Terror

The ongoing train that was on its way to Argus in Atlas was derailed. The entirety of the train had literally went off the rails right down the slope of a snowy hill. All of the passenger cars had their couplings snapped off during the tumble with some even flying far, crashing into the woods. The fall killed about sixty passengers, several unconscious, others were injured and in need of medical help, and a few miraculously came out of it unscathed, just shaken.

However, for a certain beautiful sister of Jaune Arc, Saphron Cotta-Arc, she was not of the few miraculous, unscathed individuals. She was lying on a broken window panel with her head bleeding. Her shoulder had been dislocated and her leg having been fractured by falling luggage with the passenger car flipped upside down. With a groan, she woke up, regaining her consciousness amid the carnage that was once a tranquil train ride. She tried to push herself up, but she felt the weight of something on top of her and something else that was painful and fractured. The searing pain sent her vision into flashing stars. The first thing she noticed that was that she felt her own warm blood dripping down her nose bridge. She knew that she probably bumped her head too hard against the window when she blacked out during the train's crash against something solidly enormous. Then when she turned around, the cause to the pain on her leg was a heavy piece of luggage that happened to fall upon her while she was unconscious.

She tried to move a little, but another surge of searing pain went through her nerves. Saphron cried out in a painful whimper as she could feel the cold material of the luggage crushing her leg bone, causing it to bend and crack. Saphron stopped, choking back the tears. Trying to push back the luggage, she had some difficulty in doing so as the force of gravity working on the heavy luggage worked against her. However, with a surge of adrenaline flowing through her body, the oldest Arc sister finally managed to push it to the side where a man was crushed to death by a bigger luggage than the one she freed herself from.

"Ah...damnit!" Now the harder part came as her leg was busted and her arm was dislocated from her shoulder, effectively making her crippled. Her breathing came out in warm mists, evident that the air in the passenger car had gotten colder due to being exposed to the outside elements. Without a good right arm and left leg, the task to pull herself out became more difficult and arduous.

10 days ago...the White Fang Headquarters, Mistral...

A White Fang messenger, a Cheetah Faunus, with a long cheetah tail and legs that accelerate her faster than the average Faunus ran through the hallway leading to Sienna Khan's throne room. She had gold blonde short hair with black bangs and a tanned complexion from all the running she had throughout, mostly on sunny days thanks to her athletic, lean built. Aci Medallion sped through the hallways with urgency in her steps and a worried frown on her face. She was up and about minding her own business of going to the dojo to work out her martial arts when she heard her Scroll play a jingle. The type of jingle that was distinctive to her ears and it was the White Fang lieutenant AKA Buck Slate's emergency jingle. Her husband had been ordered to lead the recruiting efforts deep in Vale's division of the White Fang to bolster their momentum. Fearing the worst, she saw the Emergency Message notification icon. Pressing upon it, she came across the message along with a video attachment,

"HELP! UNDER ATTACK BY APES IN VALE HARBOR!"

That was when she bolted from the dojo. Aci was nearing the double doors to the throne room.

"Let me through! I have an emergency message for High Leader Khan from Lieutenant Slate!" She explained to the guards at the doors.

The guards nodded, acknowledging her urgency as she quickly pushed open the doors. That gained Sienna Khan's attention from her discussion with her advisors.

"High Leader! I have an Emergency Video Message from Lieutenant Slate in Vale! It's dire!"

That got Sienna alarmed with her tiger ears shooting up. "Play it on your Scroll and come closer so I can see it myself."

Aci nodded and ran up to the White Fang High Leader. She popped up the Emergency Message with the video attachment. She pressed on the attachment and it played the video, showcasing Lieutenant's Grimm mask with right brow of his mask broken off and his head looking bloody and disfigured with a chunk of his eyelid dangling loose, and his hair ripped out, revealing a bloody part of his scalp.

"What the hell?!" Khan roared.

