Chapter 81

The door was nearly kicked from its hinges as he stormed in.

"Somebody better tell me where Special Agent Rose is and why she has fifty pieces of high explosive ammunition, and they better tell me now!"

The room went quiet. The strategic communications and planning room never went quiet. Not with how many operatives were in the field abroad, and how many lives depended on the smooth and noisy operation of this room. There were always operators chattering instructions to their assigned agents, radars beeping monotonously, at least one alarm bell ringing somewhere denoting Grimm somewhere in the world. It was a busy room. But today it came to a grinding, silent halt as the single most frightening person decimated his way into the room.

"Anyone?!" he demanded. "NOW!"

An operative stood up, stiff and respectful, as any good soldier would.

"Sir."

He towered over the short operative and leaned in. His voice darkened.

"Explain."

"Sir, uh…" the man started to sweat. "She requested the ammunition, sir. She provided the paperwork. We had QM give it to her. General Ironwood, sir."

Ironwood twitched.

"Requested the ammunition? And you gave it out?"

"Y-yes, sir."

"You gave her seventy-five millimetre armour-piercing panzergranate-vierzig anti-tank ammunition."

The young officer seemed to shiver.

"Um, yes, sir. She submitted the paperwork. We just gave her what she asked for."

James glared through the man's face and directly into his brain.

"Are you about to tell me… that you gave her something to fire those with as well?"

The operative shifted on his feet, and nodded very briefly.

"Answer me with your words, Lieutenant!"

"Yes, General, we did."

"And what would you have possibly given her, I wonder?!"

The man blinked twice, as if he was trying to disappear into his desk.

"She submitted ordinance paperwork, sir… for a seven-point-five L-Forty-Eight."

James's gloves nearly exploded as he balled his fists. All the veins on his forehead were inflamed and pulsing.

"Now, you and I both know that Rose is a strong girl, but I'm fairly confident that she can't lift a one-tonne anti-tank gun by herself."

"... it's mounted in a Mark-IV G-model, sir."

James nearly detonated from anger.

"A MARK-IV?! The Atlesian Army hasn't used the Mark-IV in seventy five years! How did even think about letting her have one?!"

"I am unsure what you want me to say, sir, the paperwork was all in order, notarized and filed correctly. There was a running Mark-IV in the heritage collection, it was still serialized and still wore its convoy number. She applied for it, we had the quartermaster give it to her. Sir."

James had to take a second to breathe and not murder his lieutenant.

"A soldier comes to you. A trained, extremely efficient special operative who normally applies for .50 BMG, flak vests, and smoke grenades suddenly wants a whole-ass antique tank, and that doesn't seem weird to you?!"

"We assumed it was extraneous circumstances, sir."

"Under extraneous circumstances spec-ops soldiers can be commissioned a LARV or Weisel, not a tank!"

The poor lieutenant wanted to cry. But didn't, somehow.

"The paperwork was signed. We were given clearance, we released the equipment."

"On who's authority?!"

"Yours, sir."

If the room wasn't already quiet, it suddenly became quieter. All the air left the room at once. The General pointed a finger very close to the Lieutenant's face.

"Eck-fucking-scuse me?!"

"It was your name on paperwork, sir, that's why I don't understand why you're so angry."

"MY AUTHORITY?! Do you not think that I would have seen that paperwork cross my desk, read it first, and then signed it? DO you think I would have signed! An application like that! Without contacting the person submitting them first!"

"No, sir-"

"I bet not! Show me the paperwork!"

"Yes, sir."

The lieutenant dashed off to the room filled with filing cabinets adjacent to the radar room. James scrunched up his face and aggressively scratched at his head, trying to rid himself of the stupidity that he found himself in. His blood was boiling. The lieutenant returned a moment later with a file folder in his hands. A thick one, at that. James held out his hand.

"Give it to me."

"Yes, General."

He took the file and opened it, rifling right to the back two pages where the signatures were scribbled. He squinted down at the names on the page and the scripty handwriting.

"Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir."

"This is not my signature."

The Lieutenant when white.

"Sir?"

"It's a very good copy of my signature, but this is most certainly not my handwriting. Do you expect me to believe that Miss Ruby Rose, the most honest and selfless soldier I have on staff would fake my signature to acquire antique ordinance?"

"Uh-m, no sir."

James sighed again, pulled out the Lieutenant's chair, and sat down in it.

"That's right."

He continued through the file, finding a particular pink slip of paper just two pages down from the top of the pile of pages. He frowned at it. More than he already was.

"This is a permission of absence-assistance form." he looked up at the Lieutenant. "Somebody submitted this paperwork for her."

"Y-yes sir."

Even though he could read the page, he tightened his gaze up at the lieutenant.

"Who."

"Lieutenant Colonel Schnee."

"Oh, jeez."

He dropped his head into his hands. After a minute of griping and rubbing his temples, he stood up and set the file folder down on the desk, still open.

"Tell me, Lieutenant." he put his hands on his hips. "I'm tired of being angry, it's making me sick. At ease, soldier. But tell me- and be honest with me."

"Y-yes, General."

"What do you think… what do you think Miss Rose would be doing with an antique Mark-IV and fifty rounds of anti-tank ammunition?"

"You want me to be honest, sir?"

James nodded.

"Y-yes, that is what I just said."

"Uh, Agent Rose suffers from diagnosed depression and post-traumatic, sir. She has mentioned in the past that visiting the rifle range is cathartic for her, and she spends a lot of her free time in the museum on base, reading the exhibits. I would assume that she found out that the Mark-IV was serialized and wanted to try it out. She does live on an eighteen-hundred acre farm, sir. I wasn't concerned because the situation seemed logical to me and my unit, sir."

James was trying, he really was.

"While you are correct, Lieutenant, that farm is six thousand miles away in Patch, across an ocean. How would she get the tank there."

"She requested a transport, sir."

"Then get me the pilot and the flight plan."

"It was an automated transport, sir. And it dropped off radar halfway across the North Sea."

He took his head out of his hands and looked up at the operative.

"It did what?"

"That's where our radar range ends, sir. Just at the border of international waters."

"Put the tracer up on screen."

"Yes sir." the lieutenant turned to one of the com techs at the front of the room. "Corporal Redmond, trace Manta-Six-Niner."

The com tech sat down at his desk extremely quickly and mashed his keyboard with lightning pace. After a beat, the big screen at the front of the room changed to the radar display screen, showing several dozen active blips, showing all the battlecruisers and aircraft deployed from one end of Atlas to the other. A line showed up on screen, dotting across from the centre of the page down and to the right, indicating a south-east path of travel. James blinked.

"See, that's not what I expected to see, based on your explanation, Lieutenant. Corporal, could you overlay that radar graph onto a map of Atlas."

Without even a millisecond of hesitation, a map came up on screen, showing the radar path overlayed onto the upper quadrant. James stood up and studied it for a second.

"Huh."

"Yes, General?"

"That doesn't look like it's going to Patch."

"N-no, sir. It seems to be going to Mistral."

"Mistral…" James paused, eyes widening. "...oh no."

"Sir?"

"Oh fuck…"

It clicked in his head. Her sudden disappearance and deactivation of her body identification, the specific choice of an antique tank that wouldn't have a tracking system installed, several pieces of extremely potent and untraceable non-computer-controlled powder-charge ammunition, an automated transport that wouldn't be tracked after it left radar range. This wasn't for pleasure. This wasn't for fun or for catharsis. And having documents submitted by someone he literally trained to fake his signature. She knew what she was doing. This was purposeful. James' voice caught in his throat.

"She's going to Kayaba…"

The Lieutenant froze.

"Uh, General?"

James bolted upright.

"Red ALERT!"

