Chapter 21: Unexpected Assistance
Dawson was little more than a speck off in the distance by the time Julia finally stopped running. Once she was certain that The Courier wouldn't track her down to finish what he started, at least not immediately, she leapt out of the window to their room and never looked back. Only when she was finally alone in the building sandstorm that had suddenly swallowed the calm patch of desert surrounding the town behind her did she take a moment to rest.
Her legs burned from having been forced to abandon her first chance at proper rest in days, mind trembled from the psychotic outburst she had been subjected to by her former partner, and heart wavered knowing that despite how unhinged Six had been he wasn't entirely wrong. It was painful to admit, but if she would have been in the same spot he had been after having risked their lives together and talked down to her like she was an absolute idiot she would not have stopped at just scaring her to death.
No, Julia would have killed him without a second thought. Knowing that a barely coherent madman had enough mercy left in him to spare her life when he had every reason to kill her hurt more than any injury he could have left her with. It wasn't because such an act damaged her pride, not to say it hadn't been wounded in the process, but rather how it not only proved what The Courier said about her, but painted a damning picture of her recent actions.
As much as Julia loathed to admit it, the crazy murderer had a point when he said he had done more for Vacuo than both her or the Spirit of Vacuo, regardless of whether or not it was his intention to do so. He had done more than anyone else since the death of their previous leader, saving her own life on top of it and how did she repay that kindness? By trying to kill him, of course, because the moment he told her he wasn't a faunus she couldn't think of him as anything other than a monster.
And if he hadn't managed to shrug off a couple dozen bullets without any aura to help him on top of somehow knowing she would try and fail to kill him before attempting to use his own weapon against him, that would have been the end of him. She would have put him down without any hesitation, wasting no time to think about how she would have ended the life of a human who had gone so far as to save her life and help the faunus of Vacuo more than its current leader had. Even if The Courier was a completely unredeemable asshole, he still did more than anyone else had been able or willing to do.
At least, for those who hadn't died for what they believed in.
"Damn it! Why couldn't that human just be another sick monster like the rest of his kind!" Julia yelled in frustration.
Maybe it was her exhaustion finally catching up with her, stockholm syndrome highlighting the best of her murderous partner's features while downplaying the worst, or perhaps her own growing doubts finally crashing down around her. Whatever it was, the antlered woman wanted nothing more than to just turn back and return to Vacuo, the city, not the kingdom, alongside her leader and ask him what she should do.
Alexander never questioned what needed to be done after her sister died at Ironwood's hands, nor did he ever hesitate whenever sacrifices needed to be made in order to further the Spirit of Vacuo's cause. Even when it came to enlisting one of the most notorious criminals terrorizing Mantle, her beloved never once questioned what needed to be done.
Not even when he asked her to kill the very man that could have easily ended her despite having every reason to do so.
Julia shook her head in an attempt to clear her head after that particular thought crossed her mind. No good would come from thinking this way, as not only was Alexander never wrong when it came to how the world would view the faunus inside of Vacuo or Mantle's treatment of them, he did everything he could to prepare the few people that sought his aid as best he could. Even if it meant the entire world would turn against them and it was just her and him against everything Remnant could throw at them, she would have died defending her love and what he fought for. The world might have laughed at them once like The Courier claimed, but now that they were in a position to finally change Vacuo for the better…
…what exactly would they do?
Before she could think of the hundreds of possibilities that were out there, ones that Julia hoped Alexander had already considered, something darted out of the thick shroud of blowing sand and straight towards the faunus woman. The figures were big, black, and unnatural shapes unmistakably belonging to the creatures of Grimm, several of which were running straight at her. The lonesome traveler drew her sword anticipating a fierce battle from the half dozen Grimm that rushed her and prepared to eviscerate the first one that tried to pounce on her, but all of her preparation went to waste. The Grimm did not even bother to look in her direction and simply passed by her, instead charging towards the town behind her with reckless abandon.
