Team JNPR
The Promethean's entrance was anticlimactic to say the least. The appearance of the Promethean on the radar was very brief before it too was jammed. The five of them got ready for some sort of surprise attack on their location, some sort of explosive or close quarters combat, anything that would throw them off.
And despite their anticipation of something surprising, they still were surprised when the Promethean simply walked out of the shadow of a hangar and started walking casually towards them.
Jaune watched his own creation approach, feeling curiously detached. The whole sequence of events seemed so surreal.
The figure stopped 20 feet out. He bowed deeply at them and then straightened up. "Seems like I found you Jaune!"
"It seems you have, Promethean, and quite a search it must have been. Now I don't know if you know this, but you are currently standing chest deep in an Atlas military base. They may not know that you are currently here, but once they do you'll be ripped apart." Jaune projected as much confidence as he could.
"Speaking of which, how did you get in here without alerting the guards?" Pyrrha leaned forwards. "This is a high priority base; the security is some of the best in the world."
The figure just laughed, a harsh grating, warbly, discordant sound. "Oh, but so is Beacon's."
"I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"Ask Jaune, I'm sure he knows what I'm talking about. Don't you, Jaune?" The Promethean's tone was innocent, but Jaune could tell the underlying malice.
"Jaune?" Pyrrha turned her head at him. "What does he mean?"
"I snuck out of Beacon to explore." Well, sometimes I did it in the body standing opposite us. Omission isn't lying is it? "Don't see how sneaking out of Beacon has to do with sneaking in here."
"If you can leave somewhere, you can always come back. I quite literally drove right in through the front gate." C shrugged. "Wasn't that hard in all honesty."
"And how many did you kill?" Jaune knew there was more. The soldiers wouldn't have let him in that easily.
"Don't know, lost count at 20." He sounded like he had just given Jaune the weather.
The rest of his team gasped. Jaune simply buried his face in his hands. "Goddamnit. Are you serious? Why?"
"To kill you of course. You are too much of a threat."
"Who commanded you to?"
"Oh no, not that easily. You'll figure it out eventually if you survive long enough. Now, let's start before I get bored. I hate fighting bored, ruins the fun." The Promethean unsheathed his sword and turned it in the sunlight.
Jaune turned to look at his teammates, only to flinch a little to see Pyrrha right next to him.
"Jaune, there is something wrong, something dangerous about him. Besides the fact he killed innocent soldiers and now is trying to kill us, I can barely feel any aura coming from him."
"I can feel it too. Life in general feels warm and welcoming, but he feels like the Grimm, auraless." Ren walked up. He looked disturbed at the news.
"Soulless." Pyrrha looked at the figure, who stood there unmoving. She frowned and turned back to them.
"Nora, Penny, how long until we get communications again?" Jaune called over to the two who were huddled around Penny's scroll.
"No idea Jaune. I don't know what he did but we don't have any communication with the network towers. He seems to be using a jammer as all I'm picking up is loud static. Trying to counter his jam will be incredibly difficult with this equipment but I'll try my best." Penny pressed a button and a panel on the panel slid open to reveal what looked to Jaune as the inner workings of the wireless beacon of the post.
She started to rearrange wires, consulting her scroll every so often. There was no need to physically look at the screen, but Penny preferred to act like a normal person around others.
Jaune turned back to the Promethean to see him standing still, acting as if he had all the time in the world. Jaune leveled his sword at center mass and fired the pre-charged railgun. The shot tore away from the barrel, leaving a yellow smear of molten metal and ionized air in its path.
The Promethean turned and leaned backwards incredibly quickly, watching the projectile go right past him and carve a hole in the asphalt. He straightened up and dusted himself off. "My turn?"
He crouched and leaped straight forwards, sprinting towards the post. Jaune and Pyrrha vaulted over the waist high wall and fell on him, red and white blades gleaming in the light.
The Promethean's blade came up to block Pyrrha's and turn Jaune's away. He used his momentum to roll forwards and leap onto the wall of the outpost. He jumped off it and slashed at Jaune's defenses.
Jaune retreated under the barrage, managing to get his shield up during a very brief lull in the attacks. The Promethean's attacks were lightning fast, a dozen raining down on his shield in a couple seconds. Jaune had no idea how he was managing to do that without tearing his arm off, but he had no time to think.
Pyrrha recovered from her brief surprise at the Promethean's insane speed and threw her shield in a downward arc, distracting the Promethean who produced a shield out of seemingly nowhere.
Jaune noticed this, and hoped that none of his teammates saw the sudden disappearance of the scabbard on the Promethean's waist. It would just lead to awkward questions later on.
