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Peach led the way towards the bunker. It looked mostly the same as the one built near Mistral. Dented in places from the Grimm, a sign that there was nobody home. Merlot wasn't here at least at first inspection.
The front entrance was just sitting open, though. It wasn't torn into like I would have done. It seemed from an open fuse box that somebody had wired their way inside.
They had to know about electronics much more than I did to do something like that. And it wasn't likely that Merlot would have to wire his way into his own facilities. Unlikely but not impossible. Especially if he hadn't visited in a while.
A harsh wind howled around us. It was quickly whipping up into a blizzard. I pulled my pipe out and smoked it. I struggled to get my lighter to work and I sniffled against the cold.
"This is it. But it wasn't open the last time I was here," Peach said. "Well not here here but near enough to see it."
"Stay here Peach. Be on your guard," I returned. "I'm not sure what we'll find inside. Merlot is rather famous for his experiments on the Grimm."
"On the Grimm? Why?"
"Why indeed. I suspect that he likes it but I haven't had the chance to talk to him about it. Maybe that changes today."
I rather doubted it but it was always possible that he was really here. Somebody had wired that door open.
Neo took a step forward and together we walked into the laboratory. Some Grimm had made their way inside and we collapsed on them easily. I pulled my shorter longsword and Neo used her stiletto. I cut down a creeper and paced my way over a hexagonal tiled floor. The lights were on unlike the last place we'd been to so I didn't need to use my soul to cast light on the place.
A Beowulf came upon me and I easily sliced it and it disintegrated into ash and the usual Grimm goo. My heavy boot falls rang out against the tile. Even Neo's heels disturbed the sound of the place with little clacks. It was as somber as a crypt inside.
I stomped on a Creeper. I easily crushed the small monster under my heavy boot. They'd gotten inside and had started to tear the place up a little. Some of the glass tubes were broken and frayed wires sparked.
I felt a warning in my soul. My sixth sense called out to me.
"Someone is here. Or was here very recently," I murmured to Neo. There were giant tubes and inside them were Creepers. They were frozen in a strange blue fluid. It wasn't glowing from within like the experiments in Mistral had been, however.
It was incredibly macabre, even these monsters in the tubes rather than the malformed 'human' Grimm of Mistral. The chamber we were currently in was tall and triangular. But it went on past these white and blue suspension pods and deeper inside. Large electrical lights were on above us. They must be dust run, this far from civilization.
The laboratory had to be totally independent of the rest of Atlas and Solitas.
A creeper oozed from the blue liquid from one of the recently broken pods. It was blue instead of white but only in places. The transformation was splotchy and incomplete unlike the green ones we'd run into near Mistral.
It let out a groaning noise and crawled toward me and I put my sword down through it and into the hexagonal tiles. The ground sparked beneath where I sliced it up after the Grimm dissolved into goo and died.
A voice was coming from further in. A low male voice from the baritone of it.
"Come on. Let's see who's up ahead."
As I walked I sliced apart the tubes we came across with Creepers in them. They disgusted me. Perhaps I saw a bit of the experiment that had created me in these. It made my blood boil with hatred. Not just for the Grimm and their ilk but also for Merlot. And for whoever was making noise up ahead.
It also, and I realized that it probably wasn't healthy, made me hate myself.
I didn't like me. That had been true before I learned the kind of monster I really was. I wasn't my biggest fan. I hated what I had to do to get by.
Even before I killed Ren and Nora I hadn't been fond of me. I'd gotten what I deserved more often than I had bad luck. I was disgusted with myself. At Beacon, I hated my weakness. I think that was when it really started.
When Ruby loved me I couldn't believe it. How could she? How dare she, an angel like her, love a monster like me. How could she do that to me? It was, in a self detrimental way, incredibly cruel of her to care about me so. Even before I knew what I was I had been like that. I loathed myself and it fucking showed sometimes.
But then again smoking wasn't healthy and I was doing that. I was also hell bent on this path of revenge. Had been bent on revenge for a long time now, between Cinder and Merlot. I probably just figured something else would kill me long before smoking did. My lifestyle plus the enemies I had made ensured that I was probably going to die young. Salem sort of sealed that deal for me, too, by being an immortal goddess.
My self hatred was there. It was present even in the things that I loved and in the relationships I formed with the people who loved me.
Then I started killing people. I became good at it too. I hated me for that even more than ever. I hated hiding it from Ruby when I killed Eminence and her Seifer.
