A/N: Holy shit, we're almost at the end of March. Hot damn, does time fly. Right, this was the third of the submissions entered for the latest writing contest, written by the wonderful Mando.
M/N: Well, here's another in my little mini-series. Hopefully I wrote the combat a little better in this one. Still working on getting the hang of that. Either way, expect more of SSSN and CRDL both, one of these days.
Title: Icarus
Author: SirMandokarla
Cardin adjusted the straps on Russel's armbrace. Black snatched at him, but he didn't really care. It wouldn't hurt him. Or couldn't.
Didn't matter.
He shared a look with Sky, sitting rigid with his halberd. Dove's armour had been improved, alongside all of theirs, but his armour rippled with black smoke. It wouldn't do for that to get loose on the Bullhead. They knew this, every one of them, but Cardin couldn't make himself worry about it as much as he was sure he should.
Didn't matter.
They'd been flying for hours, out of Haven, since they got their last intel. A Huntsman loyal to Advent, lost to XCOM's meddling.
Not just XCOM. The team of that traitor from Haven, hunting down the only good Hunstmen in Mistral, rescuing the bad ones.
A distant part of Cardin's mind relished the thought of putting down the monkey.
Didn't matter.
"ETA, ten minutes," came the pilot's voice over the PA.
As one, the four ADVENT Hunters slammed fists against the Bullhead's bulkhead, three times.
They would accomplish their mission for the Lady Fall.
Only that mattered.
Sun lay back in a hammock he'd made himself, out of cloth donated by villagers. They hadn't been all that happy with team SSSN at first, not after they'd had to track down and tie up that Huntress. That was probably fair. More so after Marina (who they were supposed to call "Banshee" when she wasn't around) showed up and carted her off for whatever treatment XCOM was offering. That probably looked like a kidnapping. Luckily, or really unluckily but not as bad as it could have been, there'd been a minor Grimm attack later.
Sun grimaced at the thought that that had probably had something to do with all the fear and uncertainty around having a Huntsmen team fighting a professional Huntress right there in the village.
In a hammock next to him, Neptune was humming that new song from Atlas over the sound of the rushing water outside the wall. It eased Sun's thoughts, though he was still feeling a little broody right up until Neptune increased volume, humming louder every time Sun suppressed a smile. Eventually, Sun burst out laughing. He wasn't any good at being broody, anyway. It took him a solid ten seconds of laughing, Neptune still humming, before he subsided and joined in, adding words to the tune.
"Souls in the wind must learn how to bend, seek out a star, hold onnnnn to the end…"
It wasn't a loud song or anything, not by nature. It was peaceful, hopeful, and it was Sun's new favourite. Neptune didn't like it as much, but some of the things lately got them all down once in a while, and Neptune was best at carrying a tune, so he took the job.
They'd gotten to the third chorus, right after Sun had made sure to give his friend a wink at the "dream about the sun," line, when Scarlet and Sage arrived and joined in.
By the time they finished, drowning out the river with noise, the team was sitting around, grinning at each other. They didn't really need to say anything. It was enough just to have each other around. They'd done well the past months. Fought fights they could never have won before the Vytal Festival, and come out just fine. Alive, even unhurt in most cases. They'd saved people, innocents and Hunters. Some of the first Hunstmen and Huntresses, actual professionals, people who could make a real difference, were even starting to recover by now.
Sun was just opening his mouth to say something about being proud of his friends when they all heard the sound of an incoming Bullhead.
"Was… Marina coming back for something?" Sage asked, trying to scan the mountain-filled horizon. The transport must have just come into the valley, but it was almost impossible to see in the late afternoon sun.
"I don't think so?" Scarlet backed up, as if he could get a better angle by taking a few steps away from the little copse of trees by the town wall. "It doesn't look like it's slowing down."
That was true. Sun rolled out of his hammock to take a look, and the Bullhead was definitely headed right for them, but high enough it couldn't be planning on landing.
Then something separated from the Bullhead.
