Ruby sighted through her scope, watching Yang square off against the Grimm emerging from the trees. Their coats were blots of coal against the snow.
More brush rustled behind her and she checked again on Weiss and Blake with Robin, picking their way up the slick tail of the airship, "Come on guys..."
Hackles raised and standing at attention beside Ruby, Drei dipped his head and growled at the nearby brush. His bared teeth flashed in the light of another round firing from Crescent Rose.
"Careful," Weiss warned as she climbed past a jagged tear in the metal near the ship's tail. She kept a hand on the rope. Despite the bullets and mounting roars of the Grimm, she stayed focused on getting to the top of the cliff.
Holding fast to the rope just a few feet behind Weiss, Blake felt Robin cling ever tighter to her neck with each shot from Ruby and Yang, which was surprisingly not much of a hindrance as the little girl's legs had also locked in a death-grip around her waist. It made breathing difficult, but it also kept both of her hands free to climb, which Blake definitely needed with the little girl's added weight.
As much as she admired Weiss's ability to focus in the midst of battle, Blake couldn't help but spare a glance back at Yang. She immediately wished she hadn't. The brawler was a lone dancing ball of blazing reds and golds, guarding the smallish area where the airship's nose met the cliffs from a sea of Ursas - majors, minors, it was as if the entire population of forever fall had gathered together in one place. She had never seen this type of Grimm in such numbers.
"Weiss," Blake fought to keep the edge of panic from her voice, trying to channel the rush of adrenaline into her tired limbs as she carefully made her way past the jagged section the heiress had just scaled - they were a little over halfway up now, "please hurry."
"I am," Weiss snapped, more than aware of how close they were now to the cliff. She could hear Drei's deep growl and the razor sound of Crescent Rose. "Hang on to me- we'll jump the rest of the way."
A gust of wind whistled across the rift, causing the massive airship to creak and shift. The tiny Faunus whimpered into Blake's collar.
Nodding, Blake climbed up right beside Weiss, releasing the rope to throw one arm around her waist, and the other around Robin. A circle of flawless bluish white appeared before them, and Blake only had a moment to prepare before they were all jettisoned into the air. Her reflexes didn't fail her this time, and she landed in a roll, cradling the tiny Faunus away from the fall.
When she opened her eyes, another pair of eyes was staring right back at her, blood red, a Beowolf right above her, jaws wide open. Before she could even react, a snarling bark came from behind her, and in another flash of white Drei leaped over her in a wild lunge for the Grimm's neck.
The Beowolf went down hard, snarling and ripping at Drei's thick fur.
The pack was huge. Crescent Rose sheared through another half dozen omegas, but the wolves with their red eyes and bared teeth poured from the treeline.
"Missed you guys," Ruby grinned at Weiss and Blake before circling her scythe through another pair of Beowolves. Breathing already ragged from the ferocity of the attack, she pivoted, bringing her sniper rifle to bear on an alpha standing over the climbing rope. The round ricocheted off its bone mask. Black drool spattered the snow as it turned, its burning eyes sizing Ruby up.
Another alpha joined it, and another, watching their less experienced brethren get cut down. Weiss straightened at Ruby's side when the tide of lesser Grimm ebbed.
The darkness among the bushes teemed with points of red, like hellish fireflies. Ruby's mind raced. They'd never run into a pack with so many alphas. The grunts and roars of the Ursai down the cliff grew louder- probably Yang was on her way up. Ammo, stamina, room to fight- Ruby bit her lip. They were low on everything, but it didn't matter.
"Guys, I have plan," without breaking eye contact with the row of alphas, she edged a foot back towards the cliff.
"It had better be good," Weiss's gaze flickered to Blake and the tiny Faunus in her arms.
"It's at least fifty percent good," Ruby said.
Blake followed Ruby's lead, backing up to the cliff's edge. She held one hand over Robin's Faunus ears, keeping the little girl's head buried in her collar in an effort to keep her safe, even though it left her unable to do much more than shoot at straggling omegas with Gambol. With Ruby and Weiss staring them down, the Alphas didn't seem keen on making a move, so Blake chanced a look back down at Yang.
