Unknown Location
Wren awoke to the feeling of a cold, hard floor and a pain in his neck.
...wh-where the hell am I? He thought, thoughts clouded. He picked himself up off the ground and looked at his surroundings.
He was in a cell of brown, weathered stones, with a door of bars, made of a metal he couldn't identify. He looked at his legs. No chains. Good. He turned to the bars, hands glowing.
He shouted as he slammed a fist into the metal, only to be met with a dull clang and pain in his knuckles. Shit. Those bars won't break easily. He looked at them more closely, inspecting where they met the floor and ceiling. They're in there pretty tight. It would take too long to use my Semblance on 'em.
He was snapped out of his thoughts by sharp footsteps from outside his cell. He turned toward the source of the noise, finding an impenetrably bright light. He shielded his eyes. The light dimmed slightly, revealing a pure white figure, cyan illuminated cracks running the length of his body. His skin, clothes, and shoes seemed to run together, a borderless form of pure energy. The only things with true definition were its light gray cloak and its hair, both fluttering weightlessly, as if unaffected by gravity. It spoke.
"I am Avalon." Its mouth didn't move, and its booming voice seemed to come from all directions at once.
"I don't care who you are, let me the hell out of here!" Wren yelled, briefly glowing green.
"Such insolence." Avalon raised its arm, sending Wren careening into the wall of his cell, pinned by some unseen force. Wren's Aura frantically flickered before steadily shimmering. "Hmm?"
Avalon's hold on Wren shattered like glass, dropping him to the floor. He stood defiantly, facing Avalon.
"What power! I must have it!" Avalon said, opening the door to Wren's cell. Wren responded by flickering behind the entity and attempting to sucker punch it. Avalon whirled around, grabbing Wren's wrist. "The idea of instability, weaponized! Such potential!" It seemed ecstatic.
Wren capitalized on Avalon's distraction, stomping on its foot and slamming his free hand into its gut, giving him enough time to free his other hand. He followed up with a hook kick for good measure, stunning Avalon for just a moment, allowing Wren to flicker away. As soon as he reappeared he took off running. He turned corners randomly, hoping to throw Avalon off his trail.
Further down the hall, he caught sight of Tobias Fynn. Wren yelled as he drew closer to the shark faunus, sticking his arm out and clotheslining the unfortunate pirate.
"You! You're that Ferris guy's partner!" Wren said.
"Wh-how did ya get out of yer cell?!" Tobias squeaked.
"Big glowy dude opened the door, so I ran! But that ain't what's important right now! Where's my team!?" Wren grabbed Tobias by the collar and lifted him with one hand.
"Wait, ya… ya fought off Alexander and escaped? Ye… ye could be just the guy I need!"
"The hell do you mean?"
"Put me down and I'll tell ya!"
"Fine. Make it quick." Wren dropped Tobias on his rear.
"Oomph… I was planning to leave this place! These guys don't feed me anything!"
"They don't… feed you?" Wren raised an eyebrow.
"Ferris… he seemed like a nice guy at first… but ye saw firsthand how much he hates Faunus… or just any other person, for that matter. I didn't like it, so I was planning to leave when I got the chance. They wouldn't let me just walk out of here, y'know. Not after my involvement in this whole thing."
"'This whole thing?' What thing?"
"Avalon can steal other people's Semblances! He calls it 'archiving.' He copies Semblances and uses them when he fights."
"What the..?"
"And at this point he's got hundreds of 'em." All kinds of abilities, from all kinds of people, from all over Remnant. I can't take him alone, so I needed some backup."
"So you think I'm the missing link in all this?"
"Pretty much. If we can spring the rest'a yer friends, we'll have a chance."
"So where are they?"
"All over this facility. The cat fauna, they were with the inventor last time I checked. They should be our first priority."
"True, Taiga needs the most attention of all of us." Wren mused. "Alright, lead the way." He snapped his fingers.
"Let's go, then."
-XNTW-
"Taiga!" Wren yelled, skidding to a halt.
"Wh-Wren? What's going on?" Taiga mumbled, not looking up at him.
"We're getting out of here." Tobias said.
"You! Weren't you…" Sig said from nearby.
"Yeah. We don't have much time, I'll explain on the way out." Tobias replied.
"Kira, can you blast the bars down? If I use my Semblance to wear them down a little, a decent explosion could knock 'em out of their sockets!" Wren said, grabbing two of the bars and glowing green.
"I'll try…" Kira said, grasping the same two bars, her left eye flashing yellow. Wren let go of the bars.
"Now!" Kira detonated the bars, blasting shrapnel in all directions. "Alright!"
"That wasn't exactly subtle. Avalon's gonna be on our tail in just a minute." Tobias said, concerned. "We need to go."
"You heard him. Mount up!"
"Hold on just a minute! I need to… there!" Sig whirled around, brandishing two strange apparati, an odd combination of rods and strings. "Taiga, come here for a moment. This won't be elegant, but it'll work for the time being."
"What are those?" She asked.
