"It's almost time…"
They can see the raised walls surrounding Vale from here, cannons and ballista and turrets lining their tops. One of many structural modifications to the city, designed by humanity's top minds to be easily and quickly deployable in the case of an unexpected swarm. Or in this case, the simple need of an additional layer of defense against the coming tide. Once filled by skyscrapers and towers, the city skyline is clear. An open shooting range for the defenders of the city to deal with any and all aerial adversaries that might slip through the front line of defense. All buildings still above ground are boarded up with cages and traps set out at the minimum, the majority of the city's infrastructure lowered into underground bunkers hours ago.
It's almost surreal, seeing the bustling city become a ready-made battlefield overnight. They didn't have anything like this in Patch. Then again, she always heard that the major cities tend to get hit the hardest.
A group of first years with pretty much no official on field-experience, it doesn't really come as a surprise that they would be stationed in an area of low-risk and low-importance, guarding some buildings that look like they'd be able to hold off the grimm well enough on their own. Veritable metal fortresses with owners wealthy enough to pay for the added structural security, but not quite important to be lowered into the underground for safety.
Still, they remain ready and alert. At any moment tonight, they could be called to support another huntsmen team in some other part of the city. For this night is the night for humanity to stand as one against the darkness, and they all have to do their part.
Beneath the light of a streetlamp, Ruby gives the 'emergency seal' one last glance and tucks it away. She goes back to idly checking Crescent Rose for the fifth time that hour, unable to quite keep down the well of excitement bubbling in her stomach.
"Man, they really hunker down here in the city, huh?" Yang idly looks to the armored buildings as she stretches. "It's kind of like that one weird show you watched. 'Evangilion'?"
"Neon Genesis Evangelion. And I watched that spin-off, Nobody Dies. But yeah, it makes enough sense, doesn't it? There's way more, uh, stuff here."
"Money. There's way more money here, so of course they're more concerned about protecting it." Weiss says, approaching the sisters.
"And, you know, people?" Yang shoots a side-eye at the heiress.
Weiss returns the slight glare for a moment, then reaches behind her. "Here. These are for tonight."
She hands both of them a small-thin rectangular case. Pure dust cartridges. Ruby takes hers with a smile and Yang hers with a raised brow.
"Oh! Thanks Weiss! Do we, uh, need to pay you for these or anything?"
"No." Weiss puts her hands on her hips and closes her eyes. "I'm just… trying to help."
"Well, not like it's gonna do much good anyway." Yang groans. She spreads her arms out, motioning to the surrounding street. The empty surrounding street. "Look at this place! We'd probably see more action back at Patch!"
"Yaaang~, we're supposed to be helping protect the city. Isn't it a good thing if we don't have to do much?"
"I guess." Yang pouts. "… I'd still rather be at the wall."
"Eheh…"
"… It's starting."
The voice comes from above, Blake perched atop the roof of the building behind them. She stands, and her teammates all follow her line of sight into the night sky, the stars slowly blinking out all across the horizon.
"… This part always creeps me out..." Ruby mutters under his breath.
Yang crosses her arms. "... You can never really get used to it, do you…?"
The last glimmers of light fade from the night sky above. An echoing silence and an unnatural. The fading chill of late Autumn whispers through the streets.
Then, the night turns red as a crimson eye opens in the sky above.
Of Heroes and Monsters
Chapter 28: The Long Night(Part III)
It's like a flipped switch.
The night fills with the sounds of growling and howling and snarling and hissing and screeching and snapping. Like a symphony of maddened animals, they cry in turn and move, hordes, packs and flocks stampeding as one. By land. By sea. By air. By claw, hoof, fin, wing. Consumed by the red madness, the Beasts of Grimm descend upon the last bastions of humanity.
The airborne are the first to arrive. Lancers and Nevermore and Griffons and all other manner of flight-capable grimm blot out the horizon as they approach the city of Vale like a sandstorm of locusts, crimson eyes burning through the darkness. They fly up, up high enough to bypass the great wall surrounding Vale and-
"FIRE-!"
Metal and steel roars to life. The sandstorm of shadow meets a tide of bullets, each round ripping multiple grimm from the sky. Gunners at every fifteen feet unleash a hail of metal into the oncoming swarm. But for every one of the creatures reduced to shadows and dust, five more take its place. It is only a matter of minutes before the anti-air defense at the wall is overwhelmed, and flocks of Nevermore and Griffons and Lancers sweep into the city.
