Things just get worse.
The arena's plummet occurred almost in slow motion. The huge gravity dust generator in the coliseum worked as hard as it could to keep the whole thing afloat, stretching out the agonizing and dreadful process. Jaune grabbed Ruby, pulled her in and held her close as he dropped to the floor. She clung to him tightly, not knowing what else to do.
The screaming and blaring alarms melded together in an incomprehensible roar; it sounded like a waterfall of fear was crashing down all around them. That only increased when the arena violently shook, and an angry crash resounded from below their feet. They had hit the ground. Those still standing fell over, bumping into and smashing each other. Then the whole coliseum was eerily still, and Jaune dared to think that they had settled on the earth.
Then it began to tip over. Slowly, the floating arena teetered to the side. Amity Arena had been hovering above a scenic cliffside view of the Emerald Forest. It had just smashed down onto the very edge of the cliff. Now it was fully capsizing as it slipped off the ledge.
The pressure levied by its own weight pushed the architecture to its limits and beyond. The cement beneath people's feet split and cracked. The arena floor caved in, becoming a mess of all the environmental settings and complex machinery beneath. Pipes burst, sending gouts of liquids and steam out through the walls. The pillars holding up the huge tv screens snapped, sending the screens tumbling onto spectators. The bolts holding down the seats popped, and the bleachers all warped. Everywhere one looked, the carefully crafted arena was ripped asunder.
The coliseum itself wailed as its steel beams tore themselves apart; the plaster sheathing cracked; the electronics spluttered; the glass shattered—every aspect of that great accomplishment of engineering seemed to come alive just in the moment of death, just in time to scream.
Like a human with every bone in their body having been viciously broken, the arena screamed and fell. It toppled over the side of the cliff, falling sidelong down into a forest, dragging all inside along with it.
Salem stood atop Mountain Glenn's namesake summit. The dead and silent city lay motionless before her, like a desiccated corpse. The last rays of sunlight were slinking behind horizon, casting the world into a shadow that made the dead city all the more ghoulish.
"My lady, the attack should have happened by now," said Watts. He stood behind her, looking down at his watch.
Salem's cold, black eyes remained focused on the city. She looked at its empty streets, its broken buildings. She closed her eyes.
She imagined things for how they used to be. A bustling mini-Vale. A proud town where people hunted new opportunities and enticing futures. Open shops, pretty little parks, rumblings cars, laughing children. A city alive.
Then, so quickly, a city dead.
With her eyes closed, Salem saw the past. She saw the outer walls being overrun. The whispery echoes of screams still came easily to her, even after all this time. Her nose twitched as it recalled the scent of blood spilled that day. She shivered.
"My lady?" Watts asked uncertainly. After not receiving a response, he turned back to the bullhead which had brought them there to the rocky peak. Internally, he debated whether or not it was too early to suggest leaving. He had learned she liked to linger on things.
A stuffy silence lay around them, with not a single animal or person making a sound to disturb the stagnant air. Not so much as a breeze shook the quiet. It seemed as if nature itself was as reticent to bother Salem as Watts himself was.
Then Salem twitched. She brought her head up and breathed in deeply. She let it go, slowly. She opened her eyes.
"It's happened," she said, blankly looking up into the air, looking into the nothing, as she usually did. "I can feel it."
"Ah, the attack?"
"Yes…" she whispered.
Salem brought a hand up to her cheek, and she felt something wet. She looked at her fingers with detached curiosity. They were dampened by her tears.
"Odd…" she whispered, wiping her face dry.
The pain, the fear, the anger, the paranoia, the confusion. She sensed it all. All coming from across the forests, from the place of arena's collapse, from Vale. As if it were a rolling wave of noxious fumes, it had hit her. Her skin tingled, and her eyes narrowed.
The grimm around Mountain Glenn felt it as well. A chorus of howls and whoops emanated from the dead city, suddenly ripping apart the claustrophobic silence. Even the old, massive mammoths hulking through the trees emitted deep rumbles from their great chests.
