No, not dead yet (though after this chapter, I imagine several people might want me to be). I could give you any number of reasons for the delay, but as you will see, this chapter needs none. I'm also not offering any apologies for it, either.
I will, however, off my thanks, to all those who read and review or even simply stop by to wile away part of your lives. Your the reason I'm able to keep putting out this bullshit.
That's right, it's all on you. Just please, read it SLOWLY, give it time to age. All will be explained... eventually.
"So, let me get this straight… Weiss's been stabbed, in the chest, and this guy she barely knows decides, 'oh, hey, this is the perfect chance to practice my mouth to mouth?"
Ren grunted noncommittally, trying to ignore his captain's constant complaints like the branches which kept swatting him in the face. Both proved futile and he screwed his eyes shut as another one lashing him across the nose.
"So, what, someone gets shot in the head, would this guy just give CPR to them too?!" Jaune failed to notice his teammates' aggravation the same way he overlooked the overgrown forestry snagging at his flailing arms and snagging at his hoodie. "I mean, where does a guy like that get off?!"
"I dunno, sounds about right to me," Nora was the only one seemingly content with the situation slogging its way through the wildly wooded path. There was a swagger in her step as she followed her team through the tall grass, her place as the shortest member letting her see beneath Jaune's indignation to the underlying problem. "…Depends on how hotthe guy was whether she got off too. Right, Pyrrha?"
"Huh?" However, the champion was more focused on the birds' gossip than the girl's, their songs oddly bright and cheery despite the sound of humans crashing through the underbrush being enough to wake the dead, and the dense canopy making the trail as dark as a crypt. But then at last a light seemed to go on, and Pyrrha's cheeks blossomed red. "-Oh! Well, I-I don't know… never really thought about…those kinds of…"
"Gah! What the hell, why do I have to be stuck on a team with Clueless and Sexless?!" There were several cringes at this accusation, a ruffling of feathers as the birds took offence to Nora's shout and took flight. "Come on, Ren, help a sister out here!"
Sparing a glance back at his partner rewarded Ren with another low-hanging twig smacking across his neck. Already less than eager to get involved, the tall teen excused himself with a hand rubbing the new welt and went back to concentrating on where his head was at.
"Awe, admit it, girl," Taking her friend's cold shoulder in stride, Nora skipped ahead and elbowed her redheaded teammate in the side to get her attention. "Don't 'cha ever think about what kind of huntsmen hotties 're out there? Nothin' wrong with looking you know. And hey, might not be Weiss's style, but I heard from Yang that Sun guy's seriously chiseled."
Turning the other cheek didn't hide Pyrrha's blush, but it did make her notice a familiar mark as she passed by.
Reaching out, she traced the groove she had chiseled in the tree trunk months ago and noted with a less-than pleased purse of her lips that someone had added to it. Now, instead of being a trail of breadcrumbs to guide them back to Beacon, the arrow's barbs pointed deeper into the forest.
"I mean, Jaune's a nice guy and he's improved a lot, but you can't seriously tell me that you're into… that." With a subtle (for Nora) fleer towards their leader, the short huntress directed Pyrrha's attention to where Jaune was fighting (and seemingly losing) to a rather large spiderweb which had stretched across the trail. "…I think I'd be less surprised if you told me you were into me."
This offhand remark succeeded in taking Pyrrha's mind off the mark on the tree. Although, she could scarce conjure up a response, sputtering as if she was the one with spider's silk coating her tongue.
"No, no, no!" Pyrrha waved her hands furiously between them to clear the air, attracting the attention of their male teammates. The otherwise fearless huntress then grabbed Nora, hiding the two of them behind her shield and whispering harshly, "It's not like that at all!"
"I don't know…" Leaning in perhaps more than necessary, the boisterous (and dangerously bored) huntress decided to tease her strait-laced teammate a little bit by "I'm always down for a little adventure."
Like Ren, Nora found regret in her words as Pyrrha was all but taken down by her scandalous suggestion, her dead weight flopping on top of her.
"Gah! Come on, Pyr, I was only joking! Pull yourself together!" Despite being strong enough to wield her massive hammer, the smaller huntress found herself being smothered by the champion as if she were some kind of colossal, slumbering cat. "Man! You're heavy!"
"Sorry…"
Not even bothering to deny the weight which was at least half her weapons and accoutrement, Pyrrha picked herself off her comrade and was in the process of recomposing herself when she heard Nora chuckle.
"Ya know, I can't remember the last time you said that."
Thinking on it, neither could Pyrrha. When exactly had she weaned herself of that apologetic habit? And furthermore, what exactly did it mean?
However, finding this answer was akin to Nora trying to suss what was going on in her friend's head based solely on her troubled expression. In other words, futile.
They'd have better luck figuring out what lurked in the bushes, based on the fact they had suddenly gone silent.
"What do you think they're talking about back there?" While focused on the fleeting glimpses of red and orange, Jaune missed the dark look Ren shot back at him. "…I think they were laughing at me."
"Since when do you care what other people think?" Mid-swing Ren realized how harsh the question sounded, like a rock in a lawnmower causing him to wince. "Look, Jaune, we're your teammates. Need I remind you that we're about to see someone who absolutely loathes your existence and has vowed to eradicate it if you ever so much as set a foot in this forest again?" The tall boy took another whack at the thicket which fought against his pistols' twin bayonets like barbed wire.
"Why do you think I'm trying to distract myself?"
Managing to avoid looking at anything in particular, Jaune also stopped himself from rubbing the scarlet mark on his left arm. The wound was still tender, as was the Pavlovian pain of the nurse's scolding whenever he touched it.
"You know," Ren sighed, rubbing his own arm in empathetic soreness. "You didn't actually have to-"
"Don't say that I didn't have to come."
Pausing in his bushwhacking, Ren glanced back at his captain to see him looking worse than when they'd brought him to the infirmary: a grim countenance and shaking like a leaf- no, more like a baby rattlesnake, scared out of its mind and ready to invest it all in one bite.
"Okay," Ren said breezily, blowing a strand of seaweed hair out of his face before gesturing limply to the labyrinthine thicket. "In that case… you want to take over?"
"Oh, uh, sure." Making his way up to Ren, Jaune began using his sword like a machete against the tenacious plant life which had consumed the trail. It didn't take long for the hard work to consume him. "Man! Has it seriously been that long? I don't remember the trail being this thick even the first time."
"It seems to be good training for your swing, though," Pyrrha noted, returning Ren's nod as she and Nora rejoined the group. "Perhaps we should come down here every weekend?"
Just as it was said, though, Jaune missed and nearly fell into a particularly nasty briar patch. His left arm shot out on instinct, posting itself up to the elbow into the pile of brambles, saving him from going in face-first.
"Gah-!"
But this quick catch saved him little face and spared him no pain. The thorns tickling his wounded arm didn't hurt as much as knowing that his team saw him make a fool of himself yet again. Eyes and jaw clenched, he didn't need to see the apology begin to form in his partner's mouth to know it was coming.
"Oh, Jaune! I didn't mean- I'm sor-"
"It's fine."
Hauling himself up with the hilt of his sword, Jaune went back to aggressively blazing a trail. Each swing was now imbued with a certain violent determination which was quickly blunted to mere annoyance by the thick foliage. Soon, even this battle of attrition wasn't enough to distract him.
"Why are we even here to begin with?" Losing track of where he was going in the same way, Jaune found his sword stuck in a tree that had obviously been there a longer time than they had. Wrenching it free with some effort, he began carving a new path around the obstacle. "Doesn't He have a scroll now or whatever? Why can't Ozpin tell him about the mission himself?"
"He tried, but Jin's not responding."
"Because it's us he wants to talk to." Although, Pyrrha knew in truth that she was talking mostly to, and about, herself.
"Having us here puts Him at an advantage," With patience steadily being recharged, Ren explained the situation for his captain. "He can ask things he'd be reluctant to bring to Ozpin."
"So, it's not really us he wants to talk to," Jaune stated, short and sharp as he cut.
"No." The quiet boy admitted with another long-suffering sigh, filling in for a lack of breeze.
No one noticed the forest's lack of comment, oddly silent on the matter.
Though perhaps they were all subconsciously aware of it; Jaune's progress slowing to a crawl as his motivation was seized like an engine without oil. Dislodging the sword from a tangle of vines yet again, he wiped another sheet of sweat off his brown and leaned heavily on his weapon.
