A White Fang attack on Beacon was exactly the type of situation Carmine had been training his entire life to deal with, Grimm and hacked mechs notwithstanding. As his father would say: "Prepare for anything." Despite that, he didn't feel prepared for any of it. He held no strong attachment to anyone or anything at Beacon, so seeing it burn only provoked as much anger as seeing the aftermath of any one of their dozens of previous attacks across Remnant. Over the years, he'd grown accustomed to the anger, a constant emotional response he could expect.
Then Aspen led them to that woman and… things changed.
Carmine looked ahead to where Aspen ran with the body, supposedly leading them to the civilian evacuation point. He'd never say it to anyone, but the woman had been familiar to him. While he had never seen her before that he could remember, she had borne some resemblance to someone he knew once, someone he'd been close to. Had it been anyone else—even his parents—he wouldn't have had any reaction, but his sister was another matter. Seeing her in that woman had rattled him, leaving him feeling more vulnerable than he had in recent memory.
That was to say nothing of his dilemma with Aspen. He knew in his heart that, somehow, she was Grimm. Compared to the White Fang, Grimm were easy. They didn't hide among the general population, waiting for the opportune moment to cause as much devastation as possible. The idea that there were Grimm out there that could do just that—because he doubted she could be the only one—alarmed him. He didn't know what Aspen's true motivations were, but she did well to make it seem as though she was actually interested in stopping this attack and protecting people. And wasn't that just—
Carmine's foot caught on something mid-stride and he slammed face-first into the ground. With a frustrated groan, he pushed himself up on his hands and knees as he regained his bearings. Looking back, he saw that he had tripped over the body of a dead mech, partially concealed in a patch of grass. He cursed to himself. Of all the stupid things to do, I have to trip? As he stood up, however, he realized that it was much worse. Pain shot up his right leg as he put weight down on that foot, eliciting an involuntary hiss. Gods dammit!
Evidently, both Ilex and Aspen had noticed, at least partially, what had happened and had paused to look back at him. With a scowl, he waved them off. "What? I'll be fine. Just keep going." Ilex shrugged and made to just that, but Aspen continued to stare him downat him. After a moment, though, she too turned away without comment.
Carmine let out another string of silent curses. It might've only been a minor sprain—easily manageable—but he could just imagine the dressing down his father would give him if he ever found out how he'd humiliated himself. "You are supposed to be a hunter! A hunter is aware of their surroundings at all times! A hunter doesn't trip over their own damned feet!" The teen spat as he checked his gear to make sure nothing had been damaged in the fall. Aspen had put them down in a relatively secluded area from the rest of the fighting, but "relatively" was all it would take for him to be attacked and never seen again if he wasn't prepared. Everything seemed to be intact as he went through the full inventory but, as he pulled out his goggles, he saw that both lenses were cracked to the point where they would be useless. Of frikkin' course. Jamming the goggles back into their pouch, he pulled his weapon out and quickly tapped out an instruction into one of the rods. The rest shifted around his hand, taking the form of a staff. While he could have easily ignored the pain in his ankle and returned to running, that would only make the damage worse. Better to take at least some of the weight off and give his Aura a chance to heal it.
Before he could begin to limp after his team, however, Carmine picked up an animalistic grunting in the darkness to his left. Cautiously, he readied his staff in a combat stance. He couldn't see anything yet but, by the sounds of it, he was dealing with two, maybe three, Boarbatusks. He cursed quietly. A few Boarbatusks wouldn't normally have posed much of a threat to him but, without his goggles, he was at a serious disadvantage in the darkness. He steadied his breathing, listening intently for the inevitable attack.
All at once, the shuffling and grunting stopped. An angry snarl was the only sound Carmine heard before one of the Boarbatusks came charging out of the shadows. He quickly stepped to the side to avoid the straight-line attack, striking the Grimm in the head as it passed. It squealed in annoyance but, through the noise, Carmine heard its companions rolling toward him. On instinct, he threw himself forward, dodging one but finding himself in the path of the second. He managed to maneuver his staff in front of him to take the blow, but there was no time to properly brace himself and he was knocked back.
