"They went this way!"
The voice spurred the eight masked figures faster, crashing through low-hanging shrubbery and branches without care; hiding their trail be damned, escape was priority.
What few advantages the Faunus' night-vision afforded the fleeing group was lost in their mad dash for escape, barely making out the shapes of the towering, wide trunks they were passing between. The broken full moon sat high above, casting everything in an uneven mixture of eerie silver glow, and pitch black shadow.
The fleeing party was chased by dozens of armed humans, most wielding simplistic spears or short, basic swords aside from their tough hide armor, but the one leading the pack was a brickhouse of a man, the worn, battle-tested sword laying across his back easily as large as he was. Up above, a woman jumped from vine to vine, unslinging her bow in mid-air before landing on a branch to take careful aim.
One of the fleeing Faunus fell to the dirt with a shout of surprise as the bark of a nearby tree exploded into sawdust and splinters as an arrow–more like an arm-length steel lance–broke straight through the wood to imbed in the ground ahead of him, causing an eruption of soft forest soil and leaving a crater, like a freshly planted flagpole. One of the men behind him grabbed his shoulder, wasting a step to drag his fallen companion to his feet, and the chase continued.
The howling whistle of flying hunter arrows punctuated the chase, none landing a decisive mark. The giant of a man below called up to the archer with a quick shout, and the woman descended the branches swiftly, taking the last thirty feet in a fall she slowed on a thick vine. The girl looked up to the taller man, now joined by a much shorter, more limber man, who was peering through the darkness.
"We've confirmed fifteen dead at the gates, and the scouts are reporting movement in the north-west. The Grimm are probably stirring from the bloodshed and their panic." He told her, the shorter man nodding.
"Shit, and we have the guard after the escapees." The woman said in annoyed understanding. "How likely are the Grimm to draw any monsters?"
The scout spoke up, his lips drawn tightly, "high; a large number of Barnos have taken to roost in the western grove, and we're in the middle of Vespoid season. Being in Beowolf country, unless they have some help, we're likely to to see a long, drawn out fight between the two sides, and considering those dog-eared bastards sabotaged the gate, we've got no defenses if it spills into town."
There was a brief moment of silent contemplation, the three shuffling in place before the two men stared at their female companion.
"Fine, you two fools and the guards can handle the rest." The archer all but growled with a flare of her nostrils, sheathing her bow as she began pulling herself up a vine, stopping only to glance down at her companions. "I'll be back in town in ten minutes; I'll try and direct the fighting out towards the forest. Crush a few Grimm for me, eh?"
The bigger hunter smirked triumphantly, bouncing the immense metal blade on his back with a shrug of his shoulders. "Don't bungle into a Barnos again, I don't wanna have to pull you out of the muck a second time."
The woman shot him a sneer, then disappeared up into the trees, her slower companions jogging after their quarry beneath her.
Though the sound of their pursuers still reached their ears, the eight Faunus hunkered beneath the roots of a tree that could have sheltered three times their number. The gnawed roots, upturned dirt, and old leaves lining the floor made it obvious that the tree often served as shelter for a larger beast, but they were alone for now.
Seven of the animal eared (or tailed, or furred, or clawed) figures buckled, leaning against whatever they could–be it the roots, each other, or their own knees–each panting and sweating. One removed the yellowed Gajau skull he wore over his face to cool himself, another lifting his wooden owl mask above his eyes to stare at the back of their leader. In a black cloak, only his eyes covered by carefully whittled bone, Adam peered out into the darkness with his arms crossed, his posture tense, his expression neutral, his ears perked for any sound.
The owl masked man sucked in a cooling breath, and spoke in a heated whisper, "Adam, what the hell happened?" He asked in a desperate, seeking tone.
"We've been planning this for months! How?!" Another man asked nobody in particular, straining to not bury his claws into his palms in rage and woe.
"There's a traitor, there has to be, how else—" The chatter fell silent as Adam held an arm out, his fingers curled into a fist. He wheeled around and shattered a root in a single punch, the flash of red around his arm being the only indicator that his Aura had taken damage, Adam himself did not flinch from the pain. The red light of his soul–his shield, his strength–faded, some of the Faunus looking enviously at it; it took lots of training, both physically and spiritually, to draw upon one's Aura.
"What happened is that we lost long before night fell." He answered, reaching into his cloak to toss aside several large, wooden spheres with small metal bolts driven into the sides, their unlit fuzes drooping pathetically. "They might have found the stashes of explosives and waited for the smell of gunpowder, or one of their scouts saw us moving in." He pulled out a large paper map, and with a grunt of anger, ripped it to shreds and let it float to the ground like confetti. "Which would mean that the patrol schedules we got were useless, our routes in and out less safe than we thought. Somebody didn't do their job, and because of that, we lost sixteen brothers and sisters."
"So what do we do?" A young woman wearing a helmet in the shape of a snarling cat-beast asked, sitting on a root with her entire body in a slump.
"They're out there, searching for us." Adam answered in a low voice, appraising the numerous Faunus before him in their light leather armor, their varying masks, their small, one-handed weapons, all the equipment they had brought to sabotage the foundations of the human settlement… now, wasted. "Recouping is pointless, we don't have enough hands. They're going to be on guard, and probably have more scouts searching the forests for a long time after tonight. We've lost."
The finality of the word made the other seven slump and shrink down, holding their heads, their arms, or their stomachs, shivering at the complete destruction of their morale, and Adam let loose a low, unsatisfied sigh.
"We'll return home and report to Sienna what happened; we're unlikely to abandon moving against this area yet. This location is too important to give up. All that anger and hatred you feel right now? Save it." He clenched a fist in front of his chest, balling it so tightly that his Aura flashed a minor warning, "it will drive you to take your revenge the next time we come here. And when we do, we'll take all of them, more than enough to satisfy our fallen brothers and sisters. In the meantime, the eight of us shall prepare…" His head turned softly, staring past the other Faunus with idle curiosity, "the nine of us, I should say."