"I really don't remember it being this far… aren't we there yet?"
Finding themselves in yet another thicket, the group looked around for any familiar signs between the new growth. Pyrrha noted that she hadn't seen any of her self-made marks in a while. And the fact that they hadn't seen the Grimm yet, either, was itself unusual; the forest oddly quiet when devoid of his stale death-threats.
Around them was life, fresh and primordial, plants so thick they were like the painted backdrop of a stage. It was such that for just a moment, the group of four felt as if they had taken a wrong turn somewhere and stumbled into a different story entirely.
"Ah, but you must always remember that no matter where you go…" the familiar, miserable narrator weighed in on their reality, "… there you are."
There he was, at last, lounging around as if he'd been waiting a century with tails like a fossilized waterfall dripping off the tree branch above them.
And there they were: finally realizing that it was the same branch and the same clearing were they always met, now somehow so choked with vegetation to become unrecognizable. Somehow, Jin seemed unrecognizable, framed in flora that made him look almost like a still-life painting.
And despite the number of times they'd come to this exact impasse, they were again choked for conversation.
Though as usual, Pyrrha was the first to shrug off this surprise and step forward to confront the Grimm.
"You have a mission with us,"
-But the lines got crossed again, her words coming from Jaune's mouth. The captain drew everyone's attention as he coughed, not used to the taste of dialog with the demon.
"Grimm eradication out past Mountain Glenn, Ozpin says you already know the details…"
"Hmm, is that so? Strange, seeing as I never usually bother with such trivialities," Looking down upon Jaune as equally insignificant, "Yet, I distinctly remember making it clear that you in particular are not welcome here, boy."
"Y-yeah? Well… tough shit."
Now they noticed the woods' silence, or perhaps only when it was broken again by the Grimm's eyes snapping open. Both eyes wide, their message clear and unblemished despite the spiderweb of cracks stretching from canthus to canthus: nothing had changed.
"You said I annoy you, right?"
For the longest time, Jaune annoyed himself: his cowardice, his fatuousness, his weakness- but most of all, his inability to change any of it. Discovering his Semblance made all the difference.
"You piss me off."
No, he was not emboldened by his newfound strength, even now scared out of his mind knowing that the godly Grimm could still tear through his hard-light constructs with a single claw. But Jaune was tired of living like this. They said it was better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees, however…
"… it's better than being boring…"
He was not a hero. Not like his partner. Was he envious of her strength? Perhaps. No- definitely. Also, her poise, her personality, her power- he lived in the shadow of her perfection. Still, his own life- still without purpose- it was worth something…
"… right?"
"Heh," Coming to life, Jin barked a laugh before slipping off the tree branch and landing quietly in front of them. He cat-stretched, arching his back and letting his tails flower up towards the canopy, then inverted this pose so that he stood at his full, intimidating height over Jaune. "…Sure, why not?"
"That's… it?"
"Of course. After all, why should I let a whelp like you spoil a perfectly pleasant day?" Neither could Jaune could stop him from reaching out and ruffling his blond mop as one would a child, the claws against his scalp more uncomfortable than they'd been against his arm. "Hell, I'm willing to admit we might even have something in common- two legs, two arms, eyes for an eye and all that. Although, seeing how we are more than the sum of our parts, I've concluded that you're simply not worth it."
Jaune was wrong- this was it, by far the worst thing the Grimm could have done to him, turning his back on the boy entirely in favor of his teammates. No longer treating Jaune like an irritation, he simply… wasn't there.
"So, I can guess that your presence means that old Oz's not too upset. But do tell, I am eager to hear how the good General reacted to our last playdate."
"From what I understand, he seems to be coping." On the surface Ren himself was doing well, but below that understatement he was still disturbed by the Grimm's new attitude. "The yelling from Ozpin's office didn't last much after the first day. Although, maybe the General's gotten bored of fighting a losing argument. That said, there have been no bounties posted. Not that they could have any hope of harming- let alone finding you unless they leveled the entire forest, and I assume Glynda would have a thing or two to say about that. Although… I heard it was Lt. Schnee who assumed most of the blame for the incident. Her word was no doubt the most helpful in persuading the General."
"Oh?" With Jaune still in his peripheries, there was nowhere else for Jin to turn to feign disinterest. "I wonder why she did that."
"I can't say," Ren shrugged, even though he was mildly interested in her motivations himself, "Weiss only told me that her sister even vouched for you with RWBY, for what it's worth."
"-To me, very little," Nothing but a thorn in his paw which he stretched and flexed menacingly at the messenger. "And if I had wanted to know, I would have asked."
Ren was perfectly fine not telling more, washing his hands clean of the matter and holding them up chest-height as he backed away.
Likewise, Jin's approval mattered very little to the stoic teen. They weren't friends- the Grimm didn't have friends, hardly anyone else who would willingly talk to him without being motivated by threats. And Jin was quickly burning through even these, soon to be alone on his social iceberg.
If it was anyone else, Ren would have felt pity. But something told him this sentiment wouldn't be appreciated by Jin.
The Grimm himself appeared to appreciate his situation after a few tense seconds. Disgruntled, Jin got up and paced around on legs like the pistons of a steam train before parking himself in front of the teens and blowing a deep, whistling sigh.
"What happened the other day… for what it's worth I… I really hadn't meant for it to turn out like that."
At last, they arrived at the reason they had been called out there. They didn't recognize it for what it was at first, camouflaged like all the other familiar things by Jin's murky intentions.
"-Make no mistake, this isn't an apology."
No, they hadn't thought it was. An after-action report, a receipt for damages, an explanation for the reckoning visited upon them by an angry god- but not contrition, no, never from this vindictive creature.
However, he was owning up to behaving like a lowly beast.
"I should have had more control over my actions."
And that was what he couldn't tolerate. Perfectly fine to act beastly so long as it was on his terms. But Good and Evil didn't exist without choice, and he'd surrendered that control. This was the only way to take it back- to his chagrin- humbling himself in front of these humans and admitting that he'd made a mistake.
How it must have rankled him! It was so humiliating that he had to call them out here alone, because he hadn't the heart to do it in front of everyone- couldn't do it for anyone else.
For who would listen to his halfhearted confession beside one, foolish redhead and her team? Even then, why should they care?
In all honesty, it was… pathetic, a moment of weakness Pyrrha and the others should have seized if they were not so stunned by its abruptness.
"It won't happen again," Jin's guarantee was backed up by an angry growl as if he could hear their silent judgments of him. He was holding himself back, claws kneading and palms leaking that curious combination of red and black like a fine spirit being uncasked after many centuries.
"…I promise,"
What… would make them believe this? As a rule, this Grimm didn't make promises. That he was shifting up the game now shouldn't inspire confidence and yet-
"From here on out, my actions are my own."
It was what he wanted. And they could trust that Jin would always get what he wanted.
"…Tell you what," Though not about to leave empty-handed, Nora charged headfirst into the unknown with her smile as a flashlight, "Throw in a free trip back to Beacon, and you got yourself a deal!"
The discomfort felt by her three teammates quickly descended into outright foreboding as Jin grinned, stood up only to take a knee and clench his knuckles over where one would expect a heart to be. The mockery of a salute left a black and red streak across his armored ribcage.
"As you wish…"
From there everything happened rather quickly, if not to say exactly smooth.
Riding a young colt bareback was doubtlessly better than being an unwilling passenger harnessed in the Grimm's tails, especially with the ginger-haired adrenaline demon constantly egging him to go faster. From the outset they'd busted out of the canopy and through the sound barrier, the Grimm's maniacal laughter and Jaune's girly cries trailing behind.
Thankfully, Beacon wasn't far away as the crow flies. And compared to their morning schlep they were indeed flying, skipping off the treetops and over the heads of blissfully unaware students on their beeline out of the forest. For huntsmen hopefuls they were rather unobservant, dismissing the black streak crossing the horizon as merely a bird flying in front of the sun.
As it was, Ozpin himself didn't look up from his paperwork until the shadow crossed his desk, sitting up right before Grimm and students crashed through his window.
"Jin," Only the tiniest hint of alarm made Ozpin's voice seem anything out of the ordinary. "Is there a reason you entered my office through the window?"
