Chapter 34 Okay screw this thing!
Six was sure of it now. She really hated snow. Yesterdays blizzard may have blown over but the resulting snow was still around and it was making navigating a complete pain.
"Are you sure this is the right tunnel?" Six asked as she helped melt the snow, opening the ammo section on her Gravity hammer to expose the Burn Dust Crystals and use the heat they emitted to try and melt the snow.
"Yes, I've lived here most of my life, I know my way around." Lucy said, giving Six stink eye as she moved her claws nearer to the snow to speed up the melting process.
"Sorry but these tunnels all look the same to me, it's like being back on that damn island without the AI giving me a map." Six said, ramming her hammer into the snow, figuring that would work faster.
"Is that thing waterproof?" Lucy asked as Six pulled the hammer out and stabbed it in again.
"Yes of course it is." Six shot back, figuring it would probably work, it was a high tech alien weapon, I it couldn't survive some water...
"Could you two stop fighting?" Jorge asked from behind as a gap that looked big enough to wriggle through was finally formed.
"Don't ask me questions I can't answer honestly." Lucy said simply as she moved in to the gap.
"Erm, are you sure about that?" Six asked just as she got stuck.
"No, no I'm not." She said simply, trying to pull herself further forward, but she was sadly thwarted in her efforts.
"Can you get back out?" Jorge asked with concern as he looked at her. (Six noticed he was... enjoying the view, to say the least)
"Erm, no, don't think I can..." She admitted glumly as she gave a final defeated wiggle.
Six looked at the sight, a part of her wanted to laugh at the sight, another part of her thought she should help...
Then an idea came to Six, she turned to Jorge and said.
"Well dude, you going to help her?"
Jorge looked at Six.
"She's stuck, what do you want me to do, pull her back?" He asked. Six shook her head and beamed, knowing what would follow would be both funny and helpful.
"No, get her through, give her a push, if we're lucky she'll make a gap big enough for you to get through and she can pull you out." Six said, waiting for Jorge to work out where he'd have to push to get her through.
"Good idea Six, I 'll... Ah."
I think he got it.
Yeah, I think he did.
"Well go on, she can't say blocking the exit all day." Six said, smirking under her helmet as Jorge nodded and pushed hard on each buttock.
"Jorge please tell me that's you!" Lucy squeaked as Jorge pushed harder.
"Yes, sorry about this, urgh, How did you get so tight!?"
"I don't know in, put so effort in I can't just lye here all day!"
"I'm going, anyway I'd hurt you if I did it too fast!"
"I can take it, I've been in tighter situations than this!"
"Urgh, I'm, urgh, trying!" Jorge cried, struggling to get the Polar Bear girl free from her prison of ice.
"Come on, I think I just moved!" She said as she slowly shifted.
"Good!" Jorge cried as Lucy eventually popped free.
"You okay?" Six asked, looking through the hole to look at Lucy who was struggling to her feet.
"Yeah, I'm good, although I suggest we make the whole bigger before Jorge attempts to squeeze through."
"Yes!" Jorge said instantly, clearly not a fan of the idea of being pushed through the hole himself. Giggling Six set about melting the hole bigger.
…
"Okay, now we're all out..." Lucy said, looking slyly at Jorge (who'd still managed to get stuck) "...Its time for me to do my thing." She said, running towards a tree and vaulting up it at maximum speed, reaching the top in less than a minute.
"Won't the snow have burred her ship?" Six asked. Lucy laughed.
"Yes it would have, but if they are still alive..."
"They are." Six snapped back.
"...Then they'll have had to clear the snow and make camp, and I tend to find people camping are usually very easy to spot. For example can you see that smoke trail over there?" She asked, pointing off into the distance. Six rolled her eyes.
"I can't see anything except trees from down here." She said, gesturing towards the forest currently blocking her view.
"Well then get up here!" She yelled. Six looked at Jorge; who shrugged, bent down and put his hands together to give her a boost up into the tree. (Lucy was about a foot taller than Six and could reach the first branch)
Six rolled her eyes and began scaling the tree, pulling herself up she stopped a few branches bellow Lucy and looked over to the smoke trail.
"You think that's them?" Six asked.
