With an ear shattering explosion, the once empty field was now wreathed in fire and smoke.
"And stay dead this time, you bastard!"
Jaune Arc roared as he rammed Corea Mors through the chest plate of a black knight. The teen was dressed in some light plate mail, armor designed to provide maximum coverage without impeding any movement. His opponent had elected to wear the opposite, armor that covered every inch of the body and showed no skin at all.
Seeing as the black knight was now a corpse that was drenching the ground in a puddle of blood, it was a choice that didn't help him any.
Jaune continued to stare at the corpse, unmoving as he perched over it and leaned into his family blade. All these years, all the suffering this monster in human flesh had caused and now…
Now it was all over.
Jaune Arc, sixteen with the eyes of an older man, breathed in deep and savored his kill. It was done…it was finally over.
"Wouldn't do that if I were you kid."
Jaune jumped, reflexively settling into a battle ready stance.
"I mean, I like to enjoy a good revenge slaying as much as the next zealot but I wouldn't recommend doing that with a former vessel to a demon."
The blonde young man gulped, heeding the wisdom that was his elder.
Deacon was a hardcore exorcist well versed in all dealings with the unholy and supernatural. The older man was well respected and sought after as a prime fighter on the frontlines against all the demons that preyed on humanity.
He also was one of his few close friends and had been the reason he got to see past his eighth birthday. Both of them had met through the twisted schemes of a dark power that tore Jaune from his home and thrust him into a new world full of dangers worse than the ones his previous world held. Still, Deacon stuck by the child and eventually the two became inseparable, learning to fight side by side and forging a bond that was akin to father and son.
Which made it all the more disturbing when Jaune got an eyeful of what should have been his much older and battle hardened friend.
"…This might be the black magicks speaking but do I…sound younger?"
Jaune did an about face and had to rub his eyes and blink twice before he confirmed what his vision was sending to his brain. While he had opted for a traditional armored set that was reminiscent of knights of old, geared to protect as much as possible while offering as much free maneuverability as plate mail would offer, his elder had been equipped in the simple cloth of a priest.
Granted the cloth was enchanted and blessed but it looked more fitted for a causal setting than the actual battlefield. The vulnerability shone through now, the once pristine set turned into glorified rags. To go back to the issue at hand though, Jaune took one more long hard look at his colleague and concluded one thing.
"I think that demon sucked out your lifeforce…and made you around my age."
The man in question was quite tall, fairly young, and had a spiky mass of black hair with red highlights on his head. However, the most striking feature about him was the burns. Large crisscrossing marks pocked the body and seemed to intertwine as if to convey some twisted message in the burned flesh.
Deacon took one look at his body, patted his face, and summed up his thoughts in one word.
"Fuck."
=R=W=B=Y=
A light drizzle darkened the skies that made people rush inside and those who couldn't long for a hot meal and a dry bed. A lone figure stood atop a wall of logs and surveyed the surrounding area. The placement of the gate and fortifications made for the perfect vantage point to defend against any siege, including but not limited to a horde of Grimm.
The single guard, a woman judging by her obvious stature and figure, kept glancing over the empty field that laid before her. She hefted a rifle and peered around, taking note of any possible hiding spots or walls that could be utilized by her fellow guards in the case of an attack. Earlier, she had been told by the visiting group of hunters that there had been increased sightings of Grimm in the area and while she hated to listen to those useless heroes, she was not so foolish to pay little heed to warnings.
"Violet said you were at it again," The mild voice was part amused, part exasperated, and brought Blanc out of her black mood. She looked behind to see a pretty young blonde in her early twenties standing there.
"Hrm? What?" Verte sighed and sat down next to her.
"You're brooding again aren't you," It wasn't a question. When Blanc said nothing, Verte rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"What are you like, Blah Blah, we've all told you to cut it out with the depression already…" That prompted a smile to tug at the corner of the other young woman's mouth.