Somebody down at the front hit the big red button. The room exploded with noise again, sirens blasting and spinning red strobe lights literally descending from the ceiling. James screamed.

"I want all personnel available descending on that forest now, every piece of equipment we have at the ready! I want all battleships turned at Mistral and deployed on that forest at full speed! I want you to take every piece of artillery we have available from the smallest mortar to that entire railyard of Gustav Guns pointed at Kayaba fucking forest and I want everything living, Grimm, or inanimate that isn't Special Agent Ruby Rose razed to the fucking ground! You will bring me back that girl safe and sound or you will be shot! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!"

"Sir, yes, Sir!" came the chorus of the room.

"Should I mark this as AWOL recovery, sir?"

James turned, his scorching glare cutting into and through the poor lieutenant. He pointed his finger back into the man's face, the mechanism beneath his leather gloves whirring loudly from effort. His teeth clenched shut.

"You will mark this as rescue, and you will do it now. Am I understood, Lieutenant?"

"Y-y-ye-yes, s-sir."

James yelled something nondescript and turned to storm out. If the door had been opened already, it would have gotten off with only a few scrapes from the doorstop when he had barged in a few minutes before. But since it was closed, it met with the unfortunate fate of being punched actually off its hinges as General Ironwood destroyed his way out of the room and broke into a run towards his office.

"Fuck me. Taiyang's gonna fucking kill me…"

/.../

The snow fell gently and sparsely around her as she chopped her way through the undergrowth, her machete cleaving easily through the frosty foliage. Her jumpkit was usually light, consisting of a Ka-Bar knife, her NF-Seven-Five, a medkit, and a pair of kevlar gloves to keep her weight low. Jumping with her rifle on tended to add excess weight, unless it was an emergency or an active combat zone, their kit would normally be placed in a crate and dropped in after them for recovery. Jumping with a machete strapped to her hip was a little more precarious than normal, of course, since there wasn't really a safe way to land with something so long and sharply bladed attached near one's sensitive bits.

She sniffled and sliced her way through a felled tree, snapping the cold wood with a sharp crackle. She had landed quite a ways away from her cargo, thanks to packing double the amount of parachutes on it, and the fact that it weighed twenty-six tonnes meant that the wind didn't push it around as much as it did her. It was about a ten-minute hike through the thick, snow-dusted woods before she came across the Dunkelgelb desert-tan painted zimmerit-coated armour, standing out like a sore thumb among the dark greens of the trees and the settling white of the snow.

"Hey, it landed right way up."

She stopped for a second and admired the swath of destroyed trees that the pallet had flattened on its descent from the sky. She had packed two battery-powered ten-tonne truck winches and a few tackle blocks in case the tank had landed with its tracks facing the clouds and its turret imbedded in the soft grassy earth. As part of her basic operative training had been recovery of large vehicles in deep mud and from rollovers, and after getting the highest mark in that particular class, took five months off of active duty to actually teach that particular class. It was always hilariously fun to take one of the Atlas Military's sophisticated six wheel drive ten-tonne cargo trucks, load it up with a battalion of baby-faced recruits, and launch it at full speed into impassable mud holes, then stand to the side and bark orders until they had dug it out for her. Suffice to say, it would have been an easy recovery for her.

She approached the tank, pulling off her elbow pads and setting them down onto the very flat front slope. She brushed some of the snow off the headlight and its brush guard, and wiggled the front ratchet strap that was pulling on the left side front tow hook and compressing the suspension. They were still tight, which pleased her. That meant that the force of the impact had been taken by the huge twelve-by-twelve planks of lumber under the hull instead of the seventy-year-old leaf springs. She didn't have the time nor the spare parts to change eight entire wheel bogie assemblies in the middle of a cold forest when she had more important things to do. Although, she did admit that changing a two-wheel bogie was much easier than replacing a torsion bar on the later Mark-VI heavy tanks thanks to the stupidly convoluted interleaved roadwheels. She digressed.

"Right. Time to get you free."

She reached for the ratchet strap release. It didn't budge. She yanking tried again, this time putting her back into it. Again, no dice.

"Shit, I'm gonna need a tanker bar."

She pulled her jump goggles off from around her neck and set them up on the front slope with her elbow pads, and circled around to the starboard sponson where all the pioneer tools were located, strapped to the outside of the hull with period-correct canvas straps. She carefully freed the big long cast iron tanker bar, which was really just a tan-painted oversized crowbar, and slung it over her shoulder. She returned to the bow and carefully fed the pointy end of the tanker bar into the ratchet strap handle and pulled back until it was about ready to give. She turned her face away and scrunched up her face, cringing, and pulled down hard on the bar. With a colossal bang the ratchet strap released and freed the front left corner of the tank, which tried to spring upward. The other front strap started to creak as it was now doing double duty holding the bow down. She quickly remedied it too, narrowly avoiding having her head taken off as the strap broke free of the hull and slapped into the ground.

"Holy shit. Who strapped this thing down, the Hulk?"

She wiped her brow on her forearm and circled back around to the stern, taking the straps off with more ease than the fronts. With all four of the heavy load straps removed, the tank rose up off of its wooden blocks, the suspension decompressing with a cacophony of creaks. She paused a moment, leaning on the tanker bar and admiring her work.

"Ah, perfect. Time for lunch, then."

She stepped up to the starboard sponson and put the tanker bar back into its straps, securing it tightly against the armour. She put her foot on one of the roadwheels and grabbed onto the edge of the tank's upper plate and pulled herself up onto the engine deck in one movement. She was careful to keep her hands away from the numerous cooling slats in the lid of the deck, since the metal was quite sharp and not exactly something she wanted to get her fingers stuck in. Her bag was still tucked into the bustle rack on the back of the turret, lucky for her it hadn't fallen out at any point during the descent or landing, and she pulled it free and set it on the turret roof, unzipping it quickly.

"Right. And the burner…"

She pulled the little propane stove out of the bustle rack as well and set it down next to her back, pulling a blue gas bottle from the bottom of her pack and screwing it onto the nozzle. The gas hissed quietly as she opened the knob, and she reached for her barbeque lighter in the front pocket of her pack. With a whoosh, the burner lit the ring of blue flame under the grill. She fished around in her pack for a second, grabbing a cooler bag out from under her clothes and setting it in her lap. Out of the cooler bag came a package of hot dogs and a bag of buns, which she set neatly on the turret roof behind the grill, which was heating up nicely. With a careful hand and a utility knife, the hot dogs came open and she rolled three of them onto the grill surface where they started to sizzle quietly.

"Ahh… great day for a barbeque."

The snow that was lightly falling around her was vanishing before it reached the grill, she noticed. It was kind of a neat effect. She took this opportunity to pull her Seven-Five out of its holster and do a quick field strip on it, dropping the magazine and setting it aside. The Seven-Five was a peculiar firearm, being the only handgun she could think of that fired a bottlenecked rifle cartridge, specifically the seven point five Mistrali round designed for the Ninety-P submachine gun. It was an odd looking gun, too, bulky and ugly in comparison with the sleek and classic Valean 1911 and more contemporary Mistrali Baratta A9M3 Tactical service pistol, but it served its purpose. And that purpose was delivering a pointed armour piercing round at two thousand three hundred feet per second. She pulled a grease bottle out of a pouch on her combat vest and applied two little drops of grease on the inside of the slide and two more down in the trigger mechanism. She sniffled.

"Ooh, the hot dogs are burning."

She reached over to the grill and flipped the weiners by hand, doing her best to not burn her fingers on them.

"Ow ow ow ow ow, ow. That's hot, you idiot."

She sighed and wiped her hand on her pants,

"Oy. You learned nothing from your dad, didja. You don't deserve to be the daughter of the Grillmaster."

