I think you should know where this chapter is going. I for one am really excited about this chapter, and I'm looking forward to writing about the fallout.
A couple life things for me – first, my grandfather's getting a bypass next Wednesday, so I'm rushing up to visit him this weekend. Second, I had a nest of baby robins right outside my door. I'm talking take two steps out, reach out, and touch some baby birbs close. I say had because they just left the nest today.
It's late, I'm tired, so here you go. Can't wait to see what the reviews look like. Thanks for giving me those, btw. Also, omake's back. Yay!
Chapter Twenty: Breach
Beta: HybridAlabaster
"Everyone, get up. It's an emergency."
He rolled all three of his teammates out of bed. They glared at him as they rubbed sore backs and knuckled sleep out of their eyes.
"What the hell is this for?" Russell asked. "New torture from Goodwitch?"
"Weiss just called," Cardin said. "Vale is in danger."
Sky was the first to register what Cardin had said. His eyes widened, and his hands tightened around his halberd.
"Grimm?" he asked.
That snapped the others out of their drowsiness. Russell scrambled for his daggers, nearly cutting himself in the process, while Dove buckled on his sword with fumbling fingers.
"I don't know," Cardin said, "But I can't imagine what else it would be."
Professor Goodwitch had given him her Scroll number yesterday. As a tribute to Yang, he had switched the 'w' with a 'b'. He selected the contact and waited for her to pick up.
"This better be important," she snapped.
"Weiss just called. I couldn't hear anything since the signal was weak, but she shouldn't have any service, should she?"
Goodwitch had put it together faster than his teammates had. "Meet me at the Bullheads. I'll get us a pilot."
Russell rummaged in his packs and pulled out strips of jerky. They chewed on them as they ran for the docks, weapons in hand. Ozpin called over the intercom for all resident teams to mobilize, but with all the departures yesterday, that only left a handful of patrol teams at Vale.
Glynda arrived five minutes after they did. Her hair was a tangled mess, and her glasses were crooked. A Bullhead pilot ran behind her, puffing and out of breath.
"Get on, quickly!" she shouted at them.
The Bullhead lurched through the air as the pilot struggled to keep his eyes open. They circled over the south-east corner of the city as Glynda looked for a place to land.
"Did she say where she was?" Goodwitch asked.
"All I got was static," Cardin answered. "I'll try calling her again."
The call went straight to Blake's voicemail. Cardin left a quick message telling her to call him back and put his Scroll away.
"Can you try calling Oobleck?" Cardin asked.
Glynda shook her head. "Already tried. We'll have to scout the area until we find them."
"Or whatever they called about," Dove added.
As they scoured the area, the Bullhead played an evacuation warning. Sleepy-eyed citizens fled down the streets clutching bags of food and holding the hands of children.
"This better not be a prank," Professor Goodwitch said after a few minutes. "There will be serious consequences if this proves to be a false alarm."
As if on cue, a loud explosion boomed off to their right, followed by a concussive blast of air that knocked the Bullhead sideways. Without waiting for orders, the pilot turned the Bullhead towards the cloud of smoke rising in the early morning sky.
The source of the smoke was a courtyard circled by small shops and restaurants. A gaping hole sat in the sidewalk, and a couple dozen Grimm rushed out. A flash of white and yellow held back the tide of darkness, blasting it back with shards of ice and gouts of fire.
The pilot hovered over the teeming mass of Grimm. Cardin nodded to his team, and together, they jumped out the side doors. Cardin angled himself so he drifted towards a Beowolf, raised his mace, and swung it down at the base of its neck. It crunched beneath the impact, and he drifted through it as its body dissolved into black motes. A Creep sprinted at him, snapping and snarling as its feet scratched up the pavement, but he smashed its jaw with a backhanded swing of his mace.
He looked around for his next opponent, but the Grimm were all gone. Yang and Weiss panted, struggling to stay on their feet, while Goodwitch floated down towards them from the Bullhead.
"What happened?" the Professor asked.
Yang pointed at the hole. "Ruby's still in there," she panted. "Have to save her." She took a step towards the hole and fell to one knee. Goodwitch stooped and helped her back up.
"You're going back to Beacon." She waved for the pilot to land. Once the Bullhead touched down, she guided Yang on board, but she clutched at the railing, refusing to step inside.
"No, can't leave. She's still in there!"
