Before anything else, I own nothing but the original characters, and content therein related to them. RWBY is owned by RT, and any mentioned creator's work belongs to them, and them alone. Rest in peace Monty, your vision lives on in us all.
CHAPTER 7
Almost everyone was gathered in the house. By the time the storm cleared up, it was already 11 at night, but Halcyone didn't care. She'd need to rip the General apart to even begin fixing the problem, and that meant she was outside draped in a blanket, shemagh tied around her face, freezing her ass off to fix the thing. Tired as she might have been, that wasn't stopping her, she'd go inside when it was fixed, and in the morning when everyone was rested, they would leave. Pyrrha was outside with her, helping when she could with her polarity, and keeping watch while the Vacuo smuggler was distracted. It was better than staying inside the house…
From inside, Qrow could see Halcyone leaned over the vehicle's opened hood. Ruby popped by, and he'd idly told her everyone should get some sleep. Clayton came into the hall after her, and looked outside to see his teammate smacking something with a wrench. "That girl's crazy." Qrow observed.
"You're telling me…" Clayton's usual thin smile turned into a frown. "She laughs when she gets hurt, when bad things happen… Not like a dark chuckle, I mean like, full blown laughter… I think she actually enjoys it sometimes." Clayton said.
Qrow hummed in thought. "You worried about her?" He asked.
Clayton shook his head. "A little. At first I thought she was just putting on some sort of act to fit in with the rest of us guys on the team, but she... She's nuts, and that's coming from me. I hate saying this, but if I had to bet on how each of us was going to die, Halc would go out with a really big boom, and she'd do it for either Yang, or our team."
Qrow chuckled at that. "My niece is her girl worth dying for? And let me guess, you'd do the same for Ruby?" It was Clayton's turn to chuckle.
"My team's all a little crazy, but we're not suicidal… I just meant that Halc would make the act of killing her, or any of us an extremely dangerous one to accomplish." Clayton said, before turning back to the study. "I'm racking out. See you in the morning." Qrow just grunted in acknowledgment.
By the time the sun had come up, Halcyone was still outside working, bags under her eyes, and fingers half frozen. She'd got the engine running, and used the heater to stay warm, but by then it had been another two hours before she realized nobody had come out of the house to check on her. Pyrrha was curled up in the car, asleep under Halcyone's blanket. Inside, Pale was half propped up against the wall, hand on his revolver, and Blake was using his lap as a pillow. He'd twitch in his sleep periodically. Yang was nearest to the fire, which had long since gone out. Weiss was curled up to her own knees. Oscar had fallen asleep on the couch. Clayton and Ruby were cuddled together in the center of the room. Maria had stayed up to read, and fell asleep on the smaller loveseat along the wall. Qrow, who'd drunk himself into a blackout, sat in his chair, the empty bottles on the floor. Seemingly nobody was going to wake up… Until Clayton's quiet sleep devolved into a snore as his jaw finally fell open, waking nearly everybody, including himself.
Daylight stung Pale's eyes and he groaned. Blake pushed herself up off of him quickly, and Oscar fell off the couch. "God dammit." Pale muttered as he got up, and stretched. Ruby went to wake her uncle up, as Clayton did a headcount. Realizing Pyrrha and Halcyone hadn't come back all night, he went outside to check on them. Pyrrha was bundled up in the back seat, and Halcyone, though shivering, was also well awake with an active aura.
Everyone gathered by the General, as Weiss used her semblance and a little fire dust to weld a ball hitch onto the rear end so, the trailer from the shed could be used to better distribute the weight of the entire group. "Can't we just go back to bed?" Oscar asked.
"Why don't we make breakfast?" Blake asked.
"Do you want to make it?" The farm boy asked in return. Blake shrugged.
Pale rolled his eyes. "Y'all are acting like we didn't just get 9 hours of sleep." He said, as Ruby and Qrow pushed the trailer over to the vehicle.
