Blake had been watching the building for a few hours now, the mall was several stories tall, large amounts of light pouring out of it's glass roof. Around it's entrance was a wooden wall making a small courtyard, the walls having walkways that armed guards patrolled.
There was a rumble from the sky and she looked up to see thunder clouds slowly approaching, rain in the distance blurring the light from the street lamps to the south of the city. She stood up and began to run along rooftops toward the mall.
She hopped over one last alleyway gap and stood, there was a wide jump separating her and the shattered window she was planning on jumping to, below an alley with a fire escape for the building she was currently on. She looked at the shattered glass on the window frame and was glad she was wearing her gloves as she walked backwards till her feet hit the small wall stopping her from falling to her death.
It was a good starting point for the run up to the jump where if she failed she'd fall to her death.
With the sobering thought she took a deep breath before sprinting forward, her feet pounding into the roof of the building as the edge came nearer and nearer, the window looking like an open maw waiting to swallow her.
Then she stepped onto the small wall and flung herself forward, her hoodie falling and her hair falling out behind her. Then she was through the window and rolled, crouching and quickly scanning the dark room which she had landed in.
It seemed to be a storage room, she stood and pulled her hoodie back up and walked over to the door where light was coming through from the crack underneath. She checked her katana and knife one last time before opening the door delicately.
Light flooded her vision and she blinked as she adjusted from the darkness to see a brightly lit mall walkway, the guard rail on the other side that looked down into the centre of the mall crowded with cheering spectators. She wondered if she could try fitting in before remembering what the men had said they did to faunus and also noting no faunus among them.
She closed the door and began thinking she may have to find another entrance before her eyes caught the ceiling. It was made up of ceiling tiles. She hopped on top of a crate and then another before lifting up a ceiling tile and looking around to see a space she could easily crawl through if she was careful.
With no other alternative she pulled herself into the space, sliding the ceiling tile back onto the hole but not perfectly. She looked around her, occasional walls and beams and pipes cut off certain sections but a grate with light throwing through it was several meters away, Blake noting it was in the direction of the people and the wall.
As she got closer the cheers got louder and louder and she was finally looking through the grate. There were three rows of walkways all with people cheering and crowding round the hand rail, what they were cheering at made Blake scowl as rage filled her. Two faunus men were fighting on the ground floor, several other dead bloody bodies around them.
Sitting on a throne a floor above the 'arena' was a large man in what looked to be a suit of armour, several armed guards stood at his side and several scantily clad women lounged around him. Blake watched for several minutes before finally one man was punched to the floor.
The crowd roared as the faunus man panted, his body bloody and bruised as he turned in the direction of the throne and the crowds fell silent.
The man on the throne- who Blake could only assume was Cardin as mentioned by the men she'd killed- seemed completely indifferent as he ate an apple. Then he gave a thumbs down.
The crowd roared with blood lust again as the man screamed insults and swears while a door to a pet shop was opened and out came several Imps. Blake watched as the man ran to the opposite side of the arena and the Imps closed in on him.
She looked away as his screams filled the air and the crowd jeered and roared in pleasure, she scowled at the crowd, feeling disgust at their wanton blood lust and hatred of a living being who had only been slightly different from them. Then she noted those hanging away from the crowds, men and women, some with children, others on their own. They all had similar expressions to herself and she pitied them, this was clearly a safe place if you were a human, but the atrocities being committed were terrible.
She turned and continued to crawl through the space. She crawled for a long time, using wall spaces and vents to move between floors, looking through ceiling panels to see various scenes. Two men on patrol bragging about their latest 'conquests', a woman and man arguing while a crying child sat in a corner, two women planning on leaving the mall by stealing some supplies, a man crying as he took a long drink of a bottle while holding a photo of a woman and a kid in his hand.
She stopped after an hour of crawling and after a brief sip of her water bottle before then hearing a voice, cocky and deep, below her.
"The people love me" Said the voice and she moved a ceiling panel slightly and looked down into some sort of room, Cardin sitting behind a desk while a man with a green mohawk and another man with blur hair.
"They do, but we can't keep killing the faunus captives like you are, we're going to run out"
"Then we'll just get more" shrugged Cardin.
"From where?"
Cardin frowned and leaned forward slightly "Are you questions me, Russel?"
