Hey, everyone! I'm alive.
Let me just say that I am so, so sorry for the wait. I have so many (totally legitimate) excuses, but I wanna get to the story before the people who read Chapter 4 last time end up dying of old age.
Rrright. Where were we? Well-timed cliffhanger? Epic climax chapter? Hordes of bloodthirsty Grimm? Ah, yes, that's it. So, without further ado (adon't?), may I present Chapter 5.
"Alright, can we please finish this up sometime soon?" Blue moaned.
He grimaced at the sight of the latest in a long line of Ursa. He dodged under a swipe from one of its massive paws, rolling to his feet with sword in hand. It swung the paw back at him; he jumped, executing a forceful spinning kick to its chin and knocking the beast's head back.
The Grimm roared, enraged by his offense. He pressed the red button on his sheath, and a shade of crimson spread down the length of the weapon. With a roar, Blue ripped his nodachi from its sheath, along with a torrent of white-hot Dust-fueled flames. The razor steel cleaved straight through the flesh and bone of its foreleg, but came to a jarring halt against the thicker armor of its mask. The searing heat of Blue's attack left charred black burns on its face.
Blue sheathed his sword for another quick-draw iaido attack, red button still held down. The crippled Ursa in front of him stumbled forward with a halfhearted growl, blood pooling on the concrete beneath the stump of its front leg. It shuddered as Blue's heated sword passed through its midsection, then slumped to the ground inanimately.
Around him, he saw his allies fighting in similar conditions. Natalie was hammering her LMG rounds into pretty much any Grimm she happened to look at, simultaneously using her whip to tangle up the limbs of the more agile ones so she could finish them. Catherine was the most mobile of the group, the darkly blurred fighter weaving and dodging constantly in her attack so that hardly any of the evil monster horde was able to keep up with her.
A shadow fell over Blue's shoulder, and he whirled to find a frantically rotating Boarbatusk descending on him for the killing strike. The swordsman maneuvered his steel sheath to block, but before the two objects made contact the Grimm was accelerated sideways by a concentrated burst of wind.
He glanced to see Cyril give him a little salute before spinning his staff into the mask of a Beowolf behind him, resuming combat. Blue followed likewise, sprinting toward a duo of smaller Beowolves to cut them down with his swift strikes.
Natalie wrapped her chain whip around the neck of a Beowolf and pulled it off its feet. "Dammit, Blue, how the hell did you think these were people when you saw them?"
"They looked like a crowd of people to me! Don't judge!" Blue retorted.
"Then your eyesight is terrible!" The Beowolf from before took a burst of .30 cal ammunition to the face, barely beginning to dissolve before a dead Creep collapsed over it, taken down by the dual flashing knives of Catherine.
"Don't blame me, at least. Isn't she the one who led them here?" Blue sliced into the side of a passing Grimm, then pointed at Catherine with his sword. "How come she's not being annoyed by you?" Another Grimm barreled toward Blue in a full-body tackle, a Beowolf with claws outstretched in a clutching grasp. He switched from the red button on his weapon to the blue, executing two rapid iaido slashes.
The Beowolf passed by him, slowing its pace as the swordsman rested his nodachi on his shoulder and watched two frozen chunks of arm fall to the ground heavily. Nice knowing you, thought Blue as he beheaded it with a forceful two-handed swipe, causing the corpse to dissolve into hazy black smoke.
"Catherine has been polite and tremendously helpful since the moment she got here. You, on the other hand, are a complete nuisance and deserve to be pestered." Natalie called to Blue as she blasted more Grimm.
"Alright, fine, fine," Blue exasperated. "I'm so terribly sorry I thought they were humans before. Now can we finish up?"
"Seems like a reasonable request." Cyril commented, swinging his staff down and back to throw open the weapon's fan mode. "Let's get to it for real."