"I will handle it. You need to get back to Beacon and get a doctor." To the pilot, she said, "Make sure it happens."
The man nodded and helped Goodwitch pull her aboard. Weiss followed without protest and stared at Cardin before the doors closed.
Once they were gone, Goodwitch studied the hole in the ground. Without turning towards them, she said, "The four of you, remain out here. I will get Ruby out of there."
She stepped forward, but Cardin put a hand on her shoulder. "Ruby's not the only missing one. Blake wasn't with them."
Goodwitch nodded. "Then I will get them both."
"And how will you fight if you have to carry them?" Cardin asked. He looked at the gaping hole in the street. The smell of spent Dust and decay wafted from it. "Not to mention, how will we seal the tunnels if you get stuck down there?"
She turned towards him with an incredulous look on her face. "Are you volunteering to rescue them?"
Cardin looked back at his teammates. Sky blanched, and Russell looked uneasily at the hole. Dove's shoulders straightened, and his hand went to his sword.
"Don't get me wrong, I'd rather stay out here and enjoy the sunlight," he said, "But I'm not letting this city get torn apart by Grimm." Just as he saw appreciation and respect touch Goodwitch's face, he added, "Not to mention, rushing into danger and rescuing my fellow students would do a lot for my public image." He smiled as the happiness curdled on Goodwitch's face.
"If that's what you're determined to do, then I will escort you down there." She adjusted her glasses. "It is far too dangerous for a first-year team to enter a Grimm-infested cave by themselves."
Professor Goodwitch led the way in, stepping down the crumpled roof into an old train engine. As Cardin clambered down, the smell of blood hit his nose, fresh, cutting through the rank odor of older death. He looked down and saw a spray of red droplets splashed across the wooden floor. He set his palms on the cold, wrinkled steel of the roof and swung himself through the hole.
He feared to find Blake there, but instead, he found Torchwick. His glassy eyes stared through him, and his coat was dark red. He had the conductor's radio in his left hand. Glynda tipped his head back. There were two gashes in his neck, a shallow, but fatal cut in his jugular, and a deeper slash that split his throat in half. His cane rested against the far wall, and Torchwick's bloody prints were on the handle.
"This wasn't the Grimm," Goodwitch said. "The cuts are too straight."
Russell hit the floor next to him and nearly slipped on the blood. "Shit," he said, "Think Team RWBY got him?"
"Maybe," Cardin said. He knelt to examine the cuts. They were too narrow for Ruby's scythe, too wide for Weiss' rapier, and not split-like-a-melon enough to be one of Yang's haymakers.
Once Sky and Dove made it down, Goodwitch set aside the corpse and opened the door behind it. Cardin stepped through the blood after her, with Russell at his side. Sky gingerly stepped around the pool and leapt through the door.
Once they were all through, Goodwitch studied the entrance to the cave above them. With a flick of her baton, chunks of concrete floated to the edges and melded to the edge of the hole, narrowing the entrance until it would barely accommodate two people standing shoulder to shoulder.
The cave had smooth walls, and the floor was flat and split by two rails. Freight cars had fishtailed off the tracks, spilling a couple Atlesian Paladins and several large canisters of refined Dust. The snarls and howls of Grimm echoed off the cavern walls, but they were distant. A human scream pierced the muffled din, but it was too baritone for the missing team members or their instructor.
"The White Fang must be further in," Goodwitch said. "The Grimm are slowing down to hunt them."
"The White Fang are here?" Cardin asked. "How can you tell?"
Goodwitch frowned at him. Half her face was hidden in the darkness down the tunnel. After several paces, she said, "That was a Dust explosion. Grimm couldn't have done it, so that leaves the White Fang."
Cardin nodded. He walked over to one of the Paladins and brushed dust off its window.
"Do you think we can get these working?" He pried it open and hopped inside, but when he tapped the console, all that came on the screen was a crackling blue background with jumbled white code.
Sky came and took a closer look. "The circuits are fried. Must've been some Lightning Dust in that explosion."
Sky and Russell helped Cardin out of the Paladin. As he brushed dust off himself, Cardin asked, "Were the White Fang really stealing all that Dust just for this?"
Professor Goodwitch looked farther down the tunnel. "I'm guessing they set off multiple explosions to lure the Grimm down the tunnel. What I don't understand is why there aren't more here."
They walked on. Another few-hundred feet down the tunnel, the path forked a couple ways. They shone lights down the branching paths, checking for Grimm, but they were empty.
