Note: Good news. Got vaccinated. Bad news: Oh God, is it taking forever to write this finale. Maybe be went a little overboard with having literally everything happening. Oh well. If you've been liking this final battle, please let us know. We'd appreciate it. We're not even halfway through yet, so there's still plenty more to come. Could you imagine if we quit this story now? Lol. Anyway, we're going to nap. You can read now. Enjoy.
Chaos.
Sweet chaos.
The sound was so familiar. That damned, haunting sound of those stolen screams, so close she could taste it.
She raced toward the square with a smile on her face.
What an unexpected surprise.
She narrowly avoided its bite again. It got a lot closer than last time.
No room for sloppiness.
Ruby dove between the Grimm's legs, narrowly slipping past the bird's head. She swooped underneath it and caught it off-balance, and in its desperation, it tripped over itself and collapsed onto its wings. Ruby skidded to a stop, her mind racing faster than her heart—but she barely had a second to think before the snake threw itself at her and she had to jump back out of its range.
Okay. Strategize. She had to strategize.
The snake head retracted and the rest of the Grimm clamored to its feet, stumbling into a full-on sprint. Her first instinct was to run, but instead, she dove under its talons as it swiped at her. It stumbled again as it tried to reposition itself around her, but with rapid footwork, she managed to keep herself beneath its frame.
Strategize.
Three heads.
It had three heads.
Three wills.
It rolled onto its side. The snake lashed at the other heads. It was the leader. The hungriest. Eager. Impatient. The bear. It remembered her. Its enemy. Vengeful. The main body. Clumsy. The bird. In agony. Jittery. Underside. Wings. The least threat out of all of them.
So that was her target. She couldn't outrun it. She couldn't kill it. But she could still evade it.
The bird head on its stomach twitched, pecking and swinging its head around, but its range was so limited that Ruby had no trouble staying behind it. The Grimm stamped and turned about, searching for an angle, but Ruby was quick and kept her positioning. A talon to her left. Paw behind her. Beak. Steady. Stay steady. The Grimm was screaming constantly, overwhelming her senses, but she tried her hardest to not get distracted. It swatted down at her, the sidewalk crashing under its weight. Each step ripped through the air like thunder. She could hear the saliva pooling in its mouth above her, its chest heaving with every desperate, pained breath. The shadow beneath it was so thick that she felt she was in total darkness, the only light source coming from the deranged bird head. With how chaotically it was moving, it was hard to keep her thoughts centered.
Dodge.
Dodge.
Pivot.
Beak.
Talon.
Paw.
Dodge.
Scream.
Talon.
Beak.
Scream.
Scream.
Scream.
The Grimm suddenly lunged backward, and she dropped to the ground before the bird head could snatch her up in its beak. She whipped around onto her back and collapsed her weapon into its gun form, pressing herself against the ground to remain small. The beast snarled in front of her, three heads lashing, but before it could bring itself to a full halt, Ruby unloaded a hasty series of rifle shots toward its faces. Most of them reflected harmlessly off its skin, but a single one caught it—wedging into the bird's eye, causing it to erupt in a sea of red and black fluid.
The bird screamed out in pain. Its talon jutted and reared back, and its wings spread wide and flapped, trying to escape. The rest of the Grimm seemed confused and startled; the bear refused to move while the snake lunged beneath the main body and snapped at the bird head, sinking its teeth into the back of its stump neck where its feathers merged into fur. Ruby stopped firing and for the moment she stared at the monster. For the first time, it truly seemed vulnerable.
Eyes. How could she forget the eyes? The bear still bore its scar from when she shot it in Forever Fall, and now the bird matched its broken face. Maybe she couldn't kill it, but it had a weak spot. It would be just like a video game. Hit the glowing bits. Only with far less room for error. Not that she had a choice. Ruby rolled back up to her feet, trying to catch her breath. She didn't know how long she would have to rest. Her heart was pounding like crazy. She hurriedly pushed her glasses back onto her face.
Updated strategy: blind the living hell out of it.