She slid her pistol back together and locked the disassembly lug back closed, racking the slide a few times to test the action. Satisfied, she slid the magazine back in and chambered a round, and slid it back into its holster, ready for action. She could smell the hot dogs were almost ready now. She reached for the bag of buns and slid three out, placing them cut-side down on the grill to toast for a second. She had to shift her seating position as the cold steel of the armour was starting to bleed through the knees of her combat pants. She got comfortable on her butt, and grabbed the buns off the grill again and put them into the inside of her hat, which she had squished flat on the turret roof. She fished out a pair of tongs from the bottom of her bag which she had neglected earlier and lifted the weiners off of the grill and put them in their buns. Down at the bottom of the cooler bag was the condiments, travel sized of course.

"Why did I pack relish, I don't even like relish."

She put the relish back and applied a generous amount of ketchup and mustard to each one, capping the bottles and tossed them back into her bag and pulled off her gloves so she didn't get any food on them. The hot dogs were exactly as burnt and terrible as she liked them, crispy on the outside and painful on the inside. Perfect. She forced all three of them into her face faster than her dad would have approved of, but it was necessary to stave off the chill that was slowly creeping up on her. She carefully removed the ketchup-mustard mix from the ends of her fingers with a napkin and shut off the barbeque, unscrewing the gas bottle and sliding everything she was done with back into her bag and slipped the bag back into the bustle rack out of the way. She closed the lid on the little gas burner and slid it back into the rack as well, securing everything down with a pair of bungee straps. She did a quick time check on her watch.

"Oop, time to get moving."

Everything was meticulously planned out for this op. She knew that the General would find out about her mission, and would likely try and come to stop her at some point, so she was on a tight schedule. Everything was planned as a 'sooner rather than later' timescale, and she wasn't about to let that careful planning slip. She hopped down off the engine deck and back onto the snowy ground, jogging around to the portside sponson. She pulled at the canvas straps and freed the huge six-foot-long starting crank from the side of the hull, slinging it over her shoulder and moving around to the back of the tank. The bar was heavy, but with a bit of finesse she fed the socket end into the little hole on the transom just above the tow pintle and slid it all the way in until it caught on the end of the engine's main pulley.

"Prepare to start."

She paused a second.

"And cranking."

She spun the crank, having to put her whole body into it as the old motor was quite large and quite irritated from being dropped from the sky. The manual for this particular tank stated that the engine was to only be started electrically in emergencies or if the oil and coolant was already warm. Technically it was, since it had been driven out of the museum and into the hanger under its own power less than half a day ago, but in that time the oil would have probably settled back down in the pan. Since she didn't have a crew with her to switch on the ignition inside while she cranked, she figured that cycling the motor herself a few times then starting it electrically wasn't going to do any significant harm to the old beast. She lost count of her cranks at about forty, and decided that was enough to move oil up the galleries and into the rockers.

"Was it sixty turns? Who cares, I can't remember, ten more."

It was harder than she thought, cranking over the high-compression engine, but after another ten turns of the big long crank handle, she pulled it back out of the hole and returned it to its straps up on the sponson. She mounted the armour and climbed up the front slope, stepping up onto the turret roof and reaching for the hatch. With a turn of the handle, the hatch opened in two halves, assisted by two big springs, and revealed the commander's seat still in the up position. With one final check of the bustle rack straps, she turned around and fed herself feet-first into the open hatch and sat down on the commander's seat.

"Kay, how do I…"

She grabbed a handle under the seat and pulled it. To her actual surprise, the seat dropped incredibly quickly and nearly stopped her heart. She thanked her lucky stars that she had her legs apart when it did or else the recoil guard might have taken off her knees. She gingerly stood up again on the seat and grabbed both of the hatch halves and pulled them down, twisting the two red handles and locking them in place. She paused a minute to let her eyes adjust, feeling aimlessly along the wall for the light switch. After a second, her hand found the little metal box and she flicked the switch to the up position, illuminating everything in the tank in a soft yellow glow of old incandescent bulbs.

"Much better. Okay, driving…"

She slid off the seat and crouched down on the hull floor, and folded the gunner's seat up and out of the way so she could see forward in the hull. Without having a fully enclosed turret basket, she was able to slide herself off the turret floor and forward into the driver's compartment, folding herself onto the seat and pulling the seat back up behind her. She settled in with her legs on either side of the two tiller handles, her left foot on the clutch and her right foot on the extremely heavy brake.

"Right, lets see if my remedial Atlesian lessons are any help... "

She scanned the box of switches and dials to her right between her seat and the bow gunner, seeing everything printed out in common Atlesian in all caps.

"Okay, uh, Zündung, I think that means ignition."

She flipped the switch. All of the gauges lit up and flipped into position. The fuel gauge showed a full tank, the temperature gage showed cold, the battery gauge flipped deep into the green.

"That's what I was looking for. Now, starter…." she hunted around, finding two switches next to each other. "Okay, Anlasser Eins and Anlasser Zwei must be the two starter motors. Great. Now, where's the choke?"

She found a little pull knob just above her right knee, with a little printed sticker stuck on. She smirked, figuring the original engraved plate must have fallen off at some point in the last seventy four years.

"Starterklappe. I think that's what that means."

She pulled the knob out and reached over for the starter switches, holding her thumbs on each one.

"Okay, make some noise for me, baby. Contact!"

She pushed the switches up and held them. Both of the original starters slammed into the flywheel and turned it angrily, chugging the gigantic twelve cylinder marine engine over and over. She pumped the gas pedal a few times, trying to fuel the carburetors by force if she had to. After a few moments of hoping and just as she was about to give up and try again with the crank, the engine bit and lit off, screaming into life from the back of the tank. She let go of the switches and dived for the hand throttle and choke handle, pulling out one and pushing in the other until the rev counter settled at fifteen hundred revolutions per minute. She cheered to herself for a second.

"Brilliant. Where's my helmet?"

She leaned around the centre console and glanced into the bow gunner's seat. There was an antique Atlesian Armoured Corps tanker's helmet sitting on the seat. She shrugged, and figured if it was good enough for soldiers back then it would be good enough for her now. She reached over the transmission tunnel and grabbed it, pulling it back around and slid it over her head and tightened down the chin strap. She knocked herself on the head to test the helmet, and satisfied, sat up straight in the seat. She reached up to the hull roof and opened the driver's hatch, straightening her back so she could see out and over the front slope.

"Cool. Let's see if you move."

She reached forward and dropped the parking brake, and pulled back on both tillers so the tank wouldn't roll forward. Holding them back with her left hand, she reached down for the gearstick an grunted it into first gear, which was luckily in the correct left and forward position instead of somewhere dumb like right and down like the old cargo truck on base. She could never quite be sure with these old vehicles, they all had their nuances. She eased up on the clutch, feeling the pedal vibrate as it started to engage. The whole vehicle started to squeak and rattle as the tank started to move forward. She was giddy. She had never done this before. It felt like one of those 'meet your heroes' moments, and it was glorious.

"I'm drivin' a tank! Yeah!"

She pushed the throttle down and drove forward off the steel landing skid, sinking the fat treads into the mushy snowy ground. She gently pulled the left stick and felt the sprocket clutch disengage, slowly steering the tank to the left. She pulled a little harder, feeling the brake engage and slow the portside track down more noticeably, pivoting around. She let up on the tiller and accelerated, mashing the clutch and shifting the tank up into third gear, feeding the power in and trying not to be thrown around in her seat. There wasn't really any finesse to be had with the driving of this particular tank. She remembered a time out on patrol when a member of her Armoured Division escort managed to fit their MBT in between a street of buildings with only an inch to spare on either side of the sponsons. Those MBTs were all computer controlled and used a delicate joystick to drive, so being gentle with them was easy. The Mark-IV, however, was mechanical. And awful.

