This is the last of my backup, guys. I have nothing left. It may be anywhere between a week or a month (hopefully not) before I can get another chapter out. My schedule is extremely sporadic at the moment, and there are times where I have the opportunity to write, but choose not to. Fallout 4 is a poison, I tell ya...
That being said, throwing a message my way helps keep me focused. You don't have leave a review or write some 5000 word PM - just throwing me a line saying 'hi' helps keep me on track.
Thank you for the reviews so far, guys. I hope to be here for many more chapters.
Tinker Joe and Foe Hammer, callsigns of the fast-deployment Bullheads inbound to SRD-04, streaked over the Emerald Forest at nearly four hundred kilometers per hour. In truth, only one was needed – as the military VTOLs had been stripped of nearly everything but their engines, a single Bullhead-FD could lift nearly three times the weight of a standard civilian model, more than enough to carry a single Hunter team. Coupled with the one-off ram jets strapped to their sides, the machines had both the speed to get where they needed to go, and the lift for whatever they needed to get out.
However, in this instance, it was decided that a pair would be dispatched. One reason was the simple fact that it was an Emergence – if the unthinkable happened and one of the Bullheads was taken out, the other would still be able to complete the mission. The second was that, since the FD variant carried virtually nothing in the way of weaponry aside from a nose-mounted machine gun, a pair of GAH-42BS "Bleed" armored battle suits clung to the underside of Tinker like a pair of fleas.
It was a clumsy design, essentially a rollcage with limbs. Standing at a little under nine feet tall, the pilot would stand in the machine's legs and control its systems with a pair of motorcycle grips, protected only by a metal faceplate. As one of the first mech designs, it was obsolete by most standards and had a nasty habit of chafing the inner thigh. Despite its flaws though, it laid the foundation for all other legged machines and stood as one of the most widely used pieces of equipment in the world, mainly due to its rugged frame and portability.
That, and the fact that it allowed the pilot to field anything up to naval caliber weaponry in enclosed spaces. The large, three-barreled Vulcan cannons bolted to the machine's right arms were used mainly in ship-mounted point defense systems, and were devastatingly effective against the chitinous armor of Grimm.
Flight Lieutenant Carol Rawley, pilot of Foe Hammer, flicked on her radio and said, "Listen up, ladies! Y'all know the briefing, so I'll make this quick – in about one minute we are dropping into the most Grimm-infested hellhole you ground pounders have seen this side of Mountain Glenn. There're students down there so watch your targets! We don't need an incident."
"Since when did we start a daycare?" Tinker moaned, rolling his 'Mech-laden Bullhead from side to side as it flew. "This is so lame!"
Rawley rolled her eyes -
One of the Bleed pilots cackled. "Your face is lame!"
"Shut up- just shut the fuck up, Dexter!" Tinker snarled. "Another word and I'm dropping you!"
Though Tinker couldn't see it, Dexter let go of his controls and gave the underside of his Bullhead a double one-fingered salute, while behind him the pilot of the second Bleed tiredly rubbed his helmeted forehead as he muttered, "Todos los idiotas son cojos…"
Suppressing a sigh, Carol Rawley focused all her attention on the radar screen before her, praying that her idiot squad would stop bickering long enough to focus on the mission.
-O-O-O-
"Proximity alert! Proximity alert! Warning - heat levels critical! Warning -"
Connie slapped the override and the warbling alarms ceased.
Whatever plan she had prior to throwing herself into an Emergence was gone now; all she could do was act and react as Grimm surrounded her tank, skirting by her in a large circle and lunging at the tank whenever they thought her guard was down. It wasn't – every Beowolf that tried had been vaporized, but she would be lying if she said that the constant battle wasn't taking its toll. The slowly building ache behind her eyes was evidence enough.
It wasn't like she was fighting on foot – not that she would want to anyway – but while she was ensconced within her tank, the same metal hide that kept her safe also prevented her from seeing any more than the tank could.
With gritted teeth, Connie threw Grendel to the side and swung the turret in a wide arc. Yet another Beowolf tried its luck against her, and not only did she dodge it's lunge, the rotating turret swung the barrel right into the beast, sending it flying with a loud crack.
She was holding off the majority of the Emergence so far but some were still coming from the sides, far off to the left and right of the mine, as well as the ones that skirted around the circle of death that she controlled. It was amazing that the Grimm instinctively flocked to the strongest presence, and while that was only thing that spared the mine, it also pushed her and Team JNPR to the breaking point.
Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren were behind her, forming a last line of defense. Ren had helped her for the first few minutes until Pyrrha was back on her feet, and had since fallen back to his team where he and his partner cut down the Grimm that managed to break through Connie's circle of death. Woozy after regaining consciousness, Pyrrha hung back even further on a rock and used Miló's rifle form thin out the Grimm from afar, not trusting herself to stay conscious in the heat of combat. Still, her skill as a sniper was nothing to sneeze at. As far as Connie could tell, one shot meant one less Grimm that they all had to deal with.
And then there was Jaune. Connie was going to give him a thorough dressing-down anyway, but it seemed that he was doing it himself by how he hung back even further than Pyrrha, sulking behind the rock that his partner was perched on. Without a ranged weapon of his own, he could do nothing to help. Connie sighed, hand twitching to take a snapshot at a charging Boarbatusk. His battleplan was flawless, working even without his direction, but his mistake had almost costed everything. It probably still would if the evac was even a second late. Speaking of which…
"Where the hell are those flyboys?" Connie grumbled. It was twenty-seven minutes into the operation, and the SDC transport was two minutes late. Those two minutes could cost all of them their lives. "Useless SDC thugs…" she muttered.
"What was that, Connie?" Pyrrha voice asked, coming over the U-OS line.
Connie gulped, only now realizing that she'd forgotten to turn off her throat mic. "Nothing," she said quickly, throwing Grendel to the side and into a Beowolf.
"Hey, when are those buddy-buddies of yours gonna come?" Nora asked. She sounded uncharacteristically worried as a dull thud followed by an explosion came over the connection. "They'll be here, right?"
Connie glanced at her rearview monitor. She could barely spot him through the crowd of Grimm, but it seemed like he was still sulking. This must be what it's like to be in command.
"Of course they'll be here," she said, trying not to let her voice crack through the faux-confidence. Still, she glanced at the mission time again. Why were they late? As far as she knew, Grimm had no anti-air weapons… Still, if things were going to go how she feared, she would direct the VDF Bullheads to extract the miners and Team JNPR. The transport Bullheads would never be able to pick up the miners, JNPR, and her tank, even if they still had their oversized engines. She would be able to, but she would never be able to bring herself to leave Grendel behind. Connie pushed that unnecessary thought out of her mind and leveled Grendel's cannon at the feet of a group of Grimm, and with a twitch of her trigger finger sent the beasts flying.
"Connie, there's too many! We can't hold on for much longer!" Pyrrha's voice called – the beleaguered champion's bullets tore through the Grimm, but for every one she killed, two more took their place. Even with Nora thinning them out, Pyrrha's sights never landed on less than three Grimm at a time.
Even as this was happening, Jaune was sulking by the defense tower, dead to the world.
Connie let loose an animalistic growl.
Tired with the hit-and-run game that the Grimm were playing, Connie shot her tank forward in a burst of speed. If the beasts were shocked at the sudden action they didn't have time to act on it – Grendel bore down on a group of them, nearly running them over before Connie threw herself into an abrupt turn that spun the tank nearly one hundred and eighty degrees. The tank shot to the left in an extreme drift, avoiding a collision, but the collision wasn't the point.
It was the fact that the massive stern thrusters, belching bright blue flame to counteract the tank's momentum, were now directed at the encircling Grimm.
Connie gritted her teeth, the G-forces nearly throwing her body out of her seat despite the five-point restraint, but through the violent shaking she saw the tank's jet wash set swaths of Grimm aflame in her rearview monitor. She held the drift as long as she could, her hands and feet twitching as she felt the weight of her tank shifting through her seat. Connie held her momentum halfway around the encirclement of Grimm, blasting the monsters with searing Dust all the while and still going. She couldn't help her self-satisfied smirk.
-O-O-O-
The vibrations of the reactor were normally curbed by the cradle that housed it. While not common knowledge, nearly all reactors were not bolted directly into the machines they powered, instead mounted in hydraulic-cushioned frames that suspended it in midair. Otherwise, the powerful vibrations they produced would shake both it and the machine it powered apart.
The cradle did its duty up to a point, but it couldn't stop vibrations that harmed the reactor itself. Normally, this would be impossible, as it was a geometrically perfect sphere. Normally, the reactor wouldn't suffer from a gouge that ran within millimeters of one of the veins where liquefied Dust flowed through. Normally, the reactor would not be held together with a patch and ferosteel.
With a sudden snap, the pressure behind the vein burst through the weakened metal.
-O-O-O-
CRUMP.