"Well it's either them or someone else trying to be found..." Lucy was interrupted as a flare shot of from the smoke trail.
"I know them, Ruby insisted the suit have them!" Six yelled, fist pumping the air, and proply falling out of the tree.
Thwump!
"They made it!" Six yelled from the small crater she was lying in.
"You want a hand?" Jorge asked as Six struggled to stand again.
"No I got this!" Six yelled, finally extracting herself as Lucy crashed down next to her, promptly burring Six in snow again as she kicked up a ton of snow.
"Thanks." Six muttered as she stood up.
"You're welcome, now lets go before something bad finds them; If I could see it then I'm sure a Grimm could; you really don't want the Griffin finding them." Lucy said as they set off through the trees.
"Hang on, Griffin? You mentioned that yesterday, what exactly are we dealing with?" Six asked as the trek began.
"Literally a giant albino griffin Grimm. It's a big bastard, wing span of about sixty feet. Five hundred tones of muscles, more weapons embedded in it's back than anything I've ever seen, a razor sharp beak that can smash through mountains, it literally did that at one point. Point is its a tough bastard and the biggest threat to Crate around, if we can kill it we might be able to survive a trip back to Atlas! I don't know, just once this things dead we can get something out of this! But until then, we're stuck. Stuck in a town running out of food and unable to survive if another attack comes." Lucy explained darkly as she walked ahead of Six.
"Don't worry, I'll get help to kill this thing once we've found them." Six said. Lucy looked down at her.
"You really think they'll bother helping a group of Faunus? Trust me they wont." The Polar Bear Girl muttered darkly.
"What about the other kingdoms? Do you really think none of them would help?" Jorge asked. Six shrugged.
"I don't know, the worlds kinda shitty to Faunus, the only place that would defiantly help is Menagerie, and they don't have the resource's to deal with this shit." Six explained.
"Urgh." Jorge growled, Six nodded.
"Yeah I know the feeling." Six nodded. Lucy turned to look to her.
"What you ever had to deal with racism?" she asked in a sarcastic tone which clearly indicated she didn't think so.
"I personally have never been a victim, the closest I've come to dealing with racism is beating the shit out of some ass holes picking on Velvet." Six explained.
"Wait, you did what?" Lucy asked, sure she'd misheard. Her experience at Atlas had involved a lot of people walking by and ignoring the problem.
"Oh right, a bunch of dicks where harassing her in the library. So I, lets see, hit one in the head, the next two in the guts and kneed him in the groin and head butted his face. Oh and I gave him one last kick for good measure."
Lucy looked at the Spartan, she could be making that up, but if she had a problem she would have brought it up impatiently. And, it was hard to tell but her body language indicated she wasn't lying.
"Well that was good of you." She said quietly, looking down at the Spartan who was fiddling around for her Scroll.
"Yeah, she and her girlfriend are awesome!" Six said, showing her a picture she'd taken at the Ice cream bar a few weeks ago. Six was taking the picture and thus was angled weirdly to fit them all in frame, Coco was grinning widely with her arm wrapped around Velvet who had stolen her shades and was doing the same thing, although she was using her free hand to do bunny ears behind Coco's head.
"They look cute together." Lucy said, smiling as she saw the picture, then noticed the other figure in the picture.
"Who's that?" She asked, pointing at Penny who wasn't smiling, she appeared to be halfway through saying something (The actual thing she was saying at the time was: Why are we saying cheese?) and was looking adorably confused.
"Oh that's Penny, she's my roommate at Beacon." Six explained, smiling as she looked down on the orange haired android,
"She looks cute." Jorge said. Six nodded serenely.
"Yeah, she is..."
We said that out-loud didn't we.
Yup.
FUCK!
"Someone's smitten." Lucy said, grinning as she looked down at the Spartan.
"A bit." Six admitted, smiling as she swiped the screen. One image had Penny with ice cream on her nose which had been to cute to not immortalize, one showed her trying on Six's Beacon uniform, actually there where a lot of those; also one with her reaching down, form behind, in a mini skirt...
"Okay not seeing that one!" Six yelled, slamming the power button as fast as she could.
