Author's Note: Okay, so that was a little more than a month...at least it's updated on Thursday, right? Anyway, I've been trying my best to iron out all the details regarding the Grimmland Arc of this story, and I've pretty much got it all set. I was planning on just putting it all in a single chapter, but as you can see it got away from me. The next update shouldn't be too far away, but it'll likely be shorter than this one.
Incredibly, with this update, I will have a story on FF.N which officially places me at the ten-chapter mark. If you don't know my writing well, this is an AMAZING accomplishment, since I normally lose patience/inspiration by around the third chapter, if that.
Disclaimer and Warning still apply from the first chapter.
Chapter 10: On the Road Again
Orville jerked awake at the sound of a high-pitched scream. He dropped the rock tent he slept in like lightning and ran to the tent from which the sound had originated. It wasn't hard to deduce where it had come from, given that the tent in question was shaking, and the fabric would bulge worryingly every now and then as the occupants tried to escape.
He hastily unzipped the entrance, allowing Sun and Ren to tumble out. The Faunus had a frantic gleam in his eyes as he scrambled away as quickly as he could while Ren struggled to his feet, face haggard.
"What the hell happened?" Orville wondered, even as the others came to see what the commotion was about.
Ren shot Sun a glare as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "See for yourself," the tired martial artist growled, looking a thousand percent done with his tent buddy. Orville ducked his head beneath the flap and caught sight of the source of Sun's distress, then blinked several times to make sure he wasn't mistaken. His hand darted out, capturing the offender, and held it up for everyone to see.
"Sun," he said slowly, turning to his blonde friend. "Is all this because you're afraid of a little rat?" The monkey Faunus flinched back from the small rodent, causing Yang to smirk widely. Weiss stared down her nose disdainfully at the creature, while Ruby and Nora cooed over how cute it was.
"Look, I've got a thing about rats, okay?" Sun mumbled defensively. "Their beady little eyes just...I don't trust 'em, alright?"
Orville sighed, but nodded. Phobias weren't exactly rational, after all, and he was terrified of thunder himself so it wasn't like he could talk. "Next time make sure your tent is sealed properly at all times, or you might find more of this little guy's friends cuddling up with you again."
Sun shuddered violently. "Noted."
Shaking his head, Orville walked over to the ring wall, opened a little mouse hole and let the intruder scurry away. "Well, since we're all up, we might as well get a jump on things," he announced, and everyone began the process of breaking camp while Ren cooked breakfast.
It took roughly an hour for them to finish the meal and pack everything away. When they were done, Orville collapsed his wall and began leading them south.
"So how will we be crossing this chasm?" Pyrrha asked as she walked up alongside him.
"The Link Bridge," Orville said. "It's a few miles from here, and the last bit of civilization we'll be seeing for a few days."
Pyrrha frowned thoughtfully. "I didn't know there were settlements in the actual Grimmlands," she said curiously. "There aren't any in the Mistral Wilderness...I suppose things are different here on Vytal."
"Yeah, well," Orville shrugged. "Us Vytalites are hardy and stubborn, which is either a great combination or a terrible one, depending on who you're asking. The people who live out here are mostly descendants of deposed kings or groups who opposed the royalty and were banished long ago."
"That's awful," she said, looking across the rift.
"That's life," he replied simply. "They've adapted pretty well, in my opinion. We should just be thankful they're there at all, otherwise there wouldn't be a safe place for us to rest every once in a while." He hesitated, then added, "There are also a few frontier colonies sponsored by Vale and Vacuo, too, but those are almost always within a few days' ride of The Bridges."
They crested a hill, and Pyrrha gasped in astonishment at the sight before her. Orville couldn't blame her, really; the first time he'd seen the Link Bridge it had rendered him speechless. As the others drew up behind them, the quiet chatter fell away as they took in the view.
"Holy shit," Sun breathed.
"You said it," Yang agreed in an uncharacteristically subdued tone. The others were likewise awed by the massive feat of architecture and human ingenuity.
Calling it a bridge was somewhat misleading. When one hears the name, they might think of something perhaps large enough to allow four cars to travel side-by-side. The Link Bridge was a marvel of engineering and design, built by an ancient kingdom long forgotten to time and fortified by dozens that followed, including Vale itself. Two massive fortresses stood sentinel on either side of the Dark Divide, each boasting a gate strong enough that any Grimm horde would batter itself bloody against it and a Cross-Continental Transmitter soaring high above. The bridge itself was a mile wide, and hosted buildings all across it where its inhabitants lived and worked, all to maintain one of the seven entrances into the Vytal Grimmlands.
Below the massive length of stone (and steel and duracrete and countless other building materials of varying age), several smaller bridges spanned the canyon, leading to various ledges hewn from the rock face beneath the shadows of either of the twin citadels where Orville knew most of the foodstuffs grew and the specially-bred domesticated elk were kept. All of the Bridges across the Dark Divide were almost completely self-sufficient, earned through the trial and error of nearly a thousand years of hardship.
Collectively, the Bridges could be considered a kingdom in their own right both politically and economically, but chose instead to allow Vale to hold governance over them for simplicity's sake. As close to the Grimmlands as they were, the Bridges' only concern as far as politics went was whether or not they would be rendered assistance should the worst come to pass, and being beholden to Vale most definitely provided that.
"Come on," prompted Orville, nudging Pyrrha to kick-start her brain. "We still gotta get through the gate. It'll take some sweet talking, maybe a couple bribes here or there, but we'll be on the other side in no time."
"Or I could just show them my Hunter credentials," Jaune offered helpfully. "I can tell them that we're on a training mission, which isn't that far from the truth anyway."
Orville stopped short as he turned to the professor, then grinned. "Or we could do that," he relented. "Looks like you're useful after all, Teach."
"Gee, thanks," the Huntsman muttered sarcastically. "I feel so appreciated."
"He's just joking, Professor," Pyrrha said apologetically, jabbing Orville in the ribs subtly. "We value your presence here with us, right Orville?" She smiled menacingly at her partner, and Orville felt a bit of sweat beading on his forehead. He might be able to beat her every once in a while, but he had a healthy (and completely justified) fear of his partner's wrath.
"Sure, sure," Orville nodded vigorously. "You know me. Orville the joker." He chuckled nervously until the edge of danger left Pyrrha's expression. "Alright, let's get to it then."
With Jaune's papers and license, it was a simple task to get through the Vale-side portal. They stopped at an inn for a quick lunch before heading toward the other side.
The guards on the far side of the Link were a bit more suspicious, but they were all given passes, allowing Orville and Jaune to lead the others to the stables within. The Vytal red elk had been bred on the Bridges for close to five hundred years, with evidence of their domestication in the Grimmlands going back even further. Each Bridge's stock had slightly different characteristics, but with the close ties the Bridges shared the elk's traits were more or less evenly intermingled. They were known mostly for their more powerful frame, sure footing, and sheer endurance. It was said that a Vytal Red could run for three days and nights without tiring, though no one in living memory had ever been insane enough to try testing that legend.
When they reached the stables, Orville quickly spotted a familiar mane of russet hair standing behind one of the rental booths and made his way over. "Mal!" he called out in greeting. Blue eyes darted to his, and a wide smile appeared on the pixie-like face of the stable-hand.
Malon was the daughter of one of the most well-known and respected elk breeders on the Link, and had once been a wild filly who would take unsanctioned trips out into the Grimmlands on a regular basis until the incident had occurred. Her own elk had been taken down by a pack of wild dogs about a dozen miles from the Link, and she'd been beset by Ursai when she attempted to return on foot. Thankfully, Orville had just left the Link on one of his runs, and he easily dispatched her pursuers before taking her back to the safety of the Bridge.
"Orville!" she shouted, waving him over and hugging him around the neck when he got within grabbing distance. "How are you? I haven't seen you in months!"
"Yeah, I kinda got signed up for Hunter school," he replied with a shrug. "Takes up way more time than I'm comfortable with, but what can ya do?" He turned to the group, who were looking between him and Malon curiously. "Guys, this is Malon. Mal, this is, from left to right, Ruby, Yang, Weiss, Ren, Nora, Sun, Blake, Jaune, and Pyrrha. They're friends I made at the academy."
"You've got friends?" Malon asked in faux-amazement. "Did you save their lives, too, or did you have to bribe them? I mean, what other reason is there to be associated with you?"