"Did it just drop someone?!" And if it had, how were they supposed to help the person? If the passenger didn't have Aura, it would take a miracle for them to survive a fall from that height.
"No, there's more!" Neptune rolled out of his hammock, too, starting to wave them away. He was right; as the shape got closer, it became more distinct, separating into four individual black shapes. "Bombs?"
"Gliders?" Scarlet, of course, suggested.
"No," Sun shook his head. They were dropping too fast. Too straight. "It's-"
"Hunters!"
Sage must have seen the glint of armour, or maybe heard something, or maybe he just guessed at the shape, but in an instant he had his sword out and he used the flat to knock all of them back into the street.
Sun hit his back and managed to combine a sort of pained grunt with a shout of, "Auras up!" He was pretty proud of the multitasking, especially since he had to catch his breath right afterwards.
Two seconds later, the world exploded. Stone cracked and fire roared and the few trees the villagers had been tending to for years and years went down with sounds like gunshots.
Sun climbed to his feet amid a cloud of dust, and that would probably have been the end of it if he hadn't been lucky enough to hear the sound of clanking metal. Sun rolled to the side and was only saved from faceplanting by the fact that he was already on the ground when the next shockwave hit. He let the air roll him onto his feet and caught sight of his new definitely-not-friend for the first time in what felt like at least three cataclysms. At least the dust was partly cleared.
The guy, almost definitely a guy, looked like a tank. An angry tank. An ADVENT angry tank who'd gotten caught in a home hardware store and decided he'd make do. Steel armour, ADVENT insignia on shoulders and chest, vaguely ADVENT-y look to the helmet except for the pots-and-pans-y part of the look, which was really due to the sheet metal thing. Sun had always thought knight armour looked silly. Why bother when you could move faster without?
Speaking of. Sun moved. Because the big guy was charging at him with a mace the size of Sun's torso, and it seemed the thing to do.
A familiar-looking mace swung underneath him, and Sun finally got the chance to break out Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang. Except, when he landed two shots and four good knocks later, he'd done less damage than the tank man did running into the wall of the next building over.
Sun took a second as the guy pulled himself out of the wood to search for his team.
Neptune and Sage were fighting together against a heavily-armoured pair in a total stalemate. Both pairs had one polearm user and were holding the others off, at least for the moment. As for Scarlet and his-
"Scarlet!"
"What?"
"No killing!"
"He's not dead!"
"His arm's off!"
"No, it isn't!"
"What's that on the ground?!"
"He threw it at me!"
The whole exchange served as a bit too much of a distraction, especially when the arm in question jumped up off the ground and grabbed at Scarlet. Sun was busy picking his jaw up off the ground when he heard the clanking of armour again. Since he didn't actually have the power to do much against the guy, he threw his weapon into staff style, stabbed one end into the ground, and stepped aside.
It worked out really, really well. At first. The tank hit the staff and Sun gave him a little assistance in probably his first ever pole-vaulting experience. It was really graceful, except for the howling rage and everything.
"Sage! Incoming!" Sun yelled, picking up his staff and running after the flying tank. He would have kept running to create a three-on-three fight, but Scarlet was busy fighting that guy with daggers in a weird one-handed fight. The one-armed guy was down to one dagger, but Scarlet had one hand busy trying to keep a disembodied hand from strangling him.
Sun veered right to help Scarlet. Sage could handle things for a second. Hopefully.
"Scarlet! Need a hand?" Sun punctuated the brilliant joke by swinging his staff and knocking the hand away from his friend's throat. The other guy was still coming at them, so he swung and knocked a couple of attacks away while Scarlet caught his breath.
A… really, really loud explosion happened over where Sage and Neptune were.
Sun glanced over.
Yep, they needed help, too.
"You goo-? aaaAAGH!" he started, then obviously stopped, asking, because this guy's hand, his very black and smokey and not human hand, had just grown tentacles. Sun leaped back, pulling Scarlet with him, and the guy's hand latched onto his shoulder and reattached itself.
"Fighting retreat?" he offered.
