I blame finals.
Warning- one F word.
In the Council Room
Uproar grew on two different factional views, pitting friends against friends. Verbal debates shook the whole room as tables cracked and profanities happened here and there. The large room echoed with their roars of justice and actions.
They were all divided, brothers and sisters who were once so close now pitted with one another in an escalating debate of the match to a near physical one.
On one side stood CTDK and EBNY. On the other side stands VRDN, and MLCT.
The neutral and pending are teams SLTE and HLTP.
Until weapons ended up being drawn because the teams on either side are on equal grounds.
"Perhaps it's just best if we actually take frame by frame." Nicole suggested. "It would make outer lives and judgment easier."
"It takes too much time." Mike retorted.
"Yes because you rather spend all your time with hookers and not your team, nor mission." Emily added in, watching a scarlet shade take over his face.
Jakob takes the first swing at Cindy who just ducked the large fists and launched her own, striking him across the face with the force of a Boarbatusk spin dashing into their target. Jakob staggered under the surprisingly harsh blow, and glared at her.
Team HLTP opted out right away, deciding they they will have no say in this matter altogether and try to quell the rising situation. With HLTP being the true neutral of the Remnant Frontier Patrol, they always try to defuse any heated situation.
But today is not in their favor.
"Guys, we should all take a-" Penelope was knocked aside by a large ax as VRDN made the first team strike to the opposing side.
"I will not stand idly by when people who sympathize this behavior stand with us." Jakob swings his battle ax at Cindy.
Emily and Brenda intersected for their friend with their own weapons, the rest of EBNY and CTDK followed suit.
"Neither will we." Emily pushed him back, slashing him quickly with her razor edged sword creating a thin line of red across his chest.
"Guys enough!" Hanna jumped between the two leaders in vain effort to calm them as her pleas fell on deaf ears.
And then all hell broke loose when SLTE decided to side with the guilty side. Weapons drawn and anger seething, they all charged against the lesser side, backing them all up against the furthest walls. A brawl broke out among them without reason. This wasn't their usual friendly team brawls- this is a actual one where anyone can be killed.
"What is up with them? This never happened before- even in the past events like this." Emily whispered to Cindy as Diane released her semblance, covering the eight of them in the orange hexagonal patterned shield.
"Don't know," Emily muttered, eyes shifting around, Tryygr cawed on her shoulder. Her eyes were solely trained on the emblem on their left shoulders.
They were fading.
Emily's eyes widened at the view from Tryygr, there is no way in a thousand years for their markings to just fade out, they are made with dust, and it won't fade so simply. Unless…
Her vision shifted to an approaching black gunship.
"We have to move, it's too late we can't reason with them." Emily looked at Ying, and made a motion with her hand. Ying drew a canister from her belt.
"Wait, what?" Cindy barely voiced before the canister exploded in a blinding white flash. A hand gripped hers and dragged her along.
"I'll explain later," Emily and the rest of her team dragged CTDK out right on time as the ship hovered a few feet from the ground.
The hatch opened to reveal ROCK and four other heavily armored warriors standing next to them, their equally massive guns roaring to life as it spat out hot shells to the pursuing groups behind them. One of them had a large glowing blue gun of some sort, glowing brightly for a second before shooting out a glob of glowing light blue plasma glob that detonated on the ground, sending a heatwave from such a small blast around them, the grass around it within a two yard radius to lose life and become black instantly.
Cyres and Mel sent a titanic wall of fire and ice behind them, aiming to halt their pursuers momentarily.
"Get on!" Akaia shouted under the cover of the three heavy support as they try to keep the other teams at bay.
They wasted no time boarding the gunship. The hatch closed behind them as they sped off, the ship cloaked itself into the night once more.
They watched as the ship flew off and disappear from sight altogether as the ice shattered and the fire died down. Jakob watched as HLTP disappear into the forest as he turned back to the sky.
"They got away…" He hissed as a familiar sounds of high heels to concrete came behind them all.
"Oh don't worry just yet about the loss." familiar gold eyes peered in the dark of the night.
