Huntsman of the Digital Hazard

by Eliad91

Using the Relic of Creation to help build the CCT seemed like a good idea on paper, but nobody, least of all Jaune Arc, expected the new world that was waiting for them on the other side: a digital world. But with time and the new lifelong companions they would find on the other side they would achieve their digital destiny. (No knowledge of Digimon required for this story.)

10. Chapter 10

I OWN NOTHING! ENJOY! I HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A GOOD DAY!

"Ok, so, the big thing is when you use dust this way you need to interact with and get used to the way dust feels when you use it. Dust doesn't have a personality or anything but the different types do react to aura in different ways depending on their nature and each has a *feel* to them for lack of a better term." Jaune awkwardly explained to his audience as they each dutifully took notes.

From Nora's chaotic scrawl as she filled in extra notes and observations in the margins and added the occasional doodle to keep her hands occupied as she listened. To Veemon's odd shorthand where he apparently removed any and all words he deemed unnecessary to actually being able to understand what was written. And Blake's clean and orderly notes as she took down everything with an honestly astonishing speed. Jaune gulped as all three of them looked up at him expectantly before continuing.

"So what I mean by feel is…" Jaune floundered for a moment as they all looked at him. Jaune wasn't a teacher, why did they come to him for tutoring!? No, no, keep it together. Just had to do his best. Jaune collected himself quickly and continued his explanation, "A big example would be how friendly dust types are to shaping. Stone, ice, hardlight, and plant dust are all actually quite friendly towards shaping and forming constructs. An accomplished caster can create stone orbs and walls that they can throw at people as well as cause spikes to rise from the ground. Same with ice dust and the others, though there are differences between each of them individually as well. Like stone's unyielding nature which can take a lot of practice and concentration to shape, or plant dusts natural tendency to want to grow wildly and has to be reigned in and guided properly for the effect that you want. I tend to practice with plant dust for control and one time early on I let it get away from me and had to call my sisters to get me down from where the new tree grew up under and around me while wrapping around all my limbs."

"Wait, seriously? A tree?" Blake cut in when Jaune paused for a moment to take a breath.

"Oh yeah," Jaune nodded vigorously. "It was like a thing. Like seed in the ground I didn't know about, to a full-on tree wrapping me up where I couldn't really move in like seconds. So yeah you definitely need to respect dust while you're working with it because it's super handy but can also be really volatile. That's part of why I like using hardlight dust so much. It's super friendly to shaping by nature since it was engineered that way. The only real problem is it can be kinda brittle unless you constantly pour either power or aura into it but I get around that by layering my constructs to reinforce them. The biggest bummer is the price, like hardlight gets used for pretty much everything up to and including scrolls, but military grade is really hard to get a hold of outside of Atlas and kinda expensive. Even worse when you use crystals like me instead of the cheaper powder type everyone else uses, since they have to actually press together the mixtures and grow the crystals artifically using the dust types that make it up"

Looking up to all four current residents of the room staring as he finished his tangent Jaune felt the heat of a blush catch on his ears. "Yeah. Or, well, something like that. I'm sorry for going off topic."

"Stop apologizing," Cut in the voice of Jaune's co-instructor for the study session. "You're fine," Weiss harrumphed, "Your simplified explanation of the Baum Effect was perfectly serviceable, and considering the laidback nature of this study session as a sort of round table or open forum occasional tangents are to be expected. Now finish explaining if you don't mind?"

"Come on Jaune-Jaune," Nora cut in as she grabbed back his attention with a smile. "This has all been really handy actually. So for the other side of the coin, when you showed me how to practice with fire dust a while back fire tends to not be shaped well since fire by its nature tends to want to go wherever it can as soon as it can?"

"Yeah that's exactly right!" Jaune latched onto the new talking point. "Things like fire and wind and lightning can be directed but are very hard to form in actual shapes with dust unless there's a semblance or something involved. Most of the time it becomes a case of, point it in the right direction and let loose. The closest I've come to proper shaping with things like that is the trick I did with the lightning dust where I coated most of my body in it through interaction with my aura and even that wasn't clean because lightning wants to act like lightning. Really, I guess that's the big point when you start working with this stuff. There are some exceptions like with semblances and stuff but fire wants to act like fire and ice wants to act like ice and so on. I can work exclusively with fire dust and training in manipulation with it but I'll never be able to make fire dust that's cold to the touch because that's not the nature of fire. I don't even mean just from a spiritual aspect but like physics and stuff too. To make fire you need to excite molecules by adding kinetic energy which generates heat. Dust is able to do this without a fuel source but it's still the same thing the addition of kinetic energy excites the molecules and then fire and heat are born. It's actually really interesting when you think about it, dust as a science is still pretty unknown in terms of how it works. There may actually be a point to the argument of dust being magic of a sort considering the way it interacts with conservation of mass and causality…."