Scarlet nodded and raised his cutlass, but stumbled when there was another explosion behind them. Sun stepped up and caught a dagger on his staff, which he nearly lost because the guy was just shockingly strong.
Another explosion behind him.
"SUNNN!" Neptune yelled.
Another explosion.
"WHYYYY?!"
Okay, maybe launching the tank guy with the exploding mace at his friends hadn't been the bright idea he'd thought it was at the time, but they sounded fine.
Another yelp from Neptune, another explosion.
Mostly fine.
Sun blocked another two or three attacks from the only one of these Huntsmen without seven layers of plate mail, all while backpedaling so fast he was pretty sure he should be winning a contest of some sort.
Yay, you advanced as fast as you could in the other direction, and your prize is not dying!
Honestly, that was looking like a pretty good prize right now. The only reason he hadn't lost his nunchucks by now was because they just weren't designed to take hits the way a staff or sword would. Even then, he could feel how hard the guy was hitting, especially with that Grimm arm.
Additional question for later: why did a Huntsman have a Grimm arm?
Questions for right now: how was Sun going to know when he was getting too close to the other fight when he was busy not dying in this one and being partly deafened by all the explosions?
That question was answered when a very large hand grabbed him by the shirt collar and swung him around. Sage was definitely yelling something he probably thought would be helpful while throwing Sun at a new enemy, but whatever advice he had was lost in the ringing of Sun's ears.
Hopefully that would clear up with a little Aura and a short break in the explosions. For now, Sun had a guy with a sword to fight.
The process-of-elimination way of learning about the enemy wasn't getting them anywhere fast, but was there any other way to figure out this many people? SSSN had been sent up against targets they'd been briefed on before now, and targets they'd outnumbered. Who were these guys?
Tired of the sword thing, Sun wrapped the chains of Ruyi Bang around the blade, turned, and flipped the armoured man over-
No, he didn't.
The sword stopped dead as he was partway through a really solid hip throw, and the guy just did not go up.
What kind of person didn't go up when they were flipped?
The sword and Ruyi Bang ripped out of his hand and slammed Sun in the shoulders, and he rolled to get a look at his answer.
Oh. That kind of person.
"What the Commandy #*#$?"
"Language!" Sage yelled, then turned and looked. "What the Commandy #*#$?"
The sword guy, who now had half of Sun's weapon, was bolted to the ground with a dozen black tentacles. And he now had four legs. Sort of. Either way, more legs and tentacles than a person should have.
Sun scrambled to his feet, backing away from the guy whose tentacles were currently unburrowing themselves from the ground to let his back legs move.
"What happened to you?"
The guy responded by raising his sword, which seemed reasonable enough, as ominous monster things went.
"Do these guys seem a little more monster-y than usual to you guys?" he asked, mostly conversationally, definitely a little bit panicked-y.
A startled yelp from Neptune answered that question, and told Sun pretty clearly that they were all surrounded.
"Up and over!" he yelled. He'd be losing Ruyi Bang, but they could make do once they were free.
Sage leaped into the air, holding Scarlet's hand, and they both jumped again from one of Sage's air pulses. Sage spun and threw Scarlet, who glided towards the street, and used another pulse to follow after.
Neptune used Tri-Hard to vault into the air, meeting Sun's jump at the top, and they both put boots together and pushed. Being nearly horizontal at the time, Neptune was launched after Sage and Scarlet. Sun, on the other hand, was thrown at the wall. Worked for him. He curled up, hit the wall feet first, and started running, making it just high enough to jump back and over the team of Grimmified Huntsmen and join his friends.
They formed up in a sort of wedge, with Neptune at the back and the three of them up front, acting as a screen for either his gun or his guandao.
"How're they moving that fast in that armour?" Scarlet asked. First one to speak and already sounding out of breath. They really needed to work on the guy's endurance.
Sun kept his eyes on the four armoured Huntsmen. All of them were just as fast as any other Hunstman, way faster than they deserved to be, with Grimm stuff leaking out of their ears. Not that Sun could see their ears. They were all wearing those ADVENT helmets, or a weird version of them. The only one whose body they could see was the guy with the daggers and a Grimm arm that was, right now, about twice as long as it should be, with two elbows. Gross.