The other Faunus watched as another black leather-wearing Faunus stumbled into their hiding place, panting heavily. The leather encasing her left leg had been violently torn open, and fresh blood stained her pale skin. Her mask long lost, the yellow-eyed girl stared at her companions with a pale expression. "S-sorry…"
"Blake!" The various Faunus hopped to their feet to run to her, two leaning down to check her leg as the rest did what they could to help prop her up. "Are you okay? What happened?!" One asked.
"J-Jagras…" She panted, the side of her knee filled with teeth marks, the bone beneath softer, and crunching quietly when she moved it even a little. "Stepped on one while trying to follow, musta found its nest. Dug right into me, but I got away, think the humans stumbled over it too…" She looked to Adam, trying to see his eyes through his mask, all while giving a small, but hopeful smile. "I can make it."
Adam looked over the eight survivors of their failed raid, and nodded slowly. "Then let's move; the longer we take, the more ground they'll cover."
"Shouldn't we treat her wound, Adam? It'll get infected—"
"No time." Adam interrupted harshly, drawing a worried look from Blake. "They'll probably find us soon. We'll treat her as soon as we're in the clear, but for now, we go." He turned on his heel to head out, the other Faunus watching his back, unsure.
With that, the nine Faunus set out from underneath the tree, heading south. Individually, each one of them was swift, well-suited to darting between tree trunks and branches, climbing cliff sides, and crawling through the mud when necessary, but they were forced to move slower.
Two men held onto Blake's arms as they loped along, the rest moving ahead, pausing to open their ears and watch their straggling wounded with worry. In the distant night, the shouts of the humans could be heard, and the further they went, the closer the shouting was.
However, their pace partially picked up as they began to hear distant howling.
Blake hid her pain with deep breaths, and focused on the backs ahead of her. A single, stray Jagras had been a small issue, but a whole pack of Beowolves barreling in from the forest? Even if the Grimm drew out monsters looking to soak in the mists of their defeat, Beowolves could be numerous and far too voracious. Nine frightened, depressed, and wounded escapees in the forest at night was an appealing target for even the monsters, the Grimm wouldn't even bother with the formality of a proper ambush before they were run over.
Her leg burned as she tried to keep up the pace, but she found herself slipping, leaning more heavily on her burdened companions, and all the while they heard the humans, the Grimm, and the monsters growing louder as combat sprung out across the forest.
They weren't safe, they were as far from safe as they possibly could have been, but Blake intended to survive. The humans may have won the night, but the future belonged to the Faunus, just as Sienna had always said. They would return, and Blake would be with them to take the town, its supplies, and its survivors.
It was the humans' fault; the Grimm, the monsters, forcing the Faunus to live out in the midst of danger, they would pay, and their outpost would fall under Sienna's domain! The thought numbed her leg some, knowing she could exact justice for her fallen comrades, but it was cut short when their band stopped.
Ahead of them was a man devoid of any animal characteristics, holding a two-handed axe. He stared at the nine, the nine stared at him, and he raised his head to shout, "they're here! I found them!" His scream echoed into the night.
Adam drew his sword, a three-foot katana that was tempered with monster-salvaged metals to cut clean through metal and rock alike, but his vengeance would have to wait; not a second after the man announced his find he was tackled to the ground by eight feet of pitch-black wolf, its bony white claws digging into the screaming man's torso to rip him to red ribbons, his screams finally cut short by a quick, violent bite to his neck.
The wolf Grimm, still baring the meat of the man's throat between its teeth, turned to face the nine Faunus. It loped a step forward on ape-like arms, its upper-torso uncannily human, yet the illusion dissipated with the wolflike head and digitigrade legs. Beowolves were big Grimm, easily able to haul around and tear an Auraless person apart, and this one in particular seemed thrilled to have more morsels to rip into. The beast spat out its prize and lifted its head to howl, its thunderous announcement cut short as steel sliced its head clean off, causing the Grimm to evaporate into a dark mist, but the damage was done; twice over they were exposed, and the nine knew it.
"What do we do?!" One of the Faunus pleaded, staring at Adam's back as he stood over the corpse of the felled human, the black mist around him abating with the rise of the wind.
Swiftly, Adam turned back on the group, marching through them with a look of grim promise. "For the good of the whole, sacrifices must be made. We'll make it back alive." He knelt before Blake, and Blake watched quietly as he inspected her leg. "You won't be moving quickly on that leg."
"I'm sorry." Blake apologized gently. Adam stood, his shoulder against her belly to bend her forward as if to carry her. The burden of carrying Blake back would be a hefty tole; even if she was a young woman, even if he was their strongest warrior, it would not be a quick nor easy journey. Blake felt a feeling of relief, even embarrassment at what he was about to do, but both feelings quickly ended in pain.
Blake's knee shattered inwards from the hilt of Adam's sword, her entire world turning white as he compounded onto her already softened knee. He stood, using the motion to throw Blake onto her back as the rest of the Faunus stepped back, gasping, staring, watching Blake cry and writhe on the ground, unable to bend forward enough to grab her broken knee from the pain.
"Adam!" One of them failed to admonish any further, his surprise cut short by a dark look.
"S-Sienna, she'll…!" Another tried to start, but stopped as Adam grasped her by the collar, his glare no less intimidating with two masks separating them.
"Sienna will understand that Blake gave her life to help us. She knows that sacrifices must be made for the good of the whole; we will honor Blake volunteering to be left behind to let us escape, won't we?" He asked, his voice raising in threat as the other seven stared in quiet, horrified understanding at what he was implying.
If any of them wanted to stand up for Blake, to challenge Adam, or to waste time arguing, it was cut short when the howling started up again. The Beowolves were all around them, well within a mile of their position, their haunting cry carrying through the night to alert each other to their prey. Adam sheathed his blade, turning away to run, and the rest of the Faunus stared after him.
Most of them took off immediately, only a few stayed back to look at Blake as she stared up at them with quivering eyes, her flesh unnaturally pale. One of them made a move towards her, paused, then stepped back with a jerky turn to charge after Adam. The rest, despite their lingering looks, followed suit, leaving Blake alone.
They were using her as bait. Blake realized that in an instant, but it was difficult to hold onto that thought and feel a grudge as a simple turn onto her side made her knee burn like a blade hot from the forge had plunged into it. She grit her teeth, trying to crawl after them, but they were long gone by the time she lifted her head to try and find them.