The brawler had made it roughly halfway across the ship, but with the extra space around her she was slowly being surrounded, her blazing semblance the only thing keeping the snarling Ursae at bay. She'd taken out most of the Minors, but there were at least as many Majors, and more were pressing into the center of the downed ship every second, clambering to snap at the lone huntress in their midst. The ship beneath them groaned with the weight of them all - there was no way it would hold for long - but that wasn't what made Blake's stomach drop.
Off in the distance, hulking just above the trees, she spotted a single file line of white spines slowly plodding in the airship's direction.
Goliaths - an entire herd on their way to join the fray.
"Yang, run!" Blake tried to shout over the din of the frantic battle below, "Get up here, now! Yang!" The brawler didn't even glance upwards - and even if she had, it was dark enough now that Blake doubted she'd be able to see much past her own flames.
"Ruby-" Blake halted upon turning to face Ruby and Weiss and the row of Alphas.
She couldn't quite fathom what she was seeing.
A Beowolf towering nearly twice the height of the trees was slowly strolling towards them. The bony plate of its skull was cracked and weathered almost beyond recognition, its jaws dripping blackness between chipped teeth, and though neither of its shattered eye sockets burned red, its ragged ears stood tall, one trained towards their group, the other focused somewhere to its side.
Ruby tightened her grip on Crescent Rose, remembering that school day back in Forever Fall when they'd fallen into a rats' nest- the Grimm rats' nest. The parallels came quickly- the hordes of white fangs and red eyes. The King Rat loomed up in her mind's eye, bigger than the monstrous Alpha alpha beowolf. Even with Blake shouting and making a ruckus, the wolves hadn't broken ranks- they eased out from the sparse treeline, forming a snarling half-circle around the three on the cliff's edge.
Ruby's cloak whipped in the icy wind as she held her ground before this new, giant-sized beowolf. Her original plan to drop the airship and as many ursai with it as possible and run like mad wasn't looking like it was going to work out so well anymore. Her mind raced. She needed a distraction. Something to keep a hundred beowolves busy for ten seconds so she and Yang could-
A whistling sound came over the wind, and the pack's eyes all flickered left just in time for a shell the size of a can of baked beans to explode in pink against the side of their leader's head.
The beowolves erupted in fury, surging towards a familiar battle cry, "Yeeeeeehaa!"
Ruby's heart leapt in her chest.
"Help them," she said to Weiss and Blake as she dove over the cliff to get Yang.
"But-" Blake barely got a word out before Ruby was nothing more than a trail of rose petals. Weiss had already sped directly into the fray of battle, towards the sound of explosions and laughter, glyphs flickering almost too quick for Blake to catch. Still hanging around the outskirts of the frantic melee, Blake held back, setting Robin on the ground and moving so she blocked the tiny Faunus from view as best she could.
A wailing howl snapped Blake's attention to an Alpha that had strayed from the main fray and set its sights on them. She brandished both her swords as it charged, but just as she was about to spring out to meet it, she caught something darting towards them in her peripheral vision - another Alpha, making a beeline for them along the cliff's edge, closer even than the one that had howled.
No sooner had she noticed the new threat, a familiar figure dropped seemingly out of the sky in front of it - Lie Ren, looking a bit more tattered than usual, but wearing the same cool expression he always did in battle. He ducked under a lightning fast swipe of the Alpha's claws, grabbing the beast's arm and pivoting, using its momentum to throw it right off the cliffside.
Blake only had a moment to admire his technique before the Alpha that had howled was upon her. Whirling around, Blake grabbed Robin and darted to the side towards Ren, using a round of dust to leave behind a molten-red shadow clone that exploded the second the Alpha's teeth closed around it, splitting the Grimm's head apart in a shower of dark sludge and bone-white fragments of skull.