"Har-har," he rolled his eyes at her sarcastic remark. "I'll have you know that I'm a very personable guy when I wanna be. Anyway, we need some mounts..."
"And you want me to hook it up," she finished, sounding unsurprised. "Daddy would never let me hear the end of it if I didn't give you the family discount, and since you're gonna need nine elk I can add the group discount as well."
"What about the really-really-ridiculously-good-looking discount?" Orville suggested. "I qualify for that, don't I?"
"No, but your blonde friends certainly do," Malon smirked, glancing back to Jaune and Sun appreciatively (especially Sun, whose shirt was predictably unbuttoned). "Tall, dark, and handsome, too," she added, jerking her chin toward Ren, who flushed in embarrassment, "but not you. I will give you the hit-every-branch-on-the way-down-the-ugly-tree discount, though. How long are you planning on being out there?"
"I'd say between two and three weeks," Orville said. "I'm making my usual circuit, but these losers are definitely gonna slow me down some."
Malon ignored Weiss' indignant protest, quickly tallying up some figures on the desktop tome in front of her. "We'll say three weeks to be safe," she suggested. "With insurance and deposit, you're looking at three thousand lien for the lot." Expecting about as much, Orville pulled out his credit card and handed it over, allowing Malon to complete the transaction before pulling out a 'closed' sign and hanging it over her booth. "Alright, follow me and I'll take you to your mounts."
Malon led them down one of the many long rows of stables within the fortress where her father's rental animals were kept and began to process of matching elk to rider and saddling them up. It took about half an hour, but finally, after Jaune was handed the reigns of a massive pale-furred bull named Grani, Malon headed farther back, where Malon's family's personal elk were and returned with a light brown bull with pale belly fur who whickered excitedly upon spotting Orville.
"How's it going, old buddy?" Orville asked, offering up a carrot he'd happened across a few minutes prior. He reached up and ran his hand across the handsome creature's cheek, smiling as his ash-grey eyes fluttered briefly.
"He missed you," Malon commented softly, grinning.
"I've always said Yakul has good taste," he quipped in return. "Everything all set?"
"You're good to go," confirmed the stable hand with a short nod. She followed the group back out to the main thoroughfare that led to the gate and embraced Orville tightly. "Be careful out there, Pup."
"When am I ever not?" he asked, and when Malon opened her mouth, he pinched her lips together. "Don't answer that. Give Talon my best, and tell Romani I'll bring something back for her."
The group mounted up (Orville thanked his lucky stars that all of them knew at least the basics of horsemanship, which was similar enough to riding elk), and headed off to the entrance to the Grimmlands.
The great fortress loomed above them as they approached the far side of the Link Bridge, where a massive arch held the great gate. Inscribed along the archway was a sinister warning that Orville had taken to heart the first time he'd passed through.
"What the heck does that say?" Nora asked, her face a mask of confusion as she tried to puzzle out the odd pronunciation.
"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate," Orville recited from memory. "'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' The guys who built this had a flair for the dramatic, if you hadn't noticed already." Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Pyrrha and Weiss trading uneasy glances while Ren swept a cautious gaze over the words. Even Nora had gained a slightly hesitant look at his explanation.
"Well that isn't ominous at all," Yang piped up cheerfully. "So is there a locker somewhere around here that we can dump our hope into for safe-keeping?"
Orville cracked a smile; trust Yang to banish the apprehensive atmosphere which had settled over their group. "I think there might be some storage space over that way, but the rent is ludicrous."
"Ah, well," the brawler shrugged as if it couldn't be helped. "Guess we'll just have to keep it on us, right?" She shoved Jaune from behind. "Let's go, Prof. You're the one with the special papers, now get us through!"
"Shake 'n Bake, Peej!" Orville shouted, thrusting out with the Dynamic Duo and his soul. The ground bucked and quaked at his prompting, sending half a dozen Beowolves into the air while he slashed two of the closest in half. Ren took advantage of the others' momentary helplessness and cut them to pieces with Stormflower's blades, which were coated in razor-sharp shells of pale pink Aura. "Champ, Blitz, give us a Hot Shot!"
From atop the stone tower he'd lifted earlier, Magnhild roared and Miló barked. Several feet away a cluster of fifteen lupine Grimm disappeared in an explosion of ruddy smoke created by a special Fire Opal grenade being struck by the Pyrite infused bullet Pyrrha had fired. A gust of wind blew away the smoke, revealing a large crater and little else.
Seeing the immediate threats neutralized, Orville glanced over to where Team RWBY were handling the other half of the Grimm horde they'd found attacking a Vacuan caravan As he watched, Yang skated by on a slab of ice while holding onto Gambol Shroud, allowing Blake to slingshot her partner by the elastic ribbon straight toward the Alpha Beowolf in charge of the pack at blistering speed. The blonde brawler slammed a massive hay-maker straight through the Alpha's snout, collapsing its skull and sending it flying back amidst a spray of smoky gore.
"Do Alphas count for double?" Ruby called while she twirled about nearby, cleaving a Beowolf in half at the waist.
"I guess," Orville shrugged, dodging a vicious black paw as it swung at his head. He reversed Selenite before stabbing back and shredding the claw's owner with two barrels full of grimmshot, letting the recoil spin the shotsword back around so he could decapitate another Beowolf. "But that means the Major we took down was worth four." Ruby gave him a petulant glare as she passed, but didn't argue the point.
From the corner of his eye Orville watched as Sun and Jaune fended off the Grimm who were attempting to bypass the protective ring of Hunters and head straight for the more vulnerable prey. Sun was pretty damn good with his weapons, but Jaune was like a one-man curtain wall, always moving and keeping a constant barrier between the attacking monsters and the nomads.
Orville swept his gaze across the impromptu battlefield and allowed himself to relax. Withh RWBY and ORNP working together while Jaune and Sun pulled guard duty, the Grimm had been all but decimated. Of the hundred or so Beowolves, Ursai, and the odd Creeper or three, only a few dozen Beowolves could be seen slinking off to lick their wounds and regroup. Watching as Pyrrha, Nora, and Ruby picked off a few of the retreating wolfish Grimm, Orville could very nearly feel sorry for the poor saps who had believed themselves worthy of taking on the two best teams Beacon had to offer (though he may be a bit biased in that assessment).
When the last Beowolf disappeared beyond a cluster of rolling hills in the distance, the two teams fell back to the defensive wall the nomads had pieced together and Orville had reinforced upon their arrival. The caravan itself was a motley collection of luridly-colored trailer trucks and RVs so ancient their hover pads were barely topping off at half a meter above the ground. The defensive cannons mounted on the tops of the vehicles were likewise outdated, probably dating back to the Color War if the primitive Dust magazines were anything to go by.
The leader of the convoy, a graying ram Faunus with bar-shaped pupils and the most impressive goatee Orville had ever seen, leapt over the barricade with more vigor than one would expect from a man his age.
He reached forward and grabbed Ren's hand with both of his, shaking it firmly before moving onto the others one by one. "Thank you all," he kept babbling over and over. "Thank you so very much!"
"No problem, man," Orville assured, patting him on the shoulder. "What kind of people would we be if we'd just left you guys with a bunch of Grimm on your asses?"
"Plus, we're Hunters," Ruby added, beaming. "Helping people is what we do best!"
"Nevertheless," the ram said, "I insist on rewarding you somehow. Is there anything you young folks need?"
"Well, someone forgot to bring my spices," Ren noted, shooting a dirty look at Orville. "Would you happen to have any oregano and ground red pepper to spare?"
"I can't be bothered to think of everything, Peej," Orville retorted stubbornly. "Sunshine brought along her stuff without being prompted, I just assumed you would have brought yours, too."
"When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me," his only male teammate sniped back sullenly.
"I'm pretty sure we have more than enough of both," the caravan leader interjected before Orville could respond. "I'll just go grab some..." With that said, he bolted back to his RV and away from what must have looked like some pretty insane teenagers.
"Look, we'll be coming up on Gilded Lake in a few hours," Orville tried to placate Ren, who had been in a fuss since he'd realized that the only thing he had to season their meals with was salt and black pepper at dinner the previous night. "I'm sure they've got some exotic Grimmland spices, and I'll buy all the oregano and red pepper you could ask for."
"And saffron?" Ren prompted hopefully.
"And saffron," Orville agreed, rolling his eyes.
In short order, Goatee Guy returned with a couple containers that Ren gratefully accepted before turning to Jaune, who must have told the travelers that he was in charge. "Is there anything else we can do for you?"