Of all the things that could have happened to her tonight, that had to have been the most horrifying by far. Grimm were not known to look over potential prey, not unless there was a greater target they had in mind. It didn't take Julia long to figure out that the Grimm who ignored her for the time being were intending to attack Dawson, and for a moment, she was overjoyed about it.
After her sister died, traveling alone through the wilderness outside of Remnants cities had been a risk she never had been willing to take, not that it was one she had been keen on in the first place. Certain responsibilities had been thrust upon her when that happened, far wider reaching but no less important than the ones that had fallen to Alexander on that fateful day too. It was because of that responsibility that she finally had to leave Vacuo and set out for Vale alongside The Courier, as not only was it the perfect opportunity to dispose of him according to her beloved, but he had also proven himself more than capable of assisting her on her journey… for long as he lived, but that was another matter entirely.
She had responsibilities that demanded her to reach Vale. Who was she to abandon them in order to ensure they were carried out? Leaving behind an entire settlement of humans to die, as callous as it was, hardly mattered in the long run. Anyone else without a personal reason to go back and fight would have done the same in her place.
Leaders, champions, and anyone with any common sense would have done the same! No one would stay behind to defend a few hundred lives when thousands or even millions more could perish as a result. A person would have to be mad to think otherwise. To stay behind and fight, they would have to be completely and utterly insane.
And The Courier was exactly that.
As much as she didn't want to consider it, Julia knew that he would have stayed behind and likely shot anyone who could have helped and didn't. It was an utterly crazy thing to do, which is exactly why she could see him doing it.
Why? She couldn't even begin to guess. It could have been anything, from simply wanting to kill a few Grimm because he wanted to or perhaps because he actually cared about someone other than himself, as unlikely as that was. It could have been just to prove her wrong for all she knew, just to show the world that he wasn't a monster even if no one would ever care one way or another…
But she would know, wouldn't she? She knew that he would stay and fight, just like she would have if that was a town full of faunus, because… because… because…
"Oh Brothers, is that the only reason I would help them?" She thought in horror.
If it was, then what did that make her? A hypocrite at the very least or different from Mantle's troops, proving The Courier right about her at the very worst no matter what.
Of all the things that she would allow to happen, vindicating that monster's final words was the very last thing she would allow to happen. With no small amount of disgust held towards herself for having hesitated so long, the faunus ran back towards Dawson as fast as she could in the trail the Grimm left behind in the hopes that she wasn't too late to prove that madman wrong.
And then, once she managed to prove both her and the Spirit of Vacuo were nothing like Mantle or the murders he claimed them to be, that was when she would finally use everything she had at her disposal to kill him.
Hopefully there wouldn't be that many Grimm between her and The Courier. It would be a shame if they managed to slay him before she could.
To say that getting smacked in the chest with a giant-ass hammer hurt was putting it lightly. Thanks to my experience getting the ever loving shit kicked out of me all across the Mojave, I knew for a fact that a couple of my ribs had been shattered by the initial impact. Considering I had done the same to plenty of legionnaires with their own super sledges, I'd say I was something of an expert when it came to knowing how much effort it came to cave someone's chest in and hot damn did that bandit come too close to comfort. By the time I finally stopped flying through the air and crashed through the conveniently placed wall a few yards behind me, I didn't even need to look at my Pipboy to tell that I already had one foot in the grave. The stabbing pain that came with every breath I took and steady trickle of blood seeping through the bits of metal protecting my chest made that much obvious.
Despite wanting to just lay down and bleed until the pain went away, I fought against every signal my tesla coil filled head was sending me and the humiliation of being treated like a human golf ball long enough to reload Penetrator while I was still coherent enough to remember I was out of ammo. With my primary weapon loaded with plenty of slug sized goodness, I braced myself against what was left of the wall I crashed through and pulled out a couple of stimpaks to patch up the worst of my injuries. I didn't have many of those little miracles left, and although I was hesitant to use the last of my medical supplies I had on me to take care of whatever damage that bastard with the giant hammer dealt out, I wasn't so stupid as to let my tendency to horde my meds be the death of me.