"Car ready?" Qrow asked.
Halcyone grinned. "Does it look ready?" She asked.
"Great, now we can-" Qrow was cut off by the sound of air escaping the old tire.
Halcyone closed her eyes for a second, before she pulled out Road Rage, ran to the nearest fence post with a shout, and started hacking away at it. "Stupid bloody farm! Nails an' gravel roads! Can't have shit in Anima! Mother-fucken blizzard! Easty fuckin' Cunt! AAAAAH!" She shouted, finally cutting the post in half. Breathing heavily, Halcyone looked at her friends, and swallowed, as she realized they were all giving her an odd look. "Sorry about that." She said, putting her weapon away, before chuckling nervously.
"You people are just beacons for bad luck aren't you?" Maria asked.
Yang slid down against the edge of the well. "I'm starting to think the universe just doesn't want us to get to Atlas." She grumbled.
"It's just a flat. Halcyone, you've got a spare, right?" Ruby asked.
"Yeah, I'm on it." Halcyone said, opening the General's trunk to fetch the extra tire.
"It's not just that. Storms, crashes, monsters… I'm just tired." Blake looked up at Yang from her seat on the step.
"Me too… Constantly fighting just to get by is getting old." Yang said.
"Yeah…" Ruby muttered.
"But it's what we signed up for." Clayton said, as he scratched at his hair under his tricorn.
"We signed up to save the world… Not delay the inevitable." Oscar said.
"Save the world?" Pale said, pushing off of the porch to walk down the stairs. "Oscar you do understand that the world has fundamentally already ended, the result of the Great War halting expansion out of the kingdoms, and we as hunters and huntresses exist solely to delay the inevitable as long as possible right?" Pale asked, before spitting into the snow. "Doesn't mean we give up though." Oscar looked at Pale, before blinking twice and then looking at the ground, suddenly feeling worse.
"But why even go to Atlas?" Weiss asked.
"We have to. Atlas is the only place on the planet we can go where the relic will be even remotely safe." Clayton said.
"Say's who? Ozpin hid the relics under giant schools, with literal armies of future huntsmen and huntresses guarding them, and look how that's turned out so far." Yang said, remembering what Raven had told her as she stood up. "How long would it take Salem to find the lamp in the middle of nowhere?" She asked. "If we just bury it, or toss it in the well. It would take years." Yang said, as Pyrrha looked at them all from the doorway of the house, the lamp on her hip.
"Why is it even our responsibility?" Pyrrha asked no one in particular, the conversation now shifting to her, as she walked down to the edge of the well. "Save people and hunt grimm. I understand that it is our duty… To slay evil, and push back against the darkness of the world. But we can do that without having to be at the center of a shadow war. What's say we just use the relic again, waste the question, and bar Salam from its power for 100 years. Atlas isn't going to fall any time soon. The Relic at Beacon has still yet to be found if Ozpin wasn't lying about it, and we can assume Vacuo's general population would be more than capable of preventing Salem from taking it's relic. So why should we be forced to fight over dusty old artifacts from the world's messiest divorce? Why can't we just live our lives the way we want to live them?" Pyrrha asked, taking the lamp off her belt and holding it out in front of her. "Why can't we just have a happy ever after?" She asked, her fingers trembling.
Everyone was tense for a moment. Thus far no one had seen Pyrrha ever act so hopeless. Pyrrha let her fingers loosen, and just before she considered pulling her hand back, and resigning herself to be the hero she'd always wanted to be, the glow of two red eyes shined from in the well. Pyrrha let out an unholy scream, and accidentally used her semblance, forcing everything magnetic away from her. Everyone felt their weapons tug against them, and the General and the trailer rocked in place. With Yang being in such close proximity to Pyrrha not only did she get knocked over, but her implant gave her a massive headache. The lamp dropped straight to the bottom of the well, making a splash as it hit the water.
"What the Hell Pyrrha?" Pale asked.
