'Where am I?'
Explosions colored Yang's dreams, roars of Grimm, and flashes of fierce amber eyes that filled her with anger, intermixed with horrified ones that filled her with sadness.
'I… I fell.'
She clenched, trying to drown out the screams and return to peaceful slumber.
'Am I dead?'
But her struggle was a futile one, her mind seemingly determined to rush towards consciousness at breakneck speed, reliving the final battle at Ambrosius's central location over and over again as it did so.
'I must be.'
After what felt like an eternity she stopped resisting, helpless as the cruel and hateful images flashed before her eyes. At least when she woke, the nightmare would end, even if she dreaded what awaited her in death.
'I'm sorry girls, I wasn't strong enough.'
As consciousness came ever closer she braced, preparing for the agony she was sure wakefulness would bring. Except…
'Are the roars getting louder?'
"YANG!"
The side of her face exploded with a sharp pain and her eyes snapped open. Tearful amber eyes, framed by raven hair and completed by a familiar set of cat ears bored into hers with terrified panic. Seeing her awake, the other girl pulled her close and tight, sobbing all the while.
Shakenly, Yang reached up, hugging her back with what little strength she felt she had.
"I'm here Blake, I'm here."
Blake just clutched her closer, her wails muffled by Yang's hair.
For several minutes the two stayed like this, Blake's sobs slowly subsiding to weeping, and then to wimpers. Yang merely held her tight, oblivious and utterly uncaring for the world around her. After all, either she and Blake were dead and this was the afterlife, or they weren't dead, and she had another chance.
And right now? Her partner needed comfort. As far as Yang was concerned, the world could go hang itself.
Slowly Blake's whimpers grew silent and her shaking diminished. Raising a tear-streaked face to Yang's she tried to speak, only for no noise to come out.
"Breathe Blake, breathe," Yang admonished.
Gulping Blake tried again, barely managing to utter her question.
"How?"
Yang raised a cheeky eyebrow, "I was kinda hoping you would tell me. All I remember is falling."
Blake's gaze fell to the floor.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
The blonde's hands immediately found hers, holding them together.
"You have nothing to be sorry about. Nothing. You understand?"
"No...I, "She looked back up at Yang, eyes once again tearful, "Yang...I fell too, and I was with Ruby, and she's not here and, and, oh gods I'm sorry."
Yang leaned back, eyes shocked as she listened to Blake's grief-stricken babbling. For a moment she was silent, more than a bit disturbed, her fist clenching open and closed as she processed the likely fate of her sister.
"No…" she whispered, before her eyes hardened and she grabbed onto Blake with an iron grip, stopping the other girl's lamentations, "No. If we survived then she did too, and we'll find her. You hear me Blake? We will find her."
Her gaze softened and she pulled Blake close, hugging her again, "And never, ever blame yourself for something like this again. This, none of this was in any way your fault. Got it? None of it."
"But-"
"No buts. It's not your fault," Yang leaned back, looking her in the eyes, "Promise me you won't blame yourself."
Blake blinked away her tears, still hesitant, "I…"
"Please?"
She looked away, before giving a slight nod, "Ok. I promise."
Yang offered a small grin, before quickly standing up and extending a hand, "That's the Blake I know! Now then, let's get sorted! First order of business, where the hell are we?"
Blake gave a soft grin as she accepted the hand, swiftly being pulled upright, "I... have no idea. I woke up just a few minutes ago with you unconscious next to me." She frowned, "Now that I think about it, I noticed there were a lot of explosions in the background and I was going to investigate, but…"
"Then you saw me."
"Yeah…"
Yang chuckled, glancing around the room they found themselves in, arching an eyebrow at the sight of a living room of sorts. A few seconds of searching more revealed they were in an apartment, The living room they had woken up in seeming to double as a bedroom. In addition there was a small kitchenette, and an even smaller bathroom off the side. No one seemed to be home, and with not much else to see the two decided they weren't going to find any answers to their questions here. Headed over towards what looked to be the exit, Yang reached over and pushed the heavyset door, only for it not to budge. Frowning, she tried again, harder this time. Didn't even shift.
The two exchanged a concerned glance, Blake moving to help. Together, the two Huntresses heaved with all their might. A crack sounded out, along with grinding. Pausing, the two leaned back as the grinding petered out.
"Sounded like we did something", Yang remarked, "One more time?"
Blake nodded and the two braced against the door again.
"Three, two, on-wooooaaah!"