"I don't think we have to worry about being surrounded," Sky said in a whisper. "Any Grimm near the blast would've been drawn out." He still stayed well away from the dark tunnels.
Cardin shone his own light down a tunnel. He caught a glimpse of a humanoid figure staggering in the darkness. Yelling for them to follow him, Cardin approached the figure, but he stopped short. The light of his Scroll revealed desiccated skin, a skeletal frame, and sunken, hollow eye sockets. It held a rusty sword in one hand that scraped along the cavern floor.
Cardin raised his mace and brought it down hard on the corpse's head. The skull broke apart like wet clay, and black motes seeped out of the bloodless wound.
Professor Goodwitch took a sharp breath as she examined the corpse. "Let's move on. We have to find Ruby before the Grimm."
As they left the side tunnel and rounded a corner, they came upon what looked like an embryonic train station. The tracks ran on one side of a hollowed-out box, with a raised platform next to them. An assortment of cracked boulders littered the room, and at the far end, rocks lay heaped on the rails, blocking all but a man-sized hole at the top.
The boulders looked odd. They stood too tall, too smooth, too skinny in places, or too squat and fat, all different in shape but vaguely cast from the same mold. He walked up to one and circled around it. He stopped when he reached the other side, the side facing the cave-in.
The Beowolf's other features had crumbled away, but the skeletal mask, though cracked down the middle, had the unmistakable ridges and spikes that, even made of stone and aged smooth, made him shiver. He ran a finger along the mask and came away with gray dust on his fingers. Long grooves ran down the mask where his fingers had dug into it.
There was a loud whoomph, like a rug hitting a floor, as Russell kicked over one of the statues. Gray dust was smudged up to his knee, and he stumbled back as the dust cloud hit his face.
"Where did these come from?" he asked, waving his hand in front of his nose.
Sky examined one of the larger shapes, likely an Ursa from its rotundity. He scraped off a sliver with his halberd and rubbed it between his fingers. "Earth Dust. For it to be this soft, it's probably from when Mount Glenn fell ten years ago."
Dove pointed at a petrified Creep on the tracks. "The train would've run them over."
"Mixed with Ice Dust, maybe? If the ice melted, no, it'd be too soggy. Sublimate it with Fire?" Sky scratched his head. "Crazy things happen when you mix Dust."
Professor Goodwitch frowned at the statues. As she strode past them, her eyes caught a flash of red in the rubble pile. She yelled to Cardin and ran towards it. Stone by stone, they shifted the pile, working from the top, taking care to put their weight on the sides, until they unearthed Ruby. Her eyes were closed, and she had Crescent Rose in a white-knuckled grip. A bloody scrape covered her forehead, and puncture wounds in her ribs stained her dress a darker shade of red.
Goodwitch put a finger to her throat. "She's alive. We have to get her out of here now."
"What about the other one?" Cardin asked.
The Professor scanned the station. "There's no time. The Grimm will be here any moment." She looked up at the rocks. "The cave-in will slow down the Creep and Beowolf, but a Deathstalker would smash right through it."
"So, you're giving up?" Cardin asked. "I think we've got enough time."
The Professor looked down at Ruby. "She needs immediate medical attention. We can't afford to wait until we find Blake."
Cardin turned towards Sky and asked for his halberd. When he got it, Cardin activated his Semblance, and a tingle crept up his arms. He tried to bend the halberd in half, but it wouldn't budge. Instead, he took one of the boulders that had fallen in, set the halberd on top of it like a lever, and picked up another rock. While he stood on one end, he put all his Semblance behind the second rock and brought it down just below the blade. The halberd snapped in half, leaving two rods of roughly equal length. Spearing Dove's and Russell's coats on both sticks, he made a makeshift stretcher. Together, they gently rolled Ruby onto the stretcher, face-down. To make sure she stayed on, Cardin tied the sleeves of the shirts around her shoulders and waist.
"Sky and Russell, take an end. Dove, go with them and fend off any stray Grimm. Goodwitch and I will find Blake."
They didn't need to be told twice. Dove ran ahead, holding up his Scroll, while Russell and Sky trotted behind him.
Cardin pulled out his Scroll as the light faded. Goodwitch watched him while she wiped dust off her glasses.
"So, what do you suggest?"
