Chapter 5: I'm Not Paralyzed, but I Seem To Be Struck By You
"I've decided that the stuff falling through the cracks is confetti and I'm having a party."
— 10 —
"I belong here," Jack told the archaeologist, his body language firm. Commanding. A man expecting to be obeyed as a matter of course.
The archaeologist hesitated. He looked around the room, the main trove. It's where they stored personal supplies and recovered artifacts both.
Or so Jack was figuring.
"You can go now. I've got it covered," Jack said, making a brushing motion.
At length the archaeologist nodded. He adjusted his safari helmet and started for the tent entrance. "Right, Huntsman. Yeah. Sorry to bother you."
Jack watched him go, hands in his jean pockets. Then Jack was alone with everything valuable the camp had.
Too easy.
Almost scary, really. The man had called Jack a Huntsman, as if merely showing up at Beacon had made Jack some paragon of honor and strength instead of one of the Valefor's own. He understood that's how people treated Huntsmen; it was one of his reasons for wanting to be one. What Jack failed to understand was how that lie continued to be taken as the granted truth.
Maybe it can't be helped; Jack's the type of boy to check under a gift whore's skirt, after all. But, it's hard to follow how people can still view Huntsmen so heroically in light of basic facts.
Case in point. The moment Jack found himself alone, he started doing his best impression of a window shopper among the sealed artifacts and personal. Why, yes. I like that one, this one, and yon two.
Well, no. Bad example. This was just the price of business instead of any abuse of Huntsman power. Couldn't be helped. Like, if they really wanted to keep this stuff to themselves, they wouldn't have had secured their things with such easily picked locks.
Any reasonable person would agree.
Like Nikki, standing there at the entrance to the tent, hands on hips. She was totally a reasonable person.
"I'm never gonna be able to go to the bathroom in peace anymore, Jack," she said, shaking her head. Girl wasn't happy. "Not without being scared that without me you'll get up to this sorta thing."
He turned her way, an easygoing smile on his lips. "What? Not my fault I'm high maintenance."
Looking around the room as if on the hunt for anything missing, she made her way over to Jack. "So what exactly is your fault, then?"
Jack shrugged and gestured vaguely. "I found this tent. The one tent with air conditioning. Air conditioning, Nikki. Kick back and relax with me." He sat down in a room chair and kicked his feet up. "And I prefer the term 'credit' instead of 'fault.' Word connotation matters."
She wasn't buying it. In fact, scowling, she pushed his boots off the, uh, Ottoman? It was a rock with scribbles on it. And a transparent plastic tarp.
"Please don't put your boots on the priceless relics, Jack," she said with an exasperated breath.
"Worthless," he corrected offhandedly. "If you can't pawn them quickly off, might as well be heavy garbage."
She gave him a long, speculative look as she stood over him. Jack just enjoyed his comfy chair and gave her a small wave. He was all friendly smiles. Nothing fishy going on here. And please don't check his pockets; Jackie-boy liked his new artisan wooden watch.
At length, and with another sigh, she put her hands on a desk and leaned her back against it. Like she was going to sit on it but got cold feet at the last moment.
"Put it back, Jack," she said.
"Nuh-uh. My dad's ghost would beat me with a spatula if he knew I touched the thermostat twice."
She gave him a glare, but without any heat. It was almost a look of concern. But big girls like Pyrrha didn't show concern for people like Jack, now did they?
"The stuff you stole," she said, folding get arms.
"Stealing? Me? That sounds like the kind of thing I would do very often if every day were opposite day. Sadly, it is regular day." He shrugged. "I mean, I guess it's your unbirthday. But still not opposite day."
"So you didn't steal my airpass?"
Jack folded his arms behind his head and rolled his eyes. "Are you still on that? I told you it was an honest mistake."
"You reached into my back pocket by mistake?"
He shrugged, kicking his feet back up on the worthless stone thing. "Not my fault your legs are so long I can't go nowhere without tripping over them."
Pyrrha wasn't impressed. "You mean credit."
Jack screwed his face up. "Word connotation, Nikki."
"You haven't answered my question."
He stood up abruptly, facing her with a contemplative expression. "Your legs, my hands. Just one of those accidents. Need a demonstration?"
For a moment there, her face resembled a featureless wall. Jack wanted to hang a poster up on it to make it look less blank and empty. Maybe one of those Hang in there, baby! posters. Jack had always liked how the cat on that branch was probably dead by now. It felt poetic that a dead kitty was encouraging you.
"No," she said. "Just make sure no one loses anything when we leave, Jack."
Duly noted. No flirting out of this. Best to just play along. So he held his hands up at her in mock defense. "Just so long as we leave soon. And find a way to profit off the white wolf."