"High Leader! If you have received this message, I would probably be dead anout now! We are under attack! Not by Grimm or the Huntsmen! No, they're Apes! Goddamned bloody apes!" Slate was heard ranting with the video showing dead bodies of White Fang regulars and the remaining guards shooting their guns at huge, man like dark, hairy figures that were acrobatically all over the place. One guard got jumped on by an ape leaping from the wall and was pummeled mercilessly with the ape wailing onto him with his fists! Another got sent flying across the floor when another ape charged headling into him by the gut. There were several initiates that tried to escape through the back exits that have been blocked by barricades outside. Five of the fifteen gorilla-like apes saw this and nabbed them with three of the initiates thrown harshly into crates, destroying them into splinters. One Faunus got pummeled with a toolbox, and the fifth other had her silver gray bunny ears bitten viciously by the ape with his large canines.

Aci screamed from seeing the simian monster rip into the Faunus's ears, causing her to hold onto her cheetah tail nervously. Sienna unconsciously touched her ears while she snarled at the sight,

"Barbaric monsters! I will rip their tongues out the moment I encounter these bastard monkeys."

"I don't know where on Remnant these demons have come from, but they're slaughtering us, outmaneuvering us, and they outsmarted us!" Slate's voice was heard as his hand-to-camera movements were shaky. The video quality was grainy, but the constant flashes of lightning made up for the flaw as it showcased a single ape lifting up a shelf full of boxes without much trouble. Then in a surprising grotesque act of brutality, the ape slammed the shelf onto the newcomers that weren't able to bust through the exits in time. Their bodies flattened into bloody smears.

"Oh my Oum!" Slate was heard in his angriest and shocked state of disbelief.

"Holy shit...," Aci felt her mouth dry up and her stomach twist into knots.

Sienna's hands on the throne chair dug harder into the material with her nails scratching up the material. The hoots of the apes became more and more frenzied by the loud clanging sounds, the clamoring of the lightning, and smell of blood permeating the air.

"They're tearing the warehouse apart. At this point, I may not survive this. But for those who are still listening, send reinforcements! There might be more of these apes and I fear the threat they may pose to our kin, but-" Slate's rant was cut off when he heard something slamming messily onto the box and his eyes widened in sheer surprise when he saw the tear!

"Shit!" Slate ducked under and the top portion of the rectangular crate was hacked off and toppled over. He fell out of the bottom and looming above him was Ajax wielding the chainsaw weapon he had stolen from him through a combination of brute force and wicked intellect when the two fought. The alpha primate may not understand how to use the complexities of the chainsaw, he certainly knew how to wield it like a brawling street fighter. In hindsight, the lieutenant should have been wiser about engaging an ape of such great stature and greater intelligence instead of letting his frustration and arrogance cloud his judgment in engaging Ajax hastily. He was overconfident in thinking he could run circles around the gorilla-chimp ape creature as its movement seemed undisciplined and animalistic, which was typical of great apes and Beringel Grimm as they often rely on their size and brute force sprinkled with some higher intelligence to hurt their opponents. And it certainly was that way for a while with Ajax's wild swings of his fists had a lot of openings Slate exploited. The creature was wounded with serious wounds short of killing him, he was at Slate's mercy. However, the White Fang lieutenant had forgotten that a cornered, wounded animal was more dangerous than otherwise. And he paid a heavy price for underestimating Ajax when the ape nearly crushed his wrist, forcing Slate to drop his chainsaw weapon.

Ajax's psychotic toothy grin along with his facial scar being metallic with glowing sinister red faint lines was the result. His Aura glowed black as his wounds became covered in a metallic sheen with faint lines of red. His Semblance was in the form of clawed metallic gloves materializing and the chainsaw being turned into a wicked, sharper weapon with more curved teeth and glowing crimson 'eyespots'. The ape barked out what sounded like a primitive, crude version of a laugh before he went full out screaming, swinging the now metallic weapon wildly in a terrifying display, maddened with bloodlust.

"Damn you, you ugly son of a bitch!" Slate was heard in his last moment of defiance when he grabbed a crowbar lying on the floor. He stood up and swung, but Ajax ended it all when the Faunus lieutenant was heard hollering out in an agonizing painful cry. The video abruptly ended in static.

"SLATE!" Aci hollered when she realized that her husband was probably dead or was about to be. The worst part, she was too far away for her to do anything about it.

Sienna slammed her palm onto the arm of the throne room and roared with the unadulterated fury of the tiger that she was,

"GET ME ADAM TAURUS ON THE LINE, NOW!"

