Music Choices: Animals by Architects, Duality by Slipknot

Eclipse

Chapter 64

The Hunter's Moon

Part VII

He hissed softly as the needle sank into a vein, before sighing in relief as the aura booster hit. His aura flooded back to full strength, rejuvenated once again. The sensation pulled a sigh from deep in his chest, and at last he cracked a rust red eye open.

Aura boosters could be rough on the body if used excessively over a short period; and at times deadly if used excessively over a long period. It's why folks like Hunters, Witchfingers and military types tried to only use boosters in an emergency, or during an extended hunt or conflict where they would burn through them; and it was also why hospitals only administered them as a last resort to those with active aura.

Considering the science behind aura, and Semblances themselves, were about as shaky as a possum having a seizure, it tracked that what scientists used to boost aura levels weren't based on anything that made genuine sense from a clinical health standpoint; just good ole trial and error, monkeys smacking stuff with hammers until suddenly, they made something that, for whatever reason, worked.

Fact is, Aura boosters actually contain a very small amount of Dust particulates. Back in the day, someone had, in a fit of desperation, tried to revive their broken aura with Dust powder, either by fucking eating it? Or stabbing into themselves with it in a creative manner of some kind; and lo and behold, it had worked. They lived to pass on this information, and then a girl in a backwater mining Settlement near Mantle had tinkered around with the idea, and then boom: the first aura boosters were created, and there was minimal risk for the fucking things to blow your arms and head off, unlike jabbing yourself up with raw Dust crystals. Because on a microscopic level, Dust acts a lot like Aura; but in large quantities, it behaves different, and none of the eggheads really knows why yet.

When he'd been a younger man, he'd tried to activate his aura with ill obtained boosters, thinking perhaps that would kick-start it. They hadn't. Nothing had happened, no matter how many times he tried. What he hadn't understood was that, without aura or a Semblance to burn through the micro-Dust, what his body could not pass or filter out was collecting in the nooks and crannies; so when he actually, finally, got an Aura and Semblance? He'd nearly blown his ass up.

The moment his Aura finally sparked, several of his internal organs had ruptured, and he had laid on that grass, bleeding and coughing and dying, already half out of his mind with fear, but still able to appreciate the irony of the moment. All his life, he'd been waiting for that moment, the moment he could really, truly fight back against the forces that had been wanting to kill him since he was born into a mad world that hated him with a black fucking passion. And the second it happened, he was going to die.

It hadn't been fair. And his fear transformed once again into anger and fury at the injustice of it. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that the moment he got power, it was going to be ripped away from him again; that the moment he could properly defend himself and the people he'd wanted to defend, but couldn't, the moment he could self actualize and fucking do something about it all - he was going to die.

It was spiteful. It was fucking cruel. And in that moment of helpless, dying rage, something else clicked; he'd seen himself not from his perspective, but that of something beyond him, a black beast with teeth, and fur and a fury not unlike his own, a spirit that howled and made the blood boil, and gave chase to its enemies, and made prey of them instead.

The First Great Hunter. The Beast With No Name.

Despite the pain, the fear, and confusion? He'd gotten back up again, aura blazing like hellfire, only on four legs this time instead of two. His memories after that point blurred and stretched, though he got flashes of the time he'd spent in the wilds, and acting out his revenge on those who'd betrayed him, the lapdogs of that vile mistress; but eventually he'd come to his senses enough to direct that fury towards a purpose. Towards a goal.

He'd been working towards it ever since; and he was going to bring it about, no matter what.

He tossed the empty cartridge amongst the others, and splashed water on his face, before walking out of the small bathroom. He didn't bother to check his reflection; he'd already taken care to remove any and all mirrors in the little smuggler's den he'd reappropriated. It had its own Dust generator that, with a little tinkering, ran just fine; and whoever had built the den had taken time to supply it with running water and plumbing as well, considering they were right next to a water-main, and hop skip and jump away from the sewer lines. On top of the aged Semblance glyphs, there were several existing security measures that he'd added his own personal touches too, combined with things a little less conventional.