"Can you stop? I've been too old for that stupid nickname for years now for crying out loud."
Verte grinned briefly, then became serious again. "But you were doing the melancholy guilt-trip brooding thing again, weren't you…"
"What if I was?" Blanc sighed tiredly.
"Is it something to do with those Hunters that were here earlier?"
"Hrn."
Again Verte sighed. When Blanc made that particular non-committal sound, it was a sign she wasn't going to divulge any more information on the present topic no matter how much she was pestered. The oldest Arc child had always been put into a mood whenever Hunters were involved. The young woman once had aspirations to join the prestigious group of warriors but became disillusioned with them long ago when they prioritized one man's life over that of civilians.
Civilians that included her baby brother.
"Well Violet told me to come here and get you to stop being such a grump. Mom also wanted me to give you some of this."
Blanc turned and nearly gave a squeal when she was gifted the thermos of homemade soup and slightly cold but soft bread. Mama Arc may be one of the strongest hunters in the world but she still took the time to be the greatest mommy too. None of the Arc children would ever willingly miss a meal of hers.
"Thanks Verte. Tell mom that too…and…let Violet know I'll stop being a grump. Now get inside, you'll catch a cold."
"You're too overprotective," Verte said with a groan, "Besides, it's just a little rain. You should take a break, the village is still gonna be standing here tomorrow. Taking one night off won't kill you."
The younger Arc sister suddenly took a softer tone of voice, "Besides, it's silly to keep blaming yourself for every little thing. No one blames you for what happened…and I know Dad already beats himself up enough about it."
Blanc schooled her features and turned back to stare out over the ramparts. The older part of the Arc family had torn their way through the Grimm in a mad rush to get home, mission and holdings be damned. Their mother had sobbed when they found the home broken into and silent but her tears turned into relief when they checked the secret cubby to find the three youngest inside.
It was short lived when the little girls told them what Jaune had done.
Rarely had the family seen Nicolas Arc become so infuriated but that day, the current scion of the house of the Arc family waged a single one man war on the invading Grimm and beat back the tide of Darkness. The rampage was legendary and cemented his status as the figurehead for the current mission to reclaim the lost lands that each government pooled resources to commit to but the Arc man was finished.
Nicolas rebuked the men in charge, proclaiming that he was done with traveling on far away jobs and leaving his family to fend for themselves. He hung up his blade, a self-made sword in the likeness of the ancestral Corea Mors, and retired to his true home, a little house on the outskirts he built by hand. Nicolas spent day and night, tirelessly working until he finally felt that the defenses he made were adequate protection.
To him, everything was a little shy of satisfactory. To everyone else, it looked like he turned a small wooden homely cottage into a veritable castle that would require two armies just to breach, let alone take. Refugees flocked to the new castle and declared fealty under Nicolas Arc, offering their services in return for protection. The man gave no confirmation but also no denial.
Eventually the population boomed and a settlement blossomed out. It was a good foothold leading into the wild and the walled cities made an extra note to mark down the newly declared community as a trade hub. The economy was flowing and Nicholas Arc made damn sure that if any Grimm so much as looked in the direction of the walls, eradication followed. The prospering area was a surprise to those in the government but chose not to make a hassle out of finally having made a successful stronghold outside the walls in years.
Verte and Blanc both huffed at how broken their father had become. He had once been a powerful man in his prime, embodying the trope of masculine hero that saved the day. Ever since Jaune disappeared though, he seemed to visibly age and suddenly lost all his warlike luster. The man no longer wanted to fight a battle unless it directly affected him and what was his while no one could really fault him for his emotional breakdown, there were people who decried his actions for abandoning others to the ever increasing threat of Grimm.
Instead, the populace had to make do with the Arc maidens, the sisters who took their father's place on the frontline and carved their own legacies into the bodies of the monstrosities.
"Look, just come inside for a little at least. You gotta give a report to dad anyways."