"Patrol teams, you have incoming-!"
"Well, so much for not having much to do!"
Shadows dart by overhead, spilling into the city from above. And just as quick, they fall. A spray of bullets takes down a Nevermore. An invisible force smashes into a Griffon, and the Griffon slams into the side of a building as it falls. A shadow leaps onto the back of a Lancer, the giant hornet breaking apart to nothing a moment later.
"Come on, we gotta help!" Ruby cocks Crescent Rose. She looks up at the roof of the building behind them. "Blake, let's-."
The rooftop is empty.
"B-Blake?!" Ruby blanches. "Yang, did you see where-?"
"Woohoo~!"
The shout comes from atop another building and Ruby looks over just in time to see her big sister leap from the top of the wall, grabbing onto a Nevermore just as it flies past and disappearing into the night.
"Guysss~… we're supposed to be a team… uuu~…" the unceremoniously ditched leader of Team RWBY lets out a pitiful moan, shoulders slumping. A sigh. She hefts Crescent Rose and looks down at her beloved weapon. "Whelp, looks like it's just you and me… as usual."
"I'm just going to ignore that last part and assume you were talking to me."
The last voice she'd expect comes from behind her. With wide eyes, Ruby whirls around, a few rose petals fluttering out of her ear. "Weiss? You're still here?!"
"And exactly why wouldn't I be?" her partner asks with a raised brow.
"Ohhh~, I just thought you'd be the first one to ditch since you tried to leave the team but you didn't!" Ruby wraps Weiss up in a teary hug, clinging to her partner. "I'll never doubt you again!"
"… So, this is what he meant when he said you're too 'huggy'."
"Okay guys, let's just stick together and- NORA I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU DO NOT GET DOWN RIGHT NOW, I'LL TELL REN ABOUT… ABOUT THAT!"
Down on the street below, Ren gives a concerned look to his teammate. "Do I want to know?"
Pyrrha just gives a worried shrug. "I'm not exactly certain what he means by that… and I don't think I want to know, either."
"Hey!" From her perch, ready to jump onto the back of a passing by Nevermore, Nora instead leaps back down onto the street with a huff. She points an accusing finger at her leader with a faint blush. "You promised! You pinky -promised!"
"Look, the point is-! God, there're so many…" Looking a few seconds away from a panic attack, Jaune tears his eyes from the sky. He shakes his head and slaps his cheeks a few times. "A-anyway, we have to stick together! We're supposed to be ready to go support the wall so you guys can't just go running around doing whatever! They put us here for a reason, so let's just stay around here and try to pick off whatever stragglers we can."
Team JNPR gives their leader a nod. Jaune lets out a relieved sigh, runs his hands through his hair and gives their surroundings another once over.
"Okay, um…" He digs his fingers into his scalp, trying to come up with something. Anything. Anything to not be a complete and utter deadweight and failure.
"Um… none of you guys are secretly actually faunus, right? Then we should stay on the street level, around the lights. If we get too high, it'll probably get too dark for any of us to see."
"Hm. I… probably should've given this one a bit more thought."
Riding atop a Nevermore, Yang Xiao Long squints, the swarms of circling grimm around her little more than blurs in the darkness.
"Oh well. Live 'n learn."
She rises and pats the seal under her clothes, the tag stuck onto her upper stomach. Why did she put it there? Something about 'gates', the seal needing to be put over one of them and that being the only place she could conveniently put it without it sticking out from under her clothes.
She's heard all about the kinds of weird things seals can do to people. But she trusts him. And if the effect really is anything like she thinks it is, it's going to be the mother of all ace-in-the-holes.
In other words? It's the world's best 'oh-shit' button, and a blank check to go as wild as she wants tonight.
With a grin, Yang slams her gauntleted fists together, the sparks lighting up the darkness for a split second. And she draws a fist back, anchoring herself with aura to the back of the Nevermore beneath her, her muscles coiling and tensing.
"Let's GOOO-!"
Her fist falls. And the Nevermore shrieks as bones break, the round going in its back and out the front, the grimm breaking apart into nothing as Yang rides the momentum back, glowing golden locks billowing behind her as she hovers for a split second in mid-air.
