Hello, internets.
(I've always wanted to say that.)
Wow. That was really fast. And, I might say, a bit more fun to write than Chapter 1. And I know what some of you are thinking about the title. "Wow, another second chapter titled after an assassin? Lame." I think that too. Nothing good came to mind. So sue me.
Well, my last opening author's note was huge, so this one will be really short.
Anyhow, here you go. Have fun with Chapter 2.
Two weeks ago
The bushes rustled softly around Agent 1 as she army-crawled her way through the thick jungle undergrowth. Humid, viscous air filled her lungs with every breath, and her clothes, already soiled by the damp mud she was crawling through, clung to her skin like they were trying to strangle her. The whine of mosquitos, flies and other insects buzzing in the air sliced through the cavernous silence that filled this rainforest, creating an infuriating sense of contradiction. The conditions of the assignment were enough to drive anyone insane. Nevertheless, the young woman's mind was clear and her focus was one hundred percent on the mission at hand. It was why her superiors had picked her for this job; it was why she was the best.
She glanced down at the glowing display of her wrist unit. A small, topographical GPS map portrayed in green lines informed her that she was approaching her target. 1 pulled herself forward to the edge of a small, rocky ledge. She took hold of a large, broad-leafed branch that obscured her view. Drawing a knife from her upper arm sheath, she slashed through it and discarded the limb, returning her attention to the scene below. Even in the midst of the night's darkness, she could see every detail.
The thick, verdant jungle canopy was visible for countless miles in any direction from the outcropping she was perched on. Directly at the base of the cliff, though, it was rudely interrupted by a rather sizable clearing. Stacks of cut tree trunks lined the edges, and severed stumps were scattered throughout the middle. The huge industrial machines that had wrought this artificial disturbance on the peaceful tranquility of the forest also lay dormant. Several white buildings with roofs and walls of corrugated metal sat on raised trailers. The most unsettling presence on the compound, though, was that of about a dozen large cages situated in the middle of the clearing. They rested under the scrutinous gaze of a few towering floodlights, which shook periodically as whatever was in the cages roared thunderously.
The young agent wasted no time. She slid her knife into its sheath on her arm, looking around to ensure that she left no sign of having been there. After removing the branch she'd cut back earlier, she took a deep breath, held it, then leapt over the edge.
The wind whistled through her hair, giving her some relief from the stagnant air that had plagued her for the last six hours or so. She closed her eyes, enjoying the blissful breeze for a while, before cracking them open. The ground was getting awfully close now. She really should probably do something to avoid being transformed into a smear on the jungle floor. Agent 1 sighed, reaching to the back of her black combat jacket to pull open two zippers that ran parallel to her spine. Powerful muscles moved against her back, and she could feel soft feathers sliding against her skin. Two sleek black wings unfolded from her back, quickly billowing upward as they caught the draft of her downward fall. She decelerated quickly, reaching the forest floor and landing softly.
1 folded her wings and tucked them away again, drawing her main combat knife from the back of her waist as she sprinted toward the lighted clearing she'd spotted earlier. The clearing's activities were the work of an illegal logging company, but even as sketchy as its operations were, it wasn't the reason she was here. The company had recently taken on a side practice in addition to its habits of deforestation; the unique and particularly dangerous Grimm that inhabited the area were being captured and trafficked out of the area, at the discretion of whichever buyers had the deepest pockets. 1's superiors had elected to have her remove the offending Grimm, and eliminate their proprietors.
She reached the edge of the clearing, bursting through the trees and quickly ducking behind a stack of logs. She filtered out the musty smell of wet wood from her mind, instead focusing on finding her targets. Four of the white trailer buildings she'd seen earlier were dark inside, but the lights of the fifth one shone out prominently, illuminating the ground for a considerable distance around it. Loud voices and music were clearly audible from within, giving 1 the impression that the site's overseers were having some kind of party or celebration inside. She took it as a fortunate opportunity, although part of her wanted to go in and berate them for being so careless in such a dangerous area. She ignored it and made her way toward the Grimm cages on the other end of the compound.