"Yeah," Depositing the huntsmen hopefuls onto the carpet, two out of four hugged the green shag as the closest thing to ground in their lives. "I forgot how fun it was not using the door."
Ozpin stared at the Grimm as if for a moment he had forgotten just what a monster he had raised, before he raised an eyebrow in condemnation of his surrogate child.
"You gave Ironwood your word… right before you take three of his ships and an officer out of commission- not to mention injuring one of my own students- then drop off the face of Remnant yourself without a word, only to reappear in front of me in undisguised contempt of me and my office. And you expect- what, that I'll just allow you to take these four and be on your merry way?"
"Bags are already packed," Folding away two of his tails, he gestured with the remaining four at the students as if they were naught but mildly burdensome luggage. "I'm ready to go."
Perhaps they expected the headmaster to go ballistic on Jin, but this would have been less characteristic- if not to say more unexpected- than the unburdened smile which sprouted instead.
"Try not to accidentally drop any of them."
"Says the man who launched these same students off a cliff." It was when said students were remembering this earlier betrayal that an evil grin blossomed on the Grimm's face. "Right, 'accidentally'."
While JNPR was busy processing their headmaster's most recent act of turncoat, Jin turned and once again scooped them up in his tails before telling them in a mocking parody of his earlier warning:
"Let's hope you have a better landing strategy this time."
"Hey!- wait, we don't even have our gear-"
But the malicious Man-Grimm was already poised at the window, claws clutching either side of the frame like the yoke of a slingshot.
"Just think of it as a… survival exercise."
"A wha-aaaaAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Before anyone else could delay further, the five blasted away in a blizzard of glass. And once Jaune's screams of dismay and Nora's hysterical giggles had faded, Ozpin allowed the self-assured smile to drop as he fell back into his chair.
There was a sound like a sigh and then a polite ding as the elevator door opened unto his office.
"Ozpin, I have compiled the foreign competitors' profiles for screen-" Glynda cut off as her heel crunched on a piece of glass, looking up to see the sorry state of her boss's chamber. The man himself was staring out the pane-less window with another one of his painfully doubting expressions on his face. "Sir?"
"Glynda… tell team RWBY they have the go-ahead."
"But Ozpin, Qrow says that Ironwood is already mobilizing behind our backs, it's too big a gamble-"
"-Teaching is a gamble," More concerning seemed to be where he would find a cheap supplier for window glass, assuming this would be a regular occurrence. "Raising children is a gamble, hoping that your investment isn't wasted."
Although, that was by far the most optimistic of worries.
"… In for a penny, in for a pound."
"Ie…"
A sound of pleasure mimicking the squeals of Boarbatusks, fangs bared in hunger like the woefully baying Beowolves who huddled around their packmates.
"Ta…"
A farewell to manners as a bead of saliva dripped down his jaw.
"De…"
The beginning of the end for this horde of Grimm who seemed to already know their fate even as they prepared to fight tooth and nail for whatever parody of life the possessed. It was almost sad, in a way, admitting there was no hope for them even if they were to survive the coming carnage.
"Ki…"
They could feel the Man-Grimm's Aura- or whatever passed for it- start to swell, arcing from the tips of his tails to the sweat on their skin. It was an odd sensation, simultaneously invigorating and intimidating, like a cheeseburger with donuts for buns. No doubt it was driving the lesser Grimm mad as they were unable to reconcile the contradiction, forced to simper in hunger and humility.
"Ma-su!" *
To Jin it was an orgy of food. To them, it was a massacre.
-Or was it genocide? Fratricide? Cannibalism? About all team JNPR could do as they stood on the sidelines was contemplate the semantics of the slaughter, because trying to make any real sense of it was an exercise in futility.
Although, doing nothing felt equally superfluous. Wasn't this supposed to be their mission? It felt more like exercising a dog at a park, not even able to take it for a walk without fear of it and pulling them off their feet and dragging them through the dirt.
Or maybe… they were the pets, and just waiting for Jin to throw them a bone.
"I'm boooooored."
And this was even more bone-chilling than the gargled screams in the background (the regular Grimm's screams oddly human sounding - strangely similar to Jaune's who shivered and tried to find comfort in the fact it was not him).
"Hey, Ren, I was thinking-"
But her partner was too. Paying attention, the lazy 'o's were like the wail of an alarm for the young man who hastily grabbed his nearest teammate and fled into the bushes, muttering an excuse about food and shelter for the night. Ren hoped Pyrrha would excuse him for leaving her behind, but he figured that if anyone could survive Nora's machinations, it was her.
He might have been a tad optimistic.
"So, Pyrrha…" Fully aware of her friend's departure, Nora donned a mischievous smile and scooted closer to her remaining comrade. "Um, Pyrrha?"
As attention-grabbing as the huntress was, however, Pyrrha's was entirely focused on details, trying to make sense of the violent madness in front of her. The champion honestly liked fighting, and for the same reason; because a person's truth always came out in those fleeting moments.
Maybe she had just gained an appreciation for the nuance, but to her, Jin's style was no longer what could be deemed 'beastly'. Rough, yes; instinctual, most certainly. But those instincts were being drawn two different ways, the roughness due to this oscillation of extremes. One strike was as pinpoint as a sniper's bullet, the next moment tearing through this conception along with the neck of a Goliath with his teeth.
Ripping out the elephantine Grimm's esophagus and spine with one jerk of his head, Jin dropped through the black brine of its dissolving body before jamming a claw up into the gullet of a saber-tooth cat that was foolishly trying to pounce on where he was formerly. He tossed the feline up and over at two Beowolves who were simply waiting on their haunches for an opportunity- one which would now never come as all three exploded into a black fog.
From there he sidestepped the clutch of feathered arrows fired from a Nevermore, leaping up and grabbing the crow-like Grimm by the shoulder blades and tearing it messily in two. Before both halves could dissolve, Jin took the ironlike wings in hand and used them as swords against a King Taiju that was attempting to swallow him whole. He laughed delightedly while slicing the twin snakes into pieces as thin as carpaccio, taking the last brace of feathers between his fingers like throwing knives and hurling them into the eyes of a charging Boarbatsuk that was so large it probably couldn't have fit in Beacon's main hall. Jin then halted the beast simply by grabbing onto its tusks and headbutting it out of existence, the crunch as skulls collided sounding more like a wrecking ball against concrete.
The concrete jungle of Mountain Glen was the perfect place for Jin to cut loose, where buildings could fall like trees and no one would hear. Another derelict skyscraper collapsed in on itself as the Man-Grimm darted off in pursuit of a pride of Smilodon that were having second thoughts.
For a second time, Nora popped back up on Pyrrha's radar- right in her face.
"Pyrrha!"
It took all the control the Champion had not to attack her friend, the lack of Grimm features barely registering as she raised her weapons.
"What is it, Nora?" Although, she was starting to get a little short with the petite woman- which in itself was unusual. She should be used to Nora's behavior by then, though perhaps it was Jin's usual ability to get under her skin making her antsy. "We really should be following him to make sure he doesn't get too out of hand."
"I'm worried about you."
There was another explosion in the background, a tremor through her feet and a rising cloud of dust that Pyrrha tried to blink out of her eyes.
"I'm sorry- why?"
Even as she lowered herself off the hilt of her giant Warhammer Nora didn't back down and stared up at Pyrrha with a mix of insistence and anxiety.
"All you've been doing lately is training, whether it's with us or RWBY," Normally it wasn't a problem; but even Jaune didn't spend as much time with their sister team outside of Weiss's almost daily sessions. "What happened to going out to eat? Seeing a movie? Video-game tournaments?"
Pyrrha couldn't say it, but recently such things had taken on different connotations in her mind. They felt frivolous, unsatisfying- dare she say tawdry? To her, each day felt too short. There were all these things expected of her, things which she couldn't differentiate from her own burdens.
"What happened to being friends?"
She did feel bad about this. But at the same time, Pyrrha didn't know what to say.
"Of course we're still friends," Whether it was true, the response felt as forced as her T.V. interviews.
"Then… can I tell you something?" Nora asked tentatively- that the exuberant Valkyrie could be so shy proved that Pyrrha didn't know her own team, either. "…it wasn't worth it."