Weightlessness and shadow. The wind howls around her, a chilly tingle all over her entire body as crimson eyes all turn to the single source of light in the darkened sky.
Her grin grows wider with anticipation. Then becomes a focused frown, gauntlets crossed defensively in front of her as a dark blur of movement barrels into her from the side.
The impact is muted. Not too much, but enough for her to notice even through her aura. Jagged teeth dig into her torso, aura and aura alone keeping them from sinking into her stomach. The glow of crimson eyes pierce the darkness. Her own eyes adjust. The outline becomes visible, a Griffon, just big enough to bite a man in half. She slams one, two punches into the Griffon's jaw until it releases her, and immediately she grabs onto a tuft of feathers around its neck before it can get away.
She soars through the air on her new, impromptu mount. The Griffon tries to shake her off. Yang holds firm and swings onto its back, her body light, even lighter than it is on her best days. Aura forms a makeshift foothold on the grimm's back. Then, BANG-BANG. One round to a wing, and another to the back of its neck. The Griffon falls and she leaps back into the air, more than content to just let the big dumb birds come to her.
This is it. This is the reason she became a huntress.
That split second of weightlessness, not sure whether she'll plummet to the hard ground or get another ride. That moment as that ride comes, barreling down and trying to run her over with hardened beaks and pointed claws and razored feathers. That rush when there's no time to think and the only thing there is to do is act.
And she acts, burning through the blackened sky like a tiny sun.
A punch sends a bullet straight through the mask and skull.
A kick snaps the bones in a wing like dry twigs.
A beak almost, almost, manages to get a few hairs, and she shatters the bottom half for its efforts.
It's a skydiver with the added fun of a whole lot of giant, flying monsters trying to kill you on the way down. And she meets them all with fire, fists and bullets, sending each on their way to oblivion as she makes her way down.
She reaches the bottom on the back of a Nevermore with both wings shot out. The crippled grimm crashes into the street, and Yang hops off and walks away, brushing her shoulder off as the shadowed beast vanishes into bits of ash.
Not a hair out of place, Yang puts her hands on her hips, looks up at the darkened sky and lets out a sigh.
"Man, that didn't even make a dent, did it?" A pause. She glances around.
"I wonder where Blake went?"
"… I forgot they can't see in the dark."
The already decaying forms of several moderately-sized Nevermore surround her, each with a number of shadowed copies of Gambol Shroud impaled into their bodies. From her position atop a rooftop, Blake looks back at the city. To her, the streets and buildings are as clear to her as they would be on a sunny day.
Except it's not a sunny day. It's the middle of the night with a blood red moon, and enough grimm in the sky that you can barely even see the clouds.
'… I never realized it got this bad in the major cities.' She glances over in the direction of the entrances to the civilian bunkers. 'Well, considering the concentration of scared civilians here, I guess it's no surprise…'
Negative emotions are what attract the grimm, after all. And this scenario is something straight out of a horror novel.
'… I should meet back up with the others.'
They've been together for a month, but it still doesn't feel like they're really comrades at all. Just people who happen to bunk together. 'Team' RWBY. Granted, that's more her fault than anyone's.
How much can you really become friends with someone when you're hiding as much from them as she is? They know Blake, the 'human' girl who likes books. Not Blake Belladonna, ex-White Fang member and daughter of one of the original founders.
Who also likes books.
Her partner had explicitly said the kind of person who she dislikes is the kind who abandons their comrades, after all. And Blake herself has done that now. Twice over. Then, there's the Schnee. Enough said. Ruby… seems nice enough. But she'll probably side with her big sister over anything.
In short, she can't let them ever find out. She'll just have to pretend to be the human she isn't. To all of them. All of them, except-
Feathers against the wind. A flap of large wings. Having approached while she was lost in her thoughts, a smaller Nevermore, one still the size of a fully grown man, swoops down with beak and claws.
Blake rolls under it, thrusting upwards with empty hands, two shadowed katanas materializing and finding their mark in the avian grimm's breast.
The Nevermore tumbles to the ground like a stuck pig. Blake rises to her feet and manifests another copy of Gambol Shroud's main blade in her hand, looking it over, the shadowed katana like one of the body doubles she can make of herself with her semblance.
"This really is convenient…"
She releases the blade, both it, the other copies impaled into the grimm and the grimm themselves all fading away in turn. Her thoughts go to the creator of the seal stuck just under the base of her hidden tail.