The sounds of snarls, growls and rattling cage bars grew in volume as Agent 1 approached the area where the Grimm were kept captive. Normally holding the creatures alive under any circumstances was a flagrant violation of the laws set forth by inter-kingdom treaties. Notable exclusions to this ruling were scientific research groups that studied them and sought ways to end the threat they posed, and educational institutions (normally the type that trained Hunters and Huntresses, although every now and then a culinary school would acquire a permit to keep Grimm).
The first cage she walked up to contained a slumbering Beowolf, which she passed up as it was not destructive enough for her purposes. It did, however, wake from its sleep at her arrival to snap at her. Its muzzle poked through the bars, but all it could really do to affect 1 was make a racket. The next three cages were linked together to contain a lengthy serpentine body, and she was hissed at twice as she passed by the first and then the second glaring head of a King Taijitu. Several other cages held more Beowolves and some Boarbatusks, but she stopped at the last one. She had to tilt her head back to take in the white, enameled spikes on the Grimm's back. It shifted heavy paws tipped with wickedly sharp claws as the young assassin looked up into the face of the Ursa Major that she had just roused from its torpor.
This one should serve.
1 stepped back from the cages, casually licking her finger and holding it into the wind. Eastern-bound breeze. Around 7 kph. She headed east, downwind of the cages. The rhythmic ssh-ssh of the wet grass her feet swung through gradually overcame the annoyingly racket of sounds the Grimm were making in their prisons. She selected a tree at random as she approached the edge of the clearing; a walnut tree of medium height. Agent 1 didn't know if walnut trees were native to this area. She didn't care. She climbed the tree high enough for a decent view of the cages from which she had just departed. The owners of the illicit operation, having been pulled away from their party by all the commotion, were stomping angrily toward the cages, shouting at the creatures within and gesticulating wildly as if they could be understood.
1 drew her knife for the third time that evening, clicking a button to convert it to its second form. The knife, about forearm length, had a molded handgrip and a black metal crossguard. The blade was silver, with a thick black section in the center; now the tip split apart, allowing the black section to telescope out to roughly double its previous length, forming two parallel metal rods.
1 slid a magazine of needle-like metal flechettes into the receiving port on the crossguard. The men by the cages seemed insistent that the Grimm go back to sleep before they left.
She took an optic sight from her belt and locked it into place above the handle, parallel to the metal rods. She peered through the adjustable scope, settling on 8x zoom. It wasn't something she needed to make the shot, but 1 liked to be sure. Through it she could clearly make out the details of the man closest to the Ursa Major's cage. He was overweight, had a bushy beard and looked flushed from the stifling jungle weather.
Her crosshairs lingered between his eyes for just a moment, before she thought better of it. If I give the others cause to run, some of them might escape. She switched targets, exhaled, and her finger tightened on the trigger.
Inside the weapon 1 held, a Gauss rifle, a single metal flechette was released from the magazine into the weapon's chamber. Magnetic coils in the two metal rods charged up, taking hold of the projectile and pulling it forward. Within 0.07 seconds, the flechette reached a speed of four kilometers per second. It exited the miniaturized railgun with the approximate kinetic force an SUV would carry doing sixty on a freeway. The entire process was silent, save for the crunch emitted by the tortured metal of the lock on the Ursa's cage as it liquified. The door squeaked open quietly as the latch released.
An entire Shakespearian drama seemed to commence across the face of the bearded man. His expression displayed confusion, then changed to shock before he seemed to finally settle on terror. Similar emotional turmoil took place on the features of the other poachers as the massive Grimm stalked out of its cage, shouldering the door open wider as it did so. Each boom of its thunderous footsteps echoed off the edges of the clearing with an eerie sense of finality. The bearded man backed away hesitantly, trying to avoid attracting attention from the Ursa.
Then the locks on the other cages exploded in shrapnel, detonating sequentially down the line as they were hammered by 1's rifle. The contents walked, crawled, and slithered out, stretching their muscles after weeks of confinement. This whole intake of information was too much for one worker, who lost consciousness and simply collapsed to the Ursa took this as its cue to charge forward at the group of poachers with a throaty roar, causing them to panic and scatter. Grimm from the rest of the cages rapidly caught up to them, cutting off their escape routes. It was over quickly.
