Beta'd by Da-Awesom-One.
FULL SPEED AHEAD
-Benjamin Carson-
"I strongly recommend we remove the Lady Schnee from the ship, effective immediately, Specialist Carson. As soon as feasibly..."
Inquisitor Laura's cold, no-nonsense tone carried above the constant low thrum of the vessel's engines, echoing along the cramped metal halls of the Rock Star's interior as we walked alone, save for the occasional passing deckhand stopping in their duties to snap off a perfunctory salute and offer a greeting.
Acts I would then return with a nod or a word of encouragement before hurrying on, grateful for the momentary pauses in the Spearpoint native's tirade.
It'd gotten so bad, I'd actually begun relishing the varied meetings and inspections that comprised my standard administrative duties aboard ship.
The near constant check-ins with Hemlock regarding security measures and tactical threat analysis for when we actually arrived in Frontier space, chief of which being what was apparently, of all things, a massive storm-front that ringed the region's distant coastline almost entirely. One that had supposedly been raging for... well, no one seemed to know for sure apart from 'always,' the Frontiersmen claiming it to be some freak environmental phenomenon laid down to legend while I just listened in abject horror at the implications of such a thing.
Rowan's Wrath... Godsdamn, couldn't they have gone with a less ominous name? A sentiment that hours spent poring over maps old and speculated with the little Ambrose and... Polendina, did little to alleviate. So many what-ifs and the like regarding ways to make sure we didn't stumble into anything too dangerous along the way, among... other things.
Idly, I flexed my arm, missing the now nearly forgotten weight of Hangman's Glory in hand. The many ideas the Doc had in regards to fulfilling that need, my own doubts about my rusty fighting skills after so long in the tactical seat... So many distractions others would bring to drown out all of the insecurities.
Of course, then they'd be out of earshot, and Laura'd swoop in again, hovering along as my shadow, taking advantage of my presence after having been hounding Echo to get me to himself in the scant days since we'd departed Atlesian airspace. Since then, he had refused to give me the option after it had become clear I had little intention of making time.
Persistent fella. I'd certainly give him that.
"...continued presence represents a potent risk not only to the operational integrity of the mission, but, might I add, introduced wildly improper and rather embarrassing interpersonal conflict in the form of your relationship. This is not even including the familial conflict with the Schnee household, one that might yet be alleviated by the return of his kidnapped...!"
"Right. First off, let's curb that talk here and now. Explain some things."
I halted mid-step with a sigh, forcing the scar-faced soldier to have to swerve to avoid me in these tight confines. His face contorted slightly under that peaked cap of his, as whatever damage he still bore - extensive, more than likely, going by his visible features - were aggravated by the motion.
"Miss Schnee's aboard my ship of her own free will, as she's gone and stated multiple times to myself, others on this crew, and I'm certain to you, if you'd just ask the girl in person. Havin' departed from her family home willingly, and exercisin' her citizen's rights as an adult has entitled her to freedom of movement within' martial limit. Therefore, she'll be remainin' here as an appointed independent asset - much like yourself - representin' herself as a Huntress trained at Beacon. One of not inconsiderable skill, which may prove to aid us in the mission at hand. Bottom line, she's stayin'. That's final."
Not to mention it would be far too late to send her back, anyway, even if we'd acted the moment she'd shown herself. I'd done up the figures in my head enough times to see that.
Not with us having already cleared the Atlesian border with about as much anonymity as could be mustered in a global situation such as this. Ironwood had suspected for a long time that the enemy, be it the White Fang, Cinder's Black Queen faction, Violette's Red Hand, or maybe a mix of all three, had gained access to current Atlesian Military records and troop movements.
How else could one explain the attacked convoys, the disappearances of Kingdom-sanctioned Huntsmen and Huntresses, or the attack on that punk Trapper Lancaster's holding facility? So we'd kept this very, very private. Privacy that might be compromised by an airship of our description returning from out of nowhere beyond the border from this particular direction with such a high profile passenger.
On record, the Rock Star was still sitting pretty in a berth now occupied by a derelict ship of similar tonnage and compliment, while I and much of my crew had vanished into the webways of Atlesian Military bureaucracy. Not that that was all the cover I had, Ironwood apparently having been none too quick in quashing rumors of my vanishing along with the Atlesian Heiress within much the same time frame. A veritable hotbed of gossip and trouble I was certain one Jacques Schnee was absolutely frothing over.
"Really? How convenient for you, then. Somehow, I doubt that a man such as General Ironwood would've approved of you bringing your girlfriend along for the ride. And while I'm at it, what exactly is the status of her rooming situation, anyway? Your man, Garrett, has proven rather difficult to get a straight answer from. A fact I personally find rather..."
"Inappropriate? Much like that there question and seemin' implication, Inquisitor."
"Not if I'm right. Your media presence alone implies much, Specialist," he said, stressing the final word in a way I found far too condescending for my liking, even if he didn't quite see it that way.
"That so? I was under the assumption we'd broken up, and that y'all in Spearpoint would've gone for more than tabloid garbage to get their facts straight. 'Course, you'd never admit to it. That'd be spyin' on an Atlesian citizen's private affairs. That's a big no-no."
I brought a metal hand to my brow in seeming ignorance of the venomous look he gave me, tapping away at the silvery studs protruding from flesh, the implants pulsing in time with my seemingly ever-present headache of late.
Sobriety: a rewarding experience in some respects, though I wouldn't lie and say the stress of this mission and the kinks already making themselves known weren't making me regret the clean living.
Regret it, but certainly not break it, much as the Inquisitor here seemed resolutely disinclined to believe otherwise. Him and his prissy Queen.