Carmine tumbled through the dirt, only just managing to right himself before he came to a stop. Using his staff to help lift himself back into a standing position, he eyed the three Boarbatusks before him. They had arranged themselves radially around him; the one he'd dodged to his left, the one who'd hit him in front of him, and the one he'd struck between them. They eyed him with malice, hooves stamping angrily in the dirt.
Not feeling like standing around and letting them attack at their leisure, Carmine rushed the Boarbatusk in front of him. It took several steps forward to meet him, but backed off when Carmine jabbed it in the face with his staff. He adjusted his grip on the weapon as the other two charged him, catching the middle Grimm's tusk and redirecting it into its companion. With the threat behind him dealt with for the moment, Carmine once again thrust his staff toward the Boarbatusk in front. This time, however, he struck the ground just short of the creature's snout, an intentional move that allowed him to flip the beast up into the air the moment it stepped forward. It squealed as it left the ground, but the sound was cut off by a swift jab to its throat from the staff. Carmine didn't bother to watch as the beast tumbled across the ground, wheezing through its crushed trachea as it slowly asphyxiated. There were still two others to worry about.
Said Boarbatusks had managed to right themselves and were angrier than before. With a snarl, one of them charged straight for him again. Carmine took a short running start and, being sure to push off on his uninjured foot, leapt up. Rather than clear the Grimm, however, he used it as a stepping off point, using the counter momentum to flip in mid-air. With the extra force, he brought his staff down on the other Boarbatusk's skull plate. The bone fractured under the force and the beast screamed and thrashed its head, clipping Carmine before he could land. He took the hit in stride, though, falling into a roll that let him immediately rise back to his feet.
The Boarbatusk turned around to face him, fury in its eyes and smoke seeping out from the cracks its face plate. Carmine assessed his options. Vulnerable to piercing. Switching weapons leaves me open. Knife's too wide, not long enough to reach the brain. His hand dipped to his side, drawing a crossbow bolt from its quiver and gripping it like a dagger. The Grimm charged forward with a squealing roar, intent on eviscerating the human in revenge. One-handed, Carmine swung his staff as he stepped aside to stop the beast from turning its head and goring him. The weapon clattered uselessly against the hard tusks, but it did its job and forced the Grimm to slow down. Reaching around the tusks, Carmine stabbed the bolt into the Boarbatusk's forehead, eliciting a scream that lingered even after he slammed the shaft home with his staff. After a few moments, however, the beast collapsed and began to evaporate. One more.
On cue, the third Boarbatusk came spinning out of the darkness. Carmine thrust his staff toward it, halting its charge at the cost of compromising his grip on the weapon. Whether the Grimm recognized this or not, it capitalized on the situation, locking the staff between its tusks and pulling it from his hands. Unfortunately for the Boarbatusk, the weapon was so thoroughly entangled that it couldn't throw it away. Not missing the opportunity, Carmine regained his hold on the staff and, after a brief wrestling match, used its leverage to flip the Grimm onto it's back. As it squealed and struggled to right itself, Carmine swiftly drew his knife and plunged it into the beast's throat. With a whimper, its writhing ceased and its body began to smoke.
Sighing in irritation, Carmine resheathed his blade and unstuck his staff from the corpse's tusks. That fight had been loud and messy, and would almost certainly attract more Grimm. When they came, he wanted something with a little more stopping power than a staff. A few taps on the shaft caused one of the ends to shift, reorienting to form the head of a war hammer. It had the same amount of mass, of course, but the shape would concentrate the force more effectively. Allowing that end to fall to the ground, he leaned on the haft for support as he walked. It would be a simple matter to ready himself if need be.
"Human!"
Oh, for the love of…
(- -)
Beacon burned gloriously in Cinder's eyes. From where she stood atop one of the academic buildings, she could see all the little children running about, attempting to save their precious school. It was a foolish notion. Try as they might, there would be no stopping what was coming. She smiled to herself. "Beautiful."
Beside her, Emerald shared the opposite sentiment. "It's almost sad."
Cinder resisted the urge to laugh. The thief may have felt some sympathy for the students, but they both knew where her loyalties lay. "It's horrendous," she agreed, tilting her head toward Mercury on her other side. "Focus on the Atlesian Knights."
