Revision (2/6/22)
First crack at a fight scene in a while, apologies for any wonky pacing.
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Fallen Knight
Chapter III
Lie Ren was having an exceedingly frustrating morning.
It all started not too inconvenient. He had woken up to the calming smell of peaches from his pocket humidifier with Nora commandeering his right arm. His by now long-term girlfriend and partner had completely foregone any pretenses of using the top bunk. Jaune would frequently mumble some complaint about misconduct but in Ren's opinion, it was entirely their fault for allowing co-ed dorms.
The comfortable contentedness borne from waking in the arms of his partner quickly died as Ren realized what day it was. And from there, it was only downhill.
The Animite had awoken late, on today of all possible days, and was thrown off of his carefully maintained circadian rhythm. He had to compete with Yang in all her voraciousness when it came to morning routines and was left with barely enough time to join Dai-san for their morning meditation. To add to everything, he had found a tear in the inseam of his combat attire. A usually mundane fix if Ren hadn't used all of his threat the day prior to repair Nora's skirt after a dust incident.
He just hoped the mission debrief would be easy and uncomplicated.
Ren rolled over the top of a Juvenile Ravenclaw and wrestled the bipedal avian Grimm into a chokehold from behind.
"Nora!"
"On it!"
Her pink aura-encased fist met the Ravenclaw's beak at the tip and forced it through its sleek skull, scattering it to a black mist.
He let the headless corpse crumple to the ground.
"Thanks," Ren said with a heaving breath, hands braced against his knees.
"GrrhhaaaaAA." Nora suplexed another Ravenclaw, shattering its spinal vertebrae and pressing its head into its shoulders as the spindly limbs spasmed.
Ren let out a single breath in solidarity before the Grimm were upon him once again.
After the bombing run that took Jaune and a few others out, the entire base descended into pandemonium. A murder of Ravenclaws – Nevermore adjacent bipedal avian type Grimm with long, terrible four taloned hands and feet that fight like flying Creeps – rendered themselves unto the base like a dark cloud of misery. They stuck themselves below the firing line of their big guns and near critical infrastructure, forcing the Huntsman to engage them on the ground or risk losing more of their already meager supplies. How they got past the scouts and forward defenses without a single alarm raised, Ren could only imagine. And fear that maybe Nora had a point.
Dodging under a feather the size of Blake, Ren shoulder checked an averaged size Ravenclaw of about five foot five. Catching the frantic swipe of its talons, he planted a foot on its neck and gripped its beak with his other hand, ripping it off with the gut-wrenching sound of tearing flesh and sinew.
Ren balanced the beak in one hand. A little rear-limited but remarkably hefty. He dropped in a low crouch, narrowly avoiding a bear-hug of death, and jammed the improvised weapon into a general approximation of where its heart might be, felling the Ravenclaw with a single blow.
While they swarmed the interior of Hangar 13 in great numbers, Ravenclaws were pushovers at the best of times. The only reason the assembled B-company was flagging was due to their distinct lack of weaponry - on account of them being caught with their pants down - forcing them to rely heavily on their limited contingent of martial artists.
Ren threw a glance upwards as he dropkicked one of the Grimm out of the air, to the gargantuan Maven perched on the lip of the hole it tore in the wrought iron ceiling. 20 feet tall and shrouded in its wings of leathery black feathers that shimmered in the morning sun, it quietly observed the brawl beneath it with intelligent red eyes that made Ren very uncomfortable.
Mavens, on the other hand, could put down seasoned veterans within minutes. It was telling that standard hunting procedure was to back off and have a cruiser nuke their nest from ten klicks out. And here they were with nothing but their bare knuckles…
An armless Ravenclaw shot past his vision like a bullet and slammed into three more who were ganging up on Russel, bringing the four of them down into a pile of broken Grimm bones.
Nora cackled and struck a power pose, Ravenclaw arms clutched in both hands, before backhanding another one so hard it was decapitated.
… and a Nora.
Maybe they had a chance after all.
"Gah! Ffffucksickles that hurts!"