I only had time to plunge three of them into my chest before the crowd that had gathered to watch me get bitch slapped like some generic villain in a Grognak the Barbarian comic came to check my corpse for anything worth stealing in the false belief that I wouldn't have been able to survive such a hit. At least, that's what I think the first two who poked their heads out were trying to do. I wasn't really in the mood to ask questions since everything fucking hurt and I was too pissed off to do anything but blast a fist sized hole through their faces.
"Heads up assholes!" I shouted half deliriously in an attempt to get my mind away from the shock of pain that ripped through my body.
I would have done anything to be able to forget about the pain… no, almost anything, but sadly I didn't have any Slasher or Med-X on me so shitty puns were unfortunately my only way of coping with it. The one kind of pain killer I did have was a Battle Brew, but since I was saving those for when I was in a condition where I needed to feel no pain while tearing something apart with my bare hands, they wouldn't have done me much good here. I could have also used some Psycho to focus on something else entirely, but I wasn't so desperate as to start taking that stuff again.
Well, not yet in any case. Might have to re-evaluate that choice in a minute or two though.
In any case, being able to cause a little carnage at least makes my situation a little more bearable. All I had to do was think of turning those savages into thin red paste and while I might not have been able to eat a handful of them good eatin's, just thinking about them was enough to make me feel their effects. Don't know why that was the case, probably some more Big Mountain bullshit, but so long as it helped I couldn't care less about why.
Wouldn't have even had a chance to pull my mask down and get a taste of the blood sausages their heads burst into either, because a couple more bandits rushed towards me once they knew I wasn't as dead as their fallen friends thought I was. There were five of them, each one holding a rifle of some sort, and I was seriously outgunned with only an aura penetrating hand cannon, double barrel shotgun, and fire axe to defend myself. The anti-material I had slung over my back hardly counted since I couldn't damn well aim it in close quarters.
Well, looks like this is going to be interesting.
I darted towards them before they could open fire on me in the hopes of taking them by surprise. I fired off every shot I had left in Penetrator without bothering to aim it, not so much thinking I would be able to kill any of them so much as I wanted them to panic and not have enough time to line up a shot on me. To my surprise, I actually nailed one of them in the chest by the time I was close enough to make use of the rest of my arsenal.
The bandits tried to open fire on me at close range, but unfortunately for them my shotgun was a bit better at tearing people to shreds at point blank than a few fully automatic magic bullet slingers. Two of them were blown to pieces by the time I emptied my shotgun, leaving only two frenzied faunus left all on their own. To their credit, they handed themselves better than most schmucks that I came across in the Mojave and were actually able to land more shots than they missed. Unfortunately for them their shots barely did little more than piss me off even more.
I broke open the shotgun and slammed one of the bandits in the face as hard as I could with the stock in one swift motion, dropping one of my attackers in an instant and giving me precious time to reload. His partner tried to swing a fist at me rather than reload and I didn't ducked underneath it as I slapped two more slugs inside. Before she could recover and follow up her wild haymaker with anything else, I swept her legs out from underneath her and painted the sand beneath my feet with her blood. That left only one last bandit to deal with for the moment and the man I nearly knocked out while reloading realized it too.
"Waip, pweash!" He cried out between broken teeth. "I haf a fam-"
He never did get to finish what he was saying since it was kinda hard for him to talk after I blew his head off, but I still got the jist of it. It'll really suck to be those people. Good thing I didn't give a shit about anything savages like him had to say or else I might have felt bad about it.
"Hey, what's going on over there? Stop wasting time and kill that bastard already!" The bandit leader yelled believing that his lackeys still had things under control.
"Why don't you come over here and do it yourself? You're not afraid to fight me without starting things with a cheap shot, are ya? Of course, you're free to send me more fresh bodies to loot if you're too much of a bitch to come over yourself. I could use the ammo your pets are carrying." I hollered back from behind cover as I loaded the last magazine of slugs I had prepped for Penetrator.