The Grimm were around her, the humans were coming after her, her knee wouldn't stop hurting…
Tears in her eyes from the pain, Blake dug her fingers into the bark of a nearby tree, hauling herself up on one leg, the other streaked with hot, wet red. The world around her spun, her stomach clenched violently as the constant pain made her want to throw up, but she forced herself to hop forward on one foot.
She could barely pick out the roots and shrubbery around her, but miraculously, she got caught on none of them as she slowly forced herself forward. She could hear the trampling around her as Beowolves sought to surround her, but she forced her back against a tree as she heard a shout.
In an instant, one of the Beowolves sprung from the brush to snap at her terrified face, but an arrow struck its temple, killing it immediately. Blake was dimly aware in her fright that people were rushing from around her, fighting the Beowolves. There weren't too many on either side, but the chaos would surely attract more, and both of them wanted her dead.
If she laid her ears flat, she could have been mistaken for a human, especially since she'd lost her mask scuffling with the Jagras, but she didn't think that would hold for very long. She stood stock still, jaw clenched, eyes squeezed shut, hot tears spilling down her cheeks; why had they left her to this? All this pain and horror happening all at once around her, she could only barely hold her breath to try and numb her body and emotions as two Beowolves carried and pinned one of the human guards to a tree to dig into his flesh.
She hopped to a different tree during their distraction, pressing against the bark as man killed Grimm, and Grimm killed man. She felt her boot splash hot ichor as she used the vines to pull herself along, and she had to shakily unsheath her short sword to hack into the head of a Beowolf caught in the hanging tangle separating them. Her blade snapped against its plate bones, but without its lower jaw to catch her, she managed to stumble her way past it. Its claws desperately tried to rake her, and she hid a scream as she felt its tongue against the back of her neck, but she was out of its reach and desperately racing away from the battle.
She didn't know where she was going, she didn't know how she would even survive. A human man stopped in front of her, his eyes meeting hers, his mace covered in flecks of shattered bone, and Blake held a hand over her mouth in silent fear that mace would bury itself into her skull. The man seemed to consider saying something before he pitched forward and fell on his stomach, revealing his back had been shredded into little more than useless meat, the sight making Blake's stomach churn as she stared at the interlinking vertebrae of his spine.
She tried to kneel down to grab his mace, but her broken knee thumped the ground and sent her onto her back silently sobbing, her eyes locked onto the still corpse nearby. If those damned humans had remained fat and lazy in their conquest... why did they constantly have to push onto Sienna's territory? Why couldn't they just leave the Faunus alone?! This stupid man deserved it, for his and all of his kind's sins!
Blake managed to drag herself up by grasping ahold of a vine, balancing on one leg again as her mind fell forwards and back, but Blake's firm grasp and stiff leg kept her from falling with it. She could curse the humans all she wanted if she survived this, but she had to keep moving.
Blake swore she felt the hot breath of the Grimm with every step, but it very well could have just been her overheated body. Her leg burned so badly that she could barely see through the water in her eyes, but some impulse in her told her to survive, to make it through, to somehow live another day.
The treeline ended, and she collapsed on gray stone. In the moonlight, she found herself at the edge of a ravine, and she stared into the glinting reflection of rushing water below. She'd met her end, and it was neither glamorous nor honorable. It was painful, it was scary, her leg hurt worse than it ever had before, and she knew full well that, barring a miracle, the next few seconds were all she had left.
She sucked in deep breaths and rolled onto her back as she watched red eyes emerging from the densely packed trees, boney black wolves loping towards her, flashing long, slender canines and lashing pink tongues. One carried the armless torso of one of the settlement guards in its teeth, dropping it in anticipation; the Grimm had no need for meat, just fear and death, and Blake was at the precipice of both extremes.
The pack of wolves trundled closer and closer, having all the time in the world to watch this cat-eared girl panic and try to push herself closer to the edge of the cliff, the pebbles she dislodged clicking ominously against the rock wall on the way down.
Blake grit her teeth, wanting it to end quickly, pleading for life, pleading for death, knowing for certain one was coming, but the little voice in the back of her mind screaming for survival still persisted. Did she risk jumping into the depths below? It would have been better than dying in the jaws of the Grimm…
… If she'd taken Adam's advice and had unlocked her Aura before coming along, she wouldn't be here, but she was so damn stubborn, so desperate to prove herself…
She held her arms in front of her face as she felt rancid breath against her skin, then felt the entire world shake as a thunderous scream shook the night. The Beowolves stumbled back, and Blake stared up in quiet, horrified awe as a second scream pierced through the chaotic howling, demanding silence.
The sound of unfurling leather came from below, and from the dark walls of the ravine, a massive shape flew upwards. The beast was larger than ten of the Beowolves put together, and the wind it stirred with the impatient flaps of its wings sent the Grimm stumbling back. The enormous wyvern, with its green scales and condor-like talons bared towards the black beasts, sucked in a deep breath, and fire erupted from its throat to roast the crying Grimm.
Blake gasped, whimpering to herself as it swooped over her, spitting fire, crushing with claws, battering with its tail, the ground shaking beneath her as another furious scream made her ears ring. The draconic monster bit a Grimm in two, the black mist sucked into its body rather than dispersing in the air, and the Rathian barreled into the horde. The Grimm, as they often did, yipped and whined, perplexed that something other than a human would come at them with such unmatched ferocity. Their confused whining was completely drowned out by the wyvern's bellowing roars; each slaughtered wolf seemed to only increase it's rage, not calm it. None of the shadowy beasts would survive her wrath unless they opted to scatter and flee.
Be it divine miracle or the cruel prank of the gods, Blake knew she wouldn't be getting a third chance; a Rathian here? She managed to just crawl herself into its territory?! She dragged herself towards the edge of the cliff, biting her lip from the pain as she slowly, carefully lowered herself. She couldn't use one of her legs, and her fingers already hurt, but she had no other choice. She had to fight through the pain to keep her grip as she slid down hand by hand, listening to the combat above as a motivator to keep moving.