The smuggler's den was large enough to that it had several Dust class shipping-containers, which he had turned into holding cells for the annoying ass pack of suicide-lemmings that his daughter had unwisely seen fit to recruit to be part of her little temper tantrum. He paused next to one of them, the smell of industrial metal and stale air creating a bitter taste on his tongue as he listened.

He'd had to sedate the loud pink one, who'd woken up as unhinged as ever and was genuinely difficult to interrogate, even with his Semblance and her lack of aura. During questioning, her eyes would still shift color, and even when she couldn't use her clones, that frequency jump would shake his grip on her long enough for her to break his hold to insult him or spit at him. It also burned through his aura levels, and drained him too quickly to be worth the effort.

He'd considered killing her outright, and still might to be honest if she kept fuckin pushing it, but having leverage on both Tormund and Summer was just too good to waste; and killing was, these days, a last resort for him if possible. Because even if you burn and salt a body til there's nothing left, or give it spiritual rites, there was still a chance that the witch could raise them into her army; and the more powerful a person had been in life, he wagered the more powerful they'd be as a Grimm. No sense handing her weapons she could use against civilization.

Nope. Better to imprison and reprogram if able.

Or if not? Then dispose of them far away from civilization. Considering their prison capacities had been, well, greatly reduced as of late, that last option would likely become more prevalent for a while.

Next to screamin-pink was the tweaky nerd kid who was gonna give himself liver damage with all the caffeine concoctions he drank. He was awake, and had been chock full of information; most of it, however, Verdant had already known from his excursions onto campus. Not all of it, though.

Little nerd was a bubbling font of intel, and a very powerful technopath; even though he wasn't a shifter, or magic user of any sort, he could be incredibly useful as a Servicemember. If he could be reprogrammed, which to be honest, might be a lost cause. Couldn't hurt to try, though. Technopaths were so rare and so useful; and theirs was, unfortunately, no longer a part of the team.

Verdant strode on silent feet towards the last two containers, and opened the folder he'd been carrying under his arm, rummaging through it. He'd spent most of his time so far questioning Natalia, whose Semblance insights had been genuinely some of the most useful to him on a personal level; hells, she'd be useful on a professional level to him too, because she could use that Semblance to soothe or make new-drops more compliant and less afraid.

That'd been one of their biggest struggles when they started this program up, trying to break in free people and turn them into efficient soldiers and public servants. It was, to be honest, a real fuckin pain in his ass, trying to figure it out. If they'd had an empath like Natalia on board at the beginning, oh man, they'd have a much higher percentage of success. It's why kids were typically their only success stories, at least at the beginning. Kids were easier to mold. Teens were still pretty easy, up until a certain age; but once they'd hit their twenties, man, it was fuckin next to impossible to deal with some of them, and that? That was a waste.

That's why he'd wanted to expand their program to recruiting people who weren't necessarily magical, but whose Semblances or abilities made them useful prospects for the Service. It was his biggest argument with the King, who insisted that Semblances were protected as part of an individual's right to physical autonomy and that the shitstorm challenging that would kick up just wasn't worth it; in Vale, just because you had a Semblance that might save the Kingdom or the whole world, the King could not legally impress you into his Service.

Least, not anymore.

No Kingdom on Remnant could legally gang-press their Semblance bearing citizens into military or royal Service based solely on their special abilities or the needs of the Kingdom. Civil wars had been fought over it, civilizations had been toppled - wa wa waaaa.

All fuckin wormshit, really.

Nobody liked to think that, maybe, the good of the many out-weighed the petty wants of the few; ya know, considering their circumstances and everything. They might have a good point if the Grimm weren't a factor, or the thing controlling them didn't exist; but exist the fuckin did.

Only people who seemed to be mostly willing to do what needed to be done without a bunch of hand-wringing was Atlas, unfortunately. He was not a fan of Atlas; they were too shortsighted, racist, and high on their egos to be effective world leaders. Their whole schtick was that they believed their Kingdom was the only real Kingdom and everybody else was just a pretender. They'd rather waste time conquering over other governments and territories and grinding down the faunus than actually working with other Kingdoms to systemically wipe out the Grimm. But, they at least understood that a powerful Semblance existed to benefit the survival of the whole, and not just the individual.