Ren's head snapped to the left. A blue-haired woman with two thick rectangles of black facepaint beneath her eyes, Reese if he remembered right, had been speared through the thigh by a projectile feather.
"Nora!"
"Come get me you spaghetti noodles! Mama's HUNGRY."
Surging forward, Ren dropped to his knees and slid under an airborne Ravenclaw before catching a follow-up feather aimed for Reese's face.
"T-Thanks for… the assist." She said as Ren snapped the feather in half and tossed it aside to prevent it from catching on anything, her teal eyes already flickering with delirium.
"Don't worry about it, let's get you out of here- " Ren hefted her into a fireman's carry, wincing as the leg wound spurted purple-tinged blood. "Nora! Position 3!"
His partner falling into step behind them, the trio waded through the dissolving Grimm corpses and debris to the center of the hangar. A ring of Weiss' Arma Gigas cleared a defensive position wherein what wounded that could be recovered were being treated.
Dashing between the legs of one of the ethereal suits of armor, Ren cast his eyes over the rows of wounded Huntsmen. Their wounds varied from deep punctures to simple aura exhaustion, but the ones with visible wounds were all unconscious. At the center of the circle kneeled Weiss, hands planted to the cement floor and face drawn together in intense concentration as glyphs flared out on all sides of her.
"Medic!" Ren called, laying Reese down on the floor as Nora tumbled in behind him, the Gigas' great sword coming down in a single fluid motion to cut a pursuing Ravenclaw in half.
"Aw come on, man! I totally had him." Nora said, crossing her arms and glowering at the summon. For all her bravado, the bruises across her face and arms and labored breath betrayed her fatigue. Thank the Brothers she took those unarmed combat classes with him back in Beacon or else they would be in a colorful predicament indeed.
Blake, noticing his call for aid, carefully hopped through the wounded and dropped down next to Reese with Ren.
"How long?" She asked, raising Reese's leg slightly to check the depth of the wound. It had run clean through to the other side.
"Just happened, three minutes max."
Blake sighed in relief. "That's great, the tip isn't internal either so we may be able to stop the poison before it shuts her down."
"Poison?" Nora asked as Blake cut a strip of leather from an unconscious Hunter's harness he didn't recognize.
"Yeah. These things look like Ravenclaws but they've gone through some kind of evolution – Here bite down on this," She all but shoved the leather strip into Reese's mouth. Ren, guessing where this is going, braced the rapidly panicking woman against the ground and activated his semblance.
Reese's form stilled and her eyes rolled into the back of her head as Blake removed the last feather fragment with a precise tug. Tossing it aside, she gestured to the wound. The skin surrounding the puncture site had begun turning a sickly purple with dark-colored puss gathering at the edges.
It evoked memories of a similar injury long ago. The wary glance Nora shot him told Ren he wasn't alone.
"It's some kind of paralytic anesthetic. Non-lethal – so far – but even a little will put you under within a few minutes. For how long, we don't know." Blake said as she wrapped the unconscious woman's wound with some improvised bandages.
"So Jaune's still…?" Nora said, worry lacing her voice.
Blake shook her head with a grimace. Ren could make out his golden shock of hair laying next to Weiss, unmoving. "He had the biggest dose of anybody yet, we left the feather in for a long time thinking it would do more damage if we pulled it. For all we know he could be in a coma for months."
Nora let out a frustrated growl, Ren couldn't help but agree.
He turned his pink eyes out to the wider battlefield as Blake departed with a quick 'good luck.' He could pick out some powerhouses still standing through the chaos. Yang was single-handedly tying down five Ravenclaws with her flurry of haymakers, Sun and Arslan were using Sun's clones as aerial platforms to fight the Grimm in the sky, and Ruby, wielding Crocea Mors and probably the only one with a real weapon, bounced from wall to wall like a tempest of red death. He watched as the Crimson Reaper repeatedly attempted to challenge the Maven but was rebuffed with a lazy flick of its wicked claws.
Apart from them, however, the battle was most certainly not going in their favor. The lines of huntsmen not adept in unarmed combat were forced closer and closer to the line of Gigas who themselves were beginning to show signs of being overwhelmed. Unconscious bodies and some corpses dotted the floor of the hangar.