The door, and the ground beneath them gave out, plummeting down in a fury of crushing rock and shattered steel. Even as they gained a view of the abyss below, the two Huntresses were instinctively reacting. Yang reached behind and smashed her robotic arm into the wall, embedding it deep in the concrete-like rock. Her fall immediately lurched to a halt, leaving her hanging. Twisting, she attempted to swing her feet onto one of the many edges of what she now realized was the side of a skyscraper, only to feel something arrest her movement. Looking down she was met with a black ribbon wrapped half a dozen times around her waist, complete with Gambol Shroud embedded into the building as well. Twisting to look up at Blake, herself hanging thanks to Shroud's sheath, the blonde raised an incredulous eyebrow.
"Just making sure", Blake muttered sheepishly. With a yank she freed Yang, allowing the two to swing themselves onto a ledge. Safe for the moment, they paused to get their bearings and figure out where they found themselves.
When she did however, Yang's breath caught in her throat with a gasp. Beside her, Blake had much the same reaction.
They were in a colossal city, filled with dark oppressive-looking buildings so tall they stretched beyond view, dozens of kilometers into the sky. A massive concrete labyrinth that spanned as far as the eye could see, its air choked with smoke and smog from a million sources. Flames were everywhere, gaping wounds blasted into skyscrapers and roads cluttered with burning debris.
The city was brutal, domineering, utterly devastated, and far larger than any Yang and Blake had ever seen. And, Yang noted as explosions bloomed in the distance, it was under attack. Blake had noticed it too, her ears pointed in the direction of the conflict.
She was quiet for a moment, but eventually grimaced.
"It's hard to make out," she hesitantly revealed, "but I'm hearing a lot of roaring. Not Grimm, but definitely animalistic."
She paused, ears flicking, "A lot of machinery? I think? No… vehicles."
"Vehicles?"
"Definitely," Blake nodded, considering for a moment, "Lots of them too."
"Anything else?"
She continued to listen for a second, before shaking her head, "No. I'm not hearing anything besides that battle. This place is… its dead."
Yang drummed her hands on the nearby ledge, giving a nonchalant shrug.
"Head towards the fighting then?"
Blake glanced around, before offering a raised eyebrow, "Well, I don't think we're on Remnant anymore, and since we can't ask Ambrosius where he sent us…", she shrugged, "It's the only place we can head to if we want answers. Unless you feel like wandering through an empty city and hoping we get lucky?"
"Nah," Yang responded, "Battlefield it is."
She stood up, gesturing to a doorway further down, "After you."
"Let's try to stick to the high-rises, I doubt the roads are all that traversable."
Blake glanced down. What little of the roads that could be seen was completely choked with debris.
"Yeah, probably a smart idea."
It was only a few minutes before they came across the first bodies.
It was a family. A mother, father, and their young daughter, seeming gunned down as they fled.
"Who the hell shoots civilians in the back?" Yang growled, crouching before the little girl's corpse.
She barely looked five.
Blake sighed, shaking her head, "Monsters. Monsters and cowards."
"It's more than possible to be both," Yang muttered under her breath, a face that mirrored her own surfacing from memory.
Reaching, she closed the poor girl's eyes. Across from her, Blake did the same for the parents.
The two took a moment of silence for the family, before unspoken agreement had them continue on their way.
That family, and everyone else who died in this brutal city would be avenged.
Hours they walked.
In that timeframe the family of innocents proved only the tip of the iceberg. Dozens, hundreds, and then thousands of bodies were discovered by the two. Some looked like they had fought back. Military-looking soldiers lying side by side with armed civilians, overwhelmed in their defensive chokepoints. But most…
Most just looked like they had been slaughtered.
Huddled in panic rooms, barricaded apartments, closets, all broken into and its occupants butchered. Blood was everywhere. Covering the floors in a shallow pool, painted on the walls, hell, it was even dripping from the ceiling thanks to the undoubtedly thousands of bodies in the levels above.
The only silver lining was that the perpetrators were obvious.
Massive, greenskined brutish beasts covered in makeshift scrap armor and wielding crude weapons of questionable quality.
"Ruby would weep at the sight of these things," Yang remarked as the gun she had picked up quite literally fell apart in her hands, "Complete and utter trash".
"Maybe not," Blake replied, glancing over one of the greenskins, "Most of the civilian bodies were killed by gunshot, so some of them must work."
"I guess…" the blonde acknowledged doubtfully, "just seems weird."