Sun blinked.
"Hey guys," he said slowly, since the Huntsmen didn't look like they were moving. At all. It was really unnatural. "Do those guys look familiar to you?"
"You know…" Scarlet took a step forward and tilted his head sideways. Probably squinted, too. "They kinda do."
Sun nodded. Without the helmets, maybe with armour with less straight lines and red, and definitely without the evil black smoke, there was something vaguely familiar about their weapons and the way they stood.
Then the four armoured Grimmsmen were charging and leaping over fallen trees and there wasn't really time to play Guess Who anymore.
"Sea Monkeys left! Cherry right! Redbeard when I get Ruyi Bang back!"
"How're you gonna do that?" Neptune asked. Yelled, really, but that was because his voice rose when the other guy with the halberd charged him and he had to duck and dive to get out of the way.
Sun grabbed Neptune's arm and swung him away, and then team SSSN was sort of surrounding the Grimmsmen, so that was fine. Except the guy with the sword who was holding Ruyi Bang with a tendril on his hip was fighting Sage and Scarlet!
Well, maybe they'd get it for him if he just gave them an opening.
'nother explosion. More fire. It'd almost be boring if it couldn't burn down the entire town and also kill them.
"Ideas?" Neptune yelled, because their ears were ringing again.
"No!" Sun yelled back, while doing a very important backflip. Important because it kept him not dead when the halberd guy and mace guy tried to take off his legs and head, respectively. "I was hoping to get the sword guy!"
Neptune shot the halberd guy once or twice and scrambled up the side of a building that really shouldn't have already been pushed back to. "How about now?!"
Well, it would sure be a lot easier if they could actually hit a real body part at some point.
Sun smacked himself in the head, this time in the middle of a front flip. The front flip was also important because it took him over the mace guy and split attention from Neptune.
Now on the opposite side of the big guy from Neptune, and Neptune with the high ground, Sun did the smart thing.
He jumped on Mace Guy's back.
"Get their helmets!"
Suiting action to word, he fiddled with the latches on the neck of the armour and jumped to avoid being slammed back-first against a wall. On the way up, he grabbed the guy's helmet with his tail and pulled it off.
It did not make the guy very happy, but Sun hit the ground running and passed the helmet into his hands before chucking it at the halberd guy.
It made a good distraction on both counts. Mace guy got angry, halberd guy stumbled, and Sun was on him as his front foot came up and his halberd with it. Neptune shot the guy a couple of times, and Sun was able to sneak a leg in and knock the him over, snatching up the halberd in the bargain. He spun it, jammed it into the crack in now-no-halberd guy's neck armour, and-
The Mistrali Trade Route bullet train derailed somewhere four hundred kilometers away, jumped the distance, and slammed directly into Sun's back. At least, if anybody asked, that was what he'd tell them. There was no way one guy in a suit of armour hit hard enough to knock Sun as far as he did. Sun flew threw the air, wondering for at least two seconds what had happened, until he spun far enough to actually see the two Grimmsmen he'd just said goodbye to. And, still flying through the air, he stared at his first good look at the biggest guy.
"Hey!" His tail helpfully latched onto a tree branch way too close to a house and sent him sailing back. "I know that guy!"
Scarlet and Sage were fine, ish. Scarlet's gun grapple had the stray hand tied up and Scarlet had the sword guy (with four legs!) off balance, switching in and out with Sage to push the Grimmsmen back, then retreat. Scarlet kicked the hand back out of reach while Sun was mid-flight.
"It's that racist guy!" Neptune yelled, summing up Sun's own epiphany about the guy now lacking a helmet. Which wasn't very nice. He probably had a name. Sun just couldn't remember it.
And he landed, rolled, and came up in time to see the mace coming right for him.
Oops.