Somewhere in Mistral...

Oscar Pines was running through the wheat field that was 50 feet away from the barn. It was midnight when he heard his aunt's horrified scream and several cows also screaming about in agonized pain along with the fearful neighing shrieks of the horses coming from the barn. The boy, fearful and worried for his aunt, wore a dirty and scuffed white shirt that laced across the chest. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and there was a pocket on the left tricep. Orange suspenders hold up his olive pants, which were tucked into worn, brown boots. He wielded a pitchfork, thinking it might be a Beowolf, a Boarbatusk, or worse, an Ursa coming to raid the farm. He has no Huntsman or basic combat training at all, but he didn't want the life that he knew and grew up with to be destroyed, so he would fight or at least die trying.

Auntie Dorothy! To the Brothers above, please see that she is not hurt! Oscar prayed in his head along with a rush of other panicked million thoughts as the screaming of the animals intensified into unbearable levels.

When he heard Auntie Dorothy the loudest she ever heard before it came to an abrupt stop, Oscar's hazel eyes widened with his forest green irises shrunk as great fear snaked into his core.

"No!" Oscar yelled, as he pushed his legs the furthest he could push, the fastest he could run with panic and desperation setting in. Sweat pouring all over his tanned face and his hair becoming disheveled from having to push his way through the long wheat crops that he was supposed to finish harvest when this happened.

After two minutes of running frantically through the fields like a madman, he final reached the farm, but tripped over a deep hole that made him fall face first into the dirt. He pushed himself off the ground to look what he had tripped over and his blood ran cold at the sight of the half portion of his dog's back end with the front chomped off entirely with blood and severed organs spilling out.

Oscar almost screamed unhindered had he not covered his mouth being mindful that the killer could still be on the farm waiting for him. He crawled away from the remains of his dog with his sight still fixated on them with panic clouding his senses. Then the panicked mooing of the cows and terrified clucking of the chickens snapped him out of his stupor as his eyes now came across three-clawed footprints that had came from a nearby field with some trees beyond closer to the barnyard to its left. And they were big...as big as a dinner plate!

There was a trail of these footprints leading into the very barn itself with a smashed door being evident that the creature broke through. Oscar gulped, but steeled himself to pick up his pitchfork and carefully treaded the trail. Upon closer look, he could see that his aunt did bar the door, presumably to protect herself and the animals from the creature, but it ultimately proved futile. A terrible thought dawned onto him that whatever this animal was, it had to be large and aggressive enough to overcome the locking mechanism. The boy felt shaky, physically and emotionally, at the other thought of the fate of his aunt. The things he might see that could scar him. Nevertheless, he had to push through for his auntie's sake. He carefully stepped over the wooden wreckage, being mindful to watch for splinters. Stepping into the hay-covered ground, he could feel the drop in temperature and hear the terrified screeches, whines, and groans of the barn animals sounding out from the shadows with most of the barn being dimly lit by few lamps. With the squint of his eyes, what were once solid stables had been trashed and the bare outline of the bigger animals like the horses, cows, sheep, and pigs that were huddling in darker spots of the barn, stricken with panic and instinctual fear. Oscar heard flapping above and he looked up, seeing a throng of crows cawing from above, perched onto the bars.

He had seen a few of these birds every now and then, mainly when the birds were picking off scraps from animal feed leftovers, resting, or just playing around. But to see this many of about twenty of them in one place was unusual.

That meant...

Oscar felt the shiver on his spine when a horrifying, ice-cold realization and the smell of blood both reached him. Then he heard a growl.

And it didn't sound mammalian or mammal-like with Beowolves, Ursa, or Beringels, but rather it sounded like a warbled booming croak of a large bird that had some guttural rumbling growl of an alligator. It sounded both avian and reptilian and it was coming from the other end of the barn.

"Oh gods..." Oscar whispered, deathly afraid that this creature was unlike anything he had encountered. That much, he knew now.

There was a lamp beside him sitting on a box of hay. It was off.

He grabbed it and without thinking of what he would find, he turned it on. The light shone and it revealed to him a sight that he would sorely regret with his own eyes.