The Promethean fought both Pyrrha and him on two sides, blocking Jaune's attacks with his sword and Pyrrha's with his shield. Jaune pressed him, trying to get the Promethean to hold his sword closer to his body.
He must have realized what Jaune was trying to do since he disengaged from the fight and retreated, watching the two of them. Jaune watched him warily, surprised at how much better the Promethean was at fighting than he or even Pyrrha. Simply managing to hold Pyrrha off was no easy task, but to make two of the best fighters at Beacon stay on the defensive for half the battle? Impressive.
Jaune had also detected no aura during their slightly unbalanced duel, which meant that the Promethean was managing to hold their aura-boosted attacks with his strength only.
How the actual hell does he manage to do that? I know for a fact that that body cannot sustain those forces for long without aura. He should know, he made it.
"Well fought Jaune. And you too Pyrrha. Very well done indeed. I did not expect such a response, though I am happy to finally get some opponents I have to work to kill. It's been ages." The Promethean broke the tense silence that had filled the air. He stretched leisurely and relaxed, body language screaming confidence.
Pyrrha seemed mildly shocked that the Promethean knew her name, but hid it well: Jaune barely read it. His theory was correct; the Promethean had managed to crack the body's memories. If Jaune could read Pyrrha's emotions, that meant the Promethean could too, which would lead to awkward situations if the Promethean opened his gob.
"I see you read up on my background Promethean. Not content with simply being business partners, you had to know more."
The Promethean cocked his head and Jaune got the feeling that he was smiling grotesquely behind that visor. Jaune hoped the Promethean would go along with it, if only for giggles. He seemed the type to play with his prey before eating its brains and leaving it to bleed out.
"Yes, that is true. 'Information is Power', and this information was something that everyone was trying to get their hands on. A genius suddenly appearing and taking Vale by storm seemingly overnight? Did your friends never question your…background?"
Jaune looked at Pyrrha out the corner of his eye. He waited to see her reaction, if she would doubt him or trust him completely. To his immense relief her posture immediately grew more resolute.
"I trust my team leader and friend completely. You will die before you try to do anything to him or this team." Pyrrha spun her sword into its javelin form and threw it straight up, slightly forward. The Promethean watched it arc through the air and stretched a hand out casually to catch it. He focused his attention back to the duo in front of him as he waited for the javelin to fall into his hand.
Jaune saw Pyrrha's aura flare slightly. She tensed, which worried Jaune. This tactic was never one they had practiced before and so he didn't know what move would be most effective after Pyrrha did her thing.
Pyrrha threw her shield onto the ground, convex side down. Jaune knew what that meant and leapt to the side as the shield exploded upwards, kicking up a huge dust cloud that covered the area around Pyrrha.
"NORA NOW!" Pyrrha's voice was hard to locate, but the effect of the shout was hard to miss. A bolt of lightning descended from the sky and struck the javelin, that was inches from the conductive metal of the Promethean's suit.
The material was meant to be a Faraday cage to stop the effects of strong electrical fields from hurting him inside the suit. But now it protected the Promethean instead.
The charge flowed harmlessly through the special conducting channels on the surface of the armor and down into the ground. The Promethean grabbed the javelin and smashed Pyrrha as she flew at him from the Dust cloud.
Thermal vision! Goddamit! Jaune cursed himself for not implementing some sort of kill switch for his armor. He cut himself some slack though: how was he supposed to know when his body was going to possessed by an ancient evil?
Pyrrha flew backwards into the side of the outpost, creating a large dent in its side. Jaune shot a flare at the Promethean's feet (a Fire and Wind Dust mixture that took some time and lots of protective suits to get right). The flare should disorient the suit's sensors slightly which gave him enough time to get back to the outpost.
He slammed a Barrier crystal into the ground next to Pyrrha and climbed the wall into the outpost. Penny was still working with the network of the base, trying to coordinate reinforcements. She glanced apologetically at him, which he took to meant the circuits were fried quite damn well.
Nora kneeled on the floor, three spent Shock crystals lying around her. A puddle of vomit lay in the opposite corner. Ren supported her as she swayed in place, a distant look in eyes. Jaune took one Aura crystal from his pouch and tossed it to Ren. Ren nodded his thanks, boosting Nora's aura artificially.
Jaune peered out to see the Promethean with the sword in railgun form, aiming straight at Pyrrha. He fired and the round slammed into the Barrier, transferring all its energy into the translucent blue shield. It dropped to the ground glowing red hot. The Barrier thinned to almost transparency.