Lucy and Jorge both burst out laughing (Apparently Six hadn't been quite quick enough to hider the pictures contents.) They wouldn't stop giving Six a hard time about it until they finally found what they where looking for.
Unfortunately they weren't the only people to have found the found the wreck and the subsequent camp the survivors had set up, well actually they where the only people to have found the camp. The gigantic white Griffin on the other hand...
Lucy was not kidding about the things size, it was insanely huge, it must have just caught the edge of the ship with it's talons to do something so small as ripping the entire back end of the ship off. The thing was diving on the camp.
Six didn't think, she ran in; Her legs blurring as she accelerated, a purple glow formed around her.
Six jumped and within a second her Mjolnir armor back on her body as she flew at the creature, slamming the hammer into it's body.
The burn dust infused swing didn't do a thing. The Grimm looked down at her, it reared back and roared. A scream that vibrated throughout Six's entire body as it raised a massive talon to swipe her off the face of existence as casually as one pushed their junk of a desk.
Six turned to run, the snow was making it hard until familiar Gatling gun fire was heard. Six looked over, Jorge had adopted a gunning stance and was firing on the creature. No matter how tough you are you can't ignore more bullets being forced into you than the gun seamed physically capable of holding.
The Grimm turned to look at Jorge as Lucy darted in and grabbed Six, pulling her out of the snow and throwing her over her shoulders. Sprinting between the beasts legs and towards the wreck.
Jorge kept on firing while the pair darted under the makeshift wall (Some canvas Winter had been hauling for reasons she wasn't one hundred percent sure of) And into the ship.
Six's eyes lit up under her helmet as she saw the group she'd been looking for.
"Guys!" She cried, diving at the Spartans and pulling them into a hug, loosening one arm so she could send a salute at Winter and wave at Weiss.
"Six!" the group yelled out, before looking at Lucy.
"Who's she?" Weiss asked, looking the Faunus up and down.
"Right, Guys this is Lucy, Lucy this is the group we where looking for. Jorge is outside giving us some covering fire, we need to get out now!"
"But where are we going to go?" Winter asked as she grabbed her sword up off the ground. Gesturing for her sister to do the same.
"Theirs a town nearby, it's not perfect but it's got big walls, we can at least come up with some kind of plan their." Six said, before looking at Lucy who seamed unsure.
"I don't know, if that thing follows us Crate can't survive."
"We can't survive if we don't get out of here!" Kat pointed out, Six noted she had a bandage wrapped around her head, actually they all looked worse for wears. Carter seamed to have gotten of the best out of all of them with just a plaster on one cheek. Winter had a her right hand bandaged up and Weiss' eye was covered by the large bandage wrapped around it.
"She's right, even if we don't go to this town we can't stay here." Carter said, before looking to Lucy. "Can we go any wear else, is their a safe spot somewhere?"
Lucy thought for a second before saying:
"Well... There's Crystal Cove; provided we can get in the tunnels we should be able to get away without it being able to find us or Crate..."
"Okay, we're doing that, lets move it people!" Carter yelled, climbing into Six's mech suit (Six insisted on bringing it anywhere dangerous and as such had insisted it be loaded into he back of Winters ship before they left.)
Six nodded as everyone picked up their weapons (Kat was carrying Carters rifle seeing as he had no use for it and it was a bad idea to not be able to switch on the fly between ranged and melee if you where fighting on Remanent.) and got ready to run. Just before they left Carter approached Six.
"You found the big guy?" He asked, his face betraying the fact he didn't quite believe it, Six grinned.
"You can say hi once we're safe, now come on lets go!" She yelled.
Lucy was the first to go as they ran towards the cave, most of the group following her to try and reach the right tunnel.
The terrain was treacherous and required a lot of work to navigate successfully, this was hard enough when it was peaceful but add a giant monster chasing you to that and it became dam near impossible.
The main problem was they had no way of getting cover, the tree's didn't work, the thing just smashed through them with ease and it was taking all their effort just to stay ahead of the thing, so no one could turn back to fire of some shots to try and hold the thing back.
Six now knew how the grunts felt while facing a Spartan, she almost felt bad fore them.
Six ran faster and faster, they had to do something, Six scanned around and saw something; it probably wouldn't work but it was the only chance they had.