Now that I knew that I had been right to hate me all along though… now that I knew I really truly was a monster… Now that I was doomed to die fighting with a goddess in my brain after she made me kill my team I just had all the more reason to hate myself.
If before I didn't like me, then of late I despised myself.
I tortured people now. I hurt them because I could and they… they couldn't stop me. I'd chosen blood and violence and when Wutai burned I'd thought about finishing the job just because I could and they couldn't stop me.
I wanted to kill Raven Branwen. She'd never done anything to me personally. Except through Vernal she'd never done me wrong but I wanted her dead all the same. Still, I wanted her dead. She'd only narrowly escaped me and I hungred for her blood as much as I did any of the others just because I could. I knew it was wrong.
I wanted to destroy Cinder Fall. I wanted to eviscerate her for all that she had done. For what she did to me personally when she took Pyrrha from me. Whatever could have been, whatever had been supposed to be, it was no more because of her. She took that from me. I was robbed.
Her minions like Emerald and Mercury would have to go too. That went without saying but they weren't at the top of my list of people to nix. If I ran across them and they got got, so be it. But I wasn't hunting them like I was the others.
Tyrian I had killed for so much as looking at Ruby wrong. The wounds he'd left on my body was meaningless beside what he had wanted to do to her. He tried to take her from me and bring her to Mother. He had to die for that. He did die for that, whether he himself knew that before the end was irrelevant.
Ren and Nora wouldn't want this for me. Pyrrha wouldn't have wanted this for me. She wouldn't have wanted me to seek my revenge against Cinder either but damn it, I wanted that too.
I'd chosen blood over friendship in my heart a long, long time ago. Especially relative to how old I was. One year old and I was committed to revenge.
Ruby's love had been too much for my Grimm blackened heart to bear. In my depths I wanted the boot and the sword. I wanted it.
Mother needed to go too. I wasn't sure how yet. I wasn't sure when but she'd suffer by my hand. As much as she was capable of suffering. However much that was she would experience it. I was going to cut her into pieces.
She had her fingers in my brain. It made me want to slam my head into the wall over and over. There was nothing I could do about it. Her claws were in me. Nothing could keep me safe from her. I was born doomed to go through this.
My cursed father Merlot who even now I hunted would also know my spirit. He would know what it meant to bring a monster into this world. He would know what he had truly wrought. How dare he? How could he?
It was all their fault and I hated them as much as I hated myself. I was a sword. I was meant for this vendetta. My power which allowed me to grow stronger with each beat of my hatred would allow me to strike them down.
We grew closer to the voice. A low aristocratic murmur. It was distant in this place and echoing beside our footfalls. We would be upon the source at any moment.
I suspected it wasn't Merlot but it could be. It could be… and then I'd give him to Neo. Or worse or something, anything worse. I'd split his limbs. I'd tear his eyes from his skull. I'd-I'd… I was working myself up into a tizzy.
I exhaled lowly and slowed my beating heart. It wouldn't do me any good to get jumpy. I breathed in and out, nice and deep as we crept up on our target.
This hall contained suspended Beowulfs now. I continued to spear them. I refused to be cornered by these monsters should the worst come to pass. Whatever purpose my father had intended the blue fluid to have on them was rendered utterly meaningless. Just as I would one day rend his heart.
I moved around a corner, and out a blast door. I came out into a huge open room sword and shield at the ready. I gazed up over a series of computers up at a man in a deep navy blue suit trimmed in yellow. He was speaking into a scroll and abruptly stopped at my presence.
He tapped a few buttons on one of the computers and a shimmering barrier appeared between us. Sealing me and Neo into the cavernous room and himself in the smaller control room.
"And who are you?" His voice boomed into speakers that surrounded me.
"Are you Merlot?" I demanded.
He laughed. "No, I'm not mad Merlot. Now what's your name?"
"I'm Jaune Arc," I announced.
"You… you're Merlot's creation. You're Salem's son!"
I glowered through the barrier at him. "I gave you my name. What's yours?"
"You have… you have the relic of knowledge! I thought your sisters would reclaim it."
"You know my sisters?" I demanded.
"My boy," he drawled. "I created your sisters. In my own laboratory. I suppose if Merlot is your 'father' then I am your 'step-father.'"
I stared at him. "Your name."
"I don't see the point in giving my name to a failure. In fact, I don't see much point in continuing this conversation. I will be taking that relic, however."