"Be safe," Jaune replied simply. "The Link Bridge is only a hundred miles or so off, you should be able to make it by tomorrow afternoon with your vehicles."
"Bless you," Goatee murmured, nodding respectfully to them before ordering the makeshift barrier broken down and packed away. Orville pushed his own contribution to the wall back into the ground, and with one last wave and a wish for good luck, the caravan was back on its way, leaving the group to mount their rental elk and continue in the opposite direction.
"So what was your count?" Orville asked as he drew level with Ruby.
"We got forty-six!" his fellow leader boasted, shooting a proud look at her team. "Plus, we managed to pull off that super-cool combo attack on the Alpha we've been working on."
Orville nodded, impressed. "Nice work," he complimented. "Too bad ORNP beat you guys by ten."
"What?" Ruby exclaimed. "But Team RWBY kicked so much butt! How did you guys manage to beat us?"
"The Grimm were no match for our excellent coordination," Pyrrha said idly from Orville's other side. "Don't forget that we've been working on teamwork a little longer than you have."
"Not to mention we've got the greatest, most glorious leader of all time!" Nora added from her position behind them.
"Them's fightin' words, Miss Nora," Yang grunted, spitting out a wad of bubblegum. She'd been quite taken with the whole Wild Wilderness aspect of the journey after she had learned they would be riding elk for most of the trip, and had even brought some shotgun chaps and a wide-brimmed cowboy hat for use on the road, such as it was. "Mah li'l sister's the rootin'est, tootin'est leader in all o' Remnant."
"Our kill count begs to differ," Ren pointed out in an off-hand tone that Orville had taught him specifically in order to rile Weiss up.
True to form, the Atlesian girl with a fetish for white clothing glared at Ren. "There's absolutely no way that sorry excuse for a mongrel is anywhere close to the leader Ruby is."
"Aw, Weiss you do care!" Ruby squealed, eyes sparkling with unshed tears of joy.
"Don't read too much into this," Weiss snapped, but Orville could see the smile trying to fight its way onto her face.
While the two teams bantered good-naturedly with input from Sun and (more rarely) Jaune, Orville and Yakul led the group through the rolling terrain at a slow, steady trot. Most of the Grimm in the area didn't bother them, and the few that did were taken out by Pyrrha or Ruby from a safe distance. They stopped every once in a while to inspect something more closely or for a quick pit stop to fuel up and empty out, and Orville finally managed to convince Yang that the rocks didn't resemble lipstick even remotely beyond the basic shape.
Eventually, as the sun began to flirt with the mountainous horizon in the west, they arrived at their first destination. Orville grinned at how excellent his timing was, and allowed nature to explain to his friends why Gilded Lake was named thus. The dying sunlight reflected off the wide oxbow, turning it into a hook of beaten gold upon the land as it curved around the lonely Thunder Mountain, which glittered in the sunset like it was aflame. Just beyond it, Oakenshield River flowed west toward a forest older than most of the ruins in the Grimmlands.
In the shadow of the gleaming mountain and within the protective bend of the lake stood a settlement too large to be called a town, but not quite enough for the title of city. The seven tallest buildings were six stories high and had been carved straight from the sheer stone wall of Thunder Mountain's eastern face, and each row of structures beyond them were set in a neat grid using them as a guide. The buildings closest to the shores of Gilded Lake were short, squat huts, and everything in between those and the six-floor buildings got progressively higher the further back they went. Down the center of the lake was a pontoon bridge which connected the city to the Grimmlands beyond their natural moat.
"Let's get going," he said, urging Yakul into a canter. "They disassemble the bridge when the sun goes down."
After he awoke and performed his morning ablutions, Orville left the room he and the other three males had shared and headed to the common room for some breakfast, deciding to allow Ren (and by extension Sun and Jaune) a little more sleep. As the first of his regular stops on his circuit, Orville knew Gilded Lake's inns and lodges well enough to pick out the one with the best accomodation and (more importantly) food.
He paused at the common room's entrance and scanned the occupants. At such an early hour, the place was mostly empty except for a few bleary-eyed merchants getting in a quick bite before heading out. Orville didn't expect to see Pyrrha sitting by herself in a corner, idly spooning up some porridge as she stared into the hearth fire. He waved down one of the waiters and ordered some bacon and eggs, then went to go sit with his partner. Pyrrha must have been deep in thought because she didn't seem to notice as he slid into the seat across from her until he poked at the little crease between her eyebrows.
She blinked those emerald eyes of hers several times before her gaze focused on him. "Oh, good morning," she said, offering him an embarrassed smile. "When did you get here?"
"I just sat down," he chuckled. "Thinkin' about something important?"
Pyrrha shook her head, replying, "Not particularly. I didn't get much sleep last night; I must have zoned out for a while."
Orville leaned back in his seat, shrugging easily. "Happens to the best of us, Champ," he assured her. "So does Yang snore, or were the beds too lumpy?" He'd noticed early on in the school year that one of the RWBY girls snored loudly, and the most likely culprit was his blonde friend.
"Actually, it was Weiss' snores that kept me awake," Pyrrha corrected, laughing lightly. Orville's eyebrows rose in surprise; it was difficult for him to connect the deep bass rumbles he'd heard with the diminutive, almost doll-like Schnee, but he didn't think Pyrrha would lie about something as innocuous as that. "The rest of her team must have gotten used to it already, and Nora can sleep through just about anything, so I was the only one who seems to have suffered."
"Tough luck," Orville sympathized. "We can pick up some ear plugs on the way out, if you want."
"I wouldn't say no to that," Pyrrha admitted with a sheepish smile. It never ceased to amaze Orville that the girl whose fierce reputation as one of the greatest fighters in the world could be so kind and empathetic toward even Weiss who, while not a total bitch, could be mistaken for one on occasion.
They were interrupted by the waiter setting down Orville's breakfast in front of him, pouring a cup of strong coffee into the empty mug already on the table. "Thanks," Orville nodded to the server distractedly before turning back to Pyrrha. "So, after this do you wanna come with me to get the Pyrite?"
Pyrrha's smile widened slightly as she bobbed her head. "That sounds fun," she acknowledged. "But I thought no one else knew where your Dust was? Wouldn't such a valuable resource have been discovered so close to a settlement like Gilded Lake?"
Orville grinned. "Everyone can look, Champ, but not everyone can see, y'know?"
Frowning at his enigmatic statement, the Mistrali girl eloquently replied, "Er...what?"
Chuckling, he answered, "You'll see," before tucking into his food. After a moment of watching him curiously, Pyrrha shrugged and resumed eating her own breakfast. Despite having begun before him and having much less in her bowl, the two partners finished at the same time, and once he drained his cup of coffee, Orville stood and gestured for her to follow.
They stepped into the early morning light, and Orville pointed up at the mountain, which shone in the sun like a beacon. "Look and see," he urged. Pyrrha followed his finger and stared at the bright stones, her eyes sharp as they bounced around the eastern face of the summit. After about a minute, she turned her gaze back to him in confusion.
"I don't understand," she finally admitted, shamefaced.
Orville offered her a supportive smile. "Don't worry if you don't get it at first," he said encouragingly. "I didn't really figure it out until I'd been here a dozen times, and Gilded Lake's citizens live here and still don't know."
He led her to the inn's stables and they mounted up, Orville on Yakul and Pyrrha on the roan cow named Pedasos that Mal had paired her with. They crossed the floating bridge and sketched a lazy curve around the outer shore of the lake to the other side of Thunder Mountain, where Orville guided them up what he generously called a trail. Yakul and Pedasos had no trouble navigating the treacherous footing which would have stymied a Valean horse half a meter up, and they eventually found themselves on a bluff that overlooked Gilded Lake several dozen meters above the high buildings.
Orville watched from the corner of his eye as wonder stole across Pyrrha's face when she beheld the incredible sight below them. He allowed her a few moments to drink in the tableau before clearing his throat.
She directed her attention back to him, and he wordlessly ran his palm along the stone of the mountain beside him, reaching with his Semblance as he did so. Wherever his fingers passed, the rock seemed to lose its luster, and when he drew away and held out his hand, there was a coin-sized chunk of Pyrite glittering innocently between his thumb and forefinger.
Pyrrha gasped as understanding dawned on her face. "The Pyrite is what makes Thunder Mountain shimmer like it does!" she realized, turning once more to the stone.