Agent 1 watched the whole scene through her optic lens. She felt nothing, no twinge of emotion for those who lost their lives in front of her eyes. She counted the men as they were attacked to make sure none were missed. The employers of this outfit had been foolish not to send any guards to the facility; no less than a Hunter-class fighter would have been needed to fend off the powerful Grimm in the area. The carnage had ended by now, and the creatures were beginning to take their leave. Curiously, most species of Grimm did not seem to have a taste for human flesh, which raised the question of where their ferocity stemmed from. A question it was not her prerogative to answer.
1 collapsed her rifle, stowing the scope on her belt. She dropped down from the limb she'd been perched on, flipping nimbly between branches on her way to the ground. The earth rushed up to meet her, and she planted both booted feet on it in a firm landing, dusting herself off before glancing up to find a pair of red eyes staring at her from a demonic, masked face.
Her instincts took over before her eyes even absorbed what kind of life form she was facing. 1 immediately performed a split kick to the beast's face, throwing its head back and staggering it. The Beowolf recovered, shaking its head and inhaling deeply for a howl to summon its pack. Strangely, the only sound that it managed to make was a wet gurgling, and it scrabbled at its throat to find that a knife hilt stuck out from under its chin. The beast's eyes filled with a red fury, communicating a hatred that its now muted vocal cords couldn't.
1 sat in a low stance, another throwing knife already out in her left hand. Her main weapon still occupied her right. The Beowulf stepped forward, throwing a slash that was ducked under with ease. 1 followed her dodge with a cut to the Grimm's vulnerable shoulder, then a slash across its back. The beast swung its other arm around behind it to backhand her, but she caught its wrist and kicked its ankle out, throwing it off balance and onto the ground. Three more quick stabs to the right shoulder put the limb out of action. 1 flipped back from the beast, waiting for it to make the next move.
The white mask of the Beowulf didn't show shame, regret or fear like a human fighter would. The beast stood up, glaring at its opponent darkly. Then it turned away from her, and began to trot lopsidedly into the forest. As it grew further away, the sound of its footsteps and the throaty, guttural rhythms of its breath grew quieter and quieter.
1 waited to make sure it was gone, then relaxed her posture. She felt no need to follow the creature and finish it; no such clause was detailed in her mission, and it was therefore unnecessary. The agent reached down to activate her wrist GPS, sending out a locator beacon for her retrieval team to pick up. Headquarters was a five-hour flight from her coordinates, so she settled in for a long wait.
In the time the stealth-black Bullhead picked her up and landed back at base, Agent 1 sat in silence with the retrieval squad. The only sounds were the quiet whisper of the aircraft's blades and the occasional squawk of radio chatter from the cockpit. One of the men next to her looked fairly young and somewhat nervous, most likely a new recruit. He glanced over to her several times, interested to see his first glimpse of one of the renowned agents that made up the core of their organization. She ignored him.
The moment the wheels touched concrete in the aircraft hangar, 1 was already walking briskly into the network of tunnels built into the mountainside headquarters. I have to hand in this mission report as soon as possible. Her boots thumped loudly as she walked through the whitewashed halls, glowing light panels in the floor and ceiling lighting the space. She brushed past several desk workers dressed for business in the sparsely populated halls, but only one of them crossed over to walk next to her briskly.
"1!" he called. "Hey, wait up. I want to hear about your mission. How did it go?"
Eric Detrich, an operations officer, had on a sharp-looking suit and a forest green tie. He organized missions and was in charge of notification and deployment of agents. He was more of an executive; technically higher up the ladder than she was but by no means her superior. His eyebrows were still raised in anticipation of an answer to his question.
"The mission went well. The targets were exterminated, I went undetected, the Grimm are no longer a consideration." She spoke briskly, her voice hardly changing pitch as her faintly clipped accent enunciated the words carefully and concisely. "I'm going to see the commander now for a debriefing."