"Head back to the ship," Salem said. "Tell the pilot to prepare for liftoff."
"Yes, my lady," Watts said, not wasting a moment to turn and get to the bullhead.
Salem tilted her head down. She looked between her feet, at the tough dirt she stood upon. There was something beneath. She knew that.
Salem knelt onto her knees. She placed her hands gently against the ground. Then she whispered.
"I felt you then. You were almost as dead as this stone… but I still felt you.
"Did you feel me as well? Did you sense me in your sleep? Did I make you dream? I know I stirred you when the city fell. When the maiden died and I…
"A miracle, really. The perfect place, and the perfect time. You must have been about to turn to dust when it happened. I'm so glad I could stop that… so glad that now I can see you. You spoke to me then, and I swore to come back, didn't I?
"You've been resting and preparing all these years, pulled back from the brink by that disaster, recalled to life. And now… you can feel it, can't you?"
Salem stared down at the ground. She ran a hand across the cold, rough stone gently. As if she were stroking the cheek of a child.
Underneath her, the mountain shuddered. A tremor shook it, causing rocks and pebbles to dislodge and collapse. A cacophony arose from all around as the earth shook.
Salem's lips slowly crept up into a smile.
"Good," she said, "let it be done."
The carnage was ongoing—even as it got worse—because cruelty does not care for respite. The coliseum had completely capsized and fallen hundreds of feet, landing on its side and crumpling. Many who had been reveling within died from falling at odd angles, especially those who had occupied the stands opposite the side which smashed against the ground. Their bodies lie broken, twisted and bloodied, put on display for the survivors to see and have to climb over. Even most of those who lived—civilians, Atlas personnel, hunters—were battered and bruised.
Jaune crawled out from under a mess of fallen debris, carefully shielding Ruby underneath him. She was still and wide-eyed, overcome with shock. She flinched when he asked her if she was okay, but she did not say an answer.
Jaune forced himself up to his feet, unceremoniously flinging away a couple of disfigured corpses. His head spun when he suddenly stood up, and he teetered on his feet for a moment. Despite this, he forced himself to look around and take in the situation.
The entire arena had collapsed onto its side. Looming up like a wall was what had previously been the arena floor. Well above him loomed what had been the other side of the arena stands. The massive screens, whole sections of seating and architectural decorations had snapped off and fallen down onto what was now the uneven floor. And bodies. Many bodies.
All around was a scattering of battered flesh and bone, sometimes alive and sometimes not.
Screams died away even as fresh ones were produced. People finally bled out enough to be silenced or awoke from shock-induced paralysis with voices primed for terrible shouts. People groaned, muttered, groveled and sobbed. The injured and the dead were heaped up into the same piles, tangled with one another.
Jaune looked down at Ruby, who seemed unharmed, if not unfazed. She timidly glanced around, eyes wide and horrified. He gripped her hand—the robotic one—and squeezed it.
His instincts, however, forbade sentimentality in such a crucial moment. He whipped around and looked for his friends, only to be struck in the gut by an overbearingly powerful sense of horror when he saw more bodies of those he did not know flopped around. He could not see his friends right away. Guilt for their deaths attacked him—
Breathe deep. Hold. Release.
He could not fall to panic.
Jaune forced himself to let go of Ruby's hand, then went about a search. With a grim sense of purpose, he quickly hauled up corpses and threw them aside. He had learned not to harbor too much dignity for the dead.
He picked up another corpse and felt awash with relief when he saw Ren and Nora—clinging to each other desperately—concealed under another body and some of the seating that had collapsed.
Nearby, Yang threw herself up from underneath some rubble. Weiss and Blake got to their feet beside her.
"Jaune!" A girl called out. "Nora! Ren!" It was one of many voices that fought to be heard amidst the pained shouting, but Jaune picked up on it in an instant. With it, the last of his deepest dread subsided.