Blake's feet dangled over a sudden drop, no rock nor wall for her to find purchase on, and a quick glance downwards showed she'd found herself at the mouth of a cave in the ravine wall. She gasped heavily in exhaustion, her panicked mind unable to find a way around the problem, until the Rathian above roared, the cliff shook, and Blake's fingers slipped.
It was 'luck' that she managed to not land on her mangled leg, instead finding herself on her back at the edge of the cave, woozy beyond belief, everything hurting at once. She could barely remember to survive, barely move, barely push herself up enough to stare inside the cave, and in the pale light, catch sight of a mound of straw, decayed greenery, and bones.
Four eggs the size of her torso sat in the nest, resting against one another on top of red-flowered shrubbery and charcoal-black rocks, which looked freshly roasted. This was where the Rathian had come from, wasn't it? This little cave, with the eggs… The wyvern wasn't hunting for a late night meal, she was guarding her nest from a sudden bout of intruders.
The mother was trying to protect her family. Even if she vastly overwhelmed her enemy in size and power, she fought with all her fury to guard her nest. They weren't hatched, had no potential beyond hopes and dreams, the Rathian could have fled, leaving her eggs behind as bait to save herself…
Blake swallowed bitterly, staring at the soon-to-be monsters waiting to hatch, recalling that she was nothing more than a sacrifice to protect the companions that had abandoned her. If she was an egg she would have been protected by an enormous, flying, murderous monstrosity, but no, she was bait. Bait for her so-called family, bait to be beaten and interrogated, or ruthlessly eaten by the nightmares that stalked human misery.
She collapsed onto her back, her entire body feeling as if it had been dragged through hell, and she was only dimly aware that the sounds of combat above had stopped.
Had the Beowolves been killed? Blake blinked, her vision blurry, her hearing no better, but she recognized silence. She risked an instance of movement, making a fist with one hand, and then she heard the sweeping sound of large wings stirring the air. She craned her head around to catch sight of the Rathian staring at her from outside its nest, its unreadable, reptilian eyes focused on her coldly.
There was an intruder in its nest, and Blake was dimly aware that was her. Her heart was pounding in her ears as the beast stared at her in angered silence; teeth that could pierce steel snarling at her, talons that could crack bone clicked closer, hot breath that could roast her alive lit the cave above her, and Blake felt for, perhaps, the hundredth time that she was not meant to survive.
She edged herself closer to the cliff, hoping she could get there before the Rathian took further offense, but she was far too late for that. The great wyvern let out a snarl, and Blake screamed and tried covering her face again as one of its taloned feet lashed out, and swept Blake back and out of its cave like it was swiping away a bug, not even hungry enough to save her for later.
Amidst rocky debris, the rush of cold, night air, and full-bodied pain, Blake found herself wondering 'what next?' Then her back hit the racing current coursing through the ravine, the shock shutting her off, and she was swept away, unconscious.
"We can't thank you enough, Scout Master, this wouldn't have been possible without you." The broad-shouldered, black haired man spoke with a hint of pride, and more than a smidgen of awe as he looked up at the legendary woman that he walked through the growing encampment with.
"Poppycock, despite our contributions, it was yours and your team's hard work that put this camp on the map. I'll accept no undue praise, Tukson," explained the Scout Master, her blonde hair kept in a tight knot behind her head, all but towering over the not-at-all-short man by her side. Scout Master Glynda Goodwitch glanced around the small, comfortable little cave Forward Point Tukson had been built inside of.
Tents of varying sizes with varying purposes were built in the compact corners of the small crack-in-the-wall they had discovered, a large fire roasting an enormous pot of boiling white broth and chunks of food within, the smoke and steam rising through a long, thin break in the ceiling into the sky above. The steep cliff and narrow passageways to reach the camp would be widened with time, but for now, an intricate pulley system and a large boulder would serve as a delivery system and gatekeeper to the campsite. It would be the perfect shelter and hiding place from hungry monsters and ravenous Grimm, and an excellent stake in territory for the people of New Vale.
"It wouldn't have been nearly as easy if you and your apprentices hadn't taken down that Nargacuga; it took three of us and our rations for the month during our first expedition—"
"And it won't be bothering you anymore, though the Grimm may be more prevalent without it patrolling the area." Glynda stated with a firm nod, leading the way towards a crack in the deep orange rock wall, sidling through it with Tukson behind her, the latter grumbling about getting to work with a pickaxe the moment he could. They stepped out onto a plateau cast in a ruddy orange, overlooking a sea of jungle green, a stiff breeze filling the air with rustling branches and loose leaves. The early morning sun was peeking over the horizon, their celestial light waking up to the hard work of field researchers and scouts. A tent was set along the steep cliffside the plateau was backed up against, and a team of men in various hide armors and cloth robes, wielding knives and chisels to work at the enormous carcass of a batlike quadruped. Glynda noted with idle satisfaction that a goodly amount of its hide and bones were being loaded onto the back of the cart they'd be taking back, and she was more pleased that the beast's enormous skull was still preserved despite Xiao Long's attempts to brain damage it.
Tukson chuckled by her side, watching his workers dismantle the monstrosity piece by piece. They didn't have the equipment they had back at Beacon, so it had taken all afternoon and night in order to cut it up this much, but there was plenty of material to take back for the researchers and smiths to work with.
"Auntie Glyndaaaaa!" An excited, high-pitched squee caused the various workers to pause and crane their heads, while Glynda's idle smile turned into an exhausted scowl as a teenage girl with a red and black bob cut raced up to the huntress with her arms outstretched in offering. "Auntie Glynda! Auntie Glynda!" Ruby squeaked as she hopped in front of her mentor, Glynda's gaze rising and falling to catch the girl's silver eyes. She was in her hunting outfit, Aptonoth-leather hide covering her upper-torso and legs, with simple cloth underclothing to prevent chafing. Though her arms were bare, a pair of small metal pauldrons adorned her shoulders, as well as thick gloves to protect her palms. Her boots were huge and heavy, giving her a sure-footedness she needed to race across any terrain fearlessly, and every hem of her leather armor was decorated with tufts of silver-blue fur that could have only have come from her current monstrous crush. "Look-what-I-got-from-the-Nargie-thing-six-fangs-for-my—"
Smack!