Cardin gestured towards the rock pile. "We would've seen Blake by now if she was on this side of the cave-in. Either she's under there, or she's on the other side."
"And if she's under, she would suffocate before we find her," Goodwitch finished.
"Couldn't you move this whole pile?" Cardin asked.
"I could, but I can't see the individual rocks, so I might crush her by accident." She took out her own Scroll and brought up an Aura reading. "I have to save some Aura to seal the breach as well."
Cardin checked his own readings. Splitting the spear in two took a tenth of what he had.
"Let's check the other side. If we don't see any sign of her, we'll shore up this pile and catch up with Russell."
Goodwitch nodded. Cardin went first, clambering up stone by stone. The pile shifted beneath him, but he managed to reach the hole at the top. He pulled the Professor up and examined the other side with her. The light of his Scroll swept across the cave. Below them was one head of a King Taijitu. The other half of the serpent was buried beneath the rubble.
"Whatever turned them to stone probably caused the cave-in as well," Cardin pointed out. "They must've thrown every crate of Dust they had on that train." But he had a moment's doubt. "If it was a train car, where was the wreckage?"
Professor Goodwitch looked down at the petrified Grimm and frowned. "I don't think we're going to find Blake. We better leave."
Gunshots rang down the tunnel. Both of them recognized the sound. Cardin slid down the pile, plowing through the Taijitu's head, and sprinted towards the gunfire. Glynda followed at his heels, baton raised.
Both of Blake's legs were trapped beneath a boulder the size of a car. Blood seeped out from under the stone and pooled around Blake's waist. Her face was pale where it wasn't covered with dust, tears ran down her cheeks, and her arm trembled as she took aim down the tunnel. A Grimm yelped as a spray of bullets tore it apart.
He put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and pointed a gun at him.
"Cardin? What are you doing down here?" She furrowed her brow, as if trying to remember something. "You got my call?"
Professor Goodwitch raised an eyebrow at him.
"You used Weiss' Scroll?" Cardin asked, feigning innocence. "I couldn't tell who was on the other end."
Blake blinked at him for a second, then her eyes went to Professor Goodwitch. "Yes," she said hesitantly, "Mine's dead."
Goodwitch gave them a flat stare and deadpanned, "So, in the middle of a pitched battle, you asked Weiss for her Scroll so you could call Cardin."
Blake grit her teeth, and some color returned to her face. "Weiss was a little busy with a chainsaw-wielding maniac. She flung her Scroll at me and told me to call him."
Goodwitch sighed and shook her head. "You do realize that sounds a little far-fetched."
Cardin shrugged. "It was worth a shot. Now, are we going to get her out from under there, or are we going to keep bickering about who called who?"
The Professor studied the rock and tapped it with her baton. "I don't think I can move it. It's too heavy."
"Can you at least pull up on it? I'll roll it off of her."
Goodwitch nodded and whipped her baton forward. The rock shifted and Blake groaned, but her legs remained trapped. Cardin activated his Semblance and put his hand on the rock. The moment his fingers touched it, the rock shot upwards. His fingers slid off of it. Goodwitch gasped as the rock plummeted back down on Blake's legs. She howled in pain and dug her fingers into the floor, leaving long scratches with her nails.
"What the hell was that?" Goodwitch asked.
"How am I supposed to know? Let me try pushing it first."
Cardin put his hand on the boulder. Blake groaned and shifted again, trying to wriggle free. This time, when Goodwitch lifted the boulder, Cardin moved with it, pushing it aside and letting it fall a safe distance away from Blake's bruised, bloodied legs.
Blake pushed herself up one of the walls, struggled to stand, but her left leg gave out. There was a puncture wound in her lower thigh, and everything from her knees to her ankles was a patchwork of swollen black and blues streaked with darkening red.
Activating his Semblance, Cardin scooped one arm under her legs and caught her shoulders as she fell. She hissed, but she didn't squirm in his grasp. She felt light as a pillow. He passed her his glowing Scroll, which she held in her left hand. The other had the gun pointed behind them. He turned towards Goodwitch and said, "I'll go on ahead. Could you delay the Grimm a bit?"
The Professor pushed up her glasses. The might've glinted if they weren't in total darkness. "If I couldn't keep a pack of Grimm at bay, how could I be expected to teach the next generation of Hunters and Huntresses?"