Having no idea what she was referring to, and yet it struck Pyrrha as solidly as the other huntress's hammer which Nora was now leaning on like a pogo stick, rocking back and forth pensively.
"What was?"
"I thought… we thought that killing the Four-Tails would be enough to make us happy- but it wasn't. Now it's gone, both the Grimm and the feeling of revenge- it's just empty!" The shells of buildings staring back at them trembled like Nora's bottom lip while the Grimm went to town, beginning to crumble and fall as she watched on. "I'm sorry, Pyrrha. I'm so sorry that you had to- you shouldn't have to suffer for it! I don't want you giving up your own happiness for-"
"I didn't." Pyrrha shook her head with a small smile that, the longer one looked, was more tragic than happy.
After all, it was impossible to give up something she never had in the first place.
She didn't give Nora enough credit, for the girl clearly understood this private thought and sought to dispute it the only way she knew how. Suddenly Pyrrha found her arms and tongue tied as the smaller girl wrapped herself around her waist. The embrace was so tight that between pained breaths she had flashes where it felt like she was in the Grimm's clutches again.
"Please, let us help," Pyrrha felt the request reverberate through her gut, and tried to quell the ginger-haired woman with a pat on the head. "Whatever we can do, Ren and I want to make this right again."
"S-sure thing," The chuckle came along with a wheezing cough, "Just-um, could you loosen up a bit, Nora?"
Like a tourniquet, the hug seemed to tighten slightly before she finally released.
"Thanks, Pyrrha."
Not feeling like she deserved it, Pyrrha pursed her lips and struggled not to let the apology slip.
"So, uh, you and Ren…" In a move that felt like throwing sand in the eyes, Pyrrha shifted her discomfort towards the only opening she saw.
Though to her shock and dismay, Nora once again appeared to know both herself and even Pyrrha better than she, countering with an unashamed smile.
"Why not?" Indeed. When all other considerations were stripped away, thoughts of revenge and propriety left by the wayside, love became as pure a decision as battle.
"…Speaking of, we really need to get you laid."
After this blow, not saying anything suddenly became a whole lot easier, and Pyrrha felt like her lungs were again being crushed by Nora oppressive personality.
However, in a constant struggle to survive, there was seldom time for embarrassment.
"-Nora, look out!"
That her teammate's hands were already around her waist turned out to be a good thing as Pyrrha flung the two of them backwards, barely evading the claw which buried itself into the asphalt under their feet. The attack had come so fast that it turned some of the road back into tar, flinging the scalding, waxen shrapnel at the two huntresses where it splattered onto Pyrrha's shield.
Shifting from defense to attack, she flipped Akoúo to the side and already had her rifle leveled with finger on the trigger when she saw what was in her sights and froze.
"Jin… what the hell?!"
"Just trying to keep you on your toes," Hopping onto the balls of his feet, the Grimm jerked his fist out of the ground and flexed away the remnants of the road like it was nothing more than a mud bath. "All kinds of dangerous creatures out here… can't have you getting too comfortable."
"You dick! You said that you were going to be in control!" Indignant though she was, Nora herself was not ignorant enough to trust the Grimm any further than she could throw him.
"Psh. If I wanted it, you'd all be dead a thousand times over by now." He did have a point, underscoring it by carefully examining under every fingernail to see if he scored any flesh. "I'd say that I am perfectly in control."
The bodies of both Jaune and Ren were tossed out of the forest, landing with just the right amount of force that they rolled up next to their teammates. Twin groans confirmed the Grimm's affirmation of life, and the two looked up in confusion to see a copy of Jin staring down at them. This was only the second time that any of them had seen his clones- that they knew of, a fact that should have scared them had they the time to think about such things.
"I seem to recall someone saying that they were bored…" With equal parts despair and disparagement, her three teammates turned their heads towards a sheepish Nora. "Well, now I am too."
"Wait, you finished off all the Grimm in the area?" Jaune blanched, sounding like the parent of a teenager who couldn't believe they had finished off all the fresh groceries despite paying the bill.
"Nah, not all of them." Jin waved him off with a claw the was still stained with the shadow his fellow monsters. "I left a few for midnight snacks. But I did promise you that this would be a survival exercise, remember? Won't be much of one if we have to go back early, nor if you didn't have some challenge…"
"I believe you have been away from humans for too long," Testing that he could still stand, Ren confirmed that his sarcasm wasn't also damaged by the rough handling. "Coexisting with you is challenge enough. You might have eaten, but we still need food, not to mention fresh water that's not contaminated by being stagnant for decades, shelter, and it's going to get cold so a fire might be nice-"
"Sure, sure, sure, you should have plenty of time for that." His clawed wave morphed into a satire of Ren's mouth, flapping aloofly as the Grimm was wont to do with his own gums. Jin was acting every bit as sardonic as when they had first met- a great improvement over last time, but one which failed to instill any confidence in them.
"What's the catch?"
"Food's a good motivator, isn't it?" Licking his lips, he looked down on the four of them as if they were his next course. "For me, the Grimm were just an appetizer. But you're right, the four of you need food to survive, so… how about, whichever one of you fails to land a hit on me, that one isn't eating tonight."
The only thing that would make them doubt Jin's seriousness was that he was almost treating them like real students, a semblance of fairness behind his wanton cruelty.
"What are you waiting for? Clock's 'a tickin'. Oh, and since it has been so long, I'll remind you that if you want to land a hit, you better come at me with-"
"Die motherfucker, die!"
Sounding like a Grimm-sized raspberry, Nora unloaded all six cylinders of her grenade launcher in quick succession at Jin whose look of bewilderment was quickly covered behind a wall of explosions.
"Did…?" The wisps of smoke and heat from her gun barrel were like smelling salts to the huntress as she stared wide-eyed through them at the smoldering cloud where the Grimm had once stood. "Did I actually hit him?"
"Close, but no," His voice was too close for comfort- she hadn't reloaded and wouldn't even be able to shift Magnahilde into its Warhammer form with how he was practically breathing down her neck. "Love the enthusiasm, though."
Despite his teasing tone, Jin was deathly serious, and it was only by dint of her partner coming to the rescue that Nora left with her head. Ren whisked her away just as Jin's claws came whizzing above them like a helicopter blade. The huntress reloaded as they moved, so that by the time she was set down the avenging Valkyrie was already laying down a new field of fire.
"Ha, ha! Good, good!" The Grimm brayed, kicked back like a horse and catching Jaune's shield. The huntsman and his defense were separated, Jaune rolling farther away from his team as his shield landed somewhere in the bushes. But Jin couldn't spare an eye to see where, pulled into a dance with Pyrrha's spear as she led him further afield. "Remember now, no holding back!"
Ren and Nora both unloaded their guns at him, the staccato of pistol caliber and steady beat of grenades were soon joined by precise rifle fire from Pyrrha as she distanced herself and started taking pot shots at the Grimm's shadow. There was a low ring like a triangle as their guns ran dry, then an intermission that was too brief to reload before the next movement.
Silent out in the woods, the lesser Grimm waited for the chance at the spotlight.
But as the measures slurred into minutes and minutes into hours, the sorry creatures began to lose interest. Tired of waiting on their laurels, they began to amble off and took their red-eyed leers with them.
Two by two their eyes winked out like Christmas lights until there remained only a single pair to watch over the bloodless scuffle outside Mountain Glenn.
And then the sun, red in the sky, set behind the mountains, leaving one bloody eye to keep vigil until well after dark.
It was dark. No more Aurora, no more struggles between good and evil in the sky above- if such a thing existed in the first place.
Below, the landscape was cast in waxen light making it look even more cartoonish and unreal. Illumination came only from the moon which they hadn't seen in… how long? Enough that the craters looked like unfamiliar, evil scars on the glowing surface. The planetary satellite was one, huge eye that had seen far too much.
The sun was out as well, eclipsed in a wink with light only on the peripheries, edges of the circle fuzzy with flames trying to escape the darkness.
Smoldering blue eyes stared back at the sky in disdain.
"You're not fooling anyone,"
No one answered, and so Matatabi replied in kind, rolling her eyes and going back to sleep, waiting for the world to wake up to realty.
"Not anymore."
Night had fully settled in but remained restless. From a sprint their fight had become a marathon, the redheaded warrior trying to remain light on her feet even as the darkness of every blink got longer.
