[X] Blake Gaiden: Candle Burns From Both Ends
She could hear growling around her, over the heat. The flames weren't dying down. The opposite, in fact. Things were burning fiercer, hotter, and Blake wiped some sweat from her brow as she crawled herself forward.
She looked back for a moment, to confirm how the flames had spread across the ground. It'd only been a few minutes since she had started crawling away, but the two corpses in the clearing were already burning.
Sienna. Adam. Both of them had died there. Both had died there, so recently. Both were having their remains warped by the flames. By tomorrow, none of them would be recognisable. There'd be merely ash and bone.
If that. The Grimm were converging. Those monsters were searching for survivors, but their actions were dictated with an inexplicable hatred for humans and Faunus.
But at least there was comfort in knowing that they were monsters. Monsters didn't need to be explained. They were just monsters. Expecting them to hate and destroy came with the concept. They didn't have an intent, they simply were.
The Intoner? Four? She clearly had an intent. Blake didn't know what it was, but she clearly had motivations. There was meaning behind her actions. Blake didn't know what they were, but she was a person who would bring forth so much devastation for a reason.
This wasn't the actions of a monster who could barely think. This was an intelligent being which looked over the facts of the world, considered their desires, and chose to kill.
Blake noticed something moving ahead of her, and ducked down to the ground. A Beowulf was prowling along the ground, sniffing out sad intent. It paused, smelling into the air for a moment, before turning towards Blake.
Of course.
Reaching for Adam's sword, Blake pressed the trigger and fired the sword, quickly grabbing the hilt before it could fly out of reach and used it to slash through the air in the Beowulf's direction. The propulsion of the sword threw Blake through the air, and she slashed. She hit the ground in front of the Beowulf, cutting through it's head in the process, and her broken leg slammed into the ground. The bone fractured even further, and she screamed, as the Beowulf went limp.
There was a roar to her left, and Blake looked over to see, through the burning wreckage, more Grimm. All looking in her direction.
...Fuck.
The one at the front of the pack stepped forward, approaching Blake slowly. It walked over a burnt corpse, stepping over an unidentifiable head and crushing it with casual ease, as it walked around the flames. The others followed suit, approaching Blake at a leisurely pace, and she tried to pull her self away.
She abandoned that plan after a moment, after realising just how much faster than her the Grimm were. Instead, she put Adam's sword back in its sheath, waiting for the next Grimm to draw close enough for her to fire.
She rolled onto her back, and then shuffled backwards, leaning up so she could properly aim. In the few moments it took for that to be done, the Grimm were already upon her.
She pulled the trigger, and leaped for the sword in the process, but as she put pressure on her leg, the pain shot through her again, and she screamed. The sword flew ahead, and the Alpha Beowulf leaned its head to the side to avoid the blow. The Beowulf behind it was less lucky, as the blade stabbed through its roaring mouth, and it faded away after a moment. Adam's sword fell to the ground a moment later, and the next Grimm along walked over it, snapping the sword in the process.
Closing her eyes, Blake did her best not to sob.
She was...
She couldn't give up now. There had to be someway for her to get out of this situation.
Pulling her hands into fists, Blake waited for the Grimm to approach, so she can get ready to fight. She couldn't let it end here. Not after what had happened.
Four had taunted Adam by telling him that nobody would remember he existed. Blake refused to let that be true. She couldn't let her win. She couldn't...
The Alpha Beowulf took one more step forward, and then paused, giving Blake time to see her death coming.
Then the Beowulf behind it let out a death scream, and the Alpha turned back, in time for the blade to stab through it and hit the ground behind it.
As it dissolved, a teenage girl stepped forward, over the dissolving flesh as she approached Blake.
"Oh my." She said, as she picked up the sword and folded it away somewhere. "I didn't think you'd be in this bad a state. The part of me recording this hasn't intervened yet so I didn't know anything except I should look for you here, Blake."
"Who..."
"Ah, that's a secret." The young woman said. "I can't tell you just yet, I'm afraid. But I can't let you die yet, Blake. Even if you didn't have a role to play, you deserved better. You could have better. And I'm sorry it had to happen this way."
Blake blinked, and suddenly, the heat was gone.
"W-What?" She asked, looking around.
The young woman smiled, as she put Adam's sword down in front of Blake. The damage done to the blade had been reversed, somehow. The red blade had been stitched together and reformed, close enough that she couldn't tell the difference.
"I'm sure you're confused." The young woman said. "But this is going to take a while to explain, even if I dance around what I'm not allowed to talk about. Give me a moment, Blake. Because Four, and the Intoners, are so much more dangerous than you think."
Blake opened her eyes, as the memory kept going.
She still didn't know much about her saviour, definitely a lot less than she needed to know in order to properly trust her. But after what Four had done...
She couldn't afford to underestimate the enemy. And given that everything that Blake had attempted to confirm had been confirmed, she was willing to assume her nameless saviour was, at least, opposing the Intoners.
Which was what made this effort so important. The White Fang had reacted to her story with the appropriate amount of horror, and between her relation to Adam and the reputation gained when people found out what she had survived, the plan was simple enough for her to organise.
Step one was gathering all the Dust needed to make the plan work. Ice Dust, Water Dust, both were needed in high amounts to properly prepare to make this safe.