"Shit shit shit shit shit." Pyrrha cursed, something she didn't do often.
Clayton face palmed. "Fuck." He muttered.
"Great, now we have to go get the lamp." Ruby said.
"Do we?" Weiss asked.
Pyrrha turned to her friends. "There's a grimm down there, I saw it's eyes!" She said, pulling Freedom or Death out of its sheath.
Yang sighed. "Alright, fine. If there's grimm then they'll be able to tell Salem or whatever. Guess there goes our plan to ditch it." She muttered. Qrow just got up and went to get a drink. The kids could handle one grimm on their own.
"I'm fixing the tire, you guys have fun without me." Halcyone said.
Before any of them went down, they did a quick ammo check, and that's when Pale noticed a detail. "Blake, why are your eyes so dilated?" He asked.
"What?" She asked back in confusion.
"It's bright as the sin of pride out, your pupils should be pinpricks right now." He said, pulling out his scroll and turning on the light, shining it in her eyes, receiving no reaction. "What the Hell." Pale muttered. Pale looked over at Weiss, and then went over to her, shining the light in her eyes, the pupils refusing to constrict. One was an anomaly, two was a coincidence. Pale shined his scroll light in Yang's eyes and got no response. Three was a pattern. "Somethin ain't right." Pale said, as he went over to Pyrrha, finding her pupils to be wide. Hobbling over to Oscar the result was the same.
"Pale, what are you on about?" Clayton asked his partner.
"I might have been wrong. Something might have poisoned this place, might have been the water, or the food, Hell might have even been the air… Whatever it is, it's poisoning us. Pupils usually constrict when exposed to chemicals that block acetylcholine, but what's going on right now is the complete opposite, something making us have too much of it, which is what would be making us all tired." Pale said.
"You seem plenty awake." Ruby said, as Pale checked her eyes.
"Yours are ok though." Pale said to Ruby, before he looked at Clayton. "And so are yours." He looked over at Halcyone. "And yours." Opening his scroll camera, he put it in selfie mode, and checked his eyes. "And mine." Quickly Pale turned to Maria. "Miss, check that diary, see if there's any mention of what happened towards the end. I want to make sure none of us are dying." Pale said, as he pulled his revolver out.
"So we're getting the lamp and leaving finally?" Clayton asked.
"Hauling ass, if this place is innately toxic, we need to get out." Pale said, before he swung his legs over the edge of the well. "Come on." Pale said, before dropping into the darkness.
One by one, Pale, Clayton, Ruby, Yang, Wiess, Blake, and Pyrrha dropped into the water system below the farm, weapons stowed except for Pale's. Weiss had her scroll light on. "Maybe the current took it." Yang said. As Pale took out his bayonet, and scratched an X into the support post to his left.
"If we get lost or turned around, keep the X's on your right." He said, as they passed a junction, Pale scratched another X into the post on the left. They had been walking for around 5 minutes, and at every other wooden support post Pale scratched an X on the left side wall. "This is taking too long." Pale said, looking around at everyone. More problematically he was getting a bad feeling about just what kind of grimm he suspected was in the tunnel with them, harmless as it may have been. "Blake has moderately good night vision doesn't she? Pale though. "Turn out the lights." He said.
"Yeah… We can just look for the glow." Blake said with a shrug. Clayton and Ruby took their weapon's off their backs.
"Weapons free." Clayton said. Soon following, Blake and Weiss pulled out their swords.
"Up there." Blake said, after a few more seconds of travel. Clayton and Pale gave each other a look, and raised their guns to cover Ruby as she went off to round the corner, only to come back with the lamp screaming.
"What is it?" Yang asked, as Clayton put himself in front of his girlfriend. The it in question came around the corner. Tall, humanoid grimm. Apathy.
"FUCKING ZOMBIES!" Ruby screamed.
