Ch 9

[Minutes before the briefing]

"Wait, so if this Elder Grimm is so dangerous, Shouldn't we be mounting up to destroy it sooner rather than later?"

Jaune asked aloud as he ducked under a roundhouse kick aimed straight at his head. Said leg belonging to Navy Tsunami who continued her barrage of kicks with the beginnings of a manic grin forming on her face. Her berserker state rearing its ugly head yet again, it was hard to believe that she was actually in control the entire time.

"Its too dangerous to just attack it outright, its Grimm spawn would swarm whatever's in front of it!"

She answered his question just in time to side step an downward swing from Via Lux, the clang of metal cracking concrete reverberated throughout the semi dilapidated arena within the Gauntlet. He was now going fully on the offensive, he twirled Via Lux intimidatingly before dashing at Navy and delivering a quick combo of sword spear strikes to her person. To her credit, she was quite the heavy hitter but with Jaune using his own strength and precision to keep her own movements at a minimum, she had to improvise.

Shifting to her left side, her left hand spun its baton so its barrel was aimed towards the young Arcs chest. An automatic spray of bullets pelted him, putting his Aura to the test before he disengaged and put some space between them.

Not one to waste an opening, Navy channeled some of her Aura into her batons until its color turned a bright red. A symbol of a curled bicep appeared over her: a strength buff no doubt. She sprung into action immediately, swinging her batons together in a wide, horizontal arc. Jaune was quick to backflip away while he poured his Aura into his feet.

Kicking off the ground ouce he'd landed, he rocketed into her with Via Lux in its sword mode and poised to slash at her torso. His blade met her baton in the middle, the clash expelling aura in all directions as the two were exchanging and avoiding blows, swipes and swings. As Navy pulled back for another heavy hitting strike, Jaune was also pooling his aura into his sword spear and as the two attacked the blow was so powerful that knocked them back to their own sides.

Painfully.

Just as the two soldiers arose from their own personal craters, Eris suddenly came out of seemingly nowhere and was somewhat damp. Now standing between them, he spoke softly. "The G-General wants us in the briefing room stat...," he meekly sputtered. Navy, still in her berserk state promptly smacked him in the back of his head, knocking his helmet right off. Rich golden hair spilled down to his shoulders.

"Stop being so damn unsure of yourself, It's not like you can't fight!" She was openly glaring at the poor boy now. "You're the last Discordia left alive, but if you keep up the scary shit it's gonna bite you in the ass." She said with a fair amount of sass and annoyance in her voice. Eris was shriveling into himself from the sheer force of her presence at this point.

"Hey, Navy. Take a breather, ok? Your kinda fuming..." Jaune commented, a little bit concerned. This caused Navy to slightly gasp in shock before trying to rein herself in. Turning back to Eris, Jaune asked a question of his own, "Does this have anything to do with the Elder Grimm he's been talking about?" To which Eris only nodded in confirmation. 'Well that explains the urgency, I guess,' his inner mind voiced to himself.

"Then lets head back as soon as we can, we probably don't want to miss this," the young Arc said to his friends. 'Huh, friends... I guess they are now,' he mused to himself with a smile as they began walking through the Stream Pad.

Making their way through the many districts of Laguna, Jaune often found their infrastructure quite intricate and ornate. Massive archways with beautiful carvings in the violet painted stones, sculptures and murals of scantily clad men and women littered the larger, domed buildings giving off an almost unnerving feeling of eeriness the longer you looked at them. The alleys would curve and snake into hidden coves and sections around the city, getting lost on foot was a big possibility.

Strangely enough, they seemingly had no homeless population whatsoever as the young Arc was hard pressed to find a bum on a corner or alleyway but to no avail. He would definitely ask Navy about this later.

Finally, they found themselves standing at the entrance of what appeared to be an office building, or rather, Laguna's approximation of such. The domed-cylinder shaped structure was lined with windows at the upmost top, allowing light to shine down within it. The violet-purple stone walls had a slight shimmer and there was only entrance inside the odd building.

