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The Mad Spring Maiden
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Innovation or death.
There is no room for complacency.
Only evolution.
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In the under-dwelling of Professor Henry Stein's lab, Bean was strapped to the same chair used so many times for Grimm experiments. In attendance, was also the leader of the Mistral Kingdom, Prime Minister Argent.
"I assure you, doctor—Bean will be deployed as soon as our armies establish a foothold on Vale soil," he said.
"M-m-must see Victoria soon. Bad-d-d feeling."
"…I know, Henry. I miss her too."
While the doctor lost himself in his instruments, Argent made his way to the desk mired with paperwork. In its corner, untouched by any of the clutter, was a small picture frame. A bright, smiling bride carrying an equally elated groom in her arms. In terms of height, Henry was much shorter than Victoria.
He used to joke about the size discrepancy, but knew his sister found love.
…
They had failed her.
Some days, he wondered what madness drove them to such measures A reckless experiment to fuse Human and Grimm. And to counterforce the influence of the dark creature, they made her inheritor of the Spring Maiden.
It was supposed to be revolutionary. An undertaking that would change Remnant forever. A way to control the Grimm. And it would give Victoria a power she so rightly deserved.
Salem's whispers in their ears…
I will grant your beloved strength no one would dare question. Enough to silence any naysayers. A force wielded to command respect.
"Madness," Argent muttered aloud. "Pure madness doomed my sister. Nothing but our own self-righteousness."
The Prime Minister looked at Bean.
He wondered if the boy would be able to communicate with Victoria—or if he were simply repeating the same mistakes again.
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X
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After the punishing experience of Vulcan's ambush, Neo vowed never to make the same mistake again.
As soon as the Spring Maiden came to view and tilted her head in their direction, the petite girl activated her Semblance. A great mirror was conjured beneath the feet of her team, and they fell through. Lightning shattered the glass until it was nothing but sparking shrapnel.
The five reappeared some distance away, just barely out of the Spring Maiden's sight. Only when they squinted their eyes, could they see the woman in her full form.
The upper half of her face was masked with bone so familiar to the creatures of Grimm. It also carried a wistfulness similar to a veil. Long, black and gray strands of hair flowed out like some vengeful spirit. Her "garments" were a macabre version of a wedding dress constructed of bone and sinew. Across her body, screws stuck in place.
Her wings were pieced together with various gears and weapons. They scraped with a cringing sound, folded with an unnerving twitch. Though they could only be described as "wings", they were skeletal by design, so flight was impossible. Her frame itself was thin and fragile. Almost malnourished in a sense.
All matter of plant life sprouted from her passing footsteps. In the cloudless sky above, spears of lightning fell. Bright and divine, they struck at random. Nothing safe from the walking personification of creation and destruction.
"AHhHhHAAAAHhhHhHH!"
The Spring Maiden let out a heart wrenching scream. It was a sound that overpowered the senses. Made those near it grow frail and unstable on their feet.
…
"THAT?! THAT is the Spring Maiden?!" Mercury couldn't stop himself from yelling. "How the hell are we supposed to down THAT freak of nature?!"
"I didn't plan for us to meet her like this," Emerald muttered with one hand on her chin. "Raven's intel said she was the key to saving Cinder, and I knew she was in Vale. But I didn't know she was around here." She paused. "But you knew—didn't you, Mazzie?"
The engineer continued to peer at the walking catastrophe in the distance without any indication she heard Emerald. Something flashed in the small woman's eyes. A light of purest grief.
"I have a job contract for your Team, Ms. Emerald. I formally request you to terminate the individual formerly known as Victoria Stein. The current Spring Maiden."
"…Is this really what you want?"
"I… I…" Masa's expression paled and shifted. "It is the heartfelt request of this one's host that her dear friend finds peace."
"I knew it," Emerald murmured. "Team ENMY accepts the contract. It's not like we have a choice, anyway. Running away from her now is impossible."
"This one will assist you in any way she can."
"That'll be something to see."
"Hey, are we really doing this?!"
"Keep it together, Merc. We've taken down a Maiden before."
The young man looked at her, then back at the shrieking, electric, banshee monster.