"Holy shit, it's loud!"

The noise of the big marine engine was extremely deafening. The MBTs were designed to operate in silent running with their generators turned off, but not the Mark-IV. It was designed with hardly any muffler at all to silence the three hundred unrestrained Atlesian horsepower as they churned the tracks through the snow. It wasn't like she was planning to sneak around or anything. She checked the compass on the dashboard, and did some alignment with the tillers until the dial was pointed firmly at E. She settled in on the seat, and pushed the tank to go faster, shifting it all the way up into sixth. With a top speed of only thirty miles per hour, it would be a long drive to the middle of the forest some fifty miles away.

"Time for the long haul. Ahh."

/.../

Kayaba forest was big. It covered something the the effect of four hundred and fifty thousand square miles of land, and was a big part of the north of Anima. It was almost entirely uninhabited, save for a few military-guarded radio outposts. Even the firewatch stations were military guarded. Nobody lived out here, and that meant there was no one to quell the overwhelming Grimm population. And just like with goldfish in a pond, the bigger the pond, the bigger the fish will grow. Kayaba forest had the largest population of Alpha-class Grimm and Goliaths of anywhere on Remnant. There was some big stuff out here, and quite a few undiscovered types of Grimm that hadn't yet been identified. Those were the kinds of Grimm that scared her.

Thanks to the absence of human intervention or any form of forestry in this part of the world, the trees here in Kayaba had been allowed to grow to absolutely ridiculous proportions, towering some three hundred and eighty feet in the air and measuring nearly thirty feet in diameter. And due to the lack of light through the canopy and available ground nutrients in the soil, only very short shrubs and bushes grew on the forest floor, meaning the twenty-six tonne tank could cruise through the large gaps in the trees at full chat, having to only make minor course corrections along the way. It was a good day for tanking, and in such a beautiful location too, if the density of Grimm could be ignored.

Ruby checked her map and compared it to the desert tracking compass that was running in the bow gunner's seat. She was within a minute of latitude of the circle she had drawn on the map, indicating where she had landed years before. She grimaced for a second, before shaking out her head. She let up on the accelerator and put the clutch in, pulling back on both tillers gently until the sprocket brakes started to grab, slowing the tank down again. She rolled to a slow stop in the snow, pointed along a long column empty of trees. She looked around.

"Alright. Battle stations, I guess."

She reached up and pulled the hatch closed, locking it shut. She put the transmission in third and let up on the clutch until the tank started to move forward, and fed in the hand throttle so the revs came up to about two thousand. She did one last check through the forward vision block before dropping the back of her seat and sliding back onto the hull floor and shimmying up and onto the gunner's seat in the turret. She hit the turret lock lever and freed the gun, her hands falling to the traverse and elevation handles. After a quick glance through the slightly fogged sight to make sure it was still good, she let go and reached down to the ammo rack in the portside sponson. The big seventy-five was hefty, for sure, but not overly so. Normally there would be a loader in position on the other side of the gun to get rounds into the breach, but she was alone in here today. She hoisted the almost fifteen pound cold brass round up and over the recoil guard, and dropped the shell onto the breach block. It dropped down and out of the way, and she slammed the round forward and into the chamber, lifting her hand up and out of the breach as it slammed shut, hammer cocked and ready to fire.

"Okay. If they don't know I'm here yet, they will now."

She cranked the elevation handle all the way up and centered the turret on the hull, holding her finger over the little electric trigger on the traverse handle.

"One away!"

She pulled the trigger.

BANG

The whole tank shook as the round fired, launching the recoil mechanism back and spitting the empty, smoking casing out and onto the hull floor. Her right ear was ringing.

"Holy fuck that's loud."

But it wasn't quite as loud as the roar that came back at her from somewhere deep in the forest.

"Well, they know I'm here. Hello, boys, I hope I haven't interrupted your party!"

She twisted the traverse handle and swung the turret around to the right, peering through the sight. Sure enough, there was a set of red eyes barreling towards her in the distance she smirked.

"Not today, pal."

She reached down and grabbed another round, slamming it into the chamber. With a steady hand, she got the middle stritch marking right over the spot between the glowing red dots.

"One away!"

BANG

And after the soil had settled in the spot the Grimm had been, she noticed a distinct lack of red dots. She smirked.

"That's what I'm talking about!"

She looked down at her scroll on her knee. She had the Grimm Locator app open and pinging, with its distance set to five hundred meters. She was surrounded by dots on the screen. An eyebrow went up as she judged the closest one. She spun the turret around so it was facing the nine o'clock position on the azimuth indicator and readied another round in her lap. She peered through the sight, catching eyes with another Grimm, this time a very large Beowulf, barreling at her. She lifted the round and slammed it home.

BANG

She didn't waste time getting another round in the chamber. Before the dust had even settled, she spun the turret around to seven o'clock. She lined up the stritch triangle on the chest of a Beringel.

BANG

Another round went in the chamber. She spun around to three o'clock. Two Ursa roared at her. She smirked.

"You don't learn, do you?"

BANG

The inside of the tank was getting pretty smoky. She stepped off her seat for a brief second to spin the ammo rack around to get more rounds pointed at her, and kicked the floor hatch open to let the spent casings bounce out of the hull and onto the ground. She lifted it closed with her foot as she sat back down on the gunner's seat and readied another round in the chamber.

"Come out come out…"

She spun to five o'clock, lining up on a pack of Beowulves that were running for her, teeth bared and snarling. If she wasn't inside a mobile twenty-six tonne bunker, she might have even been scared.

BANG

The big round ripped through two of the Beowulves like they were tissue paper, spraying entrails and viscera into the air. The explosive charge detonated as it hit the dirt, liquifying the rest of the pack like a hand grenade in a paint bucket.

"...Wherever you are!"

BANG

She spotted a line of Goliaths off in the distance, but well within her firing range. They marched single file, slowly, and methodically. She could see them taking occasional glances over at her and all the commotion she was causing, but they seemed to not want to be a part of it. She grinned evilly, slamming another round into the chamber and pulling another one up and onto her lap. Of course they wanted to join in the fun.

"Lead, tail, then pick them off. Right, Field Marshal?"

She easy lay onto the one in the front, steadying herself with the turret brake. She exhaled slowly, and braced herself against the recoil guard.

BANG

The lead Goliath disappeared in a shower of black ooze and mud. The whole train of them seemed to falter, not expecting her to engage them at range. She dropped the readied round into the breach and spun the turret so it faced the Goliath in the back of the line.

"Aaaand, chaos."

BANG

The line of Goliaths panicked, bumping into each other and trumpetting wildly. After a second, they all turned in discombobulated unison and started to trundle in her direction, much to her joy.

"Your attention please. This is your captain speaking. We will be passing through an area of slight turbulence."

BANG

The whole tank rocked violently as the round went down range. She fed another into the gun, rotating on the second Goliath.

"Go ahead. Make my day."

BANG

See, the Goliath was an imposing Grimm. At nearly five stories tall and weighing in at around two hundred tonnes, there weren't many weapons in the hands of modern Huntsmen that could adequately deal with the gigantic beasts. There was just too much flesh to deal with, and the sheer mass of the animals could easily overcome any vehicle it came up against. It was basically like fighting a building. It didn't yield, and you were going to lose. With Crescent Rose in hand, a Goliath could be slowed, but never stopped thanks to the sheer thickness of the chitinous armour plate that adorned its face. The heavy and destructive .50 BMG that came out of her rifle would put mere scratches in Goliath armour, even though it could cleave through lesser Grimm like they weren't even there.