"Is that all you think about?" Pyrrha chided with a resigned sigh. "We still haven't come to an agreement on what we're going to do with that thing."
"I'm just focused on what matters, Nikki," Jack said, now twirling a knife. "And right now, what matters is."
Jack stopped. Something was wrong. Some detail his subconscious had picked up on which hadn't yet filtered up into coherent thought. A kind of premonition of real knowledge.
"Jack?" Nikki asked, annoyed.
Something the Right Man had one told him bubbled to the surface. "When you just can't get along with someone but have to work together to defeat the big bad, someone is going to snap first and betray the other. You gotta prepare for it. Either have some deterrent or, more fun, make sure they suffer badly when they make that first move against you."
Why was that coming to mind?
With a flick of the wrists he was holding a knife in each hand. Fiddling with them like he were trying to pick his nails. He put the Shine to use and got to his feet. "Nikki, heads up," he said in a cool demeanor, all previous playfulness gone.
Pyrrha gave him a skeptical look. Like she thought he was still screwing with her. Then she flashed her own Aura and took a quick, sharp breath.
Jack glanced her way. He'd put his Aura up because of a bad read of something on a level deeper than conscious. Just something he trusted to stay alive. Pyrrha, on the other hand, had used her Shine for something. He didn't really follow what. Back in the Emerald Forest she'd pulsed her Aura like sonar, and Jack hadn't understood it.
Was a lot he didn't know about Aura, really. Stuff Nikki did know.
"Grimm. Lots," she said, weapon already in hand.
"I blame your negative accusations for drawing them in." He clicked his tongue, trying to add some levity to the situation. "You need to learn to blindly trust and accept everything I say."
Before she could reply, Jaune Arc sprinted into the tent. He tried to stop so suddenly he lost his footing. Pyrrha grabbed his shoulder so he didn't fall. The boy was panting, sword and shield in hand.
"Grimm. Lots. Everywhere," he said, dragging a sweat-soaked sleeve across his dripping forehead. "No radio. Phones dead. Everyone. Gotta defend!"
Pyrrha nodded. "Got it. Where's your team, setting up defenses?"
Seemed like she was just accepting this without issue. Just following orders. And apparently Jaune had assumed command. Somehow.
Jack didn't take things on faith. He pulled out his scroll. It wasn't Beacon issued. Something the Right Man had given him. "Communications are down?"
Jaune sucked in a breath. "Can't send for help. Need to send a runner."
His scroll was flying at full sail. He had a perfect connection. He was about to volunteer this information when the Right Man popped into his head again.
"So your temporary friends going to betray you? Fun! Minimize the damage. Become a hard target. Or find a way to get out quickly. Best yet, ensure that your common enemy hurts them worse than they can hurt you when the fight is over. That last one leaves you in the best position, Jackie."
Get out of my head.
All the same, Jack kept his lips shut. He doesn't know the full scope of what was wrong, just that something wasn't right. And he would rather play this card close to his chest for the moment, just in case it proved helpful. More to the point, there had to be someone else with a signal. Because if it was only him, well, that'd look more than a tad suss.
He puts his scroll away. "So what are we going to do?"
"Find the others," Jaune said quickly. "Prepare a defense. Maybe you smoke signals or something to call for help! I don't know, but it's gonna get bad."
— 11 —
"We're all gonna die!"
Truly this was a sign of great things to come.
"Obviously some day, Reuben," Cielo rasped, choking down the last of the rose petals with tears in his eyes. "But once you truly realize and accept that, you find that all of life's options open up to you and that they're all equally pointless. Now use your endless optimism to spin that into something more inspiring than it really is. Your semblance tastes awful, by the way."
"I'll drink to that," de Scavi replied, raising her flask.
Choked gasps and strangled coughs were all they got as Ruby struggled to remain upright, bent at the waist with her hands on her knees as her oxygen-deprived lungs fought against her. Cards leaned next to the girl but stared up at Cielo. Pyrrha was somewhere, so he guessed that meant he was supposed to be calling the shots for the time being until they ran into literally anyone else.
Yay.
Before he could say anything, a commotion reached the tent. Something like confused, panicked mutterings. Easily the most exciting things had sounded at camp since they showed up with the White Wolf.
Ignoring the shit's fucked, bro feeling in his stomach, Cielo flashed his aura. For that brief instance, he really wished he hadn't. His soul, his entire being, was engulfed in a sea of black. Itchy, creeping dread crawled up his spine and clawed at his flesh as ice water froze his veins solid. The sheer volume of them; it was like he was sensing the Grimm for the first time in his life again. Staring deep down into that well of empty, yet entrapping darkness. He had to force down the urge to vomit from the utter wrongness of it.