Unlike Emerald, Mercury took no small pleasure in the events below. "Oh, I'm getting it all," he said, focusing his scroll on a group of soldiers exchanging fire with their own mechs.
"Good. Continue the broadcast until the end." It wouldn't be long. Grimm would be crawling all over the city by now, and with Atlas's toy soldiers turned against them, whatever meager defenses Vale had remaining would be unable to quell the mass panic that only drew more Grimm to them. That vicious irony would be their undoing, and all she had to do… was wait.
…
…
This… This wasn't right. Cinder walked to the edge of the rooftop. In the distance, she could make out the ruins of Mountain Glenn, lit by the low-hanging moon. It should have awoken by now. Had Salem been wrong? Cinder knew better than to question her mistress, so if something had gone wrong, it had been with her own plan. Turning around, she pulled Mercury's scroll from his hands. She ignored his confused protest, cycling through the various broadcasts around the city. Rather than Grimm rampaging through the streets, however, she saw only a few scattered groups, all of which were being dealt with effectively by the city's defenders. With so few Grimm, even the Atlesian Knights weren't presenting much of a threat.
This doesn't make sense. There should have been hundreds of Grimm in the surrounding areas, far more than were currently attacking. It was almost as if they were ignoring the negativity across Beacon and Vale entirely. The rephaim. Salem had said they were the ancestors of the Grimm. Perhaps they possessed some means of controlling them, then? Her information on their species was limited but, if they were as similar to the beasts as they seemed, it was possible they could influence them in a similar manner to Alphas and Majors. Deluded as Aspen was about becoming a Huntress, it was almost certain that Deirean was the one responsible.
The scroll cracked in Cinder's fist, the metal warped by heat. She should have finished him off when she had the chance. Casting the ruined device aside, the woman turned her gaze back to the school to see Ozpin at the base of the tower. She narrowed her eyes as the implications of his presence became clear. "Go," she said, dismissing Emerald and Mercury. "Your work here is done. I'll find you when I'm finished." The two nodded obediently and left.
She would claim the power that was rightfully hers, and then she would use it to destroy the rephaim.
(- -)
Grimm. That was something Aspen could understand. They were driven by instinct, trying to kill something that was causing them pain. She was familiar with that pain and could sympathize with that desire, but she had made the decision to bear that pain and protect Mankind instead of harm them, even if that meant killing the Grimm. They may have been her kind once, but Deirean had made it clear that they were no longer the same. Even the "mechs," as Ilex had called them, she could rationalize as an enemy. They were machines, no sentient will of their own. They had been turned against their creators with no choice in the matter, and there was nothing to regret in destroying them. Faunus and humans fighting each other, however, she didn't know how to handle.
She'd followed the large cluster of auras, expecting to find a place she could take the dead woman's body to be taken care of but, as they'd gotten closer, they'd found a group of soldiers pinned down by over a dozen faunus. She felt anger and rage from the latter group manifesting itself in cruel satisfaction as they fired on the men and women hiding behind whatever meager cover they could find. They wore a common white-and-black uniform marked with a red wolf's head and claw marks, as well as facemasks that seemed designed to evoke a Grimm of some kind, judging by the red stripes over the eye slits.
How was she supposed to handle this? Ozpin had said that Huntresses were supposed to protect people, but these were people attacking other people and she didn't even know why. They were clearly motivated by anger, but she didn't know the reasons behind that anger.
Before Aspen could fully process the situation, one of the masked faunus turned and pointed at her. "Kill the humans and the traitors!" On her order, several of the other faunus drew swords and axes and charged her, Rhys, and Ilex.
Traitors? Not having time to try to parse out what the woman had meant, Aspen focused her attention on the nearest opponents. A pair of men wielding swords had chosen her to attack and, looking down at the woman in her arms, she could understand why. Carrying the body prevented her from using her own sword and made her vulnerable, so she dropped it. Surprise skittered across her skin like a spider as one of the faunus hesitated, giving her an opening to kick him in the chest as she blocked the other's sword with her own. Pushing the blade away, the girl reached up to grab the man by the back of the head and brought it crashing down into her knee. The man's entire body flashed a dull blue before the mask cracked and he slumped to the ground. Aspen looked down at the man in confusion, then to the one she had kicked. Neither moved.