She just needed a bit more time. She had the location, she had the information, she had the plan. Maybe it'd fail, but she still had to make an attempt at this.
She couldn't just leave this unanswered. Four had kill hundreds of people in an hour, and she was the only one who properly knew. Even if shed had told the White Fang, they couldn't possibly understand the situation without being there at the time.
She had to do this. She couldn't afford to let someone like Four exist. And if her saviour had been even remotely truthful in regards, she wasn't alone.
There was a buzz from her scroll, and Blake looked over, to read the message she had been informed.
Ah. Ilia was back.
Leaving the room, Blake quickly exited the small caravan in which she'd been spending the last few months. Looking around, she saw several other caravans which she knew were filled with White Fang members, as Ilia walked past one. She looked towards Blake, and approached quickly.
"Hey." Ilia said, trying to avert her eyes from the burns lining Blake's face. The worst of them were covered by the mask that her mysterious sponsor had prepared, in replication of Adam's, but the mask only covered so much and her lower face and neck made it clear how much had burnt off. Not to mention her hair, which she had tried to keep cut, but the hair around the burns had never grown back, and it was noticeable after the over half of her hair kept growing.
"How'd the mission go?" Blake asked, immediately getting to the point.
Ilia looked away, briefly saddened. Blake almost apologised for her bluntness, but repressed the urge. There was no point. Even if Blake knew Ilia well, there was no point getting overly attached to anyone.
The Intoner, Four, was a monster. She delighted in taking people apart, even if she hid it behind a thing veneer or claiming justice. Blake refused to give herself another weakness for Four to exploit, when the time for battle came. She was already far too behind what she needed to be to face off against the Intoner.
Sighing, Ilia looked forward again. "...Complete failure."
That caught Blake off guard. She wouldn't have been too surprised at a partial failure, but complete? "What happened?"
"We were down a member from the start." Ilia explained. "Likely captured, because there was people there who had interfered with the plan. I'd prepared to go in to fight Red, but someone pulled me aside before I could. Haseltii went to figure out who sent her, but she never left. I tried contacting her scroll, and didn't recognise the voice that answered."
That... Wasn't good.
Blake looked up for a moment. Someone was making moves against them. Someone knew at least a bit. Blake didn't need to ask to know that the human hadn't returned either. Perhaps he had been a traitor all along, or perhaps he'd just been captured as well. Or perhaps he'd gotten scared and abandoned the cause. It didn't matter. Haseltii's capture did.
She was one of the people who knew the plan.
"Who was involved?" Blake asked.
"I don't know." Ilia responded. "There was the girl who bumped into me, a girl our age in a red dress. Maybe the girl who fought Red as well, some blonde brawler called Yang."
Blonde brawler?
"What weapon did she used?" Blake asked.
"Shotgun gauntlets." The answer came quickly. "Why?"
...Her again. Blake thought she would have made the yellow haired girl give up after breaking her arm. But she was still hunting her despite that?
Maybe hurting her so much was a mistake. But if she hadn't, Blake wouldn't have been able to make her stop. She had done the best she could, but now she had a new enemy. Someone looking for vengeance, possibly.
But on top of that, there was apparently an organised hunt, involving the person who Blake had personally hurt. And now they had Haseltii. After having at least good enough interrogation tactics to get the plan out of someone in the first place, assuming there wasn't a traitor.
And now they had Haseltii, and thus, information on the plan.
"...We can't play it safe anymore." Blake decided.
Ilia looked at her, as Blake looked down to look her in the eye. She vaguely recalled when Adam would do this, and how intimidating it had been to stare into the mask.
"If they have Haseltii, they'll know what we're doing soon enough." Blake stated. "We can't afford to wait, in that case. We need to get to Mount Chantico before anyone can intercept us there."
"...Or you could stop." Ilia tried. "Blake, I don't know everything about the plan, but I know enough to know it's dangerous. I know that, whatever happened that killed everyone up in Atlas, you want to get back at people. But are you really willing to risk this?"
"I have to." Blake responded, turning away from Ilia. "...You wouldn't understand. You didn't see it."
The Intoner, Four, had been monstrously powerful. Adam hadn't stood a chance, and he was more powerful than Blake could reach in a reasonable timeframe. And she knew from her saviour that she didn't have time.
Even if she just contributed, in a fight with people strong enough to bring down Four, Blake would merely be an inconvenience. Someone getting in the way. She wouldn't allow that. She needed to kill Four, but she needed to be strong enough to matter, first.
The plan was simple. Mount Chantico was close enough to Vale that she could get there quickly if she hurried. The heat of the volcano was enough that Grimm avoided it, and weaker ones would actually burn up getting close to it.
With all the Ice and Water Dust, Blake would buy herself time. All she needed to do was find one of the creatures that her savoir insisted lived within.
And then it was merely a question of if her mysterious helper was right, in telling her how to tempt one into forging a Pact.
It takes some time to travel to Mount Chantico, at least a days walk. If Blake delayed a day, she could get one last big shipment of Dust to take with her, to buy herself more time to accomplish her goals. But can she risk delaying for safety's sake?
[X] Yes. Wait a day. Better safe than sorry.
[X] No. She couldn't afford to wait, when it came to this.