In the momentary reprieve that followed, Blake set Robin back down and blinked at Ren, who blinked back, raising a brow at the tiny shivering Faunus clinging to Blake's leg. Chambering rounds in both halves of Storm Flower, Ren moved to stand beside the pair of Faunus and called up a soft pink spherical barrier around them all, firing off a few rounds through it to take down a stray Beowolf that had escaped Blake and Weiss's earlier slaughter. He motioned for Blake to join the battle.
Flashing Ren a look of pure gratitude, Blake knelt down and gathered the tiny Faunus girl in her arms, pressing a kiss between her fox ears. "Listen to me, Robin. This is Ren. He's going to keep you safe. Stay with him until I get back." After one more kiss, this time to her forehead, Blake all but jumped to her feet and sprinted towards the tree line, her sights set on the ancient Beowolf towering over the chaotic battle roiling at his feet.
At the edge of the forest, Weiss whipped Myrtenaster crosswise, freezing a batch of Beowolves that lunged at her. She gave ground fast as another wave shattered the first, sending bits of frozen Grimm scattering across the icy rock.
A shockwave sprinkled with pink lightning swept through the Beowolves' ranks, and the heiress had a fleeting sense of deja vu- like she'd seen this... in a dream? She braced and an alpha's claws rang off of Myrtenaster's steel. Her gaze hardened, she didn't have time to think about dreams now.
Ruby's boots hit the icy metal of the airship- she had a second to place Yang as she skidded down, not that she was hard to spot. Her sister was partway up the ship, fighting a half dozen raging ursai. Ember Celica flared and one of the beast's claws scrabbled helplessly as it plunged over the edge of the ship into the darkness below.
"Yang!" Ruby shouted, driving Crescent Rose into the sheet metal to stop herself.
Ruby was close enough that her voice cut through the ringing in Yang's ears and the brawler whipped her head around, relief washing the exhaustion from her blood-red eyes. "Hey, sis!" She just barely blocked a backhanded swipe from the Ursa Major she was tangling with, the force of the blow sending her skidding back to Ruby's side. Standing back to back with her sister, Yang spared a moment to look around at the impossible number of Grimm surrounding them. The airship groaned, bulletproof glass cracking beneath their feet. "So, is it time for one of your awesome plans yet?"
"Yep!" Ruby chirped, gauging how much more the crumpling ship could take. As soon as the Goliaths got to it, the whole thing was toast, "Can you pass me your safety line and knock the ship loose when I give the signal?"
"You bet I can! ...Uh-" Yang fumbled with the extremely secure knot Blake had tied around her waist for all of two seconds before having to leave it to intercept an incoming Ursa's snapping jaws with her fist. She flashed a grin at the now-toothless Grimm stumbling back into one of its companions, sending them both scrabbling over the ship's edge. The grin faded when three more took their place. "Yeah okay," gritting her teeth, the brawler brute forced the knot securing her to the rope, snapping it at its weakest point. "All yours," she shouted over a trio of roars headed their way, tossing the frayed end of the rope over Ruby's shoulder and rushing back into the fray.
Up on the cliffs, at the other end of the rope, Blake quickly worked loose Ruby's knot around the tree, thankful for the distraction afforded by Weiss's relentless onslaught and bright flashes of pink that had to be Nora keeping the pack of Beowolves and Alphas occupied. Her brows furrowed, Faunus ears twisting this way and that, finding two distinct sets of sounds missing from battle.
She'd seen Ren. She could hear Weiss and Nora. But Jaune's awkward shouts of attack and Pyrrha's confident battle cries were nowhere to be found.
Her concern was overshadowed when she felt the earth beneath her feet and the trees overhead begin to shake harder and harder, heralding the approach of that ancient... thing heading towards the cliff's edge. Ruby had asked her to help, so if she could neutralize the largest threat...
Leaping up into the trees before a nearby Alpha caught sight of her, Blake made her way through the treetops towards the towering wolf, gunning for a leg. Yang was on the other end of this rope. Maybe if she could secure a leg, they could somehow trip it... some kind of modified bumblebee maneuver...
"HEY! Come this way!"
