Well, my job has shut down. Which majorly sucks, I've been loving it. I AM planning on using my newfound free time productively, and increasing my writing time. If I double my daily word count, I figure I can finish drafting the entire story in the next month or so. We'll see if I can do that, since I have other projects to work on, but I'm hopeful. That said, I realized the other day that I'd made a HUGE mistake in what I currently have written for chapters 46-50 and I'm thinking I should probably edit those before I continue, so I can try to avoid making the same mistake in the future.
I do not own anything except my original characters created for this story.
Adventure to the North
There were usually at least half a dozen bullheads around the Beacon campus, reserved for official Huntsman business. The pilots were on call at all times to transport people to all corners of Vale if necessary. Since the team was transporting goods that were too much for them to carry on their backs, and the village—rather uncreatively called Northingham, as it was the northernmost settlement in Vale territory—needed the supplies as soon as possible, nobody objected when Skye pulled aside one of the pilots and told him what they were up to. He fired up the craft and they were airborne less than twenty minutes later.
Aurum was simultaneously relieved to be on the way so quickly and frustrated at the thought of being crammed into the small space of a bullhead for a couple hours. She finally decided to just quit thinking about it and pulled a comic book out of her pack to occupy herself on the ride.
She was absorbed in the adventure—it was a slightly comedic story, of a masked hero who patrolled the city streets at night and stopped criminals, leaving them tied up on police station steps for the cops to find in the morning—when their pilot called back to them, "We should be setting down in Northingham in another five minutes or so!"
"Thanks for letting us know!" Skye called back. She quickly readied her sword, slipping her extra Dust vials into her pocket. Indie adjusted her hood so that Crescent Ranger was in easy reach, and Aurum hurriedly placed the comic back into her backpack, then stood, ready to disembark.
She'd been expecting the familiar dropping sensation in her stomach that usually accompanied the landing of an aircraft, so she was startled when the ship banked and did a one-eighty instead. Several different possibilities for what could be happening ran through her head in a split second, until the pilot's voice came floating back from the cockpit again. "The square is overrun with Grimm! I won't be able to land!"
Indie immediately shouted back. "I can get us down!" Almost as an afterthought, she turned to her teammates. "Um, if you're okay with it?"
Skye gave her an incredulous look. "If you can get us to the ground without breaking our auras, I don't care. Of course we're okay with it!"
"Got it." A fierce, determined expression came into Indie's turquoise eyes. She nodded once, decisively, before calling out to the pilot once again. "Can you try and hover in place for a few minutes?"
"No problem, kid!" came the reply. Aurum immediately felt the bullhead slow, and a few seconds later, it had halted its forward momentum as the gravity Dust in the aircraft was activated. Dust really is a wonderful thing…
Before Aurum could really process it—although she had a pretty good idea what Indie's plan was—Indie had retrieved an arrow from her quiver, attached it to her cord, and nocked it, all in one smooth motion. She aimed it toward the closest tree and loosed. Aurum barely heard the thunk as it lodged in the wood, and she doubted her teammates had heard it at all—the craft's motor wasn't deafening, but it was still pretty loud.
Indie tied a knot in the cord and quickly threaded the end through one of the handles on the compartment's interior. The rope flashed through her fingers, and she'd finished the complicated-looking knot that held it in place before Aurum had a chance to blink. She watched in awe as Indie gave it a couple firm tugs to make sure it wasn't going anywhere. Aurum had no idea what the knot was, but she knew that both the cord and the bullhead handle were more than strong enough to support the weight of a single Huntress at one time, and she had complete faith in Indie's knot-tying skills. The plan was becoming clearer by the second.
Her setup completed, Indie turned to Jade. "You first."
Jade looked like she'd just eaten something unpleasant tasting, but when Skye nudged her toward the open side of the bullhead, she set her jaw and stepped forward resolutely. Making the tall girl go first was probably smart. Jade might have overcome her fear of heights in the last couple years, but she'd made it plain to her teammates that she would never like them, and Aurum didn't trust Jade to actually jump from the bullhead without the proper motivation. A sentiment that Indie apparently shared.
The green-haired Huntress glared at the setup for a long moment, then finally sighed in resignation. She deliberately took her weapons and turned them in her hands so she was holding them by the barrels. Hooking the handles over the line, she hesitated one last moment. Aurum was seriously ready to push her, but Jade did actually jump of her own accord.
"Okay, who's next?" Indie asked her remaining teammates.