Though nobody dared called the icy, cunt-sucking fucks out on it. They just hid it behind bureaucratic dogshit, patriotism, "the draft", and incentivized it with extra food rations for their starving families down in Mantle.

Everyone else? They relied on good old propaganda and the shiny Hunter's Academies to lure their most powerful Semblance users into becoming tools for the state; worked pretty well, or it used to anyways. But these days, there was so much corruption amongst the Hunters, that the whole system needed a good overhaul, from the floor up.

They'd been given too much slack as an agency, and the Witchfingers were too few, too cucked and too bitter these days to police them properly; and now they thought they had run of the whole fuckin world, to do whatever they wanted, to whomever they wanted. They'd forgotten their purpose. They'd forgotten that they were dogs on a chain, to set loose on the monsters and their ugly mistress; not supply her with more in their reckless, selfish fuckin behavior.

If he had his way, then the Hunters of Vale and the King's Service would become one and the same; similar to the AceOps in Atlas, but instead of only a handful of elites, it would encompass every Hunter who became licensed at Beacon or who had Valish citizenship. One state level agency with different branches that worked together to serve the whole of Vale and her territories, answering to the King himself.

He could make that happen. He would make that happen. Just needed to get a few obstacles out of their way first.

Lost in thought, he pulled out Argent's file, and began to slowly leaf through it.

This one he'd waited on. He knew the least about him; for all intents and purposes, he was just a regular guy, born and raised in Vale. His record didn't have the same red flags Natalia's had, and he wasn't the son of anyone important, unlike Sigyn; his partner had been scouted by dozens of agencies and corporations before he was fifteen, all of them drooling over his Semblance and intellectual prowess. Nobody knew who this guy was, or cared to know; his record was totally squeaky clean, and his accomplishments unremarkable.

However, Argent was the leader, and Verdant had learned quite a bit about how Ozpin ran things up in that little castle of his. Team 'leaders' were seemingly chosen either for their power, their lineage or their raw potential; usually it was a combination of at least two of those factors, though sometimes one was seemingly enough.

"Where do you fall then, big man?" Verdant muttered, thoughtfully, reaching out to open the door. When, very fucking suddenly, he felt as if he'd been force fed a fistful of needles.

His eyes widened in shock at the pain, and he let out an agonized cough as he patted his chest with his palm, expecting to draw back blood. There was nothing there.

"What the- grrnnn!" he bent over suddenly, a pained snarl pulling from him as his guts twisted in agony. His teeth flashed as he sweated profusely, and he tried to shift skins in an attempt to protect himself from attack; and found he couldn't.

In fact the more he tried, the more pain he was in, as if he was tangling himself in invisible barbed wire, sinking in under his muscles, into his spine; a thousand silver needles manifesting under his skin and binding him into his human form. Verdant roared in fury, staggering as he drug himself over the floor, pulling his pistol from his hip.

Noises bombarded him, and he started to see darting shadows all around, as if he was being besieged by Gheists - no. Not Gheists, not fucking Grimm. In the periphery of his watering vision, Verdant could see flitting inhumane shadows, shaped not like Grimm, people or anything on this plane of existence; entities he had little experience with, but some knowledge of due to his own upbringing and the admissions of the free folk he'd interrogated over the years.

Spirits. Vættir. Aos Sidhe. Yokai. They had a million names across Remnant, things that haunted human and faunus myths and minds; entities that belonged to the realms between the borders of life and death, and the worlds beyond. Allegedly, some magic users could either command them or call upon them for assistance; apparently that was true, because they were currently tormenting him.