She curled herself into a ball of rose petals and raced toward the Grimm again. The snake head was still gripped tightly into the bird's neck, lodging itself into its own flesh as Ruby dashed toward it, and it was unable or unwilling to swat at her. With the bird wounded, the creature did not move its talons, and Ruby targeted its still legs and unsheathed her scythe once again. She reformed and slid past the talon, hooking her scythe around it and pulling the trigger to force the blade backward. The skin was too tough to break, but the leg was pulled out beneath it, and the Grimm yelled out in agony as it tripped on top of itself. Ruby's Semblance took her out of harm's way before the monster could crush her, but the bird head and the snake buried into it weren't as fortunate. Its oversized body fell directly onto the two heads tussling on its underside, and they both crunched into the pavement beneath as its wings stretched out and twitched like dying muscles. A dozen muffled, high-pitched screams called out from underneath, and as the Grimm rocked itself on its belly, Ruby flew up onto its back, landing on its hide. Its fur was sticky and warm underneath her touch and its swaying kept her unsteady, but she still managed to balance herself as she dashed up to the back of its neck and raise her scythe high over her head. Two of its heads may have been trapped, but the third one was more than available for the taking.
Ruby screamed and swung her scythe down hard, hooking its tip into the bear's one remaining good eye.
The Grimm didn't like that.
Its wings forcefully extended, and Ruby was suddenly knocked off its feet as the beast pushed itself up into the sky. Rubble and dirt dripped off its body like water as it ascended, a mass of kicking, twitching limbs, and roaring heads without purpose or direction. The Grimm headed straight upward, not rising rapidly, but quickly enough that Ruby was forced to hold on for dear life. The scythe, still embedded into the bear's eye, was her only grip on the behemoth, and as it rose higher, Ruby grabbed onto the handle of her scythe with both hands, her feet dangling out into the open sky beneath her. She yelled in panic.
Flying. It wasn't supposed to be able to do that.
And, as it turned out, it couldn't. Not for long. It rose some thirty feet out of sheer adrenaline before it suddenly jerked and began to descend. The sudden shift dislodged Crescent Rose from its face, and Ruby gasped as she suddenly found herself plummeting off its back toward the hard ground below. In her flailing shock, her scythe flew out of her hand and she was left alone, a single, defenseless girl hurtling out of the sky. Thirty feet quickly became twenty and then ten, and right before Ruby hit the ground, she redirected all of her Aura to her back to cushion the impact.
Her spine hit the ground first. No Aura was enough to make it not hurt like hell. The wind was knocked out of her lungs, and Ruby wheezed and seized up momentarily as the reverberations from the impact worked its way through her skeleton. After a second of pure, intense pain, she managed to open her eyes—and she immediately gasped and threw up her hands to guard herself as Crescent Rose spiraled rapidly toward her. She felt the wind whipping off the spinning blade as it approached her, and it only just missed her head, landing blade first and wedging itself into the concrete. Ruby's breath returned to her as she lowered her guard, glancing to her side and looking at her own reflection in the sun-lit blade that nearly decapitated her. For a moment, she managed to breathe a sigh of relief.
And then the sunlight suddenly vanished overhead.
And then the Grimm crashed to the earth next to her like a meteor, sending both her and her weapon flying across the square.
Ruby soared and crashed hard, rolling off the sidewalk and onto the carefully cultivated grass, tearing up the dirt until she rolled to a stop. Ruby tasted the turf on her tongue as she tried to stand back up. She felt a sharp twinge in her lower back that she forced herself to shrug off. Fight. She had to fight. No matter what. But damn that hurt. Not as bad as what the Reveler did to her, but…ow…
Ruby groaned and picked her weapon off the dirt. She cracked her neck and braced herself for the fight to continue. The crater that the Grimm left in the middle of the square resulted in a heavy cloud of gravel and dust raining from the sky. Out of the heavy grey matter, she saw its black, hulking mass shifting as it rose back to life. Its silhouette slowly took shape, the snake tail and wings forming out of the dark, and it let out another cry—not a human scream, but for just a moment, its voice was that of distorted static, artificial and cold before morphing into a single woman's violent cry. Ruby squared her feet and aimed her weapon into the cloud of dust. She would fire upon its red eyes the second she saw them glowing at her. Three down. Three to go. She was in pain, but she could still do this.
Yet the moment she was waiting for, where the Grimm would turn to face her, never came. Instead, the Grimm remained in profile, looking out at something else. The snake head snapped in a random direction, and the other heads growled and followed suit. Ruby was baffled until she turned to face what it was staring at.
Their battle had taken them only a few yards away from the Embassy Building. In the windows, Ruby could see dozens of shadows of the workers who had yet to be evacuated. The Grimm growled, salivating over the Humans in its presence, and bored of its fight with the redhead and blind in its lead head, it began stumbling awkwardly toward the Embassy.