"Sheeeeit." Pale muttered, recognizing the grimm, right before Ruby whipped out Crescent rose, and shot the nearest of them in the chest, doing little more than angering them as it seemed, despite the golf ball sized hole it now had. The crowd of Apathy let out a scream that resonated through the tunnels, and instantly a majority of the group felt weak.
"What is this?" Yang asked, her knees beginning to buckle.
"Everything's so heavy." Blake said, before Clayton, seeming to still be unaffected, let out a yell of his own, cranking off 6 fire dust shotgun shells into the crowd, setting two on fire, causing them to stumble forward and die. It wasn't going to be enough.
Maria shouted at them all as she approached from behind. "RUN!" Not needing to be told more than once, everyone took off, as Clayton and Pale filled the tunnel with fire and semblance empowered bullets. There was another scream, and right in front of them, blocking their path to the well's exit, was another small group of Apathy.
"This way!" Ruby yelled as she led them through a small opening in the wall that branched into more tunnels. Without time to map the place for the rest of them, Pale was keeping track of the twists and turns on his own, and surmised they had to be under the house to the right of the main estate.
Passing by a hole filled with more of the grimm, Pyrrha spotted a skeleton. "Guess that's the huntsman." She thought, before turning momentarily and pulling on any metal in the direction of the human remains, knowing his weapon that used the huge shot shells she had found earlier should be nearby. From the water, a long 4 barreled shotgun shot up into the air, and Pyrrha caught it, then kept on running. The oversized shotgun was in good condition, if now missing all of it's bluing, and with the wood stock rotted, but otherwise capable of functioning. That was perfect...
Realizing that, not only was she too fatigued to use her own weapons properly, she was probably too small to handle the stupid amount of recoil such a gun would create. Pyrrha looked at Clayton who was topping off his own scattergun. "Clayton." She said, handing him the bigger gun and the bag full of the huge speed loaders she'd taken. Seeing the massive size of the shells, Clayton shrugged, and loaded the gun while on the run. Passing by another group of the grimm, then turning left at an intersection that was about to be filled with them, the group ran into the wine cellar Ruby had discovered earlier. Clayton turned left, as the others ran right, now faced by about 10 of the apathy crammed into the back left corner of the room. They let out another scream, and Clayton felt his hands get heavier, but all the same he fired the quad shotgun into the group four times, and swept up the rest with Kingslayer's fire dust rounds. The rest of the group was more affected by the scream than him.
Pale was now practically dragging Blake, as he shot at the rest of the grimm in the room with Clayton. His resolve had weakened only a little. "Get up!" He shouted, pulling Blake to the exit.
"It's fine." Blake said blankly. Pale then fell trying to pull her, slipping on his peg leg.
"COME GET SOME YOU BASTARD!" Pale shouted, shooting the head of the last apathy in the room. Clayton backed up while reloading the giant shotgun with individual rounds, the threats now coming from the hole in the wall. His friends were all behind him, and he wasn't going to let them die. Still he felt his arms getting heavier now. As he lifted the giant old shotgun, accidentally bumping a lever on the trigger guard out of alignment. Clayton pulled the trigger, and all four barrels fired at once. The hole in the wall jam packed with grimm, was now awash with a cocktail of four different dust pellets. Fire, Lightning, Ice, gravity. The effects killed many of the apathy that were coming into the room, but did little to stem the flow from the tunnel. The felt recoil in part from the four rounds going off, and the gravity dust pushing against him, Clayton fell on his ass, and the stock of the shotgun in his hands broke in half, the weak wood under too much strain from the kick and all its time rotting.
Still clutching onto the gun, Clayton backed up against the stone support pillar of the room as he reloaded. Ever so slowly he reloaded, his fingers felt numb, and the grimm got nearer and nearer. He rested his head against the wall, as the clawed fingers of the humanish creature got closer. Looking between his friends and the grimm about to tear him to pieces when his aura shut off if he passed out, Clayton shed a single tear. He was about to break his promise. "I don't have permission to die."