Grendel gave a violent shudder, smoke billowing out from under the turret as all power seemed to vanish. Alarms blared in the cockpit even as Connie struggled to maintain control of her craft mid-drift.
"Warning, warning, reactor breach detected. Reactor breach detected," Grendel intoned. Connie could do nothing but grit her teeth as the tank jerked beneath her – blue contrails flared chaotically from every port on the machine, the reactor too unstable to feed consistent power to the turbine which even now groaned and whined as it struggled to maintain lift. Connie was fighting against the tank itself as the momentum from her drift was pulling her tank into an uncontrollable spin moving at nearly forty miles per hour. It was a grim reminder that the forward thrusters were currently crushed and impacted with gravel and dirt – if they were online, she could stabilize herself or simply kill her speed.
And yet, they weren't.
Connie's heart leapt to her throat as the tank slid further and further from her control… until it finally let go. All she could do was hold on.
Grendel screamed as her stern swung out, and suddenly the tank was sliding backwards. The bottommost edge of the stern scraped along the ground and spun the bow around once more, throwing the tank into a lazy spin as it careened through the encircling Grimm. The Beowolves and Boarbatusk were thrown into chaos – the few in the way of the tank were thrown like bowling pins, while the ones fortunate enough to leap out of the way did so only by leaping on the Grimm around them. If this had been a mob of only Beowolves or only Boarbatusk, this wouldn't have been a problem – however, the aggressive, territorial beasts didn't like being jumped on like mere stepping stones, and the entire group devolved into a roaring, biting mass of fury and gore as the two species of Grimm began tearing each other apart. For the three members of Team JNPR, this was a blessing as the sudden bloodlust dragged any Grimm close by into the melee, including any Ursa that had been lagging behind.
It was also the only reason why Grendel hadn't been mobbed in seconds.
All of this was noted and shoved to the back of Connie's mind as she wrestled with her controls. Her main, rear, and support monitors flickered and even life support was sending stuttering puffs of air through her breathing tube, with the tank's overwhelmed systems focused entirely on bringing the reactor under control.
Even as Connie fought, Grendel lurched across the open field in what could only be called a drunken haze. Jets of flame fired from its ports and consequently died, dumping the cushion of air that would normally be trapped beneath. With it gone, Connie had no control over her machine as it moved.
Her heart leapt to her throat as she realized that Grendel, amid its spins, had thrown itself to the side and straight toward the edge of the mine.
"Shit!" she snarled, and cranked back the throttle.
The sudden loss of what little power that was being fed to the turbine made it die instantly, and an ugly screech of gears ripped from the tank's innards as it crashed to the ground. With no control, Connie could do nothing but grit her teeth and hold on as her tank slid closer and closer to the pit, until it finally stopped with Grendel's nose just peeking over the edge.
With a relieved sigh, Connie fell back in her seat. Though she was able to ignore the vertigo from seeing nothing but a sheer drop on Grendel's monitors, she couldn't help but press a hand to her – helmeted – forehead and mutter, "Too close…"
-O-O-O-
Mouth gaping, Pyrrha stared at the dead tank in shock. She certainly hadn't expected the machine to explode from within; while the explosion wasn't loud or even visibly damaged the tank, it still carried enough force to make her ears pop. Still, having fought – and won – so many of her championship matches taught her that it was the injuries that you didn't see often proved the most devastating.
Still, not only had it surprised her and the rest of the team, but it also threw the surrounding Grimm into disarray. She relaxed her grip on Miló as she watched the mass of Beowolves and Boarbatusk – which only seconds before were determined to kill them all – rip into each other in a blood haze. Perched on a rock, she saw Ren and Nora lower their guards as well, watching the massacre with morbid fascination as more and more Grimm poured from the forest to throw themselves into the fray. It made sense that they were attracted to the fury and bloodlust, but Pyrrha never thought that they were susceptible to other Grimm as well.
With the beasts distracted, she dragged Ren and Pyrrha behind the defense tower, keeping low. When she realized that Jaune was still hiding behind the rock, she dashed back out as quickly and quietly as she could, sliding the last few feet to relative safety. Still, even as she tucked herself against his side to make sure the both of them were good and hidden, her leader didn't even react to her presence.
Checking on the Grimm tearing into each other was only thing that kept the blush from her face. What none of them knew, however, was that when they lowered their guard, they opened themselves to the twin presences that hung back in the shadows. They knew not to give in to their baser instincts, knowing that it would only lead to their own deaths. No, they were patient. They would wait. And then when the moment was right, they would strike.