Jaune slowly trailed off as he took in the view in front of him. Nora was writing things down rapidly and still adding her own little notes to the margins, Demi was looking increasingly more confused, his expression glazed over, and Blake had apparently just put her pencil down at some point.

Jaune stared across his friends as he began nervously rubbing the back of his head. The silence drug on the only sound being the scratching of Nora's pen on paper. "Soooo…." Jaune slowly started, "Do any of you have any questions?"

"You said dust interacts with semblances?" Blake opened, the question in her voice clear to Jaune. "How so?"

"Well it kinda depends on the semblance, I don't know a lot on the subject myself since my semblance doesn't really interact with dust." Jaune admitted awkwardly as his hand reflexively went to the back of his head as he looked to his co-tutor for help. "You have any advice Weiss?"

"Yes actually, the Schnee family semblance makes heavy use of dust so I have some personal experience in this subject." The white haired huntress explained as she adopted her 'teaching' pose. One hand and finger up in front of her and the other curled behind her back with her eyes closed and head tilted slightly up. "It may take some practice but typically if your semblance has interactivity with dust then the act of activating dust with your aura and holding the energy rather than releasing it can allow you to feed the energy into your semblance as you spend aura activating it. This phenomenon is also known as the Carroll Paradigm after the man in question discovered the sword he created from his aura could be granted elemental effects when holding dust crystals in his hands."

The Schnee heiress relaxed from her teaching pose as she looked down at her seated teammate, "Was that enough of an explanation?"

"Yes," Blake nodded with a thoughtful look on her face, obviously considering what this could mean for her combat style. Jaune really wasn't looking forward to the idea of having to deal with shadow clones that blew up. The normal ones were bad enough.

"Hmm, that would be a good project for us to work on," The Schnee heiress opened as she looked to her teammate. "I would be willing to supply the dust for your practice and we can work on it together." 'Thank you for that Weiss. Thank you for that so much.' Jaune groaned internally as his book buddy quietly nodded at the idea of developing her powers more. Seeing his own teammate finishing with her notes as she very nearly vibrated in her seat brought Jaune to a pause.

"Yes Nora?"

The two simple words opened a floodgate and now hurricane Nora was rolling in. "So how much exactly does physics tie into dust science? How exactly does crystal casting differ from powder casting and how does that differ from ammo mixes? How do you mix new types of dust and then create new crystals? The book said hardlight crystals don't exist but you use them, what's up with that?"

Jaune awkwardly raised his hands in surrender under the onslaught of questions from the excitable huntress as he did his best to answer her with a small chuckle. "A good bit and it can really help but it's also not necessary unless you're planning to get deep into it. Ask Weiss. Ask Weiss. Ask Weiss. The crystals are made through a combination of exerting both heat and pressure on the new powder mix and letting the synthetic crystals form naturally, or as close to it as they can manage. The book is outdated, the current edition is five years old. The techniques for making crystals from synthetic mixes were developed about three and a half years ago by a team from Atlas."

"Indeed," Weiss cut in, to Jaune's relief, she took to the teacher role way more than he did. "The process was developed with proprietary technology and funding from the Schnee Dust Company in conjunction with some of the brightest minds from the Atlesian government. My sister Winter even uses one of the synthetic crystals for steam dust in her weapon." Weiss paused for a moment to take a breath still in her teaching pose even as Jaune watched Nora turn her full attention to the white haired girl, eyes wide and expectant, before Weiss continued her portion of the lecture.

"Powder differs from crystal casting in that powder is much easier to work with but as a trade off the dust burns up and can't be reused. The current prevailing theory is the energy from the dust dissipates and will slowly grow into new crystals over time underground but there is very little supporting evidence for this. With powder casting it is easy to say, spread the dust in a thin layer before you and then activate causing a wide area of effect attack. With crystal casting performing a maneuver like this can take hundreds of hours of training and practice just to do it and even more to do it reliably in a combat situation." Weiss informed Nora quickly and efficiently as the carrot top smiled and rapidly took down notes. How could the girl write so fast? Oh! Weiss was continuing her lesson.