Now as much as I wanted to run out there and shoot the son of a bitch for treating me like a goddamn golf ball, I remembered that there were a lot of bandits with a lot of guns capable of shooting a lot of bullets. Now, I wasn't exactly what you would call a numbers guy but even I knew that the odds were not in my favor there. The moment I stuck my head out of the house I crashed through they were going to fill me with holes faster than the NCR did to the Khans back at Bitter Springs. It wasn't cowardice that kept me from running out of cover guns blazing, but rather me actually using my head for once now that I was in the rare situation where I didn't have enough ammo to brute force my way out of a mess like this.
I wasn't sure my friend with the hammer was going to fall for the obvious attempt to rile him up, so I decided to go with something I knew would be guaranteed to piss him off while I kept my back against cover so I didn't get my ass shot the moment I stepped away from it. It worked on Antlers and, as much of a temperamental asshole she turned out to be, she seemed a lot less inclined to charge me blindly than this guy so it was at least worth a try.
"Come on you filthy animal! Show me what you faunus freaks can do!" I taunted with the same condescending tone as the Mantlesian bitch who ran me over twice.
Wasn't quite sure if this guy was a faunus or not, but so far most every bandit I killed and had the time to inspect did seem to have one of those random mutations that their kind was apparently known for around these parts. Lizard girl, the wolf tailed woman that baited me into the mess I currently found myself in, and even the corpses at my feet all seemed to have something that made them different from the average human. Well, most of them anyways. Two of the ones without heads didn't have anything that looked animal like on what was left of their bodies, although I figured that whatever made them a faunus had been splattered on the sand along with their brains.
The bandits were all wearing the same black leather outfits too, the same one that Antlers also used. It was a stretch to assume that actually meant something since it seemed high quality armor was a bit easier to get a hold of and maintain in Vacuo than it was in the Mojave, but I wasn't ever one to think coincidences were just that. Not when there was a chance they could save my ass in any case. None of that was important though, not until I ever saw her again.
I waited a moment or two to see if my taunting had the effect I wanted it too. It was just as I thought I had failed to sucker the savage into coming for me alone that a large section of the wall beside me was knocked down by a hammer that came swinging way too close for comfort beside me that I discovered, yes, it did work. It was only as I felt an exploding pain against the back of my head and was knocked down flat on my stomach that I realized my plan worked a little too well.
"Load up whatever supplies you can find and get out of here. I'll take care of the human before this place gets wiped off of the map like the rest of these scumbags' towns." The leader called out to his underlings.
Apparently my bait had worked better than I thought it would. I half expected the bandit leader to chase me down with a couple of his lackeys, instead he saved me the trouble of cutting through the fodder so I could reach him. Chasing them all down would be a bitch once I managed to kill this bastard, but I had plenty of time to waste on hunting some savages now that I didn't need to escort Antlers anymore.
As much as I wanted to get down to business and start seeing how many slugs it took to start blasting holes through the fucker who couldn't help but to knock down a whole damn wall to reach me, there was something I needed to confirm first.
"This ain't the first place you fuckers raided?" I asked him, thinking back to the last settlement I came across.
"It won't be the last either." He growled back, revealing a nice set of fangs that he bared towards me.
I stopped fucking around now that I had my answer. With a mostly steady aim with months of experience putting down shitstains like him, slightly shaking from chem withdrawal, I drew Penetrator with practice speed and emptied all five shots in his magazine directly at him as fast as I could. The hand cannon wasn't anything like the revolvers like I preferred using, not capable of dumping its entire load in under a second, but considering it fired 12 gauge shells instead of 12.7mm rounds like my usual pistol of choice.
Now, I had this fucker dead to rights since I had a gun that easily splattered the heads of the other bandits I had killed up until this point. You can imagine my shock when this asshole did the impossible and parried every single one of those damn things with the handle of his giant hammer from point blank like it was nothing.
I wanted to cry bullshit at the bandit for pulling off some more of this local European bullshit I hadn't yet been able to figure out, but I had a more pressing matter to attend to in the shape of a bigass hammer being swung down to crush me. I rolled away from it and pushed myself back to my feet, creating enough distance between us so I could try filling him with more lead. If at first you don't succeed at killing something, you obviously haven't shot it enough times… or it's a hologram with nothing to shoot or kill.