Tightening his grip on the improvised daggers, Ren glared at the Maven. Every time one of them approached the mouth of the hangar to escape they were blocked by a deadly accurate feather strike from the beast. At least two bodies were run through, hanging limply off of the ten-foot-tall projectile like a marionette with their strings cut off. If they could only break through to the rest of the base, rally some kind of support. Because at the rate they were going, the hangar would be nothing but dead bodies before the rest of the base recovered enough to help them on their own.
The Mavens six-eyed gaze shifted to meet his own, the cold intensity sending involuntary shocks down the length of Ren's spine. Slowly, as if it was mocking him, its head tilted to the side. Beak angled in such a way that Ren could swear it was smiling.
A low growl tore itself from his throat. Ren stood and stripped from his overcoat, never breaking eye contact, before flashing back into the fight with aura-assisted speed. Nora followed with a loud 'whoop' of exhilaration.
What a day.
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Jaune awoke in a world of black ichor.
It surrounded his vision and completely overwhelmed his senses. The viscous substance invaded his body and clogged his airways as the young knight thrashed in a desperate attempt for air. Mercifully, his hand broke through the surface meeting stagnant air that was neither cold nor warm. Like a draining pool, the tide of ichor reduced at a constant rate, leaving Jaune to collapse to the floor and wretch his guts out.
It tasted like copper and rotten eggs.
"Ahh… ahh… Fuckn'… wow. Where am I?" Pushing himself to his knees and observed the space he found himself in. Or the lack thereof.
It was a void. An endless expanse of nothing but inky black. The only defined object he could see was his own body. Even the floor, which felt like a bed of damp cork on his knees, was the same shade of impenetrable black.
"O-kay then." Jaune said, craning his neck to look behind him only to find more of the same. Spatial awareness and depth perception was definitely gonna be an issue.
Patting himself down, a wave of muted agony scythed through the right side of his body. It was as if his very blood was boiling inside the veins. Frantically, Jaune shrugged off his steel grey overcoat only to see its back absolutely soaked in purple-tinged blood. A puncture hole near where his wing and shoulder met was sodden with sickly magenta puss.
A wave of nausea rolled over Jaune as another stab of pain traveled down his muscles.
"Wonderful…Ah. That's… Really good. Crocea?"
Silence. Nothing but his own labored breaths.
"… Just-. Just dandy." Gritting his teeth through the rolling waves of nausea, dizziness, and pain, Jaune tore up his coat and fashioned a makeshift sling for his right arm. While not perfect, it took some amount of pressure off of his back.
Alright, Jauney. How're you gonna get out of this one?
Placing his hand on his knee and assuming the meditative stance that Ren taught him oh so long ago, he schooled his breathing and put the all-consuming pain out of his mind. A golden sheen overtook his skin, radiating in the void like crackling firelight.
Peering out, his surroundings hadn't changed. A new calmness overtook his mind, however, allowing him to form coherent thoughts beyond 'motherfucker that hurts' and 'what the shit is happening.' It also meant that he felt the small twinge at the back of his skull that maybe he'd been here before.
He caught a glimpse of the ichor staining the front of his coat and the memories bubbled through the cracks of his mental barriers.
Grimm ichor leaked through clenched teeth, talons of something ancient and horrible raking across his brain. He didn't have long before it would take control.
"Will it hurt?
"More than you can comprehend."
Jaune clenched his jaw and shook his head. Now wasn't the time. Yet still, the memory came.
"Crocea?"
"Hmm?"
"… Makes sure he's a person she'd be proud of. Make him a hero."
"I… I will try."
Crocea's powerful voice rattle through his skull, sorrow etched into every syllable. A deep ache pulsed through his head as the distant rasping of steel became audible, and yet, he could still see no one else in the void.
Like the kiss of a phantom, a cold sensation plunged itself through the left side of his chest, straight through his heart. He blinked, and the kind blue eyes of Crocea looked down on him with sadness.
He blinked once more, and she was gone.