"The big difference with ammo is it's technically not a form of casting at all as the powder blends used for ammo simply are activated with a trigger pull, fired, and forgotten. It was this innovation from Atlas towards the end of the Great War that caused the biggest push towards the widespread usage of dust beyond dedicated casters and nearly won them the war and ended the Color Revolution were it not for the Last King of Vale and whatever conflux of semblances and dust manipulation he managed to pull out to end the fighting." Weiss winded down her lecture and opened her eyes to see a happily nodding and writing Nora looking up at her expectantly still. Jaune could swear he saw an actual battle of wills between Nora's excitement and Weiss' reluctance until something apparently broke between them and Weiss sighed.

"The mixing of dust types to create new blends and effects is largely trial and error based on educated guesses. Two simple mixes I'd suggest experimenting with are fifty-eight percent fire and forty-two percent water to create steam dust and sixty-four percent fire and thirty-six percent earth to make lava dust. There is some small margin for error either direction but those typically offer the best results. If you want the steam dust to be a bit more explosive I'd recommend a blend of seventy-five percent fire to twenty-five percent ice dust." The heiress acknowledged begrudgingly before letting loose a sharp "eep" as she was wrapped up in a hug by the tiny powerhouse known as Nora.

"Thank you sooooo much Weissy! I've been wanting to study more on powder mixes but no one's had the time or experience to give me the heads up on what mixes do and don't work as well as what types of mixes to use! You're awesome! So what would happen if I blended water with lightning? Oh! Actually if I blended water, wind, and lightning dust would I be able to create localized thunderstorms? I need to figure out percentages. I wonder if that's how they seed clouds?"

Jaune recognized the signs of Nora's mind running a mile a minute as she started brainstorming. The encouragement from the Doc earlier in the semester had done wonders for the girl and her dedication to her studies. Still though, "Nora, I'm happy for you but I think Weiss might appreciate being put down now." Jaune advised his teammate as he fought to hide the rising smile from appearing on his face.

"Oh! Sorry Weissy," Nora apologized as she set down the heiress, a faint dusting of pink across the girl's cheeks at the praise.

"You're fine Nora," Weiss waved her off as she straightened her dress and shot a glare at Blake who was making no effort to hide her sardonic smile at Weiss' "distress". "I understand you're the touchy-feely type and I am happy to help you better yourself when you're this dedicated. Maybe just ask first before going for the hug next time though?"

"Absolutely Weiss-cream Sundae!" Nora cheered as she offered her friend a thumbs up.

"Do you have to use that nickname Xiao Long came up with?"

"Yup!" Nora chirped happily. "I think it's cute."

Jaune smiled sympathetically at the heiress with a shrug as she let loose a long suffering sigh at the nickname, to be fair she could've had it worse. At least she didn't get stuck with Vomit Boy. He hadn't actually thrown up on that flight anyway. Just excessive amounts of dry heaving for thirty minutes…. Yeah maybe it was just better to let that one lie.

"So," Jaune cut in as the session reached a lull. "I think that's a good stopping point for the day. What about you guys?"

"Yeah I think I've got a better understanding now," Blake responded, the raven haired huntress nodding slightly as she looked through her notes. "At the very least I know where I went wrong during the final, thanks guys."

Jaune nodded to his corner buddy before having his attention drawn down by a tug on his sleeve. "I uhhh," Demi opened awkwardly as the veemon awkwardly shuffled his feet and rubbed the back of his head. "I kinda lost my place there at the end and I didn't understand parts of it I think but I swear I'll keep working on it!"

Jaune just laughed as he patted the little lizard man's head. "You're fine Demi," Jaune promised. "We got into some higher end stuff at the end by accident anyway and that's on me. You still have plenty of time to catch up and we'll put in some one on one time later, ok?"

Receiving a nod of agreement from his kinda-sorta protege who was also Pyrrha's partner Jaune turned to the rest of the group as everyone gathered up and put away their notes. "So me and Nora," Jaune ignored the muttered "Nora and I" from Weiss as he continued, "were thinking of heading down into Vale to do lunch. You guys wanna join?"

Jaune watched Blake open her mouth to respond before being cut off by Weiss, "As soon as Ruby and Yang return we will be heading down into Vale to view and appreciate the preparations for the Vytal Festival. It will be a culturally enriching team bonding experience."