"Arms! I made 'em with some stuff I could grab." Sig attached the metal objects to Taiga's stumps. Taiga bent the elbow a few times, flexing the inarticulate fingers.
"Hmm…"
"Are we all done here? We gotta go!" Wren yelled from a ways down the hall.
"Niko, KAST, and the rest of SLFR are somewhere in this facility. We need to find 'em and get out." Tobias said, speeding up.
-XNTW-
There was a slamming noise from down the hall, dislodging sand and dust from the ceiling and shaking the walls.
"Was that… Niko?" Kira cocked her head.
"Most likely. Those bars are pretty durable, but Niko's a big guy. He could probably bust his way out with enough force." Wren said.
Sure enough, there was a noise like an explosion, filling the corridor with dust and sand. The assembled fighters covered their eyes, and when the clouds cleared, Niko stood slouched, panting and growling.
"Niko!" Wren shouted. Niko's head snapped around, staring at the group.
"Wren..? And… Tobias?" He grumbled.
"We'll explain. Come on, we gotta find the others!" Kira yelled.
-XNTW-
The bars bent easily for Niko. Team KAST was freed without trouble, and Sig was reunited with his team as well.
"This is nice and all, but… wasn't that too easy?" Niko pondered.
"Wait, you're right! I ditched Avalon back at my cell, but he hasn't shown his face at all! Neither has that weirdo Ferris…" Wren realized. As he said that, a hidden intercom crackled to life.
"Hahahahahaha! Very clever, very clever. You got it! But there's a reason. See, we knew exactly where you've been this whole time." Ferris' voice sputtered out through the speaker.
"What? Then why-"
"Why didn't we stop you? Weeee~ll, we'll let you see for yourselves. Why don't you come find us and we'll talk it over. We're in the central chamber of this facility. You'll get to it pretty quickly if you knock down that wall to your left and keep going in that direction."
Without hesitation, Niko slammed a fist through the wall in question, blasting it inward.
"Move." He said.
-XNTW-
The group slammed through one final wall, into a massive chamber. It was pitch dark, the only light emanating from the hole they emerged from.
"Well, isn't this perfectly ominous…" Trace quipped.
Suddenly, the lights clapped on one by one, revealing massive curtains covering the walls, similar to those you'd see at a musical theatre production. Ferris stood alone in the center of the room.
"Ferris!" Tobias called out.
"Oh, you're here too. I wondered where you swam off to." Ferris' voice echoed through the room.
"So, spill it. Why didn't you chase us down?" Wren stepped forward.
"Oh, right. I forgot about that." Ferris shrugged. "See, it doesn't matter if you all escaped, because…" Ferris clapped his hands twice. The curtains drew back, revealing walls of cages. Inside were all manner of people: Men, women, children, humans, faunus. "We've got plenty of people here for Avalon to burn through. Then we'd just get you again, and so on." He gestured around the room. "And also, that means we hold the ultimate ransom. If you come back with the military or the police or something, we just bring the roof down and kill 'em all if you try anything."
"You monster!" Summer shouted.
"Hehehe, that's about right!" Ferris laughed gleefully. As he was laughing, Wren whispered to Tobias.
"Take the rest of us, focus on getting all these people to safety. I'll hold Ferris off for as long as I can." And with that, he blinked out of sight.
"Alright, I've talked long enough… Eh, wasn't there one more of you?" Ferris squinted at the group.
Wren burst from the aether and slammed a fist into Ferris' gut, blasting him through the far wall and onto another building's roof.
"Wren! His Semblance is ferrokinesis! Remember!" Faye shouted after him as Wren followed Ferris, landing across from him atop the roof.
Wren removed his left gauntlet.
"What do you hope to gain from this?" He asked Ferris.
"Eh? Nothing, really. I just wanna hurt people."
Wren removed his right gauntlet.
"Then that does it."
"Does what?"
"I have no reason to forgive you anymore." He tossed his gauntlets over the building's edge. "You damn near killed a family member, knocked me out, kidnapped my friends and a bunch of other people, and threatened their lives. All for your own sadistic pleasure!?" Wren yelled.
"Pretty much, yeah. And don't forget that I tricked you into thinking I was a nice guy, too."
"That's it. You're done. I can't let you walk free any longer. As a student huntsman, I'm obligated to ask you to stand down or I'll resort to force."
"Heh, you don't believe in that line, though, do ya?"
"You're right. I don't. So shut up and let's fight." Wren spit on the ground as he dropped into his stance.
"Ooh, the anticipation is killing me!"
"No, that would be me!" Wren yelled, launching forward, fists raised.
A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
Sooo… Politics. They exist. They're tense and frightening. That's all I'm gonna say. I hope that my stories can help distract from your stress and tension, if you have any.
I tried to make this chapter a little more frantic, and tried ending it on a cliffhanger. I hope it worked. We'll see, I guess.
Leave a follow or favorite if you liked this, and please leave some reviews!
Thanks, and I'll see you next chapter. Cyber, out!