Oh.
These white-clothed faunus weren't like Laurel or Oliver or even the Grimm. Attacks she had intended to stun had instead knocked them unconscious, judging by their feeble auras. They were weak, weaker than soldiers should be. What kind of force were they supposed to be?
Kill them. They don't deserve to live.
Aspen pushed her internal voice aside to reassess the situation. Ilex and Rhys had moved away from her and had also been engaged by the militant faunus. There was an unusual aggression in Rhys's aura accompanying his typical glee as he launched himself at three opponents at once. Like her, he seemed to understand their relative strength and was fighting with his bare hands, even using his tail as a blunt weapon. Ilex's aura, on the other hand, had that same dull fear she'd felt all night as he weaved around a woman's wild axe swings, but it was also tinged with the same frustrations Rhys had, directed at the other faunus.
Four more auras moved her way and Aspen turned to face them. Two men and a woman carrying swords, staggered so that they wouldn't reach her at the same time, covered by a third man with a gun who hung back. Keeping her reverse grip on her sword, Aspen charged forward to meet the soldiers. The first one swung at her in a downward arc aimed where her neck met her shoulder. She moved faster than him, though, and was inside his guard before the blade even came close to touching her. With her free hand latching onto his wrist, she dipped down and flipped him over her opposite shoulder. He landed face-first with a grunt, but a swift blow to the back of the head from the hilt of her sword silenced him in a flash of green.
The woman was the next to reach her. Yelling, she made to stab the kneeling girl in the chest. Aspen quickly rose to her feet and deflected the blade with her own. A hard strike to the woman's outstretched wrist knocked the sword from her hand, and a roundhouse kick to the head sent her to the ground with a pop of yellow.
The man with the gun fired a burst at Aspen, but she was already moving as he pulled the trigger. Dipping under the third swordsman's attack, she grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up. She felt a brief stab of fear from his aura before she slammed him into the stone walkway. His body sparked a pale red and then stilled as he fell unconscious. Without pause, she pressed on toward the final man. Fear spiked off of him as he began to fire wildly at her, and a bullet struck her in the shoulder. Aspen's sword flashed out and the man's gun fell to the ground in two pieces. He stumbled backward, but Aspen caught him by the collar of his hooded shirt. Even through his mask, she could see the terror on his face.
Slit his throat.
Growling, Aspen slammed her head into his. The mask cracked and his body slackened as he fell into unconsciousness. Letting him fall to the group in a heap, Aspen looked around again. Between Rhys, Ilex, and the human soldiers, the rest of the hostile faunus had been dealt with. It took some focus, but she could tell that they were all still alive as well, though most were unconscious. With no other targets to worry about, she reached up to her shoulder to pull out the bullet that had hit her. The physical pain was a welcome change from the throb in her head and intangible pain of auras, though once the bullet was extracted, she could feel the wound begin to seal itself. Satisfied that she was otherwise uninjured, she returned to the dead woman and lifted her up again.
As Aspen turned back toward the soldiers, she noticed that most of them were looking at her with a mixture of discomfort and suspicion. Even as she walked into their midst, they merely stared at her. She cocked her head in confusion. "Is this where the evacuation is?" she asked no one in particular. Some of the soldiers jumped when she spoke, nervously gripping their guns tighter. Aspen frowned. What was going on?
One of the men stepped closer to her. "Evac is further north," he said, pointing further in the direction she, Rhys, and Ilex had been travelling. "The woman…" There was trepidation in his voice, and she could feel his nervousness. "Is she injured?"
"She is dead."
The man swallowed and nodded. "I see. Well, we'll take her from here. You just… keep doing what you're doing." He waved his arm toward two of the other soldiers in a beckoning manner. Their hesitation was like thorns against Aspen's skin, but she passed the woman off to them when they did come over.