He chose to keep rolling. Seemed the best option. It took him into Cardin's legs- that was his name! It took him into Cardin's legs and through, which put Cardin down behind him and… Henchman number three?... still on the ground practically beneath Sun.
Well, now Sun felt bad not remembering this guy's name. And why wasn't his helmet on? Sun hadn't gotten around to knocking it off.
His mind put the puzzle pieces together, and he realized he'd had the halberd in just the right spot to get run over by Cardin.
Cardin really hadn't gotten better at fighting, had he? Even as fast as his team was, they really weren't equipped to handle how agile SSSN's team had all learned to be. Sage was jumping around in midair, Neptune could vault up to a second story, no problem, and Scarlet could practically fly if he wanted to.
Speaking of outmaneuvering.
Sun took Jingu Bang in hand and shot HenchThree in the face, twice. It didn't do much, since his Aura took the impact, but it had to take a chunk out of that. There wasn't time for more, though, since HenchThree bucked and tossed Sun off.
Neptune was already there to pull him to his feet.
"We're winning!" Sun said brightly.
Neptune was not smiling.
Sun turned around to see HenchThree on his feet and Cardin growing. Actually standing there, getting bigger while they watched, rippling with black smoke that filled out his armour. HenchThree had his halberd-
"Hey, Neptune?"
"Yeah?"
"What's Henchman Three's name? I forget."
"That's what you're worried about right now?"
"I just shot him in the face twice. Seems rude not to know his name."
"Sky! Now shoot!"
That seemed reasonable. "Take out Sky first!"
Neptune gave him half a glance, shrugged, and shot Sky. He got it, at least. Shoot the guy they actually looked like they could take out of the fight, then get to the big guy two on one.
It did not work out that way. Sky charged them, forcing them to back up, and they ran out of room when they hit the wall of the village. Sun didn't even remember getting turned around enough to be on that side of the Grimmsmen.
"He's getting big!" Neptune yelled, mostly over the sound of gunshots and that river.
"Crow's Nest?"
Neptune looked at him. Then at the growing Cardin, who at this point was a good three times larger than he should be, and almost entirely a mass of black smoke. "You can't be serious."
Yet Neptune jumped, vaulting backwards and hitting the town wall to escape Sky and get height. Sun was right beside him, grabbing a ladder rung on the wall, swinging up, and kicking off.
They hit Cardin's shoulders about the time he hit four times normal size, and took up positions holding onto Cardin's hair.
Cardin did not like that.
"Think he can reach us?" Sun asked as the man armoured giant swayed.
"Nah," Neptune said, with absolutely no confidence. He was busy trying to get Tri-hard, now in rifle mode, and Cardin's arms were coming up.
Sun readied Jingu Bang and crouched low.
Aaaand the armour at Cardin's shoulders ground to a halt.
Sun would have leapt for joy, if that wouldn't have gotten him in reach of reaching fingers that were easily as big as his chest now.
This guy was way bigger than he had any right to be! At least it didn't look like his mace had grown with him, and his armour was more Grimmstuff now than metal.
"Now what?" Neptune yelled, but he was already shooting at the other two Grimmsmen, supporting Sage and Scarlet, so as far as Sun was concerned, he was doing what he needed to do.
Sun kicked Cardin's neck lightly and yelled down at the man's ear. "We're trying to help- what are you doing?"
Cardin grabbed Sky from the ground, lifted him over, and tossed him to his shoulder at Sun. Sun tried to dodge to the side, but there wasn't exactly enough room to maneuver on Cardin's shoulder. So Sky hit him and Sun had to grapple with the way-too-strong Huntsman with about three foot-spans worth of space for their four feet while Cardin flailed around and knocked down half the town wall and practically let the river in.
Except Sun wasn't wearing armour and Sky was, which meant Sun weighed half as much but could maneuver way better. His weapon also wasn't getting in the way. Sun pushed, held on to Cardin's armour with his tail when he had to, and managed to get Sky teetering over a pretty good fall before Cardin had the indecency to mess with the fight again.