"'Course, if ya absolutely must ask, you can likely find our Princess holed up in Corporal Rouge's quarters, tryin' and failin' to adjust to ship life. Thing is, I'd keep those thoughts to yourself if I were you. Doubt she'd take as kindly to accusations of impropriety as I am now."
We resumed our march, Laura following in sullen, or rather more steaming silence. Difficult to tell through the scars. Whoever had gotten their hands on him did their number deep and unrelenting...
Our marked destination was down another gantry of ridged access stairs towards the secure hold of the middling-sized airship. A thick steel bulkhead door guarded by one of Sergeant Hemlock's best leading into the brig, and more importantly the current home turf of...
"So, seein' as we're apparently so chummy all of a sudden, why don'tcha explain to me why you're so hellbent on workin' with Team JADE?"
I'll admit to it, that had thrown me for a loop when the idea of the request had first been filed across my desk. In triplicate, with accompanying marks and details of exactly why such a thing would be a good idea... Decent points, at a glance.
"Your initial suggestion that I work with Sergeant Hemlock's, er... 'Red Team' has its tactical merits in some regards, Specialist Carson, I'll admit. They're proper soldiers; more than I expected. However, with that in mind, I feel, given my experience and tactical skill set in the application of Aura, that I - and the mission at hand - would be far better served operating alongside your... how did you refer to them, your unique 'assets.'"
He chewed a mutilated lip as we approached the entryway, the guard saluting before offering me a Scroll slate somewhat awkwardly, eyeing Laura. The little device hummed a short chime as its screen automatically snapped images of my face and thumbprint, comparing it against on-board files before flashing green to the sound of clicking mag-seals from the door.
"Authorized. Designate: BANDIT." Allison's voice chimed in my comm-bead without incident, so used to it was I that I barely even jumped anymore at the sudden check-ins now that Jacob Ambrose's little AI assistant - well, a copy of her anyway - had made itself at home aboard. At the Professor's insistence, of course, despite my misgivings on the matter. "Welcome, Specialist Benjamin Carson."
Full biometric alongside physical and automated security worked into the design of the ship upon its construction for exactly this purpose, keyed towards the identifying markers of less than a handful of individuals comprising myself, rigid and uptight Hemlock, and his immediate junior officers. Without which, these doors wouldn't open, theoretically meaning that the occupants within could be considered contained and secure within.
Theoretically, anyway... A formality, really, given how often I would stumble across clear evidence to the contrary, but one that put most the rest of the crew's minds at ease to have purported even so. As long as the ones inside were subtle, at least.
"Ya ever work with Trappers before, Laura?"
"Given Spearpoint as a society is comprised of a majority Faunus citizenry, our leader foremost among them, and a thing opposed to most others on the mainland, I think not..."
His tone managed to sound not too judgmental or superior on that score, I'd give him that much. It was pretty progressive, the Badland's own turgid past with them all considered.
"Though our military sciences division has put forth considerable effort towards understanding the enemies we may one day be forced to confront, as we would any potential threat to the Granite Throne." He said this all matter-of-factly, especially as he was staring about at all the added Atlesian security measures put in place, seemingly unimpressed, or at the very least un-intimidated. "We've studied what visual records remain of their operations, accruing what verbal recounting from the mouths of survivors, even going so far as to obtain biological samples of deceased operatives left behind by their comrades as to better understand their curious physiology."
Samples... Bodies... Corpses, he meant. Probably kids no older than Joel was, or younger even. Being cut apart like dead meat, studied like lab rats...
Well, ain't that simply downright ghoulish, and missing my point entirely.
A prosthetic fist tightened at my side as I passed back the tablet, now possessive of a slight hairline crack where my thumb had been. Gorge positively rising, my skin crawled as I wanted to spitm but couldn't countenance... Forget it, I did. The young officer looked at me askance, as if I'd failed in some other way.
To be frank, I didn't care much...
"Nah, I meant have you ever really worked with one of them? Ever even seen a live one, up close? Talked with them at length?"
"Aside from that rather crass bodyguard of yours at the party? No, I haven't. But I feel confident I understand their profile well enough." A comment that had my eyebrows rising, biting back a wince as hissing pressure seals in the door squealed shrilly from lack of oiling. "Hardly anything truly special. Over-exaggerated to the extreme."
"Oh? That right?"
"Indeed. Self-righteous children acting out their emotions upon monsters in the dark. Supposedly talented such to the point that within a span of years, with proper training and discipline, they may yet have proven remarkable Huntsmen and Huntresses, gone on to preserve civilization. Only instead, they take the easy path, on top of their skills, depending on degenerate and dangerous augmentation in order to supplement what abilities they had with false power they didn't earn. And they have the gall to be proud of it, as if it's some badge of honor."
"And yet, you wanna fight alongside 'em?" I thought I might've noticed something outta the corner of my eyes, a flicker of movement for the briefest of instances. A stirring in the ceiling panels, until my eyes simply forgot to pay attention, too fixed on the straight-backed warrior, and my own incredulity. "Not sure I'm followin' your logic, Spearpoint."
"They're a living, breathing insult for any truly committed disciple of the martial arts. A textbook case displaying the self-destructive cost of shortcuts, burning their own lives and bodies out like bonfires. And for what? A few years of meaningless bloodshed, and pointless pride without service?"
I frowned, shooting him a glare outta the corner of his eye, wondering exactly what he meant by that as the door - more a glorified vault really - juddered open on squealing hinges.
"Still, one can't fault their effectiveness in the field under controlled circumstance. Only they often present as lacking in discipline, absent proper leadership or structure to fall back upon. With my strategic acumen and field experience to act as a buffer for their excesses, perhaps it would be possible to instruct or even guide them towards a proper...!?"