Weiss had sold the explanation so well Jaune almost believed it completely. Then Blake revealed Weiss' actual motivations, "She wants to spy on the other students coming in to get a better feel for the competition."

"Ha! Yeah that tracks," Jaune laughed as the heiress huffed in embarrassment. "You guys have fun with that ok?" He finished as the members of team JNPR shuffled out of the room.

"Do you wanna come with Demi?" Nora offered as the three stepped into their own dormitory. Jaune dropping off his books before donning his customary hoodie.

"That's ok, Pyrrha had some plans for the two of us to go out together after she got done with her training. I think she wants to make up for the lack of one on one time since we usually end up doing stuff with Yang and I usually end up training with Jaune." The little digimon explained as he hopped up in bed with a book in hand, huh Peter Pythos and the Tournament of Champions. Must've been a gift from Glynda or Pyrrha.

"Speaking of Pyrrha and Yang," Jaune cut in with good humor and curiosity. "How are things going with those two? After how things went yesterday I know they had their date night and there was the whole 'I love you bit' from Pyrrha. Are they finally getting serious?"

"I'm….. not…..sure?" the little digimon admitted slowly. "They're acting really date-y from what I've seen but I don't think Pyrrha really realizes it yet? How long did it take you and Nora to make it official?"

Jaune proceeded to choke on air. "Pfffft, whaaaaaa? What do you mean? Me and Nora aren't… We just go out together every Friday and spend a lot of our spare time together and I really like her and she's kinda out of my league and….. Nora are we dating?"

"For like two months now I think yeah." The carrot top responded honestly with a deadpan tone that was ruined by the massive blush on her face.

Huh. "Huh, that's… kinda awesome actually. Do... Do you wanna do something over the break if we're making it official? Like only if you wanna make it official?" Jaune stammered awkwardly, what the hell? Had he just bumbled his way into a relationship with his cute, shortstack best friend that he'd been crushing on? What? HOW?

"I think I'd like that very much Jaune-Jaune," Nora laughed as she took his hand and started dragging him out the door. "Now come on, I don't wanna miss the lunch special at Geo's"

Unfortunately Jaune's existential crisis about not realizing he was already in his first relationship and Nora's lunch date would have to wait. Their scrolls let loose the now familiar tone that told them there was work to be done.

-HoH-

"Now students!" Oobleck shouted over the roar of the speeding bullhead. "The rift in question is currently surrounding a dust warehouse in downtown Vale, assuming their numbers are the same as last time there should be fewer issues with the size of the battlefield but be aware that you will still need to be wary of the volatile dust! Avoid explosives and excessive use of firearms as much as possible!"

Coco quietly snorted to herself as Oobleck worried of his firsties. A big worry over nothing really, after all now that rookies had team CFVY there to pick up the slack and finish the job. Trainees or not, ten huntsmen should be plenty to handle a few thieves. Still a little extra intel never hurt, "Oi! Velvet's cousin!"

Coco eyed Jaune Arc as he jumped at her calling for him. Well built and a bit on the lean side he was definitely making the knight in shining armor look work for him but the t-shirt sleeves on his hoodie were just odd, same with the wrist to elbow bright orange rash guards. Definitely needed to give him some tips if she was going to be associating with him for an extended period of time because the boy was a mass of poor aesthetic details marring an overall good design.

"Y-yes'm!" Coco smiled to herself as he stuttered. A little off considering his good showing during initiation but she could work with awkward and polite as long as he was willing to follow direction on this mission. An involuntary glance and blush on his part towards the very pleased looking carrot top next to him revealed even more to Coco, ahhh young love, so cute as long as it didn't make him a liability.

"Tell me what we should be expecting one more time!" Coco shouted over the roar of the engines as she stubbornly held onto her beret. Should've remembered to grab a clip to hold it in place. "I wanna see if we missed or overlooked anything!"

Coco eyed her fellow leader as his eyes hardened and he nodded, good boy, he did have potential. "During yesterday's encounter there were roughly ten smaller digimon who we are currently assuming are rookies and three larger digimon who were all definitely at least champion, all three were also swordsmen! We mainly engaged the three champion digimon and ignored the rookies which was the first mistake since this allowed them to gather up the dust and prepare for their departure!"

"What are your recommendations for what we're stepping into?" Coco shouted back, might as well get a feel for where the firstie's head was at.