Then he heard the call of a giant nevermore, and the dread returned.
It was not the most uncomfortable jail cell that Roman Torchwick had ever been in. Sure, it was pretty much just a metal closet with a blanket on the floor Sure, they only let him out to take a leak once a day. Sure, he hadn't seen daylight in weeks. Sure, the guards would bang on the bars and wake him up in the middle of the night. Sure, the guards would drag him out and beat the hell out of him on the reg.
But hey, it beat that stint he spent in a nightmarish jail when he got duped on the one—and only—time he went to Vacuo.
And besides, this was just temporary.
Not long ago, a siren had pierced the dull monotony that clogged the brig. It ran through every room and hall in the ship. A desperate emergency siren, one that told every Atlas goon who could hear that some pretty not fun stuff was going on.
It made Roman smile. The grin was half satisfaction, half relief, half nervousness. He stood just behind the bars, arms crossed. Now it was just a matter of time. He trusted the others to follow the plan. Soon, everything would work out.
Roman bit down, imaging the taste of his favored cigars and the sensation of gnawing them. All that he had put up with, soon it would be done. It'd be over. He just hoped that she would hurry up…
He looked at the guard for the first or twentieth time since the siren started blaring. The bozo stood nervously by the brig's entrance. His left his hand rested on the stun baton at his waist. Roman liked seeing him like this, all paranoid and anxious. Normally, the prick swaggered up and down past the cells that housed Roman and a few other poor saps that Atlas had picked up, acting like he was tough shit.
The door to the brig opened. The guard jumped and looked to the side, only to be struck by confusion when he saw that the doorway was empty.
The very gleam of reality cracked. Already in the air, it was far too late for the guard to do anything. A pointed heel struck the side of his helmet, and he collapsed to the ground. No more fighting required. Above him stood the diminutive, dangerous form of Neo, holding her umbrella in one hand, a bag in the other.
Roman's smile returned. Gone was the nervousness. Confident adrenaline pumped into him, making his blood feel hotter ass it ran through his veins.
Neo wasted no time in snatching the key from the guard's belt and sprinting down to Roman's cell. She was called at by several of the other prisoners, begging her to let them go, too. She summarily ignored each and every one of them and only stopped in front of Roman.
She slid the key into the lock, twisted and wrenched the door open.
"Hey—"
Roman's greeting was cut off as his little accomplice threw herself into him. She let go of the umbrella and bag—each falling without care to the floor—and wrapped her thin arms around his waist. She pressed her face into his chest.
His grin fell, replaced by a confused and honestly shocked expression. Despite her light weight, Roman fell back a few steps before becoming still. He did not move a muscle; Neo tightened her grip on him.
After another moment, he smiled. This was not the smirk of a rule-breaker or the giddy, nervous grin of a man about to get away with something bad. This was a sincere smile.
He put his arms around his shoulders and gave her a hug in return. "It's alright squirt, I missed you too."
Instantly, Neo tore herself out of his grip and turned away. Her face was flushed with an embarrassed hue of red, and she refused to even look at him. Roman suppressed a laugh.
"Alrighty," he said, "let's get to the server room, right?" He cracked his neck, readying himself after weeks of lethargic imprisonment for the most important job of his life. There would be time to tease Neo later.
His little accomplice also quickly shook herself out of her little pout. She knelt and—still not looking at him—unzipped the bag. Quickly, she tossed up to Roman all the necessities she'd brought: the parts of his cane, ammo and a hat.
He quickly slipped the hat back on his head, where it fit snugly. It clashed with his grey prisoner jumpsuit, but it also took a step toward calming some of his remaining nerves. A fair tradeoff.
He quickly affixed the crook of his cane to the shaft and loaded a few dust rounds. He twirled it expertly, satisfied with the familiar whoosh. That brat had smashed his last one, but this would do nicely as a replacement.
"Now I just need a cigar," he joked. He turned to Neo, having just a little bit of hope that maybe she actually brought one.