"I can't tell…." Everything was blurring, even Jin's stare which had latched onto her like a fresh snakebite was coming loose as she swayed drunkenly. His two eyes doubled to four, folding back into a tryptic before she nearly fell, and the image collapsed back into one. "Are you trying to teach us a lesson here?"
"Don't be stupid, Red," Was he winking at her, or was that a trick of the light? "What could I possibly have to teach you? Better teamwork- better yet, how about when to give up?"
The rest of her team had dropped out already, consequences be damned. And even now Pyrrha considered joining them in starvation- in solitude as their survival exercise-turned duel migrated away from her team, into downtown Mountain Glenn. From inside, the city felt as empty as she did, life like breakfast gone long ago. The place might have been haunted, urging Pyrrha to give up the ghost.
"-You can't, can you?" Another of his annoying smirks cracked across the Grimm's face- she wished she could just crack him one and put an end to this. "Why? Because it's so much easier being a martyr. Your own pain's nothing- just shut up, grit your teeth and bear it. Because as hard as it is carrying the weight of the world, at least it's not as bad as empathizing, seeing the suffering of others and knowing that you can't do squat. Even when you are fighting against impossible odds, there's no need to stop and think about why you sacrifice so much. The lives of others are worth so much more than your own. That's why you tolerate that useless captain of yours, isn't it?
"So, by all means let's keep going, rehash this age-old battle of Good and Evil like the good little meat-puppets we both are. Naught but guts and teeth- all smiles and false interactions, dancing the same song over and over and… what are you doing?"
While the Grimm was grandstanding, Pyrrha had planted her spear in the ground and taken the opportunity to rearm herself. Reaching behind her back, she pulled out a shrink-wrapped bar and proceeded to noisily unwrap it in contempt of Jin's sermon, munching on it like movie popcorn.
"I'm listening," She should have listened when Ren warned her the concoction was more for nutrition than flavor, dry and bitter, hard even to chew with let alone speak. She swallowed and the bar's wholesome ingredients dropped like a plutonium slug into the pit of her gut where a chemical reaction took place. It mixed with raw stomach acid, setting off a chain reaction that vibrated her bones and carbonated her bloodstream, culminating in a gasp like a burp that released all pressure and left her aglow. "-But I don't have to believe you, do I?"
"Oi," Jin's eye was twitching- or maybe it was reality itself that seemed to glitch around the right side of his face. Sometimes she saw a scar, a crack in his mask like a fracture on the ice of a frozen lake. Sometimes seeing a sliver of blue beneath the glaring red. "That's cheating."
"Is it?" Then again, maybe it was just her, metabolism forcing the mitochondria of every cell into overdrive, synapses popping like Ren's machine pistols giving Pyrrha a heady feeling of confidence that couldn't be good for her long-term health. "It's what you want though, right? By breaking your 'rules' I'm being selfish, like you. Or perhaps I am proving you right, forcing myself to keep going by any means necessary."
Letting the plastic wrap fall and float away on the breeze, Pyrrha picked up her spear and cradled it under her arm, the tip pointed at Jin's heart.
"-And ignoring the pain of others… Either way, you win, don't you?"
His face was so contorted in rage that it was painful to look at, as if she had stabbed him in the gut and twisted- certainly not the expression of a victor. For a moment Pyrrha considered that she had made a terrible mistake in goading him. But rather than feel scared, she felt almost… sorry.
"Unless… it was all a lie."
"Now!"
It was difficult to tell whether he'd been successfully distracted, reacting almost concurrently with Jaune's decoy shout. Caught in the middle of the street with little means of defense, Jin stomped on fractured slab of concrete, similar to how he had blocked Yang's barrage during their first 'spar'.
It was a gamble but… it was what they were hoping for.
A handful of small-caliber rounds pelted the upturned slab along with two grenades, the other four baseball-sized bombs appearing to fly too high over Jin's head.
But Nora was practically an artist with her launcher, and as soon as the Grimm noticed the shots landing behind his back, he knew something was wrong.
Electrical wires which he himself helped unearth suddenly leapt up, wrapping themselves around his legs. He looked at Pyrrha who had her eyes clamped in concentration, no doubt having imagined this moment so often that she didn't need sight to aim her polarity at him.
It was going almost unbelievably well, an unintentional bonus when a water-pipe was breached and started flooding the ground under Jin's feet. Every attempt to step out of the sand-trap had him sliding further down into the muck, at the same time the electrical conduit snaked up his legs like tree roots.
And that was before Nora decided to run her own charge through the cables, using her body as the switch to link the live wires to the severed end of the ones wrapped around the Grimm. Even neglected, the city's emergency batteries still held enough charge to light the LED streetlamps on an automatic timer, long after the streets themselves had been run barren.
But today, after the sun had set, the small crowd which had gathered there was treated to a firework display of discharge, the Grimm's bones glowing like fluorescent bulbs right before they shorted and turned out the lights once and for all.
Nora herself knew from repeated use of her Semblance (along with how her skin tingled like wintergreen mints on the tongue) that the number of amps she'd channeled hadn't been enough to put Jin down for long. But, hopefully, it had made him forget about her earlier 'missed' shots.
"Hmm… that almost tick-"
His ears twitched, the sound of cracking outlasting the sparks of electricity which skipped off into the night. The noise which persisted was different, more substantial- more like a crunch than a crackle. Instead of electrons connecting, this was something breaking-
"….Oh."
The last concrete struts gave way on the skyscraper across the street and it came down like a flyswatter atop Jin. Team JNPR themselves were like flies, narrowly escaping being crushed but having tornado-force winds tearing at their skin and clothes. Those that managed not to be immediately blown off their feet were instead tossed into the air as the ground rebounded like a trampoline.
When they came down from their high, they looked to see what happened.
"Did… did we-?"
"DON'T!" Even after their ears stopped ringing, this was something no one wanted to hear.
Instead, they kept still and listened, the dust settling over them like too much makeup powder as each held their breath- not holding their breath that Jin was finished, just that they might be.
"This counts as a hit for all of us, right?" Jaune asked, approaching slowly, his face ghostly white as he glanced over at the flat, black spot where their adversary once stood.
"… Did he become a Grimm pancake?"
It was a hole.
A deep, black hole.
"…You think he's down there?"
-So black that they'd been unable to see it at first against the asphalt, rubble around the rim of it like salt around a margarita the only thing to set it apart. And so deep that even gathering around it they couldn't see the bottom, no glowing red eyes glaring up at them like distant stars and no disgruntled shouts spilling over the jagged lip like a burbling cauldron of acerbic remarks.
Of course, they were reluctant to get that close.
"Heellllloooooo! Jin, are you down there?!"
"Nora, I really don't think that's a good idea-"
As foolish as sticking one's hand blind into a dark crack. But this wasn't a Black Widow, and Nora wasn't the target. The tails shot right past her and wrapped around Pyrrha, dragging her down into the abyss.
"Pyrrha!"
That Jaune was first to react was by far the most surprising outcome, though she really didn't give the boy enough credit. It had been his plan, from the energy bars co-developed between their culinary expert (Ren) and their resident busybody (Ruby), to dropping a tower on Jin.
But then again, he still wasn't strong enough to do it on his own, wasn't fast enough to prevent his partner from being taken. Jaune threw himself at her but their fingers slipped past one another as Pyrrha slipped over the edge.
It would be up to the Champion to save herself, again.
She had dropped Miló in the surprise, luck leaving her with Akoúo whom she wedged between upper layers of the urban landscape. The javelin caught between a power box and an I-beam and she jerked to a halt, half devoured by the blackness. It was clear the weight on the other end wouldn't let her hold for long, and the damage taken by the cityscape left it as fragile as a wafer cookie.
Still holding for as long as possible, her arms screamed at her. Someone up above screamed down at her- her mind screamed at her as she realized that she had no choice, she couldn't outlast gravity, and she couldn't let her team risk themselves trying to save her.
Pyrrha let go.
"Enough with this bullshit!"
Matatabi screamed up at the twilight, the others slowly gathering around to see what the commotion was, but careful not to get too close as the cat's body glowed with blue flames like a comet.
"Sister, what is the matter?" More tolerant than others of his sibling's fiery spats, Son Goku approached and glanced between the Two-Tails and… whatever it was she was looking at. "The sky's changed. Isn't that a good thing?"