"I don't think you can really compare that crazy ass thing to the previous Fall Maiden!"
"Yang! Call out her weaknesses…. Yang?"
Hearing no answer, Emerald turned and saw Yang fallen to her knees. Neo was shaking her out of worry. The blonde girl's eyes were wide with something Emerald couldn't describe. The crimson in her irises glowed especially bright. Tears ran freely and constant down her cheeks.
"Yang? What do you see?"
"Em…!" she was barely able to eke out through her sobs. "I've never…! Seen anything like this…!"
Her hands clutched over her heart, which ached more than any experience before.
In Yang's vision, she saw deep gashes of red cross the Spring Maiden's body. They blared and fluctuated wildly. It was nothing like the veins of yellow light she saw in others. This was the Reaper's Semblance in its original. Images of the body cut apart and put back together. Death plagued every fiber of the woman's being.
There was nothing resembling defense or the hiding of weakness. But its opposite.
"She…!" Yang hiccupped painfully.
"She wants to die…!"
…
They went silent at those words. Each of them seemingly lost in their own thoughts. A wound stricken to their cores that gave them pause. It rooted them where they stood.
…
"Then we put her out of her misery," Emerald spoke softly. She coughed and tried her best to regain her composure. "Mercury, take the skies."
"Yeah."
"Neo, slide me and Yang in. We'll flank her hard."
Okay.
"Yang… I need you here."
Yang stood with an effort, not bothering to wipe away the tears still streaming down.
"I'm here."
"Hey, Masa. What kind of help were you talking about, exactly?"
The engineer faced the equipment still lying at their basecamp.
"Penny. Execute ReOrder Program 3-9."
[Executing, Doctor.]
Suitcases flew from the Hummer like military aerial lockers. They landed at the feet of Team ENMY. Body parts ejected from each container and assembled into the figure of a familiar girl.
The android snapped to an energetic salute.
[This Unit is Combat Ready.]
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X
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As soon as Mercury and Penny flew a certain distance of the Spring Maiden, ephemeral bolts and screws floated down. They had a feathering glide to them, which lent an impression of gracefulness.
The translucent objects glowed and charged.
"Not good!" Mercury yelped.
They backed off just as a web of electricity traced among the conductors. The thunderous wave blew the two away, as if it were an explosion. Despite dodging the attack preemptively, they still suffered some effect of shock and stun.
In the wake of the crackling surge, the Spring Maiden tore a weapon from her own wing, like ripping a feather away. She chucked an axe, then a sword, then a spear in violent succession. Although the manner of the throw was berserk, they possessed a deadly accuracy.
Mercury shook off the numbness and was forced to activate his Semblance to its fullest. He gathered desperately what winds he could to deflect the first projectile. For the second, he barely parried. The silver light sprouting from his heels diminished significantly at that.
Penny released an array of swords, catching the spear aimed for her in steel wires.
[Combat Reassessment Required.]
"No 'combat reassessment required'. Just keep playing decoy, tin can, so the others can blindside her!"
[Acknowledged.]
At that, Penny pressed her thrusters to engage the Spring Maiden once more. Her swords danced and weaved towards the target. Mercury trailed in her wake.
The wings of the Spring Maiden shifted and assembled a number of rifles and shotguns. They creaked forward, taking aim at the approaching hostiles. Gunfire rang out in volleys. The barrage detonated in midair, painting the skies with smoke.
Penny's swords were shot away with a piercing ping. She was forced to cover herself as some of the leftover arsenal reached her.
To save the android from the shower of artillery, Mercury activated his Semblance once more to repel further attacks, and whisk Penny to safe distance.
"Crap, this is really eating up my Aura."
[Decoy maneuvers: required.]
"Yeah! I know! But Yang will never let me hear the end of it, if you get turned into a pile of scrap again!"
…
Meanwhile, as the two fliers earned the full attention of their target, the rest of the team reappeared in its shadow.
Not twenty feet away, three figures burst into an all-out sprint from the cover of shattering glass. Neo swung around from the left side. Emerald went straight, staying in the winged bride's blind spot. Yang looped from the remaining right, powering her fist along the way.