Twenty minutes later, the exhausted quartet of warriors was still locked in combat with the final few Grimm of the day. As Natalie finished off a Beowolf with a slivery slash of her razor-sharp whip, Catherine simultaneously deposited a fifty-gram chunk of lead flechette into the skull of a Boarbatusk behind her. Cyril had already defeated his target, a Creep, so the last of their group that remained was a certain lanky swordsman.
The swordsman in question was currently on one knee, sword and sheath like lead weights in his hands and resting on the ground. His shoulders rose and fell in sequence as he breathed in gasps of oxygen from the sweat-laden atmosphere around him. I feel tired, he thought, just to provide the requisite understatement of the decade. Even his aura, normally an impregnable bulwark of strength, had waned somewhat quickly beneath the exhaustive battle.
And yet, here he was, with one foe left.
"I don't wanna have to fight that one," Blue complained loudly as he stared up into twin pairs of slitted pupils, each seeming to sink menacingly into the red sclerae of two snake heads suspended before him by a lengthy serpentine form. One a cold, deep black, the other tinted gleaming white. As Grimm went, Blue supposed the King Taijitu wasn't such an ugly one to behold here and there.
And then it just slammed its face into him. Not a hiss, nothing in warning. Just bludgeoning him with its big stupid head the size and shape of an economy-class sedan. The dark asphalt of the street below him sprouted cracks in a spiderweb shape from the impact of the dark head of the Taijitu.
The snake Grimm's lighter head hissed in reaction to its counterpart's offense, seemingly satisfied by the attack on a human. The black snake head shuddered, though, and slowly lifted away from the roughshod earth not of its own accord.
"Get… off… ME!" Blue groaned from beneath the snake head. He held up the monster's face with his back, hands and knees planted firmly into the ground. The swordsman struggled heavily to stand one foot up and moved his hands to the underside of the struggling King Taijitu's head.
The towering serpentine Grimm was rocked back as Blue forced himself upward with a mighty push and a tremendous roar. It landed in a tangled pile amongst the folds of its own body. Blue staggered to his feet, scrabbling in the debris to find the glinting silver hilt of his sword and gripping it firmly when he felt the cold steel against his palm.
The King Taijitu was rearranging itself as he moved his fingers over the rainbow-tinted controls of the weaponized Dust scabbard on his sword. "Did you know… that I really hate creepy-crawlies?" the lanky swordsman asked his adversary. The serpent Grimm replied to him with a hiss. "Yeah. I thought so." Blue flexed his fingers over the buttons, gripping both sword and sheath firmly in a drawing stance.
The snake struck as Blue spun backward on his heel. Dust and rocks kicked up from the hole made by the large Grimm's strike, and Blue clamped down his fingers on all three of the buttons at once. Glowing rainbows of color rippled down the length of the steel scabbard, increasing in frequency until they were a shimmer of indistinguishable white light. The Taijitu's second head struck, crisscrossing over the other one. It sideswiped Blue on his return spin in the opposite direction, but the necks behind both heads were stretched out in front of him now.
The Dust inside Blue's scabbard vaporized, shattering the metal that made up the device and leaving the swordsman with a nodachi that glowed with silver Dust-fueled energy. Blue slid his now-free hand onto the hilt of the curved sword, raising the blade above his head in a two-handed grip. Then it descended.
There was a bright flash of striated white light that overflowed from the edges of rooftops, spilling out into the afternoon sky. Accompanying the sight came a high-pitched keening noise that faded along with the light, both phenomena gradually giving way to the native sky and quiet ambient hum that normally filled Vale's streets.
Blue's nodachi was buried halfway into the concrete at the base of a long, jagged gash marking its path through the concrete. The linear scar marring the surface of the road went from the middle of the street where he stood all the way to the sidewalk, about a foot deep at its thickest point. It crept up the walls of the buildings at the side, widening as it worked its way up thirty feet to end at the third story.
The blue-haired swordsman was still gripping the hilt of his sword. His enemy, the King Taijitu, had been beheaded on both ends, leaving only scorched stumps where its twin faces used to be. Its body was still moving as residual nervous signals from its now-disconnected brains worked their way through its muscles and gradually wore themselves out.