Sun heard Sage yell, then everything tipped and he was falling, wrestling for control. It barely lasted a second, but Sky didn't let go. They hit the ground and rolled, mashing Sun against ground and armour and ground again, until they hit a fallen tree. Sky kept hold of him and slammed him against the tree.
Wham! Couldn't focus. Wham! Couldn't breathe. Wham! Black spots. Bright spots. Wham!
Sun fell back against the tree, Aura spent. Water flowed under him. Hands wrapped around his throat.
The world went black, hopefully for just an instant, and then the hands were gone and Sun could breathe again. He blinked his eyes and heard yelling before his vision cleared. Sage. Scarlet. Cardin.
… Cardin?
That was definitely pain and not rage kinda yelling. The world got shadowy dark instead of blackout dark, and then a hand grabbed Sun's collar and pulled really hard, dragging him off the ground, into the air. Sun didn't figure out who it was until there was a pulse of green energy and they flew higher. Then the ground shook.
Sun was in Sage's arms when they hit the ground. Mostly comfortable, really, except for the bruises and all. He finally got a chance to look around.
Cardin was picking himself up off the ground, with Neptune scrambling away near his shoulder. No, not away. Towards someone.
Sage lowered Sun to the ground and barely gave him a once over before letting him down. Scarlet filled Sun's view a second later, holding Ruyi Bang. Or was it Jingu…? No, Jingu was at his belt. That meant he had both again. He just needed to stand up and take it.
Which was fine, except his legs weren't too happy about how things went for the last thirty seconds or so. Oxygen was a good thing for acrobatics. Good to know.
"You okay?"
"What happened?"
"Neptune lost it. Stuck Tri-hard in Cardin's ear. He fell on Russell and Dove."
"Cool. We can finish up…" As soon as Sun's legs stopped being numb and Scarlet stopped being so strong. He shouldn't be able to hold Sun down with just one hand.
"Stay down. We'll handle the rest."
That didn't seem fair at all. So far, Sun had lost half his weapon, split his team twice, and gotten his butt kicked. His team deserved more from him than that.
But they also deserved not to worry about him just because of his pride. So he lay back and nodded.
Scarlet nodded back and ran to join the others.
The reason Sage had run so fast was obvious once Sun picked him and Neptune out again. They were both smashing something on the ground where-
Sun pulled himself up against a fallen tree to see better.
-where Sky had fallen. Sky was on his back and Neptune was electrocuting his armour while Sage brought that massive sword down again and again, crushing the armour, sparking Sky's Aura.
"Sto-" his voice cracked. Hoarse from nearly being crushed. "STOP!"
Scarlet stopped mid-stride. Sage and Neptune looked up.
"We're saving them," Sun yelled. Said. Tried to yell.
They heard him, anyway, and even if they shot Sky dirty glares and Sage kicked the guy again, they stopped.
Good.
Sun settled as best he could you watch the rest.
Water spilled along the ground and soaked his pants again. He blamed Cardin for knocking down the town wall.
Except the rest was… not looking good. His team was winning, but they were doing it brutally. Sky was motionless on the ground, Cardin would have gotten his ankle tendons chopped if black tendrils hadn't writhed out of his armour, and Scarlet and Sage were on opposite sides of the one-armed guy, hitting him in the back while Neptune distracted the four-legged guy. They were actually doing a lot better than they'd done with him there.
And something was going on with the Grimm. Cardin's armour was sprouting tentacles, the tied-up hand broke loose, and the henchmen with four legs started looking less like a four-legged man and more like a centaur or something.
Real Grimm - normal Grimm - didn't do that kind of thing. Did they? Were there monsters out there who got more powerful as time went on?
Worse. Were they doing it by feeding on the team somehow?
Sun started assembling Ruyi and Jingu as best he could while watching the fight. He didn't need a staff right now, but by putting the bars of the nunchucks together, he got serviceable rifles. Maybe he could still help. And besides, his legs weren't numb anymore. They were wet, though.
He managed to stand as the one-armed guy hit the ground, and right before Cardin moved.