Naruto knows she's a faunus. But he doesn't know she used to be part of the White Fang.
She knows his eye is glowing like those of the creatures currently laying siege to Vale… that he's, in his own words, a 'were-grimm'… not that she really knows what that means… but, at the very least, she owes him the benefit of the doubt.
With empty hands, Blake leaps down from the top of the building. When she lands, there is a shadowy reconstruction of Gambol Shroud's main blade in her right hand and its bladed sheath in her left.
Ruby and Weiss, she has no idea where they are. But Yang… the only other person she can imagine making that lightshow in the sky only a few moments prior had already declared he wouldn't be participating in the defense of the city. So, the smart money is on it having been none other than her sunny partner herself.
Then, Yang should be able to reach Ruby, and they can all meet back up after. That's the plan.
Blake heads off to find her partner as the howls of the creatures of Grimm fill the long night.
The creatures which stalk the lands arrive next.
Hordes of Beowolves and Boarbatusks and Deathstalkers and Taijitu and Ursa crash against the walls like waves against a cliff-face. Reinforced by steel, the armored fortifications hold off the initial charge. But it is like water pooling against a dam. The grimm stampede over one another, trampling and crushing their own as they throw themselves against the barrier standing between themselves and the humans inside the city.
Then at the Southern Wall, the trembling of the ground deepens. Bigger, heavier steps following in the wake of the lighter many. Trampled many times before, the tree line reveals in full the cause. A cross between elephants and mammoths, a herd of Goliath's charge forward, the Matriarch easily half as tall as the wall itself. They descend on the wall, trampling even the lesser grimm beneath them as they advance.
"THE GOLIATHS ARE HERE! DUST-SPEARS, AT THE READY!"
They are loaded into the ballista, massive, seemingly inert, silver cylinders that come to an arrow-head tip and a thruster on the other end. Ten feet long and thicker than a grown man's arm, each silver cylinder required a team of two adults to load into the ballista as the ground began to shake with the approach of the Goliath herd.
"FIRE!"
The twang of metal-fiber ropes. The ballistae launch the silver spears through the air, their thrusters igniting just after and sending the silver spears hurdling into the charging Goliaths. Each finds their mark, some piercing through and felling their target through sheer momentum alone, the others getting stuck in the thicker hides of the older Goliaths, the herd continuing their frenzied charge even as their numbers fall.
Then the spears ignite, the timed trigger activating for the small fortune of dust packed into each cylinder. The silver casing cracks with light and-
BOOOOM-!
An ear-splitting detonation. The shockwave is felt even from the other side of the city. Light and dirt erupt into the air as though expelled from a volcano, the resulting avalanche of force and debris crushing the advancing tide of grimm against the wall and blowing away all others in every other direction.
A silence follows in the wake of the dust spear's detonation on the Southern Wall. The soldiers stationed at the ramparts take the moment to collect themselves.
"Shit… that was probably a bit too close to the city…" the wall commander grumbles, lowering their hands from their still-ringing ears.
One of the gunners picks themselves up from the floor where they'd thrown themselves to for cover. "… But did we get them?"
The wall commander goes up to the edge of the rampart. Their eyes narrow at the tower of smoke. A sigh.
"Nope."
"################-!"
On cue, a massive figure emerges from the smoke cloud. The largest of the Goliaths, the herd Matriarch, hide charred and burning, chunks missing from the head and mask, still advancing forward on blasted legs. The dark behemoth trumpets in rage as the grimm surge back like a dark tide, a suicidal charge towards the city of light and the wall that protects it.
"Shit, they're too close for us to use the dust spears again!" one of the soldiers of the Vale City Defense Force panics. "What are we going to do?!"
"Us?" The wall commander takes out a cigar, sticks it between their lips and lights it. "Nothing."
They let out a puff of smoke as the massive footsteps approach. One thousand meters. Eight hundred meters. Five hundred.
"Just goes to show why humanity calls 'em 'heroes', huh?"
The Goliath Matriarch's front leg falls.
A purple light shines from above.
And the ground beneath it opens up, jaws of earth closing on the Goliath Matriarch's foot and dragging the limb down like quicksand. The behemoth of a grimm crashes into the earth, its front leg swallowed entirely into the ground.