The man with the green mohawk 'Russel' gulped and shook his head quickly "no, of course not, it's just that it's taking to much time and resources to hunt for male faunus, and as time goes on they're getting harder and harder to find" said Russel quickly.
Cardin seemed to keep looking at him for a few moments before leaning back with that same smile "So your saying it can still be done"
Russel wore an expression that suggested he wanted to argue but instead just decided upon nodding "Yes"
"Excellent" He said "anything else you wanted to talk about?"
"We lost a scavenger party to the east" Said blue hair.
"So?"
"It's where we saw that evidence of that smaller settlement"
Blake's eyes widened as she realised they were talking about the church.
"So?" Asked Cardin again.
"Sir, this is clearly a first strike" Said Russel.
Cardin nodded slowly "I see" he said, his hand stroking his chin "prepare a scouting force, under the guise of peaceful intentions, we lure them in then take them"
Blake narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth underneath her mask. She needed to warn them, she needed to warn Yang. She turned and began to crawl away, but her leg accidentally kicked the ceiling tile and it fell into the room below. She didn't wait for a reaction as she crawled fast, hearing gun shots tear through the ceiling tiles behind her.
As she crawled she heard people shouting and running.
"We got an intruder!"
"Search the ceiling!"
"Let's find this son of a bitch!"
Her journey back was much quicker then her exploration had been, probably because she had a set destination and she had given up on trying to avoid being caught. She grunted when a ceiling tile she was crawling over shifted followed by a cry of "here!"
She managed to avoid being pumped full of bullets as she rolled to the side then forward quickly, barely stopping for breath. She finally made it to the tilted ceiling tile and hopped down into the deserted storage room without even checking in her haste to escape.
She regretted that as she found herself surrounded by several men with guns who had clearly been searching this room. She cursed as she slipped a knife from her belt and stabbed a man int the back as she spun and used him as a bullet shield before pulling her katana and hopping over his corpse.
Bullets flew around her as she sliced one man across the neck and kicked another man in the chest, sending him flying and knocking over one of his comrades, landing on top of him.
Blake back flipped and stabbed another man through the heart before then yanking his body in front of her and using it as a shield as she grabbed the man's gun and with him still in front of her mowed down the remaining men in the room.
She dropped the corpse and walked over to the struggling man underneath his unconscious comrades body, she plunged her Katana through both their bodies before then grunting as she was kicked in the side. She looked up to see more men entering the room with guns and melee weapons as the man who kicked her grinned and advanced.
She glanced toward the window and noted that the rain was now heavy and the wind billowed in, that would conceal her easily, but it was still rain. She decided however as more men piled into the room that it was the best option as she ran toward the window and without hesitation jumped as cries and gunfire echoed around her.
She reached her arms up, seeing she wasn't going to make it. Then grunted as the air left her lungs when her chest collided with the wall and her hands clutched the edge of the building. Then she yelped as the bricks around her hand exploded and several shards scratched her hand as she let go.
Her back struck something and she cried out before she fell to the side and hit something soft but smelly. More gunshots echoed around her and she shot up, glad her legs still worked as she sprinted from the alley as she heard shouts and an alarm blaring.
She didn't care though, Blake ran, loosing her pursuers in the night and rain.
She was bruised, bloody and battered. She needed help, and she knew just where to get it.
~§~
Yang yawned again, she was ready to be replaced on nights watch, nothing at all having happened through the night except for rain and thunder that had made her thankful she was under cover.
Then there was a crash, not of thunder but of a trash can being knocked over that made her jump and very wide awake, she frowned and leaned forward, searching through the night and rain for anything out of the ordinary.
She saw it quickly, the street lamps illuminating the street a dark figure was stumbling toward her, one hand on their waist as the other used the wall to support them. It couldn't be a grimm as they didn't do that, that was a human.
She grabbed the rifle and zoomed in, trying to make out more detail. Her scope must of reflected the light as the figure looked up and Yang's breath hitched.
She recognised those amber eyes anywhere.
Then the figure collapsed.
~§~
Everyone was awoken as Yangs thundering steps echoed through the church as she bolted down the spiral staircase. She didn't care as she ran to the church door and pulled it open, the door being pushed open further by a sharp burst of wind as some rain managed to get in.
She ran through the street, her way illuminated by street lamps as her footsteps echoed through the street. She made it to the figure to see an Imp looming over them, about to descend with jaws wide open.