The JNPR lead didn't even hesitate before giving her his assessment. "Assume their numbers will be higher today! Now that they know to expect possible resistance I wouldn't be surprised if they have at least one other champion with them or more rookies. Best case scenario the numbers are exactly the same amount of both rookies and champions but I prefer to plan for the worst. Make sure your team is coordinated to keep them scattered and disorganized, if they look like they're trying to gather up in a certain area don't let them! My team knows to do the same!"

Hmmm it seemed like his head held more than eyes and teeth at least. Coco felt the bullhead slow and let a confident smirk pull up at the edges of her mouth. It was time for the fun part. Coco moved to head to the exit of the bullhead for the drop when she felt a hand on her shoulder grabbing her attention.

"Coco," Arc said as he looked down at her. "Let's avoid casualties if we can, yeah? These guys aren't Grimm and it would be good to get some kind of intel or explanation besides."

Coco couldn't help but laugh a bit to herself as she shrugged off Arc's hand, the kid really did worry too much. "Don't worry firstie, you've got team CFVY with you now. We'll get the job done, clean and painless, now let's go!" And with that Coco was out the door and dropping down to the currently empty street in front of the now rainbow shimmering warehouse, Gianduja grasped firmly in her palm while maintaining its handbag form.

"Alright everyone form up! Three huntsmen to a tamer team!" The commanding voice of Arc rang out. Opting to let the kid take the lead Coco grouped up on Arc with her partner, each of them laying a hand on a shoulder while he reached out and took a hand each from the both the carrot top Valkyrie and his dinosaur as they made their way through the iridescent barrier. Wow that was ten kinds of weird, like trying to turn left and right at the same time.

Then they were through and Coco was striding forward, hand on her hip as the others formed up behind her, as it should be. Coco gently reached forward and prepared herself to knock on the door of the warehouse. With her foot. As hard as she could. She kicked the door in. After all, a huntress had to make an entrance with style.

The doors swung open with a resounding crack as Coco kicked them in and leaned forward on the same leg she kicked with. "Valean huntress, your options include surrendering now or giving me the option to do this the fun way, please choose the fun way." Coco said while deploying her weapon's minigun form, allowing a vicous smile to form on her face to intimidate her targets. Or that was the plan at least.

"FIST OF THE BEAST KING!" What Coco got was a giant lion's head made out of energy as the brick house with a lion's mane punched the air and sent the attack rocketing towards her. A quick dodgeroll to the side had Coco avoiding the attack and firing a salvo of lightning dust into the room hoping to stun or scatter her targets while the rest of the squad leapt into action.

The room quickly turned to chaos as all ten members of the team engaged the raiders. Coco faced down the apparent leader, who's name they still didn't know but was probably something lion related on a guess, flanked by both the Arc boy and Yats who rushed to the fore to engage the monster. A quick scan of the battlefield showed Nikos' partner transforming into a masked swordsman with heavy wooden gauntlets and two wooden swords before engaging with the samurai bird. Nikos herself fought the green one covered in blades alongside Fox and the boy in pink and green who Coco just couldn't remember the name of. Vel, the carrot top, and Arc's dinosaur dashed into the crowd of small ones and…. oh that was a new wrinkle wasn't it?

Coco watched as each of the smaller creatures that had hands to hold them pulled out dust weaponry. Claws, dextrous paws, and oddly shaped hands pulled out flaming daggers, freezing spears, shocking axes, and of course lots and lots of guns. That was definitely gonna be a problem.

Trusting the boys behind her to handle the big one Coco dashed past the lion man and moved to assist the three with the heavily armed little monsters. A flex of her semblance, Hype, as she passed through the group began activating the dust in their weapons prematurely and driving it wild. Edged weapons were overcome by their elemental effects as the mon were shocked, burned, and frozen by their own dust. At the same time Coco lashed out with Gianduja, now returned to its purse form, the heavy bag lashed out sending digimon flying and scattering them to the four corners of the room while more importantly keeping them from the pile of dust sitting in the middle of the room that they were gathering around.

It was pure chaos as even without the dust weapons Coco was forced to dodge sharp claws, bladed limbs, vicious punches, gusts of wind, shards of ice, lightning, and fireballs. Lots of fireballs in shades of yellow, red, orange, and blue. The huntsmen were out numbered but doing their best, cyan light flashing into construct as Coco glimpsed Vel apparently taking her partners place against the big cat for a moment joined by the red lizard as they joined Arc and cyan light glowed as barriers and blades of hardlight energy were formed and quickly shattered under the assault of the much stronger opponent. Another roaring lion's head made of energy crashing and washing over two glowing kite shields as Velvet copied her cousins weapon and fighting style while the red lizard shot blasts of cherry red flame directly into the beast's face over their shoulders.