"Now?" Detrich asked. "Right now? As in, you're walking there at this moment?" He glanced over her mud-splotched uniform, inhaling slightly only to gag at the scent. "Shouldn't you, ya know, take a shower and change? You sort of smell bad."
"That would be prohibitive to the express delivery of this report. It is standard protocol to deliver mission reports as soon as possible after…"
Detrich cut her off abruptly. "Yes, yes, after the completion of the mission. But it's also important for you to clean up and get a fresh uniform 'as soon as possible' before going to see the big boss. You've got to make yourself presentable. It's important." 1 opened her mouth to protest, but the executive kept going. "Really, this disregard for general etiquette needs to stop, Cath-"
Eric caught himself, but Agent 1 cringed anyway. She hated when people didn't use her designated codename. An uncomfortable silence took over as the two continued walking. Finally 1 spoke. "I think I will go and clean up as you suggested."
Detrich seemed relieved. "Good, that's good… Yeah, so I've got some, er, files, that I have to organize for a meeting later, so I, ah, have to go and do that."
Agent 1 nodded and turned sharply down a hallway to the right, leaving the confused man to ponder just what was going on in the mind of the organization's best agent-in-training.
1 stood poised outside the commander's door, hand raised to knock. She had showered and put on a fresh change of her uniform clothes, a white short-sleeved shirt underneath a black flak jacket with black cargo pants. Numerous small sheathes for throwing knives were strapped onto various locations on her body, and she wore standard issue combat boots. Her straight black hair was cropped short at the jawline with two tufts poking up on top, and she had white bandages wrapped around her wrists and palms.
Her knuckles rapped sharply against the solid metal of the commander's door. "Come in," a voice spoke from the other side. She opened the door and walked into the office. The walls were tan, decorated with several plaques and lamps. The central feature of the room was an impressive walnut desk, behind which sat an equally impressive man.
Rumor had it that Commander Sark was ex-military, and he certainly didn't do much to indicate otherwise. The man wore a dark green suit with pockets and a few medals on it. He had a graying buzz cut and a weathered, experienced face. Even sitting down, he seemed to fill the room with an air of dominant, yet restrained confidence. The commander gestured to a chair across from his desk. "Please, have a seat."
Agent 1 sat down stiffly. "Sir, I have my mission report ready from the jungle assignment southwest of Mistral."
"Actually, Catherine, I think that report will be able to wait. There's something else I need to address with you."
The agent straightened at the mention of her given name. "Sir, Catherine O'Neill is my civilian name. Protocol dictates that, while on assignment or on base, agents should be referred to only by their codenames."
Sark waited for her to finish, a courtesy not many people afforded Catherine during her habitual recitations of agency protocol. "Be that as it may, I think it's best if you start getting used to hearing that name. You'll be using it a lot on your next assignment."
Catherine cocked her head. "Sir?"
The commander stood from his desk, bringing himself up to his considerable full height, and began to pace back and forth. "Catherine, this agency was founded many years ago by some very powerful people. No government controls our actions, no military supplies our soldiers. Few know of our existence and even fewer are out of our reach should we wish to silence them. Do you know what the goals were that those founders had in mind?"
"Yes, sir." she replied. "To employ the finest personnel in assassination and espionage and deploy them throughout Remnant in order to influence world events."
"Precisely." Sark reached one end of his paces and turned on his heel. "And you are one of those personnel, the product of many years' training and education. Your skills are unmatched in stealth, efficiency, killing. You have only one more mission ahead of you before your training is complete." The commander's latest stride ended at the edge of his desk, from which he picked up a slim manila envelope using two fingers. He leaned over and handed it to her.
Catherine accepted the envelope, unfolding the cover. Her gray eyes scanned back and forth over the lines of the first page, widening more and more with each pass. She looked up at her commander. "Sir… I do not understand. I have been fully educated in combat, history, and almost everything else this academy offers. I graduated top of my class from basic training. Why am I being assigned to Beacon Academy?"