But that was the genius of bringing the Mark-IV. It was fitted with an anti-tank gun. A weapon designed to cut through face-hardened steel plate armour. The L-Forty-Eight field gun was one of those things an enemy tanker had nightmares about, since at close range it was punching through up to a foot of hardened plate armour. Very few tanks save for the thickly-overarmoured Valean No. 4 Giant and the Eastern-Bloc Mistrali Type-34/85 with its severely sloped armour could withstand the punch of the Mark-IV's gun. So to say she was overcompensating was an understatement. Goliath armour might have been thick, two to three meters in some spots on its face plate, but it was very brittle and extremely susceptible to high-velocity armour-penetrating high-explosive anti-tank ammunition. The pointed bullet left the barrel with a flash of muzzle flare, crossed the forest in an eight of a second, and blew a ten foot wide hole in the face of the Goliath, blowing its face plate clean off.

"That's right, smile you son of a Bi-"

BANG

Of course, 'clean off' was a relative term.

BANG

Ruby coughed out a lungful of cordite smoke.

"Now that's a lotta damage!"

BANG

She was surprised that the line of Goliaths were still advancing on her. Normally they wisened up and would retreat after a certain number of them got killed to save themselves, but they seemed extra aggressive today. Not that she minded, of course. She was only just getting her aim in.

"Ssssssmokin'!"

BANG

She was having way too much fun reducing the line of Grimm to piles of sizzling rubble to realize her right shoulder was actually aching quite badly from hoisting the fifteen pound shells up and over the breach at such an awkward angle. The adrenaline in her veins was cushioning out everything, including the deafening ringing in her right ear. She knew she was doing irreparable damage to her eardrum, but she didn't care. It was all necessary.

"Say hello to my little frie-!"

BANG

With that, the line of Goliaths was quelled. She laughed boisterously and twisted the traverse handle to spin the turret forward again. All of a sudden, there were sounds of claws scratching on the armour, and the tank bucked under the weight of something landing on it.

"What the fuck?"

She pulled down the periscope and looked through it, nearly having a heart attack as the teeth of a large Manticore grinned back at her.

"Whoa! Well, now I can't have that! Get your ass off my tank!"

She twisted the traverse handle, rotating the barrel towards the beast in an attempt to push it off. All this did was make it angry, as it bellowed, turned its face, and tried to bite down on the gun barrel. The turret stopped turning, the traverse motor whining and groaning in effort. Ruby grunted.

"I said…"

She let go of the power controls and grabbed the manual traverse crank with both hands.

"Get off my tank!"

She put her whole back into it and turned, grunting the turret around and forcing the Manticore to lose its balance and fall off the front slope, dangling by it's jaws around the barrel. She quickly forced another round into the chamber and continued cranking the turret around, and as the barrel reached the seven o'clock position on the azimuth indicator, the Manticore's torso halted its continued rotation. She grimaced as she looked through the periscope, watching as the beast's hindquarters got caught by the tank's portside tracks and pulled down hard. Unfortunately, the Manticore was unable to release it's jaw lock muscles in time as the weight of the tank separated its head from its body, pancaking it into the soil and leaving its furry head hanging freely and disturbingly. Ruby choked a little.

"Oh, fuck, that's gross!"

She barely had time to consider it as two more smaller Manticores landed hard in place of the first, one on the engine deck and the other on a fallen tree she was passing by. She wasted no time diving for the trigger.

BANG

The shockwave that blasted out of the sides of the muzzle brake was enough, vaporizing the heads of the two unfortunate Manticores who had basically parked themselves in the exact wrong places, knocking them sideways and free of the tank. The shock of the firinging also shook loose the ugly head that was clamped to her barrel, freeing up her sight picture once again.

"Okay, getting a little close for comfort."

She powered the turret around again to the rear, where a group of extremely angry Beringels were basically fighting with each other to be the first to reach the tank and its occupant.

"Oh! Well you folks look like you could use some piercings!"

BANG

The line of apes was shredded in an instant, sending limbs and heads flying everywhere, along with a few yards of dirt and debris. The engine deck was getting pretty severely caked in mud now as the damp, snowy earth she was kicking up was warmed by the engine. Any more and she'd need a shovel to dig the tank out. An alarm went off on her scroll, indicating there was something behind her. She quickly loaded another round and spun the turret around to face forward.

"Whoa, little close!"

She stamped down on the floor-mounted trigger, lighting up the coaxial machine gun mounted just under her sight. A haze of green tracer bullets shot forward and ripped through a pair of Ursa that had stepped a little bit in the wrong direction. They fell to the ground with two heavy thuds directly in front of her tank.

"Oh, shit!"

The tank slammed into the two corpses, shunting them forward. The tracks grabbed traction on the dead Ursai's back armour and lifted the bow of the tank up, almost knocking her out of her seat the three-tonne Ursai bodies couldn't handle the twenty-six tonne tank that was climbing them and collapsed, spewing entrails and insides out onto the snowy ground, tainting it black.

"Ugh, that was awful! That's so inhumane!"

She shivered as the smell of the outside started to come in through the ventilation system. It was pretty putrid, as decaying Grimm corpses tended to be. She coughed, kicking the floor hatch open again to clear out the spent casings, the brass ringing like church bells as they clattered out onto some rocks. The Mark-IV was doing an excellent job, churning through the forest with more easy than any other seventy-four year old vehicle would and holding its easy pace like an absolute champ. She spun the turret around to the two o'clock, spying a particularly large Beowulf lunging at her, magnified by the sight.

"Oh, no you don't"

BANG

A little alarm light started to flash on the azimuth indicator, labelled 'Überhitzungsschutz'.

"Shit…"

She ignored the warning light and fed another round in. Her phone beeped loudly in her lap. She looked down and bit her tongue. The screen indicated a Class-Two warning, reserved for certain kinds of extra-dangerous Grimm. She spun the turret around to the eight o'clock position. She gasped a little.

"Oh."

The shining, golden stinger of a very large and very angry Death Stalker glinted through the sight at her. She layed on its face armour and pulled extra hard on the trigger.

BANG

For the first time, Ruby felt a twinge of fear. The shot had ricocheted off the white armour due to the steep slope that the beast presented to her. Since this particular Grimm was very low and very flat, there wasn't a lot of real estate on it to shoot at, and since it was an invertebrate, the whole of the Grimm's body was made of armour, there was no soft flesh to even aim at. She readied another round in the chamber and looked through her periscope, desperately trying to find something that might help, since if that Death Stalker got close, it could easily snap a track off, or tip the tank on its side at the very least.

"Fuck, this better work."

She carefully laid the gun to the right, aiming at the tree that was next to the beast.

BANG

The round ripped through the thick tree trunk, detonating its explosive charge and basically cutting the tree down with extra steps. The top part of the tree fell straight down with a massive thud, tilting over and starting to fall sideways.

"No, no, you stay put, bastard."

She stood on the machine gun switch, and sprayed the ever loving shit out of the Death Stalker's face, lighting the snowy forest up in green tracer light again. The beast stopped and stood in place, guarding its face with its pincers. She kept her foot held hard down on the switch, right up until the point where the gun ran out its belt and clicked loudly, indicating it was spent.

"Oh, come on!"

She reached for a new belt. It wasn't needed, however, as the massive tree fell all the way down and completely flattened the big ugly Grimm, leaving only its pincers un-squashed.

"Yeah! Take that!"

Three large Griffons landed on the freshly felled tree, eyeing her and the tank with a certain amount of trepidation.

"Gee, I wondered when you'd show up!"

She slammed another round in, and lined up with the one in the middle.

BANG

As fast as Griffons could fly, and they were indeed incredibly fast, fast enough to dodge low-velocity dust ammunition, there was just no avoiding something flying at almost three thousand feet per second. The middle Griffon disappeared in a sudden cloud of feathers, as it wasn't armoured enough to trigger the round's explosive charge. Before the other two got any funny ideas about taking off and flying away, she slammed another round in and aimed just slightly below where the Griffons were perched.