The girl held her head, whimpering as her excitement turned to blunt pain, and Glynda let loose a withering growl that made the girl freeze up. "Rose, you will address me by my formal name while we are on a mission." Glynda spoke icily, and the small girl shrank smaller in shame as the blonde Scout Master snapped. "Disrespecting your superiors is a quick and easy way to find yourself given dung collecting duties, and considering how much you complain about your nose—"
"Auntie Glynda! Auntie Glynda!" Came another excited, girly voice. Tukson stepped back and hid a snicker between pursed lips as a shockingly pretty girl bound up to the facepalming huntress, her hair more gold than blonde, and loosened to sway in the breeze as she bound up to their leader. Yang was dressed in similar armor to her sister, neither having gone through a personal hunt to find materials for better gear, but Yang wore considerably less. Her stomach, shins, calves, and one shoulder was exposed to the world, drawing considerable interest from some of the men in the camp. Her brazen appearance was intermixed with gold and red feathers, the prized plumage plucked from the blonde girl's beast of interest. The feathers sprouted from a comfortable headdress she wore, as well as from the belt of her short leather chaps to accentuate her showmanship. "I took a look at that Nargalicious' femur and it's just the right length for me to—" Ruby wisely stepped away from her older sister, right before another 'smack!' filled the air.
The workers tried their best to ignore the loud dressing down happening behind them, but many of them couldn't help but watch the spectacle in amusement at the sheer contrast between what they'd seen of the three girls the day before, and what they were bearing witness to now.
Both Ruby and Yang rubbing welts on their head, Glynda wrapped up her shouting, "— final warning before I report to the Hunt Master about your insubordination!" She huffed, fists on her hips and partially bent forward to meet their eyes.
"Dad doesn't care when we call him dad…" Ruby mumbled, only to zip her lip when Glynda's cold stare turned on her.
"He will once you two are both given independent missions of importance; now save your babbling for the road, breakfast is ready inside the main den. I want us at ground level and on the way home before the sky turns blue, am I understood?" Their tyrant of a mentor demanded harshly, and both girls bobbed their heads in fearful rapidity before zipping past her to squeeze into the den.
With the girls gone, and Glynda shaking off her role as their authority figure, she turned to Tukson with a small, sharp nod, gesturing to the wagon they'd be taking on the road. "I trust you and your men will have us stocked up by the time we've finished eating. Ozpin and Xiao Long both have high hopes for this encampment; we look forward to your findings."
"And we here at Camp Tukson look forward to serving Beacon, Auntie." Tukson smiled, a mistake that filled the morning with yelling once more.
The wagon rumbled as its wheels crunched through the thin, muddy top-layer of the narrow pathway between endlessly tall trees, and bowing shrubbery that stood taller than Glynda. The wooden vehicle was partially weighed down by several jute sacks filled with preserved meat and vegetables, their openings tightly squeezed by knotted drawstrings to prevent hungry hands from sneaking into them early. In addition, a pair of long, slender wooden crates, treated with tar to remain waterproofed, sat at the very back of the wagon, each containing rolled up maps, scrolls of new territorial information, and books that either needed completion, or had been completed by the trip. Tied down with resilient ropes and metal hooks were piles of bones wrapped in the hide of the slain Nargacuga, but most precious of all was a single, preserved black Dust gem pulled from the batlike beast that sat buried in one of the crates.
It burdened a single, small, slowly plodding Aptonoth; the gray skinned lizard beast, whose club-like tail had been docked to not interfere with the wagon's rolling. At the base of its skull was a short bony crest with a large metal ring punctured through it and a metal tag engraved with 'C72'. It was only slightly taller than Glynda at the top of its back, but easily ten times the Scout Master's weight. A pair of blinders kept its sideways-facing eyes from spotting all the lush, rich vegetation within mouth's reach of the beast, and leather straps were wrapped around its neck; sturdy enough to survive the constant pull, but the buckles could easily be snapped if something surprised the Apty into suddenly bolting, ensuring their supplies didn't go with it.
Glynda walked alongside the Aptonoth, one hand on its leathery neck as she strode with calm purpose, her eyes and ears open, but not straining for anything in particular. She was well protected in a mixture of leather and metal, not exactly as heavy or covered as the paladins guarding their home, but quite possibly better protected thanks to the large, verdant green scales and matching leather hide imbedded in the more plain materials. The hunter's long sword resting on her back was also abundantly green, but utilizing spines, bones, claws, and fangs melded into the metal to create an blade hard enough and sharp enough to take down some of the most powerful predators in Remnant. Along with her Aura, she could have survived a rain of cannonballs, then cut clean through the cannons in a single stroke; every piece of her equipment had been self-earned, and her reputation as a wilderness survivor was equally hard won.
She quickly looked to her right as Ruby shot by her from the cart's flank, and watched as the young lady climbed a tree by the edge of the road. The girl used a large, sharp hunting knife to carefully trim the stems of a few blue mushrooms growing in the tree, and caught up with the cart a minute later with her haul of reagents.
"One order of blue mushrooms!" Ruby smiled cheekily over at her sister, who walked along the left side of the cart with her arms behind her head, a click of the older girl's tongue expressing her annoyance.
"Just one order? C'mon Rubes." Yang chided with a playful grin. The older girl extended her left arm, showing off her wrist-mounted slinger, loaded with a grape-sized rock. With a squeeze of her left hand, the slinger let out a sharp 'twang!', and the stone flew into the trees above. A second later, a yellow hive splattered against the ground, drawing a groan from Glynda as the younger blonde gleefully began scraping up the viscous pile to collect in a large, wooden tube at her side, the angry bees inside landing foolishly on her red hot Aura and disappearing in pathetic puffs of smoke.
Ruby gave her sister a bemused sniff as the older girl grinned.