Sark reclaimed his seat behind the desk, clasping his fingers together and leaning forward. "Catherine - Agent 1 - You are the perfect stealth machine. You can hide in an empty room; you can shoot the tips off matchsticks from five hundred meters away. You can infiltrate any building in the world without detection, eliminate any target without being suspected. You obey orders without hesitation. The only remaining flaw in your ability…" Sark paused. Catherine displayed no reaction to his words, not even a glimmer of emotion. He sighed.
"The flaw is your ability itself. You are too good at going unnoticed, too emotionless to be completely effective. You could not feign laughter or sadness, if you ever realized those were appropriate reactions to any situation. Some information in this world is not written on a paper that can be stolen, or stored on a computer that can be hacked. That information, those secrets, are known only to certain people. People who would never dream of speaking them aloud, let alone telling another soul they didn't trust with absolute certainty. Those are the most valuable secrets, the things most worth knowing. Those are the secrets that you could never access, because you do not know people." Sark stopped to let the appraisal sink in to his most promising trainee. He did not expect her to disagree. That would require her to be offended, which was a highly unlikely occurrence.
Agent 1 let the information flow through her mind. For the first time in many years she was surprised. That her renowned abilities had just been criticized scathingly should have angered her, but it did not. Catherine wondered if she was expected to respond, and if so, what she should say. The commander saved her this inconvenience, however, as he resumed his speech.
"For this reason, Catherine, your assignment now is to become an ordinary student. A Huntress, yes, but in every other respect you must learn to become like the vast majority of people your age. Have friends, go to parties, tell jokes. You will be able to blend in out in the open, and, more importantly, gain the trust of almost anyone. After this final training mission, possibly the toughest you will have ever endured, you will be without question the finest agent among our ranks."
Catherine thought over this. She did not speak for a long time. A chance to better herself for the good of the agency… certainly something she found appealing. But at the same time something deep inside her shuddered at the thought of going to this place. Although, then again, it was neither her place nor her right to refuse. Catherine looked back up at Commander Sark.
"When do I leave?"
And that was how Catherine ended up on a rooftop in Vale, picking off Grimm with her rifle on the day a certain team of reckless teenage girls blew up a train underneath the middle of the city.
She wasn't aware of that particular detail, of course. Helping out against the invasion was just the best way she had been able to think of to build up a positive reputation, thereby convincing Beacon's administrators to let her in.
Another Ursa's head exploded after a hardened metal flechette pierced its eye at high speed. Catherine quickly switched targets, took aim, and pulled the trigger again. Beast after beast she brought down, only pausing occasionally to exchange an emptied clip with a full one from her belt. She had just sighted another Boarbatusk in her crosshairs when a bright glint, shining in the afternoon sun, flashed in front of her target and blinded her through the scope. Her shot went wide, cracking a chunk of white concrete off the sidewalk next to her target.
Catherine grimaced and lowered the scope to investigate the object that had thrown her off. The said object was moving quite fast, weaving in and out of the other Grimm in its hurry. Startlingly, it seemed to be making its way toward the building she had settled on as her snipers' nest. Without gunpowder, her rifle was silent and, without a sound to be attracted to, most of the creatures below had been unsuccessful in locating their bane at the top of the seven-story building. This unidentified silver and black blur had no such troubles, sprinting toward Catherine's location recklessly. She figured it would give her no trouble, being as far below her as it was-
And then, as it reached the bottom floor of the tower, the blur took a flying leap from the ground, cracking the concrete where it pushed off. It slammed into the side of the building and, rather than rebounding off or skidding back down, it simply continued running pell-mell straight up the wall. A trail of shattered windows and shredded plaster was left behind its route, and it approached Catherine fast enough to make her scramble back from the edge where she'd perched. It reached the edge of the roof and soared into the air from sheer momentum. What... is that? She stared at it, her brain not quite believing the information her eyes were sending it, until gravity took hold of it and pulled it down to land on the roof, where she got a better look.