Aurum didn't wait for Skye to respond. Jamming the two halves of Aurora Blaze together, she stuck the weapon over the top of the rope, and activated the gravity Dust inside her bracelets so she'd be securely anchored to it. Leaping out of the bullhead, she let out a loud, "Whooo-hoooo!" as she slid down the cord, the contrast between her descent and her teammate's almost comical in her mind.
Jade had already waded into the Grimm by the time Aurum landed on the ground. The Faunus only spared a second to take in the situation—maybe two dozen Boarbatusks, along with the odd Ursa, and they were roaming through the streets as though they owned the place, ramming into buildings and just generally causing chaos. Two of the Ursai were clawing at a large structure that Aurum was guessing was a reinforced Grimm shelter. It looked pretty solid, the only damage so far a few scratch marks, so if anyone was taking refuge inside, they wouldn't need her attention just yet.
"Hey, pork-for-brains!" A few of the Boarbatusks surrounding Jade turned their heads at Aurum's taunt. Evidently giving up on the taller fighter, they aimed themselves at their new target and charged. One rolled up into a ball and launched itself at her. Aurum smiled to herself, before she activated her semblance and flashed out of the way. The monster flew past her and smacked into a steel retaining wall, easy prey for Aurora Blaze. It was soon nothing more than a smoking corpse.
A shimmering snowflake-shaped platform suddenly came into being in front of her. "Aurum, quit playing around with the Grimm; they're not toys," Skye ordered as she dropped gracefully from the glyph and, lightning-fast, drove her saber through the unarmored belly of another pig nearby.
"Ugh, you're no fun." Aurum was only half paying attention to Skye; she spun using her semblance, and the whirling tessen caught two of the beasts at once. She smirked in satisfaction. "See? Just because I make jokes and have a good time, doesn't mean I'm not taking my job seriously."
Skye gestured with her sword and a handful of the Grimm were immediately lifted into the air by black glyphs, where they dangled, squealing in a not-very-threatening manner, before Aurum zipped beneath them, giving each one a series of slashes. The beasts crumbled to ash in her wake.
"You're being unprofessional," Skye insisted, letting the gravity glyphs dissolve and turning to focus on one of the Ursai that had just started growling at her. It was soon dispatched and Skye called more gravity glyphs into being, causing a new batch of Grimm to become weightless, thrashing around in their midair prisons, until a few arrows soared down from the roof of a nearby building and picked off the dangling monsters one by one.
"You're kidding, right?" Jade panted, swinging at what looked like the only Beowolf to join the party. Aurum wondered if it was a loner, or a scout that had gotten separated from its pack. "You have seen Nora kill Grimm at least once in your life, yeah? You wanna talk about treating our jobs like a game… Aurum's got nothing on her."
"Uh… thanks?" Aurum muttered. She ducked underneath the Ursa that Skye was facing off against; the number of armored spikes on its back indicated it was an Ursa Major, and while she was sure Skye could take care of it by herself, there were no other Grimm in sight anymore and it would go faster with the two of them.
She folded up her fans and jabbed them at its belly; it roared in pain, and a split second later it was roaring again as it lit up like a bonfire. Aurum yelped in surprise and nearly fell back onto her butt. At the last second, she was able to recover her balance, and calling up her semblance once more, shot between the thing's hind legs to escape, already planning how she was going to chew out her team leader for setting the Grimm on fire while a teammate was still engaged with it. Once free of the smoldering bear, she looked around for new targets.
There were none. Not a single Grimm remained, not within Aurum's range of vision anyway, and if the thumbs-up Indie was shooting them all from the rooftop was any indication, none left in the line of sight of the high ground, either. Aurum let out a long, sighing breath, and lowered her weapons.
xxxxx
"Thank you, Huntresses, thank you so much!"
Jade was more than a little embarrassed at the way the mayor was reacting. Seriously, all they'd done was kill a bunch of Grimm; they'd literally just been doing their jobs. But the middle-aged man with the name of Hawthorne Crest, would not stop gushing as he pumped Skye's hand. The rest of the village council, gathered around the team, looked rather impatient for him to finish. The mayor went for Indie next, giving her the same overenthusiastic treatment, and from the next-level uncomfortable expression on her face, she would have gladly been anywhere but here right now. Jade knew the feeling—neither she nor Indie was what anyone would call socially gifted.
Finally nudging the poor man aside—and none too gently either; he deserved it with the scene he was making—Jade tried to change the subject. "This mission didn't have a determined length listed. I'm assuming we'll be here for a few days to patrol the town and deal with any threats, so is there someplace we can sleep while we're here?"