It was a simple, easily understood order that all hunters keep an eye out for useful supplies while on the road; honey made for a fine food additive, but being produced by the common alchemilla bee, also held strong body mending and Aura-restoring properties if mixed with the green herbs that dotted the land. Blue mushrooms had a symbiotic relationship with the forest flora, growing in poisoned or diseased areas and metabolising the infection to create nutrients for itself, effectively extending the lifespan of what would otherwise be a sick tree at the cost of forcing it to share in its store of energy; properly prepared and consumed, it could absorb infections and poisons to be passed safely as bodily waste.
While such things could be farmed, the dangerousness of the world for the common person meant that even the most well-prepared beekeepers could be heavily pressured with the demands from both hospitals and restaurants, so having extra flowing into New Vale eased the city. It also intrigued the researchers to see just how different even the most common of materials were based on location.
While Glynda did not discourage the two apprentice hunters from doing their best to provide, she wished they would stop wasting so much energy pursuing common materials… or bickering, for that matter.
"You wouldn't have even been able to take out its tendons without my help!" Yang argued, drawing a snort from Ruby that would have earned her a well-earned smack if she'd tried it with Glynda. Yang punctuated her declaration by grabbing the neck of her hunting horn, a long series of bones molded and fitted together in the shape of an enormous smoking pipe, the head of which was as thick as her torso and studded with thick, blunt spikes, while a durable blue air bladder filled an empty cavity burrowed out of the sturdy bone. Numerous screws and leather straps kept the whole absurdity in one piece, while a series of depressions and buttons would allow captured air to escape up the neck and out the end like a pressurized didgeridoo.
"Oh you're always saying: 'you could never do this' or 'you could never do that without my horn.' Well lemme tell you somethin', sista," Ruby grabbed the handles at her hips and, with an idle toss, threw her bone hatchets into the air to catch them with a daring grin, the sickly yellow dual blades each smaller than Glynda's and Yang's weaponry, but still larger and heavier than a pair of sensible short swords, "help all you want, it's these sweet babies doing all the work!" Ruby's weapons looked like sawed, shaped, and sharpened jaw bones, small, pointed teeth still embedded along the tip of the spine, with leather wrapped around the handles below the fitted guards.
Glynda rolled her eyes; if she was petty, she would remind them that she had dealt the most fatal of blows. If she was petty, of course.
The Nargacuga had been a fine fight for the three of them; Glynda had broken a sweat trying to keep up with the beast, whose finely honed senses prevented the three of them from flanking properly to surround it. Each limb was seemingly spiked, allowing it to lash out from all angles at any moment, and despite Glynda's annoyance with the girls' bragging, she knew that the girls had done their best, and allowed her for a much cleaner, easier kill.
She intended to let their father know of their contributions: Yang had realized that the big bat monster relied on its sensitive hearing to track their movements, and rather than spend the air collected in her horn's bladder on empowering her allies with enchanted music, she had expended it all in a cacophonous, explosive trumpet that had dizzied the monstrosity, and sent it biting at rocks and tree stumps in its pain. Ruby, small and agile as she was, had capitalized by avoiding its spined limbs and hacking away at its feet and wings until the beast was all but immobile, giving their mentor ample time to set up a killing blow straight through the heart.
Of course, her will to praise and admire the upcoming huntresses was tempered by her steadily growing annoyance at their constant one-upmanship.
"Fine! I'll take the next order for a Jagras hunt alone." Yang snapped, and Ruby boldly laughed in her sister's face.
"Oh, sure, your big dumb horn is so scary! You can send all the Jagras running while I take the alpha by myself!" Ruby huffed, and Yang sneered.
"Assuming you can stop yourself from wanting to mount it long enough to kill it!"
"At least I'm not constantly fawning over a stupid dodo!"
Their growling reached a peak until Glynda held up a fist, silencing them and drawing their attention. The Aptonoth came to a stop from a sharp pull of its bridle, and the small caravan came to an apprehensive still. Then, Glynda raised a finger, making it clear they weren't in danger, just about to be tested: "what do you hear?" She asked.
Both girls raised an ear, and simultaneously answered, "water." There was a river through the trees to their right, the rush of liquid sounding more like a long series of rapids than a babbling brook. A perfect place to catch some fish during migration season, and there would be plenty of ferns and herbs to gather, maybe even a rare seed!
Ruby and Yang shared an excited look, while Glynda gestured again, "now what do you smell?"
They lifted their noses into the air now, and took a few deep sniffs, then immediately grimaced. "Poop." They both stated flatly, drawing a nod from the Scout Master. The both of them had a quick moment of fear that they'd be ordered to collect some...
Their blonde leader whirled on them, hands on her hips. "Correct. Water draws life, and fresh excrement means something passed by recently. You two are to take the Aptonoth down to the river for it to drink; you will protect our supplies while setting up a fire. I, meanwhile, will search the area for signs of a monster. If you have evidence one is nearby, what will you do?"
"Ready the dung pods and cover each other's backs." Yang answered, drawing a nod.
"Order the Apty down and shoot a flare in case it attacks." Ruby followed up, getting what may have been a pleased grin from Glynda.
"Excellent. Get to it, lunch is fast approaching, and, assuming we're safe, I would like to eat." The two girls gave an excited cheer, taking the Apty by its bridle to guide it carefully between the trees and down a slope, while Glynda followed her nose.
Four bowls of soup each was a small breakfast for a hunter, even a young one. A healthy mixture of constant exercise, Aura usage, and remaining on alert taxed a hunter's body, and carrying such large, heavy weaponry wasn't much help in that regard. The ravenous appetites of hunters was widely known, with organizations deploying them requiring a dozen dedicated cooks to keep even a single platoon happy. One hunter could eat their way through enough food to feed a full family of four, and seconds weren't a rarity either. That most hunters kept off debilitating weight was a testament to the amount of work they put into their jobs, assuming they weren't just growing fat and living off of reputation and status.
It was a common worry among the traders and managers of major settlements: was it possible to feed both an entire civilian body and the endlessly hungry hunters that guarded them? It was an even bigger issue where Ruby was concerned; the amount of movement and strength that it took to use her weapons drained her faster than her sister, so if Yang was hungry enough for a single four person family…
"Wait." Yang ordered tersely, smacking her whining younger sister's hand as she reached for one of a dozen dried fish getting roasted by a large campfire.