Jaune took one deep, shuddering breath to ground himself. That was when he died. Or was it him? Could he claim to be the original Jaune if half of him was ripped out and replaced by someone else? Either way, the only thing it told him was that this void was his mind…
Wait.
The last time he was here, Cinder had made him Arc barbeque.
Jaune held his breath, but the low burning of asphyxiation never came.
Pressing a hand to his neck, he felt nothing. Only the clammy skin of his fingers. He moved to the other side of his neck. Still nothing. Closing his eyes, he tried to count his heartbeats through the connection his aura had with his body, and still: nothing.
Jaune did not have a heartbeat.
Jaune was not alive.
Jaune had died.
Again.
.
.
.
"… huh."
He expected some rush of intense panic, a feeling of existential dread that maybe this void was some sort of purgatory where his soul would be held for eternity. Doomed to wander its endless expanse for being a bad leader and friend to his peers. But nothing came.
The last time he had gotten out of this situation, Crocea had killed him and stitched herself with his aura. Jaune didn't think suicide would be as productive in this situation given there was no one to save him this time, and he didn't have his sword.
A thought crept into his mind. A hypothetical technique developed in Atlas some years ago he remembered Blake telling him about. It was technically possible to revive someone shortly after death via the forced restarting of their aura. In the same way in which a defibrillator worked to deliver an electronic shock to the heart, a short, finely controlled burst of aura transferred into an individual could have the same effect.
The technique was ultimately unsuccessful in all of its trials. All potential candidates had nowhere near enough aura control and so dispersed the transfusion over too wide of an area, dissipating its potency. Just maybe, however, given the nature of his semblance, it could work.
Closing his eyes, he moved his aura around all corners of his body. He noticed a distinct lethargy in the way it responded to his internal commands. It felt less solid, like it was leaking through the cracks of his mental net. He should probably hurry up.
Unbuttoning his sodden navy dress shirt, Jaune removed it and his makeshift sling with a restrained hiss, revealing his bare torso underneath. Pockmarked in old scar tissue and made up of hard, functional muscle, the same clamminess had begun to overtake it as the color slowly drained away.
"Okay. Okay. I got this. Just self-administering an incredibly technical medical procedure that could leave me braindead, no biggie."
Pooling all of the aura he could wrangle into the palms of his hands, they became beacons of condensed golden light. After rubbing them together – That's what doctors do, right? – he held them a few inches above his chest and took a deep breath. Not that it really did anything.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
"Clear!"
His senses were briefly submerged in something akin to freezing water as his body took an involuntary gasp of breath. Brilliant ley lines of vibrant colors flashed across his vision, going every which way like a spider web. The void quickly flooded back in.
Jaune let out a whoop of excitement. He was on the right track at least.
He pulsed again and the same sensation of being waterboarded in Atlas slammed into him. Some of the lines were more defined than others, like thick bands of colored energy. They seemed to disperse from around him every which way along with the weaker strings, moving and twisting with life and motion.
He came down.
Come on, one more time.
Rubbing his hands together again – cause why not – Jaune pushed every last drop of gold energy he had into his hands and plunged it into his chest.
This time it felt like breaking through the surface of a freezing lake and into the warm embrace of a Vacuoan Fall. His vision refocused into a world of brilliant colors. All around him blues, greens, reds, yellows, and so many more shot off in every direction, tied to his circle of brilliant gold. Jaune could make out, at varying distances, the threads tying into spheres of condensed energy.
Twin spheres of pink, one darker and the other lighter, danced around each other in the distance. Across the sky, one of deep crimson flashed back and forth, almost too fast to perceive, a short distance away light blue shone almost as bright as his own, completely stationary.
Dizziness overtook Jaune. Black spots forced themselves into the edges of his vision as something in his brain rejected what he was seeing. He fell backward, remaining conscious just long enough to see the sphere of purple hovering over him.
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Jaune fell back to the real world like a meteor.
The sudden restarting of all of his bodily functions had every muscle in his body spasming in sensory overload.
"Jaune! Oum- calm down!" Hands came to his shoulders and grounded him.