BANG

The tree exploded again, sending huge chunks of wood flying every which way. She watched the two Griffons try to get up, but get stopped halfway through cawing at each other by the explosion of shrapnel. They fell forward, through the smoky cloud of debris, their chests full of oozing puncture wounds, each of them missing significant portions of their extremities as well. It was a bloodbath. She spun the turret around forward, seeing a herd of Creeps actually running away from the bow of the tank.

"Well that just won't do."

BANG

Grimm body parts exploded into the air. Black, gooey blood rained down, accompanied by wet, snowy soil, coating the front slope. She caught sight of a pair of Creeps that had been severely wounded by the blast, in her way and unable to get up. Since she had no control of the forward movement of the tank, she just watched through her periscope as they disappeared underneath, and grimaced a little as she felt the tank rock to one side as their bodies were squashed under the tracks. It was getting uncomfortable. At least with a regular gun or bladed weapon, the Grimm could die with dignity. Getting blown to pieces didn't feel very dignified.

"Wait, who the fuck am I kidding, they don't deserve dignity."

She spun around to the ten o'clock. A King Taijitu slithered out of the trees, conveniently right in the middle of her sight.

"I hate snakes!"

BANG

And just like that, one was made two, as the explosion ripped the beast's body in twain almost right at the join of the white and black halves, sending them in two furies of agonizing slithers as their connected brain stems were severed. She watched with pain in her face as each end roared in anguish, their eyes fluttering, not knowing what to do. Very few Grimm she had ever encountered ever seemed scared, or had any sense of what death was. But this King Taijitu, or rather, each end of this King Taijitu seemed to have at least a passing understanding of its end, and that it was very near it. Ruby squared up on target, right between where the two heads were lying, and closed her eyes.

BANG

She opened them again to a familiar sight. A cloud of smoke and debris, and headless Grimm.

"Why is this getting to me? This is my job!"

She reached for another round in the ready rack. Something hit the side of the tank. Hard.

"Fuck!"

She almost fell out of her seat as the tank rocked sideways. All of a sudden, the hull started to turn to the right.

"Fuck, walked a track! Who did this?!"

She spun her periscope around to the right. Sitting in the dirt, about ten feet away, was a very concussed and dizzy looking Boarbatusk, its tusks damaged and scratched with dark yellow paint.

"You again?! Cocksucker!"

She spun the turret around, and pointed the barrel down at the face of the perpetrator.

"You remember what I said!? You remember what I said I'd do!?"

She slammed another round in.

"You remember."

BANG

The Grimm disappeared in a crater, dug up by the huge explosion. But unfortunately that wasn't the only thing swallowed by the crater, as the edge of the hole collapsed under the weight of the tank, sucking it in.

"Oh SHIT!"

The tank slid sideways into the crater, digging in the roadwheels on the starboard side and bottoming the hull out on the dirt. The port side track ground into the soil, pulling up the permafrost and loam beneath it but not making any more forward progress. The tank was stuck.

"Oh, fuck me!"

She panicked and dove for the periscope. The planet was sloped sideways at about a fifteen degree angle, and a plume of dirt and smoke was rising from the front of the tank. A large crowd of Grimm was advancing on her from about a hundred meters off the bow.

"Fuck. You stay back, you bastards!"

She slammed another round in.

BANG

The devastating hole in the ranks was quickly filled by more Grimm.

"Damn it. Come on!"

Another one.

BANG

Again, more Grimm replaced their liquified brethren. Ruby grit her teeth and focused on getting as much lead downrange as possible, even with her shoulder on the brink of falling to pieces.

"Come on!"

BANG

She reloaded, heart racing.

BANG

Her lungs burned. Bits of Beowulf rained down.

BANG

The barrel temperature warning light was on constant now. With every shot, more and more of the rifling was coming out with the projectile.

BANG

Rounds were ricocheting now, as they were losing a lot of momentum before even leaving the damaged barrel. This gun wasn't meant for sustained fire in such quantities. The manual had explicitly stated that after every five rounds fired the crew was to clear the bore and wait up to ten minutes for the metal to cool. This would keep the rifling sleeve intact and extend the life of the gun. Besides, most tank-on-tank combat never lasted more than five rounds anyways. Most never lasted past one.

BANG

The tank was fighting for its life. It didn't want to give up. And Ruby was damn proud of it. The big L-Fort-Eight wasn't accurate anymore, barely able to get shots down to the hundred metre range the targets were at with any sort of precision. She was aiming with the periscope at this point, as the constant shocks from firing had cracked the sight and rendered it useless.

"Come on… stay dead…"

BANG

There was only one round left in the ready racks. The rest were in a storage bin down in the hull next to the bow gunner. Too far away to resupply with a hoard this size bearing down on her like this. She growled and grabbed the final round, slamming it into the breach. She pointed the damaged gun towards a huge Alpha Beowulf that was leading the charge at her. She spit through a clenched jaw.

"Fuck you."

PAFFFSSSsssss

"Fuck, misfire!"

She fell out of her seat and slid under the recoil guard, standing up again in the loader's position. She grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and pulled the pin, readying it in case the round was still live. She kicked open the floor hatch and grabbed the breach operating handle, slamming it open and preparing for the worst. The casing flew out backwards, minus its projectile and fell out the hole in the floor into the mud. This meant the explosive charge was somewhere down the barrel, still unexploded. She pointed the nozzle of the fire extinguisher up the bore and squeezed the handle, filling it with the retardant foam that would extinguish any burning cordite and react with the explosive, neutralizing it so it wouldn't burst.

"Fuck me. Damn it! I'm sorry!"

She dropped the extinguisher and slid back around to the gunner's seat. She reached for the coaxial machine gun and opened its loading gate, pulling out the last belt link that was still in the feed mechanism and sticking it between her teeth. She grabbed two more boxes of ammunition off the rack inside the turret wall and put them down next to the mantlet, lids open. She fed the first one in, dropped the loading gate, and cycled the bolt to load it. She grabbed the second belt, and using the empty link, joined it to the first.

"Looks like your time it up, friend. But goddamn it, you're not going down without a fight."

She grabbed the power traverse handle and held it to the right, feeling the turret start to turn slowly, and she tied it in place with a rag. She slid out of her seat and back into the hull, scrambling into the driver's compartment again. She reached for the hand throttle, grimaced, and yanked it all the way back. The engine soared to redline, shaking the whole tank as it tried to twist the transmission and driveline into a pretzel. Anything that approach the front of the tank now would either be eviscerated by the naked front sprocket, or pulled down and shredded by the remaining track. The tank screamed. Ruby wanted to scream too, but there were more important things to do. She hopped back up into the turret and slid open the hatch that led to the bustle rack, seeing her bag and barbeque covered in a thick layer of mud and snow. She unzipped her bag and reached inside, pulling out her weapons and the thick cloak that were down, hidden at the bottom. She quickly threw it around her neck and slammed the hatch shut again, reaching above her head for the commander's hatch.

"It was an honour serving with you! Auf Wiedersehen, mein Freund!"

She kicked down on the floor trigger for the machine gun as hard as she could, breaking it and locking it in the fire position. The sound of the gun firing was her que, and she punched open the commander's hatch and grabbed the outside of the cupula. Ruby held her breath, and jumped out.

I told you I was coming back. Here I am. Are you ready?

Ruby soared up into the air, flipping backwards, the shining white cape flying out around her in the wind. She landed boots-down in front of the tank, green tracer bullets sailing over her head in a slowly turning arc and absolutely sawing through a line of Beowulves like they weren't even there. She reached for her belt with a smirk, and pulled free the two sickles, flicking them open to her sides.