If the stone faced stare of the Lord General was anything to go off of, the planning was not going at all as he wanted. His hands pressed on the wide, round table before him as his posture suggests he'd been leaning on it. The table itself was quite sturdy for how sleek it looked, one large cylinder that widened into perfectly smooth, rounded surface. What the target of eyes happened to be... a massive black splotch on the upper region of a very large, seemingly holographic, map of Nidhogg spread across the table.

"Is everything alright Lord General?" Navy voiced her concern, her straight face was slightly frowning.

"Our scouters picked up a massive surge of Grimm activity around the Drake's Head late into last night," his expression souring the more he spoke on the topic.

"Scouters?" Jaune asked aloud.

Navy quickly elaborated on the subject, "We planted sensors in key locations on the continent. Its a grid basically and each one was specifically made to detect the absence of Aura within the environment. As you know, Grimm have no Aura and the sensors can detect that void," pointing to the black mass visible on the map.

"Miasma is on the move again..." the General certainly wasn't in a good mood at this point.

It was no secret that the General had a deep seated hatred for Grimm as a whole, but Miasma? He seethed at the very mention of it, the beast that ravaged his home and killed his people. Knowing full well what damage it was capable of from having personal experience on the matter.

Yes, over a hundred and seventeen years ago, Slade was there when Laguna nearly fell to ruin. A young man at the tender age of 16, an exemplary young soldier to be as he was named the youngest to be inducted into the Empresses Court. An honorary member of her Royal Guard, personal aide to Morganna and one of her most trusted friends.

Though, what... or rather who he truly fought for was not just the Empress, his true affections were only for The Great Seer...

Aurora... his first love.

They had known each other nearly all their lives, having known of her precognitive semblance since they were children. It seemed obvious that she would be elevated to nobility but all the same, he pushed and pushed to make sure that they would always be together. Morganna had approved of them when she'd found out about them via watching them sneak off to a room together one night.

When the dreaded night came, she'd been at Morganna's side and was completely unwilling to leave her friend and Empress to die alone. That is until she witnessed her sacrifice.

Afterwards, she was driven to protect what was left of her people. Though for some reason, she couldn't see the future of her kingdom, she would fight for it all the same. That being said, a certain Grimm had other plans and as Aurora did her best to combat the encroaching horde, Miasma attacked her personally.

Its timing was nothing short of impeccable. The second her guard dropped, the Elder Grimm quite literally dropped the sky upon her. Black clouds hurtled to the ground like stones; dark, condensed masses of the Grimm's lifeblood raining upon her.

A black hailstorm of utter destruction. The devastation of the inner kingdom was assured as the black spheres tore through stone and metal like a high-caliber bullets through meat leaving nothing but scorched, charred rubble and bodies behind. She had no hope of escaping the unrelenting assault.

Ever since then, the lord General has dedicated most of his time and energy towards finding and destroying Miasma. Which lead to this moment, Lord Granite... angrily staring at the projection.

"Currently, we've been following it's movements and its usual whereabouts, but it seems to be staying within the upper atmosphere of the Drakes Head. The lesser Grimm have also been more aggressive lately and a few of my units have reported them being much more malicious then usual." He spoke with a much more calm tone, keeping his own hate for the ruinous beasts to a minimum. As he took a breath, the map projection brought up six blue triangles each situated in a circle around Laguna. Each one was about eighty to a hundred miles from the Kingdom and three of them turned red.

"What's more, is that they've been attacking our outer encampments and not sporadically either..."

"... its giving them orders." Blurted the young Arc, he was reminded of the Grimm in the Palewood and how they somewhat communicated with each other.

"Precisely," The General nodded in agreement. "All of their movements so far has been at specific encampments. The three they've destroyed are the biggest camps furthest from the Kingdom."