"Yep," Orville confirmed. "This place gets its name for the frequency of lightning strikes on and around the mountain. Pyrite generates electricity when you flow Aura through it, but it attracts and absorbs electric currents without any prompting. It's the only metallic Dust I've ever heard of, and I like to think of myself as a bit of an expert on the subject."
Pyrrha rolled her eyes, smiling nevertheless. "It must be destiny that you and I should be partners, then, isn't it?" she mused as she caressed the mountain absent-mindedly. "That I, one of the very few Hunters ever recorded having a Semblance which affects metals, would encounter you, the person who discovered the one type of Dust I can manipulate without a Dust mage's training."
Orville was about to needle her about her talk of destiny when she lifted her hand away from the rock and presented him with a piece of Pyrite glimmering on her palm. "I've said it before," he commented. "We make a helluva team, you and I. Let's gather as much as we can before the others wake up and start blowing up our scrolls."
As it turned out, the rest of their adventuring party didn't wake up until the sun was high overhead and Team OP had collected quite a bit of Pyrite. Orville was in the process of compressing the large pile of golden Dust into a more manageable size when his scroll began to ring.
He checked the caller's name before flipping it open and answering. "Timid Tilly's Taxidermy, where you snuff 'em and we stuff 'em! How can we be of service today?"
Yang rolled her eyes at the odd greeting. "The horticulturist one was better," she deadpanned. "Where are you?"
Orville aimed the scroll's camera at the pile with Pyrrha in the background, who waved self-consciously. "We're getting the Dust. Y'know, the whole reason I wanted to come on this trip in the first place?"
"And here I thought it was so you could ravish all us impressionable girls in the wilderness," she shot back, grinning. "There goes my fantasy out the window."
"Put a pin in that one and we'll get back to it later," he snickered. "Anyway, we're almost done up here. We should be back in an hour or so."
"Don't leave a girl waiting too long, now," Yang pushed out her bottom lip, and Orville suddenly understood where Ruby got her devastating pout from.
"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled uncomfortably. "See you in a bit."
He cut the line and turned back to Pyrrha. "She's gonna be the death of me, I swear," he grunted, settling into a wide stance and let his Aura settle over the Pyrite before squeezing with his will. Compressing the Dust was a process Orville and Gin had spent close to three years perfecting, and was slow and arduous when done properly. When performed incorrectly, the Dust had a worrying tendency to explode at the slightest provocation (Orville had gone through no less than twenty utility belts before they'd gotten it down-pat).
As the sounds of grinding stone began to fill the air, Pyrrha sat down on the chair he'd made for her earlier and settled in with her own scroll. Orville screwed up his face in concentration as he steadily removed the empty space between the Dust particles and formed it into a cuboid, but movement in his peripheral vision kept distracting him. It turned out to be Pyrrha's leg jangling as she fiddled with her scroll, and he tried his best to push it out of his mind, but something was off about the picture. Pyrrha was usually the picture of rigid discipline, able to sit perfectly still and be completely comfortable doing so. This fidgeting was uncharacteristic and frankly off-putting.
Eventually, he couldn't stand it, and straightened from his half-crouched position. Pyrrha looked up, raising a questioning eyebrow. "Something wrong?" she asked, getting up from her seat and reaching for Miló.
"Nothing dangerous," he replied with a calming gesture. "You were distracting me."
Pyrrha furrowed her brow even as a pink flush crept up her neck. "What do you mean?"
"You were wriggling around so much that I figured something was up," he explained.
"Was I?" she sounded mystified. "I hadn't even noticed, I'm sorry."
He waved off the apology. "No harm done, but what's got you all jittery?"
"It's nothing," she denied, but her slowly reddening face made him think otherwise.
"Sure about that?" he queried skeptically.
"I—that is to say..." she floundered for a moment before seeming to come to a decision. She went from flustered to determined in the time it took Orville to blink. "I wanted to ask: are you and Yang together?"
Orville blinked rapidly at the question. First Jaune and now Pyrrha? "Uh, no," he answered honestly. "We're friends. I'm pretty sure she's my best friend, though I'm still trying to work that one out." Pyrrha's expression morphed into combination of relief and trepidation, then horror when he asked, "Why?"
"N-no reason," she stammered, flapping her hands in front of her as if to stave off the inquiry. "I was just curious. The way you two act, you can see my confusion..."
Sighing, Orville nodded. Really, he would have had to be a total idiot not to see that Pyrrha harbored some sort of feelings for him that went beyond mere partnership, but he hadn't the slightest clue how to deal with it. Well, he knew a few ways to exacerbate the situation very pleasurably, but that wasn't what he wanted.
"I'm not actually looking for something like that," he said after a while. "I've had...let's call it 'bad' experiences with intimate relationships and leave it at that."
He could see how much Pyrrha wanted to ask about those bad experiences (and wasn't that the understatement of the century?), and he was grateful that she curbed her curiosity and simply nodded, trying her best to hide the disappointment in her eyes. He felt terrible about that; Pyrrha was a sweetheart, one of the nicest people he knew in fact. But it was better that he didn't entangle her even further into the shitstorm he fondly called his life.
"It must have been pretty bad," she finally commented lightly.
Orville huffed in sardonic amusement. "Enough that I pretty much swore off women for the foreseeable future," he agreed.
"Oh." Something in Pyrrha's voice made him give her a bewildered look. "I didn't know you were...ah...like that." She heaved a massive sigh. "Why are all the good ones gay?" she muttered to herself.
"I-I'm not gay!" he sputtered, feeling his face heat up. "Not that that's a bad thing, but I'm not gay. I meant that—" He cut himself off when he realized that Pyrrha was stifling her laughter behind her hand and sent her a sullen glare. "Har-har, Champ. You're a friggin' riot."
Apparently, his face was so amusing to her that she couldn't hold in her merriment anymore. Her belly-busting laughter echoed through Thunder Mountain's crags, and Orville petulantly resumed compressing the Pyrite while he grumbled to himself about Yang corrupting his sweet partner.
"You're not exactly the greatest influence either, you know," Pyrrha pointed out, watching as the heap of Dust shrank steadily.
"That's the good thing about you and I," Orville said. "We even each other out. I've been better behaved these past few months than I have since I was eight thanks to you."
"If that was you being well-behaved I'd hate to see what you were like before," she muttered.
"My dear, you've no idea," he smirked in response, reliving the vague details he could recall about the incident which had gotten him banned from Vacuo's Casino District for life.
Eventually, the massive mound of Pyrite they had harvested from the stone had been squeezed down into a perfectly symmetrical block that fit snugly into a special pocket in Orville's bag, and they made it back to Gilded Lake well before sunset.
They even had time to pick up some ear plugs for Pyrrha.
On the sixth day after Thunder Mountain disappeared behind them, the group found themselves looking down at the ruins of a town which had once been called Littleroot. It was a disheartening sight, especially the gap in the ring wall which looked otherwise strong and sturdy. The settlement was much smaller than the one at Gilded Lake, but that by no means undercut the sense of tragedy that clung to it.
"What do you think happened here?" Ruby asked quietly, her silvery eyes shuttered and dim.
"Same thing that always happens in places like this," Ren replied with a surprising amount of bitterness in his voice. "Grimm."
"I don't think it was just Grimm that did this town in," said Jaune, frowning. He pointed at the breach in the wall, where dark scorch marks scored the half-melted stone. "That looks like the work of Burn Dust to me."
"What kind of asshole would do something so screwed up?" Yang snarled through gritted teeth. Her leather half-gloves creaked in protest as her hands clenched tightly at the villainy.
"Maybe they didn't have their Dust supplies stored properly," Weiss suggested half-heartedly.
Orville let the speculation wash over him without really hearing it. The decrepit old town dredged up some incredibly unpleasant memories that would have been better off buried in the sewage of his subconscious. Just looking at the ruptured wall made him feel weak and worthless.
"No use wondering now," he managed to say after a while, wheeling Yakul around and nudging him into a steady lope. "Let's get going."
Something in his tone must have alerted the others to his foul mood because every so often he would feel eyes on his back, but he ignored them in favor of getting them to their next destination in a timely fashion.
They'd passed through Sanguine Gorge a day prior where they'd picked up some Sunstone, and Drowsy Dale three days before that in order to gather the Tiger's Eye. They were only a week in and yet they were already almost halfway through with Orville's usual Dust run. Granted, he could have been just about done by now had he been alone, but the company was great, and the team bonding experience was invaluable.