"H-Hey!" Ruby said. She fired off a few shots toward the Grimm's hide to get its attention, but it merely ignored her as it crawled out of the rubble. The office was full. Why was it full? Where the hell was Weiss? Had she not gotten to that building yet? Wasn't she supposed to be evacuating these people? Ruby quickly glanced up at the multi-storied structure and counted how many people she saw inside—people whose only exit was either a plunge out of the window of the front door where the Grimm was about to barge in. The security was gone. There were no other Huntsmen nearby. Ruby was all alone to save them. She muttered under her breath. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me…"
The City ground to a halt within minutes. The screams and chaos from the Grimm echoed throughout the streets, bringing traffic to a halt, drawing civilians out of their offices and into the sidewalk, and causing the motion of Vale to shudder and grind to a standstill. Handfuls of confused whispers came out from the mouths of those too far away to see the action for themselves, and those who were slightly closer managed to see the citizens from the square as they were fleeing and screaming down the streets. Scrolls rang up police lines. The cops undoubtedly assumed it was a prank at first. A giant monster in the middle of the city? It took them too long to realize that it was real, and even then, what were they going to do? Plan, gather, coordinate—don't send in any Huntsmen alone until their actions were clear and the situation was well understood. Any delay only increased the chaos, and the chaos only prolonged the confusion of the citizens.
The chaos wasn't just limited to the town square, and a few unfortunate people found that out the hard way when a van nearly swerved into them at top speed.
Adam headed toward the middle of the city, keeping his foot firmly pressed to the gas pedal. He didn't care where he was going or who he nearly hit along the way. He just knew he had to keep driving. Blake hung off the side of the van, pressing herself firmly against the metal as she clung on for dear life. Adam tried swerving to shake her off of him, but she held on with nothing but sheer grit. Her side was killing her, blooding dripping from the stab wound just above her hip. His blade had entered her deep, plunging straight through her muscle, but even though she felt her leg go numb, she refused to let go. She gritted her teeth and swatted her free hand at the driver seat window, clawing desperately. She could see his face in the side mirror. He looked afraid. Panicked.
Adam turned the corner hard, nearly tilting the van off its axis and onto its side. He cut off a few vehicles and a couple of pedestrians scurried out of the way to avoid being hit by him, and yet not a single thing deterred him. With Blake battering his window and his own wounds flaring whenever his muscles tensed, he did all he could to avoid crashing altogether. He had to focus on a hundred different things at once, and because of that, he just couldn't shake Blake off of the damn van. She screamed at him. If she wasn't hanging on with her sword, she would have shot him. The central road was three lanes across, and he did his best to maneuver around whatever came in front of him. He was met with honking horns, screams, distant sirens. All of them: worthless. Just escape. It was all he thought. Escape. With a grunt, he swerved toward the middle of the road, hoping that he could ram her into some oncoming traffic. He found a bus parked in the middle of the road, its occupants packed into the back of the vehicle looking out toward the city's center. It was blunt and heavy and perfect. He aimed toward it, speeding as fast as he could within the limited space, and at the last second, he turned out of the way, hoping to scrape her off his hide like a roach. Blake braced herself, but before she collided with the bus, she hoisted herself onto the roof of the van. The side mirror snapped off the side on impact and shattered on the side of the road, but she was unharmed.
She retaliated by plunging her sword through the roof of the van, nearly ramming it through Adam's head. She missed him by a few inches.
"Adam!"
She plunged it in again. Miss.
"You're not running from me!"
He was effectively weaving through the streets. They were growing closer to the center of the city. Did the idiot not realize he was heading straight for the Grimm? If he dragged her into that…
"Pull over, you fucking coward!"
She couldn't stop him. The pain and the wind were too intense for her to aim. He pulled away down another narrow alley, out onto a smaller street, around a bend, almost threw a group of tourists and onto another smaller road. The sounds of the Grimm battle were growing closer. Maybe he was headed there intentionally. Suicide pact. Kill them both.
She raised her arm again, but couldn't find the strength to force it back through the metal.
Blood loss—not just from Adam's attack, but all of the collective wounds from her fight with Weiss were coming back to haunt her. All of those cuts and bruises and hairline fractures had destroyed her cardio. Even the simple act of holding onto her sword became exhausting. She needed Neo and Sun to give her a fighting chance, but they were long gone. She was all alone, weak and worthless.
Well, maybe not. They were getting close to the Embassy.