"Nothing's changed," She growled, pawing the earth-like linoleum which, if it were real, would have been turned to glass anyway. "Don't you see? It's all fake- replicas like an aquarium. A zoo, a prison- call it whatever you want, it's just a cage!"
Not all that shocking, they'd all had their existential rages against the world they woke up in. However, Matatabi's anger seemed channeled elsewhere…
"Wait, you don't mean to say…" Kukouo was the first to catch on- though in fact, he probably knew for a lot longer than he was willing to admit even to himself.
"It's a seal," Matatabi confirmed, spitting mad, embers spilling from her fangs and burning holes in their very reality, "And who do you think holds the key? He's been here the whole time, listening, changing things just enough to keep us placated. He's been pretending to work for us, but like every other Jinchῡriki we've had before, he just wants our power. He could have let us out at any time, but now- oh, ha, ha, ha… now he's losing control."
"Who? Madara? -Not Naruto, surely…"
"Who else?" Everyone else looked up at the sun and moon which were seemed as oppressively close as an eavesdropper. "You at least going to show your face, Jin?"
The moon cracked open like an egg, in between the jagged edges an Eternal Sharingan stared down at them.
Pyrrha opened her eyes- immediately sensed that she was out of Jin's grasp and rolled away, grasped at the first paramagnet which answered her Semblance's call. It wasn't her spear- a piece of rebar with one end broken to a jagged tip. It would have to do.
…But do what? Where was Jin- furthermore, where was she? Excavated out of that pitch-black pit and spit out somewhere there was light but no Grimm.
There was a growling warble from behind her. Pyrrha stood corrected.
She turned around and stood face to face with a spiderlike Grimm that was half again as large as the Deathstalker they'd taken on before they were even students- before they were even a team. She was alone and armed with nothing but a rusty bar.
It would make good practice.
Now that her eyes were adjusting (the Grimm's clutch of beady, red eyes like a bunch of grapes staring back at her), she could see that at least 2/3rds of its girth was a swollen abdomen which towered over both her and the arachnid itself but failed to reach the cavernous ceiling. Good. Chances were that it would be slow-
Pyrrha would admit she could be a slow learner. Her champion status was earned through hard work, painful failures- and the instincts which saved her yet again as the beast snapped at her weapon hand. Weaving around it's dripping mandibles, she jabbed her shive into one of its Satsuma-sized eyes. She tried not to feel satisfaction as the creature shrieked in agony.
Besides, there was still a whole orchard left to pluck.
-But then the glutton returned, Jin leaping over her to take the beast head-on, the claws on his feet popping out another half-dozen eyes as he used the creature's head like a steppingstone. Chiseling his claws in between the spider's abdomen and thorax, he lifted the armor plate as if it were the lid to a sarcophagus with black flesh stringing off it like cobwebs.
And to Pyrrha's continuing horror, from this new opening crawled a swarm of miniature Grimm-spiders. So many were pressed up against one another it was like a sea of shag-carpet, a wave surging from the mother's carapace and threatening to drown her. She steeled herself with the iron bar in hand but the stream avoided her like a stone in a river, all running away from Jin who was now using the piece of the other Grimm's armor the way one might use a magazine to squash bugs.
Pyrrha was conflicted, split left and right as the miniature monsters scuttled around her. They were Grimm, no doubt. But maybe their premature 'birth' meant they weren't hungry. Instead, seeking to preserve their short post-natal lives, they darted off to seek shelter in the darkness.
Something in Pyrrha felt bad about killing them- but wouldn't they just run off to become threats as large as the 'mother' later (if not Jin)?
She watched where they disappeared into cracks and holes, looking around her surroundings for the first time since the fall.
It was almost as if she'd never left the surface; skeletal buildings reached upwards towards the ceiling like stalagmites, streets running in perfect grids until they met with the sloped walls of the egg-shaped chamber and abruptly halted. Though in contrast to the construction above, everything here seemed half-complete. The buildings were never fleshed out instead of being gutted by the Grimm, and only about a third of the Dust-filament lamps installed in the roof had bulbs. They would burn for centuries without power, but never more than a shadow of what had been intended.
However, as one of the spiders scrambled between her legs, Pyrrha noticed the fresh-looking rails under her feet. They ran from the tunnel behind her to the suspiciously mint-condition locomotive parked just beyond Jin, the Grimm just now finishing taking out his aggression with the arachnid. There was scarcely enough left to vanish into dust, the armored slab the last thing to go as Jin dropped it and looked her way.
"Now, where were we…?"
Ironically more relaxed knowing where he was, Pyrrha got out of her defensive stance and lowered the iron bar to her side.
"Haven't you had enough?" Quickly she remembered how hedonistic he could be, adding, "Besides, we won."
"Heh, heh, is that what you really think?" He didn't even look down as he took a step towards her and crushed another two stragglers. "Hmm, maybe I should teach you a lesson, then. Take a look, Red. No matter who you are, there's no such thing as victory, no end to the battles you have to fight."
Where the adolescent Grimm disappeared into alleyways and cracks in the construction, Pyrrha saw other eyes staring out at them. Now at least they knew where the big ones had gone, but the older Grimm must have known better than to interfere and remained hidden.
"Take this place. They built Mountain Glenn during a time of relative peace, but they still planned for emergencies," His claws shimmered like milky quartz crystals as he gestured to the half-completed shelter. "Constructed to survive the end of the world… but not eternity."
"Nothing does," The huntress herself was quickly growing apathetic to his fearmongering- yet, couldn't help but feel slightly bad for the one who should fear eternity most of all. "And yes, even heroes fall. We do what we can, take what we can, day by day.
"And now, I take my leave. I'm done."
She was, the last of her patience and the subatomic particles in her bloodstream failing. Far from satisfied, though. Even if she had consumed as much as Jin she doubted she would be in any mood to continue. For once, the champion was through fighting.
"-But I'm not!"
Without even turning around, Pyrrha jammed her makeshift weapon into Jin's hand that was reaching out to grab her. The sharp end slid naturally between the gaps in his armor and through to the other side. But it was as dissuading as a bee sting to the Grimm who simply switched to his other limbs, four of his six tails devoted to binding and bringing her to him.
And maybe she had secretly been waiting for this, relishing the moment before his assumptions blew up in his face.
Pyrrha seemed to explode in his grip like a Bangalore Blade, razor-sharp metal expanding between his tails and scoring deep cuts before he could retract them.
Taking a step back, Jin was too surprised to be angry, staring slack-jawed at his prehensile limbs which now lay by his side, limp as wet noodles in a dark-red sauce. Two were nearly severed completely. And sure, even if they were, he would heal. But how-
Gone was the huntress's armor and her image as a Greek goddess. The scales of her cuirass had come undone, reformed into bandoliers which weaved around her like metallic snakes with a mind of their own- yet, were controlled by her Semblance much akin to the Grimm and his tails. She stood as a modern-day Gorgon, giving him a stare that would turn a lesser man to stone.
"You've been holding back…" Jin didn't try to contain his own uproarious laughter which rang hollow throughout the cavernous room. "Tell me, does your team know just how far above them you are? Does the Pipsqueak even know what you had planned for the armor she designed?"
Pyrrha could have owned up to these accusations if she'd wanted to, but she was also tired of keeping it all in.
"You've been holding back as well."
"Of course! If I wanted to, you'd be nothing but paste-!"
"-That's not what I'm talking about."
But he seemed to know this without her having to say more, defenses falling like the scrunched dimples of his smile and giving her an opening.
"It was all a lie…" Words were his true mask, and once she stopped paying attention to them it was all written there in black and white. "You promised that your actions are your own- but they're not. They're simply your attempt not to be Them."
"Watch yourself Red-"
"-You've been holding back since we first met- before, even, not allowing yourself to do what you really want. And it's not what you say it is; you could do it. You've proved how good you are at disappearing, vanishing from plain sight and making people think you're something you're not. You don't have to bother with all these pretenses- you could even do away with them, do away with us entirely-
"-But you can't, can you?" Fair was fair, but she couldn't stand the cruelty of repeating his words and so forced a bitter smile. "You can't give up on people. Not even- least of all, yourself."
He could barely restrain himself; it was written on his face like it'd been on the chamber walls, clear for anyone who cared to see it. Jin looked like he wanted to bury her and ensure that this knowledge was lost forever. At this point she expected it, might not even blame him.