There had yet to be any hiccups in the plan, which was starting to grate on Orville's nerves something fierce. Usually, he'd have run into a tribe of pygmy shamans attempting to sacrifice him to a statue of their god carved from a massive Dust crystal or a group of insane caravaneers using him as bait in order to figure out how to tame soulless beasts so they could start the world's first Grimm circus (and he wished he could say honestly that he'd never been in either situation), but so far it had been smooth sailing. Almost too smooth...the Grimmlands were always dangerous, ever-ready to snap the unwary up and gobble them whole. For a group of ten people to have gone so long without incident was unheard of, and Orville felt his anticipation grow exponentially with each passing day.
"Lien for your thoughts?" Orville looked over to the side to find Blake ride up next to him, one hand on the reins of her black and white bull, Beauty, while the other idly flicked her scroll's screen as words danced across it.
"I'm a little worried," he confessed sotto voce after glancing back at the others, knowing she'd be able to pick up his words. "Something always goes wrong out here, and the suspense is starting to get to me as to what the hell it's gonna be."
Blake's amber eyes narrowed as she inspected him before she sighed in exasperation. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe you're being a little paranoid?" she asked rhetorically.
"It's crossed my mind," he acknowledged, giving the area a cursory sweep for danger. "In my experience, though, it's better to be paranoid than dead."
"True enough," conceded the cat-girl before changing the subject. "So where's our next stop?"
"The Mountains of the Moon, about three days from here," he answered.
"So that's where your Moonstone is?" Blake inquired sarcastically.
"No, actually," Orville chuckled as she blinked in confusion. "Moonstone comes from the bottom of a lake. The Mountains of the Moon are where I get Fire Opal. We'll have to be quick there, though."
"Why, is it dangerous there?"
Orville shifted uncomfortably in Yakul's saddle. "In a manner of speaking," he hedged, not wanting to open that can of worms ever, if he could help it. "Let's just say it's a lot better if we don' take our time getting the Fire Opal."
Blake pierced him with a shrewd gaze before shrugging. "You're the expert, I suppose," she said with some degree of skepticism. "Speaking of which, I was wondering whether or not you've noticed our tail."
He nodded once, fighting the urge to glance back beyond the group to the forested area they'd left just left. "Since yesterday," he said. "I can't be sure, but I'm thinking it's a LaMOR."
"A...Lay-more?" Blake parroted curiously.
"It stands for 'Last Man on Remnant'," explained Orville. "After a Grimm incursion destroys a settlement, there's always a chance that someone will make it out alive, whether by skill, preparation, or sheer dumb luck. But having suffered through that kind of trauma, sometimes something in their head just...snaps and they decide to stay in the wilderness as some lone-wolf survivalist type."
"And you think this is a LaMOR from what happened at Littleroot?" Blake asked, but Orville shook his head, feeling that helpless feeling from before well up once again.
"Littleroot only had two survivors, and neither of them stuck around afterward," he replied, spitting a wad of phlegm into the bushes off to the side. "It might be a bandit scout checking out whether or not we're worth the effort to rob. We should hurry up a little, shake our guest and get out of this cursed place ASAP."
Blake dipped her head and fell back to inform the others of the change in pace. That left Orville with his own thoughts once more, which inevitably were drawn back to Littleroot. It hadn't been five years ago that the small village had been full of life and on its way to becoming a major stop for the caravans. Everything had been looking up for Littleroot right up until a giant hole had been blown into the side of their wall.
Twenty years before its eventual desolation, Littleroot had been pitched, laid-out, and built as the furthest settlement from its parent kingdom since before the Great War. Backed by Vale, it was situated in the crux of Vytal's two most heavily-trafficked trade routes going east-to-west and north-to-south, and was supposed to help facilitate safer passage. For two decades, it had done just as it been designed to until the explosion and subsequent Grimm attack.
His foul mood hounded him for the rest of the night, even after they'd set up camp and had a little sing-along to keep their spirits up. As he sat in the crow's nest alone (having offered to take his watch by himself), he watched as a small humanoid form made a quick, exploratory loop around the ring wall. He couldn't make out a single thing about them due to the formless cloak-like garment they wore before the figure scrabbled up the sheer face. Despite himself, Orville was impressed; he'd practiced for years on raising walls as difficult to scale as possible, and his camp walls were ten feet high.
Fishing out a Tiger's Eye dart, Orville kept one eye on the intruder while he shucked his jacket, leaving him in only his red woolen long johns and boots. When their back was to him, he leapt from the lookout tower to the wall and sank straight into it, allowing him a more concealed vantage point. The interloper shuffled through the packs before carefully removing a box of granola bars. With a quick look around, the stranger fled back toward the wall, and Orville was close enough now to see that the person's finger- and toe-nails were grown out and filed down to points. They weren't Faunus features (he'd gotten intimately familiar with a leopard Faunus who liked to use her claws in rather inventive ways), but they were obviously strong enough to find purchase in stone judging on how easily the nimble thief scaled the wall.
It was only once they were on the other side of the wall that Orville pounced. Sliding through the stone, he grasped the person's shoulders from behind and pulled. Before they could make so much as a squeak of surprise Orville's prey found themselves lodged firmly on the outside of his wall, limbs encased in stone and mouth covered by a rocky band so they couldn't call for help.
"Hi there, neighbor," he offered casually as he stepped out of the wall. "I see you're borrowing a cup of sugar without asking."
The thief snarled beneath the gag, and Orville took a moment to inspect them more fully. Through the wall, Orville could feel that this person was a girl, and based on the burgeoning curves had just taken her first shaky steps into adolescence. Her eyes were green, and bore the telltale reflective pupils of a Faunus. The hair and skin was so dirty and smudged he couldn't quite make out their color in the darkness.
Internally, he grimaced. Feral children were akin to LaMORs, and yet so very different at once. Like their counterparts, ferals were the product of broken villages and Grimm rage, though LaMORs made a choice to stay in the wilds, while ferals had basically no choice. Kids who went feral more than likely spent their entire lives in the Grimmlands, not knowing any other way to live. Most didn't make it past their first year alone.
"Can you understand me?" he asked, not daring to get his hopes up. Her eyes narrowed, but jerked her head down once in the affirmative. He breathed a sigh of relief; there had been documented cases of feral children who had lost their villages before they could properly speak, or could speak but discarded that knowledge as obsolete in favor of skills they could use to survive. At least he could communicate with this one.
"Alright, I'm going to remove the gag," he said, gesturing to the rock covering her mouth just in case. "Don't make a ruckus."
Slowly, he shoved the gag back into the wall and, after a moment of hesitation, pulled her bodily from her stony prison and set her on the ground.
For a moment, she didn't seem to believe what had happened. She looked up at him (she was at least a foot and a half shorter than he was), her eyes wide in confusion. He reached into the wall and withdrew the pilfered box of granola, then held it out for her.
When she merely flicked her gaze between him and the food, he shook it lightly, causing her to jerk back instinctively. "Go on," he said, setting the box down closer to her. "It'd be a shame for all your hard work in getting it to go to waste."
After a moment's hesitation, the girl snatched it from his hands and scurried away into the night. When she was nearly a dozen yards away, she stopped and turned to face him, her eyes shining eerily in the wan moonlight before disappearing into the brush.
Pursing his lips, Orville stepped back through the wall and climbed back up to the lookout. He would have liked to do more for the poor thing, but knew that she wouldn't have taken any assistance lightly. Based on her gait and the way her eyes darted to and fro constantly, he figured that she must have been out here by herself for quite some time. She would have gained a healthy amount of skepticism for things that looked too good to be true, and pushing supplies on her would have just driven her away.
If he was lucky, she'd return the following night; he could ease into getting her to trust him a little. It was almost like trying to make a stray warm up to him, and he'd spent enough time on the streets of Vale to know how to do that properly. When his watch was over, he knocked lightly on the tent Blake and Yang shared, and a moment later the cat Faunus stepped out fully dressed.
Before he tromped over to his spot for some shut-eye, he said, "If you see a little humanoid figure lurking about, don't worry about them. Turns out our guest isn't quite the threat I'd assumed them to be."
She frowned, but nodded her understanding. "Does this mean we might be gaining another traveling companion soon?"
Orville grinned at how easily Blake was able to pick apart the situation to the bare bones. "Just keep your eyes sharp."
