Hello folks! This chapter, a few tactical errors are made, Huo practices his favorite trick, and an important guest fails to show.
111. An Empty Room
Jaune had almost forgotten what it felt like to know which way was up.
With the Pennymech grappling it from the front, the giant hybrid had to focus most of its attention on her, which finally gave the rest of them a moment to breathe.
At least, his plan had involved taking a breather, right after they found Ren and Nora and made sure they were okay. But before he had the chance Twiggy stopped to hover in midair, her neck twisting around towards Penny. Jaune sagged against her neck. "Please tell me she has a plan. Someone has to have a plan, right?"
Twiggy barked, which was encouraging... then dove right at the giant, which was not.
Jaune yelped and clung to the saddle as they plummeted towards the hybrid's face—and wow, those eyes were really unsettling up close. Way too many of them, like a spider. Twiggy latched onto the helmet on its head, right at the crown. From only a few feet away, Jaune could see a seam where the outer panel was screwed on.
"Oh," he blurted.
Twiggy attacked it with all four paws, her claws screeching off the metal and leaving a whole lot of useless scratches. Harpy didn't have any more luck when she joined them a moment later—she soon gave up and made another attack on the giant's eyes instead. It closed them just in time, and gave its head and neck a shake that sent them all flying.
Okay. Get the panel off. Jaune could work with that.
"Down!" he shouted.
Either Harpy or Pyrrha must have guessed what he was thinking, because they passed him and Twiggy and flew straight towards the row of destroyed buildings he'd been aiming for. They scrambled out of the saddle the second they hit the ground. Jaune stumbled through the rubble, looking for—
"Jaune! Pyrrha!"
Nora's voice. He jumped and whirled around. "Guys!" Jaune threw himself at her, then Ren. "You're okay!"
"Mostly," Ren said, wincing slightly when Jaune hugged him. "What are you looking for?"
Oh. Right. "Something crowbar shaped."
With four of them searching, they soon spotted a long, thin piece of rebar. A bit too long, actually, but it only took a second for Twiggy to fix that by snapping it in half. Jaune tossed one end to Pyrrha and hefted the other in his right hand.
"Be careful," Ren said, and gave them a nod.
Jaune grinned. "Yeah, uh... pretty sure being careful means not going near that thing, but we'll try!"
They'd only been gone for a minute or two, tops, but when they came winging back to the fight, the giant had Penny by the throat.
She seemed... pretty comfortable, all things considered. There were a lot of sparks, and her chassis was cracking, but if it hurt at all she didn't show it. And when Jaune looked at the giant, he realized that she might be letting it do that. Because while it was chewing on her, its head was almost still... which was very helpful for Winter Schnee, who was kneeling on its helmet.
As they approached, Jaune noticed that Steele was still in the fight—circling around and making a nuisance of himself, and getting thrown around by the giant. Keeping it distracted. It didn't seem like it had noticed the human on its head. Sort of like how Jaune wouldn't notice if he was wearing a hat and an ant started crawling on it. She threw one arm out, tossing something down to the ground below.
Jaune guided Twiggy to circle around the giant, instead of going for the head like he'd planned. He didn't want it to toss Winter trying to shake him off. Then, as they came up on the other side, he finally spotted the screwdriver in her other hand.
Okay, new plan. Make sure the giant didn't notice until—
The giant pulled back, tearing a mass of metal and wiring away from the Pennymech. Its head jerked with the motion, and Winter slid all the way to the back, hanging by one hand from the back of its helmet. One of her boots struck its ear.
The three eyes Jaune could see rolled upwards.
"Go!" he shouted to Twiggy. He hoped Harpy would follow them—his voice was completely drowned out by Steele's furious shriek. But before he could attack the giant, it hurled the chunk of mech it had torn out. He dodged it, but it turned in midair and slammed into his stomach, sending him crashing through the wall of the Council headquarters. Winter managed to grab on with her other hand, but the screwdriver slipped between her fingers and fell over a hundred feet back to earth.