With tears still flowing from her eyes, the burning warrior never blinked for a moment. Her arm pulled back, and then pitched forward with a riproar of force.
In the next second, her world flipped upside down. Yang wasn't sure what happened, but vaguely felt a hand wrap around her wrist. Then, her body was thrown of its own volition.
Was that…
Aikido?!
While she lied, belly-up from the technique, the Maiden delivered a downward axe-kick to the midsection. All the air in the girl's lungs expelled, and her insides scrambled.
It was Neo's turn next. She slipped in to the thin space where her prey could not attack from. The stiletto blade in her hand postured for an upward thrust through the ribs.
Just when the point was about to find purchase, a shield materialized in its way. The sword was deflected with ease, and the recoil caused momentary imbalance. To finish it, the shield bashed Neo straight in the face. Her nose leaving a trail of blood on her backstep.
Emerald tried repeatedly to hallucinate something, anything at all within the target's mind. When nothing came of it, she could only opt to assist in the physical assault.
She released the chains on her weapon and tried to loop them around the Spring Maiden's neck. The woman only caught it in her hand and gave it a rough tug. The small motion was enough to send Emerald plummeting out of control towards her enemy. A wing full of blades waiting to meet her.
"GUYS!"
A concentrated volley of ordinance hit the Spring Maiden from all sides. Projectiles from Yang, Neo, and Mercury coalesced there. Combined with Penny's beam cannon, they drowned the target with overwhelming force. When Emerald regained control of her body, she too added her bullets with desperado flare.
It was a new attack pattern in Team ENMY's ever-growing bag of tricks.
After their fight with RNJR and Qrow, Emerald learned what an appealing target she made. Deciding to turn this into a strength rather than kept as a weakness, they came up with the Double Herring Maneuver.
Decoy tactics were simple, but being able to switch decoy presences interchangeably among different teammates added another layer of complexity. Which they practiced to perfection, resulting in an endless shelling of the Spring Maiden.
The woman was carved and gouged to pieces from the relentless hellfire.
…
For an awkward second, they worried about the uncertainties of their target's death. But fortunately, or unfortunately, their worries were swiftly dispelled.
Dark mist pooled where the mad Maiden fell. Her limbs that had been shot off, the bullet holes that riddled her body, everything was being regenerated with inhumane vitality.
"No… freakin' way," Emerald muttered.
"What do we do now?" Mercury asked.
"We hit her again! Rinse and repeat!"
At hearing Emerald's words, alarms went off in Yang's head.
"We can't do that!" she shouted.
"What do you mean?"
Yang looked down at her arm, remembering the sensation of when she was thrown with effortless technique. Not only that, but she saw the perfect counterstop she used against Neo. And then, there was the way she avoided being entrapped by Emerald. Those were not feats of mere coincidence, but pure skill.
It was a glimmer of insight, and a far-fetched theory in any other circumstance—but Yang, and even her teammates understood on some level.
"…The same tactic won't work a second time. There's a brain of a combat genius in there—I can feel it. If we try the same trick again, we might die."
The Spring Maiden was insane, but her body and finely tuned instincts remembered the fighting style of her "previous life". Rather than a foe they could prod for weaknesses, every encounter would be a tightrope walk of death. This is what Team ENMY agreed to, innately.
"Fine. So, we smack her with the dirtiest tacs we got," Emerald reassessed.
"And if she keeps regenerating?" Mercury questioned.
"There's no way that can happen. There's a limit—we just have to drive her to it."
"Sounds like you've had better plans."
"You got your own idea? Cause I'd love to hear it."
"AaAHhhHHHHhHHHH!"the Spring Maiden shrieked.
"Nope. Your call, Em."
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X
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…
…
The battle waged for an hour now.
Though the length of time may not seem long from the outside, or in real time. But in terms of fighting, an hour was an eternity.
Going the distance in a championship boxing match meant twelve grueling rounds of torture. Even then, there were breaks in between.
Of course, for Team ENMY, there were no breaks. No moments of reprieve to catch their breaths and reformulate. They ran out their stamina and rode on adrenaline. While fatigue tried to set in, each member brushed it off, like a demon on their backs.