"Sleep well."
Over the next two days, Orville enacted his plan to ingratiate himself to the feral girl who was following their trail, making his walls just a tiny bit easier for her to find handholds in and setting some of his share of food and water out to make it easier for her to 'steal'. Both nights he would watch her enter camp as fluidly as a shadow, and both nights he would wait for her on the other side of the wall. He would speak, and she would listen, occasionally nodding or shaking her head but never uttering a word. The night before, he'd even managed to get a very small smile from the girl. It was awkward and almost painful-looking, like her facial muscles weren't quite used to pulling in such a manner, but it was definitely a smile.
As they rode along, a line of snow-capped peaks began jutting up beyond the horizon. They were called the Mountains of the Moon because they were the largest mountain range in the world in both how far they spanned and how high they rose. The least of them, Mount Serenity, soared to roughly eight thousand meters while the biggest, Tranquility Peak, seemed to pierce the very sky and reach for its namesake twelve thousand meters above Remnant. The Mountains were one of the major obstructions to overland trade between Vacuo and Vale, which meant that there were several different ways to get from one side to the other.
Orville, however, was privy to a secret passage that cut his travel time from the forests and plains on the eastern side to the desert that protected Vacuo almost in half. Even Gin wasn't aware of the existence of such a path, and Gin was a bonafide expert on the Grimmlands. The only problem was that the people who guarded the path, or rather a certain individual among those people.
The reason he was so leery of the Mountains of the Moon was because of a girl named Violet. At one point in his life, he had believed her to be 'The One' that everyone talked about. Then, of course, he learned that she was actually guiding his thoughts and fostering his feelings for her using her Semblance. It was at this point that he wrote off any romantic relationship as a waste of time, effort, and most importantly emotion. He had better things to spend his life on.
At the moment, he was lecturing the others on the absolute need for stealth at this juncture in their journey.
"So, as far as I can tell, the people who live near the Fire Opal are descendants of ancient rebels who were exiled into the Grimmlands by King Mekhmet of Alexandria about five hundred years ago," he said. He rolled his eyes fondly at Nora, who raised her hand like they were in class. "Yes, Blitz?"
"What's Alexandria?"
"That's the precursor culture to modern Vacuo," Weiss piped up. "They're the ones who built the Celestial Pyramids." Nora made an 'oooh' of understanding, and waved her hand imperiously for Orville to proceed.
"Thanks, Blitz," he chuckled. "These guys have been living inside Tranquility Peak ever since, so they know the mountains like the back of their hands."
"Wait, inside?" Ren interjected blankly. "What do you mean?"
"Tranquility Peak is the remains of a dead volcano," Orville explained. "The inside is pretty much hollow. The exiles found a lava tube that led into the empty caldera, and they decided that it was the best place for them, concealed within the bowels of the earth and hidden from all their enemies, including the creatures of Grimm."
"Wow," Sun hummed, intrigued. "And I always though history was lame."
Orville snorted. "History's all we've got left, Broku. Our world is called Remnant for a reason. There are things out here in the Grimmlands that would blow the minds of the entire population if they came to light. I once came across something that had to be some sort of space ship."
Yang laughed at that. "Pull the other one, Corndog. Everyone knows aliens aren't real."
"I never said anything about aliens, Sunshine," he retorted. "There was writing on it, and I recognized a few of the symbols as ones I've seen on other ruins all over Vytal and Menagerie."
"I didn't know you believed in the theory that we once had space-faring technology," Jaune said thoughtfully. My dad's the same way, only a little more...ah, shall we say intrigued by the notion."
"Well, at least I know what to get you for Yuletide," Weiss scoffed at Orville. "A big roll of tin foil so you can craft your own hats."
He shook his head with a smile. "To you, yours, Edelweiss," he quoted, "and to me, mine. The truth is out there, and someone's bound to find it someday." Shaking his head, he returned to the topic at hand. "Anyways, I only own a half-share of the rights to the Fire Opal, since I and one of these mountain folks found it. He's the only other one who knows where it is, but he and I aren't exactly on the greatest terms right now, so that's why we need to be wary."
They had begun to climb the foothills by that point, and the elk began to show their worth as they picked their way up the slopes. However, as the group climbed higher, they were stopped by a loud, animalistic shriek from behind and below.
Orville tugged on his reins and Yakul spun in perfect sync with his rider. Roughly half a mile out, he felt a large displacement of earth, but his vision was concealed by the evergreen forest. Then, a massive blast of light and sound erupted from the area he'd been focused on and suddenly there was a great clearing in the trees.
Ruby was the first to react, shifting Crescent Rose into its rifle configuration, and peered through the optics. Orville quickly followed, bringing his field glasses up to his eyes.
He scanned the area with a feeling of dread welling up in his gut while Ruby reported to the others. "There's a big group of people out there," she said. "All older than we are, all armed. As far as I can tell, all human, too. Wait, there's a bunch more people about half a mile back. Only a few of them are armed, though. The rest..."
She frowned, and Orville followed her line of sight to the cluster and promptly broke his binoculars.
Pyrrha, startled, grabbed his hands and swept the shards of glass and carbon fiber from them. "Orville, what's wrong?"
"Slavers," he snarled, unable to keep his lip from curling in disgust and rage. "Ren, give me your eyes." Thankfully, his male teammate handed over his own binoculars without question, and Orville returned to his sweep, ignoring the sentient chattel for the moment in order to figure out what the others were doing blowing up half the forest.
A flash of motion to the west of the man-made clearing caught his attention, and after a bit of focus, he found that it was his night-time guest, running as fast as her legs would carry her. Just behind her were half a dozen large men, armed with various weapons.
"Fuck," he growled, tossing Ren his binoculars back and pointed to the base 'camp'. You guys figure out a way to free those people. I need to get down there, now!"
And before the others could even protest, he'd dug his heels into Yakul, pointing him on an intercept course with the feral girl. He and Yakul tore through the trees, dodging reaching branches and gnarled roots alike as they rode, until they almost trampled the little girl when she darted out almost right underneath them.
Yakul reared up on his hind legs to avoid her, and she dive-rolled away from the elk's flailing hooves. Orville slid off Yakul's saddle when he went vertical and landed in a deep stance facing the direction the girl had just raced from, drawing Obsidian and Selenite from their joined scabbards.
"Get on," he ordered, pointing to the elk's back even as he lifted a set of steps for the girl. When she hesitated, he snapped, "Up, now!" She obeyed, skipping up the steps and leaping onto Yakul. "Take her back to the others," he then said, shifting his attention to his mount's gray eyes.
Yakul shifted and bounded off back the way they'd come, and just in time. The moment Yakul was out of sight, seven men arrived at the spot, wielding hunting rifles and machetes.
The sight of Orville brought them up short, but the leader quickly regained his wits and brandished his blade. "Well, look what we've got here," he sneered. "A little lost boy to add to our collection. Why don't you come back to our camp with us, young man. We'll get you all settled."
Orville didn't respond verbally. Instead, he shifted his left foot and the ground beneath the men shifted with it, sending them off-balance. Before they even knew what to make of him, the Dynamic Duo danced. Aura-enhanced steel ripped through the slavers' meager guard like piss through snow, and Dust rounds blew holes where holes ought not to be on humans.
By the time he was done, all that remained of the slavers were cooling bodies and splashes of blood on the forest floor.
He closed his eyes and sought out anymore nearby, then headed off in the direction of the other large group nearby, using Geomancy to push him faster. Orville stopped several meters away from them and decided to take stock of the situation.
There were roughly a dozen slavers, but this group seemed much more seasoned than the first seven. It seemed they'd sent those bastards out to get them some much-needed slave-catching experience. Just the thought made his grip around his blades tighten angrily. Then he smiled a vicious smile; they might be more worldly, but they still didn't know he was here, or what he could do.
Orville gathered his energy and focused on the earth beneath the slavers, flooding the ground with his will. Then he brought his hands up in a clawed cage, and the dirt rose up at his command and encircled the entire group. Just as the first panicked shout issued from the cage, Orville clenched his fists, and the earthen globe obeyed, imploding into hundreds of shards of compressed stone and gory bits of flesh.
He released his hold on the bloody earth matter, and the remains of eleven men dropped to the forest floor with a sickeningly wet plop. With a scowl, Orville pushed down and buried the corpses three feet down.