Blinking to find him staring suddenly primed with a hand reaching for where his fancy sword would've hung if we hadn't checked it at boarding, I looked over my shoulder, and found quite the clear reason why his little diatribe had cut short.
"Fuck. No," Jasper Fullmark spoke up with a growl perforating his usual timbre.
A man who - even half dressed in little else but his tracking collar and a criss-cross of old scarring both surgical and earned - dwarfed both of us easily, filling the entryway, and looming down at the pair of us and our rather panicked guard with a steely grey-eyed look I'd last seen weeks earlier, and a noticeable tension about his jaw.
The same expression he'd worn when he'd ripped his way through a White Fang assassination force looking to see my handsome mug on the business end of a blade. One I'd have preferred he keep snug tight up under his helmet, or at the moment back secure in his... cell? Wait a second. That's right, his cell...
Eyes narrowed, I leaned to the side, staring past a bicep near on the size of my head into the brigs interior cupola, where a handful of cells were situated. 'Were' being the operative term.
Jasper's door, several inches of supposedly solid metal, lay buckled on one side of the confined space littered with impact craters as though a rabid Boarbatusk had been taking potshots with a running start. Circuits smoked haphazardly from clipped wiring and caved in panels, recycled air thick with burnt copper stink.
Dai Jin and Corvus were huddled amidst the carnage, the two of them openly glowering at Laura also. The Faunus was seemingly listening as Dai Jin explained something, all while tapping his... ears...
'...Oh boy.'
Funnily enough, my mind drifted to a slight little detail on Fullmark's file. An addendum shared by AMBR's Team Leader himself, concerning an elder sister who'd also joined the Trappers. A sister who had been fighting alongside Joel and the rest of them on the way out of Bastion months before.
A sister who hadn't made it out. And now he'd more than likely just heard how the bodies of such people were...
"...Laura," I breathed ever so slowly, feeling a pressure tightening in my throat. Something beyond the physical, a feeling I distinctly remembered on occasion with Joel. An intense sensation roiling in my gut. "Y'oughta get to steppin', now. Right now." I motioned calmly towards the hapless guard, the man thankfully knowing better than to take his gun off the Trapper as he eased back. Taking what moments he could to whisper frantically into his comm-piece, face paling by the second.
"Specialist Carson, what kind of ship are you...!?"
Edward Laura's outrage cut off sharply, the hand instinctively moving for the absent sword at his waist pausing as a silvery haired diminutive figure sporting a voluminous Atlesian uniform jacket that clearly wasn't hers - not with my name tagged across the front of it, no sir - stepped slowly out from around his ready stance. Lithe fingers trailing gently across his side. Amys Claret, the little spook, had used her Semblance to hover behind the man with a mindless grey-eyed glower that could've split ice as she weaved deftly past her lead with a curious dip to look at the livid scarring crossing Laura's features beneath the brim of his cap.
How long she'd been standing there right next to us unnoticed, I didn't quite want to think about, shooting the Spearpoint Inquisitor a sharp look, and following the Trapper into the cell. A hand raised, motioning for the guard to close the vault behind me.
Laura, as one could expect, didn't seem too pleased with being snubbed. Though given the way things seemed to be heading, I think he'd prefer to be absent to what lingered in their eyes as the metal doors ground shut with a keening whine of straining servos.
"...Y'all know I gotta work on gettin' all this fixed up now, right?" I said offhand as the last of the locks settled into place, motioning a metallic limb towards the wreck the Trappers had made of my ship's brig, and grimacing at the charred scent lingering in the air. "And I've gotta report this, too. Punish it probably, though what I'm gonna do to y'all, I can't... And you, Spooky! You're gonna put that back where ya found it, right?"
Amys shrugged like the precocious child she was. Delicate fingers picking at the jacket absentmindedly, playing with the many sewn in pockets, obvious and concealed that I'd had tailored into the interior while I bit my lip hard at the sight.
Suffice it to say, I was seething, allowing metallic digits to ply at my forehead. Attempting to ease some of the ache away.
...It wasn't working.
"Dammit all by the gods, ya stunted Ursa! In fact, all yous stubborn idiots! At least pretend I'm somewhat in charge, seein' as... Oh, wait! I am! This...!" I swept a hand broadly before his impassioned slab of a face. "This can't happen! Or did you forget you, and I mean all of you, go straight back into...!?"
"Keep that grave-robbing, little scar-faced chit with Hemlock, and away from us, Carson. S'all we're asking. For... Let's call it your sake," Fullmark cut me off abruptly, a finger prodding me in the chest with enough oomph to shove me hard into the metal vault door and leave my ribs aching dangerously. "Way less trouble that way. Goes double for that prissy, uptight, little mongrel Queen of his, too, otherwise I might not be able to... Well, s'okay. You get the general idea, I take it? Big brain like yours."
"Tch... Noted, and mostly ignored... Least that last bit. I don't take too kindly to racist remarks. Specially' not about a lady, fine attitude or no," I said right to his face with an open grin devoid of mirth, staring at the lot of them as they bristled.
These little monsters of mine... Though at least the jarring knock to the insides managed to spark my Aura, the rush flooding my limbs both flesh and augmetic.
"You... Carson, you do understand that...?"
"I'm the one 'in charge?' Yes, I'm rather aware. 'Specially of the fact that you don't give orders, Fullmark. You make suggestions."
My voice didn't quaver or bend, maintaining the same chuckling cadence I'd become known for in Atlas to the annoyance of some. I could be proud of that. I'd probably die with this big brute's fist in my skull, but I could be proud.
"So now that this is settled - it actually ain't, but we'll get back to that, don'tcha worry none - mind fillin' me in on this s'posed shelf life y'all Trappers apparently have?"