Desperately, Blake reached into her pocket and pulled out her Scroll. Holding onto the roof with one hand was a struggle, but she had no other choice. She hurried before she had nothing left.
Ruby.
Weiss.
Tag them both.
Call.
"Hey, I need some help here!" Blake cried out, trying to keep the Scroll as close to her face as possible. "I'm heading down Oum and Cross! Adam's getting away! He's—"
Another car made a turn before Adam could see it. He gasped in an unexpected moment of panic, and all at once, inevitably, he lost control of the van and crashed.
Kick to Neo's skull.
Effortless jab to Sun's stomach.
Dodge.
Bat away the umbrella.
Dodge.
Sweep Sun's leg.
Glass block to Neo's skull.
High kick to Sun's face.
Breathe.
Don't ever forget to breathe.
Sun was breathing heavily, staggering back to get some space. Mrs. Glass didn't even bother trying to chase him down. She swatted Neo away from her, and as the smaller woman regrouped by Sun's side, the glass woman just casually stretched her arms out over her head. She seemed completely unbothered by them, and Sun shrugged as he tried to get through some idea of how to stop her. He had nothing. He looked at Neo for support, but she offered nothing but barely contained fury.
"So…are you going to start trying soon?" Mrs. Glass sighed. "I'll be honest: you're not justifying me keeping you alive much longer."
Sun readjusted the grip of his staff, trying to psyche himself up into attacking her again. "Neo, do you want to…" He winced in pain. "Do you want to try flanking her again?"
Neo rolled her eyes. She signed something at him he didn't understand, but he could guess what she meant. If that would work, she would have done it. Come up with something original. Idiot.
Mrs. Glass cocked her head, staring at them expectantly. "Please: keep working on your strategy right in front of me. That'll work."
Sun growled. "Okay, you don't have to mock us too, you know!"
"With your performance, there's a lot to mock."
She was toying with them. Their friends were dead on the ground on the other end of the street, and she was literally toying with them. Well, not friends. Allies. Henchmen. Goons, maybe. But even with her own allies severely wounded, she barely seemed to care. And why would she? Her Grimm was loose. Her mission had been achieved, and she knew they wouldn't be able to kill her. The last several minutes of blunt force trauma had proven that. The only reason they weren't dead was that she had some use for them. Another experiment, perhaps? Either way, Sun didn't want to know. He just wanted to be done with her, and if killing her seemed increasingly unlikely, then maybe injuring her long enough to escape would suffice.
Whether or not Neo would go along with that was another story. She wasn't looking to retreat. After everything that Glass did to her, she would only be satisfied by pure, complete revenge. She stared daggers through Glass, which only seemed to amuse the woman further. Something about Neo's determination mixed with her ineffectiveness fascinated her—like an angry puppy dog. She was convinced that Neo would die during their encounter with the bird, and yet she had managed to return and maintain her position on the top of her criminal food chain. That was admirable. If Glass didn't kill her, she might have even kept her as a pet.
"What's wrong?" Mrs. Glass cooed. "Got something to say, girl?"
Neo continued to sneer. She glanced over at Sun and flashed him a couple of quick hand signals. He just shook his head.
"I…I don't know what you're trying to tell me," he admitted.
Neo tried to sign more bluntly. He was still dumbstruck—until Mrs. Glass shouted to him. "She's telling you to charge with her and get your Semblance ready."
Sun nodded. "O-Oh. Right."
Neo's eyes nearly rolled out of her head.
She snapped her fingers, and at once she and Sun disappeared, vanished into thin air. Not a single trace of them remained, and Glass could only smirk. Illusions. Clever. The first illusion ended with her getting hit by a car. She was curious to see if they could replicate that.
She closed her eyes and listened carefully. She knew they would be charging at her. Based on their distance and their previous speed, they would hit her at any moment. She just had to concentrate, and wait…wait…wait…
Mrs. Glass threw a roundhouse kick behind her—whiffing through the air without landing a hit. Before she could regain her footing, a glowing Sun clone came out of nowhere and battered her in the head with his cane, breaking through the illusion before vanishing once again into nothing. Glass cringed and shook the pain out of her head.
That was faster than she thought.
When did they—
Another clone struck her in the spine and she stumbled forward. Neo burst out in front of her and rammed her umbrella into her stomach. Glass materialized a sword in her hand and took a swipe at her. Miss. Gone. Again, she was alone.
Three hits.
They hit her three times.