The hours of training they put into their bodies, one could never count them all. But as obvious as it was, one could train the body. One could not however, train mentality.
While Mercury, Yang, Neo, and Penny swarmed their target from varied angles, they broke off and rejoined formations seamlessly. Some direction was left to the fighter's discretion. The rest, was carefully coordinated by the team's "brain".
Partway through the introductory of the fight, Emerald's role transitioned. She dedicated herself solely to guiding the other's movements. A taxing job to say the least.
With her hallucinations rendered ineffective against the Maiden, half the Team's tactics were out the window—among some of their best ones.
Even so, the leader pressed on. She stressed every braincell and milked every synapses fire. Having to deploy a different tactic for each encounter, which usually lasted the span of a few seconds, was overclock for the shotcaller.
But Emerald had thrived in the position of Team ENMY's leader, since its founding—more than she herself realized.
"Masa! Did you finish uploading Penny's commands, or what?! The next engagement's waiting on YOUR ASS!"
"Penny's commands are ready for execution, this one confirms."
In addition to hallucinating directions to her teammates, Emerald had to do the same for Masa, who controlled Penny's more complicated actions. As ingenious as the engineer was, even she couldn't fathom how quickly the leader adapted their brand-new ally into so many strategies. It was a testament to something only hundreds of life-or-death experiences could develop.
The Spring Maiden released a discharge of electricity in all directions. Yang and Mercury were about to be caught in its effect, when Penny and Neo swooped in. Out of the thin air, the hook from Neo's parasol snagged Mercury's hip, and pulled him into a portal. Likewise, Penny roped Yang's arms, and sky hooked her away—just as shockwaves cascaded below.
"Thanks, Penny!" Yang shouted.
[Acknowledged.]
"Alright, people!" Emerald's voice resounded in their minds. "Blinders are going up in three…! Two…!"
At that moment, sight cutout for Yang, Mercury, and Neo. In the pitch black, a lone spotlight shone on the point of their destination and the path leading to it. Nothing else could be seen, smelt, or heard under Emerald's illusion. They were completely isolated.
I hate it when she does this,all three members thought simultaneously.
Regardless, the moment their feet hit the ground, they blitzed down the route they were assigned to. The Spring Maiden, likely somewhere in the darkness surrounding them—chucking more weapons or firing off bolts of lightning nearby. The attacks could miss by miles or by a few millimeters, and they would never know. She could be standing beside them, chasing them, a blade swinging in their direction, and the three would not know it.
They had only one thing in that cut-off world—their destination and their belief in Emerald.
Because the body subconsciously reacted to everything around it, a loss of time or a lag can be caused in performing a task. To eliminate this error, Emerald developed this hallucination and had the others train under it.
Not many teams could boast such a bond with their leader. To the point they would willingly give up their senses, to put themselves at the other's complete disposal. It was the worst "trust fall" exercise. But Emerald's teammates had what could only be called, "faith" in their shotcaller.
They were a team of Alpha-Egos, but their leader was the biggest of them all.
Mid-run, Yang felt an invisible blade cut close to her cheek, but she still ran. Neo felt a hard breeze blow just above her head, but she still jumped. Mercury could almost tell something was in front of him. He could feel the air prickle against his skin, but Emerald's hallucinated path dictated he fly straight, so fly straight he did.
They reached their positions, and their senses instantly returned. When they looked back at the path they traveled, it was covered in craters, fire, and devastation. A blind dash through a minefield was what they just performed. And they found themselves surrounding the Spring Maiden in a perfect triangle enclosure. A formation impossible to gain through normal means.
"JUGGLER!" Emerald ordered.
Suddenly, Penny's swords, which were tunneled into the ground beforehand, shot up into the Maiden. The stream of blades poured out like a tapped spout. Each strike elevated their target higher and higher into the air, until the Spring Maiden was forcefully held helpless in the sky.
Killer instinct kicked in for Neo, Yang, and Mercury.
The petite girl launched herself to the level of the winged bride. A flurry of sharp kicks, followed by a singular, ear-screeching stab, sent the Maiden higher into the atmosphere.