Blanc conceded the point and stuffed her meal away for later. It was just as she got up that they both heard the rumble. Verte looked up at the sky with a mildly concerned frown.
"Was that thunder?"
Blanc didn't answer, and when the younger blonde looked at her sister, she saw that Blanc had wrenched down her hood and was crouching with the fingers of one hand lightly touching the metal of the catwalk above the gate while the other hand rested on her knee. Tense and motionless, she was ignoring the cold rain water soaking her hair and sliding down her neck and cheeks.
"Blanc?"
"That wasn't thunder…"
No sooner were the words out of her mouth then they heard another rumble, this one much closer and louder than the first so much so that they felt it vibrating the wood beneath their feet, and in a moment of spiraling horror, Verte realized what Blanc had feared. The rumbling did not come from above as it would if it were thunder. Instead it came from below, which could mean only one thing…
Grimm.
Immediately Blanc dived for the siren to sound the alarm even as Verte scrambled down from the catwalk above the gate to spread the warning. The siren was a gramophone-shaped device that emitted a loud wail when the handle on the side of the box was turned and Blanc spun it as fast as she could, making the alarm siren howl through the entire camp.
Immediately, all around the camp, everything was dropped as the inhabitants followed what they'd practiced during the attack drills. The handful that were trained guards took up arms and headed for the gate while the non-combatant members of the camp scurried to take cover in the various safe rooms the villagers had built.
Meanwhile Blanc got on the comm and broadcasted a distress call to all the combatants that were out on patrol or scavenger hunts.
This is White Lady issuing total recall! Base is under attack by the Grimm! Repeat, this is White Lady calling recall! The base is under attack by the Grimm, we need backup ASAP!
Even as she finished the mayday transmission, the rumbling from beneath the ground had come closer and become even more violent; causing a constant vibration through her feet. As though in a nightmare, Blanc slowly turned to look out over the wide street outside the north gate of the camp, and before her eyes several sections of the roadway began to shake, and then collapsed completely as over a dozen Grimm emergence holes broke the surface. Immediately the roars of the invading monsters reached the horrified woman's ears and ripped her out of her trance.
Blanc quickly swung herself down from the gate and called the gathering fighters to her. They looked pale and scared but determined, and Blanc hesitated; what if she was sending these men and women to their deaths as well? Their father was out on patrol, two of her younger sisters with him. Mother and the rest were rushing to safe room and it left her as the oldest to issue orders and defend the walls. She looked around at her fellow guards and gulped, losing her nerve.
Each of them had known the risks then and they knew them now when they offered their bodies to the cause, but they wanted to defend their friends and families, their homes and the lives they'd built here, if those things weren't worth dying for, then what was?
Swiftly Blanc organized the villagers into pairs and assigned each pair their posts; she and a slightly younger dark-haired lad named Jet at the barricades on the catwalk above the gate.
Crouching behind the sandbags, Blanc loaded her rifle. Though she had Hunter training, it was incomplete and ill-suited for the situation at hand. The villagers were armed with well-kept and weathered gear that was just below the usual standard of any Altas military soldier. While no one had any unique homemade weapons, it didn't stop them from unloading crates of ammo into the Grimm whenever they showed up.
Blanc herself was partial to a good ol' fashion long range gun, the ability to stand above and rain death down below had become addicting to her and she made her past experiences known as she mechanically loaded and fixed her favorite old gun to its stand and lined up the crosshairs.
The holes had erupted at the far end of the street and the first beowulfs had just passed the halfway point down the avenue leading to the camp, when Blanc sighted along her scope with one of the leading Alphas.
"Hold steady…" she murmured into the comm hooked over her ear. The rain was heavy now; severely impairing visibility and making aiming much, much harder. They'd have to hold until the Grimm came close enough to be clearer targets…
"Steady…"
The huge dark beasts continued to approach blithely in full view, as though they didn't know that several reticules and crosshairs were being pointed at them, or else putting too much trust in the grey curtain of rain that half obscured them.