The shout came from the edge of the cliff, punctuated by rounds from Crescent Rose- standard rounds- enough to annoy the oversized Grimm.
Ruby jumped and waved her arms after the shots before landing and breathing, "Oh, wait, no eyes," she shouted again, "HEY, you big- dumb—uh… face! Come over here!"
She saw Blake getting the rope and flashed her a grin and pointed to her own leg, quickly miming tying a rope to it before firing a couple more rounds at the lesser Beowolves she'd attracted with her yelling. When Blake glanced at the towering Beowolf and nodded in understanding, she upgraded her estimate of her plan from fifty percent good to at least seventy five.
A good dozen yards away, a ring of wolves howled and snapped at Ren's force field. The tiny Faunus Blake had left in his charge took cover between his legs, clinging to his one pantleg with her ears pinned flat as she snarled tiny, terrified snarls at the surrounding Grimm.
The towering wolf's ears perked towards Ruby's voice. It changed course just slightly, cracked, weathered lips peeling back in a snarling grimace as it threw its head back and howled, a low, mournful sound that seemed as though it was comprised of a thousand different voices, dropping and dropping in pitch until the ground shook from the sheer volume of it.
Every Alpha and omega Beowolf in the area stopped, ears perking, thousands upon thousands of blood red eyes turning and fixing on Ruby all in concert.
Ruby gripped Crescent Rose a lot harder. Maybe she'd leave the plan's 'good idea' rating at fifty percent.
In the meantime, she hoped the pause was giving Blake a chance to get that rope around the big guy.
They all attacked at once.
From her vantage point in the trees, Blake's heart leapt into her throat as she watched a solid wall of darkness rush her team leader, wave after wave of Beowolves of all sizes stampeding through and out of the forest to get at their designated target. She didn't get much chance to fret, her attention snapping to a paw the size of an Ursa Major that crashed through the leaves and branches, pushing down and crushing a tree and many smaller Beowolves beneath it mere feet away from Blake's own perch. She could hear the ancient Beowolf's other leg sweeping through the forest, mid-stride.
Stomping down her desire to sprint to Ruby's aid, Blake instead followed her leader's orders and sprang towards the leg before her, darting around the area just above the paw multiple times and quickly working the rope into one of the sturdiest knots she knew. The paw was just starting to lift again when she finished, and Blake jumped back up into the treetops, firing off two rounds in an attempt to signal her success.
Ruby sniped the front runners with a few rounds from Crescent Rose. In the face of the roaring wave of Grimm, she was all focus, all skill. In seconds, they were close enough for her to count their teeth in the moonlight. Ruby sprang backwards, down to the airship yelling to her sister, "Get ready!"
The end of the safety line was cinched to the sturdy strut of the ship's exposed landing gear.
"Got it!" Yang called back, ducking and swiping an arm beneath the jaws of an Ursa that decided to snap at her for glancing away and releasing her spent shell casings, which sent the beast slipping and sprawling into the Ursa beside it when it stepped on them mid-lunge. In the few seconds it took for them to be replaced by another group of three, she had already reloaded with her final strip of high-impact incendiary rounds.
Just as she turned to call out again, the ship shuddered violently, sending a few Ursa scrabbling for purchase against the smooth metal. Yang's breath caught in her throat at an ear-splitting screech of metal. The first Goliath had made it to the other end of the ship, its massive tusks flashing in the moonlight as it reared back and stomped down on the ship's bridge over and over.
Yang couldn't tell if it was just frustrated that it knew the ship wouldn't hold its weight, or if it was actually trying to dislodge it and send them to the bottom of the chasm with it. The brawler immediately took two steps back and chambered a round, calling over the sharp crack of the ship's glass bridge shattering, "Okay! Okay yeah I am so ready right now!"
The Beowolves poured over the cliff, swarming down the length of the ship. Ruby braced to jump, Crescent Rose swung back and down to assist, "Now! Do it now!"