The creature resembled a Beowolf, albeit only vaguely. Masked in a steel version of the faceplate normally worn by this particular species of Grimm, complete with red linear markings, the Beowolf also had metal claws and spikes on its arms and legs. Its chest and neck were encased in an armored steel frame, which supported a fully mechanical right foreleg. The prosthetic limb looked bulkier than its natural counterpart on the left, and was armed with a jagged blade that jutted from above the claws. The beast reared back and growled, but something about the sound was odd, like an ordinary Grimm's voice had been recorded and digitized.
Then it hit her. The right arm, the neck, the glare in its eyes. This creature was the same one that Catherine had fought and defeated in the jungle two weeks ago. Obviously the poachers' employers who had been after it had gotten it back, and had certainly been busy.
The Beowolf tensed its legs up and crouched for another jump, so Catherine leapt back from it, keeping her rifle close. Powerful muscles propelled the Grimm high up into an aerial flip, and it arced toward her with razor claws extended. She brought her rifle up to bear, aiming quickly at the rapidly approaching beast. There was time for her to squeeze off several body shots, but the projectiles crumpled harmlessly against its armor plating. Seemingly at the last second, Catherine moved the barrel up and fired one last desperate shot. The beast was treated to an unpleasant surprise as her perfectly timed attack nailed it in the right eye, throwing its head back and its body off balance.
The Beowolf landed bodily next to her as she rolled away, drawing a throwing knife from her leg and switching her Gauss rifle into its dagger mode. Without a bladed edge, the longer and bulkier form was less suited to her agile close-range combat. Catherine's opponent recovered quickly, regaining its footing and lunging at her with its bladed cybernetic appendage. The eye it had just been shot in didn't appear to slow it down at all. She caught the strike on her larger weapon, supporting it with her smaller blade. Even having blocked, the force of the impact still pushed her back several feet across the rooftop, boots skidding on the rough surface. The Beowolf leaned forward to give itself more leverage in the struggle as the pneumatics in its arm whined, pushing harder and harder against Catherine's guard. She gritted her teeth, her body straining to resist the powerful beast.
The stalemate ended when the Beowolf suddenly swept its arm to the side, and the force she'd built up pushing against its blade threw her into a forward lunge, her guard left totally open. Her eyes went wide, and she felt as though she were suspended in time as the Grimm slowly raised its metal arm beside her. She gasped even before it swung the limb downward.
The attack bludgeoned her into the rooftop, cracking the stone structure and rumbling through the whole building. A circular pressure wave erupted from the epicenter of impact, like a miniature sonic boom. Catherine felt like she was being hit by a mortar shell; the intensity of the pain was shocking. Her aura cushioned the blow somewhat, and kept the blade from cutting her, but she was primarily a long-range fighter. She relied mostly on distance and agile dodges to avoid taking damage, so her aura reserves were smaller and her defenses weaker than those of close-combat fighters.
The Beowolf stood over Catherine, observing the effects of its assault with its good eye. She laid there in the crater taking slow, shaky breaths, each one wracking her body with pain. She bit back the tears that pricked her eyes. Her aura went to work healing the worst of the damage, but it would be a few minutes before she was completely restored. I cannot afford to take another hit like that one.
The agent pushed herself up one one arm, bruised torso aching in protest, and rolled away from the creature. Her foe began to circle her as she moved toward the edge of the building. Catherine strategized for a moment, deciding to try and provoke it; since all its other hits on her had been surprise attacks, knowing when to dodge should give her an advantage. She switched her weapon back to rifle mode and quickly brought up the barrel, not bothering to use a scope.
She hadn't even gotten to shoot yet before the Beowolf attacked. Her plan worked a little too well, in fact: it suddenly sprinted forward on all fours in a full-body tackle, moving too quickly for her to duck sideways without being hit. The only direction she had available was backward, off the top of a seven-story skyscraper. Having little choice to begin with, she took her only option and moved toward the edge. At least this way I will be able to avoid a direct impact. The Beowolf had about ten feet to go before it plowed into her, so she held her breath and crouched on the edge.