That was three hits more than she was willing to take.
Footsteps. They were supposed to have footsteps, yet she heard nothing from them. Of course. The clones were barely real at all, and Neo was small. Delicate. Easily breakable, of course, but light on her feet. She had to rectify those problems. With a frustrated grunt, Mrs. Glass shot her arms down by her sides and a flood of tiny, near-microscopic shards of glass pooled out of her hands, spreading all around her. The glass piled upon itself and spread out across the road, thinly coating the pavement. It was moving fast. Soon, it would hit its target.
It only took a few seconds before Mrs. Glass heard it: the crunching sounds of invisible footsteps on her creation.
"There you are!"
Mrs. Glass lunged toward the sound, breaking through Neo's illusion and grabbing the Droog Mistress by the throat. She held out her arm, dangling the smaller woman in front of her with one hand with a cruel smile. Neo gasped and kicked to try to free herself, but as the rest of her illusions fell, any chance of Sun saving her fell with them. The clones' locations were clear, and with a simple nod, the thousands of glass particles underneath their glowing feet shot up through them, tearing them apart like bullets. Neo swung her umbrella at Mrs. Glass's head, but Glass grabbed the parasol out of Neo's hand and tossed it away without a second thought, rendering the Droog Mistress helpless.
"Pathetic," Mrs. Glass quipped. Neo, thinking fast, reached down toward her belt and pulled out another pistol from behind her back, tucked within her shirt. She aimed it toward Glass's head, but her wrist was intercepted. Glass narrowed her gaze. "Another gun? You're full of surprises, aren't you?" She squeezed Neo's throat tighter, watching the smaller woman gag and struggle underneath her fingers. She barely even put up a fight. She simply closed her eyes, trying to hold onto whatever final breaths were entering her lungs. Mrs. Glass squeezed tighter.
Tighter.
The struggling slowed.
Neo's body went limp.
A rigid growl crawled out of the back of Glass's throat.
"I don't suppose you have any last words?"
It was meant as a cruel joke—one final insult that the criminal would be able to take to her grave. Mrs. Glass expected nothing out of it. Maybe that was why she was taken aback when Neo smirked at her…and opened her mouth.
"Actually, yeah."
The voice wasn't hers.
"Made you look."
A pink glow rippled down Neo's body, and the woman was suddenly transformed into Sun, grinning like a proud idiot. Mrs. Glass didn't realize the light footsteps behind her until it was too late. The real Neopolitan suddenly lunged toward her back with outstretched arms, and before Glass could counter, Neo wrapped Sun's nunchucks around her face and pulled them back, pressing the chain that connected them into Glass's mouth like a gag. Sun pushed himself out of Glass's hold, and the force of his kick and Neo's chain forced her to get tossed backward over Neo's head, landing cranium first on the glass-covered pavement. Neo tossed the nunchucks back to Sun, and as Glass tried to crawl back to her knees, Neo delivered one final punt to her stupid jaw. Just because. Glass's head snapped backward and she limply fell forward, but her fall was stopped—her chin coming to rest directly on the tip of Sun's shotgun nunchuck.
He smirked at her.
"Bang."
The blast sent her flying backward with an explosion of glass and blood. She rolled to a stop onto the pavement, and lay completely still face down, her limbs spread outward in haphazard shapes.
Dead.
Sun whistled with satisfaction, twirling and then collapsing his nunchucks. That was harder than he thought, but he was alive. She wasn't. All-in-all, job well done.
Yet Neo didn't seem to think so, considering her disappointed glare.
"What's your problem?"
The glare intensified.
"The one-liner? What about it?"
She said nothing.
"It was good. Don't judge me."
She motioned toward the other end of the street, where all of their former teammates lay deceased.
"I barely knew those guys. Why should I get all sad about it?"
She rolled her eyes.
"You're just jealous that you couldn't think of a better one."
Neo could neither confirm nor deny that.
Then, they heard slow, diseased laughter that shook them to their cores.
"Aaaaaaa ish glleeeesshs."
Neo and Sun turned to the end of the street as Mrs. Glass's body suddenly began to pick itself up off the floor.
"Yuuuug eeeeaaayyyeeellleaaa aaaahhhhh eeeeeeglsh."
Slowly but surely, Mrs. Glass was able to find the strength to push herself up to her knees, and then shakily back to her feet. Her entire torso hung over, drooping and tired, her black hair shielding her face from their gazes.