All that was left were the few who had stayed with the people they'd captured. He threw himself forward and headed to the final group just as he felt his friends arrived on the outskirts of the 'camp' and formed up to devise a plan.
"—Weiss, can you do that?" Ruby said, then looked up when he dismounted his rock board. "Orville, what happened? And is that blood on your shirt?"
"Don't worry, it's not mine," he assured them, then looked up at the girl who was still on Yakul's back. In the light of day, it was clear to Orville just how malnourished she was; the poor thing was practically nothing but skin and bones, and her green eyes were wide with fear. "Little one, do you know who those men were chasing you?"
Her gaze darted out into the forest, then to the 'camp'. "They...killed...my...family," she managed to choke out. "Took...caravan people...away." Her voice was raspy and soft, and her words came in bits and pieces, like she hadn't used either in quite a while.
"Do you know the people they have now?" he asked, pointing to the huddle of miserable folk who were being held at gun-point in chains. The girl shook her head after a moment.
"None," she whispered sadly. "All...I knew...are gone."
Orville nodded. "Alright, then," he said gravely. "I can't give you back your family or your friends, but we can still give the people who took them from you what they deserve."
A brutal snarl issued from her throat. "Kill...that one...first," the girl said, pointing. Orville followed her finger and froze.
The man she had indicated was massive, easily seven feet tall and muscled like an ancient Mistrali god. His brown hair was swept back from his face, revealing one jet-black eye glittering with malice while the other hid behind a black eyepatch. He wore a tan duster over a rough-spun gray tunic and brown chaps atop blue jeans.
"What's up?" Yang asked, resting a hand on his shoulder.
"That bastard," he murmured. "I know him."
"He...killed...my papa," the feral girl hissed. "Made...mama...scream." Furious tears leaked from her eyes, and she fixed Orville with a glare. "Make...him...scream."
"You've got it, little one," he replied.
"What are we going to do?" Jaune asked. "We can't make a move until we can be sure their captives are safe. We were going to have Weiss craft an ice wall around them, but now that you're here..."
"I'll make sure they're safe," Orville said. "You all just keep any of them from scurrying off."
Orville's scroll beeped three times, signalling that everyone was in place. Having been prepared for several minutes already, Orville made his move, lifting and shaping and compressing all in the space of a few seconds until a large, two-foot thick dome of rock had been placed over the captives. The slavers struck at the stone ineffectually before the large man, their leader, shouted at them to stop lest they damage their weapons.
With that done, Orville stepped forward and spoke. "Bruno Sullivan!"
All the slavers turned to him, weapons aimed and at the ready. Bruno quirked an eyebrow and smirked.
"Do I know you from somewhere little fella?" he asked condescendingly, though a hint of recognition gleamed in his eye.
"Probably not," Orville admitted, "but I know you. Ever hear of a little place called Littleroot? You know, that town you blew a hole in and enslaved when they tried fleeing the Grimm?"
"Was that your village, then?" Bruno demanded. "I'd apologize, but it's not really my style. It was nothing personal, I assure you. That's just business for you." He shrugged his massive shoulders as though he'd done nothing more terrible than spill his drink on Orville's lap.
"No, it wasn't my village," Orville denied. "I was there, though, when you pulled your shit. I tried to lead them to safety, I got caught by you and spent weeks in your tender care. And when my guardian freed me you killed all the others out of sheer fucking spite."
"Your guardian..." hummed the massive man. He snapped his fingers, a malicious sneer forming on his face. "Ah, I remember now! You're that little dog runt who was with Gin Solo! You're the one who cost him his legs!" He let out a booming chortle that shook Orville to his bones as memories rose unbidden to his mind.
Orville felt his lips peel back as his teeth were bared unconsciously. "I owe you much, Sullivan. It's about time I pay my debt."
And then he moved, rushing forward as he unleashed all four barrels of the Dynamic Duo and forced Bruno to dodge left, where a massive spike of stone speared upward. Bruno, however, simply stomped down and shattered the construct, reaching behind him and drawing a massive claymore, mecha-shifting as he unsheathed it so he held a huge assault rifle with an under-barrel bayonet/grenade launcher combination.
"I haven't had a challenge in a while," Bruno quipped almost conversationally. "Try not to disappoint, runt."
He pulled the trigger and unleashed a spray of bullets that Orville avoided by sinking into the ground. Surfacing several feet behind his opponent, Orville shifted forward. Obsidian and Selenite bit deep into Sullivan's back, and the huge man roared in agonized anger, spinning much too quickly for someone his size. He grasped Orville, his hand wrapping all the way around Orville's arm and slammed him into the dirt.
Orville, however, used his Semblance to once more fall into the ground like it was liquid and pulled Bruno down with him. The man's strength was too much, though, and Bruno yanked him back up out of the dirt, tossing him high into the air and bringing his assault rifle to bear.
Before he could aim properly and let loose again, Orville's hand lashed out, and a dozen Tiger's Eye darts embedded themselves in Bruno's chest. As the Dust began taking effect, Orville used the dirt on his boots to create a platform in mid-air and bounced off it, dodging the belated hail of bullets.
Landing lightly, Orville created more Tiger's Eye projectiles and began tossing them in an uninterrupted stream, aiming some at Bruno and others at his lackeys, who had been standing around watching the spectacle in amusement. Fortunately for him, most of these slavers weren't as sturdy as Bruno, and went down after only one or two darts.
Unfortunately, Bruno was ludicrously resilient. There were at least twenty shards of Tiger's Eye lodged in his body, and he was only slightly affected. With a bellow which could have made an Ursa Major quail, Bruno charged forward, his rifle shifting back into a claymore as he ran, and brought it down upon Orville.
Thinking quickly, Orville clapped his palms together in front of him, and two massive stone hands sprouted from the ground on either side and did the same just above him, catching the blade before it could cleave his head open. The moment of distraction was enough for Bruno to swing his leg back and drive his massive foot straight into Orville's chest, effectively punting him several dozen yards away and into the dome he'd created.
That single blow had been enough to shatter his defensive Aura momentarily, and the abrupt halt had damaged him nearly as much as the initial strike. Perhaps some sort of Aura-piercing Semblance, or maybe just one that granted insane raw strength?
Orville struggled to his feet, feeling pain lance up his side every time he drew breath. Pulling more Dust from his belt, Orville split it up into dozens of needles and set them orbiting his form in a defensive ring.
"Not very impressive, runt," Bruno chuckled darkly as he advanced. "Maybe I'll grind your legs down like I did the famous Gin Solo's? That way you can get matching wheelchairs, assuming the old fart's still alive, that is..."
"Come and do it, then, you sick bastard," Orville spat, tossing a pair of Fire Opal darts that were batted out of the air by the claymore, exploding a few feet away. Using the momentum of his parry, Bruno swung his sword around once more, and this time Orville was too slow to dodge or block.
A scream ripped its way out of his throat as he felt the icy steel cut through his belly, tracing a line of fire just above his hip bones. It wasn't deep enough to be fatal, but it certainly could be given time. Many of his Dust darts fell from the air as his Aura shifted from actively utilizing his Semblance to keeping his blood in his body with a dull brown glow.
"Is that it, runt?" Bruno growled as he stood over Orville. "You come and challenge me in my domain and this is the best you can muster?" He scoffed, then casually plunged the his claymore into Orville's thigh and leaned on the pommel, driving the point straight through the meat and into the ground below.
Orville clenched his teeth, biting his cheek to stifle the scream of anguish that roiled up from his gut. "You wish this was your domain, you slave-driving piece of shit," he grunted. "You're nothing but a coward who preys on the weak."
"Well, you definitely count as weak," Bruno retorted, batting the handle of his blade back and forth, causing Orville even more suffering. "You're the one who tried to seal the hole in Littleroot that time, weren't you?" The mountain of a man shook his head in amusement. "You were too weak to save those people, and you're too weak to save these ones." He tapped on the dome behind Orville. "It'll take only a minute for me to break through this, and when I do, I think I'll punish them for your transgressions. Maybe take a finger from each one and make a necklace from the knuckle bones?" He splayed his hand against the stone and casually pushed against it. Cracks began creeping across the surface instantly, and Orville saw his chance.
Orville shoved the ground beneath him, and the claymore shot upward causing him to hiss in pain. The rounded pommel struck Bruno square in the nose, and a gush of blood sprayed from his nostrils even as a stone spike surged upward and crashed into the slaver's gut.