"Ah…" One of the other officials shuffled forward nervously. She was elderly, and seemed as embarrassed as Jade was at the way Mayor Crest was behaving. "I don't believe we have a space large enough for all four of you together…" She hesitated for a moment, then her lined face seemed to light up. "…Unless you wouldn't mind staying in my barn? I can promise you, the hayloft is very clean and spacious."
"We'll take it," Jade answered, before any of her teammates could have a chance to object. "I've slept in worse places than a barn."
Skye, who was clearly not thrilled with the idea but doing her best to keep her expression gracious, nodded. "That would be fine. But I do need to know… Is this level of Grimm activity normal for you?"
Now that Skye mentioned it, Jade could see her point. The number of Grimm they'd taken out upon their arrival shouldn't have been a problem for a town of this size, especially not one that had clearly been around for some time. Settlements didn't typically last very long if that number of Grimm invaded them regularly. Jade wondered how old Northingham was… it had clearly been around for a few generations, but she knew it hadn't existed during the Great War, so unless it had been established immediately following the Vytal Treaty, it had been here for less than a century.
"No, we don't," one of the village councilwomen answered immediately. She looked to be only in her twenties, the youngest of the gathered officials by at least ten years, and was easily distinguishable from the others by the very elaborate braid in her blonde hair. "The earthquake we had last week wasn't a bad one—no deaths, only a handful of injuries, and minimal damage to property—but it did take out several portions of our outer palisade fence and some of the older sections of the inner one as well. We've been attempting to rebuild them, but our supplies on hand are limited and needed for other repairs as well, and of course we've had to hold the Grimm at bay while we make our repairs. Our progress has been slowed to almost nothing."
She indicated the bullhead that had been able to land in the square after the Grimm had been cleared out, with piles of lumber, bags of concrete mix, and other construction materials in neat-ish stacks all around. The pilot brought out another few sacks to add on as they watched. "Thanks to the supplies you've brought with you, we'll finally be able to make some real headway."
Jade was more than a little relieved to hear that the earthquake hadn't caused any fatalities. She didn't want to think about the last time she'd been around for disaster relief—eastern Anima, five years ago. That poor village, suffering severe floods after a storm… By the time they'd gotten there, the Grimm had already run rampant through the town, and out of several hundred townspeople, there had only been a few dozen survivors. Yang had immediately called for evacuation to Mistral City, and the two of them had had to defend the surviving populace for four days until the transport had arrived. Last Jade knew, the town had been deserted and was slowly sinking into the ocean.
"So we'll get started on border defense, right away."
Skye's words broke through Jade's misty haze of memory, and she tuned back in to the discussion just in time to see her partner shaking hands with the officials one last time.
xxxxx
Skye yawned and stretched as she headed for the general store to buy some breakfast for her team and herself, appreciating the brilliant early-morning sunshine on her bare skin as she walked. She'd been pleasantly surprised by their accommodations. While sleeping in a barn certainly wasn't something she'd ever thought she'd find herself doing, the hayloft was light and airy, filled with bales of sweet-smelling hay. There was enough room for all four of them, and as the elder councilwoman—Skye couldn't remember her name—had promised, it was also clean.
With part of the town's defenses down, and Grimm attacks increasing, they'd agreed to take turns staying on watch, so that they could rouse the others if it proved necessary during the night. But they'd only designated two watches; Jade, the night owl, had volunteered for the early shift, and Aurum, the morning person, had taken the late one, leaving both Skye and Indie to get a full night's sleep.
She bought four breakfast sandwiches with egg, cheese, and sausage to fill them up, along with some cookies for later and coffee for all of them, and smiled cheerily at the cashier as she paid for all of the food with her credit card. After living with her teammates for two years, she was pretty sure she could have recited their coffee preferences in her sleep. Jade took it black, nothing but straight coffee. Indie liked cream and a squirt or two of chocolate sauce. Aurum preferred milk—not cream, never cream, which Skye had learned the hard way—and two sugars. Skye actually could have gone for some tea rather than coffee today, but the store had a pretty pitiful selection of teas and she could probably use the caffeine.
Jade was already awake when Skye returned to the barn; Skye passed her the proper coffee cup and went to wake up Indie.
Aurum, who was packing up her bag for the day, paused in her task to take the appropriate drink and to wolf down her breakfast. By the time she'd finished, Skye was dragging Indie over and shoving the coffee in her face. Indie took it gratefully.
"So… what's our plan?" Aurum asked.
Skye thought about it for a minute as she unwrapped the paper from her sandwich. "Well, Ms. Slate showed us the breaks in the outer walls yesterday." Slate was the name of the youngest official, who seemed like she was doing the majority of the work to get the village's repairs finished and the citizens back to their normal lives. "There's only two big ones, and those are where most of the Grimm are getting in. There's also a bunch of smaller ones—too small for any real threat to slip through, so I think we can safely focus on the big ones for the time being. I'd say… Indie and I should monitor those from up high, since we can fight from a distance, and the two of you be our backup in case any Grimm get past us."