Verdant snarled defiantly, ghostly pains wracking his body, reminding him of the time he'd ruptured his organs and first shifted. He realized could hear music, and over the copper taste spilling in his mouth and driving him to his knees relentlessly, he could feel silver in his head, digging like a knife edge, driving, twisting, HOWLING-

"OH, you think - graah - you think you can stop me so easily, you little bitch?" he growled viciously, the taste of blood and bile coating his tongue. "Ggggrrrrrr nnghh, is this all you've got?!"

Claws in his liver, under his nails, awful whispering voices that froze the bladder and liquefied the colon, he was vomiting, he was burning, he was being electrocuted, he was drowning; he was feeling the deaths of dozens of dead, of people he'd killed, of people he'd seen die, he was feeling what they felt, the vengeful dead on the cusp of transforming into Grimm-

"IS THIS ALL YOU'VE FUCKING GOT, LITTLE GIRL?!" Verdant roared, his eyes flashing ruthlessly, his teeth jutting from his mouth, his face twisted from trying to force the transformation and getting caught. "You think I haven't endured worse?! This ain't shit, Summer! Get real! Nngh - you cannot keep what's mine? From ME! "

Hooks and daggers, teeth and fire, disembowelment and crushing pain - none of it was real, and none of it was going to keep power from him. Nothing, no pain, no goblins or fucking ghouls, was going to keep him from getting what he wanted.

He would never, ever , be helpless ever fucking again.

"You're fucking kidding yourself!" he spat, clutching a twisted half-paw over his belly, the dark shades and flitting entities darting mockingly around him, whispering vile things into his ears and he growled, forcing fur along along his arms. "You don't have the spine! You're too fuckin soft , kid!"

Rippling muscle and fur, bones cracking, the transformation genuinely painful as Summer's curse tried furiously to cripple his magic, to tear power from his grasp. He had to hand to her though: it really fuckin hurt.

It hurt more than perhaps anything he'd ever physically endured.

But Summer didn't apparently understand something very fundamental about shifters; and it was that their magic? Was only twenty-five percent physical, and seventy-five percent mental.

Embody the headspace, embody the form.

Even if it hurt, even if it twisted his guts and wrenched his spine, and ripped his flesh from his bones before re-growing, Verdant would still, could still, transform. Mentally, he had suffered far worse, for far longer, than this; and no spoiled little Huntress was going to strip him of abilities he had earned through decades of blood and awful sacrifice.

Panting, Verdant pushed back against the pain, and finally forced himself into his warg form; skin and bone splitting and reshaping, blood spilling on the floor. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the awful singing stopped, the chthonic music, shades and voices fading somewhat; at least enough for him to force himself to function.

He staggered up onto his back feet, shaking, his lips pulled back in a silent, awful snarl, his ears flat against his skull. He stared at his hands, which were still shaking and trembling, the aftereffects of the magical assault. He forced them into fists, claws digging into the pads of his palms, and they finally stopped quaking.

He still felt as if silver wires were writhing beneath his skin, trying to peel the fur from his bones, trying to cripple him; and he knew that if he tried to shift back into his human form, or go fully wolf, that pain would spike yet again to an unmanageable spike. She wanted him to hurt every time he shifted, to slow him down, to cripple him; because she was coming for him and wanted him hurtin and scared.

He hadn't expected tactics like that from her , to be honest, but if that's how she wanted to do things, well...

His red eyes narrowed, his chest heaving with anger and indignation, before his black muzzle twisted in a malicious smile.

"So you wanna play rough, huh? Ok," he rumbled, still capable of rough speech, his voice sounding brutal in his mouth full of teeth. "Alright."

He marched heavily towards a room in the back of the smuggler's den, slapping a paw across a glyph and juicing it with aura. The glyph glowed vermillion, and the door slid into the ground, 'melting' like ice under a heat lamp. Verdant stomped into the space beyond, lights flickering on in response to his movements, and revealing an impressive arsenal of weapons, field gear, Dust and collected Semblance glyphs that would bring a tear to a Witchfinger's eye. The warg growled as he started feverishly pulling things off of the shelves and out storage containers, his face the picture of wrath.

"OK! WE CAN PLAY FUCKIN ROUGH, SWEETHEART!"