"'m hungry!" Ruby insisted, her blades sticking out of a larger, riverside boulder she had slammed them in. Neither was cracked, and thanks to the Aura that had coated them, wouldn't need sharpening either.
"You're always hungry." Yang smirked, sitting down by her sister's side on a large log they had 'procured.' Their boots pushed aside a multitude of pebbles that lined the rushing rapids, thankfully giving them some flat, if crumbly land for them to set up a quick lunch, as well as allow their pack beast to suck down mouthfuls of cool, fresh water.
The sun sat high in the pretty blue sky, signalling that it was about noon. The day was warm and cozy, and the sounds of distant crashing alerted the girls to the possibility of local beasts, but they remained unworried. Getting apprehensive was what caused the Grimm to appear, and while some petty arguing would draw nothing more than some annoyed monsters, the last thing a caravan in the middle of the woods needed was to wind themselves up with worry, lest they draw Grimm, and the Grimm drew monsters, and the entire camp fell to a bloody brawl.
However, neither girl dwelled on it. Ruby licked her lips as she watched a distant family of Kelbi gather at the riverside and dip their snouts into the water, two of the young bucks butting heads with their fresh antlers. "Kelbi horns?" Ruby asked Yang, who shrugged her bare shoulder as she turned the fish over to roast the other side.
"Don't go too far if you chase 'em." Yang ordered, and Ruby shot to her feet. "I wasn't saying you should." Yang smirked as her sister tore her blades out of the boulder, while Ruby just smiled.
"Too late! Suggestion taken!" Ruby glanced at the fish longingly, and Yang waved her away.
"I'll try and call when they're ready, just don't piss off Glynda."
With that, Ruby nodded and took off.
Kelbi weren't difficult prey; in fact, even compared to the much slower, meatier Aptonoth, they were downright murderable. The tall, whispy, deer hopped and skipped away for their lives as Ruby made her presence known by hacking straight through a young, green-furred buck's neck. Ten years ago, the splatter of blood across her face would have left Ruby inconsolable, but years of watching conflicts both close and far, and regular hunting alongside her family made her much more relaxed.
It wasn't that she enjoyed the violence, nor the taking of life, but a central tenet of hunting was that the loss of one life beget the growth of another; not through some creepy transference ritual, but the dead Kelbi gave meat to feast on, fur to warm up in, and horns to grind into potions to cure ailments. In turn, if the alpha Kelbi that charged Ruby had succeeded in killing her–as opposed to finding itself without a head–then it would have extended its and its packmates' lives by removing a predator.
With a swift headcount, Ruby saw that three bucks and eight does were racing off into the woods, enough to allow the herd to breed itself whole once more, while leaving behind four dead bucks for Ruby to return to camp with. It was a cycle, one the hunters were very in-tune with; hunting monsters wasn't easy, nor was it often fun, and bringing enough meat and monster materials into town for food, clothing, and tools was a hard enough job without wiping out the population of herbivores that sustained them.
Kill too many Aptonoth and New Vale and Beacon would both suffer from a loss of meat in their diet, but allow too many to roam free, and many of the herbs, fruits, and vegetables they also relied upon would disappear into the monsters' gullets. The researchers regularly counted herds, and pressed upon young hunters to be wary of culling too much. Ruby was confident that, despite the loss of four hardy males, the Kelbi herd she'd disrupted would bounce back during the next mating season.
Ruby had always heard that disrupting the cycle of eat and be eaten was a precarious thing; she didn't believe that was true out in the woods, but off the top of her head, she knew the three thousand citizens of New Vale, and the three hundred hunters of Beacon could very easily eat themselves into starvation. She'd nearly seen it happen not five years ago when a floral disease ravaged the vegetable farms, leaving many of their crops inedible. Watching her father fret over the livelihoods of nearly three-and-a-half thousand people was stressful, especially as she watched the food markets dry up.
The successful introduction of the blue mushrooms they normally kept separate helped, and it had apparently been a meticulous process to ensure they didn't leach the soil of whatever vital plant food potatoes found in it. She didn't know the full breadth of the science or thought behind it, but she was glad the eggheads had figured it all out.
Four legless carcasses thrown over her shoulders, eight horns stuffed into her belt pouches, and four heads cast off to the woods, Ruby started her walk back to lunch. She could already taste that roasted fish, and the rolls they'd packed away melting in her mouth together. And they had Kelbi now, too! It wasn't quite as tasty as Apty-meat, but Kelbi was pretty yummy.
She walked along the riverbank, watching the smoke rising in the distance from their fire, and scanned the water for anything else she could stuff into her pouches. An herb or two stood out to her, and she saw a few large fish racing down the current, but what really caught her eye was a long, gnarled branch jutting out of the water. It didn't look like a root, so it was probably just some debris from upstream, but after peeling her eyes off the potentially edible moss growing on its bark, she caught sight of something caught betwixt the branches.
The rushing water obscured most of it, and it kind of looked like a weird, black piece of cloth that got caught, but the closer she looked, the less she was sure. It wasn't until she spied the pale face the mass of black was attached to floating above the water's surface did she realize what she was looking at.
"In all likelihood, it was some breed of fanged wyvern." Glynda stated factually, resting on the log Ruby and Yang had pulled up to the fire. She blew across the hide of the roasted fish, cooling it partially before biting into its crispy flesh to get to the tender meat underneath.
"Righteous, what kind? Zinogre?" Yang asked. She rapidly took bites of fish, bread, and from a steamed vegetable medley to be quickly chewed up and swallowed in record time. Many hunters were speed eaters to not waste precious daylight hours, but the rate at which they inhaled their meals often left restaurant chefs dismayed at how little they could have possibly tasted.
"Not enough scorch marks in the area, so doubtful, unless it had utterly spent itself and was crawling back home. However, the claw marks in the ground suggested it was travelling, not marking territory. Perhaps a youth hunting for new territory after being chased out of the nest." The Scout Master uncorked a canteen and drank deeply, savoring the cooling water with a small sigh, periodically glancing over her shoulder. "If your sister takes any more time she'll be left with MREs for the rest of the trip."