"That's why you'll never cross the edge. As much as you hate humanity, as much as you hate your history…
"…It's not wrong, to still have hope." At least, that's how she felt, hoping that the message would get through to his heart which was shut much as his eyes now were. "The ones who came before you failed- failed you, but that happens. It's a part of being human- of being alive. We learn and we pick up to start again, and… would that really be so bad? To try again?"
At some point she had started talking about herself, too, thinking about the trials which came before and the ones which would no doubt come after- if there was an after.
-But of course, there would be. The future just might not include her. Someday it wouldn't. After she was dead and gone, would there be anything to her legacy? Would any of their heroics, their sacrifices really amount to more than a few, forgotten lines like shadows on a cave wall?
"Very well," She looked up, having nearly forgotten he was there, "No more holding back."
The implications hit just before the blow, but the pain didn't register for her until after Pyrrha rebounded off the rock wall. Even in its new configuration her armor did its job, absorbing some of the trauma like rubber bands. Yet, picking herself up from the dirt, Pyrrha had to admit it did still feel like some of her smaller organs had been turned into paste.
The outcome hadn't been out of the realm of possibility. It wasn't ideal- so far from it that concurrent with the pain, Pyrrha almost didn't feel like getting back up.
But of course, she did.
And of course, Jin was waiting right there to beat her down into the ground as many times as necessary for her to learn her 'lesson'.
She already had.
Pyrrha recalled the iron bar still stuck in his hand, reached out with her Semblance and summoned the ferrous metal to her. It tore free with enough force to unbalance the Grimm, giving her enough time to bolt. Darting past, for added measure she jammed the dirtied metal into the web of Jin's foot, pinning him in place and buying herself a few more seconds to get away.
Even if she had managed to dodge his tails though, there wasn't exactly anywhere she could see to hide- Pyrrha was unable to see anything as one of his wounded tails struck her across her face, blood stinging her eyes like sweat.
As she stumbled back blindly Pyrrha threw her arms out for balance, her variable armor leaping to the instinctive command and unraveling from her body in two long strips like bandsaw blades. The razorlike ribbons flew at Jin, fluctuating chaotically as Pyrrha's desperate heartbeat. Yet he managed to evade them, diving through the coincidental apex and coming out with a swipe which met her last line of defense. Having thrown up her arms in a cross-guard just in the nick of time, Jin's claws met her gauntlets in shriek of metal.
Pyrrha cried out as the steel was torn asunder and she was cast aside by the blow, surprised more than anything as she was still fighting blind and barely managing to find her own feet as she came out of the roll. After wiping her face on her bicep, her now unobstructed eyes widened upon a metal 'I' that was rapidly getting larger as it got closer.
She jumped back, not even trying to change its trajectory, and the bus-length rail stuck ¼ of the way into the hardpacked earth where she had just been. Jin was right behind his ballista, gliding past like a professional skier. At the last second he grabbed it, plucked it out of the ground and used it to guard his back as Pyrrha recalled her bladed ribbons. They broke upon his block like streams of water, spearing into the dirt.
But she wasn't done; releasing command of her formerly hidden weapons, she used her newly freed control on the train tracks to either side. True, Pyrrha had been holding back. However, she could still only manipulate a certain number of objects at once, and guiding her armor took full concentration.
Ripping the rails out of their wooden ties and separating them from their splice plates took most of her concentration, but more strength than she rightfully ought to have by then. The tracks were heavier than she imagined; if her Semblance was a muscle it would've been herniated. But Jin wasn't caring about his wounds, and so neither would she.
He came down upon her with an overhand strike just as she managed to heave the metal beams at him. All it took was for him to angle his own piece of rail slightly to deflect her attack, then discarding his oversized tetsubō as he leapt over the veritable train-wreck.
She was expecting him to try and capture her, pin her down or otherwise subdue her. So, she was unprepared physically or mentally for the speed and relentlessness of his assault. Not giving her time to slip out of his fingers, he laced them together and came down on her with a double-hammer fist that could have been compared to the meteor scientists theorized caused a mass-extinction event.
Compared to throwing the rails, using them as an anchor while she pulled herself out of harm's way was almost too easy. Pyrrha knew she overshot as she flew all the way to the edge of the construction and nearly plowed face-first into a concrete wall. But hearing the cataclysmic explosion and feeling the debris pelt her back as she ducked into one of the hollow buildings, it was better than the alternative.
Hiding in the half-complete city wouldn't slow him down much, but Pyrrha honestly couldn't see an alternative. She was all alone after poking the figurative hornets' nest.
And perhaps it was a good thing: this was all her fault for prodding him, for pushing the wrong buttons- or maybe just plain too far. And even if her team were here, what hope would four of them have versus just the one? Maybe she could still convince Jin-
One of the rails burst through the wall, cutting her off in a haze of gypsum dust and splinters. She turned, but the same thing happened as another came to bar her way. The third she anticipated, contorting her body like a magician in the box-of-swords trick.
Except that the wall then came crashing down, the building meant to sustain a siege by Grimm and not this sudden blitzkrieg. Pyrrha rolled away from the falling chunks of drywall as Jin came bursting in like lightning, lunging after her only to be stymied by the very beams he helped install. A roar chased her out, and she could feel the building shake as the Grimm rattled the bars of his cage.
This wasn't right. He was acting like an animal- exactly what he promised not to do- no, no, he promised that all his actions would be his own, and perhaps it was they who failed to see that he was nothing more. Maybe this was why he never made promises, because he knew he couldn't keep them.
But if she wasn't right, why was he so angry?
Pyrrha stopped in the middle of the street and turned on her heel, face painted white and red with dust and righteous fury. Raising her hands to the air she looked like the archetype of divine justice, ready to call down a thunderbolt, through the earthen ceiling and smite the Evil which was just now cramming himself through the too-small doorway.
"Ready to accept your fate, are you?"
Looking down from the sky she could only see in her mind, she opened her eyes.
"Yes."
Jin stopped. He recognized the look on her face, the timber in her voice like the subtle, whining note at the far reaches of his hearing.
What was that noise? It was so familiar- not from this lifetime, but it existed in quite a few of the memories he had no choice but to hold on to. Like a flock of birds without the wingbeats, or like a brace of arrows-
"-Are you?"
In their smallest form, the individual scales of Pyrrha's armor were no bigger than the old 5 Lien coin used before the Kingdoms moved to a global economy. Coincidentally, this was roughly the size the pupils of Jin's Sharingan became as he looked up and saw the cloud of quantized, hexagonal scales raining down on him like miniature shuriken.
Even Pyrrha had to turn away as the impacts began, the metal storm kicking up untold amounts of tarry pulp and turning the street into the dark side of the moon. The sound itself was enough to deafen, like being on the wrong side of an artillery barrage. Averting her gaze, she even saw that the other Alpha-class Grimm fleeing the Apocalyptic destruction. She ought to feel some pride at that, she supposed.
Though as the iron rain abruptly cut off and the street was left eerily silent, Pyrrha knew she couldn't celebrate too early. Although she saw Jin's gory remnants splattered across half the street, the Grimm's corpse looking like it had been chewed on by a massive dog, she couldn't bring herself to feel anything.
Not even surprise when it disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
"A clone-"
"No," Something grabbed her around the neck, hard enough to choke but not enough to break it. "Kawarimi, substitution, one of the oldest tricks in the book."
She'd read the book, checked it out from the library. It had all been there, plain as day. No attempt at being cryptic, it was as if the author was just waiting someone to come along make the connection. Who were they again? Something Sanin, or Senin or some such…
Why was she remembering this now? Well, not much else to do. Her weapons were now scattered and buried too deep for her to move- body much the same. Without defense she was dead already. Jin was going to kill her.
That didn't mean she wasn't going to go down kicking and screaming. She would fight to her final breath, even if that was what he wanted. She might not have been like the main character in the book, and this certainly wasn't Tale of a Gutsy-
Guts were rattled as she was slammed against the pavement, resistance forced out of her along with what would be her last gasp.
Except that she was suddenly muzzled, something else filling her mouth instead of air. It slipped through her lips, filling out her throat like a clown blowing a balloon animal and tying her thoughts into a pretzel.