He trembled. And despite the sudden chill, sweat rolled down Cielo's neck.
"Oh," was all he said as the shock subsided. His voice was a little more light than he'd like. Almost a breath, really.
"Huh?" Cards replied. "Cielo are you okay? What's going on?"
He sucked in a breath and tensed his neck, scratching the scar across the bridge of his nose. "Yeah, we're probably gonna die. We've got Grimm. A lot of Grimm."
"How many?" de Scavi interjected, a slight tremble in her voice.
Cielo made a show of counting on his fingers. "A lot." An army, if the Grimm were even capable of forming such a thing. Hundreds, he had to imagine. Plural. They were coming from all around. And they were coming fast.
When he realized the world was doomed, he figured he'd have at least a couple of days to barter some kind of deal with the gods. He was pretty sure he was still going to hell for that one time he killed an orphanage. The entire building. The orphans were fine, though. Just upset and confused.
"Ruby," he said. "What happened to the rest of your group?"
Before the girl sucked down enough air to speak, Weiss Schnee came stumbling into the tent just as winded as her teammate. The old gang was back together again!
"We're all gonna—"
"Die. Yeah, we kinda got that," de Scavi interjected.
"Slow down!" Cards pleaded. "Where're all these Grimm supposed to be coming from?
"All around," Schnee choked breathlessly, her silver-white hair dangled raggedly in front of her face. "We've got maybe a few minutes before they overrun the camp!"
De Scavi swore under her breath, taking a deep gulp of whatever she had in her flask. They could stand around all day theorizing where the Grimm had come from so suddenly and why there were so many of them, but they were short on time.
Cielo sighed. They were, as the Valites would say, Glenned, going up against those things' numbers. The best the could do would be to hold out until help arrived.
"Where're the other two?" he asked.
The Dust heiress straightened herself, flipping her ponytail back over her shoulder as she smoothed her hair. Probably to regain some lost regality. Gotta stay prim and pretty, even in the face of certain death. "Chloe's busy alerting the archeologists. And Jaune is, I don't know. With Pyrrha and that Jack guy, probably?"
Cielo nodded and stepped outside. Cards and the others followed him. Best way to describe the state of the camp would have been "outright frenzy." A lone archeologist with horribly greasy, slicked-back hair attempted to corral his panicked-looking colleagues, many of whom kept mother-like death grips on their tools, documents, et cetera. He seemed to have given up after getting shoulder checked one too many times.
That's right. They were the only active security detail. He'd almost forgotten about that in the excitement of things. Though it didn't really surprise him that weren't very many bodies to spare. From what he understood of Vale, they set the standard in 'totally not an army, we swear, hey come check out our field day.'
"Shit!" the archeo bro hissed as he slapped his scroll against his palm. He looked pretty young. Older than the rest of them, just not by so much that Cielo was in any hurry to start calling him "mister" or anything. Looked like he was freshly out of college, which made just as much a "kid" as the rest of them. "You've got to be kidding me!"
"What's up?" Cielo asked.
The archeologist clicked his tongue. "Been trying to get into contact with Beacon but no dice. It's like the signal's not going through or something."
Nothing about that sounded even abstractly alright to him. Cielo whipped out his scroll and pulled up his contacts. Cards. She was his only contact. His soul died a little bit. He sent her random, innocuous message. "That stupid hat can't hide your secrets forever, you little bitchdumpling."
Totally innocent.
"Huh?" Schnee said. "That doesn't make any sense. We passed a relay tower on the way here. It should be strong enough to stretch the signal from here to Beacon. Maybe yours is just old and busted? That and/or you've got really bad coverage."
"Well it isn't. And I don't," the archeologist grumbled. "I spent my last paycheck on this model, so it's up to date and all that jazz."
"Putting aside such financial irresponsibility, I'm running into the same problem here," Cielo said, staring at the red text on the screen. He'd hit resend four times now and was met with no success. He gave up before it actually went through and made things awkward. Much like the archaeologist, he wasn't getting any bars either. "Signal's totally lost, bro."
Schnee gave them both a look like she was done with their stupidity and would have revoked their right to procreate had she the authority.
"This is ridiculous," she scoffed as she pulled out her own scroll. Cards and Ruby did the same. She punched in some numbers and held the device to her ear. A moment passed. Then another. Schnee's snow white face somehow looked more pale than usual. "What the?" she sputtered.
"Mine isn't working either," Cards added with a panicked edge in her voice.
"Same," Ruby supported, biting her lip.