No matter how many times she did it, and even though she was part bird, Catherine could never get used to throwing herself off ledges at insane heights. The feeling of weightlessness, then the gut-wrenching, nauseous sensation of gravity reaching up to grab her and accelerate her suddenly toward the ground. She repeated the experience for the umpteenth time after falling off the building backward. The robotic Beowolf followed suit, hurtling off the edge at a much higher speed than she. It reached out at Catherine, snarling, but she could see that it was on a course to miss her entirely. She undid her jacket zippers as it sailed over her and she spread her wings, gliding in a gentle circle to slow her descent.
The Beowolf, woefully ill-equipped for BASE jumping, did not have wings. It did, however, weigh about half a ton more than a standard specimen of its class of Grimm, thanks to all the half-inch thick plate steel someone had thoughtfully welded onto its body. After exiting the rooftop, its momentum carried it clear across the avenue in an arcing descent. It slammed heavily into the concrete side of the building opposite the one they had fought on, rebounding off with a pained yelp. Its rapid fall continued until it was rudely interrupted by an enormous mass composed mainly of carbon and silicon, known to most people as "the ground." The impact of the falling Grimm shook the asphalt, creating an almost comical Beowolf-shaped indentation in the street.
Catherine flapped her wings to get her back up to rooftop altitude, landing nimbly on the flat surface. She peered downward to the earth below to see what had become of her foe. It almost made her discount it entirely, seeing how hard it hit. Surely nothing in Remnant could survive such a fall. But, even as the thought crossed her mind, something stirred in the crater seven stories below her.
The Beowolf's steel arm dug into the concrete, dragging a furrow in the ground as it pulled itself out of the hole. The limb had been horribly warped by the fall, and the rest of the monster's body was not faring much better. Alive it was though, standing before her. Catherine sighed and raised her rifle.
A shot to its left shoulder. Another to the base of its spine. The thing was still clinging to life, barely breathing. She inhaled, and pulled the trigger. Her last flechette nailed the beast straight in its already-damaged right eye, and it laid still.
Catherine leaned back against the lip of the roof. She breathed heavily, lowering her aura's defenses and letting it focus fully on healing her. What an ordeal. I wonder if I will face anything else that strong at Beacon. Just then, another rumble shook the streets, easily as strong as the one caused by the Beowolf's landing. Startled, she searched the horizon for the source of the disturbance. Over toward the warehouse district, a plume of gray-brown dust rose prominently over the cityscape. She scrutinized it for several minutes.
Then another explosion emanated from the site, changing the plume from light gray to a burnt charcoal-black. Something else happened, too: a blurry object hurtled upward, presumably having been propelled by the explosion. Catherine's owl eyes missed nothing, immediately focusing in on the object. It was vaguely orange, and the shape looked familiar- No, She thought. It's a person…!
Catherine stretched her wings. It seemed as though she wasn't done flying for the day. She crouched and leaped up, catching an updraft into the midmorning sky and heading toward the object as fast as she could fly. As she vacated the field of her battle with her mechanical foe, her eyes were focused elsewhere as the red eye of the fallen Beowolf gleamed. Briefly, so briefly that it might not have been there save for the faint crackle sound given off, a grainy static showed through the electronic lens.
And for a moment only, it coalesced into the hazy black silhouette of a man…
So, there's the second chapter. Just to inform all of the people who even know this story exists (not many, I imagine), this is an uncharacteristically short period between chapter posts. This was half written when I posted Chapter 1, so don't get any ideas that I'm actually going to hold myself to any kind of regular schedule. I'm a high school student. Self-discipline is to me as Princess Toadstool is to Mario.
You know, I really need a catchy sign-off. Like at the end of every episode of DBZ, the guy would say something like, "Will this latest tyrant succeed in his nefarious plan? Can Goku and his friends stop the destruction of Earth for yet another time? Will Namek ever actually explode after Frieza blows up the core? Find out, on the next exciting episode of DRAGON BALL Z!" If I could get that kind of thing going, it'd be great. Post ideas in the comments…?
So, ya know, follow, favorite and review, I guess, and thanks for reading!