His breathing hitched and his mind nearly shut down when he saw the new predator. It was a large carnivorous reptile that stood on black two legs with dinner plate-sized scaly feet with sharp talons. It was a dinosaur - a theropod, and it looked similar to a T. Rex, but slightly smaller, though still relatively large compared to a grizzly bear. It had a long head with a low ridge across its snout and a pair of horns above its eyes. Its body was covered in thick downy feathers and unlike its larger relative, the T. Rex, it had long arms with three clawed fingers. Its scaly skin and feathers were predominantly white. The low nasal ridge and horns were in a dark gold streak that stopped at a small feathery crest. There were streaks of dark blue that range from the nostrils, covering the forward-facing eyes, and running down its feathery neck and back down to halfway the tail where the tip was in covered in a golden coat of feathers.

Oscar paled when it turned its long snout and head towards him with its glowing brownish orange eyes now giving him the nastiest glare he had ever seen. His face turned paler after he saw what, or rather, who was dangling in its mouth.

It was his Aunt Dorothy or rather what was left of her.

Pieces of her hand and her head with her horrified, blank expression in her eyes had a traumatic effect on Oscar, whose face bore resemblance to that of a goldfish. The rest of her body was engulfed in the maw of the beast, obscured by the row of large spike-like teeth.

"Gods...no...," Oscar felt his world crumble with his knees failing him upon the haunting, fearful look of Aunt Dorothy's face with her dark burgundy hair being messed up by her own crimson blood. "Aunt Dorothy..." He accidentally dropped the kerosene lamp, which shattered, releasing the flame onto the hay. It set off the hay into combusting into flames.

With one huge gulp, the dinosaur swallowed down the rest of her body down its gullet. The head and the hand gripping something dislodged from the feathery reptile's fangs. The latter fell in front of the boy paralyzed by grief and terror. The hand involuntarily released a bronze chain locket. It was his aunt's.

Oscar looked down as he saw his aunt's locket on the ground in front of him. He quickly caught it and hid it into his breast pocket. The Yutyrannus let off a grumbling growl that shook the barn through its reverberations equivalent to experiencing a small earthquake as the fire now both illuminating and burning the barnyard. The flames were now scaring the animals to a greater degree that panic and strife was evident among the farm creatures trying to escape the growing fire. In the midst of the hay laid visibly a dead cow that had been killed and eaten apart by the Yutyrannus with most of the carcass stripped of its flesh and organs with some bones missing. The tyrannosaur hissed at Oscar as it prowled towards him, heedless of the rapidly growing fire. The orange-yellowish glow of the fire only made the creature look more ghoulish and monstrous to the kid thanks to its towering height of 12 feet tall and length of 33 feet long and its savage bestial qualities, which were both beautiful, yet terrifying to behold. Oscar's small stature didn't help matters either as his perception forced him to look further up, the closer the beast got.

Until Oscar could only look at its chest, which only solidified his perception that the Yutyrannus was truly an intimidating, frightening monster that he would not wish even a Grimm to meet alone.

He could smell the foul odor of its mouth, the rotten flesh, and saliva dripping around him from the teeth from years of mauling many unfortunate victims to their violent, miserable ends. And it made him almost pass out. The predator lowered its snout on face level with the boy with Oscar's hair blown backwards by the exhaling of musty air from its nostrils.

Oscar couldn't move. He dared not to move even an inch with the crimson-stained jaws slowly gaping open with the dinosaur's sharp teeth flashing menacingly with blood dripping from them in the burning light of the inferno that has now engulfed half of the barn. His heart was hammering in his chest so badly and so hard that he thought that the tyrannosaur could hear his heartbeat and practically salivate at his instinctual fear. The fear a fawn would have when encountering a wolf. The beast slowly circled around the terrified farmer boy, who clutched tightly onto his pitchfork for life. He eyed another lamp that was stored in the tool cabinet in the second floor up the ladder.

Then at the corner of his eye, he saw that the Yutyrannus was about to kill him when the beast stood and reared upright with its neck and wide-opened mouth raised above him. Within seconds, he made a split decision.