His blue eyes rapidly took in his surroundings. Weiss' Arma Gigas' stood tall around him, their great swords a blur of motion. Ravenclaws, tens, maybe hundreds of them, swarmed the insides of their hangar as the assembled Huntsman engaged them in unarmed combat and- holyshitisthataMaven!?
Worried amber eyes and porcelain skin filled his vision. Blake's eyebrows were drawn in intense confusion as her hands pressed against his neck. Were those… tears?
"Blake…?"
"H-how did-? What…" Pulling him forward she checked where Jaune assumed his wound would be before snapping away and starting at him like, well, like a dead man that just crawled from his grave.
Ah shit.
"Y-You died."
"Surprise?"
Blake's mouth opened and closed, attempting to find some kind of response to the emotional whiplash of having her friend die and then wake up like it was nothing.
"Wouldn't be the first time he's done something impossible. Get off your ass and fix this, Arc." Weiss grit out from next to them.
Jaune scoffed and rolled his eyes, pulling himself into a crouch. His back muscles ached in protest but they would have to deal. "Thanks Weiss cream, I feel so loved." He reached for his sword but found only an empty scabbard. "Where's Crocea?"
"Ruby commandeered it-"
"I'm sorry, are we just gonna ignore he was dead twenty seconds ago!? Dead, gone, heart stopped, nothing, literally nothing!" Blake yelled.
Jaune shrugged and Weiss rolled her eyes. Blake could only blink with intense exasperation.
"We- nhg – don't have time right now. I can't keep this up much longer so -gah- either you boost me or find some way to deal with that Grimm-shaped incarnation of sadism."
Casting his eyes upward he was slightly unnerved to find all six of its red eyes fixated on him.
Jaune placed a hand on Weiss shoulder and equalized the drain her semblance was having on her. Funnily enough, dying? Not that aura intensive.
The former heiress sighed in deep relief.
"Thank the gods. I thought I was done for."
"Why aren't we just leaving out of the front?"
"The Maven kills anyone who tries. That's about the only time it moves. Well, then and whenever Ruby tries to get close."
To punctuate Weiss' point a red blur of Rose petals shot forwards but was rebuffed with a swipe of the Maven's razor-sharp wings. Its gaze never left Jaune.
Huh…
Severing his connection with Weiss- "Hey, what the-gah!" -he walked to the edge of the perimeter, holding eye contact with the oversized turkey. Turning on his heel, he walked the diameter to the other side. All six eyes tracked him the entire way. In fact, it tilted it's head slightly as if posing a silent question to him. Either this Grimm was fucking ancient…
… Or it was something far larger than it appeared.
Returning to Weiss and the still near-catatonic Blake – of whom was mumbling to herself about reality bending bullshit, which, first of all: mood – he restored his connection with the incensed albino.
"What the actual fuck, Arc!? A little warning would be preferable before you decide to go free willy and leave me holding a bag of mental rocks!"
"Yeah, sorry, I've got a plan."
He weaved aura into his vocal cords, melding the channel so that his voice would be amplified. It was a neat trick taught to him by a Huntsman from Vacuo. Came in handy more than you'd think.
"Ruby!" His voice boomed through the hangar causing Weiss to hold her ears and Blake to snap out of her trance.
"Shit, how long-"
"Jaune! You're awake! Are you okay!?" Ruby appeared in a tempest of rose pedals, nearly bowling over Blake in the process. Crocea Mors was clutched in her hands and stained in Grimm ichor.
"Hey, Rubes. Just needed a nap, thanks for keeping her safe for me." Jaune said, taking his sword from her hands.
"You died."
Punctual as always.
Later.
"A-are you alright, that was a super big hit. If you need some more rest, I can handle- where are you going? Jaune?"
Brushing past the reaper he stepped past the threshold of the Gigas and into the chaos. Almost immediately four Ravenclaws threw themselves at them. Directing his aura to the edge of Crocea, he lashed out in a single clean swipe. An arc of aura carried out an extra ten feet, bisecting all four of the Grimm.
Meeting the Maven's curious gaze, he leveled Crocea at it.
"Salem!"
The battlefield entered an eerie quiet almost instantly. Only the sounds of combat wafting in through the open breach of the hangar were heard. Even the Ravenclaws paused to look at the Arc.