"Not from in there, you're not." I glared and turned my semblance on. "Come fight me."
"Oh," he mocked with a lazy yawn. "Shiny." He started tapping away at one of the control panels before him.
"Neo, do you think you can teleport in there and shut this barrier down."
She looked at it and shook her head.
I guess there needed to be a little bit of open space for her to move through and that shimmering barrier allowed her none. Some semblances had rules like that. Like mine had plenty of laws. Mine was even defined by its rules.
A gate began to open up in the floor in a spiraling fashion. I hadn't really taken stock of it but it was earth beneath my boots rather than the hard hexagonal tiles that made up the rest of the facility.
From the pit a giant Deathstalker emerged. It was slightly splotched blue like so many of my wretched father's other wretched specimens in this place.
It was enormous, at least as big as the one in initiation, if not a little bigger. It lowered its brightly colored stinger at me and I raised my shield and sword. It slammed it's stinger forward but I met it with the cold hard strength only my semblance could provide. I didn't budge. Back in initiation I'd been pushed back by that Deathstalker's claws but I was so much unbelievably stronger now than then.
I slashed out from behind my shield at the stinger where it met the rest of the white, blue, and black tail.
It screeched at me as I bit deep into its vulnerable flesh and it pulled back. It came at me with its claws but Neo and I vanished with our speed. She backflipped over it, picking at it's exposed eyes as I slid at it hard and sliced at its mouth.
"Neo cut the tail!" She landed next to me and I saw her nod. The tail was now hanging by a twist of flesh and little else. It was vulnerable there. I doubted we'd hammer the stinger into its own head, probably kill it some other way.
I dashed forward and I met its claws. I held it steady while Neo flipped over it and cut its tail off. It screeched again and the Deathstalker reared back.
I cut at its claws where they met dark flesh and the blueish pincers retreated from me. It then charged me and slammed my body against one of the grey walls. I pushed back against it with a heavy boot.
The tail came around and smashed me in the chest, knocking me to the ground. I picked myself back up and met the pincers again with my shield. I slashed around it, trying for the eyes and mouth but it must have seen that trick before because it held me far away with the pincers.
Like an oversized lobster. I tried again to take off one of the pincers. I bit deep into the black flesh between blue and white flesh and it flailed pressing against me.
Neo flipped into place again and stabbed it in one of its eyes. It roared with rage, the mouth parts frothed with spittle and I felt nothing but disgust for it.
This thing was just reminding me of better times with my friends. Not that I had anything against Neo, in fact I probably had the least against Neo out of anybody alive on the planet. She just wasn't a good replacement for my teammates and friends. She just didn't do it for me like Pyrrha, Ren, or Nora could. You know? It was nothing personal. I'm sure she felt the same way about me and Roman.
I dived and brought my sword down two handed against the claw and took the tip off through the armor. The tail came whipping around and I jumped and hovered in the middle of the air and Cross-Slashed its face and tail.
It writhed to get away from my combo and it screamed in agony as I took its tail off and left deep gouges in its carapace near its face.
There wasn't that much room for it to escape me from. I was guessing things in here with it were more locked in with it and less having it locked in with them. I was turning its usual situation on its head.
I stabbed down through an eye as I fell and it writhed and tried to shake me off. I twisted Crocea Mors and shattered its shell around where Crocea Mors was buried.
It cried and began to dissolve into dust and goo.
I walked up to the barrier that guy was on the other side of and banged on it four times. Gong. Gong. Gong. Gong. I began to recharge my semblance.
"Little pit, little pig, let me in." He began to back away from his control panel. I stood and charged for a long time. I got my hands on my semblance again and swung at the barrier as hard as I could, burning my semblance with it in a wild attack.
The barrier failed for a moment and lights on his side of the barrier blared.
"I'll huff and I'll puff." I menaced from outside. "What's it going to be Mr. Man."
He ran away, the enormous coward. I couldn't believe it. He was just leaving us locked in here. I charged up my semblance and rattled the barrier until it broke. I banged at it over and over again and then I Cross-Slashed it after putting my sword together with the shield and getting the broadsword. But whoever the man with the mustache was, he escaped.
I swore and I screamed and I slashed up some of the computers in my rage before I had the sense to calm down and remember I might want to look through them.
Then I marched down the passageway after the mustached man. It eventually led out a back entrance to the laboratory. I sighed. He was stone cold gone. Along with any chance I had of learning about my sisters.
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-WG