Jade, poking some egg back inside her sandwich before taking another bite, raised and lowered one shoulder. "I mean, if you want me on the ground, who am I to argue?"
Skye gave her partner her best Oh-really? look, one she'd shamelessly copied from her mom. She knew full well that Jade didn't want to be up high, especially after yesterday. The skeptical look was completely wasted. Jade was too busy cramming the rest of her breakfast into her mouth in a single bite to notice her partner. Skye cringed internally at Jade's bad manners—she was usually a little better than that—but a minute later decided it wasn't worth arguing over and started munching on her own sandwich.
"So, sounds like a plan," Indie mumbled, shrugging. She wasn't entirely awake yet, but she looked infinitely more alert now that she'd added some caffeine to her system than she had when Skye had first woken her up. "CCT signal isn't great out here, but this village is small enough that our scroll signals will still be able to reach each other." She punctuated her words by raising her coffee cup and draining its contents.
"Then it's settled." Skye stood up, tossing her elegant blue-and-silver backpack over one shoulder. The pack looked a little flimsy, but appearances were deceiving; it was packed with pockets and sturdy enough to hold her entire Dust supply, a good amount of food, and some other essentials like her wallet, a few pens, and a small first aid kit. Skye had gotten it as a fifteenth-birthday present from Yang, and she adored it. "We'll split up into partner pairs, and keep watch. Keep in touch with conference calls if necessary, and make sure you have enough food and water for the day. We might be able to take a break at some point, but don't count on it."
With that, she turned and left, trusting the others to follow her lead. She'd already decided that it didn't really matter who monitored which breach, so she headed for the one on the far end of the village. Sneaking a glance behind her, she was pleased to see Jade following a few steps behind her, while Aurum and Indie turned west a block later.
They walked in silence the rest of the way, until they reached the weak point in the wall. Skye was impressed with the town's defenses: there was a double palisade around the town, and she'd heard bells when they'd arrived that seemed to be the equivalent of the Grimm alert siren in Vale.
Jade paused to survey their watch point. "Want a boost up? I can do that easy enough."
"Why bother?" Skye asked. "I can lift myself up with my semblance."
"Yeah, but if I haul you up, you won't have to use any aura," Jade pointed out. "Save it for the baddies."
Jade had a point. Skye shrugged and held her hands out. Jade crouched down, holding onto Skye's hands, and Skye stepped onto her partner's shoulders as gently as she could. Jade straightened up, letting Skye easily hop onto the low roof of the shed next to the palisade.
"See anything?" Jade asked.
"Not yet," Skye grumbled. "I'm not at the highest point yet; give me a minute." She hauled herself up a few feet until she was at the peak, panting slightly; the structure had a pretty steep roof. "Okay, I can see something, but…" She paused, squinting. "…I'm pretty sure it's just a shadow, nothing to worry about. Nothing's moving out there, or at least not in a way that looks like it's anything other than wind."
"Good to know." Jade leaned against the building, looking deliberately casual, but Skye wasn't fooled. She could tell by the slant of her partner's shoulders and the tilt of her head that Jade was ready to spring into battle at any moment. She settled back on the roof to wait.
xxxxx
Indie had very methodically crisscrossed the streets of the town upon their arrival, looking for a particular address. She'd found it yesterday, while she and Aurum had been on their way to their post, but she hadn't been able to stop then. Now, she approached the door.
The house was a plain, one-story building that looked about the size of SAIJ's dorm room. As Indie hesitantly went up the walkway toward the front door, she noticed the words "Savu Knight, 28 Barr Lane" written in small letters over the doorknob.
Her heart pounding—in anticipation? Fear? Probably both—she raised a hand to knock, then hesitated again.
What are you waiting for? Part of her brain screamed at her.
I don't know! Another part wailed back.
She wasn't sure how long she stood there like that, frozen in indecision with her hand raised, but finally, finally reached deep down and found the resolve she needed. Gripping that resolve as tightly as she could, she somehow found the courage to give a few solid raps on the front door.
A muffled voice called, "One moment!" from inside. A minute later, the door swung open and Indie found herself face to face with a man who looked about fifty. He had light gray hair cut short, and he regarded her with curiosity evident in his cornflower blue eyes. She stared at him for a moment in wordless fascination, until he finally cleared his throat, jarring her out of her reverie, and asked in a pleasant tone, "May I help you?"