"Are you so decrepit a coward that you have pawns do your bidding, even now!? Come down here and finish what you failed to do at Culver's Gate! Man to beast, no interference!"
The Arma Gigas dissipated as a stunned silence settled among those who witnessed his words. The Ravenclaws stood stock still.
The Maven made a low terrible sound, like the distorted warble of a hundred crows, in some vague approximation of a chuckle.
Jaune held its gaze unflinchingly.
Finally, the Ravenclaws, as one robotic entity, took flight and swept out of the hole in the hangar ceiling. A shared breath between all who were present was expelled as the Maven gave a single nod to the Arc.
Holding his sword in position, Jaune turned to look back at Ruby as Ren and Nora jogged up beside them.
Before the three could open their mouths, Jaune held up a hand.
"Look, I know this is insane but you guys are spent. I can take this, seriously."
"Jaune, you know I'm all for some high-octane leg-breaking, but this is a little much. Even for you." Nora said.
"He is right about the spent part." Ren said, hands braced against his knees and face red with exertion. "Half of our auras are in the low yellows, I'm not sure we could've lasted against the Ravenclaws let alone a Maven."
"I'm still fresh, I can stay." Ruby piped up.
Jaune shook his head. "No, they need you to move wounded. We don't know what this poison is yet so the sooner they get antivenom the better. Besides, I don't want this thing going into a rampage if I break the terms of the agreement."
"But Jaun-"
"Ruby," Jaune held her gaze, mustering as much intensity as he could. "I've got this. Arcs promise."
She huffed, cheeks puffing. "Fine. If you die I'll never forgive you."
"Yeah! I'll find your ghost and punch it back into your body!" Nora proclaimed.
Jaune gave them a lopsided smile and shooed them away. Ren lingered behind with a stern look on his face.
Pearlescent white armor sprouted around the hand that held Crocea Mors. It enveloped his body and caused his blue eyes to go glow an electric cerulean.
"I'm not dying today, Ren."
Satisfied, he nodded and moved off to aid in the evacuation.
Turning back to the Maven, a gilded helmet formed over Jaune's face, sparks of golden energy bolting off of the ethereal metal plate.
"Alright you oversized chicken, show me what you've got."
As the last of the Huntsmen left the hangar, the Maven raised itself to its full height of twenty-five feet. Its wings, which up until this point had been drawn around it like a cloak, unfurled to its colossal wingspan. Rows and rows of rigid feathers gleamed in the morning sun, each promising its own flavor of misery.
The body beneath it was a form so lithe that it seemed its long-spindly appendages could snap with even the slightest of force. Three long boney fingers that tapered into vicious points adorned each hand with four-toed feet and hindlimbs designed for bursts of explosive agility. An exposed ribcage sat over orange sacks of a pulsing orange substance that roiled with each of its seething breaths.
A collar of white fur hid its neck from view, upon it sitting its bird-like head. A bone faceplate with room for six vertical eyes, three on each side, swept back into three spikes of orange-tipped bone. Its jet-black beak curved forward into a hooked point, mimicking the profile of a scythe's blade.
Crocea Mors wavered for just a second.
"Fuck."
In a blink, the Maven shot towards him at a speed that should be impossible for such an oblong form.
Jaune really wondered if the gods just hated him
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Originally, this was going to go through the entire Maven fight and include two more scenes afterward exploring the damage Salem's attack had on the invasion force. In favor of sticking to the deadline, however, I'm choosing to end this here.
I want to take my time with the Maven fight. The semblance I've picked out for Jaune has a lot of versatility and I really want to reflect that in the way he fights. I think I'm liable to fall into the swing, swing, hop, hop pattern if I try and push through it too quickly.
Anyway, I HELD A DEADLINE BITCHES. That's fucking character development right there, baby. Holy shit is a weekly release schedule intense for a habitual procrastinator but I fuckn did it! I still really need to figure out a workflow that isn't writing a chapter the day I'm supposed to post it, but that's for future Cookies.
Thanks for reading, I really super appreciate you, see you next time.
Next Chapter (definitely): February 13th