The jaws of the feathered tyrant barely missed the boy by a few inches short of swallowing him whole. Oscar was on the left side of the Yutyrannus' head when he forcefully stabbed his pitchfork, attempting to blind the theropod. But the adrenaline and the intense fear had screwed up his aim as the pitchfork impaled it by the neck, which was still nevertheless painful for the beast as it let out a pained, angered screeching roar like an eagle with its toe stepped on that tore through the air. Oscar had no choice, but to cover his ears with them feeling like drumbeats that threatened to smash his brain into jelly. Yutyrannus swung its head, slamming into Oscar's small body, sending him flying into a wall, scaring the remaining piglets and ducks into fleeing. The feathered tyrant was prancing around, trying to find leverage for its hand to grasp onto the handle pole of the pitchfork.

Oscar groaned, getting up from having his wind nearly knocked out of him. His back hurt and was sore from the impact, but his adrenaline lessened the feeling. He needed it to escape the fire that was slowly tearing the barn apart. The boy gathered all the courage and strength he had and made a mad dash for the ladder while the dinosaur was distracted. He rolled under the dinosaur's strong legs and succeeded in reaching the steep wooden stairs. He wasted no time in climbing up the ladder by the time the feathered tyrant dislodged the pitchfork from its neck, leaving four small bloody holes in it that stained the snow-white plumage. Snarling disdainfully at the farmer boy responsible for messing up its beautiful, lustrous coat, the creature roared getting Oscar's attention. Much to his horror, the Yutyrannus glowed with an icy white Aura of its own as its wounds healed in seconds. The beast then charged.

"Uh oh!" Oscar scrambled as urgently as he could when the Yutyrannus smashed into the ladder with its jaws slamming onto the bottom half of it. The motion jerked the ladder and Oscar yelped as he nearly lost his grip.

He clambered desperately up the ladder, but the ferocious monster was quick to throw ot aside, forcing Oscar to jump onto the ledge of the snapped off stairs. His body now dangled from the edge 30 feet off the ground with his two hands the only thing preventing him from falling into either the fiery inferno, or the glowing white death in the form of the Yutyrannus. The beast jumped, snapping its toothy jaws to swallow or drag him down to his early grave.

"Please please! This is not how I wanna go out! Gods! Help!" Oscar was trapped between primordial death from below or hell from above as the fire started eating into the room above where the tool cabinet was. Another lunge from the Yutyrannus scared the crap out of him so much that he reflexively pulled his legs and butt upwards just inches away from the flesh-tearing teeth. It was the momentum he needed sorely to push himself over the ledge. Taking a quick breather, Oscar rushed into the room and with the swing of a crowbar he broke the lock to the cabinet. Coughing through the burning cinders and ash, he took a match to the surrounding fire catching onto a desk and used it to light the lamp. He then took out his grandfather's shotgun from another safe beside the cabinet. He quickly loaded five slugs into the gun while keeping the five extra slugs in his pocket.

Then, however, the entire room rocked as the Yutyrannus not only managed to shockingly jump onto the second floor, but rammed its long head halfway through the door ripping apart the entrance.

The dinosaur bellowed loudly, not caring that the fire was licking its feathery plumage. Much of the burnt stuff has been blown into the deteriorating wall. Oscar, however, fought back instead of cowering.

"Crawl back to whatever hole you've come from!" He threw the lamp right onto the reptile's snout. The fire and oil splattering all over the tyrannosaur's right eye and base of the jaw mandible as it screeched in horrible pain with the flames burning through the Aura and searing its scales. Oscar shakily aimed his gun at the beast's mouth as it highlighted how amateurish he was. His parents died when he was at the age of five and had been adopted by his uncle and aunt from the farm. Uncle Baum taught Oscar who was at the age of ten the basics of wielding and shooting a gun, mainly the gun passed down to him by his father, despite Dorothy's protest. However, he tragically perished from defending his farm from a Major Ursa before he could unlock his Aura.

Right in front of the boy and Auntie Dorothy.