His eyebrow quirked, mouth working silently for a few moments in a pretty fine impression of Reika at the sudden shift in topic. The man actually seemed at a loss for what to say, awkward in a way I'd never seen him exhibit before.
That... wasn't a good sign.
But he answered, or at the very least he warned.
"That's... That's private, Carson. Need-to-know. And you... you don't. Some of what we had to do... what we felt we had to do, for the cause... for who we lost..." Almost idly, I noticed him dig his fingernail deep into his own palm. Deep enough to draw blood as he suppressed his Aura willingly or not, all with no reaction. Almost like he didn't even feel it, because he didn't... sundered nerves from whatever had given him his strength. "It's none of your business."
"Funny. See, thing is, I've got a friend... and allies now, I suppose, that apply and might prove otherwise. And then the fact I basically own you by Atlesian standards, which trust me, I'm not too thrilled about, either."
I eased back against the chill steel frame of the door, aware of the tremor-born hum of powerful engines, and the muffled curses just barely audible from the outside, Laura making himself heard...
"So how 'bout you just call me curious, and let me, y'know... know? Before I go and make a fool of mysel... Ah!?"
Of course, given my luck, that was about the same time the entire ship juddered sharply to the side, Fullmark's rough hand suddenly on my shoulder the only thing that kept me upright as alarms started blaring sharply, somewhat muted by the thick doors but unmistakable all the same.
A shrill incessant whine as the comm-bead in my ear crackled to life with the incoherent mixture of Hemlock's voice demanding answers contrasting with Echo's fumbling attempts to deliver...
"I'm, uh... thinking you might just wanna put a pin in that, Carson," the giant of a man said, bringing his hand away, and frowning at the light bloodstains his split palm had left across my shoulder. "'Cause an inkling's telling me we've just officially entered Frontier airspace, and it doesn't seem all too happy about it."
-Reika Murasaki-
Peculiar... this notion.
And to be sure, I definitely wasn't above ruling out how positively absolutely strange it was. That despite the clear contrast, I couldn't help but think how similar an ocean was to the wastes back home.
A space utterly inimical to all but the most stubborn or foolish of mankind, traversed by madmen and thieves, while concealing a host of dangers beneath the surface. In this case, quite literally.
Changing at the drop of a chit from calm to broiling in a heartbeat, it was just like home. Well, just like back in the Badlands, anyway... Odd. When exactly I'd stopped considering that hellish little scrap of dirt and bitterness that comprised the region as a place I knew as 'home' was its own question.
One with an answer I certainly wasn't entertaining, if only to spare myself the brooding that would inevitably see me set on some mind-numbing chore detail to - as Shean the ugly Boatswain had so diligently explained - clear my head of detrimental fluff. Hours spent scrubbing the monolithic dreadnought's every surface from keel to stern and back again, until the anger and sadness had burned itself into a nugget of niggling acid in my gut.
Not the healthiest course, perhaps, but it did spare us the worst of the Grimm from assailing the ship as the vessel knifed its way through the water at speeds one had to witness to believe for something its size.
What few sinuous black Grimm swimming to engage us were either dashed against the silver-clad sides, popped by an opportunistic member of the crew with a long barreled-rifle, or simply left swimming in our wake impotently unable to match the mighty vessel if not torn apart under its tread.
Easy enough to see now how the Kingdoms could be having so much trouble with the Frontier on the raiding front, the lot of them backwards in so many ways, yet so painfully advanced in others, it beggared belief, let alone proper understanding. Esoteric engines capable of moving with seemingly nary any Dust, feats of subtle design that flew across the water more than sailed, overlapping plates of mesh binding the innards of the hull...
Marvels considered by those more seasoned of the crew and Mooring's strange ways as 'remnants of Remnant,' whatever that snarky metaphor could mean.
Things left over from a time long passed if they were to be believed, which I frankly didn't.
It was ridiculous, the thought that anyone could've simply left such things in the ruined Grimm-riddled wilderness that humanity and Faunus-kind had stumbled out into. What had happened to them then? Why weren't their more pieces of evidence of these so called pre-Holders, these Frontiersmen from before? Clues to explain themselves more readily...
All queries that earned unsubtle laughs, fervent prayers, and mocking sympathy. All things which, of course, only made me all the angrier, oddly enough.
One such incident only hours before saw me situated along the bough aft along the edge of the Prism's crenelated launch bays shielded from the worst of the rain spilling above if not the cascading tides. I occasionally shot angry glances down at the choppy waves seething below as I and a handful of others prepped our Netan boards. Dark waters filled with foam and the momentary flutter of movement from a sinuous black body lined with flowing spines, dangerous, hateful... Beautiful.
I should be planning, scheming, plotting my next move carefully in the face of what I knew. Admittedly little as that was...
This was my chance, finally free of Mooring's confines out on the open ocean... One prison for another, but this one was going towards opportunity. Or so I hoped.
Captain Majorelle - 'Harper,' I corrected myself fiercely - had been dispatched on some errand of the Cahalrym's - of Lucas Violette's. Something that she - 'he,' I subconsciously chided - found resolutely distasteful in the grand scheme of things, and I could certainly see why.
Being the Commander of one of the greatest vessels of an entire city, acting as one of its mightiest personages, and here the Prism drifted along on orders to resolve a mutiny, of all things. A petty squabble far beneath its notice, or so it seemed going by what little I knew of Mooring politics, much of it blending with Badland's sensibility. A Boss didn't bother himself dealing with petty chores, after all, having people for such matters so they could focus on what was important. But here Harper was being treated like some... well...
"Right, all of y'all drudges listen up! Yes, even y'all in the back!"