Moving past the family unit Coco saw Nikos deftly dodging every strike from the green one in buckskins, sometimes just by a matter of inches. He must've been the weakest one out of his group though as Coco watched his swings and weapons sometimes go wide or off course swinging into other digimon nearby. While the gladiatrix held it's attention though, Fox and the quiet one in green were dashing in and out slashing with the blades of their weapons leaving shallow cuts where they could.

Yats was now fighting the avian samurai and managing to match its strength if not speed. The confusion and uncertainty of its movements let Coco know though that Yats was taking full advanage of his semblance to mess with the bird's short term memory. A definite sign of how challenging the fight was for the giant teen. A glance to Coco's right showed that she was now joined by a new partner in taking on the horde of little digimon as Nikos' partner was wading into the fray. Swinging his blunt weapons with enough speed to catch the rookies raiders center mass and then add the force needed to send them flying up and away ragdolling them without over harming them.

The chaotic battle carried on for what could've only been a few minutes but felt like eternity as they all traded dance partners both in terms of help and opponents a few times over. And then something happened that Coco wouldn't have noticed if not for the effect it had on the digimon they were facing. The constant rainbow tinted mist was fading. Only thing was the digi thieves were staying there refusing to fade with the mist along with their loot.

Coco allowed herself to smile in the face of her impending victory. Just as she had figured, team CFVY had been all the muscle the little firsties needed to save the day. Now just to get the police and Oobleck to help arrest all these things and Velvet could take advantage of already being out in the city to hit that boutique on the corner of First and Maple.

Said train of thought was driven off the rails and into a fiery explosion, literally, though when a magenta beetle pulled out something that looked like a bulky, oversized scroll and looked into it for a moment before throwing a sack of fire dust at the wall and blasting it with electricity. The ensuing explosion blew out the wall revealing an empty alleyway behind them. With a cry of "Mile and a half this way! Ten minutes bzzz!" The digimon broke off from the surprised huntsmen and huntresses and through the hole in the wall moving at speed.

Coco bit back a curse as the squad made chase. These were not her running heels.

-HoH-

In through the nose out through the mouth. In through the nose out through the mouth. Ren controlled his breathing as he ran. A tiny flex of aura to boost his speed and reduce muscle fatigue and he was running at the front of the pack in their pursuit alongside Velvet and Fox. The digimon thieves were being clever and sticking to back alleys as they pushed for wherever their destination might be and the Beacon squad was doing their best to keep up.

Velvet was the fastest among them easily. Fleet of foot and using her mimicked weapons to increase mobility as Ren saw her project the wireframe of two gauntlets on her arms before thin wires of light shot and locked onto structures and building as she used the mechanism to drag herself forward and speed up her turns. Fox was moving surprisingly well for a blind man reacting to turns and obstacles faster than Ren could even notice them as every movement was performed with an almost precognitive grace. Ren himself was busy trying to do a dozen small things at once to maximize the use of his relatively meager aura to get as much speed out of his body as he possibly could.

Measured breathing to keep himself from getting winded and to maintain control. A quick burst here and there to add some extra power to a step both sending him forward and allowing him to sidestep obstacles and taking turns sharper. Leveraging the healing power of his aura to scrub lactic acid from his muscles and stave off fatigue. Ren had always known he wasn't an aura powerhouse like Jaune or Nora. Hell Rena had told him as much when she unlocked his aura back when she had first started training him. Instead it had and always would come down to his efficiency, using his aura as well as he possibly could at every given moment. Well now that practice was definitely paying off and how could those little ones run so fast with the stubby legs?

It had been annoying to Ren how well the digimon were keeping ahead of the team in spite of the squad's greater familiarity with Vale and their equipment. Well it had been annoying for about five minutes until his semblance rose up and smothered the emotion, sometimes his semblance actually was quite handy to have even if Ren didn't alway care for it. 'Still,' Ren grunted to himself as he coated Stormflower's blades in aura before stabbing them into the brick wall in front of him to lift himself up and over after the targets that had jumped, flown, and climbed over it. 'Those lines she was using looked handy, maybe a grappling hook or something I could wear or put on Stormflower?'