Jaune swallowed, and started undoing the straps on his saddle. The giant's head turned—another heartbeat and it would see them, and there would be no way they could get in close enough. Penny lunged, wrapping both forelegs around its neck and forcing it back to the ground. It landed hard on its rump. Winter slipped free, then managed to catch herself on one of the bony plates on its neck.
Jump. He didn't give himself any time to think about the hundreds of ways that this was a terrible idea. Instead he threw himself off Twiggy's back and onto the giant's forehead. One of his ankles turned as he landed, and he ended up on his hands and knees, staring blankly at the panel.
"Jaune!" Pyrrha dropped into a roll as she landed and came up a few feet away from him. "Over here!"
Winter had managed to get rid of eight screws—there were only two left on this side of the panel, and between them was a hairline gap almost ten feet long. Jaune raised the bit of rebar over his head and jammed it between the panel and the rest of the helmet. Beside him, Pyrrha did the same. As one, they grabbed the metal and heaved.
Absolutely nothing happened. They'd gotten them wedged in so tightly they didn't even wobble, but the panel was fixed on too tightly for them to move it.
Jaune tried to think over his own panic, and the screams of dragons, and the warning shout from Winter—Oh. He looked down. The silver lines on the giant's scales were glowing rather brightly.
There wasn't time to grab onto something. Not that it mattered—he, Pyrrha, and Winter were all thrown violently into the sky. He felt the familiar weightlessness that came with falling... but he couldn't help but notice that he was accelerating a lot faster than normal. Almost like something was pushing him towards the ground.
Jaune squeezed his eyes shut and tried very hard not to throw up.
Harpy could see it the moment Pyrrha was thrown into the air—her rider was moving much faster than she could fly. She couldn't catch her.
There was another human coming towards her. She ignored it. If she dived, if she cut right in front of the giant, if she poured everything she had into her speed...
It still wouldn't be enough.
She did it anyway. Wings pumping, watching her human reach the peak of her arc much too soon. And the other sailed right past her, his arms flailing. Pyrrha's blond human.
Something clicked. There were others in the sky with her—Freya and Ao Guang, who had taken off despite the injury in his side. Huo and Nymph, and Zircon and Nimbus. Steele and Penny. All of them closer than she was.
Harpy swerved in mid-air and wrapped a foreleg around Jaune's middle. Her wings snapped out wide to cup the air—
Fire erupted in her chest. He was too heavy—dragon heavy, not human heavy, and she knew the giant must have done something. Harpy pressed him against her chest and, when her wings failed, turned so that her shoulder took the worst of the fall. As she lay there on her side, dazed, she caught glimpses of the others.
Ao Guang reached Pyrrha first. Harpy realized there was a technique to stopping a fall—he set his foreleg under her arms and flared his wings on and off, not trying to fly but only to slow their drop. When he hit the ground, he rolled onto his back with the human cushioned against his belly. Nora and Ren, who he and Freya had left on the ground in their haste, rushed towards them.
Steele lunged to catch Winter—doing the same thing Harpy had almost tried, moving right past the giant. She pounced on him, driving him to the ground and pinning him under her bulk. He snarled and thrashed, clawing at her with none of the hesitation that had filled the battle up until now. His claws opened a long slash across her underbelly. The first blood drawn from her.
Penny leaped into the fray and took a bite meant for him on her shoulder. The giant grappled them both, and all three went rolling in a tangle of wings and tails.
It was Zircon who caught up to Winter, a little too late to give her a gentle landing. He hit the ground awkwardly on three legs, with the human cupped in his free paw. The impact knocked him right off his feet, and he had to twist to avoid landing on her. He squirmed sideways and nudged her with his nose. When he relaxed, so did Harpy. Her head hit the dirt and lolled to one side, and the pain in her chest seemed to double. She panted through it. Breathing hurt.