I swung the shotgun off of my back and tried to see if the bullet parrying bandit could pull off the same trick now that he had more than one thing to swing at. Unsurprisingly, he could only swat one of them away. Much to my immediate disappointment, his aura seemed to have been strong enough to deflect the other one far better than the leather armor his buddies wore, and the one shot I did manage to land on him ricocheted off of his right shoulder.
"Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me." I grumbled as I swapped my shotgun for my axe.
The bandit leader let me do it too since he was a little preoccupied as he snarled at me while clutching the shoulder I hit. Either aura works enough like armor that my natural talent with a shotgun was able to punch through it just a little bit or getting hit through your aura still hurts. I honestly couldn't tell which and didn't have an aura of my own to find out. Antlers wasn't around anymore to test on too and I doubted ol' fangsy was going to answer honestly if I asked him, so I guess that question will have to go unanswered for a little while longer.
Thankfully, I had the perfect opportunity to test it out and attempted to take the bandit's head off in one clean stroke to see whether or not my Piercing Strike could live up to its name or if this Unstoppable Force was going up against an immovable object. The bandit raised the grip of his hammer just in time to keep his head attached, but not without taking any damage. The metal shaft bent the handle and took a good bit of momentum away from my swing, but not nearly enough to prevent it from smacking into the bandit's skull. I nearly lost my grip on the axe from the impact which felt like I beat the damn thing against a Stonewall instead of someone's head. That's not to say it didn't hurt any, because my victim let out a mighty yelp of pain as he staggered back from the blow.
As comforting as it was to see that my axe was a little more effective than my shotgun shells had been, it didn't make me feel any less cheated by this aura bullshit once again.
"Jesus Christ, can you be a good little mutt and die already?" I hollered at the bandit as I charged him intending to see how many hits it took to plant my axe into the center of his skull.
Apparently ringing his bell did the guy a few favors, because instead of trying to block me once again he sidestepped my blow and punched me in my armored gut. I didn't see any power fist strapped to his hand but you can damn well believe me that it felt like he had one on him anyways, once again proving my assertions that aura is complete and utter cheating braminshit as well as reminding me of exactly which ribs weren't fully mended yet.
I grunted through the pain and tried to elbow him in the face, but the bandit took it like a champ and left me feeling like an idiot as a lightning bolt of pain shot up my arm instead of knocking his teeth out. I staggered away and desperately hoped I didn't break anything, even with the Adamantium Skeleton the Think Tank gave me, which created just enough of an opening for the bandit to put his hammer to use once again.
I tried to block the handle with the shaft of my axe and was knocked aside from the collision, preventing my mostly repaired ribcage from getting caved in by the head of his hammer. This time I followed up with a flicker jab aimed at his ears which he threw his head forward to evade, causing him to eat the headbutt I had really been intending to land at full force. I heard something crack and desperately hoped it wasn't my own skull as I pulled away from the bandit and waited for my vision to recover as little splotches of light danced in my vision for a second or two.
By the time they did fade, I had a perfect view of yet another wild swing coming at me which I expertly ducked under. I only realized my mistake as I saw the bandit kill his momentum once he was turned around but not until after he landed a mule kick directly on my sternum. I sputtered for air and brought my axe in front of me to defend myself as I recovered, but that did little to save me from the golf swing that left me flying through the air once more.
Didn't travel nearly as far this time as I did the first, but it hurt like Mean Sonofabitch all the same. Wasn't nearly enough to crack any ribs this time according the my Pipboy, but what it did do was throw me into the middle of a group of bandits that were just as happy to see me as I was to see them. They tried to reach for their weapons as I scrambled to my feet, but none of us were able to do anything to each other.
"If any of you weaklings touch my prey, you're gonna be the next one I end up playing with." The bandit leader called out, the bandits around me backing off quickly at their leader's command.