"I—" Indie's voice choked off. She had to start over. In a faint tone, that didn't sound anything like her normal one, she asked, "Are you… Savu Knight?"
He nodded. "Yes, I am. What can I do for you?"
Indie pushed her hood back to keep it from falling into her face; usually she didn't mind, but that was hardly the kind of first impression she wanted to make here. "I… I am—"
"I know who you are." Savu's tone had gone odd, as well. He turned, holding the door wide, his hand shaking slightly. "And I know why you're here. Please, come inside."
Maybe it wasn't the best idea in the world to just walk trustingly into a stranger's home, but Indie knew she wasn't thinking straight. She followed him in, taking in the home. It was small, but it was also neat as a pin, with no clutter anywhere.
"I have some water on the stove for tea. Would you like some?" Savu asked from behind her. "And please, have a seat."
"I—Yes, please," Indie answered. She sat down rather awkwardly in the chair he'd indicated. A moment later, he walked into the room—the living room, from the look of it—and sat down across from her, handing her a steaming mug of tea before sitting down himself.
"I… always hoped this day would come." Savu looked blank for a moment. "I… I just realized, I know who you are, but not your name. Do you… still call yourself Indigo?"
"Yes." Indie nodded rapidly, then forced herself to stop before it became awkward… or, well, before it became more awkward than it already was. "My name is Indigo Amitola-Rose."
"That… that's a lovely name. Did… did the orphanage give it to you, or…?"
Indie gave one quick, sharp head shake, trying to avoid a repeat of the awkward head-nodding from a moment earlier. "No, they just called me… Indigo. It was my name, and they weren't going to change it. I have… I have both of my parents' last names."
Savu looked pleased, all of a sudden. "So… you have a good family? They take care of you?"
"Y-yes, they're wonderful people," Indie answered. This was so surreal, sitting here and having this conversation.
In an attempt to make herself feel less pathetic, Indie began looking around the room. A shelf full of photographs caught her eye. One was an image of a smiling couple. It looked like it was maybe an engagement photo: Savu, with fewer lines on his face and his hair a darker shade of gray, standing with his arm around a young woman. Next to it… a picture of a sleeping infant. Indie's breath caught in her throat. "Is that—?"
She never got the chance to finish her sentence. Loud bells had begun to ring; Indie was sure they could be heard throughout the entire town. That was the whole point, after all. She knew what it was: the signal of a Grimm attack. Springing out of her seat, she frantically grabbed for the scroll in her pocket.
It rang in her hand, right on cue. She jabbed her finger at the button. "Indie!" came Jade's voice. "I don't know where the hell you've gotten to, but you need to come to the town square right away! There's a whole bunch of—" The rest of her sentence was drowned out by a loud crash and a scream. "Just get here as soon as you can!" The scroll let out a sharp beep, indicating that Jade had ended the call.
Indie immediately made for the door. Savu blocked her way. "No, you can't go out there! Those bells mean there's Grimm attacking the town! You need to stay here where it's safe; I can protect you—"
"I know what it means," Indie answered. "And what it means is that I have a job to do. I can protect myself." She pushed past him and ran out the door, pausing only to call, "Stay inside until the all-clear sounds!" before letting the door slam shut behind her.
xxxxx
Savu stared out the small window on his front door, watching disbelievingly as the daughter he hadn't seen in twenty years effortlessly scaled the large maple tree across the road, then leaped from the branches onto the roof of the Chandlers' house. He could see none of the awkwardness that had been present in her only a few moments ago; the way she was moving now spoke of practiced confidence. With a quick flick of the long cape she wore, she revealed a bow and a quiver full of arrows strapped to her back. He stared in amazement as she pulled the bow free and took off running, with sure, easy strides, leaping between rooftops as she made her way toward the square, before leaning back against the wall in wonder. My daughter… is a Huntress.
He desperately wanted to go out there, ensure that she was safe, but repressed the urge. She was trained for this, with a weapon and aura and whatever else it was Huntresses had that made them so good at fighting. He had none of that. No, he had to trust that his daughter knew what she was doing.
Savu quickly dragged one of his mismatched dining chairs to the door, so he could watch in case she reappeared. Even if she didn't, being this close to the entrance to his home meant that he could race down to the square as soon as the all-clear sounded. Shaking his head in bemusement, he sank down onto the seat.
A Huntress… who would have guessed?
Okay, this one was a ton of fun for me to do. I've been so focused on slowing down and working on character development the last several chapters, I forgot how much I love writing fight scenes. But I also enjoyed writing Indie finally getting to meet her birth father. His name is a Finnish word meaning "smoke."
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