Natalie, Cyril and Catherine stood a ways down the street, watching the spectacle from afar. Natalie stood with her hand on her hip before speaking up. "Overdramatic much?" she asked rhetorically.
Blue pulled his sword away from the scorched earth. He reached for a sheath at his side automatically, but his hand grasped at nothing and he recalled that it was gone, disintegrated after his last attack.
The three comrades joined him in the center of the ruined street as the husk of the King Taijitu faded away into shadowy, smoke-like vapors. "So," asked Cyril, "What now?"
"I am tired," announced Blue. Catherine started to speak, but Blue held up a hand and she thoughtfully refrained from commenting. "I am also hungry," he continued, "and I would love to find somewhere that offers both sitting down and eating food."
The stand was called A Simple Wok. It was by the curb of some side street they found while wandering. It had a bamboo framework and paper walls, and a sloped roof with red clay tiles. The owner was a short old man with spiky gray hair, thinning in the middle, and he gave an indifferent "harrumph" when the ragtag group sat down at his noodle house's four stools.
"I'd like to order the house ramen, please." Blue requested promptly. He moved to lean his nodachi against the wall of the stand, but the owner have him a threatening look and he realized how likely it was to damage the thin paper barrier. Instead, he placed it beneath his bench gingerly.
The old man took Cyril and Natalie's orders, Catherine having politely declined with fewer words than even seemed possible, and he set about preparing utensils and dishes for their meals.
"So, am I as cool as you guys now because I killed a big bad Grimm?" The tall swordsman petitioned his three companions eagerly.
Cyril scratched his head, leaning back on his seat. "Well, I don't know. I mean, we all fought Grimm that were enhanced technologically somehow. The one you beat was just a normal King Taijitu. It wasn't really special or anything." He explained.
Blue dejectedly slumped in his seat, crestfallen, as Cyril continued. "Honestly, I kind of have to hope that you don't get to fight one of those…" He searched for the right word for a few moments.
"Mecha-Grimm?" Natalie suggested.
"…Mecha Grimm." Cyril took the proffered term hesitantly. "If you all the sudden got to fight one, Blue, it'd mean that the city that we just now helped to save would be back in danger. We'd start all over again with the running and the fighting and the trying not to die, and it would really just be a lot of unpleasant business."
"Yeah, I guess I can see where you're coming from when you put it like that." Blue sighed. "I just thought coming here would be more spectacular than it has so far."
Natalie have him a weird look. "Exactly how exciting were you expecting it to be?" She asked. "You had a complete stranger fall through a roof onto you, met a monk-" The girl gave Cyril a strange glance, as though she was uncertain as to his honesty in this regard. "And then you fought an entire horde of Grimm."
"And I guess there was also the enraged bar owner."
"And the enraged- wait, what? What do you- You know, never mind, actually. I don't think I wanna ask." Natalie shook her head at Blue in disappointment.
The shop owner looked like he'd finished making their orders. Three porcelain bowls hit the counter in front of the group: a sizable bowl of noodles and broth for Blue, a soup ordered by Cyril and Natalie's spicy chicken. The tall swordsman dug into his carb-filled meal with enthusiasm as his friends took a more leisurely time eating.
Peaceful silence was maintained for about three minutes. "So," Blue mumbled past a mouthful of noodles, "What's the next step? Like, what happens now that we're all done fighting stuff? This is the kind of thing I wonder about in TV shows." He paused and swallowed a bite of ramen. "There'll be some cool scene with plot development and some dynamic events, then just a cut right to the next scene. How did they get to that point? Did they drive? Walk? Maybe take the bus? Was it rainy out? Did they get wet? How long has it been? No one asks these questions."
"No one asks those questions for a very good reason." Natalie stated as she grappled with her chopsticks to extricate a particularly resilient piece of chicken from her plate. The girl put up a valiant struggle, but ultimately the breaded poultry was just too well-affixed to the dish. She huffed in frustration and abandoned her chopsticks, prying the piece of chicken off with her fingers and chomping down on it angrily. "The reason is that no one cares. Would you wanna watch some people drive forty minutes from one place to another? All that's boring stuff. People watch TV to feel entertained, not to fall asleep."