To Orville's dismay, the compressed and hardened rock was unable to pierce Bruno's Aura, and it merely sent him stumbling back. Orville used the dome at his back to struggle to his feet, but his leg was pretty much shot for the moment, and his chest still hurt something fierce. While Bruno was still dazed from the one-two punch of his sword and the earth, Orville quickly sent two beeps through his scroll. He hoped his friends made it in time.
Before he could return his attention to the fight, Bruno's enormous hand slammed into him like a ton of bricks and held him up against the dome by his neck so their eyes were level. Where previously, Bruno's expressions were more amused, now they held nothing but rancor and resentment and a promise of pain.
"You're going to regret that," Bruno said. "But not for long." He drew a dagger from his belt with a pure white blade that looked more crystalline than metallic, and with no warning plunged it into Orville's chest, just above his left clavicle. Agony raced through Orville's body like wildfire as Bruno viciously twisted the knife deeper into his flesh, and he was unable to keep the tortured scream from ripping free into the air.
With an evil smile and a terrible gleam in his eye, Bruno withdrew the blade and prepared for another strike. But it never came.
A screech of defiance and wrath drew both of their attention upward, and none other than the granola thief sprinted over the dome's curve at speeds that astounded Orville, launching herself forward directly at Bruno.
The giant was too shocked at such a tiny thing attacking him that he didn't raise a defense in time to block the furious assault on his face from tooth and nail and fist and foot. But his senses returned quickly enough and grabbed the girl by the scruff of her worn cloak, tossing her away with all the concern of someone wiping cockroach guts from their shoe.
The girl impacted the ground with a loud crack, and rolled to a stop where she remained unmoving.
"NO!" Casting about with his Semblance, Geomancy registered all the darts he'd dropped when Bruno had struck him, and grasped them all with his will.
Outrage fueled Orville's throw, and a shard of Sunstone flew right past Bruno's loose guard and straight into his sole remaining eye before expending its payload in a blinding flash of light. Other needles struck true as well; Fire Opal and Pyrite hit near one another on his calf and promptly removed his leg up to the knee, while Sunstone and Tiger's Eye collided just before they hit and created a wash of acid that splashed against his left arm to eat away at the cloth of his duster and the skin beneath.
The slaver let loose a tortured howl as he clutched at his face; blood gushed from the wound like an open faucet, leaking down his face in a gruesome facsimile of tears.
Struggling to force the earth do do his bidding, Orville gritted his teeth and shoved. With a belated yelp, Bruno found himself buried up to his neck in the ground, which was constricting tightly around his entire body.
Orville tried to smile, but the toll his wounds had taken caused it to come out as more of a grimace. "Looks like you just got taken down by a weakling, Sully."
Bruno was in far too much pain to respond, and Orville ignored him, using his Semblance to drag himself over to the girl. He was relieved to see that she was still breathing, even if each inhale was labored. With gentle hands, he rolled her over so she was on her back, and the jostling seemed to rouse her slightly.
"Hey, little one," Orville murmured. "Hell of a distraction you gave me."
Her lips quirked into that lopsided grin. "Won't...let him take...anyone else," she coughed. Her eyelids fluttered, and Orville shook her slightly.
"Come on, stay awake, little one," he urged. "You'll be just fine." He wanted to use Alexandrite, but it was a stop-gap measure at best, and only worked on external injuries besides.
"Ginni," she whispered, and he stopped to look askance. "My name...is Ginni." Then her eyes closed completely.
Orville's jaw clenched, and he felt for a pulse that was rapidly losing its strength. "No, no, no," he chanted frantically, trying to think of anything he could do to keep this girl alive.
Suddenly it clicked in his mind. Aura unlock!
When Gin had unlocked his Aura many years ago, he'd told Orville that anyone could unlock anyone else's Aura if they really wanted to. But it was an incredibly intimate thing, and the person who coaxed one's Aura to the surface would always be connected no matter what.
Shaking away those thoughts, Orville concentrated what little Aura he had left after the fight into his hands, gently laying one against Ginni's temple and the other above her heart.
With a shaky breath, Orville began. "Ephemeral is the independence achieved in life," he started, feeling for that spark of light, of vitality. "Defiantly, we become beacons of hope to illuminate the path to true liberty." There it is, he thought, cupping the little flame with his own spirit. "Unfettered from despair and relinquished by death, I unleash your soul and by my heart, free thee."
A brilliant golden luminescence burst forth, enveloping Ginni's form, and Orville almost wept in relief when he felt her heartbeat grow more powerful with each contraction beneath his palm.
Once he was certain of Ginni's continued survival, Orville began to register his own laundry list of injuries was beginning to catch up to him. Wetness on his belly alerted him to the fact that his Aura was no longer keeping his blood inside his body, possibly due to the fact that he'd used up his last drops of willpower to save Ginni.
"Aw, shit," he managed to say before he suddenly found himself looking up at the sky. He realized that Bruno's pained roars had died down to mere whimpers. Turning his head slightly, he found the slaver's head had lolled off to the side, and he was sucking up air in little bursts, unable to take a full breath thanks to the stone restricting his movement.
"How's it feel to be powerless, Sullivan?" Orville asked. "How does your own medicine taste?"
"When I get free, you'll wish you had never even heard my name, you little bastard," wheezed the slaver.
"What makes you think you'll ever get out of there?" Orville replied with an agonized chuckle. "If you're lucky, a Grimm'll crush your skull and be done with it, but I think you're luck's run out. By nightfall, there'll be plenty of scavengers and predators ready to eat you alive, and you won't be able to do a damn thing about it."
Orville watched with morbid satisfaction as his words sunk in. Bruno's face went from spitting mad to horrified within a minute.
"Who the hell are you, kid?" The words were spoken with an almost awe-filled tone.
"Me?" Orville laughed, then coughed as his battered chest protested loudly. Darkness crept into the edges of his vision, and he closed his eyes. "I'm nobody."
The last thing Orville was able to discern before unconsciousness claimed him were half a dozen voices shouting his name.
After-Action Report: So there we have it. Lots of world-building concerning the wilderness of the setting. I was looking through the RWBY wiki for research purposes and I realized that I have very outdated info. I've been calling the continent that Vacuo and Vale are located on Vytal for the entire story, never realizing that the name Vytal was changed so that it refers to the island where the peace accords between the Kingdoms were drawn up. I ain't changing it, because there's no other name for the continent. The Atlas continent is called Mantle, while Mistral and Menagerie are just Mistral and Menagerie, but the Vale/Vacuo continent can't be Vacuale or Valecuo. That'd be stupid. So there.
Again, lots and lots of references and shout-outs. I know there are only about fourteen people who actually follow this story, but if you'd be so kind, I'd like to see if anyone can name them all. Or any of them. Just review, please.
This chapter also has one of the first fully combat-oriented scenes in the story, so I'd like to ask how I did. It's been quite a while, and I'm sure I've fucked something up in there. Constructive criticism only helps me grow as a writer, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Another thing I touched on lightly is Team ORNP's combo attacks. For the record, I've got the names all set up and everything. So here's a list of them, just because:
Ren + Orville = Shake 'n Bake
Nora + Ren = Flower Power (no change there)
Orville + Nora = Ground Pound
Pyrrha + Ren = Chop Shop
Pyrrha + Orville = Helter Skelter
Nora + Pyrrha = Hot Shot
Orville + Ren + Pyrrha +Nora = Dream Team
Also, Ground Pound, Helter Skelter, and Shake 'n Bake are the official ship names. Just because. I've got combo and ship names for the others, too. If you want those, then you can PM me and I'll get that list to you pronto.
Also, I've put up a poll on my profile that lets you, the reader, give your feedback as to who, if anyone, you'd like to see Orville paired with. I'm at the point where romance will begin showing up (those damn horny teenagers and their hormones!), and I'd like to know what your preferences are. So once you're done here, vote!I know I've forgotten something, so if you have questions, comments, etc., please review or PM me so I can attempt to clarify whatever's on your mind.
Oh, and I think I've dropped enough hints about which fictional character Orville is based on for you all to start guessing. Any thoughts? And no, his allusions don't follow the same trend that the original JNPR had of being based of famous cross-dressers like Thor, Achilles, and Mulan. But there is a connection between Orville's character and Pyrrha's character, so keep that in mind.
Also once again a HUMONGOUS thanks to everyone who favorited, followed, and reviewed this little story. You're the best!