Instead, she was holding up two gas masks fished from the bag.
"Huh?" Roman took hold of one and looked down at the military-grade mask. It looked like the ones the Enclave had used.
Neo slipped hers over her face and snapped her fingers to get his attention to her hands, which she quickly moved in a flurry of sign language:
We're going to need these.
For the Atlas fleet, the situation was rapidly worsening. Flocks of nevermore were swooping in, forcing the ships to open fire with light armaments. On the horizon, however, and from the clouds, growing hordes of flying Grimm were coming. The spawned in from the darkness of night itself.
The Atlas fleet braced for an impending attack the likes of which they had not seen in years. Staff in the ships desperately tried to coordinate with each other and contact survivors on the ground to see just how bad things were at the fallen coliseum. The many floating warships primed their biggest guns. Smaller aircrafts departed from the ships hangars to do battle and rescue those on the ground.
Amidst this, no one noticed them.
They were quiet in the bullhead. They all knew what they had to do. They had gone over the plans over and over again, each one of them knowing that this was the most important thing they had yet done in their lives; and, if they did it successfully, then it would be the harbinger of even more important things to come.
Twelve of them, all sure to be facing odds unlike anything than they've faced before. But they trusted their commander. He sat ready by the exit. Beside him was his right-hand man, already hoisting his hammer.
They each wore their distinctive new armor, with bulging eyes set under angry brows. They held rifles and swords and maces and axes, the weapons of hunters.
Among them all was the understanding of what they were doing and why they were doing it. Why they fought. They believed they knew why: they fought for purity of blood and mind.
They fought because they were angry. They fought because they were hateful. They allowed it to rule them. And now that they were slaves to their hatred, only now were they able to convince themselves that they were free.
This was just the first step.
The silence was broken when the radio crackled from the cockpit. The pilot said some jargon and code. They kept flying unimpeded. They flew right up to the capital ship of Atlas's dispatched fleet. They went right into the hangar, passing by a few other bullheads that were leaving.
Each one of them gripped their weapons tighter. A few pried at their masks one last time, making sure that they were on tight. It wouldn't do for there to be a leak.
The bullhead landed with a thud and final jolt. They all rose to their feet. Even the pilot swiftly threw on and secured his helmet in an expertly practiced movement; he hoisted rifle not a second later.
Their commander stood at the exit as the gangplank lowered. He drew his sword. He flicked a switch. The cruel black blade erupted in flame, a fire just as bright and deadly as the passionate hate that fueled its master.
One soldier hefted a launcher and immediately shot cannisters out of the bullhead as the gangplank lowered, missiles that quickly exploded into clouds of thin white gas. The Atlas crews unlucky enough to be nearby began to cough as the Enclave's very own chemical weapons instantly attacked their eyes, lungs and lips. Some of them would not need to worry about that for long, however.
With Rubra Mors drawn, Bishop leapt out of the bullhead as soon as he could. He had barely taken a few steps before he swung his sword and cut a man clean in half, an engineer who had been approaching to check up on their ship, thinking it carried allies. Such was how it began.
Bishop charged into the ship, followed by his death squad. Those with rifles fired indiscriminately at anyone in sight. Those like Bishop and Arthur who were armed with swords and hammers and spears and axes butchered those close enough as they ran. The one with a cannister launcher did not stop shooting their chemicals for even a moment, ensuring that their squad was followed by a trail of vicious gas. They all conducted this killing and maiming without care as to whether their targets were armed or running away. That was the case for most whom they killed.
An alarm began blaring immediately—a panicked call of disaster.
They stampeded through the hangar and into the halls of the ship, Bishop leading the pack. The personnel before them had mostly never seen nor ever expected to see direct combat. Their duties were limited to operating the grand cannons of the Atlas navy and the carrier hangers for their top-notch fighters and bullheads. The death squad sliced through them with ease.