"Awn!"
Twiggy slammed into the ground a few feet away and bounded up to them. Her nose pushed under one of Harpy's sprawled wings, and Jaune stumbled into the open. He was pale, and limping badly, but still alive.
Harpy's eyes drifted closed. Then she felt a hand on her wing, and they snapped open. Jaune recoiled when she snarled at him.
"Sorry," he said, "but I need to see if you're hurt."
She subsided with a low rumble. Twiggy caught her head before it fell again, supporting it in one paw. Harpy lay still while the human checked her wing joints and muscles, even though every touch sent another spike of pain shooting through them. Then he came to her chest, and she flinched.
Jaune winced with her. "I think it's okay," he said, patting her shoulder. "It looks like you pulled a muscle. Twiggy had the same thing happen, and it healed up in a week or so."
The giant's tail slammed into the ground fifty feet away, sending up a gout of dirt and broken concrete. Jaune yelped and ducked under one of Twiggy's wings as bits of rubble rained down on them. "We gotta move!"
Harpy couldn't stand up, so Twiggy helped her climb onto her back and carried her over to Guang and Freya, well out of the way of the ongoing fight. She slid off and landed in an ungainly heap in front of Pyrrha. Familiar arms wrapped around her neck.
With the last of her strength, Harpy lifted her head and butted her snout against Guang's. He rumbled back, too exhausted to return the gesture. Freya hovered protectively over him, pausing only to lick at the wound in his side.
Twiggy paced around the three of them, her wings flared, ready to snap at any hybrid that came close. But not before she bent her neck towards Harpy and said, "Thank you."
"Go!"
Huo didn't hesitate. He dived right beside Nymph, Nimbus only a few feet behind him on her other side. Zircon didn't follow them—he was busy getting Winter safely to the ground.
Before they could land on her head, the giant snapped it back and roared again. This close, it felt like being shaken apart. Steele squirmed in her grip and bit down on her foreleg. The roar cut off.
Nimbus reached her head first. The two bits of rebar were still jammed into the gap between the panel on her head and the rest of the helmet. He braced his shoulder against one, and Nymph took the other. They heaved. The plate started to buckle.
There was another flash of silver, and the three of them were torn away and flung back into the sky—but not before the panel popped free, sending broken screws flying in every direction and revealing an inner casing.
Huo dove. Steele and Penny worked together to keep the giant's attention on them, forcing her to use her powers to stop them from attacking the vulnerable device. Huo thought she might be starting to get tired, too—it was getting easier to orient himself whenever she flung him around, and the world didn't spin quite as dizzyingly fast.
He reached her helmet just in time to grab on with all four paws as the world turned upside-down. Then he hung there, bat-like, as his body got heavier and heavier. But the device was right there. He tore at it with his teeth, ripping away layers and layers of what felt like cloth and tasted like chemicals. Huo spat them into the wind. Then, finally, he reached wires.
Now this, he knew how to handle.
Even as his grip started to slip, he reared his head and blasted the device with all the fire he could muster. The smell of melting copper and burnt plastic filled his nose. Sparks flew.
The giant's powers stopped. Huo's jaws snapped shut as he finally relaxed his forelegs—only to cling even tighter as she began to thrash. He felt the roar shivering through him from the pads of his paws, vibrating deep in his chest and knocking his heart off its rhythm. Her head whipped back and forth. Her tail lashed wildly behind her. Then her whole body convulsed and toppled sideways, hitting the ground with such force that several buildings finally gave up the ghost and collapsed.
There was a moment of silence. Then Huo let out a triumphant roar, and Sun whooped and patted the back of his neck. The giant was free.
At the sound, she began to stir. Huo yelped and slid down the length of her neck when her head rose, coming to a stop on her shoulder. Every movement was slow and jerky as she got to her feet, like she was waking up from a long sleep.
"Hello?" he said. The great head turned. Six eyes fixed on Huo. Her nostrils flared, and her ears pinned back against her skull.