In spite of the Uncle's death, Oscar wanted to continue the train using his weapon and eventually become a Huntsman. However, Auntie Dorothy was the more affected of the two and the last thing she wanted was to see her nephew die pursuing such a dangerous dream. She forbid him from ever taking up his grandfather's shotgun lest he wound up dead like Uncle Baum. Some more, she didn't have enough money to send Oscar to Sanctum Academy. The money she had was only sustainable in maintaining the simple house, the barn, the animals, and farming equipment. Oscar didn't want to worry her at the time, and given the small income she had from selling vegetables, dairy products, and eggs, he respected her wishes. He and Auntie Dorothy busied themselves in maintaining the farm, taking care of the barn and the animals, and growing, and harvesting the crops. To move on with their ordinary lives as farmers and to get over the dreaded trauma that had affected them. Over time, whatever basic skills of wielding a firearm he had obtained diminished.

In hindsight, Oscar wished he should have insisted to his Aunt on letting him train with the shotgun, or at least take him to a local gun range to hone his shooting skills.

Now, he no longer had time to ponder on how everything came to this unexpected moment where he was ill prepared to defend his life with his grandfather's shotgun. The Yutyrannus's maw was wide opened as it screeched in agony from being burned in the face. And with a unsure press of the trigger with his eyes closed shut, the shotgun went off, pushing Oscar into the cabinet with a resounding thud, and the slug hitting the carnivorous dinosaur right in the mouth, breaking some its teeth in the process and wounding its flat tongue. The feathered tyrant roared even louder with greater ire as its own blood splattered from the maw. The floor underneath the dinosaur weakened and cracked under its huge bulk, and it then collapsed, no longer being able to support its weight. The Yutyrannus let out a shocked bellow with its only good orange brown eye nearly popping out of its skull when it realized too late what was happening. The Mesozoic hunter had fallen through and into the burning floor.

By no means was Oscar safe as the entire burning barn was collapsing onto itself. The room suddenly caved and Oscar saw his world turned literally upside down as he fell through and onto a wall that was falling outward. The roof literally fell from the sky as the walls broke down. For the boy, he tumbled into a cornfield with bruises, some bloody scratches coming from splinters, and scarring from rough contact with the wood. Oscar was briefly seeing stars before his world suddenly went dark as he lost consciousness.

For Saphron, it was a relief - a big one at that was someone, an old hunched lady with a darker complexion, goggle-like mechanical prosthetic eyes, white graying hair braided into a ponytail, a walking stick with a stylized skull, a full-length dress in the traditional Tabasco style, thick brown gloves, and a heavy blue cape trimmed at the edges with patterns of white, hollow triangles on a light blue background. For her small stature, she was surprisingly able to navigate through the upturned seats. And she had somebody behind her to cover her back. A Huntsman, a young man with mahogany spiky short hair with a dark blue buttoned up long shirt, brown gloves, a wide brown belt and dark gray pants, and he wielded a spiky club. Saphron knew him as Dee, one of the two Huntsmen that were protecting the train until it was derailed.

"Looks like you suffered more than a nasty fall, young lady," the old lady said as she noted how badly out of shape were Saphron's arm and leg. "We're going to pull you up. Dee, would you be kind to help me prop this young lady up?"

"Sure thing," Dee said as he and the old lady went onto the window. Carefully, they placed their hands around Saphron's back as both carefully lifted her up.

"Thank you." Saphron thanked them before the pain of her shoulder and leg made her hiss through her teeth.

"You're welcome, but...," Dee looked seriously at the injuries on Saphron, "You're in serious need of medical treatment. It doesn't look good."

"No kidding," Saphron humorlessly chuckled as she was hoisted onto Dee's back, "How Terra's going to kill me when I get back with a giant whopping medical bill."

"That is if the Grimm don't kill us first. Come on, let's get offa this train before you freeze to death in here" the old lady said.

She, Dee, and Saphron now had to make their way out of the overturned passenger car carefully where Dudley, a tanned-skinned man with a goatee, navy blue vest with a tan buttoned shirt, brown belt with a golden buckle, darker brown gloves, and taupe trousers, and wielding a rifle, who was waiting for them with a group of survivors that were helping the injured, or carrying the dead in the messed up corridor.

Dudley asked solemnly his friend, "Hey, man...did you find any survivors in that car?"

"We found this woman. Her shoulder and arm have been dislocated and her leg is busted. She's lucky to be alive with that much luggage around her." Dee mentioned Saphron, who could only nod at Dudley since she needed her good arm to stay on Dee's back.

"The others?"