As Neo drifted down, Yang rose like a rocket. Arms poised, locked and loaded, two body shots were delivered to the Maiden's liver and kidney. And then the combo ended with a sharp uppercut that cracked the target's ribs into her guts.
Yang let gravity do its work, and Mercury switched in. No combo, nothing fancy. Only a brutal drop kick that landed like a spear stomp to the flightless bride's center mass. The chest cavity caved in. Mercury swore her heart stop beating.
While their prey still hung in the air, the three landed.
Their Auras charged to critical mass. Their Semblances ignited, like shining jewels—and they pulled the trigger.
Yang blazed like a sun going supernova. She leapt once more to unleash her strongest haymaker. On contact, the fire from her fist encompassed the Maiden in a halo of flames, while depleting the surrounding space of oxygen.
Wings unfurled from Mercury's heels, and he rid a storm to their enemy still set aflame. By reintroducing oxygen in his wind attack, a backdraft was created between the pair's ultimate moves. A greater plume of fire combusted at its peak.
Mirrors danced in the sky, like shimmering ballerinas. And with a tap of Neo's parasol, the knives of glass flew like angry flocks of birds. They crashed like a million years of bad luck onto the Maiden.
And then, it was Emerald's turn. Her teammates had juggled the woman long enough in the air for her to prep the final blow. She was to finish it by putting the target through the meat grinder.
…But Emerald refused to move.
She only continued to watch the grievously damaged body plummet to the earth. Her stare kept its unfailing composure, in spite of her next words.
"This isn't going to work."
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X
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"Masa! Have Penny string her down," Emerald commanded.
"…Understood."
On Masa's confirmation, Penny wrapped the Spring Maiden's mangled body in a tight bind. The black mist of Grimm billowed around the pile of flesh once more, initiating the regeneration process. Although, given the damage, repair would take significantly longer this time around.
Meanwhile, Emerald's teammates landed and gathered to her.
"What are you doing? That was your shot!" Mercury started. "We set it all up for you!"
"It wouldn't have worked."
"Oh, now you're saying that?"
"I was wrong. Sue me."
"You—! What, are you saying we did all that for nothing?!"
"We bought valuable time. Let's use it, instead of yelling, shall we? Unless—Yang? Would it have actually worked?"
Yang never let the Spring Maiden out of her sight, and the Reaper's Semblance never ceased to cause her anguish.
She shook her head.
"It wouldn't have worked," Yang confirmed. "I don't really get how, but… she's too powerful."
"Yeah. Well, inheriting a Maiden's powers and being fused with Grimm will do that to you, I guess."
"What do we do now? She's…!" Yang fought the pain needling her chest. "She's crying out. She won't stop, and—"
Emerald grabbed the back of her neck, and pulled her close. They tapped foreheads.
"Calm down. Stay focused. And breathe. I need you to keep it together."
"Uh huh."
"Now, I need you to show me what you see."
"…Alright," she consented.
Yang turned around. She took in the monstrous figure in its whole.
The death in the Spring Maiden was more prominent than ever. It made everything hurt just to see it. But she couldn't bear to look away, or shut her eyes in the slightest.
"Em? Did you get a good loo—"
Emerald clutched her head, weeping in the uncontrollable way Yang was. Panicked, she wiped away the tears that only continued to flow.
"God! That sucked! W-w-what the hell, man?!" she grimaced in-between shudders.
"Yeah. I think this is what my mom and Qrow see all the time."
"No wonder they're so fucked up! Shit…! SHIT!" Emerald said with an angry sadness and a few heaving breaths. When she composed herself enough, the girl strode to where the Spring Maiden was bound.
""EM?!"" Yang and Mercury both worried, but the girl held up a hand to signal them back.
"Masa, get over here."
…
The engineer made her way from her safe spot to Emerald's side without a trace of fear. A shallow light reflected in her empty eyes—and the woman who was once her dearest friend.
"What do you request of me, Ms. Emerald?"
The girl thought back to what Masa said about her Semblance. How she lied to herself. How she fought the truth of her identity.
…
"I figured out why I lie."
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NOTE
Double-chapter Release.