Well what an unfortunate set of circumstances.
"Hell's bells," the archeologist growled. "Signal isn't lost, it's getting jammed."
Right as they were about to be rammed from all sides by a wave of Grimm? Yeah, that seemed to be the case. Call him paranoid but Cielo didn't buy into coincidences, especially not when they were so impeccably timed. But that would mean that someone was keeping tabs on them—and clearly not liking what they saw—which seemed just a bit too extravagant to him. And if someone was watching, why would they wait until now to make a move?
All in all: the hell was going on?
"Well, what the hell are we supposed to do now?" de Scavi twined.
"We need to meet with Pyrrha and them others to discuss our options," Cielo said. He wasn't sure what those were yet. Stuck where they were, surrounded by an ever encroaching swarm of Grimm, and with no way to call for help, there weren't a lot of ways for this to end. Actually there were. It was just that almost all of them just ended with them getting bad ended.
It appeared that the comically inept entity that wrote the joke that was his life's story was still capable of some mercies. Through a curtain of archeologists came Jack, Pyrrha, Jaune, and his pet (that Chloe girl).
"Guys!" the smaller of the two blond boys called out when he saw them. "Guys, we got trouble!"
"Yeah, I know," Cielo interrupted. "But wait, there's more: communications between us and Beacon are being jammed."
"Yeah, we've already figured that," Jaune replied, biting his thumb.
"Which mean we can't call for evacuation," Pyrrha sighed.
Ruby made a concerned noise. "No way, c'mon. Someone's gotta have a singal" She darted over to Jaune and grabbed his scroll.
"Hey!" he said.
"Nothing," she said, tosses it back to him and rushing for Pyrrha's. "No signal here, either. You, diggy guy, gimme your scroll!"
"So now what do we do?" Chloe asked as Ruby went on her scroll nabbing rampage
Cielo shrugged. "Still trying to figure that bit out."
"And we can't fight our way out or run?" Jack asked, arms folded.
Putting his scroll back in his pocket, Jaune said with a little bafflement, "Can you not, like, feel that with your Aura, man?"
Jack briefly flashed indigo, and shrugged. "I don't know what I'm looking for."
Jaune just shook his head and moved on.
Cards hummed. "Depending on how strong the jammer is, whoever's trying to keep us trapped out here might be nearby."
"Yeah maybe," Jaune replied. "But we don't really have the time to look for someone who may or may not be there. Nor do we have the manpower."
They didn't have the manpower to hold off the horde that was coming for them either with a skeleton crew of eight students, one archeologist trying to keep a level head, and an alcoholic. The camp was set up in the middle of a wide clearing, and the tall, crowded trees surrounding them allowed the Grimm to attack them from the shadows at all angles. What they needed was some kind of barrier. Something to protect them while they found a fix for their little "no way home" problem.
Or at the very least just kept them alive for a little bit longer.
"What the heck?" Ruby's cacophonic voice cut him off. She was standing by Jack, looking almost triumphant, and holding up his scroll. "Why does he have bars?"
"I'unno, I don't listen to rap," Cielo replied offhandedly.
Jack patted his pocket furiously, then for the briefest of moments looked like going to punch her. "Don't you dare steal my scroll and my gimmick!"
Then, like a child wondering why that car's headlights were getting brighter, it hit Cielo. "Say what now?"
Ruby held Jack's scroll out to the group. It was a nice model, and very clearly not the kind Beacon had issued the students. Like Ruby had said, full bars. Just to be sure, Cielo checked his own. No signal, same as before.
"Well how 'bout that?" Jack said, grabbing the scroll back.
How about that, indeed. Why was Jack's scroll the only one working?
"Yeah, that is weird," Cards said. "How're you getting a signal? Is it, like, some super prototype you got a tech tech showcase?
Cielo would've figured he stole it, really. Jack was an odd man. "Sheltered" by his own claim, but eerily calm in the face of Grimm. And he was obviously skilled with those knives of his. There was definitely more to him than the lovable trickster guise he wore. It reminded him of his old mentor.
He only hoped that was as far as it went.
"I splurged on the unlimited data plan," he replied, voice easy.
Cielo wasn't convinced. It was too smooth a reply. Plus, something just seemed off. It was too convenient, for one. And if the signal was being jammed then the plan provider shouldn't matter, should it?
Pyrrha was staring at him, though with a tired sort of bewilderment.
"Who cares how?" Schnee snapped. "What's important is that we can use it to call for help."
"She's right," Pyrrha agreed, sounding almost reluctant. "Right now, ensuring that the archeologists get safely evacuated is our top priority."
True. The hows and whys could wait until they were all safe and sound back at Beacon.