"You know, you're not half bad for a human." He said with a throaty laugh that sounded more like a growl than anything else. "It's a shame you weren't born a faunus. Coulda used more people like you."
"Shut up a bleed already, dickbag." I fired back.
The leader bared his teeth again at my insult. "Want me to rip your throat out? Fine by me! Let's see you tough talk when-"
Before he could finish his insult, the most demonic sounding roar I had ever heard echoed throughout the night. I didn't think much of it on account of the last mean sounding Grimm I heard dying relatively quickly after I ended up feeding it a mini-nuke. The bandits on the other hand were a different story. The ones I almost crashed into looked ready to piss themselves in terror and even the bandit leader that was giving as good a he got against me froze up for a moment.
"Aww, what's wrong? Scared of a few big bad wolves?" I goaded, thinking it was just a really big Beowolf that made that noise.
As if to answer my question, a car, A GRAHAM DAMNED CAR OF ALL THINGS, came flying out of the sky and crashed into the bandit I had been fighting until then. The savage got lucky and had only been knocked down, much to my annoyance. If I had a choice, I would have taken the opportunity to grab his hammer and bash his skull in with his own weapon for a delicious bit of irony but before I could all hell broke loose around me.
Giant masked black birds ranging from the size of a big ol' vertibird to 'little' cazador hatchling flew out of the impenetrable sandstorm that blotted out the night sky and started attacking anything they could. The bandits I had been thrown in between got the worst of it, the lucky ones getting torn to shreds by the smaller birds in a matter of seconds while the unlucky ones were lifted up in the sky screaming by the larger ones. Their screams kept on attracting more of the little bastards around us until the ground beneath us was soaked red with blood and whatever bits of meat the birds didn't feel like chowing down on.
Most of those little winged demons were too focused on the easy pickings on all sides of me to notice I was there, but the few that did found that I would not go down as easily as the bandits. While my axe might have done fuck all against that bandit leader's aura, it proved mighty effective against Grimm bone armor and the even more fragile flesh they were attacked to. I won't lie, my attempts to swat away the cyclone of feathery death probably made me look like I was high on Jet again, but since there were so many targets to hit I didn't really have to bother aiming my swings in order to hit anything. All I did was throw my axe wherever the thickest flocks of them were in order to break through them before they managed to tear my armor to shreds, occasionally swatting away a few that got around my axe with a backhand that dropped them in a single hit.
I don't know how long I had been hacking and slashing at those birds before they finally wisened up and figured out they'd have better luck pecking out someone else's eyeballs and left me alone, but it was apparently enough time for the bandit leader I had been fighting to escape.
As much as I wanted to hunt him down and finish our duel, I decided to live to fight another day for once. Not because the fucker had me on the ropes the entire time thanks to his bullshit aura, which totally wasn't cockblocking my every attempt at killing him in one shot, but because judging by the screams and roars off in the distance there were plenty of other things that needed to be killed before I could focus on settling my newest grudge. I knew exactly how much of a bitch it was to fight off two armies at once back home. The last thing I wanted now that I was on the other side of the globe was to end up in the same mess I left behind me.
I could have just let the bandits and Grimm sort each other out and clean up whoever was left, but that could have damn well put me in a worse position than I was currently in if the Grimm outnumbered the bandits or had a giant Deathjaw on their side. Leaving both sides to finish each other off was also an option, but not one I wanted to let play out since I was in a killing mood now that I knew was going on. Wasn't sure if there were any survivors from when the bandits raided town and if there were, I doubted they'd still be alive afterwards once the Grimm started prowling the streets.
It was probably too late to save anyone, but with the Grimm proving to be quite the distraction, I had plenty of time to avenge them.
The pair of killers had watched the Grimm assault Dawson from a safe distance away, neither one of them daring to speak a word as they watched the town become swarmed by the shadow clad beasts as a few smaller figures were chased off by them. To one of them, it was a bitter reminder of where her new allegiances lay and to the other it was nothing more than a repeat of the same scene they had helped organize countless times before.