"Come at me."

She dashed forward, keeping her head low under the machine gun fire and into the forest, immediately slicing into an Ursa that dared step into her path with both blades buried into the beast's chest. She yelled and pulled down, eviscerating a pair of huge gouges into the soft furry flesh and rolling away over her right shoulder before a torrent of black ooze shot out and onto the snow. It smelled. It smelled horrible, now that she was outside her climate-controlled mobile bunker. She grimaced and spun upward, gritting her teeth and shaking off the blood from the blades before turning back to a line of Beowulves advancing on her.

"Where is the Alpha?!"

Now, the Grimm obviously weren't going to communicate with her, since none of them could speak, but she demanded their compliance anyways. She ran forward, directly at the Beowulf in the middle, teeth bared and almost foaming at the mouth. The beast bared its teeth right back at her, eyes glowing. She didn't give it an opportunity to advance, swinging both sickles around and plunging the blades into each side of the animal's skull with a sickening crunch. Its whole body shuddered as the nervous system went into shock during shut down, spasming violently. She let go of the sickle handles and grabbed onto its nose, using it as a ledge to hoist herself up and onto its head, drawing her sidearm and flicking the safety off.

"Come on, I want answers, you filthy dogs!"

She filled the surrounding five heads with two armour-piercing hollow points each, before holstering the pistol and flipping forward, grabbing on to her sickles again and pulling them free. The Beowulf collapsed onto its decaying pack, a gutteral noise emanating from whatever remained of its lungs. She leaped free of the carcasses and did another flip, coiling her body mid-air and landing backwards in front of a wounded Nevermore that had taken a heavy strafing from the machine gun. Without even looking, she dodged to the left, springing off her hands as the giant bird tried to snap at her with its hooked, tooth-filled beak. She spun her right sickle around to a backhanded grip, and lunged it upwards, catching the Nevermore under the mouth and cracking the blade into the keratin and bone. The bird yelped in pain, a yelp which was made louder as she turned and flexed as hard as humanly possible and pulled the eight-tonne animal off its ugly feet and slammed it into the dirt on its side. The machine gun came around again and filled the Nevermore with even more green tracer, ending its noisy life in a flurry of holes and black ooze.

"Alpha!"

She dove for a tree trunk, using it to propel herself up into the air over a pair of Griffons that had landed next to her. With a twist of her abdominals, she rotated over and landed on the left one's back, straddling it like a carthorse between its neck and its wings. She drove her left sickle into a spot on its neck where two pieces of armour butted together. The Griffon screamed in agony as she plunged the blade down in between two vertebrae in its neck and twisted, forcing it to stumble into its comrade and subconsciously bite down on whatever was in front of it. Conveniently, it was the other Griffon's shoulder, who did not exactly appreciate the sudden friendly attack. A brawl started, the bitten Griffon rearing up and attempting to claw at her mount, which also reared in both pain and dominance. Ruby let go of the sickle and drove the other one into the beast's midback, making an awful squelching noise. She grimaced, held her breath, and rolled sideways, holding on to the sickle with both hands and dragging it down the Griffon's side and stomach, spilling blood and entrails onto the ground, narrowly avoiding getting drenched herself. The dying, eviscerated Griffon fell sideways over top of her, and she flipped forward and out of the way before she was pancaked. Her other sickle fell from the decaying neck and landed in her outstretched hand. She smirked up at the remaining Griffon.

"Where!"

She sliced both blades into its front knees, severing them.

"Is!"

She grabbed its armoured ribs with the blades and dragged it to the soil, ignoring its baleful howling.

"Your!"

She let go of the sickles and grabbed the Griffon's fangs, dragging its big ugly head towards hers.

"ALPHA!"

All of a sudden, a deafening roar pierced through the forest, silencing everything and everyone. The trees shook. Birds that were standing by took off. Even the Grimm stopped their forward push to her, frozen in place. The whole ground shook as whatever it was roared again. Ruby smiled.

"There you are."

She let go of the trembling Griffon and pulled her sickles slowly out of its shoulders. It seemed hesitant to even whine at the pain, lest it upset the Alpha. She turned a friendly smile to the Griffon as she slung her sickles back into their holsters, unlatched and buttoned up.

"See, was that so hard?"

She unholster her pistol and shot it between the eyes, watching it collapse dead at her feet. Her smile turned to a scowl. Her face turned to the source of the roar, hearing it bellow out again. Her heart was reaching critical mass now, beating so hard and so fast to keep up with her fury that she might have suffered a cardiac incident if it wasn't for her Aura repairing the damaged vascular muscles. She stepped gingerly through the snowy forest, listening for the sound of heavy panting from just ahead of her. She stepped around a pair of trembling, stone-stiff Creeps that almost seemed to be standing at attention. She came up on a line of Beowulves blocking her way with their backs to her.

"You are in my way."

Just as she was about to reach for her sickles to teach the beasts a lesson in humility, they stepped to the sides allon their own and revealed the clearing ahead of them.

"Oh."

She stepped forward. Her eyes flashed.

"Hello, there."

A familiar face. A familiar one-eyed face. She grit her teeth and glared up at the face of the largest Beowulf she had ever seen. The Alpha of this forest. The king of the Grimm this end of the continent. All of the surrounding Grimm were locked solid around the outside of the clearing, as if they were waiting for some kind of instruction. Ruby smirked, realizing she was safe for the time being. She pulled out her machete and stuck it down into the top of the head of the Beowulf on her right, shoving it down and into the dirt. Pulling it free, she reached over and slit the trachea of the one on her left, never once taking her eyes off the Alpha. She stepped forward into the clearing, shaking off the ooze that was on the blade, tossing it harshly down so it stuck into the dirt. With a shrug of her shoulders, she dropped the cape off, letting it fall into the snow.

"It's been a while."

The Alpha snarled, revealing the two foot long glistening fangs, accompanied by a huge number of pointed incisors just behind. She grimaced, feeling her stomach turn. Those were a formidable set of teeth. She knew exactly the kind of damage they could do, feeling the scars on her stomach and torso start to burn. She continued forward, reaching for the buckle of her duty belt and unclipping it. She let it fall in the snow behind her.

"How've you been?"

She grabbed her holster and unbuckled it from her pants. She tossed it to the side, hearing it poof into the soft snow.

"I've been terrible, thanks. Nothing but nightmares, nothing but weakness."

She grabbed her sickles and flicked them open with a shing of ringing metal on metal. The Alpha twitched slightly, a low growl coming from deep in its throat.

"I'm here to change that. I opened up to my sister about something that haunted me for so long, and poof, the nightmares and weaknesses went away. I confronted my fears. I'm not scared anymore."

She let the sickles fall from her hands, landing deep in the snow as she continued forward. She was unarmed. She was unarmed and surrounded by an entire forest of Grimm.

"I think you know why I'm here, don't you? I'm not scared of this forest anymore. I'm not scared of you anymore. I'm not scared of anything anymore. My friends and family helped me assure that. My sister, the bravest person I know. And Weiss, the only person I've ever loved. I'm here as proof that nothing can stop me."

She came to a halt right in front of those huge teeth, the Alpha's one working eye blazing bright red down at her only for her to glare almost gleefully back up at it. She popped the buttons on her combat vest and slid it off, dropping it off to one side. The cold air clung to her bare arms and cut through her t-shirt but she ignored the feelings.

"I'm gonna need my knife back."

The handle of the standard-issue combat knife was still where she left it, protruding from the damaged and healed-over left eye socket. It was pretty gross, actually. The Alpha growled as she reached forward.

"Do you mind?"