Bishop sprinted down a hall, with one unlucky crewmate ahead of him running as fast as he could to get away. Bishop, however, caught up to him. Without slowing down, he threw out a slash, catching the man in the face.
He collapsed screaming as the Enclave ran past him. The flame of Rubra Mors had seared his flesh across his whole face, but it certainly had not fully cauterized his open wound. He held his hands up to his face, desperately trying to hold in the blood even as one eye, having been cut in half by the attack, dribbled out of its socket and squeezed through his fingers. As he writhed in pain, blood sloshed up and slipped down into his throat, twisted the screaming into coughing and gurgling.
One of the Enclave launched a canister back down the hall as they rounded a corner, and it landed next to the mutilated man. The cruel weapon released its gas. Soon, the man was consumed totally by a cloud of chalky, overbearing white gas. It attacked his open wounds and made the pain rage even more viciously. It crammed its way down his throat, such that even if he got in a breath after spitting away blood, he inhaled the toxic fumes. He shuddered and coughed and slowly died, experiencing an undeserved agony unlike anything he ever before imagined.
His screaming and coughing shakily ended, becoming quieter until his last whimpers were inaudible over the emergency alarm. The pain was so horrific that his mind could focus on nothing else. He was robbed of the pleasant last thoughts one would wish for, such as memories of family, friends or good times. There was none of that for him. He died only thinking of the torture.
As this atrocity occurred, his murderers arrived at their destination. Bishop stopped before an innocuous-seeming door. A sign beside the door read: ventilation center.
He kicked the heavy steel door off its hinges and stormed in. A couple of frightened engineers cowering inside did not last past a few seconds—did not even have time to scream—before he cut their heads off with swift, precise slices. He did not waste a second more to approach the large machine that occupied the room.
It was a huge steel drum, a large ventilation distributor with a massive series of quick-moving fans inside that produced a roaring wind. Here, air was pumped through the whole ship and recycled. Even when above the clouds, the crew onboard the ship could breathe easily. Now, it would serve another purpose.
Bishop switched of his sword's flames before plunging the blade into the side of the ventilation shaft. He withdrew it and shoved his hand into the slash he had made. Getting a firm grip on the torn steel, he ripped back the metal, tearing a huge gash in the side of the machine. Then he got out of the way.
Several of his soldiers bore bulky backpacks. They now shrugged those off and pulled out shiny cannisters. Each one tore off the tightly sealed caps of these, releasing whisps of smoke and eerie hisses of released pressure.
Then one tossed an open cannister into the ventilator, letting the vomit-colored liquid within spill out and mix with the roaring air.
Instantly a cloud of sickly yellow smoke blasted up and spewed out of the ventilator into the faces of the Enclave. They did not flinch, secure with their garish helmets. One after the other, they each threw their canisters into the ventilator, and the massive fans within blasted the sickly-colored smoke up through the vents.
When the last man threw in the last cannister, they all looked to Bishop.
He was checking a watch on his wrist. Only a few minutes had passed, and their first objective was achieved. The path ahead was clear.
"We keep moving," Bishop said. Sword drawn, he headed out into the hall again, followed dutifully by the death squad.
"Halt!" shouted a synthetic voice.
A group of mechanized soldiers rounded the corner ahead of them, accompanied by a couple humans in full combat gear. They had their rifles raised.
Bishop raised a fist to stop his troops from opening fire instantly. He kept his eyes on the robots.
"Alright, you're in the middle of a ship in the middle of the Atlas fleet. You aren't going anywhere!" shouted one of the soldiers. "Turn yourselves in now and maybe the specialists won't rip you up."
The man speaking kept a tight grip on his rifle as he tried to convey his false bravado. He did not notice a wispy yellow gas descend from the vent right above him.
"Alright," the soldier said. "Now if you just put your guns down"– he coughed once –"then we'll get reinforcements in a second and"– he coughed again –"we'll take you into custody"– he coughed a third time –"and we can questions you—"
He coughed a few more times, as did the other human beside him. Pus-colored smoke fell through the vent and drifted down toward them.