Cardin swiped at Scarlet and Sage, who both jumped out of the way, then stomped on Neptune.
Oh Gods he stomped on Neptune!
Sun ran forward, remembered he didn't have any Aura, and knelt down at the next fallen tree with Ruyi Bang at his shoulder. It wasn't easy to aim, but dammit Cardin was bigger than a barn right now. With Sage and Scarlet still regrouping - safely - Sun aimed at Cardin and fired, switched guns, fired with one hand and reloaded with the other, and kept that up. After three shots, Cardin turned towards him.
And picked a tree up off the ground and threw it.
At least he had to use both hands, Sun thought in between mental screaming. That-
The tree sailed over his head and rolled, shedding branches with a chorus of cracking and splashing water.
-was a good thing. At least he wasn't strong enough to throw a tree one-handed.
By the time Sun reached his feet again, though, Cardin had Sage in one hand and was reaching to grab Scarlet while Sage slashed with the only sword around big enough to actually do anything. Scarlet was struggling with that Grimm hand again.
Sage got a lucky cut and Cardin dropped him. It even distracted Cardin from Scarlet for a second, not that that did any good. Sun watched Scarlet's Aura flicker and die, and the Grimm hand raked at his chest, tore open his shirt.
Cardin swept Scarlet away, sending him flying down the road.
Sun shot Cardin in the face.
And Cardin's Aura flickered and went out.
Sun felt like screaming in joy and frustration. Cardin was shrinking, but Scarlet! And Sage was falling, and Neptune was fighting the four-legged guy, and everything was going wrong so fast!
There was a flash of light, electricity, from Neptune draining Tri-hard all at once and getting caught in the blast. He and the four-legged guy went down, screaming.
Sage hit the ground feet-first and skidded to a halt as Sun reached him.
Cardin was still shrinking, but his armour was still almost twice the size of a man.
"You shouldn't be here," he snapped.
The habitual stowaway laughed. "I've never heard that before."
He rolled his eyes, which took them off the definitely-still-too-big Cardin when definitely-still-too-big Cardin charged. He started paying attention again when Sun shot at Cardin's Grimmsuit.
They both jumped to opposite sides, but Cardin stopped a lot faster than he had any right to, and turned to Sun. So Sun and Sage made the right choice by splitting up to surround the big guy, and Cardin probably made the right choice, since Sun had guns that could kill him without his helmet if that was what Sun wanted. Especially since Sun didn't have Aura and Cardin had his mace back from wherever he'd hidden it when he grew.
And Sun didn't want to kill Cardin. He remembered the team being loud and racist and surprisingly strong based mostly on brute force. It had been a really quick way to get on the rest of the team's nerves, especially Sage.
"Don't- woah! Hurt him- Ah! Sage." Sun scrambled under a swing of that mace and was nearly thrown into the air by a backswing powered by wind Dust. "He's got no Aura. Ta- GODS! Take out the armour!"
Sage obliged, slamming his sword into Cardin's back so hard it split the metal. For a second, as Cardin stumbled, Sun thought Sage had killed him.
Then a black mass writhed out of the armour and wrapped around the sword. Cardin swung his fist and hit Sage in the face with a metal backhand. Aura flared and Sage fell.
Sun slammed his staff right into the back of Cardin's head.
Cardin turned around.
"Oh, that's worse," Sun said, to himself now. "That's a whole lot worse."
Cardin was unconscious. That was good. Cardin had not stopped moving. That was weird. Grimmstuff was growing over the armour. That was bad.
Sun moved fast, while the armour was shuddering, taking unsteady, wild swings at him. He slammed the shoulders, knees, hips, every joint the Grimmstuff was bubbling out of, trying to beat it back or kill it or at least slow it down, but nothing worked. Armour-Cardin just kept coming, pushing Sun back until he stepped in water. There was no way to stop it, and the armour was stronger than Sun. Armour-Cardin crashed through the water and even a tree while Sun had to hop from trunk to trunk after nearly slipping and falling in the water from the river.
