'God I hate this, so so much.' Thought a once again sick Jaune, trying his best to figure out an aura technique to stop his motion sickness, while also suffering from said motion sickness.
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Just a few moments earlier…
Jaune was trying to figure out something. Now that statement in itself doesn't say much, but at the moment, it was life or death, for him and the surrounding area. Just earlier, Jaune had his motion sickness solved by a fellow hunter trainee, a nice fellow named Ren. Sadly, they sat on opposite sides in the seating area, so Ren couldn't refresh the technique on Jaune, and didn't have the time in their short meeting to explain it to him either. This left Jaune in a conundrum to say the least, so after realizing it was wearing off, He put down his book and experimented.
'Okay, let's see, what do we know about it? I know it's an aura tech that's some sort of pulse, focusing on quickly solving small problems in someone, I think. Now, let's try to r- what was that?'
All of the sudden, the windows of the airship had been covered in metal plates, and a dull blue light turned on. A general murmur was rising, with passengers wondering what was happening.
"Attention, this is your captain speaking, we are just 30 minutes out from Vale's airspace, sadly we have attracted the attention of a flock of grimm."
At this announcement, the murmur from the civilians rose, taking a panicked tone. While normally, this would be a problem, attracting grimm mid-flight, it's ultimately a better option than a massive sudden spike that would arise if they were caught off guard.
The captain continued on, causing the clamor to die down a bit. "I'm sure you all have noticed, I have deployed the safety measures already, and the crew is ready to have the ship speed towards Vale. If you weren't already seated and buckled, this is your final chance."
Looking around, Jaune could see the few stragglers who haven't yet seated themselves hurry towards their seats. Seeing no one in need of assistance, he focused on his aura, realizing one important fact.
'If I don't figure this pulse out, I'm gonna be Fu-'. His line of thought was interrupted by the ship rumbling, based on how he was pushed in the seat a bit, he took it as the ship was speeding up. 'Well, I always worked better under stress.' Jaune grimly thought.
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Now…
'ShitShitShitSHITSHIT' Jaune did not in fact figure out the pulse in time, and now, working under the threat of vomiting on both himself and the surrounding area.
"Mommy, I'm scared" spoke a nearby child, holding her mother's hand. Jaune looked at the pair, then looked around. He saw the state of the area he sat in, most people seemed scared, but no one was screaming. Course, there were also some people still sleeping through it all, but that's not very dramatic.
The ship started rumbling, and Jaune, who sat near one of the few windows (No longer open) could hear the muffled sound of gunfire. Taking one more glance around, he focused once more on his aura.
'Panicking isn't going to help anyone, if I could figure this out though, that would be great' Thinking this, he settled down, and with a clear goal, focused.
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In the skies, the airship was speeding as fast as a ship its size could, turrets could be seen on the hull, firing bullets towards a murder of Nevermore, a large one at that, with more gathering together from all the commotion and rising emotion of the transport.
In the bridge, crew could be seen focusing on their monitors, giving reports to a lady in the center.
"Captain! Scanners are saying the grimm have nearly doubled in number."
'That doesn't make sense, the only possible way is if…' as if she had a revelation, Captain Beau went directly to the man who spoke. "What size was the 'Great' that we picked up Rog?"
Going back to the past readings, Rog replied "according to the readings, it was about 30-40 meters in length and 20-30 meters in approximated wingspan."
'An 'Elder' Nevermore is at least more than double that size, so even if the scanners were wrong, it couldn't be off by that much.' Going along this line of thought, she opened her mouth to speak again.
"Captain! The Murder's about to launch their feathers!"
Cursing, Beau started giving orders again. "Prepare evasive maneuvers, and I want the guns primed, once those birds let loose, it's the best time to fire on them." Thinking for a moment she spoke again, this time into a small earpiece. "Rye, what's the hold up?! I wanted you up top yesterday!"
"Beau, sweetie, what did I tell you"
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"You can't rush perfection"
Atop the airship, Rye could be seen, attached to the ship with grav dust and some sort of rope. Hefting his weapon, a modified D.M.R, with lines of pulsating red running across it, scoping towards the flock, it began to hum and glow at the muzzle. Coalescing into a small speck atop it, Rye pulled the trigger, and with a sound similar to shattering glass and shrieking metal, a beam shot out.