"A shame," Bishop said, "that your helmets are made to deflect attacks, but have no filtration abilities. A design oversight, to be sure."
"Wha?" The soldier was barely able to gasp his question before needing to cough again. He could not even hold his rifle up straight, hunching over as the pain in his eyes, mouth and lungs worsened.
"Gas?" the other soldier choked out a pained wheeze that just barely conveyed the one-word question he asked. He waved a hand through the air, noticing now as the smoke thickened and fell upon them. Now both the men were unable to keep composure, coughing and crying under their masks. They dropped their rifles, mixing gasps with pained grunts as their exposed skin became itchier and itchier, painfully so. The acidic gas was quickly beginning to eat at their flesh.
The robotic soldiers, however, kept their rifles trained on the Enclave.
"Gas." Bishop confirmed. "But I'm less interested in that than these machines you have." He tilted his head and glared at the robotic guards. "The thieves should have done it by now."
Practically on cue—as the two soldiers wheezed, coughed and stumbled—something happened to the robots. Their heads erratically shook back and forth for a moment, before becoming still again.
Bishop tightened the grip on Rubra Mors.
The robots looked to their human comrades. They promptly riddled both of them with bullets. The coughing and pained gagging stopped abruptly. Two bloody corpses fell to the ground.
When the robots turned and raised their weapons to do the same to the Enclave, however, Bishop's troops blew their heads off with a few well-placed shots. Fragments of smoking scrap fell to the floor and sizzles in pools of blood. The lifeless machine husks collapsed and joined the soldiers' bodies, now equally inanimate.
More barrages of gunfire echoed down the cramped, narrow halls of the ships. Along with this came loud, alarmed shouts and screams. It all mixed with the emergency siren, producing a cacophony of chaos.
"They're shooting everything that moves now," Bishop stated. "Good."
"Now we rendezvous with the thieves at the bridge," Arthur added.
"Indeed. The ship is good as ours."
The disaster just kept getting worse.
Jaune slammed Crocea Mors down, smashing the head of an Atlas robot soldier. He had never trusted the damn things, and now his worries were proving true. At the worst possible time.
Everyone had formed a defensive line around the wreck of the stadium. Pyrrha had used her semblance to drag around some of the fallen debris and form some basic ramparts for the hunters and soldiers to man while the civilian survivors huddled back in and by the wreckage.
It had not taken long for the grimm to come in. This far from Vale, the forests were deadly. The arena had collapsed right down into one after teetering on the edge of the cliff. Now the dark shadows among the trees served as a perfect environment for spawning and roaming grimm, formed and attracted by the disaster.
A whole pack of beowolves had charged in and been fought off, and just when it seemed like there was a lull in the fighting, the robots went damn insane.
Now, Jaune quickly picked up the rifle of the robot who's head he'd just bashed in. He flipped it around, aimed it and pulled the trigger, mowing down another pair of wild automatons that had gone mad.
They were some of the last to go down, with all the assembled hunters quickly destroying the relatively frail soldiers. Frail, but they could still hold guns. The firepower had helped against grimm, and it had just more than a few civilians and even some hunters. The defenders' ranks were rendered even thinner.
"God damn it," Jaune growled. He looked down at the robot at his feet. "Got damn it!" He suddenly yelled, stomping down and caving the thing's chest in.
Jaune only spent a moment releasing his anger. In this moment, his first instinct was not just to get angry, but to focus on the fight. He returned his gaze to the trees around them. The forest. From it monsters could come at any moment. He remembered the terrifying moments spent in the capital underground, staring down dark tunnel and halls, knowing that feral ghouls, ants, murderers, super mutants and god knows what else could be there.
He did not respond with fear. He had been here before. He looked at the darkness, prepared to crush whatever danger would spring from it.
"Jaune?" Ruby came up beside him.
He jumped and whipped around, glaring at her. For a moment, she stumbled away, taken aback from his sudden reactions.