"You're no fun." Blue crossed his arms and huffed.
"I guess I'm going to Beacon to talk with the head honchos and see what they think about me enrolling. I don't have enough lien on me to pay for a hotel, anyway." Cyril spoke up, ignoring the digression. "What about you?" Blue scratched his head at the query.
"Same, I guess. I was thinking that too, how maybe they'd let us in. Sure, it's halfway through the year already, but who knows? Maybe they'll be feeling amicable." He sighed.
"Plus, I'm adorable so they probably won't be able to say no. Well, to me, anyway." Natalie clasped her hands under her chin, tilting her head and batting her eyelashes dramatically. Blue let out a derisive snort at her antics and rolled his eyes. The four of them continued eating for a while longer, happy simply to be resting and not fighting for their lives.
It's weird. I didn't notice it getting dark, but now the skies are all gray and gloomy. Clouds and winds, and the sun all covered up by sheets of mist and damp. I kinda wish I had more soup. The warmth might be nice. I hate how it gets dark and cold so early. O abridg'd days of winter, thou art cruel and heartless.
Wow, that was cool. If I ever form a band, it's going to be called Abrig'd Days of Winter.
Blue let his mind wander in the aftermath of their delicious rest stop. The four not-quite-friends were meandering down a side street back toward the general direction of the town square, as directed by Cyril. The skies were indeed much darker than was warranted by the time of day, but Blue thought little of it in the moment. He tuned back in to the sparse conversation occurring between Natalie and Cyril just in time to hear the former accuse the latter of horse murder.
"...Yeah. That was weird." He muttered. Natalie's look shot daggers at him, but he ignored the sharp glance and was about to drift back into thought when he heard a weird sound. It was odd and extremely out of place; one of those weird phantom ringing noises that sometimes came from electronics, but other times were just scattered figments of the imagination. This one was odd enough to take notice of, though, and Blue interrupted the conversation around him in full this time.
"Hey, guys, listen, listen for a sec. I thought I heard something." Cyril and Natalie toned down their bickering to a gradual silence, and Catherine continued being silent.
The four of them listened carefully, hearing nothing but the sound of the wind picking up as it blew through the streets and past buildings beneath the now-cloudy sky. Then the air split, sonic waves vibrating every molecule of their beings with a sound like two keening shards of glass being raked down the world's largest chalkboard. It was a demonic and infernal noise, a screech loud enough to make all four warriors cringe in pain and cover their ears.
"What the hell was…" Natalie began. A shadow eclipsed the small amount of light that managed to trickle down from the sky, swooping over them with the faintest rustle of wings, in sharp contrast to the noise that had just shaken the area. The absence of warm sunlight let a blustery chill run over her arms, and she shivered. "…That?" The airborne feature was gone as soon as it appeared.
Blue had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it wasn't the ramen disagreeing with him. "Anybody see anything?" He gripped the hilt of his sword in unexpected anxiety.
Cyril felt the breeze ruffle his scarf, and the monk clutched it against his shoulder securely while he scanned the building tops that surrounded their street. Finding nothing visible amongst the wispy, grayish clouds, he closed his eyes and searched with his Semblance for any traces of aura. Nothing. He felt only the vaguest indications of aura from the center of town – most likely the regular townspeople of Vale, none of whom lived out here in the industrial district. "I can't sense anything," he informed his comrades.
"Agreed. The skies appear to be vacant." Catherine affirmed.
They stood in an loose, outward-facing ring, still tense for some reason. The darkened, clouded skies stayed darkened and clouded, occasionally whisking down a gust of wind, but everything seemed calm. Blue was still gripping his sword in an alert, slight crouching position, but after nothing happened for several moments he started to feel stupid.
He stood up, lowering his nodachi. "Okay, is there or is there not something to worry about? Because this is getting tiresome. I'm starting to feel like an idiot."