Another round slammed into the shield and Jaune threw another precious Barrier crystal down to the ground. This time, an explosive shot ripped the outer shell apart and weakened the newer, inner one slightly.
Ren stood, supporting Nora as she got to her feet, a weak smile on her face. "That strike was almost as large as the pancakes Ren made on my 13th birthday. Did it work? I hope it worked!"
Jaune shook his head no and her smile dropped, replaced by shock then despair. Another explosion rocked the shield, which could hold back only two more shots from the railgun.
Pyrrha seemed to be out for the count, the impact decimating her aura readings. It spoke to the cunning of the Promethean that he used Pyrrha's own aura-boosted momentum to slam her into the wall of the outpost.
Penny was deep in cyberspace, working with the other robots and computers of the base to get any help. If the Promethean had been thorough, it would take Penny ages to even contact another terminal let alone coordinate an attack.
Jaune turned to Ren, the only other fully functioning member of the team and nodded at him. They had drilled for long hours together, trying to get their aura-focused fighting styles to output damage at maximum efficiency. And now was the true test of what they had learned.
Jaune used the last dregs of the Barrier to turn the incoming railgun shot around with a Wind Crystal, and sent it flying back at the Promethean at the speed of a baseball.
Ren leaped into the air, using Wind to dash to the right of the Promethean while firing his dual green submachine guns, fitted with special bullets meant to pierce through armor, weakening it to lateral stress.
Jaune threw a simple frag grenade at the Promethean, who batted it away with his blade. Jaune didn't give him an opportunity to think as he sent two more toward his head, timed to explode at lethal range.
They were batted away, the explosion barely fazing any of the combatants. They were meant to disrupt packs of Beowolves, not Hunters.
Jaune sprinted at the Promethean and swung his sword at his legs, turning his sword at the last moment so that it deflected off the Promethean's shield and towards his head. The sword missed as Jaune's opponent dropped to the ground. Jaune somersaulted over the leg as it swept through the area where Jaune had been a few milliseconds ago.
Bullets pinged off the Promethean's armor though some managed to make their mark. The Promethean paid him little mind, which meant that that particular body didn't contain the memories of the specifics of Ren's abilities. Which was excellent luck. Jaune jumped backwards to dodge the slashes of his opponent's sword. He stayed on the defensive the entire time, leading his possessed clone away from the outpost.
Ren leaped at the Promethean's back, only to jump off the Promethean's shield as it swung around. Jaune used this opportunity to dive headfirst at the Promethean. They crashed to the ground, the metal armors that each wore making it difficult to get an advantage over the other.
The Promethean managed to grab a hold of Jaune's head and heaved, prying him off and sending him flying into the air. Jaune recovered and landed on his feet. He backpedaled to put as much distance between him and the Promethean as possible.
Ren was nowhere to be seen, but the Promethean still looked around subtly, giving Jaune a sense of pride.
"Jaune Arc, a remarkable fight. Better than the scum that faced me earlier. Almost manages to make an inkling of sense why you would support such a weak species. Almost. Now the time for games is over, you don't seem to have any of your wild cards left.
One unconscious, the other almost so. Your very irritating green friend, gone, a fool to attack, a fool to think he would be safe far from here. And now it's just you and your aura versus me and your suit. Your two inventions against each other, three if you count releasing me as creating me.
Now, Jaune Arc. I shall finish what I…" The Promethean couldn't finish his statement due to the two-ton ship that slammed into him from above. Jaune was thrown backwards by the force of the explosion and rolled to a stop.
He gaped at the flaming wreck that lay in the middle of the airfield. There was no trace of the Promethean in the rubble, or for the fight for that matter. Jaune got up to see Penny and Ren running at him carrying Pyrrha and Nora respectively over their shoulders.
A cargo airship fell through the air and half-crashed half-landed 50 feet from him. Jaune stared at it, gaping before turning back to see Penny earnestly pointing at it. Jaune turned and ran to it, throwing the door open to see it empty. Penny ran up and leapt in, taking Pyrrha straight to the back of the ship, with Ren following with Nora.
Jaune leaped in and slammed the door shut, heading to the cockpit. The shit contained a Vertical Take-Off and Landing system which Jaune employed to lift them from the trench the ship's 'landing' approach had carved into the field.
Once in the air, he activated autopilot to take them to Vale before heading to the back of the ship to check on Pyrrha and Nora. He found them in a small medbay that was better suited to be called a closet. It contained a bed, a counter and some chairs with barely any room to move around. Ren sat with Nora on stools in the hallway. Nora sipped from a cup with a blanket around her. They nodded at Jaune as he approached. Jaune lay a hand on Nora's shoulder before heading into the medbay.