Gone was the eerie blankness of the device. She looked angry.
"Come on," snarled Huo. "Let's get the bastards that—"
He even didn't see her move. Just a snapshot of her paw as it hurtled directly towards his face, and then blackness—and lots and lots of stars.
"Huo!"
Nymph dove for him, and just managed to grab her brother's tail before he hit the ground. Even with his fall slowed, he still hit the street hard enough to leave a crater in the pavement.
Behind them, the giant roared and took off again. Her eyes bulged with rage and fear—and fear must have won out, because she ducked away from the other dragons hovering around her head and galloped away.
"Huo?" Nymph walked around to his head and nudged him gently with her nose.
One eye cracked open. "Ugh..."
Two twin thumps, as Zircon and Nimbus landed and trotted up to join her. Neptune clambered out of the saddle to help Sun to his feet. He looked mostly fine, though one of his arms had gotten caught up in the reins and they'd left rope burns up and down his bicep. Huo...
"Ungrateful jerk," he grumbled, as he tried to roll to his feet. Then he yelped and collapsed onto his side again, cradling his left legs to his chest. His eyes were slightly crossed, and there was a patch of cracked scales on his forehead where he'd hit the pavement. Not to mention the giant bruise taking up most of his right side where the giant had smacked him.
"Stop moving," Nymph told him.
Sun wobbled on his feet, and she noticed for the first time that there was a long gash on his calf. Probably one of the giant's claws, though luckily it looked like it had only scratched him. "I gotta—" he mumbled.
At the same time, Huo tried to pick himself up again and said, "I can still—"
Nymph shared an exasperated look with Neptune. Her rider took Sun by the shoulders and made him sit on the ground beside Huo.
"If you keep trying to fight like that, I'll sit on you," Nymph warned her brother.
He snorted smoke and lay back down.
The door to Watts' lab slammed shut with a terribly final sound. Blake almost slumped against it, but thought better of it when she noticed the bottom was starting to glow red. That had been much too close.
Inside was strangely quiet. The noise of the fight outside was muffled, and there was no one in sight. Just the steady hum of computer terminals and what looked like a ventilation system. Vials and beakers for preparing the Dust injections—more than Blake would have thought necessary, even for the amount of untouched eggs she could see. Rows of incubators, all filled. Some with eggs that had clearly been injected recently.
No dragonets. Watts must have sent even the newly hatched into the fight.
Before Blake could even consider a proper look around, a crash shook the far wall. She jumped, and all four of them shrank back towards the door they'd come from. Not that it was actually an exit. Whatever was trying to get in, they'd have to get past it.
Another crash. This time she could see the door on the other side—just as robust as the one they'd come through, but not quite enough to stand up to a fully grown dragon slamming into it.
Pit and Specter stepped forward, their back legs tensed and ready to pounce. Weiss fanned out to one side, and Blake mimicked her—the closer they were to the middle of the room, the better they'd be able to dodge whatever the hybrids threw at them.
The door bulged inwards. Creaked. Groaned. And toppled onto its front. Fang charged into the room snarling, opened his jaws... and let out a confused hiccup and a puff of smoke.
"Oh," said Yang. "Hey, guys."
Ruby looked around. "Wait... this is it, isn't it? Where is he?"
Weiss scowled. "Not here." She pointed at the far corner, where there was a smaller room. It was all windows, so they could easily see that Watts wasn't present. But every drawer on the desk and filing cabinet beside it was hanging open. Watts had bolted.
"Come on," Yang said, "he can't have gotten far."
"That way." Blake pointed towards the door the sisters had come in. She suspected he might have fled because he'd seen her and Weiss approaching through the two hybrids, so he'd probably gone that way. Not that the lava gave them much choice.
She was the last through the door. A final glance over her shoulder—there were the eggs, still snug in their incubators.
We'll be back, she promised herself, and followed her team out of the room.