They soon realized their folly as Blanc roared; "OPEN FIRE!"
Immediately the air was filled with gunfire; the screaming stutter of assault rifles, the roaring blast of shotguns, and the bitten off bangs of three sniper rifles. The first wave of Grimm fell under the hail of bullets, but the rest continued to move forward, pushing through the volley with their comrade's flesh.
Blanc felt her heart sink as she saw the sheer number of the enemy that they were facing. This wasn't just a stray sighting or even a small pack that had drifted too close to the site. These Grimm had come specifically to attack this camp…
She didn't even have time to wonder why such a large force would be sent to attack villagers instead of the main stronghold, as the Grimm reached the gates. Blanc immediately grabbed the sandbags that covered her, watching with horror as the metal buckled while she felt them shudder under the assault.
Over the comm she heard separate cries of terror and death, the Grimm washing over the poor unfortunate souls that were manning the posts in front of the gate …
It soon became obvious that there were just too many of the Grimm and with a horrible sinking feeling of inevitability, Blanc realized that it was only a matter of time before the camp was overrun… The thought made anger blaze up inside her and she switched from her rifle to an assault; forget finesse, she wanted to fill something with lead.
It was just as she'd emptied one of the clips and was reloading, that she heard an entirely different kind of roar to that of the Grimm's, swiftly followed by the shriek of a metal. Thinking for a horrible moment that the people that had been out on patrol had arrived and proceeded to just dive in to engage the enemy, Blanc quickly looked out from behind her barricade.
There were indeed more defenders on the battlefield, hiding behind debris behind the actual Grimm holes, but it wasn't them that Blanc had heard, and she was just in time looking out to see none other than some white armored man slice a Grimm in half… A quick glance over the rest of the warzone revealed one other unique combatant, neck-deep in combat with the Grimm and…ON FIRE?
"This is Deacon of the Templars, reporting in. Me and my companion have no idea what the hell is going or who you people are but that's not gonna stop us from tearing these monsters a new one."
Her hand flew to her comm, voice nearly sobbing with relief but held steady, "Thanks for the back up. Where's the rest of your team?"
"We are the team," Deacon responded as he decapitated wolves left and right, "I'm the one on fire. My friend Jaune is the one pushing in. We'll clean house and finish this for you."
"That's crazy! You should back off and reinforce with my men!"
"We'll be fine. Wouldn't be the first time we did this. Keep your men clear, we'll handle the majority."
"As if! Men! Show these newcomers what we're made of!"
"Hmph, very well."
The aforementioned warrior was currently cleaving his way left and right, shield held high and blade swinging like clockwork. It was like watching a machine, the way the newcomer simply scrapped through the thick horde. His stance was simple but effectively in its practicality. He blocked an attack, swung his sword, fell back into defense, rinse and repeated. No Grimm was too strong, no monster overpowered his shield arm or held steady when he sliced through them.
Any danger proposed by a flanking Beowulf or Ursa was diminished when fire sprouted from nowhere and engulfed the very air. The temperature of the battlefield seemed to increase at a fast rate, making some pause and wonder where the heat was coming from. Deacon revealed himself as the source, Black Keys clutched between his knuckles and launched with reckless abandon, flames consuming anything they touched as the holy swords did what they were made to do and slice through the black demons.
"Impressive, your men are indeed prepared for this."
"An Arc never goes back on their word buddy! Now enough chatter!"
The air soon great humid and ashen with disintegrating Grimm, the heavy downpour that previously obscured the battlefield lightened and allowed everyone to see the two heroes clearly as they dove into combat like madmen and fought thorough. It was strange, seeing one-man tear through with reckless abandon while the other slowly and meticulously cleave through the crowds of Grimm.
The holes from whence the Grimm emerged were shuttered and capped, well thrown grenades or a pillar of flames that Deacon called forth to incinerate all that stood in its path. Many gaped and marveled at such high elemental control, whispering and questions floating around as there was no dust seen on the wild priest.