And then he saw it.
The first part that came into view was the head, emerging slowly over the precipice of a building directly in front of him. It was, like all Grimm, masked in white bone and decorated with flowing crimson lines like smears of blood from some tribal ritual, contrasting starkly with the gray skies around it. At one point it might have been a Nevermore, but in Blue's mind the traditional classification system for Grimm didn't really apply here. It's freaking enormous, he thought inwardly.
Sure enough, the rest of the winged Grimm's massive form emerged slowly from beyond the horizon. Given its apparent size at this distance, its dark wingspan had to be the size of a city block, maybe two. It flapped them once, and the clouds around it stirred in mini-cyclones from the gust. The jagged plates of bleached bone that adorned most Grimm were also present on its feathered form in great numbers, almost like the thing was wearing a suit of armor.
The rest of Blue's ragtag quasi-Hunter group stared along with him, mouths agape at the spectacle. No one spoke for a few moments, even as it glided closer to them at a high speed.
Natalie spat out a very unladylike word. "Okay, let's just go forward with the assumption that it's going to attack us and we're going to have to fight it, because why wouldn't the day get worse?" She sighed, her shoulders slumped. "Let's get moving. Anyone got a plan?"
Cyril responded, eyes still locked on the Nevermore. "Let's… let's just see what it does. Maybe it won't notice us. We probably look pretty small from up there." As he spoke, the avian Grimm passed over them, repeating the earlier spectacle of blocking out the sun. Blue shivered. Even though it was so high up, the creature's presence still made his pulse race. It was weird; the swordsman felt like he should run, but even if he'd wanted to he doubted his legs would move.
The Nevermore's flight continued uninterrupted, straight over their group. Cyril sighed and lowered his metal staff, which he'd been holding unconsciously in a battle-ready position. "See?" The monk said in a relieved tone. "It's not attacking. Now we can let the police know or something, maybe arrange some form of reinforcements-"
"It is coming back," said Catherine.
"Aaand we're sunk." he finished with decidedly less bravado than he had started out with.
The Nevermore's chest swelled as it inhaled, feathers ruffling up as though readying themselves for attack. It reached the end of its breath and paused momentarily, then unleashed a sound.
If Blue had taken a minute from covering his ears and reeling in pain, and if also he had looked over his shoulder, and – further hypothetically – if there had been a ten-foot amp stack behind him playing the same broken-glass-on-a-chalkboard noise as before on full volume, he would have been totally unsurprised. As it happened, he did not indeed take any time from covering his ears and reeling in pain.
It's a weapon, he realized as he tried to regain some of the crucial sense of awareness that was of paramount importance in battle. He blocked out the throbbing pain in his ears and tried to take stock of his surroundings, even while staggered with one knee on the cold asphalt.
Cyril and Natalie clapped their hands over their ears and grimaced in pained expressions similar to his own, having dropped their weapons to the ground with a clatter that was inaudible in the flood of white noise from the Nevermore. Catherine had her arms wrapped entirely around her head, covering her ears and flattening the two dark locks that normally stuck up on the top of her head. Her eyes were still wide open, though, staring with a calculating gaze at the avian Grimm overhead.
It stopped after about twenty seconds, albeit twenty seconds that might have been two decades amidst the wash of grating pain. Blue shook the ringing from his ears and gripped the cord-wrapped hilt of his his nodachi with both hands, even as the echoes of the sound attack reverberated off the towering concrete warehouses around them.
"How do we fight it? Ideas, people. I need ideas." The tall warrior gave his comrades – and himself – no time to panic. That could – had to – wait until later. Right now, they needed to figure out what exactly was going on before they could engage the super-Nevermore and hopefully keep it from wrecking the whole city.
"We could- " began Natalie, shortly before a dark, oblong shape slammed itself into the ground next to her, scattering little crumbles of pavement. It was sleek, a slim, shiny center section off of which branched hundreds of smaller fibers, still as sharp as razors, and as tall as Natalie herself. She stared at the huge Nevermore feather in stunned silence for a few seconds. "We could run. We could definitely run," she suggested.