They stayed there, silently observing the carnage, completely oblivious to the other being that approached them until it finally spoke and revealed its presence.
"PAWNS."
The human recoiled away from the snarl that came from behind her and screamed at the sight of the nightmarish beast that stared at her with its baleful red eyes. The massive Grimm let out what might have passed for a throaty chuckle for its kind, but instead came out as a menacing growl to those who heard it.
"Oh, it's you." The cat faunus grunted in annoyance. "What do you want? Can't you see we're trying to enjoy ourselves?"
"YOU. FAILED." The abomination rumbled, struggling to articulate each word.
"We were told that failure was… acceptable." The faunus replied, stalling as she tried to find the right word to defend herself. Not out of fear, but rather hesitation of displeasing the one they both served.
"EXCUSES. ARE. UNACCEPTABLE." It snarled, licking its lips as it stared at the two women it towered over. "FAILURE. DESERVES. DEATH."
The human remained frozen in terror as the faunus answered for both of them. "Then why haven't you killed us already? Surely this must have been within our master's expectations if you haven't already killed us."
The Grimm let out a low growl, lowering its head so it could look the faunus in the eyes. She did not back down to the obvious attempt to scare her, further enraging the monstrosity who stood back up on its hind legs so it could return to looking down on the two mortal creatures once again.
"CHANGE. OF. PLANS." It rumbled.
"Really? What are we supposed to do now?" The faunus huffed.
"OBSERVE." The beast answered. "CLOSELY."
"Observe?" The faunus repeated. "Observe what?"
"LESSER'S. TURN." It snarled.
"NOW. REST." It demanded.
"What?! What are you talking about?" The faunus yelled, her brave facade finally failing her as she started to panic at this unexpected news.
"ORDERS." It answered, picking its teeth with its finely honed claws, savoring the horrified expression on the human's face while it cleaned out a few pieces of the last Grimm to have annoyed it.
"OUR. ORDERS." The abomination added reluctantly. "NEW. ORDERS. FROM. HER."
The two mortals balked at the monstrosity's words, the human because she didn't want to spend any more time around this creature than she had to and the faunus because of what the beast's words meant.
"You… you mean she has been watching us this whole time?" The faunus asked as the color drained from her face.
"SHE. ALWAYS. WATCHES." The beast snarled, letting out another rumbling laugh.
Although it hated these new orders, it had no choice to accept them as absolute. Going against their shared master's direct orders was unthinkable. The abomination was the one who was perhaps the angriest with their new duty, but that hardly mattered.
All it could do was wait. Its wait, while unfortunately extended a little while longer, was almost at an end.
Author's Corner:
Alright, this chapter was a bit late but there is a reason for that. In an attempt to create a backlog to hopefully maintain a better release schedule, a bye month was necessary. Hopefully only one of these will be needed to get back on track, but should I not happen to upload a new chapter at the end of June, you'll know why that is.
Comments:
TigerTrainerXD: (Pointing out my blatantly wrong sentence structure when transitioning out of character dialogue)
I know it's wrong, but I am doing it anyways. Consider it my style of doing things.
maskedkeeper: feel like courier would seem edgy if you wrote this like most do, quick and without much internal dialogue...
I know I'm treading that fine line a bit too carefully at time, but I also want to write a fairly messed up, questionably sane protagonist since that is what I envision The Courier likely being. I've said it before and I'll say it again, anyone whose first instinct is to track down and kill the son of a bitch that tried and somehow failed to execute in the middle of an active warzone is not the most stable or well adjusted individual, to say nothing of the batshit crazy you can do in FNV that no sane person would even consider.
Cousin687: (The Joke)
Yep, that was the entire joke. Sometimes my attempts at humor go well...
"Guest": Literal war going on outside his window-ignores it; wonders why his partner would have difficulty finding the room she was just in; takes nearly three paragraphs to figure out a corpse is not who he thought it was-are his eyes as damaged as his brain?
...other times, not so much. I'll strike that perfect balance some day.
Anyways, that's it for me. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all again in the future!