It huffed at her, its breath rancid and hot, but it didn't flinch away. Ruby reached out and briefly brushed her hand against the armour plate that adorned its face. It was rough, like uncut sandstone under her fingers, very unlike the smooth armour of younger and smaller Grimm. This armour had seen a lot of years. Likely several hundred.

"This may hurt a little bit. Sorry."

She slowly slid her hand up to the beast's eye and the handle of her knife, wrapping her fingers carefully around it. She shivered. This felt strikingly similar to her encounter with the big Cervidae on the farm, only this time instead of a car-sized and fairly docile animal that wanted nothing to do with her, she was standing beneath the mouth of an Alpha Beowulf that likely outweighed the Mark-IV and had already almost killed her.

"Be still please."

She pushed one hand against the animal's head and pulled the knife with the other. It growled and shook a little, making her freeze after only pulling out an inch of blade. Black ooze seeped out around the blade with a nasty noise.

"Please."

The Alpha settled again. She sighed through a clenched jaw and pulled on the knife slowly again. It stirred, in pain. She retracted her hands and stepped back a step.

"How about you sit down?"

The Alpha huffed, but complied, laying its belly on the snow and crossing its front legs respectfully.

"There you go. I'm gonna do this quickly, it will only hurt for a second, I promise."

She grabbed the knife again, making sure to maintain eye contact. She readied herself, took a long deep breath, and pulled the knife out in one movement. The Alpha roared.

"Oh, shit."

She reached out and grabbed the beast's head before it could rear up or get up onto its feet again and pulled it back down. As strong as she was, the Alpha was a lot stronger, and a lot heavier, easily lifting her off the ground with its neck. She struggled to hold on to the armoured face plate as it shook.

"Calm down, calm down! I got you!"

She fired up her Aura channeling it down into her hands again. The thick armour was deflecting it. She panicked and reached for the unarmoured top of its head, grabbing on to the thick, coarse fur and gripping down.

"Stop!"

As soon as she made contact with actual flesh, the roaring and thrashing stopped. She was clinging on to the armour for dear life, realizing she was a good fifty feet in the air, dangling precariously next to an open jaw full of giant teeth. She focussed all her energy to not dying, and gently tried stroking the fur to calm the Alpha.

"Put me down, please." she whispered.

The Alpha did as she asked, bringing itself back down and putting its front paws back onto the snowy earth, bending its neck so she could get off its face. She did let up her grip on the fur, however.

"Okay. Now for something stupid."

All of the time she spent learning how to do this trick was going to pay off. When Pyrrha had showed her how to do this little trick, it had only been for minor cuts and scrapes, nothing that a little bit of Aloe and a bandaid couldn't also fix. This was different. This wasn't a minor scrape, it was a destroyed eye, and it wasn't even human. The fact it had worked on a little cut on a Cervidae was one thing, but repairing damaged ocular tissue and parts of the visual nerves was an entirely different novel series all together.

But she tried anyway.

Ruby let herself go numb, feeling her Aura move down her arm and into her fingers. She closed her eyes and let her muscles go limp, holding her hand over the damaged eye socket. The Alpha stirred slightly. She ignored it. She could feel her power drain from her body, transferring through her freezing extremities and into the body of a Grimm. She realized just how much her Aura she actually took for granted, as the chill of the air bit into her harder and harder with each passing moment as she willingly depleted her Aura. Most normal people might call this dangerous. Most Huntsmen would call this suicidal. But she wasn't here for opinions.

"...Just a few more… moments…"

She tried to gently stroke the Alpha's rough armour to comfort it, not really sure if it could even feel her intentions. She winced as her Aura dropped below the safe margin of useage, reverberating as a sharp itch through her body and almost buckling her knees. She stood steadfast and let out a long breath, the condensation pooling around her head. It was almost done.

"...hold...on…"

She let go slowly, her body aching as it was free of any Aura at all. She was spent. The cold was now viscious, and she was now completely unarmed. She took a step back. Now it was dangerous.

"Okay… you can open your eye now…"

The Alpha huffed quietly, its face fidgeting. It struggled, scrunching up its face. Then, very slowly, it opened its left eye. Ruby let out a single, short chuckle. The repaired eye started to glow, brighter and brighter with every moment. The Alpha shook out its fur, and let its eye adjust to the light in the forest. After a flurry of blinking, it settled, and levelled a glare at her. A smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. Sure, the three and a half years it had been without binocular vision might have only been a blip in its overall lifespan, but that was still an incredibly long time to go with that sort of pain. The Alpha huffed again, and lay down, pressing its belly into the snow and crossed its front paws. It seemed almost relaxed, the deep grumble that emanated from its throat reverberating through the ground and up into her boots.

"Huh… there you go. Now you can see."

She paused and grabbed on to the hem of her t-shirt.

"Now you can clearly see what you did to me."

She very slowly lifted the hem of her shirt up. The cold air sawed through her bare skin as she revealed the garish wide scar that cut across her torso. Since she was so cold, her skin had turned a pale white, but the scar stayed red, almost glowing.

"Look."

The Alpha lowered its gaze, respectfully, eyeing the wide, angled scar. It huffed, quieter, and laid its chin on its paws.

"This is what you did to me. You tried to kill me. I don't appreciate that. I'm done having bad things happen to me. It's time I get control back. Don't you think?"

The Alpha seemed to lament, and looked away. Ruby's eyes glared for a moment.

"Nononono, look at me."

She grabbed the Alpha by the cheek and dragged its head back around, keeping her midriff exposed with her left hand, her knuckles turning white from effort. The Alpha tried to muscle away, but she didn't let it, pulling it back and slapping it on the nose. She spit through clenched teeth.

"Look at me. I'm in charge here. Not you. Me. Don't you fucking look away from me."

The Alpha shivered. Ruby pulled its head closer to her face.

"What you did was wrong. Do you understand that?"

This was a big animal to be forcing around. But it was yielding to her. She let the feeling take her.

"I have every right to kill you. To end your miserable, soulless life."

The Alpha nodded slowly. As if it understood.

"But I won't. Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe never. I want you to live with the remorse. I want you to live as proof that nothing… will stop me. I came here for my knife back. I have that now. Now I have to leave. Are you going to help me with that?"

It looked up at her briefly, locking eyes. It looked baleful. It looked sorry. Ruby grinned as it looked away again.

"That's what I thought. I forgive you. I-"

She was cut off by a roar from over her shoulder. She flinched, lowered her shirt again, and spun her head around to the source of the noise. One of the smaller Beowulves had stepped out of line and reared up, its fur standing on end and its teeth bared. Was it… challenging her? She frowned.

"Who said you could come forward?"

The Beowulf roared again, taking another step. The rest of the ranks of Grimm all seemed uneasy. It sparked the smallest twinge of fear in her.

"H-hey, get back in line! Fall IN!"

The beast didn't listen. Ruby twitched, and turned back to the Alpha.

"Deal with that."

The Alpha didn't waste a moment, standing up on all fours to tower over the forest again. It roared at the disobedient Grimm. Her ears burst as the sound of the commanding roar tore through her body, reverberating the entire forest. Having her ear against the breach of an anti-tank gun was a mere whisper compared to the onslaught of noise that bellowed from the Alpha. It was like every explosion in the known universe going off at once. She imagined this was the sort of noise the Moon had made when it cracked apart. Deafening. Cacophonous. Brutal.

After another agonizing moment, the roar ceased, and the Alpha closed its mouth, teeth out and ready. The smaller Beowulf stepped backwards, but it didn't fall in, and it didn't stop bearing its teeth. Ruby frowned and looked back to the Alpha.

"I guess we have to work together to get me out of here, huh?"

The Alpha snarled at the insubordinate. Ruby rolled out her neck and snarled.

"Alright. Go get him."