"This way!" She yelled, veering of to the left towards a clearing.
"Are you crazy!" Lucy yelled at full volume, Carter and Kat didn't say a thing, they followed Six, the others kept on running as fast as they could.
"Go, we should be able to do this!" Six yelled, skidding to a stop in the clearing in front of the one surviving tree.
"What are we doing!?" Kat yelled, looking at six who was crouched, ready to run.
"We need to move as soon as that thing dives." Six said, pointing at the Griffin which had risen to the sky, looking down at them with it's cruel merciless eyes.
"What are you trying to do!" Carter yelled before it headed down, diving at incredible speed.
"Hoping it's going to fast to change course!" Six yelled as she got ready for it to move.
"Now!" She yelled, sprinting away ten seconds before the griffin hit the ground. Kat and Carter followed as the thing hit the ground...
… And drove it's head into the one tree and ground.
"Did we get it?" Kat asked.
"No, keep running!" Six yelled, speeding up to catch up with the others.
"But we killed it!" Carter yelled. Six shook her head.
"That head plate on that those things are way to thick for that to have reached anything vulnerable, we cracked it and dazed the thing, nothing else!"
"And how is that helpful!?" Kat yelled.
"Can you run at full speed with a concussion?" Six yelled back in response, a silly grin on her face underneath the helmet despite the danger.
The three of them soon caught up with others.
"You're alive!?" Jorge and Lucy yelled at the same time. (although not in the same way, Jorge yelled it with relief and Lucy with shock.
"Seams you do possess some degree of skill." Winter said as Weiss beamed.
"Yep!" Six yelled back as they entered the tunnel. Finally able to slow down and catch there breath.
"That, was either very brave or very stupid." Weiss said, looking at Six, who was bent over and beaming happily.
"Can't I be both?" She asked, pulling her helmet to reveal her dumb grin underneath.
"I'd rather you stayed alive." The other members of Noble Team said in sync.
"So what? Don't be useful?" Six asked; her head tilted to the side as she looked at them.
"I think what there trying to say is we missed you and have only just found you again, we'd rather that didn't happen again." Jorge explained. Six snorted.
"Erm, if you remember correctly I found you." Six said, beaming happily. Then she looked to Carter and Kat.
"Speaking of which, you two; hug him, now."
"What!" Jorge and Lucy yelled out in sync.
"It feels good, trust me, its a good moment of reunion." Six said simply.
"I'm not doing that." Carter said simply.
"I will chicken." Kat said, before throwing her arms around him. "Big guy!" She cried out, pulling the Spartan into the best hug her small frame would allow.
"I missed you too Kat, and you to Sir." He said, sending a salute to Carter, who nodded and set one back. (In retrospect the fact he was wearing the mech suit was probably the reason he wasn't hugging Jorge, or maybe it was because he was male, Six didn't know or care.)
"Good to have you back Noble." Carter shot back as they left the caves, now in Crystal cove.
Unlike Crate this place wasn't named literally. While true the area was just a small cove; it wasn't actually made of crystal. It was actually made of ice, tons and tons ice spiralling beautifully up into the sky, crawling over the cliffs and the ground. However the thing looked beautiful, the way the light bounced was immensely like Crystal.
"Whoa." Six gasped, looking around at the beauty around her. Until she noticed something. Something with actual crystals on it's back.
It was climbing over the top of the cliffs, jumping from wall to wall before it eventually stopped in front of them and rose to it's full hight.
The thing was huge, and Six knew immediately what it was.
It was three meters tall, a tangled dented mess of blue armor sprouted from the creature which was comprised of many small red-ish brown worms wriggling around. However it wasn't what Six thought of when she imagined these creatures, it was covered with bright green glowing crystals that emerged and stuck out from its entire body. The plasma canon on it's arm was also changed, it now looked even more dangerous than before.
The mutated Hunter advanced forward faster than anyone would have thought possible. It grabbed Six around the throught.
"Don't fire!" Six gasped, knowing full well that she'd be in the way. The thing looked at her before it's head moved, the eyes glowed and inside the groups head a single thought could be heard, their own drowned out by the Hunter.
Where is he!