The shot struck true, and with a flash, it disintegrated at least a third of the flock, the rest scattering from the shockwaves.
"I stopped them from launching their feathers for now, how long until we're home free?" While waiting for a response, Rye began to fiddle with his rifle, causing the pulsating lines to dim down.
"10-15 minutes until we get in range of air support from Vale," after a moment of silence from the captain, while Rye was taking the occasional shot at the bigger Nevermore, she continued. "From our readings, the big grimm near us is a 'Great', but the amount of birds on us does not make sense, considering how close we are to Vale, unless…"
"Unless they've spawned near us" finished Rye. Lowering his gun as though in thought, and staring at the Murder of Nevermore, he realized a small detail. The majority of Nevermore that were approaching the ship came from the sky, and while that itself makes sense, it was less of them floating down, and more of them quite literally falling until they could get their wings under control. Swearing, he made to reply, but just before he could.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT"
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"BRACE FOR IMPACT"
With a very loud banging noise, the ship suddenly got rocked, and in the bridge, system alarms started to go off due to the damage.
"Damage report!"
"We took a hit to the starboard side, two turrets are completely offline and one of the secondary engines is damaged"
"Damn! Rog, what the hell did we get slammed by, and why did we not get a warning?"
Sending up reports to the Captain's chair, Rog explained as much as he could. "Well, the reason the systems didn't say anything was that what hit us was nowhere near the ship until it dived from atop us, and the speed it did dive us with didn't give the system much time to process. Doesn't help that the scanners were aimed towards the Murder either, though the camera managed to pick up what it was though, and captain, that doesn't look like a Nevermore."
Looking through the reports and staring at the image, her eyes widened. What she was looking at was Mutant-class grimm, it had a similar shape as a Nevermore, but where they looked more avian, this one was reptilian like while still having reptilian features. And while Mutants were dangerous due to how different they fought than ordinary grimm, the true reason they're so dangerous to colonies, was their ability to spawn more grimm directly from their bodies.
"Bran, contact Vale, send them the image and inform them of the Mutant."
"Beau! What in the name of God was that!?"
Taking a moment to send the image to the huntsman, she replied. "That was a Mutant hitting us, glad to see you held on."
"Gonna take a bit more than that to knock me off. Please tell me Vale's sending support though, if it's a Mutant, I definitely do not have enough dust to kill it."
Looking towards Bran, and getting confirmation and the time, Beau took a moment to respond. "ETA in 5-10 minutes with air support."
"Well, If I could get a clear shot at it, I could get a tracker on it, could hit it with some ice to slow it down, maybe cripple it if I get a good shot."
"Try if you can, it doesn't seem to attack often though, seems to prefer spawning than fighting, focus on the Murder behind us."
"Yes ma'am"
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"It's okay, you're mommy's gonna be okay alright?" When the ship had been struck from.. something, it caused the passengers to panic a lot more, some of them being yanked in their seats, fortunately, everyone had buckled themselves in, and no one was launched away.
"B-But, she's hurt and i-i-it's all my f-f-fault!" Sadly, the lady near Jaune had been caught in a bad position, trying to comfort her scared daughter, and ended up hitting her head on the wall next to them, causing her to be knocked unconscious and making her daughter even more scared.
"It will be just fine okay, I'll help your mom right now, just calm down, deep breaths." Jaune then took a gamble and got out of his seat, moved in front of the lady and took hold of her shoulders, he began to concentrate. From what Jaune has been able to figure out, the pulse of aura had an effect of giving a small heal to the person used on, though the pulse didn't send the same amount everywhere, sending more towards injuries than unharmed areas. Jaune was able to reverse engineer the technique just moments earlier, though he wasn't able to reproduce the calming effect Ren had.