"Wait." The men paused, as did Aspen. Death was… not an event to be celebrated among her kind, particularly in combat. She didn't know what human customs for the dead were, but somewhere in her mind she knew that the rephaim had one. Words, reserved for the very old, came unbidden to her tongue as she laid a hand on the woman's forehead. "Dach son alek veross ch'hadi son."
A ripple of fear moved through the three men, and she withdrew in confusion. "Why are you afraid of me?" she asked, causing all three to stiffen. Had they known what she was, she could understand their fear, but she could not think of what else she might've done to warrant it. Had she somehow given herself away with her words? It seemed unlikely. They stood there for several seconds, and Aspen thought for a moment that the one she'd been speaking to was about to answer. Instead, he excused himself and the others and walked away, leaving her to stand alone with her teammates.
A cold hand settled on her arm, but when she turned her head to look, it quickly pulled away. "I'm…" Ilex started, eyes flicking back the way they had come. He was nervous. "I'm going to go back and make sure Carmine's alright." He smiled at her, but Aspen could sense his fear and false bravado clearly. "If there's more of these guys out there, he's probably going to need help, even if he doesn't want it."
Once again, Aspen felt something under his counterfeit emotions. It wasn't warm like before, but it was genuine. Contrary to the way he spoke and acted in regards to his partner, Ilex was actually worried that Carmine might be in danger. It was an odd moment, feeling something from his aura that wasn't cold, and it puzzled her.
Ilex scratched his ear nervously, apparently uncomfortable with the way she was staring at him. "So, uh, are you okay with that?"
Crush his skull.
"As you say," Aspen said with a nod. While there was some relief in Ilex's aura, it was dominated by fear as he ran off into the dark. Refocusing her mind to her surroundings, Aspen tapped Rhys on the shoulder to get his attention. |Who are these people?| she asked, gesturing toward the white-clad faunus being rounded up by the soldiers.
|White Fang.| Rhys answered before looking at her with confusion.|Do you not know them?| Aspen shook her head, and the boy scowled. |Terrorists. Trying to make humans like faunus by shooting them and blowing them up. Doesn't work too well.|
Aspen looked down at one of the nearby White Fang members. Terrorist… The concept didn't completely translate in her mind, but she could make assumptions, and they weren't good. She scowled at the unconscious man. |They are weak.|
Rhys laughed at her statement, but his face turned more serious than she was accustomed to seeing. |These are the people they just give guns and swords to. No training, just send them in to die or get captured. There are more dangerous ones, ones that are a lot stronger.|
Aspen nodded slowly. If what Rhys was telling her was true, then she was beginning to understand the White Fang's motivations, even if they did not make sense to her. While she didn't think that Rhys would have all the answers she wanted, something did come to mind that took precedence. |That woman called you and Ilex traitors.| That was the only possible meaning Aspen could think of for her statement, presuming she and the dead woman were the "humans."|Why would she do that?|
The boy looked up at her in confusion for a moment, then scoffed. |White Fang think that any faunus that help humans are traitors.| He made a grimacing face. |Guilty by association. No offence.| Aspen kept her hands still, finding the answer acceptable. When he saw she had nothing else to say, Rhys asked, |Now what?|
|We keep fighting.|
The boy laughed and followed her as she ran out toward another cluster of auras.
Well, this was really something to write. I mentioned it a bit last chapter that I'm essentially going through this arc by the seat of my pants, and this chapter's no different. I have places I want to get to and things I want to accomplish, but I didn't exactly think about how I wanted to get there beforehand. Like, my plan for this chapter was "Carmine scene, Cinder scene, Aspen scene." That's about it. Somehow I got the above.
…
Talking about my struggles with writing has become a bit of a thing with me, hasn't it? Okay, I'm going to try to get away from that from here on because otherwise I'm going to be saying the same thing every chapter.
On the actual contents of this chapter, there are a lot of moving parts in different places, and I want to give them all their due attention. Here we have Carmine having some layers peeled off and Ilex heading toward an unpleasant situation with him, Cinder continuing with her plans despite the dragon failing to arrive, and Aspen struggling with so, so much, not least of which is her own murderous thoughts. We'll see where all this leads in future chapters.
For now, I shall simply bid you au revoir!