Dee lowered his head and slowly shook, "Maria and I looked throughout the car. The rest are dead."

Saphron felt her jaw become unhinged at how truly fortunate she was to be only survivor in the car, but was also shocked and saddened that the people around her in the car didn't make it.

Maria Calavera half-closed her prosthetic eyes with her expression remorseful that made her look older than she really was.

Dudley whispered with his face paling a bit, "Shit..."

"That was the last car. We better get outta here and get the injured to the makeshift shelter. We're done here," Dee stated sadly with no room for argument as he went past Dudley, who was shocked at how many more people had lost their lives today. Maria softly tapped on the man's boots.

"There's nothing else we can do, but help the ones that need us right now," Maria advised him sagely with a somber tone.

"I know that, but...," Dudley smacked himself on his face, "Damnit!"

"No point dwelling what had been lost, young man. These people need us, we have to tend to them. Only then we can mourn later," Maria said before she left, slowly catching up with Dee and Saphron.

Dudley breathed long and hard, calming himself down. After two of them, he was a little better, albeit still shaken by the growing casualties, he needed to lead the survivors out of the passenger car.

"Alright, people, let's move," Dudley said. He and the others begun to move with the passengers being careful to support the injured.

10 days ago...The Club...

Junior was standing over the Carnotaurus that was unconscious and unmoving after he unloaded several rockets onto the chameleon-like dinosaur and gave it a good measure of club whipping right in the jaw when it tried to lunge at him and bite his head off. He heard bone breaking when he smashed the animal's lower jaw earlier.

"Holy Oum...what on Remnant are you?" Junior noted how bizarre the dinosaur was with its turret-like eyes, the bull-like horns, and the overall look and coloration being that of a partially-armored, bipedal, meat-eating iguana-chameleon hybrid with the spines, flamboyant dewlap, and the horns.

Just wanting to be certain of it, Junior slammed his club hard onto the dinosaur's head and other than a twitch of the nerves, it wasn't responsive. He saw the how so short the forelimbs were that they amounted to nothing more than stubby lumps that happened to have clawed fingers. The feet had two clawed hallux, reinforcing the beast's similarities to a chameleon. Seeing that the predator wasn't breathing and when he touched the sternum, he didn't feel a pulse, which reassured him.

"You're truly a weird oddball, even for a dinosaur," Junior stated darkly. "By the way, this is for messing up my club, freak."

Junior spat on the "dead" dinosaur when his Scroll buzzed. When he looked up it was Militia calling. He answered the call right away with his back turned towards the fallen saurian predator,

"Ah hello, Militia...yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I managed to catch the bastard responsible for this mess by surprise, blasting the crap out of him...Do you wanna know?...It's quite unbelievable, our troublemaker was a dinosaur all along...I know, right?...Even I thought I was seeing things and I thought I was when I saw it change colors from green to kinda like red-orange or something when it was feasting on our henchmen killed by this weirdo... Oh come on, give me a break, you know as well as I do, that if the police doesn't take notice of this, sooner or later someone else less savory will, Militia...Look, at least I caught this monster red-handed. What about you? Anymore weird critters that we should be worried about?...None so far in this neighborhood?..."

Junior didn't notice that the tail of the "dead" Carnotaurus just moved, raised high up into the air. He felt something, but when he turned back around, he saw nothing other than the flashes of lightning. He looked back at the "dead" Carnotaurus and saw it was still unconscious. He thought nothing unusual happened.

Junior continued on, "...Yeah, called the police? *sigh* We have no choice in the matter. Half of our henchmen are dead and the current manpower we have would be barely enough to maintain the club...Don't get me started on the financial headaches I have to deal with the city mayor about this establishment being busted up majorly!...Not to mention, it'd be noticeable to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that will happen to pass by this joint."

He felt something was off and he turned around only to see nothing again, other than the fallen dinosaur on the carpeted floor of the third floor. He was more suspicious this time as he spoke into the Scroll.

"...And Militia...maybe you and Melanie ought to come up here and bring some men here...I don't know, I have this gut feeling I can't exactly put it into words...just do it with no questions asked...okay, I will see you sisters and the boys tonight, we have a lot to clean up...alright, see ya."