Then, a twinkle of light sails overhead, through the flocks of Nevermore and Griffons. Light bursts. The chunk of ice dust explodes outwards, flash freezing the grimm around it as the elemental particles expand into a rumbling cloud and a glowing purple sigil. The partially frozen grimm crash and shatter against the ground, the sigil flashing and a hail of icy daggers falling from the sky.
They pierce through the creatures' bodies, tearing away chunks of fur and flesh, raining down death on the waves of land-born grimm. White-blue and black pin-cushioned bodies litter the battlefield, frost and dark smoke gathering in layers upon the trampled earth.
"###########!"
The summoned hailstorm stems the tide of the lesser grimm. But the Matriarch Goliath doesn't relent. It pushes against the earth with its free legs, raw strength and sheer mass pushing up a mountain of soil as it frees its leg, even as the frozen hail forms a blanket of frost overtop of it.
"It seems this one has a rather thick hide." The voice comes from behind them and Huntress-Professor Glynda Goodwitch glides down on an invisible hand, devil-tailed cape billowing behind her. Elegance and composure beyond compare, an inhuman calm amidst the storm of darkness closing in on them. She folds her hands behind her and observes the battlefield, observes the behemoth of a grimm slowly pulling its captured limb from the earth.
Her opened scroll hovers just over her shoulder. After a short moment of deliberation, she admits, "I won't be able to hold back the lesser grimm and take care of the Matriarch at the same time."
"I will take care of the Matriarch." A voice comes from the scroll. "Commander, please open Gate S-27C."
The wall commander nods and opens their own scroll.
"You got it, General Ozpin."
"Oh, I have not been a general for many years now. Those days are long behind me. Please, call me Professor."
The gate before him opens, metal locks and steel reinforcements sliding out of place, the two slabs of steel retreating to reveal a veritable ocean of oncoming grimm, the horizon drowned in black, yellow, white and glowing, burning red.
A four-foot long, rectangular metal case hanging from his back, Ozpin steps past-opening gate and before the oncoming tide darkness. And the old huntsman moves.
500 meters to the Goliath Matriarch. The lesser grimm don't even have the time to react as a dark green blur of movement speeds past them.
300 meters. The frozen daggers fall from the sky like rain, but not a single drop finds purchase on the headmaster of Beacon Academy. The few icicles that do block his path need only a light nudge to move them out of his way and into the head of a nearby grimm.
100 meters. The case opens to reveal a silver-cylinder, a more compact version of the Dust Spears fired from the ballista. The case has just begun to fall when Ozpin takes to the air, a dark green shimmer flashing over the spear's silver casing.
Arrival. The miniature Dust Spear reaches the Goliath Matriarch's mask first, piercing the bone-like material with the same hardness as steel, and sinking halfway deep into the mask. Then, the end of a cane slams into the other end, sending it through the mask and into the behemoth's skull.
And back. Ozpin steps back into the city, just in time for the gate to finally finish opening. He opens his scroll.
"Alright Professor Ozpin, the gate's open now so-"
"It's done. You may close the gate now."
"What now…?"
A stunned silence. And Professor Ozpin, the Great and Terrible, huntsman veteran of two wars and former General of the Vale Military, strolls back into the city to retrieve another compact Dust Spear as the Goliath Matriarch's head explodes outward like an overfilled water balloon.
From north to south, from east to west, from land to sea, a similar scene takes place.
The defense of the common man holds against the lesser grimm, only to be overwhelmed by the greater creatures of Grimm. Then, the huntsman and huntresses arrive, spread thin across the entire city but still able and capable enough to save the day. An endless and repeating dance of heroes and monsters, the saviors and the condemners of humanity each acting their part in turn.
When the huntsman and huntresses gain ground, they are called to defend some other part of the city. When the creatures of Grimm advance, they are rebuffed by the huntsman and/or huntress that arrives to push them back. It is a stalemate. Yet even that is a victory in favor of humanity. They endure. They hold, as they have for the countless red moons before.
To survive for one more second. One more minute. One more hour. Day. Week. Month. Year. Decade. Century. To just have one more of the little moments that make life worth living.
Yet, this time, this night of all night, the pieces begin to shift.
Two figures creep through the shadows, sabotage in hand.
A man shudders, slowly losing himself to the darkness of the creature inside him.
The priest smiles, safe in a bunker with his flock, hidden among the sheep and lambs.