Breathe deep. Hold. Release.
After a moment spent controlling his sense, Jaune placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
Rather than say anything, he could not help but peer back into the forest. His mind could focus only on the danger.
"Blake!" He shouted, knowing the faunus to be close by. "You see anything?"
"Nothing coming yet," she yelled back, loud enough for everyone around to hear. As one of the few faunus around, her eyes were invaluable right now. What little light they had was provided from built-in scroll lights, flashlights from Atlas soldiers and the shattered moon.
Jaune took his hand off of Ruby shoulder and knelt down, grabbing another magazine of dust rounds from the ruined robotic soldier at his feet. Anything and everything would help right about now. He had the Mysterious Magnum at his hip, but he was wanting all the firepower he could get.
"What the hell was that!" he heard Qrow shout. His mentor was not far away from them, and he certainly was not trying to hide his anger. Neither his anger, nor the target of it.
It was hard for Jaune to make out the figure, but the resolute stance and the figure outline in the dim moonlight made him guess Qrow was screaming at General Ironwood. Jaune couldn't blame him.
"Atlas was supposed to be in charge of security," Jaune growled to no one in particular.
"Blaming won't do anybody any good right now," Ruby said, tugging on his arm.
They heard a beowolf's howl in the distance.
Jaune reloaded the rifle.
An orchestra of violent booms rocked the sky above them as the several Atlas battleships released another salvo on a massive swarm of flying grimm that had swooped down from the clouds like a plague of locusts.
"Blake, what do you see up there?" He called out.
"Looks like griffons and lots of nevermore!" She answered. Blake squinted and frowned. "Lots of big nevermore."
Jaune gritted his teeth. He pulled out and checked his scroll, which had a live indicator of his rocket locker's ETA. He had ordered it the moment they had started setting up a defense. It was time for a field test.
He glanced at Ruby beside him. "Sorry for ignoring you," he said. "It's just"– he looked up at the forest –"there's a lot going on."
"Yeah…"
"Jaune!"
"Pyr?" He turned around and looked at his teammate jogging up to him. "Something wrong?"
His partner stopped just a few feet from him and Ruby; she looked back over her shoulder to Nora and Ren not far behind. He had dispatched the three of them to help pull some more survivors from the wreck while he got ahead and helped hold the ramparts.
Pyrrha turned back to him. She looked downright lost. Worried, anxious, afraid.
It occurred to Jaune that she was still utterly unprepared for war—as were the rest of his friends.
"We just thought it'd be better for us all to stick together," Pyrrha said earnestly. "Other students are around the civilians, so we figured we can help you up here."
Jaune looked at his team. Despite the horror of the situation, he felt the will enough to smile.
Ruby laid her hand on his arm. Without thinking, he lowered the rifle for a moment so he could place his hand on hers and squeeze.
"We'll all stick this out together," he said.
They heard beowolves bellowing. There were more now. They were closer now.
He let go of Ruby's hand and hoisted the rifle again. It only had one mag, but his time in the wasteland had given him a deep appreciation for using whatever weapon one could to its fullest extent. Even if it wasn't much. It would all be enough. It had to be.
Yang, Weiss and Blake came up beside them as well, following their leader. And not a moment too soon. Rustling and howling from the forest got closer and closer.
"Alright!" Jaune shouted. "Stick together!"
I always thought it was curious how in the show Roman and Neo are able to take control of the Atlas main battleship all by themselves. Like… wut. Even this is pretty implausible, but hey, chemical weapons change things up. Anyway, more will be revealed of how the Enclave committed this security breach in the future.
Also, I really wish I had included more foreshadowing of Revalations 21:7 before Bishop used it last chapter. I think it would have fit in well while talking to Rubra Mors a bit ago. That's part of the issue of a serial release system: I come up with new ideas I like but can't go back and foreshadow them.
Also man this took a while. Sometimes writing just feels like pushing through a forcefield.