Blizz called to the assembled Striders milling about, the blue-haired maniac's wiry tattooed frame concealed beneath the confines of a distressingly colorful wet suit. One designed to trap heat or so I'd come to understand after long hours experience. To aid movement in the water, and make us all the easier to see one another in the wild storm-wracked currents.
Useful certainly, though I couldn't say I was precisely too fond of the getup at the best of times. The fabric was slimy, with layers of oil and fat, chafing in the worst ways, unfamiliar as it clung about my svelte frame like a second skin... often to the point it left me blushing and wondering if I couldn't wear my yukata over some bits... My face armed at the very thought, necessitating a few solid claps across the cheeks.
"Accordin' to the latest from our dear Boatswain, the Prism'll be comin' up within range of the Scarlet Queen any moment now!"
He motioned out broadly out towards the storm-wracked seas where a distant shape drifted. A formidable predatory profile, armed to the teeth with an array of likely stolen emplacements and harpoon launchers, hulled by layered sections of fine iron and steel painted the color of fresh blood. A sight that would've most certainly been the subject of any sailors nightmares in the naval compliments of the Kingdoms or their own vessels. But Harper didn't command a Kingdom-built vessel such as those in Vale or even Atlas.
Compared to a monster such as the Colorless Prism, the Queen might as well have been a tug boat, easily half the size, and by claim half the speed of its larger encroaching cousin. A gulf made all the more vast by the signs of apparent damage writ across the hull, wide rents, signs of internal detonations. Symptoms of the mutiny, results of Grimm attack.
Yet no one appeared worried at all. No one but me...
"No word from 'er, either, or movement since she popped up on our screens. No demands for clemency, no beggin' for their miserable lots, no nothin!" The wild looking man shook his dreadlock-laden head. "No idea if it can move or shoot. Our Captain don't like that, not a bit!"
He grinned broadly, his hand darting out to indicate a small fastening I'd neglected in my mounting annoyance. The indication was playful but firm, helpful given my life would probably depend on the equipment in the minutes to come. Annoying, because I'd supposedly had this process down by wrote. Oil the shift panels, examine the rigging, sluice the rotors, double and triple check the Dust core... Again, and again, and again...
"Which means, oh, ladies and gentlefolk, that we'll be goin' out on a little jaunt of our own to see what's what!" He struck a pose he apparently seemed to deem as appropriately heroic, the others of our little pod doing much the same while I lingered in the corner trying my best to avoid the sloshing salt murk of the seawater refusing to drain. "Our dear Captain needs word of the situation, and we're the ones to provide!"
"Aye!" Hands and fists rose to raucous laughter I refused to take part in, despite wishing to. To have a team again, true comrades... That had me shaking my head abruptly, biting my lip as Blizz's shining eyes fell over me.
Perhaps the mutiny could be worked to my advantage? A chance to escape in the chaos, and get back on some inkling of direction...!?
I flinched violently as a peal of thunder struck aft of my position, the bells ringing in my ears with the motion. A flicker flash of brilliant destruction booming down to crash against a long slender antenna designed for such purpose... But the sound, the wrath... born of Rowan's Wrath...
In the days since our somewhat lackluster trek, I'd witnessed many such lightning strikes. Their might, their beauty...
Each was powerful enough to clip the wings of passing Nevermore, or sent gouts of steam spilling from the ocean's surface in billowing white towers. Each reminded me just a little of Joel. Which inevitably set me to wondering bleakly if my wayward Team Leader was alright, his Aura seeming so strange last I'd worked up the nerve to look outward. His own storm shot through with something different. Something strange... almost like...
"...the thing's empty!? What nonsense is that!?"
My ears perked up against the roar of both rain and tide, singling out the consternation laden in the voice of my lead fluttering across the surf several meters distant as I completed my second pass of the derelict ship. Consternation born of my signal, flashed by the dangling beacon light affixed about the mast of my Netan in a simplistic code he'd spent the last few months drilling into my skull in every attempted 'swimming' lesson.
Nothing too difficult, downright simple compared to the struggle of learning my usual hand-talk, which, while infinitely more detailed, was nigh impossible to convey in the chaos of 'striding' in the sea proper. A shame such a method of communication wasn't quite so adept at providing proper explanations beyond the obvious.
Something I regretted even as I set about a reply with white knuckled fingers dancing along the trigger. All the while confirming the validity of the statement once more with my Semblance, despite knowing I'd checked several times already, each with the same result. Each with the same frustrations and worries lingering in my stomach that had nothing to do with the choppy waves.
"Feel it. Crew. Empty."
Barren, cleared out, deserted. Not even handful of guttering fearful souls on the edge of breaking from fighting off their rebellious fellows. Certainly not the small army of armed mutineers Harper had been expecting to find, given Lucas Violette's description of the situation. It wasn't right, and even worse, it was starting to feel almost familiar, but from where...?
Nothing. Nothing but the soul-lights of my fellows and a few fish, surrounded by dark, all consuming nothingness of the sea below.
"Response?"
"That ain't right. Nah... Can't be!"
Blizz's Netan alighted gracefully down into the surf almost directly alongside me in a spray of foam and salt accompanied by a pair of his - our - fellows, the motion executed flawlessly, though startling me enough that I almost careened headlong into a swell. Whether he'd noticed or not he didn't comment, his usually jovial sun-worn features lined thick with concern and no small amount of nervous trepidation far beyond concern for me. A look they all shared, I noticed with a small flutter of uncertainty I quickly clamped down on.
We had to be calm. That had been the man's own first lesson to me as I flailed and capsized in the early days of mastering the Netan's use. Clear purpose, deliberate action, and above all a peace with your decisions because if you'd made the wrong one you might as well pass onto the final journey with some small amount of confidence.
He'd laughed at that, easily dodging an attempt to punch him that sent me tumbling end over end into the waves. Always laughing...