"I aaaaaaabbbbbb oshooo haaaaaaabbb hseeee glshoooooo uuuu. Ghslooo ooaaaaaa."
Mrs. Glass gingerly brushed back her hair—and Neo and Sun took a step back as they stared at her disfigured face. Her glass lower jaw had been completely shattered, with only a few jagged pieces clinging to her cheekbones. Her tongue flopped out in the open air, and a portion of her throat was exposed, revealing the pulsing, tender muscles surrounding her vulnerable esophagus. She seemed unfazed, drooling and gagging over herself, but still standing and staring golden daggers through her enemies. Saliva dripped off the tip of her tongue, and she gave the closest thing she could to a smile.
"Bhgaaaagssslleeeeelliiiiiigg."
Mrs. Glass gingerly raised her palm, and thousands of the glass particles by her feet quickly traveled up the length of her body, gliding smoothly across her skin. They traveled up to her face, where they merged and shaped themselves. They clicked together like puzzle pieces, filling out the empty spaces along her mouth, and it only took a few seconds for a new jaw to plaster itself onto her face. A few drips of blood had filled into it, but other than that, it only took a minor adjustment with her fingers to feel like new. Her smile widened.
"So," she said quietly, "ready for round two?"
Neo glanced nervously at Sun, her disappointment replaced with sheer terror.
No.
No, they were not.
Fortunately for them, it didn't matter. Like the sound of an angelic choir, a police siren tore through the air. It was coming from a few blocks away at most. Mrs. Glass looked out toward the city expectantly, her tone almost mournful.
"It seems we'll have to put this on hold," she stated. "I wouldn't want to be around here when the police show up. I'm sure you'd agree."
"Why you—" Sun took a step forward, but Neo held her arm out in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. She wanted Glass dead more than anyone, but she had a point. There were too many bodies in the street for them to stick around. It wasn't at all because she just saw this woman shrug off a shotgun blast to the face. It was simply a better idea to retreat and regroup. They would have plenty of time to make that woman pay for what she did to them.
"I'll say this, though," Mrs. Glass noted. "You put up a hell of a fight. Maybe I'll give you a call sometime if I need help again."
"Hey, screw you, lady!" Sun shouted at her. She gave a playful shrug in response and turned her back, only briefly glancing over her shoulder.
"Thank you for the fight. It was a wonderful learning experience."
A pillar of glass erupted from beneath her feet, launching her skyward. She landed on a rooftop out of sight and made her clean escape. It wasn't until Neo feel the tenseness in her cheeks did she realize how terrified she must have looked. Her surprise had betrayed her. Still, her overwhelming expression was that of rage. She would hold onto that until their next meeting. Sun tugged at her arm, and reluctantly, Neo agreed to follow him away from the battle-torn street. They had come for Mrs. Glass, and now their role in the battle was over. Wherever Blake was—whatever she and her friends were doing—they were on her own. She had fought enough giant monsters in her lifetime. She was sure they could handle it. And if they couldn't?
Oh, well.
The Grimm shattered through the Embassy doors like a battering ram. The entrance was as grand as one would expect from a building representing Atlas, a massive, polished space lined with holographic monitors and statues of Atlasian figureheads. The Grimm's arrival through the front wall sent concrete flying in all directions, and the security guards that dedicated their lives to protecting that building cowered behind the service desk in the center of the room. The Grimm thrashed about, toppling over the statues and ripping its ways through the hologram projectors, its talons getting tangled in wires. It screamed and looked around. No Humans. Two sets of steps. Three elevators. Tucked beneath: corridors. But no Humans.
A flurry of rose petals flew through the gaping hole in the front of the building, rushing beneath the Grimm's legs and stopping halfway up the steps. Ruby planted her feet and tried to make sense of the chaos. The Grimm's head nearly reached the ceiling. Its heavy feet threatened to break through the floor with each step. Its screams only grew louder as they echoed within the Embassy. The guards were hiding. She was trying to see their eyes. They were terrified. They had assault rifles. Her immediate instinct was that they were going to shoot.
"Hey!" Ruby shouted at the Grimm. "I'm over here!"
The Grimm ignored her. The bear head sniffed the air and drew its blind gaze toward the service desk. One of the guards got nervous and stood up out of cover, firing his rifle at the beast. The bullets ricocheted off its skin, and Ruby furiously fired off some shots of her own, hoping to draw it away. None of the heads even looked at her.
Dammit.
Dammit.