There was no way to stop this thing. It was clumsy, sure, and Sun wasn't even sure if or how it could see him, but it was fast and strong and had a long enough reach that he had to dart in, get a hit in, and get out before ever doing any sort of damage.
There had to be a way to stop this thing and save Cardin. They'd saved so many Hunters already. They were done. Mistral was safe. These four weren't even from Mistral!
It was just these four to save, and SSSN just needed to stop the Grimm from destroying team CRDL before XCOM could get rid of the ADVENT monsters.
Note to self. Find situations with fewer acrony-
Sun's train of thought, distracted as it was, was cut off by a particularly enthusiastic punch from the Grimm-Armour. Sun went flying backwards, skipped over the water once, and nearly went under as he passed through the town wall and to the edge of the river. Sun treaded water as best he could with the wind knocked out of him, swimming for the broken wall damming the river and causing this little problem.
Of course, Cardin's armour was following him. It wasn't handling the water well, but it seemed determined to kill him despite being up to its chest.
Sun climbed the broken wall without much issue. He had an idea. Hopefully it was a good idea. Trying to save everyone didn't look good when it all went wrong.
He moved further, right over the river, staff in hand. The armour had to follow him, right? That was how Grimm worked. They sensed emotions. And dammit, Sun wanted this one. He was scared of this one. It deserved to drown and be destroyed and never be seen again.
It stopped right at the edge of the river when its foot would have gone under and carried the rest of itself with it.
Sun stabbed Ruyi Jingu into the dam and hauled backwards, as if his custom-built disassemblable staff was a crowbar. The mass shifted, groaned, and, as the armour tried to climb it, broke.
The water roared so loud it made Sun dizzy. He jumped for a branch, missed, snapped out with Jingu Bang, and swung from the branch to latch onto the next tree. How the tree survived the water, he didn't know. His teeth rattled with the power of it.
And then it was done, seconds later, and Sun scanned the river. It was calm now, at least mostly. Possible to swim in, if you knew what you were doing. But not if you were wearing a good quarter your weight in metal. Cardin had to be down there, maybe blown downstream, hopefully not hurt by the waterfall.
And from there, there were two options. Either the armour saved him, or it abandoned him.
Sun clipped on Ruyi and Jingu and dove into the water. The cold hit him like another punch to the face, but he managed to keep his eyes open once the water swept him up.
Ten seconds later, he barely made it to the surface. The water was slower than those first seconds, but faster than it looked. He was already past the village, almost out of sight past the trees. And he hadn't seen anything.
He dove again, trying his hardest to slow himself down, to swim against the current a little towards shore. His foot hit a rock and only luck kept him from twisting it, but he still didn't see that suit of armour or the boy.
Boy. Dammit. Cardin Winchester was as old as he was, and stolen by Advent to turn into whatever he'd been. A grimm-infested Huntsman in a suit of Grimm armour.
Sun surfaced for the second time and swam to shore. He didn't have a choice. If Cardin wasn't here…
Hopefully, the armour had saved Cardin instead of abandoning.
Oh. Gods. Hopefully the Grimm armour still had a man Sun's age prisoner.
Sun didn't bother getting up off his knees on the river's edge. He just fished his Scroll out of his pocket and opened it up. Neptune would have fried his Scroll, but maybe Scarlet?
Scarlet picked up on the first ring.
"Sun! You're alright?"
"I'm alright. I… lost Cardin."
"We've got the others, though. Sage sent a signal to XCOM. They should be here soon."
"Good." Sun suppressed a sigh, tried to smile. Three out of four. His team was heroes. And he'd saved them. The armour… there really wasn't another way to have stopped it. Not with Cardin inside. And Cardin hadn't been a good man, by any account. Still. "Make sure… make sure they send some people for a search party, alright? I… didn't find a body."
Scarlet was silent for a few seconds, then Neptune's voice asked, "dude, are you alright? I can come get you."
"Yeah." Sun smiled. At least his friends were worried about him. He had great friends. He was on the right side. They were all trying their best to do the right thing. "It's just… you know. It's been a long war."