"Nope. Sorry. Not running." Blue shut the redhead down completely. "We're killing it. Well, I guess it might also kill us. But I actually one hundred percent prefer the first of those two outcomes, so if anybody would like to give me a hand here with Operation Don't Get Killed, that would be fabulous."
The Nevermore screeched again – not the same sonic attack from before, just a normal everyday giant bird monster screech - and swept its massive body into an upright position, dusky wings outstretched to either side before it accelerated them both forward at great speed. The feathered masses rippled as they were put under stress by the powerful creature's muscles, and as they reached the apex of their arc a multitude of coal-black feathers separated from their owner, unable to resist the inertia of the movement. They flew with startling accuracy, as though they were perfectly weighted for maximum effective range, and whistled through the air toward Blue's group.
"Incoming!" Natalie yelled, ducking into an awkward roll in an attempt to evade the barrage of bladed appendages as they ruptured the asphalt at her feet. Catherine blocked a smaller feather with her knife and deflected a larger one into the ground next to her, and Cyril released a burst of air from his fan that scattered several of the murky projectiles from their linear flight path.
Blue studied the incoming feathers carefully and adjusted his footing to move from where he thought most of them should hit. One particularly large one seemed to be moving faster than the others, and he wasn't in a position where he could dodge it effectively. That leaves blocking, he thought and readied his sword.
Two flew past his left shoulder, one impacted between his feet, and another soared over his head. The big one bore down on him faster than he'd expected, and he swung his sword up to block. As his polished silver steel met the reflective black feather, Blue knew immediately that something was wrong.
It was heavy, heavier than he'd expected – the thing had to weigh thirty kilograms, probably also made out of solid metal. The edge of the feather looked blurry and ill-defined, and at the point of contact with Blue's curved nodachi it became evident why: the entire perimeter of the bladed feather was a sharpened, rotating chain. It spun rapidly enough as to throw a shower of glimmering sparks to the ground beneath Blue.
The blue-haired warrior was losing his battle against the force behind the chainsaw-feather, and elected to sidestep and let the projectile through his guard. It crashed into the pavement, continuing to spin until friction robbed the blackened steel weapon of its energy.
More feathers rained down on the group, and the Nevermore screamed at them, as if the hail of sharp blades wasn't enough to remind them of its presence. "Keep moving," shouted Cyril as he scrambled upright, heading toward the edge of the street.
The monk has good ideas. They needed cover, and standing in the middle of the street just wasn't delivering. Blue scanned the building facades for any openings, but turned up only a gray metal door set into the wall that was sure to be locked. Cyril made a beeline for it regardless, although he merely confirmed the swordsman's suspicions.
More feathers sped down from the darkened sky as the avian Grimm circled overhead, scattering the ragtag band of fighters. Blue slid against a warehouse wall on one side of the street, crouching into what little cover it offered. He leaned his head back against the stacked stone blocks, allowing himself a moment's respite if nothing else. He could hear Natalie letting off a burst of desperate fire as she attempted to divert the Grimm's attention in the least.
Blue cracked his eyelids, let his vision focus for an moment, then opened them further as he processed what he was seeing.
"Guys! Fire escape!" The tall warrior yelled. Catherine, Natalie and Cyril followed his gaze to the rusty metal frame set against the warehouse wall opposite him. Natalie curled her chain whip and snapped it around the lowest edge of the bottom ladder, pulling it into reach.
Above them, the Nevermore circled and watched four tiny silhouettes clamber up the scaffolding into a window. Its gut instinct urged it to ram the building with its considerable mass, but a foreign thought also entered its mind, lines of computer code and complex behavioral algorithms factoring in environmental variables and specifications. The Nevermore cawed in satisfaction and looped its flight around so that the warehouse swung into view, dead center.