Ruby saw the snake rear back its head, and the only thing she could think to do was transform and fly into the Grimm as hard as she could. The force managed to stall the snake, and Ruby hooked her scythe into its bottom lip, dangling off of its jowls. The guard stopped firing, stunned at the small, redheaded girl clinging onto the giant monster fifteen feet in the air. She looked down at him and shouted.
"Get out of here!"
The guard stuttered. "W-What the hell—"
The Grimm thrashed about in rage, shaking its head to knock Ruby away. Its wings burst into the walls and its talons ripped marble out of the floor, and the snake head jammed its head up into the ceiling, nearly busting through and shattering several light fixtures. Ruby covered herself as tiny shards of broken glass rained down on her head, but she held on, unwilling to let go again. She screamed as loud as she could over the Grimm's deafening cries.
"Go!"
The Grimm stomped forward, crushing the service desk beneath its talon. That was enough for the guards to realize that their battle was lost. Without so much as a thank you, the guards fled out the crater that used to be the front of the Embassy. Ruby gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate. Surroundings. Plan. Get new plan. Don't get eaten. Get new plan.
Stop it. Stop it how?
Trap it.
Need something heavy.
Elevators. Three of them. Just past the steps.
She could work with that.
Transforming Crescent Rose, Ruby dropped from the snake's mouth, flying away before the other heads could reach up and snatch her out of the air. She flew over to the elevator entrances and parked herself in front of them, waving at the Grimm to get its attention.
"Over here, big guy! Come on! Eat me!"
The Grimm paid her no mind. While the bear and the bird argued, the snake curiously examined the ceiling it nearly ruptured through earlier. It could sense people just above it. If it could only break the floor…
"Hey, pay attention to me!" Ruby shouted. She took more potshots at it, but even that seemed to no longer have any effect on it. The snake had taken authority away from the other heads, and it cared little about revenge or the single, simple Soul of one girl. It sensed a feast of blood just above. It had to taste it. It was starving.
Ruby tried to think as hard as she could. Distraction. What the hell was left to distract it? Not her body. Not her gun. Not her scythe. She wounded it but it wasn't enough. She needed something more permanent. The only other thing she could think of was…
Well…
Satisfying its appetite.
There was something Blake said about her last encounter with the Grimm. She said that she shoved a grenade down its throat during one of their skirmishes, and though it didn't kill it, the attack at least seemed to wound it. Ruby examined its mouths. They were large enough for her to fit inside. Slide down even. Its eyes were weak to her weapons, so maybe its organs would be, too. She didn't know what kind of internal structure a Grimm would have. She could be dissolved within seconds. Suffocate. Drown in stomach acid. But inside, it could be vulnerable. It could be weak.
Ruby tightened her grip on Crescent Rose.
She was insane. That was it. She was absolutely insane.
The snake bit at the ceiling until a hole was punctured through. Ruby heard people screaming from the floors above her. She was out of time for other options. If there were better ideas, she was so afraid she couldn't comprehend them.
The bear was blind. Jumping into its mouth would probably be the easiest to do without accidentally getting bitten.
Right?
The snake's mouth widened in anticipation, and with literally nothing left to lose, Ruby raced forward.
"Hey, asshole!"
Ruby nearly tripped trying to stop herself. A voice came from behind the Grimm, drawing its gaze toward the entrance She couldn't see past its giant mass, but it didn't sound like Weiss.
It actually sounded like—
"Remember me?"
Ruby couldn't even finish the thought before something crashed into the Grimm from behind, and the entire creature flew directly toward her. The remaining statues in its way tumbled. The scattered remains of holograms flickered in the air with their tangled wires. Ruby instinctively fell to the ground and covered the back of her head as the Grimm sailed over her and crashed through the elevators, landing in a heap in the shaft. The surrounding walls crumbled on top of it, and the Grimm lazily cried as it was buried underneath even more rubble. The one, single blow had managed to temporarily incapacitate it.
Ruby trembled.
What…
What the hell was that?
A few footsteps approached her, and Ruby stopped cowering in time to look up. The first thing she saw was a pair of familiar boots.
"Well, of course, you're here. Why wouldn't you be?"
And then Ruby saw twin, golden gauntlets. And curly blonde hair. And a surprised grin. And evil red eyes.
Yin cracked her neck and twitched uncomfortably. If Ruby didn't know any better, she thought she sounded terrified. "I guess I get to kill two birds with one stone today."