The Queen's Pawn observes contentedly, unseen and so very close to her promotion.
And in the lonely tower, the Gold Pawn slumbers. Peaceful. Quiet. In spite of the chaos of the outside.
Perhaps it was his exhaustion finally catching up to him?
Perhaps it was all of the huntsman and huntresses, so much like those who hunted him for so many years, finally leaving the immediate vicinity?
Perhaps it was something else, putting the boy to sleep for their own purposes?
Whatever the reason, the boy sleeps at his desk. At rest for the first time in weeks. At peace for the first time in months, with gentle breaths as the red light of the blood moon shines through the window.
Then, the boy's body rises.
Burning crimson peers curiously at the stump where his right arm should be, then to the window.
And his whiskered cheeks curl back, wild and unhinged as the Demon Fox grins.
...
An underground maze expands out beneath the besieged city, a sprawling network of tunnels that expands all over and well beyond the city of Vale. It is a relic of a former era, a time when humanity flourished unfettered by the threat of the grimm, a time when the Blood Moon was little more than a trite, monthly inconvenience.
Alas, the Golden Age of Humanity has long passed. In the wake of the Second Great War, Vale's underground railway was abandoned and has long fallen into a state of disrepair. Defenses once capable of fending off even the most dogged of intruders have long decayed to little more than haphazard blockades. Where these tunnels were once free from the presence of any grimm for miles on end, from the central hub beneath Vale all the way to the outlying cities across the content, now plenty of Deathstalkers or King Taiju can be found nesting just outside the central hub, the vast majority of those outlying cities now desolate breeding grounds for the creatures of Grimm.
That is, on a regular day.
On this night, these tunnels are little more than supply lines of reinforcements to the countless grimm pouring into the city. Those grimm underground do not experience the full effects of the Blood Moon above, but even they find themselves drawn to an impulse of destruction. The impulse drives the lesser underground grimm to join those already frenzied from their exposure above, a smaller but still sizable tide of grimm funneling into the city through its underground tunnels.
They clash against the ramshackled blockages, claws and pincers and tusks impacting against the piled rocks and steel crates. It is enough. The defenses do hold, for a time. But eventually the pressure builds, and the creatures of grimm break through the makeshift walls, one by one.
Finally, they reach the city. Beowolves and Ursai and Boarbatusks from the surface and Taiju and Deathstalkers from the underground all sweeping into the tunnels that lead under the outer walls and into the heart of the Kingdom.
Then, a hail of bullets mows down the oncoming grimm, each bullet accelerating with a force well beyond that with which it was fired, each gatling round with a double digit body count by the time it reaches the end of its flight through the bottleneck the tunnel provides.
"I've got a question, Dr. Oobleck."
"Yes, Ms. Adel?"
"Why do we even leave these tunnels open? Wouldn't it be a hundred times easier and safer to just collapse them so the grimm can't get to us from underground?"
"Indeed, it would be. There are many of the school of thought that we should simply abandon these structures as a lost cause and collapse them to further fortify the city. However, there are just as many who believe such a course of action the equivalent of abandoning all hope of reclaiming the land taken by the grimm in the wake of the Second Great War. Currently, those who hold to the latter also hold the majority in Vale's government."
"So, politics. Wonderful."
"According to the maps, these tunnels basically go all across Sanus. Were there really cities that far out before the Second Great War?"
"There were. There is a reason scholars refer to the period between the first and second Great Wars as the Golden Age of Humanity. At that time, even the most remote cities of Sanus had little trouble dealing with the Blood Moon. These tunnels were used as mass transit systems, and could go months without seeing the presence of even a single grimm. "
"Sheesh, really? Bit of a far cry from what we have now. What happened?"
"The Second Great War, Ms Scarlet. Once upon a time, humanity had all but triumphed over the grimm, and then in the wake of the peace that ensured proceeded to tear itself apart into the remnants we are now."
"Wow, that's… depressing. I guess it really goes to show that sometimes, humanity can be its own worst enemy, huh?"
AN: A shorter chapter, but I feel like there wasn't much to add that didn't break the 'flow'. Hm... not much to say on this one again since things are just starting to get rolling but let me know what you guys think. What was your favorite part? What was your least favorite part? Would you rather be going through Jaundice? Do you hope Cardin and his fuck-boys get eaten by the end of the night?
Next chapter next week. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you then.