Pyrrha lay breathing slowly as Penny fussed with the medical equipment. He tapped on her shoulder and she whirled around, startled.
"Jaune! Are you injured? Do you require any attention?" Penny's eyes widened in concern as she ran tests and tried to scan him for internal injuries. Jaune smiled and pushed the probe away.
"Penny, I'm fine. My aura protected me from whatever I couldn't dodge. Thank you." Jaune waited for Penny to relax before asking the number one question on his mind.
"Penny, what in the actual hell just happened back there?"
Penny looked up slightly guiltily. She played with her hands nervously as she thought up a proper response. "I should have told you what I was planning, but there was no time! The Promethean was an immediate threat and I used the most efficient method of neutralizing it. Did I do something wrong?"
"No, no, no, Penny you did nothing wrong." Jaune had seen the slight self-doubt start to creep into her expression and shut it down as fast as he could. "Just surprised me that's all. How'd you do it?"
"I knew that traditional reinforcement like ground or air support could not feasibly be requested as that would require actual communication. Instead, I scrambled the brains of one of the drone ships flying overhead to make it crash into the Promethean. I also used the drone ship as a relay to hijack this ship to pick us up. It was a round landing but by the reports the shit is giving, it seems to be mostly healthy."
Jaune gaped at her. "How long did it take you to do this?"
"About three seconds."
Jaune smiled and shook his head. "Penny, you are one smart girl, you know that?"
She smiled. "Learned from the best."
Jaune got up and walked out of the small room to go and talk to Ren and Nora. He leaned against the doorframe and waited for one of them to ask one of the million questions he knew would be forthcoming.
Their unwavering loyalty to him had filled him with pride, but Jaune knew that no matter how much they trusted him, he couldn't tell them the truth. Not yet, it would only confuse them and lead to doubt when there should be action. Better to reveal the truth after things had settled down. A war on two fronts is never desirable.
The silence stretched on, though it wasn't a very awkward silence. The three were comfortable with each other, with the latest battle only strengthening their relationship. The engine noise increased slightly as time passed, though that was probably due to a strong headwind, Jaune reasoned.
The noise steadily rose in volume, which started to worry Jaune. Even Nora in her weakened and Aura-fatigued state noticed this anomaly. The hum turned to a roar and Jaune turned to ask Penny what the matter was when the noise reached a peak and suddenly dropped back to what it had been originally.
Jaune raised an eyebrow, about to ask Penny to check and display the exterior sensors when a thump reverberated through the ship.
"Jaune! Something is tearing into the cabling of the ship, right above the cockpit. The video feed and comms from the cockpit are offline, disabling my ability to see what is causing this." Penny's eyes defocused as she focused on the internals of the ship and the information being relayed through them.
Jaune put a hand on his sword hilt and strode towards the front of the ship. If it was a Nevermore, it would be easy to deal with. A Giant Nevermore would be problem however.
Jaune reached the cockpit and pulled the door open. He looked around the room, freezing when he saw a glint of something that retracted through the ceiling leaving behind a thin hole.
That...that's not a claw.
Another glint of something appeared, though it was too dark to see what exactly the object was. Jaune knew that strange creatures of Grimm lived in the area between kingdoms, where there wasn't as much opportunity to hunt humans. Inter-Grimm fighting was the way of life her and some truly horrifying species where rumored to have evolved and to rule here.
Jaune pulled his sword slightly out of the scabbard as he got ready for an attack. The seconds felt like minutes as nothing happened. A loud crack startled him as a portion of the thick-armor plated metal fell into the cockpit. Jaune braced against the sudden pressure differential caused by having a hole in the roof of your airship.
Jaune used a Wind Crystal to deflect the air around him so that he could see clearly. Something dropped into the hole, something human-sized.
Something human shaped.
A cold shiver went down Jaune's back as he recognized the silver glint of the armor of the creature, the relaxed posture. Its body was blacked and had jagged pieces sticking out of it, with a portion of its metallic armor completely sheared off to reveal a torn undersuit and burnt skin underneat. Jaune backed up into the hallway as the humanoid turned a half melted helmet to face Jaune, a maniacal, mutilated smiling face behind the smooth metal that had fused with the raw red flesh.
"It's not that easy to kill me Jaune. Trust me, you've tried plenty of times."
Obligatory AN: What'd you think of the chapter? Anything I can fix? Anything you especially liked? Please review and PM me with this stuff, I love to get them and it helps me write better. Thanks for reading!