Natalie rushed through the deserted hallways of the warehouse office, followed closely by her companions. "Why the hell are there so many empty buildings out here? Did that many businesses start up and then fail and just leave this junk here? Sheesh!" She grabbed a lamp and used it to vault over a sizable desk in her search for an exit.
"Wait, are we going up or down?" Cyril asked her as they rushed past another doorway.
"I figured up, since the street wasn't working out too well for us and we wanna attack it. That thing's too high up for ground-level weapons to be effective." Natalie elaborated, pausing every few seconds to gasp for breath.
"I concur." Catherine voiced her opinion.
Another hallway, a right turn and then a quick backtrack down the hallway led the group to a final set of stairs ending with a door set into the ceiling. Natalie crashed into the horizontal locking bar and unlatched it, bursting out onto the corrugated metal roof. The strawberry blonde searched upward for the giant raven Grimm, but when her eyes finally fell on its dark form she froze.
The rest of her group tumbled out onto the roof, except Catherine who leapt nimbly over the other two members. On standing, they soon joined their compadre's gaping stare toward the Nevermore. It was… sort of floating. Its body was vertical in the air, with its wings curled around its torso curiously.
The Nevermore cawed. Its shadowy wings were folded in a cocoon, and it gazed down upon its tiny foes with gleaming, hate-filled eyes. Its wings slid over each other, the space between them and its body growing with each moment. Above and below it, a newfound wind accelerated, kicking up visible streams of atmosphere and howling as it picked up speed. Blue gulped as he took in the scene, and he tried to ignore the cold, clammy feeling he was getting all over his body. Against the backdrop of the dark sky, the Grimm looked completely demonic.
When only its wingtips touched, encircling an angry column of swirling gusts, the Nevermore opened its wings wide. Its miniature wind tunnel surged, almost doubling in width before the beast closed its wings again in a single movement, hurling the dark tower of raging air at the four teenagers.
"Back inside!" Blue shouted over the rushing wind. The others bolted for the door they'd left hanging open on its hinges.
The Grimm's funnel cloud of torrentuous wind closed in on them with incredible speed, enveloping the better part of the roof where they stood in just seconds. The tall swordsman grabbed the door as he leapt in after them, practically diving into the oblong opening in a panic. He slammed the door shut and it latched with a thunk just as the artificial tornado swooped over them. They were safe, and he was unharmed, but he still slid down the stairs awkwardly to meet his group at the bottom.
They were all a bit frazzled. "Freaking tornadoes?!" Natalie yelled. She smacked Blue.
"What was that for?" He yelled back incredulously.
"I needed to hit something. You're convenient." She breathed heavily for a few moments, the wind from the Nevermore's twister howling outside as it rattled the warehouse's windows in their frames. "Freaking tornadoes?!" She yelled again. Blue covered his head with his arms, but Natalie refrained from reflexively hitting him again.
"Okay, yes, it's scary. Normal Nevermores don't do that. Why is this one different and more importantly how can we disable it from causing further mayhem?" Cyril interrupted their bickering as he turned brusquely down the hallway. Blue wasn't sure where exactly he intended to go, but he and the others followed anyway.
"I can shoot it, but I have zero chance of hitting near any vital spots from ground level. Roof height seems a little sketchy too, what with the scary tornado thing and all." Natalie responded.
Cyril considered that for a moment before speaking. "Okay, everybody… I think I may have the makings of a plan."
Yeah, it's been the better part of four months since my last post and I 100% blame school. Calculus, physics and gov/econ are the newest banes of my life and I am seriously considering adding them to the story as secondary antagonists. Interesting dynamic, huh? Anyway, I've been working on this chapter during every scrap of my spare time and I was going to wait until it was finished, but this is already long enough that I thought I'd just post something, if only to prove to myself that the story isn't dead in the water. And it isn't, I promise, but from now until May after AP exams I'm going to be strapped for time and I can't make any promises in that regard, though with luck I'll post well before the next four-months marker. Thanks to everybody who's stuck out the wait, welcome to everybody new to the fic, and as always: please follow, favorite and review the story. Until next time!