Not now, certainly not. Blizz's own signal light shimmered rapidly through the overcast gloom in a pattern far more complex than the one he'd taught me, though the meaning was clear enough, given the circumstances. The Strider was intent on alerting the Prism floating several dozen leagues distant - and by extension Captain Majorelle himself - to the situation at hand. His bearing that of a man eager for orders, for an explanation. Needing one, desperately.
"Vessel that size... Gods, there had to be hundreds of hardened bastards skilled at takin' care of themselves at the least. Even with a mutiny on their hands, they can't all have just been...?"
"Grimm?"
Someone had needed to suggest it, given we were all of us doubtless thinking the same. Still, it didn't stop the others from glaring daggers at me for the offering, for making it real.
'Someone had to,' I glowered right back through a salt spray, knuckles pale against the guiding handle of my board's mast. 'Denying the truth might make one feel safer, but so does huddling down to try and ride out a dust-up... Can't be that foolish...'
Going by what I'd come to expect, colored by a decent sense for such things learned in the tepid wastes of the Badlands, this would hardly be the first ship to fall to the Creatures of Grimm. Caught in the middle of something so negatively charged as a mutiny, of all things, the beasts would've been swarming like maddened waste mites to a corpse.
And the evidence was there for all to see, clear enough through the gloom. Jagged claw marks scoring the hull from bow to stern, blackened hull sections standing as reminders of fires started and burnt out amidst the storm...
Yes, yes, a bunch of scared, rudderless sailors would've proven easy prey for the things that lurked beneath the waves glimpsed every so often from the view above deck, the sinuous fodder hunting about the surface for easy pickings, and those greater beasts in the depths gone unslain. Allowed to flourish for who knows how long, the sort of things that were the subjects of many of the artworks in Harper's study, and interspersed around the whole of the Prism, and several of the seedier districts of Mooring to boot.
Monsters deserving of the instinctive fear they inspired. The sort that left me wondering why Mankind had ever been so crazy as to set to the high seas in the first place...
"Perhaps... Perhaps not." Blizz was being mindful of the mood, but he agreed with me. Not something I was very excited for. "Strange, though. Those wounds are old. A week, at least. The Wrath should've dashed it apart long before we arrived in that case."
I made no move to comment, obviously, nor did he seemingly expect one from me, much to my appreciation. My silence deferred to experience in matters of the mythic, ever-present squall raging above, and stirring the seas into a bucking beast beneath my board. Still, I couldn't halt the hammering in my chest, the feeling that something was wrong. Very VERY wrong. More so than what I could see... Some instinct I wasn't understanding...
"Kiddo... Reika!" I shook my head out, almost managing to upset my balance and plunge myself head first into waves I might not have been able to extricate myself from. Blizz was staring at me, eyes set and his expression serious, hair whipping about his face in a frenzy. "Check again, full spread. Anything and everything!"
'Of course. Try again once more. What a grand idea!' I growled reluctantly, skull pounding with an unseen strain as I once more opened myself to my Aura and the extra sense it offered me as he instructed. 'As if I haven't already plumbed the vessel down to its very... it's...!?'
My head jerked up so fast my neck cricked audibly, Blizz and the others flinching in surprise as the motion spurred me on ahead in a floating glide several paces distant. The Strider lead shouted after me, racing in my wake in case I tumbled from the wild maneuver with a hand trying to reach out. I didn't care.
I couldn't, not now that I'd bothered to spread my awareness elsewhere. Feeling nothing aboard the dead hulk bobbing before us, but lingering in the heavens above us... But it couldn't be...
Now, being one of Harper's 'Striders' was hardly a quiet duty, and certainly not so far within the unbridled fury of Rowan's Wrath. The constant crash of tidal waves smashing against one another all about, the sharp whine of the Netan board's Dust engine thrumming beneath bare feet. Then, of course, tumultuous thunder above mixed with the pitter-patter of constant warm rain falling to the sea below, the ringing of the bells in my ear... But just then, all of it seemed to be bleeding away into the background.
It simply didn't matter.
Nothing else did, but the fact that Benjamin Carson's Aura, that familiar, green-tinged light ever-present at furthest reaches of my awareness since the day I'd come to my senses in old Lux's caravan, was close. Closer than it had ever been, its presence so much more than the vague impressions of him as I'd sensed only hours before born of distance.
He was here. Impossibly, miraculously... I could feel him again. Defined, that wily cunning warmth that warmed my heart and made it flutter, a smile pulling against my scars. It was him. HIM. It had to be...
But that wasn't all.
The smile vanished as my Sense caught whiff of something else. Something more I'd failed to recognize until now.
Not flying above with Ben, but below... Beneath the waves and growing closer even now, moment by moment. An absence I'd taken for the dark empty waters below, not an emptiness as there should've been. A defined absence of spirit so vast, I'd taken it for truth while in fact blinded by so much else... And what's more it was moving upwards toward them on a direct course. I'd never felt anything quite like it... No, that wasn't true.
I'd felt as such, that absence more times than I'd ever cared to count, lest I go mad.
Surrounded by it in the forests mere hours after the empty nothingness had swallowed my family's village. Enclosed on all sides in the darkest corners of the Badlands, prowling the wastes, and lurking in shadowed holes waiting for unsuspecting prey. Hemmed in, even at Beacon Academy, feeling as nonexistent somethings roamed the Emerald Forest, and had soon come to consume my adopted home there too, just as they had the first one. Leaving it to burn...
Yes, I'd felt this before. The creatures without a soul to feel, conspicuous in my inability for even my Sense to perceive them... but never this hungry. Never this cold and bitter. Never so bowel-splittingly terrifying to witness, knowing it was too late by far.