"CLAY!" There was a blinding white light that filled the room for only a moment, and the grimm screamed in pain, backing away from its source. Instantly everyone felt as if a weight had been lifted off their chest. Weiss pushed herself to her feet, and started making her way up the stairs, as Clayton shoved himself away from the wall, and then fired off more shotgun shells from the broken gun. Killing the few apathy that had come into the room, as his friends pushed onto the stairs.
"What just happened?" Maria asked, as Yang reached the top of the stairs and pushed, finding the doors to be locked from the outside. She cocked her fist back, only for the apathy outside of the room to cry again as they entered, that same crushing feeling coming back, dropping her to her hands and knees. Pale picked himself up with a grunt, and dragged Blake up and over his shoulder, doing his best to balance her as he fired his pistol while backpedaling. Clayton was now dragging Pyrrha, as she fired her kopis pistol limply. Ruby pulled on Weiss, as everyone fell against the stairs. All things considered this was one shitty last stand.
Ruby had no clue what to do. Her sister, friends, boyfriend, an innocent old lady, they were all about to die, and she couldn't do anything. She felt weak… Not even her teachings from Rot seemed to be helping. What good was magic if she didn't know to use it? She just wanted to save them… Was that all it took? Rot had equated her to a god if her will was strong enough. It was possible that she could save everyone… No, it wasn't just possible, it was necessary. Ruby turned to look at all of the apathy flooding into the room, and grit her teeth. "GET BACK!" Ruby shouted with all of the conviction in the world, and at first there was a flicker, before the room was awash with light once more, and this time the grimm didn't just get knocked over. They disintegrated, being systemically damaged by the light.
Not wasting a beat, Clayton looked up at Yang, and tossed her the quad gun. "Shoot the lock!" He shouted, as she was already jamming the muzzle up against the lock from in between the doors. Pulling the trigger with her big toe, all four barrels sent a hail of buckshot into through the chains, flinging the door open, and further destroying the rest of the rotting wood hand grip. Everyone filled out of the cellar, and Pale set Blake down when they reached the in-house bar. Clayton picked up the shotgun, and lifted Pyrrha to her feet, as they all started running from the house, finding Qrow sitting at the bar conjoined to the room.
"Uncle Qrow, get up!" Ruby shouted, shaking him out of the stool, before Clayton simply hooked his free hand under his armpit and dragged the drunk with no issue.
"What are you doing?" Qrow asked, trying to fight against the large gorilla man.
"Saving your ass!" Clayton shouted, as Weiss and Yang started breaking bottles and casks of grain alcohol all around them, before leaving, as the apathy continued to come up through the cellar.
Pale lit a cigarillo. He inhaled it as fast as he could in one go while standing in the doorway of the bar, trying to get as much nicotine out of the tobacco as he could, all while getting it hotter, as Weiss and Yang passed by him. Weiss took one more look at the grimm coming into the bar room, as Pale pulled the burning red cigarillo butt out of his mouth. "Burn in Hell." He said exhaling a massive cloud of smoke, before tossing the bundle of smoldering plant matter and paper into the pool of flammable liquid on the floor. The vapor from the spirits caught fire, causing the entire room to light up, engulfing what remained of the apathy in a bright orange glow. His job complete, Pale went outside with Weiss, and the two jumped into the trailer attached to the General, the rest of the group already loaded up to leave. And leave they did. Clayton and Yang were tossing alcohol bottles onto the houses around them and were shooting the liquid with fire dust to ignite the entire town. If there was no settlement, there was no way more apathy could trap lost travelers there ever again.
"The apathy." Maria said. Everyone had decided they needed to stop and take a breather about 10 miles down the trail. They'd unpacked from the car and trailer, and stood loosely in a circle sipping water, and eating what food they'd taken with them. "Not strong or fast… They drain your will…" Maria said.