"Yeah, Cards," Cielo sneered with a pig-like tone. "Jeez!"
The police girl lightly slapped his stomach.
Pyrrha nodded at Jack. Instead of jumping to action, he just stood there, meeting Pyrrha's gaze. He almost looked hostile. No, Cielo realized, he looked more like a petulant child trying to act independent when they really had no choice in the matter.
"I'll need a bit of time," Jack said.
Schnee made a shooing gesture. "Fine, whatever. Just do it."
"While that's being taken care of, we need to think of something to hold the Grimm off," Jaune said.
"A barrier," Cielo remembered. He turned to Cards. "Ice dust, how much you got left?"
The girl fished through her bags. Her face fell a bit. "A bit. Not much, really," she said with a shake of the head. Then she perked up. "But—"
"I've got some," Schnee finished.
"Right, I see what you're driving at," Jaune commented, sounding a little amazed at his own realization. "Make an ice fortress to compensate for the lack of defense."
"That's the long and short of it, yeah," Cielo agreed. He looked at the ice queen. "Think you can handle that?"
For a moment she looked insulted, as if she couldn't believe he had the gall to ask her that. Then her face shifted thoughtfully. "Actually… I'm not sure," she admitted. "Under different circumstances, one with less people and even less Grimm, I'd be able to make a sturdy enough dome, but I don't have enough dust to form something that big that would be able to weather a sustained attack for very long."
Jaune's eyes narrowed, placing a hand beneath his chin. "What about something a bit more crude? A shield that covers our back and flanks?"
Pyrrha nodded. "Preferably something that forces the Grimm to narrow their attack."
"Oh! I can help with that! I should have just enough for that at least," Cards interjected, eagerly thrusting her hand towards the sky as if trying to get her teacher's attention.
"There's that small valley leading up to the camp," Cielo continued with a nod. "Think we can use that to bottleneck them?"
"It's worth a shot, I guess," Jaune said.
"I can use my semblance to set traps," Chloe suggested after a moment.
Her partner nodded, then made a face. "What the hell is your semblance, anyway?"
She patted the boy's fluffy, blond mane. "Jaune, you know there're just some things you never ask a girl."
A plan was coming along, Jack—somehow—had a signal, which meant that evac would be on its way. Still, Cielo couldn't quell the uneasiness welling up inside of him. Aside from the hundred of Grimm closing in on them, he couldn't shake the idea that this was all orchestrated by someone, as paranoid as it might've sounded. Was it the same people responsible for what happened at Beacon?
"Help's on the way." The other blond boy had joined back up with them.
"Jack," Cielo started. "You think you can do that murder-gate thing with your knives again?"
He shrugged in the vague affirmative, still doing something on his scroll.
"Alright, I'll uh, help coordinate civilian safety," Jaune said. He seemed a bit unsure, Cielo noticed. Must've been the pre-massacre jitters. Happened to everyone.
"Aww, look at us plan together like a real team!" Ruby cheered, side hugging both Schnee and Cards. "I'm so proud! We should take a picture together!"
"Yeah, no," Schnee scoffed, pulling from the girl's grasp. "I don't trust any one of you to not try and sell it online."
"Busted," Cielo replied, rolling his eyes.
"Way to make it obvious, Red," Chloe said. Cielo didn't pay it much mind, so long as she was picking on her own partner and not his.
A distant, hellish wail whipped through the air and ravaged the forest. Cielo scowled and cupped his ears at the discordant alarm siren. It echoed through his bones, and it drop-kicked him in the soul stomach. He half-believed it'd echo out his mouth if he opened it. Like some kind of suped-up air raid siren from a Great War flick.
Why the hell was the camp's alarm so loud?
Jack, as usual, seemed so collected that Cielo wonder if the sirens were just in his head. All blondie was doing was scanning the camp. When the roar of the siren died down, a brief lull, he just said, "There's no sirens in camp."
Cielo felt something churning in his guts. Jack was right. This camp had no alarm sirens. So where the hell was the noise—
The sirens made a horrified warbling noise. Like someone strangling the life out of seven sparrow hatchlings. Exactly seven. All the while putting it up to a microphone for some depraved reason. And then they laughed, a malicious, vicious sound. Cielo and everyone else could pinpoint it was coming from the direction of the little valley and nearby stream, the direction the Grimm were coming from.
"Don't touch that dial, folks!" came the voice straight out of an old radio, only louder, and hatefully eager.
Nothing about today was going their way.
a/n: Kept you waiting, huh?
Sorry ):
I hate how busy I am. But I have a computer again after like half a year, so let's see what I can do! Don't touch that dial, folks.