"...!" I could even mouth the words that simply wouldn't come. There'd simply not been time...
Not enough. Not before the world - wracked already as it was by churning waves and tumultuous storms - came apart around me in a manner I'd only experienced only once. During a massive earthquake that had wracked the Wastes in my earliest days since joining Bill Carson's little posse; a year maybe. Even today, I remembered a reviled event which had left the region scarred and nigh-devastated for months afterwards, whole settlements left in tatters, and Grimm on the ascendant.
Men had blamed it on the debilitating effects of Dust mining overdone. Educated men might have even agreed with them. No one actually caught up in the event had much given a care either way. Their thoughts were distant, focused only on the thunderous boom of landscape shifting and reshaping its face as tectonic forces fought for dominance, and we puny souls could do naught but clutch on another for our lives and sanity.
I'd buried my face in Ma's skirts right along with Ben, though he'd tried his best to deny it in the days afterwards. No one blamed him, of course. Not when they, as grown men and women, had been just as frightened. Lost.
And this?... THIS was worse...
The sound of Rowan's Wrath breaking in half... or more the sheer amount of it as noise simply blended into a pure chaotic mess of over-pressure that left my eardrums bleeding and deafened like I'd just been struck...hitting all at once. The ocean itself - or at least the portion upon which we and the Scarlet Queen floated upon - seemed to explode upwards in a rush in which many small scenes played out all at once. Scenes I doubted I'd forget to my dying day, which given the present situation...
A Grimm, but one of a type I'd only ever seen in the ritualistic designs adorning the Prism's halls and scattered about Mooring. The sort of fearful respect I'd taken for exaggeration, or so I'd imagined in my naive ignorance. Not quite imagining that something, anything, could match the Goliaths I'd witnessed on scouting trips with Bill during my training so many years before, or approach the heights of the Beacon CCTS Tower. I'd never thought a creature could be so large that its presence might boil the seas as it traversed them, a pall of steam rising to add even greater grandeur to its terrible presence.
But this creature did all this and more... This Leviathan, unhinging it's great maw with a sound like crunching bone times a thousandfold. A tone I could feel through the deafness echoing in my ribcage.
Broad as she was, the Scarlet Queen didn't so much break as she did shatter beneath the coiled serpentine body glistening with scales and old scars propelling itself forth from the darkened depths at speeds I'd not have believed possible for a creature of that size. Breaching the surface and writhing along diaphanous fins ridged with red veined bone thick as a ship's hull, and hewn sleek from current and tide. Silver and metal frameworks built to withstand the storms of the Wrath folded under its coiling bulk until it simply snapped from the pressure.
I was lucky. I'd been moving, and was able to get clear despite being cast several dozen meters distant in the rush of super-heated air that left my exposed skin dry and prickling. The first I felt vanish did so underneath debris raining down from the ship's destruction, pieces varying in size from fistfuls of decking to wreckage the size of land-cars burying Strider's in sprays of crimson-flecked saltwater, snuffed out before they could think of fleeing.
They were lucky, too, the end fast in coming. Those many didn't have to look up at the death looming above them, didn't have to witness as it came down and simply swallowed a half dozen in half as many seconds as it retreated back into the darkened shadows that had birthed it. Its impression was visible now, even without my Semblance to guide me. A ridged fin as large as a Manta Airship breached moments at a time in wide arcs, the surface bubbling in its wake as the chill of the afternoon was stolen in a pall of humid bleakness that stole strength and shattered resolve.
Some of the Striders were crushed swiftly by riptides from its surfacing or dashed across its coils, others cast from their Netan, and drowning in the boiling dark. Blizz had fallen among them, vanishing in an instant when he'd turned back to try and save who he could. His loyalty was unwilling to compromise for my sake, and I admired him for it.
I still felt the moment when his soul faded, a moment's terror, an instant of pain, and then... nothing. I was here, a minuscule ant floating amidst a sea of giants, and yet all I could do was look upward towards the sky where I could still feel my friend growing ever more distant.
I was silent... Alone... And there was no one there but a monster to hear me scream...
-Pino of Mooring-
"Wha...!? What was...!?"
I couldn't quite form the question, still transfixed in places as I watched the tapestry of what had once been established change in an instant.
That broad outline of the Scarlet Queen outlined against the horizon, scarred but splendid in a way I was fast coming to appreciate as a symbol of strength and security amidst the harsh seas. Those signal lights bobbing in the surf at its feet, one of them bearing Reika aloft, I knew.
A comfort, whatever my own feelings after her silent, kind, and heart-wrenchingly awkward refusals. She'd been my friend. She still was regardless of how things had changed... Still a comrade.
Perhaps the reason I suspected Captain Majorelle had called me to the bridge from my station in the first place, this being our first possible engagement, was that he wanted my head focused, my hands steady. That signal beacon was proof of her, a comfort...
One swallowed up by the writhing serpentine mass of scaled flesh that had breached the seas before any eye or esoteric system on the Prism's bridge could give warning. The vaguest impression of crested bone ridges each the size of many of Mooring's manses slick and dripping with saltwater left boiling at its touch, rows of glinting teeth larger than I was opening into a flanged maw leading to a gullet black as sin that so many of those lights had vanished within, bodies flailing as if they could swim to escape.
But it was the eyes that I remembered most before it vanished below the churning waves. Those orbs, chilling despite the heat of the fires seemingly burning within them... soulless, dead. The eyes of a predator, its long hatred of man cooled to the dispassion one might have for an annoying insect. Killing not for joy, but for extermination. It was... It was a...
"Lernaean!"