The wave of gunfire the larger digimon shrugged off as Ren made contact left him grimacing as well. Maybe it would be good to add a little more stopping power somehow too. After that though there wasn't much time for regrets in weapon choice and future plans for upgrades as the squad in its entirety was beginning to catch up to their quarry and the chase turned into a running battle.

Ren dropped to his knees and slid under a lightning bolt from the pink beetle before springing back up to his feet in a sprint and was overtaken by a sparking Nora, manic grin stretched over her face as she leapt ahead of him in one giant bound. Wrapped in the electricity from the bug digimon before slamming her hammer down onto the green lizardman who blocked the blow with the massive blade on his back before letting the momentum from the tiny berserker's swing carry him forward adding to his momentum.

The unfamiliar form of Demi's new digivolution lunged forward to catch Nora as she was knocked back by the force of her own swing before depositing her next to Ren as she hit the ground running but Ren was already dodging to the side and away from his sister to avoid the claws of a yellow dinosaur wearing a fur pelt. Ren lashed out with a kick to try and trip up the the stout digimon but was cut off by a large red boxing glove in the face as Ren's head was knocked back by a vicious blow from a canine digimon that would've had him dropping flat on his back were he not caught by the around the arms by Jaune and Yatsuhashi before the two set him back on his feet as the chase continued with a blossoming pain spreading over the bridge of Ren's nose and across his face. That had been a cheap hit.

The battle continued as both sides took potshots at each other. The digi thieves desperate to escape and the huntsmen just as desperate not to let them get away. Ren almost didn't notice it at first when it started happening, he had never been there when one formed before but there were the unmistakable wisps of rainbow tinted mist flowing through the air around them. Another rift was forming but how had they known it would be here? Did they summon it? Create it? Did they just happen to get very, very lucky?

As of right now it didn't matter as Ren flared his aura and pushed himself even harder. If this kept up the enemies would escape again. Ren opened up with Stormflower pouring all of his ammo into the group in front of him trying to slow them down. "They're opening another rift!" He shouted over the roar of his own gunfire.

The battle grew more frantic as the huntsmen realized more than ever before time was not on their side. Ren caught a glimpse of Jaune raising his shield, a barrier forming in front of him as the dinosaur with the fur coat from before turned around at the same time as another yellow lizard and the two let loose a torrent of blue and orange flame that washed over Ren's leader.

The canine boxer from before ran in with another punch but Ren was ready for him this time, sidestepping the strike only to end up walking straight into the sharp, waiting claws of another digimon as the dull pain that signaled a future bruise blossomed in his side even as his aura stopped him from being impaled. This wasn't good, most protracted battles weren't this intense and they were all starting to get tired yet the digimon that outnumbered them had more breathing room as they simply let someone else take the lead for a moment and some of the small ones were even carried by the larger ones.

The huntsman team in comparison was breathing hard and for some of them ammo was starting to get low. They had been running on adrenaline from the moment their scrolls beeped and while Ren truly believed this was some of the best fighting he had ever done and team CFVY was a massive boon that didn't change the fact that eventually adrenaline ran out and they were all still getting tired.

Demi had fallen out of his digivolution somewhere along the line and was simply doing his best to keep up throwing headbutts and punches where he could. Pyrrha still moved quickly but it lacked some of that machinelike efficiency and dancer's grace the gladiatrix typically had. Team CFVY was fairing better but not by much, Coco and Yatsuhashi were lagging behind just a bit and even Velvet was starting to breathe hard. Ren had no idea how many hardlight weapons the rabbit faunus had gone through in the battle. He was pretty sure he had caught her using a glowing version of Stormflower at some point though and for the life of him Ren could not remember when the girl had gotten his picture.

Ren watched as Jaune had apparently decided not to leave anything else in reserve as his leader began to shine with a brilliant white-gold light that erupted from under his skin. Jaune using his semblance to burn through his aura and boost himself, exploding forward with renewed vigour as the team leader turned into a burning comet headed straight for the leonine leader of the digi-raiders, his strength, speed, and durability heightened to a point Ren could only envy and admire. But it was ultimately pointless.

"BEAST OF THE EARTH!" The lion mon shouted as he turned around and punched the ground, a crackling brownish orange crystal of earth dust clutched firmly in his hand as a thick stone wall sprang up between the as Jaune hit with a sickening sound before bouncing off and landing on his back. The rift was fully formed now and time was running out.

"NORA!" Ren heard Jaune shout as he picked himself up and started moving back from the stone wall. "UNLOAD!"