Blake nodded in reply, still focused on the creature. With a grunt of effort, she shoved it over onto its back, revealing a beastial face complete with misshapen jutting jaw with oversized teeth. She wrinkled her nose, backing away in disgust. Behind her Yang let out a whistle.
"Now that, "she remarked, "is a face only a mother could love."
Blake waved the comment away, instead pointing at specific parts of the beast as Yang came up beside her.
"See the scars?"
"Hard to miss 'em," Yang admitted, arching an eyebrow, "Thing's covered in them." She paused, glancing around at the other bodies for a moment, "Actually, now that I'm looking, most of the others are too."
Blake nodded, "Yeah, I noticed that as well. A lot of wounds, but all healed. All except..." She crouched down, twisting the beast's head to the side, "This one. See the kill shot?"
Yang leaned in for a better view, before letting out a grim chuckle, "Right through the head huh?"
"Yep."
"So… lots of wounds -all healed, means high resilience. Probably high pain tolerance as well. Big enough to rip a man in half and looks strong enough to do it."
She nodded, "So in other words, go for the head, otherwise we'd probably just be pissing them off."
"Sounds about right. Shall we keep moving?"
Blake took one last glance at the misshapen beast before nodding.
"Lets."
They heard the battle before they saw it.
Shouts of defiance, screams of pain, and animalistic bellows of glee permeated the city, a resounding staccato of violence, deafened only by the thunderous roar of explosions. As savage and devastating as it sounded, it did little to prepare them for the sheer, brutal totality of the destruction that awaited them atop the high-rises.
"Holy shit."
The horde of beasts' size was beyond comprehension, a tide of green as far as the eye could see, smashing themselves against a wall of guns. Ramshackle tanks, rickety walkers, and a thousand other unidentifiable mockeries of machinery charged into a killing field of cataclysmic proportions, most only lasting seconds longer than the 'infantry' that surrounded them.
Facing them, the glaring light of energy weapons, thundering detonations of tank cannons, and the burning hammer of artillery broke the tide of green under a wave of violence. The sheer volume of fire was so great that thousands of the beasts had to charge at the same time in order for mere hundreds to reach the defensive line.
Yet the beasts had thousands to spare. Hells, they had tens of thousands to spare. Even as the two Huntresses watched, a wave of the green broke through, washing into the foremost trench before a hastily redirected platoon of tanks plugged the gap. The damage was done though, and a brutal brawl ensued, one that lasted only seconds, but resulted in the bloodied defenders being slaughtered to a man. Unwilling to get flanked by the greenskins among their line, the rest of the trench signaled a general retreat across the entire line. Under the cover of armored guns, the infantry fell back from their previous positions to new, hastily erected strongpoints, the secondary trench rapidly being manned as well.
Blake's eyes raked over the defender's lines, her brow furrowed in concentration.
"They don't have any reserves", she realized, eyes widening, "That line… that's all the forces they have left."
"Then they're going to lose," Yang replied flatly, "Just look at that horde, even if they kill a hundred for every one of their own, they'd still lose. It's just too big."
"Trying to go out in a blaze of glory." Blake concluded.
Yang was silent for a moment, inspecting the battlefield for a moment before she seemingly spotted what she was looking for, "Maybe, maybe not, see that building back there? Looks like a church?"
"Everything looks like a church", Blake grunted, but obligingly took a closer look at the massive, easily multi-kilometer long building. After a moment, she raised an eyebrow, "Huh, they've based their defenses around it."
"Yeah, I thought so too" Yang agreed, before shrugging, "Could just be where they decided to make their last stand, but I'm not so sure."
"How so?"
The blonde shrugged, "Just a hunch I guess. It doesn't look more defensible than anywhere else though, so I'm hoping they chose it for a reason."
"So... what? You want to go down there?"
"I mean, if there's a reason they're defending that building…" she trailed off meaningfully.
"And if there's not, we just die alongside them for no reason." Blake countered.
"I guess…"
Blake was silent for a moment, before inclining her head in thought.
"Maybe", she started, "Maybe there's a way to help without the risk of sharing their fate."
"What are you thinking?"
"How much do you think these things are like Grimm?"
"They're big, tough, and love to kill innocent people."
"What else?"
"They move around in big hordes."
Blake was silent, giving Yang a meaningful look.
"...and if there's a horde," Yang realized and continued, connecting the dots, "then there's an Alpha."
Blake offered a small smile, "And if there's an Alpha, we can kill it."