"Shut down nerves, and reduce brain activity." Pale muttered in correction, having used a de-limbed and muzzled one on a leash like a form of grimm camouflage while walking through the Anima wilds on a White Fang hunt before. The dulling effect on the nerves effectively stopped the body's production of the chemicals that create emotions, and in turn the Emotional Electromagnetic output of anyone affected would be significantly reduced, making them appear blurry to a grimm at a distance.
The benefit of it's nerve dulling properties made not only his aim even more steady by keeping his heart rate consistently low, but when it was placed outside of an encampment it put the Fang to sleep sooner, and left the guards more fatigued. It even acted as a watchdog when Pale had to rest, as it had the ability to detect people through emotions like any other grimm.
One apathy on it's own was non-aggressive, timid, nearly harmless, and they didn't regenerate over time like other grimm making them frail. Pale even gave the one he walked with the name "Stumpy," before it finally died after being shot in the head by a Fang camp guard. The head being about the only place they could be lethally injured. When they started coming in twos and threes was when they became a problem.
"Bartleby, the man who owned the estate was hemorrhaging money in the end. He wanted to cut costs on huntsman protection. Mr. Foster, the skeleton who's gun you have, he wasn't enough on his own. But to cut costs, Bartleby needed everyone to be calm." Maria said.
"So he dragged them all down there?" Blake asked in disbelief.
Oscar shook his head. "Just two. The pack followed them, and he forgot to seal up the waterway entrance because they made him tired. Until he sealed it up later, with all of them down there." The boy said. Clayton rubbed his forehead, before fixing his tricorn.
"And nobody was ever angry or sad, or anything ever again." Pale said, before lighting up a fresh cigarillo, feeling the need for extra nicotine after the entire ordeal. He wished he spotted the obvious, but apathy were not known to roam is such numbers in Anima, 5 or 6 was about as large a pack as he'd encountered before. There had to have been at least 30 of the grimm humanoids in the tunnels, which made that the largest hoard of Apathy the world was likely ever to see.
"If the apathy drains your will… How was it that some of us were affected and some of us weren't?" Halcyone asked.
Maria had an answer for that. "The apathy can only make one drop so low… People who are at their rock bottom, or at their greatest would be resistant… But not immune… I'm hoping that the majority of you who seemed to be lively almost the entire time are at your highest." She said.
Clayton looked around at the people who Pale had suggested weren't poisoned, and sighed. "Rock bottom's more likely." He muttered. Halcyone was nuts from gods knew how much trauma. Having a death wish or something near it was almost certain, and how much more apathetic could you get than not caring if you died, or perhaps her simply not going to sleep at all allowed her to stave off the effects. Pale could have been either end of the spectrum. It was possible he had too much to live for, now that he had something even close to a family, or he could have nothing still. Clayton himself knew he was for certain simply too stubborn to just give up, and Ruby was much the same, but what of the rest of them?
"I'm sorry about what I said." Weiss spoke up.
"Me too. I didn't mean any of it… Not really." Yang said.
"Don't be sorry… It was those things." Blake said. Pyrrha remained silent, softly whispering her apologies to the group… For she had meant what she said.
"I should have seen the signs sooner. But I've never seen an entire settlement withered away like that. My age must be catching up to me." Maria said, before she turned to Ruby. "You… You destroyed the grimm in that cellar with light… You have silver eyes don't you?" Maria asked. Ruby looked at the old woman inquisitively, then remembered the lady's eyes were not functioning fully at the moment.
"I... do." Ruby said cautiously.
"Well that would have made two of us..."
Author's note.
Mr. Forster, and the giant shotgun Clayton has acquired are references to Killing Floor 2. I thought it was kind of cool that the animation team decided to dilate the pupils of everyone who was severely affected by the apathy, pupil restriction being a sign of a nerve agent exposure, it was cool to see the opposite chemical effect... And yay, Ruby finally used her silver eyes at max strength.