Cardin rolled his eyes and went up the pile. It was slow going with Blake in his arms, and he nearly slipped a few times. At the top, he had to nearly double over to scrape through. He started down slow, but when a rock slipped out from under him, he dug in his heels and slid down the pile. Blake grunted as she got bounced around.
"Could you be more careful?" she asked. "I think my leg's broken."
"You're welcome," Cardin snapped back. He looked around at the Grimm statues as he walked. "What happened, anyways? Why are all the Grimm like that?"
Blake craned her neck to stare at a stone Creep as they passed. She tapped it with her gun, and it fell apart.
"I don't know. We were fighting this girl who was with Torchwick, Neo, I think it was, and a bunch of Grimm showed up. A King Taijitu lunged at me from the ceiling, but then there was a flash of light. The rocks fell, and I was left with Neo on the other side." She looked down at her leg. "She stabbed me, then made that rock fall from the ceiling and left."
"So, no train car?" Cardin asked.
"No, the train was long gone." She looked down the tunnel. "That explosion, was that…"
"Yeah, it was. Weiss and Yang made it out, and my teammates have Ruby."
"And Professor Oobleck? He went back to disable the Paladins."
Cardin looked back at the tunnel. "He's fine. Don't worry about him."
"What about the Grimm?"
Cardin gestured to the statues. "A few got through, but we mopped them up. If it wasn't for you guys, there'd be a full-blown Grimm invasion right about now." He looked down at her. She struggled to keep her head up, but she was looking at him. He looked at Gambol Shroud, held limply in her hand, and saw the blood staining the blade.
"You killed Torchwick, didn't you?"
She looked away. "I panicked. I don't think I was going to do it, but I asked him how many lives I'd save if I killed him. I think I scared him. He called for Neo over the radio, and I panicked when I heard the door open."
"You did the right thing."
Her ears drooped lower. "No, I didn't. This whole mess was because of me. I was the one that got us on this mission, and I didn't tell Ruby or the others anything about it. Ruby wandered off in the middle of the night for a bathroom break and got ambushed and captured by the White Fang. When we went to rescue her, Torchwick had them start the train, then I killed him and that girl nearly killed both of us." Fresh tears ran down her face, leaving lines in the gray dust. "If I had just told them what was going on, none of this would've happened. We could've snuck in and stop them from running the train."
"And if you had told them, you might have never found the White Fang in time, and Grimm and Paladins would've poured into the streets without warning. Not to mention, Torchwick would still be alive. You can't know how everything would have turned out."
She looked as if she was about to argue, but she stopped when they heard footsteps behind them. Professor Goodwitch flung her baton at the pile, sealing up the top, and ran past them.
"Run Cardin! Get the hell out of here!"
Before he could ask what was coming, a sharp crack came from behind him. Blake stiffened in her arms and fired wildly behind them. Cardin, though tempted to look back, sprinted after the Professor. He barreled through the Grimm statues, kicking up large dust clouds in his wake, but he lagged behind the Professor as they left the station.
There was a nauseating clacking and slithering sound behind him, echoed hundreds of times over, punctuated by a high-pitched screech like a chainsaw scraped against a blackboard. The noise grew steadily closer with each step. His arms burned, and he felt his Aura fading out of his extremities. His skin felt chilled and clammy without the protection, but he pushed more Aura into his arms, turning them into throbbing coals. Blake and his armor grew heavier, and each breath was a stab of hot iron in his chest, but he ran on.
When he saw the light above the crumpled remains of the train engine, he risked a glance behind him. He wished he hadn't.
The walls writhed with a teeming mass of white carapace, spindly black legs, and beady red eyes. On the floor, barreling towards him, was a squat, fat beetle the size of a Bullhead, with jaws that could snap Cardin in half.
Cardin would've screamed, if he had any breath left in his body. Lights danced in front of his eyes, but he could see the train engine. Its roof had been folded into a makeshift staircase and set in front of the hole. His feet slammed against the ground as he raced towards freedom. When he reached the stair, the metal bent beneath him, but held. Step by step, he struggled up the stairs, groaning underneath the growing weight in his arms and on his chest. Fresh air blew down from the opening, filling his lungs, reinvigorating him, coaxing him forward for another sweet breath.
Something sharp and sticky dug into his back. He stumbled, and Blake's head struck the stair. Blood gushed out of a wound in the side of her head, and her eyes fluttered shut.