"Aww, c'mon, Auntie, don't be mean." Yang pouted, following her mentor's eyes out to the opposite bank of the river. "She couldn't have gone too far, just a buncha Kelbi." The blonde shrugged, swigging from her own canteen.
"This is your sister we're talking about–and again, stop calling me Auntie on a mission." Glynda went to take another bite of food, then paused, "the same sister who spent an entire expedition following fur trails rather than gathering spider web, as she was asked."
"That was two years ago!" Yang snickered, but did worriedly glance back. To her delight, she saw Ruby racing towards them with something on her back, and she nodded towards the woman. "There she is! She even caught one, so—"
Glynda shot to her feet to stare at the approaching girl in the distance, her posture lowering the slightest bit in apprehension, her eyes narrowing, her meal forgotten. Yang followed suit upon seeing her elder's posture, reaching for her horn, but Glynda gestured for her to stop.
"Yang! Auntie!" Ruby cried out from the distance, closing the gap quickly. The thing on her back was a whole lot of black, certainly not a Kelbi, but the limbs were definitely some sort of humanoid. A bloody humanoid, at that... "I found a dead chick in the river!"
"Dead chick?" Yang asked Glynda, who straightened up in confusion. "Is she cute?!" Yang called over the roaring water, and got a smack to her shoulder from the older woman.
"Yang! Go grab the first aid kit from the cart, quickly!" She ordered, turning back to Ruby as the girl began to leap across rocks in the river.
Glynda's first impression of the young lady in front of her was that she was the most dead looking Faunus Glynda had ever seen, and she had seen other Faunus die right in front of her. The girl was pale, her face nearly white, her leg an absolute mangled mess, her body covered in so many bruises that Glynda would have called it a domestic dispute gone very wrong if the wounds weren't so obviously from creatures other than a humanoid. A touch to her neck, however, confirmed a miracle: the girl was not dead… but the next hour or so could change that.
Ruby looked up to Glynda's expression with a frightened look, and Glynda reminded herself that she was the adult here, she was to lead by example. She looked up to see Yang running over with a brown bag in her arms, handing it over to Scout Master to pull out glass vials of potions as well as bandages.
"Whoa, she is cute." Yang noted with a blink, tilting her head curiously as she laid a hand across her forehead, then winced. "And burning up."
"She most likely has a fever from an infection due to that leg of hers," Glynda explained, popping a cork to let loose a heavily alcoholic scent that left both girls twitching in distress at memories of their own treatments, "for now, Yang, I need splints for her leg; don't take too long, we can't waste time here."
"Got it." Yang stood up swiftly, catching one of Ruby's hatchets when it was thrown to her, then going to the log they'd been perched on. After deeming it too soft to use she raced up to the trees to find sturdy branches.
Ruby watched with a focused expression, her hands balled into small fists as the antiseptic brew was poured into the mysterious black-haired girl's ragged leg wounds. It fizzed and bubbled and seeped in, but despite the extraordinary amount of pain it must have caused, the girl's face didn't twitch. "Auntie, is she…?"
"She will be if we don't treat her. Ruby," Glynda looked up to her young ward seriously, her frown making Ruby swallow thickly and tighten her guts to avoid growing despondent with worry, "I need three things: we have two chillshrooms, I need you to grind one as finely as you can and mix it with the water in one of our canteens, that will help reduce her fever. Second, blue mushrooms and dried bitterbug—"
"Nutrient drink." Ruby answered, and Glynda confirmed with a nod.
"And, lastly, a potion; get the honey Yang collected and mix it with one of our potions, this is serious enough to warrant some extra-strength healing. With any luck, the treatment will keep her alive long enough to reach Beacon; whether we can save her leg or not is another matter."
"Yes ma'am." Ruby didn't hesitate to dig into the first aid kit and pull out a pestle and mortar. Just like how Auntie Peach had taught her, Ruby began to swiftly and efficiently grind the ingredients into a proper, soluble form. Her canteen turned ice cold as she shook the chillshroom powder inside of it, and carefully they filled the girl's mouth with the mixture.
The black-haired Faunus began to swallow with a little bit of encouragement, and a loud, distressed gasp escaped her as her body temperature fell dramatically within the minute, her fever falling with it.
Yang returned with a pair of long, whittled poles, given just enough work to lay flat against that nearly destroyed leg, and some additional pruning made them the right size. As the girl was force fed a potion, Glynda wrapped her leg with bandages and the twin splints.
With the leg bound and the girl full of potions the three huntresses carefully lifted her onto the back of the wagon, pushing everything aside so the young, wounded lady could rest on one side. "Ruby," Glynda spoke in a continually serious voice, "you'll be in the wagon keeping the goods and our rescue separate."
Ruby bobbed her head swiftly, climbing in to crouch where she could, while Yang swiftly gathered up all their food. "We eatin' on the go?" She asked, handing several sticks of roasted fish to Ruby as their mentor nodded.
"We've not much of a choice. Fill the canteens quick as you can, and let's get back to civilization."
With that, the girls nodded. As Yang went to refill their water, Ruby leaned over the girl's face to examine her closely. She rest a hand gently on the unknown Faunus' cheek, and tried to smile, "it'll be okay. We always pull through in the worst of times."
The unconscious girl's face flickered, almost in recognition, or maybe in pain, but Ruby looked ahead as the wagon began to roll, a bite of fish in her mouth.
AN: Hello everyone, this is an idea I've been brooding on for the better part of a year. I want to take the opportunity to explain my experience with Monster Hunter; I have only played the latest game, World, which I understand is a bit of a divisive entry due. I am educating myself on the rest of the series through the magic of various wikis and YouTube, so apologies if the early chapters are a bit stale in selection.
However, I immediately fell in love with the world of Monster Hunter, as well as its inhabitants' enthusiasm towards studying, hunting, and even preserving the various monsters they share the world with. Being a big fan of RWBY's characters as well, and the two having some intriguing compatibility when I put some thought into it, I decided to go ahead and give this idea a try.
I hope it's an entertaining experience for everybody, I certainly enjoyed writing it!