I didn't understand the word when it was called, but I could gauge the significance by the bowel-chilling fear present in the Bridge Officer's cry and the shrill reactions of most present around me to realize it was something terrible. Some clutched at totems or charms hanging about station or person, others frozen stock still in place if not thrown violently to the deck by a sudden loss of balance as the waves writhed and boiled at it's presence.
Not that I'd needed their input, having glimpsed the creature for myself if only for an instant as it broke the Scarlet Queen, and now threatened us all... who might well have erased my friend. A monster of unbelievable imaginings, beyond age or understanding, dredged up and expelled from the coldest darkest depths where no one, human or Faunus, had ever been meant to tread. Left to stew for untold years at the life around it, now free to exact a toll among those that dared to violate its territory.
Big, very very big. That being all I'd suspect anyone would've ever wish to see of such a thing, for which by comparison one's life could only be considered an afterthought... And it wasn't even finished with us yet.
But not all were so lost. Not all... I blinked at the outcries of some around me pointing out into the chaos. My eyes widening as theirs had upon seeing some of the Strider's lights still shining in the air and surf. Dim, flickering, and far fewer then there had been, but present even so.
Not that it was a pleasant view in total, some few vanishing soon after into the murk likely as their riders had. But others, those riding the winds in a manner that had to mean control... survivors if less than a handful. I even dared to hope. I had to... I needed to. And they weren't the only heroes of the moment, some seated closer by far.
"An yrayt yaihi'l, c'san yldeja!" Harper's voice rang out above the clamor in the language of the Frontier, calm and collected in defiance of the danger threatening his vessel. His, and by his hand, he would see them through this... against any other monster I might've believed it, but that thing had just... Reika, it had just... "Besbe yar' trayce vari an jaq'ka! Nari suja jin!
Whatever orders were being passed along, Florid seemed to understand, crying out commands of his own, and spurring those still hesitant into frantic action. Surely but slowly, too slowly, the Colorless Prism rattled to life beneath my feet, powerful engines churning as they propelled the giant blade of a craft forward at speed, barreling forward towards the still sinking remnants of the Scarlet Queen where only moments before...
But no, that couldn't be right, could it? They needed to run, to flee before...!
"I'm afraid it wouldn't much matter, my boy." I started, realizing the Captain's words had been meant for me and me alone. The Pirate Prince seated upon a strikingly simple throne worked into the decking, eyeing the actions of his bridge with a leisurely calm so at odds with the situation, I had to blink just to make sure. "A brood of Sea Feilong we could clip at leisure. Rippermaw swarm or Qalupalik brood couldn't think to threaten, much less chase us. But this is a Lernaean-breed of Leviathan, and one shaped purely to the sea, if I'm not mistaken." His brows knitted as he leaned against the arm of his seat on one dainty fist. "Such would overtake us before we'd made it very far, I'd wager. Blade of the sea we might be, but this thing... more a missile, I suppose. You know of those, don't you?"
"I... I wasn't going to say...!?"
"No, of course you weren't. Seeing as little Miss Murasaki's in the middle of that mess." How odd, his voice still the epitome of control, and yet I couldn't say a word against it, seeing as he wasn't smiling. No sign of that ever-present grin of his... And that made the quiet fury I suddenly sensed all too keenly seem worse, so much worse. "Worse, this bastard's killed Mooring souls, mutinous or not, along with members of my crew. I want it dead, Mister Florid. Make it so."
"Aye, Captain!" the tattooed First Mate chorused from the helm, his knuckles white against an ornate guiding wheel of finely worked silver set amidst a host of esoteric gauges and measures. Steam and the raw force of Nature's Wrath bellowed from smoke stacks set along the hull as the sea's own currents lurched us forward at speed. A blade cutting neatly through the surf with ever mounting surety.
"Mister Read, exert your talents," Harper addressed the Faunus Boatswain who'd scrambled onto the bridge, slick with sweat and sea-spittle. That terrible faces splitting into an awful grin as he nodded in understanding. His arms rising as he looked out upon the waves, the mists rising with them to envelop the extravagant vessel in a miasma of billowing fog that concealed its true outline even to my eyes.
A colorless mass, equal to its name...
"Kyr'amur te Fnaldr! For Harper and Plunder!" he called in a strained cry distorted by effort. Beady eyes shining wickedly in their sockets.
"FOR HARPER AND PLUNDER!" the bridge chorused and more besides, the words echoing through the message tubes across the ship with others taking up the call from the weapon's hands on deck to the scrambling hands in the lowest bilges. And I was among them, having said the words without meaning too but meaning them regardless.
Was this... Was this really...?
"Welcome to the crew, my ruddy-faced friend, for however long that lasts you."
I merely stayed silent behind my mask, the weight of it suddenly unbearably heavy as I looked out at the storm-wracked waters. Hoping for but another glimpse of that signal light blinking through the gloom as the ship lurched underfoot and my stomach along with it, but seeing only the cresting arch of a sinuous black coil of scaled flesh.
"Now be a good lad and offer a prayer, be it to the twin gods or Queen Rowan herself, that they might grant us fortune to spare."
Captain Majorelle, for his part got to his feet, seeming untroubled by roiling floor beneath while tapping the raised heel of those silvery boots of his. Those brilliant blue eyes set ahead towards the oncoming danger... And then, and only then, did I notice a flicker of trepidation. The briefest glimpse, before it was gone.
"Something tells me we'll be needing every last drop before the day is done. Anyone still left out there most of all..."
-END
A/N: Hey all, back with another chapter before the New Year.
New job is falling into place, enough that I can't really complain at least. Less life threathening for one, though stagecraft was a fair bit more exciting. All in all aside from getting used to the schedule it's shaping up to be a busy if exciting year.
Wishing the same for the rest of y'all, happy holidays, and thank you for supporting this and future projects.- Mojo
(Next Chapter: Diving into danger)