Once he gathered enough aura on his hands, he sent it onto the lady, making her momentarily have a glow come off her. Leaning back from the mother, he looked around, and seeing that no-one needed any attention, went back to his seat. "Your mom's going to be just fine, okay? All she needs is a bit of sleep, can you be a brave girl and stay calm for her?"
"Y-yeah, I can be brave. Thank you mister." The girl quickly nodded her head, then just held onto her mom's hand. 'Okay, made a little girl calm down, healed the mother of said girl, and no longer will I be prey to motion sickness. So far so good.'
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"Beau, have the scanners focus on looking for the Mutant, I'm only going to have one chance to hit him with the tracker before help gets here"
"Right, we already got pings, seems like it'll be coming behind us from above, should be a clear shot." Nodding to himself, he adjusted his rifle, causing the lines of fire red to vanish, and a light blue color began flowing through. "From what I could figure out, the thing seems to like having it's minions do the chasing, but when I took out a good chunk of it's flock, that's when it struck." Thinking to himself for a moment, he came up with a plan. "Right, could you stop shooting at the flock, once they group up close again, and that's when you should fire, I'd say it'll bring out the big boy."
"And that's when you'll fire then? We could do that, you won't get a second chance though, can't let the Murder get to big." After Beau replied, the turrets stopped firing and after a moment, the nevermore began grouping up as well as speeding up, likely thinking that their prey was weak.
Rye began aiming in the general direction new Nevermore were coming from, roughly the same direction Beau had told him. His entire body seemed to glow a wheat brown color, and he did not make a single move, almost as if he was frozen.
The Murder grouped up, as close as possible, screeching madly as they approached the ship. And that's when the turrets began shooting, pumping rounds as fast as they could, catching more than a third of the Nevermore off guard.
"Rye! The Mutant is beginning its approach!"
Without a sound, besides the flapping of its wings, the grimm began its rapid approach. While it still had the base look of Nevermore, along with the feathers they're known for, the main difference lay in its head. Instead of the avian shape, it had a reptilian head, along with two additional limbs, though they were shorter than the two at the back.
Once it emerged from the cloud cover, that's when Rye began moving. He rapidly turned towards the grimm, his gun glowing brightly at the muzzle, this time an icy blue, and fired. The Mutant was struck just below its left wing, and suddenly that wing was covered in ice, causing it to screech in pain while it lost control of its flight. When it began falling, Rye shot once again, this time what seemed to be an ordinary shot, but was truthfully the tracker used by Hunters, landing his shot.
"Even if it survives the fall, I doubt it'll be in fighting condition. I'm sending you the tracker coordinates, and it should be safe flying from here."
"Right, come back inside, the support from Vale has arrived. Apparently they've got a big shot huntress to take care of the Mutant."
Confirming, Rye began making his way inside, just as bullheads flew past the airship, firing on the Murder. While two began flying down towards where the Mutant fell towards.
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"The Grimm has been dealt with, clear skies from here to our destination."
Everyone became celebratory, most just smiling, with a few loudly cheering with the people they traveled with. Jaune just comforted Lili, the child he sat near. Thankfully, the girl's mom began to wake, causing the kid to start hugging her.
"Mommy! You're okay, I was so scared when you got hurt and it was all my fault but then mister green guy made you glow and said you were all better again!"
'Mister green guy?' Jaune was a tad confused, but ultimately put it down as child antics.
The mother thanked Jaune, and insisted on repaying him, but he turned it down, insisting it was the right thing to do. Then the windows, covered with metal while the grimm were chasing the ship, began to open, showing a sprawling city, with a castle overlooking everything from atop a cliff.
"Ladies and gentlemen, let me be the first to welcome you to Vale. We'll be landing in a few moments, there'll be medics at the landing zone if anyone needs attention. I wish you all luck." And just like that, Jaune had made it to the next chapter in his life, his future uncertain, but his heart firm and his mind steeled.
And we have arrived at Vale, wooo. I didn't really show Jaune much here because, well, he couldn't do anything in this case. His thoughts will be shown a lot more now that we're back on the ground, though there's still 2 chapters left till Beacon, I want to do some minor world building (Or at least try my best). And yeah, hope you guys have a nice one, I'll see you in the next one.