She gave an angry cry and shoved the Imp with the lack of a weapon to use, crouching down and hauling the faunus girl to her feet before beginning to run back as fast as she could with Blake's arm around her shoulders.
"This is not how I imagined our next meeting going" Said Yang as she hobbled for the open church doors, the others looking out worriedly.
"Warn…. Had to…. You….. Cardin…. Dangerous" panted Blake, Yang just barely catching the words.
"Hold on, lets get out of danger first" Said Yang.
There was a loud bang and she heard a thud of a body falling behind her, looking up at the sniper tower to see the figure of Ruby with her sniper rifle. She wasted no time as she made it through the doors and the group quickly closed them behind them.
Yang looked around for a pace to deposit Blake and the others quickly got the idea, Nora and Sun pushing some pews together into a makeshift bed as Ren brought over the medical supplies. After a blanket was hastily thrown on top of the wood surface Yang placed the faunus on the pews.
"We need to get her out of her gear" Said Ren.
Yang and the others nodded, moving quickly to remove her black jacket and knife belts, Yang lifting the girl's head to remove the gas mask around her mouth. Ren looked at her closely before then pulling up the black T-shirt, not caring to look at the girls body as he focused on the visible wounds.
"She's malnourished and exhausted, which is why she collapsed" he finally said after looking her over "she has some scrapes and cuts and we may need to keep an eye on to make sure they don't get infected, and someone will have to keep an eye on her"
"I'll do it" said Yang instantly.
Everyone turned to look at her and she shrugged "I know her the best, we can trust her"
"Who is she?" Asked Jaune.
"Her name is Blake, she saved my life and ice queen's over there" explained Yang, jerking a thumb at Weiss who have an indignant 'hey!' "She gave me this scarf" she grabbed the purple scarf around her neck.
Ruby tilted her head with an 'oh' expression in her face "I wondered where you got that from"
"Are you sure?" Asked Pyrrha "are you sure that we can trust her?"
"Positive" nodded Yang.
When no one could come up with an argument Yang picked Blake up while Sun, Nora and Pyrrha moved the medical pew (as Ruby had dubbed it and no one had had the heart (except Weiss) to name it anything else).
Yang looked down at the sleeping form of Blake before sighing and shaking her head "I hope you wake up soon, cause I have no idea what you were talking about"
Then suddenly from outside the church, from the city itself arose a sharp cry, millions upon millions of creatures all screaming into the sky that caused Yang to run out of her tent, everyone copying her actions as they looked around, fear running through their systems.
"What the fuck was that?" Asked Neptune.
~§~
~a few moments earlier~
~§~
Salem emerged from the dark waters and looked up to the sky, from the west and approaching rapidly was a bright light, so bright that it even pierced through her protective red shroud.
She smirked and watched as it came closer and closer.
Then it hit the red cloud.
The rocket immediately sputtered out and began to spin end over end as it careened to the floor. Salem moved herself back slightly and rose an arm as the missile impacted right in front of her, throwing up Grimm goo and sticking up out of the black swamp, slowly sinking.
Salem lowered her arm and grinned victoriously.
Then the missile thumped, and there was a whirring as goo began to evaporate and the missile began to glow.
Salem's eyes widened and she shot into the swamp as the device detonated.
She surfaced many kilometres away from the device, emerging and throwing her hand up to shield her eyes from the massive explosion still raging in the distance. It was a bubble of fire that was still burning as her red mist evaporated and retreated from it.
Then her eyes widened again as the crystal trees on the distant shore nearest the explosion suddenly shook and were shattered as the shockwave combined with millions of crystal shards thundered toward her, she ducked into her swamp again and waited a few seconds before emerging to see the landscape flattened around her.
She looked back to the explosion which she could now hear, a loud roaring sound of fire along with the low shudder as the swamp beneath her shook.
She growled, an intense fury coming over her and she let out a scream, her Imps and Beowulf's echoing with cries of rage all over the planet.
Then Salem turned to the nearest bank and began summoning Imps.
"Time to make them feel fear" she growled as she set to work.
~§~
Sorry this is so short but the current stage we're at in the plot demands it otherwise this fanfic will end up being really short.
But I hope you enjoyed it, follow and favourite to be ready for the next update!
See ya!