Eventually the skirmish stopped and the haggard defenders celebrated, the last Grimm crumbling into black particles as the two warriors made sure that not one Grimm was left. The survivors of the attack all cheered the two warriors, grateful for the assist and seeking answers to who they were.
Blanc herself stepped down from the ramparts to greet the two, letting her paranoia dictate that at least half of the defenders were just as ready to fight back against the two should they turn on them.
But when she got closer to the two, a niggling sense of familiarity ate at her when she laid eyes on the one called Jaune. She didn't dare hope that it wasn't some coincidence that this savior shared a name with her baby brother and she ignored her gut about the feeling until she established concrete proof.
Deacon was the first to notice her approach and in a foreign display, bowed to her with his arms to his side and his body forward and head down. It was such an awkward scene, a half-naked scarred man capable of wielding fire like nothing bowing to her.
"It is an honor to meet you, White Lady," He said as he rose, "I hope that our unexpected appearance wasn't too much trouble and that you'll be willing to help us just as we helped you."
Blanc searched his words, trying to decipher if there was any hidden meaning behind them. She also couldn't place the slight accent the flaming man had or disguise her shock at the scars he bore.
"The honor is all mine…I guess. Tell me, what's a pair of Hunters like you doing way out here?"
The armored Jaune seemed to tense, memories from long ago coming unbidden as the voice of the lady and the terms seemed to jolt some long forgotten recollection.
"I feel like that term holds more meaning than a job that means to hunt wildlife and game animals for food."
Blanc raised an eyebrow and felt herself grow even more suspicious. Rarely did anyone ever not know what the prestigious title of Hunter truly mean and even more mysterious when they had the skills for it but no knowledge.
"Well…where do you hail from? Is it one of the outliner villages that managed to escape the attention of the Grimm or something? Not many people know what that title doesn't mean."
Deacon seemed to tense just as well, realizing that they were treading on thin ice. He noticed the locals still armed and ready, as if one wrong move would result in a fight for their lives.
"It would take more time than we're strictly allowed to explain the full story and it seems that the exchange of knowledge would be uneven if we were to swap stories. I guess in this case I must bid you farewell as me and my companion must depart immediately."
Blanc had her eyes narrowed and was just about to give an order to detain these two, violently if necessary, when the steel-clad man spoke.
"And even if I were to stand alone against the hordes of enemies, I would gladly stare into the face of death if it meant honoring my word."
Her heart stopped and the color drained from her face as some alien feeling washed over her. Now that they were given some breathing room, Blanc felt that feeling came back tenfold and suffocate her. Her eyes roamed the figure, looking for any signs that gave away what he knew.
Just when her eyes locked onto the shield before her and her focused brain remembered the sight of the family sword, the armored man removed his helm and made eye contact.
"I remember when dad used to say that to us before training. I remember it vividly when we fought. I remember…you."
Bright blue eyes that were once so innocent and full of joy, now hardened by years of combat and reality stared back into hers. Blanc felt her breathing hitch and she took an unsteady step back, willing herself back to face the truth before her.
"J-Jaune? B-baby brother?"
"An Arc always keeps their word. The family motto," The young blonde man gave a gentle smile, tears starting to fall from his face, "I swear to you on my honor and the family name, I am who I say I am."
Blanc gasped, her own tears starting to spill.
"I thought I would never see you again Blah-Blah," Jaune said with choked smile, "But I'm here now and…I'm home."
She didn't know when or why she didn't react when he reached forward and hugged her.
Intellectually, she knew that it was rather silly for her to accept the crazy situation so fast. She should be demanding evidence, waiting for proof before she acted on anything. Hell, she knew she should have waited until her father got a good look at him and his weapons to be sure before she accepted it. But, at that moment, she couldn't do that. At that moment, her baby brother Jaune was back in her arms again.
It had been a long time since she cried like that.