"I hope you know what you're doing." Jakob stepped back slightly from her.
That is before alarms began sounding throughout the city.
Inside the gunship Hadrian
The inside of the ship is spacious unlike the bullheads they've taken to missions. There were floating skulls going about, scanning them or writing with their tiny mechanical arms. Even though it is all metal with seats, the engine roar nor its vibrations cannot be heard or felt.
What felt odd is that inside were at least six more large, heavily armored soldiers sitting on one side of the gunship. They did not hold the massive guns like the four did, instead they held guns that is too large for any man to hold without it being mounted on a tripod. One of them in particular had a white helmet, and more decorated armor than the rest. In their hand held a long silver sword and the other a pistol the size of a sub machine gun.
"What's going on, what did you see?" Cindy asked Emily. "What do you mean that the marks are fading."
"Our markings of the Frontier are laced with dust, meaning that they don't fade even in the worst conditions." Emily explained to her. "The only time it can be removed or erased is when one person denounce themselves or-"
"Someone with high enough dust skill can remove them." Cindy finished for her.
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Brenda's brash voice pipped up beside them.
"It means, someone coaxed them to their side not too long ago for it to happen." Ying pretty much figured it out for them.
"So you're saying that someone planned this beforehand?" Jay asked Ying as the slender girl nodded in affirmation. "
"Correct, whoever planned this knew our teams well enough to be able to get them on either side and I don't think they know Hanna's team is a neutral in all this." Ying tinkered with her recurve bow. She was about to saw more when the pilot's voice rang through the whole, mainly to Akaia.
"My lord, there seems to be an invasion of some kind, targets are en route from the forest!"
ROCK quickly looked out the windows and at the carnage below. EBNY and CTDK followed suit. There is swarms of moving red eyes in the dark of the forest. They can see the trees shake in their wake, a few Nevermores flew over the invisible ship, rocking them slightly as the flock passed.
"Holy-"
"Shit, again?"
Akaia turned away from the window towards the squad in front of her.
"Secure the area." She commanded.
"At once." The ten armored giants unbuckled their harness and one by one disappeared into their shadows. Akaia turned to Cyres and Mel.
"You know what to do."
"Aye aye captain!" A large grin spreads over Mel's face as the side hatch opened. Mel jumped out first, her fire wings bursting to life as she descended into the fray in a ball of fire- setting a good portion of the forest on fire. Again.
"This is the fifth time this week." Cyres groaned in annoyance, immediately sheeting everything in ice until the last of the flames died down and only a certain moving flame speck remained.
Cyres whistled loudly, even though it was drowned by the wind entering the aircraft. She then jumped out, landing on the back of the mighty ice wyvern as they targeted the first few Nevermores in the sky in a flurry of ice, talons and lances.
Akaia and Rio turned to the eight of them.
"Do you have any parachutes in this ship?" Brenda jokingly asked Rio who just shook his head slightly before placing his plumed helmet on.
"Nope."
Shadows enveloped them all as they can feel the wind rushing around them and then sharp jagged movements, tumbling in the void before all unceremoniously landing on their rear ends as they were thrown from the dark portal of the siblings shadows.
"How do you even do that?" Kelly asked, shaking her head to keep her world from spinning.
"Practice." Akaia replied throwing a beowolf over her shoulders as she spun around, Behemoth and Leviathan screeching to life as the blades shot from it's housing, enveloped in black fire as Akaia brought it down on its first victim.
Rio spun Vanquisher to life, the dual end halberd had white flames lapping at the blades as he spins it around, slashing through the grimm surrounding him with ease.
"Just get going." Akaia ordered.
They take no time to stand by and watch, each team dispersing into the moving tree line.
Cindy's ax cleaved through a creeps head, the body turning to smoke before turning around to fired a solid slug into a beowulf that tried to sneak behind her. She pumped her beloved weapon once as a roar came from behind her. Rolling away, she fired a grazing shot at the large creep cursing at herself for the poor accuracy of a shot. The grimm hissed and smashed it's bone covered head at her chest, knocking the wind out of her and send her on her back.