Six dull thunks sounded in quick succession as Nora fired Magnhild. Six sharp taps as the canisters struck stone. One loud roar as all of them exploded, shattering the wall the leonine digimon had formed and blinding the group as stone shrapnel rained around them and thick pink smoke enveloped them.

Then they were through and the smoke dissipated to an empty lot. No digimon and no rainbow tinted mist signaling a rift. They had escaped. Again.

-HoH-

Gui gulped air as he rested his claws on his knees. That had been a nightmare of a fight and the enemy had gotten away again and now Jaune and Coco were fighting.

"What was that firstie!?" The fashionista snarled. "We had them and then you just let them get away at the last second!"

"It's alright Coco," Jaune raised his hands in front of him as he tried to reason with the irate huntress. "I warned you that this was gonna be rough and to expect the worst. Honestly this is still a partial victory since they didn't get away with any of the dust."

"Partial? We had them dead to rights and trapped on this side! How were they able to get away? Did you know they could make rifts? What about the Dust weaponry? We had no intel!"

Gui shrank back as the two argued back and forth. Jaune trying his best to add a brightside to the situation and Coco unwilling to settle for anything less than absolute victory. The arguing would lull and spring back up in fits as Oobleck and Uncle Rex questioned them on the battle and how the enemy escaped. The current hypothesis being that the tentomon with the big scroll had been able to track where rifts could form or could make rifts or something like that and that was how they had escaped.

Gui... honestly hadn't been playing that close attention, his mind was still stuck on one thing even as they rode the bullhead back to campus. Why hadn't he been able to digivolve? Growlmon would've been too big during the warehouse but during the chase and at the end when the rift formed Growlmon would've been useful. Big enough with long enough legs to close the gap and enough strength and firepower to handle at least one of the enemy champions all by himself. Demi had digivolved just fine in both fights so why couldn't Gui? What was the block? "Why couldn't your dinosaur change shape too? The blue one did and he was able to tie things up just fine."

Coco's voice cut through Gui's thoughts even as they eerily echoed each other. Picking his head up Gui tuned back in to the ongoing argument between the two leaders and was audience to the sight of Jaune actually losing his temper.

"He's fine Coco," Jaune bit back through gritted teeth trying to be polite but Gui could tell his brother was on the edge already and his motion sickness wasn't helping, the medicine having worn off long ago. "He contributed more than enough. I told you we had next to no intel and didn't know what to expect. I told you things were likely to go sideways. And I told you this was going to be a tough fight and not to underestimate them and what was the first thing you did? Kick in the front door for the sake of showing off? And then when it became a running fight who was stuck hanging near the back when it was all going down Coco? The fact of the matter is I told you this was going to be rough and you still went in there cocky and what do you know things got rough. We still did better than last time. I'm willing to take the wins where I can get them."

Jaune's voice had risen steadily throughout the speech both in volume and intensity and while he never shouted at his fellow leader it was obvious to everyone there he had very much lost his temper with the situation too. Gui didn't know if she wasn't used to being challenged or if something Jaune had said struck a chord with the older girl but Coco had gotten quiet after that. The rest of the flight back to the campus was a sullen silence as the two teams processed the latest failure and when the bullhead docked the two teams split off without much in the way of goodbyes aside from an apology from Velvet and quick hug from her for both him and Jaune.

The team made their way up to their dorms to find the familiar sight of team RWBY's door open and when Gui peaked his head in to say hi he was met with an equally tense silence inside the dorm room. One thing ran through Gui's mind at that moment though. Where was Blake?

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hey everybody no long note this time really. I hope you're all enjoying my first semi-original arc for Huntsman of the Digital Hazard as I look forward to working on it. We ought be wrapping up volume 1 of RWBY next chapter and after a quick breather chapter or two we'll be heading into volume 2 where the action will pick up and more shipping shenanigans will hit the fan lol.

I'm still not super sure about making Nora's Arc official this chapter but at the same time I was kinda like, they've basically been going out and kinda dating for two or three months in universe everyone is commenting on how close they are, might as well just make it official instead of drawing out a storyline unnecessarily for the sake of drama. Hate that kinda storytelling lol.

Uh tiny heads up! For those who haven't checked it out yet my short Lancaster fic When The Search Ends will be finishing next week. If you haven't checked it out yet now is definitely a great time!

Have a great day everyone! Don't forget to love each other!