Now that raised an alarm in Jaunes mind, this Elder Grimm was smart enough to coordinate an effective attack on three large settlements and retreat with minimal loses...? 'That's not good...' he thought to himself as his eyes scanned the map. Just how old was this thing to be this intelligent?

"We need Miasma to expose itself if want to have any hope of ending this," Navy chimed in.

The General hummed in thought before he spoke again, "I agree, we need to draw it out in the open... but how?" Furrowing his brow in thought. He needed a way to bring the beast close enough to be shot at with their defensive artillery.

"Wait... thats it!" Lord Granite shouted. "We send a small strike team to hit it hard and run. Have it chase them to one the encampments within range of the Kingdoms artillery and from there we can deal with it before its brood have a chance to swarm us."

Suddenly, Jaune didn't like the direction the conversation was going, nor did he like the idea of essentially being bait for an Ancient monster. Having spent months around the old lord, Jaune knew full well that he would more than likely be selected to participate or even lead the scouting party. Still, he figured he may as well bite the bullet if it was certain he was going.

"I volunteer to lead the recon team, sir!" Nearly shouting at the General, the young arc said with a clear voice.

"Actually... I was going to give that honor to Tsunami, but that works all the same as well," Lord Granite awkwardly said.

Jaune's jaw hitting the floor was heard throughout the room.

"Now that its decided, you'll need to leave at once. I'm giving you special authorization to use our transport vehicle to-"

"Woah woah woah... vehicles? You have... vehicles??" Incredulously staring back and forth between the General and Navy, Jaune was at a loss yet again.

"Yes boy, we do and before you say anything we only have a limited few landmass vehicular transports. Hell, our only airship left is still inoperable despite its upkeep," Slade huffed. Clearly, he knew how the boy would react upon hearing that he may have had a way to leave this place. He wasn't holding the boy back by any means, but he truly needed him for what was to come. It didn't help that he'd grown to respect the Arc son a great deal.

"Only... one? Man... that night did more damage then I realized." The young Arc had calmed down a bit afterward, though he still had questions to ask.

Continuing from where he left off, Lord Granite begin speaking again. "Quite so, we've spent a decent amount of time restoring it to its former glory and while everything seems to be in order, we simply can't start the damned thing."

'Even more questions for later,' he mused.

"We will give you one our Scaler Caravans to cut the time in half for you and your squad. From there you will rendezvous with the Lt. present at the encampment and continue your trek to the Drake's Head. Your mission is to draw Miasma out of its clouded cover and lure to encampment where out targeting systems can attack and cripple its movements. With any luck, we may be able to end this within a night. You have your orders, go get it done."

Arc and Tsunami quickly saluted in agreement.

"Sir!"

"Sir!"

As the General left the room, Jaune looked to Navy questioningly. "When was anyone gonna tell me that you guys have transportation?"

"W-well I didn't think It was very important at the time," now it was her turn to sputter and stutter.

"Its very important! We've been walking EVERYWHERE for EVERY mission when we didn't have to!"

"I- but, we-,"

"No butts," he nearly screamed at her. "Eris, call the trio... Im driving... by the way, what's a Scaler exactly?

Shaking away her flustered features she set about explaining yet another Laguna marvel.

"The Scaler is one our later inventions, a six-wheeled, armored caravan of sorts just as the General said. Though ours will be equipped with side-mounted weaponry."

"So its a tank...?"

"A what?..."

"Nevermind."

Words from the Author:

Hey guys, sorry Im late and sorry about the short chapter this week, took a vacation for myself last week so I wasn't near my work until late Saturday.

That being said, Stay tuned for more Fanfic goodness later~

And now to answer some questions and comments:

Outliner: Yea, I can understand that. The grandfather segment was mostly anecdotal filler to set the tone, but this is Rwby we're talking about so I think I do get some leeway here lol.

XXxxxadisxxxXX: Understandable, I don't do sound effects very much and if so it's usually sparingly.