Yang sprang into action, literally, jumping from her crouched position up onto a charging Ursa's head and leaping from it high into the air. Her new vantage point let her see the battlefield in its entirety, stunning her for a moment with the sheer number of Grimm swarming below. A sea of darkness being parted by a single beacon of swirling red. Crescent Rose circling through a fresh wave of Beowolves. The seemingly endless trail of Goliaths. The impossibly sized wolf standing just at the edge of the cliffs, grinning down at its younger packmates. She didn't see much else as she plummeted back to the ship right between two Ursas, firing off her round by slamming her fist full force into the metal hull with a shockwave of flame.
The sheet metal crumpled like tin foil. Its structural integrity demolished, the overloaded airship continued to buckle, screeching against the cliff walls as it began to slip towards the yawning abyss. The safety line began to draw tight.
Ruby abandoned her attacks, leaping to Yang's side. Crescent Rose clashed off the claws of one of the off-balance Ursas, sending it toppling into its fellows as the ship picked up speed. She barely had to glance at her sister to know she was ready to go.
"Race you!" Ruby shouted and shot back up the slant of the airship, bounding off the bone spikes of the Beowolves scrambling to get back up the cliff.
The only problem would be- Ruby looked up at the massive wolf, its huge form blotting out the stars.
"You're on!" Yang laughed, knowing full well she would never be able to keep up as she shot forward after her sister.
Keeping her footing on the crumpling ship was no simple feat, but with her explosive rounds completely spent, Yang was for all intents and purposes grounded, thanking the stars above for her boots' excellent traction as she dodged and weaved through the tumbling bodies of Beowolves and Ursas who had a far worse time scrabbling for purchase against the shifting terrain.
That is, until her foot was jerked out from underneath her inches from the ship's end.
One of the towering Beowolf's gnarled ears flicked towards a low hiss of expletives streaming from the small burning huntress that had just been ensnared by a young packmate. Its nose twitched at the windswept scent of wild roses dancing past its feet, catching the stationary scent of muted lotus flowers slightly farther away. Its fur prickled at opposing points of cold and static advancing towards its back, and somewhere close by, its other ear twisted to catch the quickened breaths of a small one that somehow managed to remain otherwise utterly silent as it too closed in.
The wolf opened its jaws in an enormous yawn. Their numbers mattered not. They would all be consumed in time.
Just as the ancient creature began to turn to face its foolish assailants, something constricted around its ankle, whipcord tight, dragging its foot right over the cliff's edge before snapping. With zero time to react or catch its balance, the beast snarled as it pitched forward and twisted, one arm lashing out to catch the lip of the chasm's edge which held for all of a fraction of a second before it crumbled beneath its massive weight, sending it sprawling into darkness...
Darkness that lit up thirty seconds later in a colorful explosion as everything struck bottom. The ship's red and blue dust engines ruptured from the impact of centuries-old bony spires slamming into their protective casing and puncturing straight through.
Ruby skidded to a halt halfway to the treeline, whirling to face the cliff. She stumbled to her hands and knees as a secondary blast rocked the ground.
"Ruby!" Weiss met her team leader as the light from the blast died down. Bits of glass and metal sprinkled down from overhead. Still panting, she caught her partner's cloak, checking her over for injuries. Sparks of burning Dust glittered as they rose into the night.
Framed in that strange light stood a familiar girl, her massive hammer in hand as she leaned over the edge of the cliff. "Was that all of them? Aw."
Ruby barely heard either of them. Her pulse roared in her ears, "Where's Yang?"
Blake flew by them at top speed stopping only once she reached the cliff's edge. Dropping to her hands and knees, she called over the side, "Yang!"
Ren caught up with Ruby and the others moments later, both hands on his knees, huffing from the exertion of having kept a full barrier up for so long and for having a tiny Faunus clinging to his back. "She was-" his sentence caught on a gasp of air, tumbling out with his next exhale, "She was still on the ship."
A/N: Yang, that was definitely not part of the PLAN
Yikes. Well, sorry this chapter was a little late! (hospital stuff, bleh) Thanks for being awesomely patient and just all around fabulous readers :3
HUGS,
D