With that call ended, he hung up and put his Scroll away. He turned around and saw this time, the Carnotaurus's spiny green and black-striped tail waving in the air. Then he looked down to see that the lower jaw he previously dislocated and broke was now healed and properly aligned with the mouth and its teeth replaced. The Carnotaurus' turret-like eyes opened up with Junior's reflection.

Junior gasped before the Carnotaurus, without warning, chomped onto the club! Thunder resounded loudly with lightning flashing fiercely outside.

"Holy shit!" Junior swore before the Carnotaurus lifted him up off the ground and flung him about, shaking him about like a dog with a chew toy. The club owner lost his grip, screaming bloody murder as he was flung into a Renaissance painting, causing it to fall and slam onto him!

The Carnotaurus bit into the club and snapped it in half due to its broadened mouth and strong jaw muscles anchored at the back of its skull. Its skin changed from emerald green and darker green to black and yellow with the beast now bellowing vengefully.

Junior pushed away the remains of the damaged painting with his Aura healing his bruised back, "Torchwick just got this for me on my birthday! I am not letting you off for that!" He whipped out his backup pistol.

But the dinosaur was faster than he anticipated thanks to its long legs as it sped up to him in no time and bit his entire right arm!

He screamed in great pain and distress as he was lifted off the ground once more with the jagged croc-like teeth of the dinosaur as it now stood up rearing up onto its strong lengthy lizard-like tail. With more pressure exerted from its vice-like jaws, the teeth severed the arm from the shoulder completely. Junior fell down with a bloody stump of his arm as his black Aura glowed on that very stump, working in overdrive to heal from the damage.

"Brothers...AGH!...NO!" Junior whimpered fearfully with newfound horror as the Carnotaurus gulped down his entire severed limb down its throat. The Carnotaurus turned red and orange, looking more devilish as it let off a croaking grumble equivalent to that of a croaking toad or crocodile as its one right eye became laser-focused on its victim and the left eye twirling around to make sure nothing disturbed it. The lightning flashes only made the atmosphere worse as the beast stalked towards him like a demon emerging from the shadows of Hell.

Junior cried with tears of sheer horror as all words died in his throat as the dinosaur touched its bumpy short snout against his face, sniffing his scent and his terror while he got a frightfully good look at the teeth.

Then the Carnotaurus roared right into his face as all of his life flashed before his eyes.

Junior was then heard screaming once again as the Carnotaurus began to maul him brutally.

Present day...somewhere in Atlas...

Everything had gone to hell much further than anyone would have liked. Saphron was now a nervous wreck with two of her limbs already busted.

She, Maria, and Dee were backing away with the crowd of survivors screaming in unadulterated terror.

The source of it all...

"R-R-R-Run...," Dudley was all he could muttered with his lungs and ribcage crushed by a great force as he was lying on the snow. That was before a great hairy, columnar foot stomped onto him, cutting him off from the plane of the living forever as he was crushed to death.

"Dudley!" Dee cried out.

"EEEYAAAAHHHHH!" a woman screamed shrilly.

The culprit of the foot was none other than a prehistoric woolly relative of the elephant hailing from the Pleistocene Ice Age...

The Woolly Mammoth.

And this Mammoth was a male, judging by the long curved tusks that were about 20 feet long and being enormous, standing at about 15 feet tall.

The beast turned its attention onto the startled, petrified crowd with primal fury and madness in his eyes that seemed to glow grayish white. It let off a rumbling seismic growl that was not only heard, but felt right through the snow and their bones.

"That's the hairiest Goliath I've ever seen," Maria joked, "But the ears are way too short."

As if upon hearing that, the male Mammoth reared on its hind legs and bellowed out a trumpeting foghorn-like roar that sounded loud and clear, echoing throughout the valley. Saphron and everyone had to cover their ears with the babies and little children crying and wailing, scared and terrified. As soon as the woolly, Ice Age pachyderm slammed down his front limbs onto the snowy ground, he went into a thundering fast walk, stomping to run them over.

Everyone was screaming in a state of panic. Saphron knew there was no where to run.

'Jaune...be safe, wherever you are! Terra...Adrian...I love you. I'm sorry to leave you all!' Those were her last thoughts as the Mammoth's shadow descended upon her.