Her chest hurts from the blow, enough to block her senses for the second. They are all trained to take more injuries than students at the schools can and supposed to heal faster as well. Wasn't the injury from last week supposed to be pain free by now?
"Ow…" She groaned, her vision returning right when the bipedal grimm is about to run over her prone from-
Only for it to be sawed in half down the middle quite brutally, courtesy of Jay. The maniacal girl made short work of the grimm around them to create a grimm-free breathing room.
"You alright, boss?" Jay asked with concern laced in her voice, Falling Sky drew to a hum as she reached out with her free hand. "You zoned out for a second there."
"Yeah just…" Cindy takes the offered hand, helping her onto her feet. She had to make up an excuse to stop the girl from worrying. "Wondering how and all this is a part of something bigger."
She prayed that Jay will buy this partial lie.
"Fair enough." She let out an internal sigh of relief as Jay shrugged. "Check on Kelly and Diane?"
Cindy nodded and followed behind Jay.
Wham!
Diane's head snapped back from the unexpected blow from a boarbatusk. She also feels the wind being expelled from her lungs as she hit a nearby half-burned tree stump. She shakes her head before spinning to her feet, her claymore cutting through the boarbatusk like warm butter.
Where the in the name of the broken moon is Kelly.
The sounds of a loud crack and green fire lit up the sky the next second.
"Found her." Diane grinned, deflecting a claw with her bracer and thrust upwards through the skull of her attacker.
As if the night is dark enough with the partial moon- it somehow got a bit more darker.
"Snake incoming!" She vaguely hears Kelly as she sees a giant freaking snake the size of a redwood tree airborne above her and then descended towards her at a rapid pace.
"Well fuck you too Kelly." Diane jum-dives out of the way as the adult king taijitu flattened the rocks and trees under it. If she did not move- she would've been flattened.
Kelly landed between her and the still recovering snake, her mask unlocked as she flicked her tongue in her face.
"Not sorry." Kelly rolled her eyes as she wraps her more muscular arm around the thick neck of the snake grimm, held secured with her knife jabbed into the thick scales. Ripple Corruption shifted into it's cannon from already pressed against its bony head. It tried shaking the faunus off, but it couldn't do much as it's head bursted into bits and pieces across the burnt clearing.
Some of the 'Grimm bits' landed on her clothes, with most of it giving Kelly a new paintjob.
"Ugh, ew Grimm guts." Diane looked at the disintegrating black splotches on her.
Akaia felt the familiar rumbling of Goliaths as she finished her last opponent with decapitating the ursa. She looked over to the rest of her team, they were looking back at her with the same expression.
"Any idea where and how far?" Cyres asked, sheathing her sword hilt to her belt.
"It's near our Glenn camp." Rio looked at his holographic scanner. "About two klicks."
"Meaning one click from the camp." Akaia nodded slightly. She looked for what she thinks is the northeast.
"We should warn them to take them all out b-" Cyres started before being cut off by Akaia.
"You heard what Mordred said, we can't interfere with this." Akaia turned to face the knightly queen.
"He never said anything about dampening the effect though?" Mel offered, promptly kicking Cyres out of the way, sending the ice queen into the ashen dirt below. Cyres pushed herself off the ground and shoved the fire demigod to trip over a rock.
"Mel, why do you always go around the rules?" Rio crossed his armored arms at her.
"I mrph pur mph." She said through the soot.
"Yeah… we can't understand you." Rio watched as her head lifted off the ground.
"I said 'I like to do that.'." She repeated, spitting out a mouthful of soot at Cyres, who made a disgusted noise and knocked Mel away with a ice bolt.
"Hey, this is a new robe!" She glared at the smaller girl.
"Hush my child, you can wash it off." Mel laid on the ground, arms crossed over her head as Cyres stormed over.
"Yes, I am a child because I'm almost five years older than you, you uncouth midget." Cyres said sarcastically.
Akaia rolled her unseen eyes and activated her intercom within her helmet.
"On the other hand, one of you go call up Cindy and let her know what's going on while I call Argus to be ready."
Vol 3 just keeps getting better and better!