What was going on? Lack of oxygen was made it impossible to think. She was beginning to black out when the black compression shirt was ripped off her chest, claws neatly severing her undergarments and leaving five light marks across her flesh.
Her head was pounding. Blood was on fire when it met the cool cavern air, forcing a gasp as the gag finally removed itself from her mouth. Dizzily, she saw Jin leering over her with tongue dripping saliva- both his and hers- before he moved on to her ear. From there, his tongue slowly trailed down the side of her neck all the way down to her navel, lapping up salt and iron from her skin. She shuddered as it crossed the valley between her breasts, took the roundabout her bellybutton and dipped inside, tickling the ancient knot.
Jin had teased Pyrrha with a lick before, being sure to leave plenty of slobber trying to make it as disgusting as possible. But what he probably didn't know was that she was used to it, animal affection a hazard/benefit of working on a small farm.
This… this was completely new to her. Nora had been right, and Pyrrha was woefully inexperienced to defend against these assaults to her senses. Animal instincts fought against common sense; she felt violated- and worshipped, all in the same, shocked breath which was as sharp as Jin's tongue as it traced a figure eight over her abs on its way down…
Her eyes screwed up in her head as he slipped below, vision going white and back arching towards the heavens as catechism shook her. Something flooded out of her, taking with it all her mundane cares, and this emptiness was replaced by a transcendental ecstasy. There was nothing left for her on earth anymore.
Right and wrong mattered as little as right and left as she stared in straight-up bliss. Even when color came back, she couldn't tell the difference between the red and blue eyes staring down at her. Both were part of the same stare, the same hideous, beatific face which she neither hated nor loved but knew better than her own.
The angel inhabiting her body guided a hand to caress his cheek. In delirium, she graced over the sharp angles of his armor, fingers running down sulci until they found a chink that hadn't been there before. Her thumb like his tongue felt the scarred flesh, destroying the illusion of perfection. The eye- the person- he had tried so hard to hide stared back at her from somewhere far off.
"…lonely…"
A lone word was all it took for the world to come crashing back through that sky-blue portal. Jin recoiled from her touch as if it burned- as if she were the succubus about to steal the one thing he had left.
Once the demon and his serpentine tongue left her, the knowledge of what it had done- what it had tempted her to do- returned, and she fell from grace-
Pyrrha came down hard on hands and legs, turned over and emptied the contents of her stomach- which wasn't much. Acid rose to scour the taste- and the memory of it- which had curdled like cream.
This mere comparison brought another round of retching, dry heaving until her throat was raw and her whole body shook in seizure. Knees knocked as she tried to clench them together with the dregs of strength she had left. There wasn't enough for her arms which buckled, forehead hitting the concrete and her vision swimming. She flopped over onto the pavement, but it felt as if she just kept rolling, tumbling forever downwards.
There she lay in the middle of the street, totally exposed, unable to do anything but imagine the hundreds of Grimm ogling her tender flesh. Something dripped down her face- it might have been blood or sweat, but there was so much of each already that it was hard to tell.
She wasn't going to cry, though.
No, while her body trembled, it was because the underground was always cool- cold now that she had lost her upper layers and caloric heat bled off into the night.
Then a blanket was draped over her, musty and rough like a dog that had returned from a day at the beach and hadn't quite dried out. Maybe it was a tarp, covering her corpse which was admittedly too numb to tell the difference. Something equally unknown picked her up gently, as one might a filthy object with a handkerchief, swaddling her firmly so that she wouldn't slip out.
"…Sorry."
The apology slipped out once again and she wasn't sure if she was apologizing to, or for, him. Convinced that she was right, though, the hold around her tightened ever so slightly, somehow careful enough not to cause her pain.
"Baka,"
She knew the tone if not the term, and Pyrrha couldn't help but agree. They were both fools, gluttons for punishment. In different circumstances, in another world, they might have been perfect for one another. If not soulmates, then nemesis. However…
"It's time to head back."
"Come on, guys, hurry up! Let's go!"
Jaune wasn't just impatient but nervous as well. It had taken them too long, in his opinion, to find a rope long enough to attempt lowering one of them down the abyssal sinkhole. But as he stood on the precipice with one end tied tight around his waist, he couldn't help but think how it was also long enough to hang himself with.
"See, Ren, what'd I tell ya? Always need some feckin' rope," After snapping it to test the coils' strength, Nora looped the rough hemp around her fingerless gloves and sunk her feet into the divots they had made to prevent her from slipping. While the huntress was more than capable of hefting her scrawny captain, there was still a physical difference in their weight. "You see Charles Bronson in the movies, he's always got some bloody rope."
"Who?"
"-Never mind that, we need to-"
As he turned back to bark at his teammates, Jaune fortuitously took a step away from the hole just as something burst out of it. The reverse meteor blew away the wooden beam and pile of rubble they had set up for a fulcrum, showering the three with dirt and jagged bits of conglomerate.
After their fits of coughing died down, it didn't take them long to identify what had interrupted their rescue plan. There, in all his ominous glory, stood half of their missing persons (not to mention the reason they were attempting a recovery in the first place). -Although, maybe 'glory' was too strong a word, for the longer they squinted at him in the wane moonlight, the less menacing he looked. More like a drowned rat, clinging on to a limp scrap for dear life.
"-Pyrrha!" Jaune only saw the red hair- and not the scathing look Jin shot at him as he ran up to them, jerking the chord out of Nora's loose grip. "What did you do to her?!"
"Nothing a few day's rest won't cure,"
Which was both true and not, and which Jaune didn't trust for a second. He stood in front of Jin with arms extended, waiting to be handed the cocooned form of his partner.
But the Grimm was oddly possessive of her, reluctant to hand over responsibility to the pathetically weak huntsman. His guarded stance reminded the students of an animal hording his food, or, however strange it would seem, a parent protecting their child.
The thought might have been reflected in their faces, because as Jin scanned them (one eye seeming to travel slower than the other, or was it just their imagination?), he made a conscious shift. Suddenly becoming self-conscious of his actions, he wavered a few more seconds before hesitantly presenting- his – possession to the awaiting huntsman.
When it got to the last of the countdown, however, he abruptly retracted his offer, extending one of his tails instead and shoving Jaune to the ground.
The teen's protests were cut off short as something launched from the darkness and cut into Jin's back. The beast roared as his other tails worked to fend off the unknown attacker, all whilst he clutched Pyrrha tight in the crook of his arm.
With the other claw he turned around and grabbed one of the several tendrils assaulting him, yanking it towards him along with whatever was on the other end. The enemy was evidently smart enough to know when to cut its losses, jettisoning the captured appendage where it fell limp as a chain in Jin's grasp.
It turned out to be, in fact, a chain. Albeit, one with razor-sharp links that left deep gouges in the Grimm's back (or had those been there before?).
It also happened that the 'whatever' was actually a 'whomever', being jerked out of cover before they could fully detach their weapon. And while the conscious members of JNPR were stumped when the orange-haired girl who could have been Nora's catholic-school counterpart stumbled out of the darkness, Jin growled in obvious recognition.
"You picked a seriously crappy time, Durama."
"Greetings and salutations!" The girl chirped like a nightingale, apparently blind to Jin's animosity but not the Grimm himself, "Hello again, Jinchῡriki!"
She waved, as did the chains connected to her backpack which glimmered like electrum in the moonlight. The sight of them must have jogged one of the Grimm's more unpleasant memories (they were probably all unpleasant, but this one was clearly not only touchy but potentially dangerous) for he temporarily put aside his disgust for Jaune and traded the boy his partner, leaving hands free for what, they could only imagine.
"I'm back to kill you!"
None of them had entertained this possibility- except for Jin himself, whose response frightened JNPR more with how serious he was taking it.
"Try it, you'll see you should've stayed extinct… UZUMAKI!"
Chapter Title: Eighteen/Woman of Mass Distraction by Alice Cooper
So, if you've gotten this far, you might understand why it took me so long to get out (among other, mundane reasons). I briefly mulled over whether to split this with the next one (Tentative Chapter Title: What is Love?) which would clarify my reasoning a bit better. If you really can't wait, I'll try to answer PM's promptly this time, but I will warn you in advance that I'm about to hit the road for 9 hours and there will be at least that much delay. Then again, perhaps no amount of effort or time can explain what's wrong with me...