There was a sudden numbing sensation that spread out from that spot on his back. He sank to his knees, crushed beneath Blake and his armor. Shuffling forward with his head and knees, he managed another stair, but his own body grew too heavy to move. He mentally yelled at his limbs, ordering them to move, but he was powerless against the force that sapped them of their strength.
He looked up, and saw Cinder's glowing, orange eyes, her black silhouette framed by sunlight. She had her bow drawn and aimed right at him. Her arrow whistled past his shoulder, brushed against Blake's head, and snapped the cord behind him. The beetle bellowed, a clacking, whining wail that nearly split Cardin's head. Strength flooded back into him, and with a roar, he ran up the last steps.
The moment he made it through, a pink-shaped blur the size of his fist raced past him and disappeared into the cave. Goodwitch waved her baton, and the last of the hole vanished behind him. He felt an explosion in the soles of his feet.
Nora waved at him, holding a smoking Magnhild in one hand. Jaune screamed Blake's name, ran forward and took Blake from Cardin's arms, setting her down gently on the street. Tears streamed down his face as he begged for a medic. He didn't seem to notice the white light that had enveloped Blake.
Cardin's own teammates ran forward and helped him into a sitting position. He watched as the wound in Blake's head knitted shut and the bones in her leg shifted back in place.
"What the hell was that?" Russell asked.
"His Semblance, I guess," Cardin said.
"What?" He stared at Jaune, and shook himself. "No, not that, the bettles."
Sky, visibly pale and glancing at the spot where the hole had been, said, "I've never seen or heard of anything like it."
Cardin wheezed as he made a sentence one word at a time. "If I'm ever about to do anything that stupid again, please break my nose."
Dove grinned and patted his sword. "Will do, captain. Nice work in there."
As he paused for another breath, he heard Jaune ask, "Blake, are those ears?"
He sat up just enough to see Blake. Her ribbon had fallen off, sliced in two.
Cinder twirled an arrow in one hand and smiled at him.
Omake: The Doctor's Adventure
Professor Port hummed his heroic theme to himself as he strolled through the Grimm-infested caves of Mount Glenn. The lyrics changed in his head – sometimes, it was fifty Beowolves, sometimes a thousand Ursa, what kind of hero would keep count over something so petty as the number of legions of Elder Grimm they had killed?
Light from up ahead in the cave caught his eye. He turned a corner, and saw Doctor Oobleck sitting at an old wooden table. He had a set of poker cards in his hand, two eights, a pair of tens, and an ace, and there was a pile of stones about four feet tall directly behind him. A corgi sat on his left, with its own set of cards in its paws. Going round the circle, there was a Beowolf, an Ursa, a white beetle, a Creep, and a Deathstalker, each with a hand dealt. A set of mismatched mugs filled with steaming coffee sat in front of each player at the table. The Deathstalker sorted its cards with a comically huge pincer, while the Beowolf scratched its head and counted the rocks they were using for poker pieces.
After a moment, the Beowolf slid all its chips forward. The Ursa and Beetle folded, the Deathstalker added its own chips to the pile, and Oobleck raised them all from the pile behind his seat. The corgi had already folded, and the Deathstalker matched Oobleck. With a flourish of cards, Oobleck took the whole pile, tossing them behind him leaving the Deathstalker and Beowolf to find more rocks while the next hand was dealt.
"Most excellently played!" Doctor Oobleck told the Grimm, "But my two pairs wins out against a pair of kings."
Professor Port harrumphed, and Oobleck turned around. "Peter! You're just in time for the next round! Have a seat, and I'll deal you in."
"Bartholomew, the city is under attack and your students are in danger. We have to go."
Doctor Oobleck took a long swallow of coffee. "Couldn't it wait five minutes? Come on, before the coffee gets cold."
"Bartholomew…"
The Doctor sighed and turned his thermos into a club. "I'm terribly sorry about this, but I have a job to do. It was a pleasure playing poker with you all."
He whistled, and the corgi leapt in front of him. A swing from his club sent the corgi around the table like a fiery pinball, ricocheting off of each Grimm in a circle. The dog tumbled to a stop at the Doctor's feet and barked happily at them as smoke rose from its fur.
Professor Oobleck walked away as the Grimm dissolved into black motes. "I hope you're happy. That was an excellent research opportunity, lost."
"Old friend, you know there's only one thing that makes me happy."
Oobleck smiled. "Slaying Grimm and laying women?"
Professor Port hefted his axe. "You said it."