-O-O-O-
"Reroute through Junction A-7… no, it would cause a power cascade… B-3? No, same thing…"
Thinking out loud, Connie wracked her brain as she raced to bring Grendel back online. In truth she had no idea what she was doing – what little mechanical knowledge she had was only due to her own stubbornness when she rebuilt Grendel, mostly on how to keep the thing running. Performing a field repair on what was essentially Grendel's heart, she was frustrated to admit, was out of her depth. Still, the fact that she still had power gave her hope, even if Grendel was giving off a low, staccato throb as her reactor struggled to behave.
She ripped off her helmet, fighting down her panic. "Okay, okay, c'mon baby, do it for Mama…" she muttered, fingers flying over her keyboard.
This wasn't right. Grendel was hers. She was hers. Her baby was in pain, and she could not – would not – allow that.
Fingers shaking, she looked to one of her support monitors.
\root:
While Connie didn't have the knowledge to repair the reactor directly, she could bypass it with a little clever rerouting, something she'd tried to picture in her head moments before. Frowning, she reached forward and began typing.
\root: GrendelInode01: Login~: CarlisleC
SCREEN CRAWL: SYSTEM READY
\root\CarlisleC: sudo /sbin/fscan –t pow /dev/MAINPOWER
SCREEN CRAWL: Executing batch process "deep_root_scan"
SCREEN CRAWL: SCANNING
SCREEN CRAWL: /dev/MAINPOWER; error detected in arteriole 014
SCREEN CRAWL: Device Error (log=32) **Kernel Database "MAINPOWER" cannot be found** Returning to top level
Connie frowned, tapping a finger on her upper arm as she tried to remember as much of the U-OS coding language as she could. And ignore the terrifying howls outside the steel shell of her machine.
\root\CarlisleC: sudo ln {/dev/MAINPOWER} {/dev/GUNPOWER} | -Linksys –KernelUpdate "/dev/MAINPOWER"
SCREEN CRAWL: Running…
SCREEN CRAWL: Kernel database update in progress…
SCREEN CRAWL: Linking devices…
SCREEN CRAWL: **Error** Root access required to update database files. Please enter admin credentials.
Connie's fingers flew.
USER: CarlisleC
PASS: ******
SCREEN CRAWL: ADMIN CLEARANCE ACCEPTED. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PROCEED?
Connie paused, holding her breath.
\root\CarslisleC: Y
SCREEN CRAWL: RUNNING…
SCREEN CRAWL: DONE.
SCREEN CRAWL: **Warning** Power reroute will reduce combat efficiency. Use caution.
Nothing happened for a long moment, and then thousands of pages of code flicked across the screen, incomprehensible until it finally stopped at an eerily blank screen.
The thought that she'd broken Grendel suddenly filled Connie with terror.
Abruptly, as if to answer her, the flickering on her monitors stopped. The thrum accelerated to a whine as power stabilized, and Grendel snapped to life as if she'd merely been asleep. With a grin, Connie fired her craft's turbine and it screamed to life, lifting Grendel off the ground and away from the edge of the pit.
It was a bandage, she knew. The reactor was still ailing, but she'd taken the strain off of it by shunting the fluctuating power from it directly into the capacitor for the cannon, using it as the tank's power plant instead of the reactor itself. Using it as a buffer would make the cannon fire much slower, with possibly less power as well, but at least Grendel could move. Connie was thankful that whatever blew in the reactor was isolated, but to have it blow out in the first place worried her to her core.
Still, this was too much. This was too close.
Connie spun her tank around, seeing the sheer chaos that Grendel's malfunction had caused among the Grimm. Shaking off her momentary shock, she urged Grendel forward until she came alongside the rock that Pyrrha was sniping from and popped the hatch, calling out, "Miss Nikos, regroup your team."
She looked to Jaune with a disparaging look, who even now was hiding behind the rock.
"We're getting out of here."
-O-O-O-
He was pathetic. Well and truly pathetic. On a scale of one to ten, he was negative one billion in levels of suck. Jaune Arc thought that he'd hit some lows before… but this, today, took the cake. Not only did he manage to get himself in trouble, but he got Pyrrha injured because of his own stupidity. Never mind that she was alright, never mind that his team was doing a phenomenal – in his opinion – job of holding back the flood of Grimm.
He'd known that he was pathetic for resorting to forging his acceptance letter, but right then, Jaune realized that he felt purely and utterly disgusting to be an Arc.
-O-O-O-
Pyrrha hauled a near catatonic Jaune to his feet, taking care not to be loud as she said in his ear, "Jaune, we have to move!"
Shocked and dragged along by his partner, Jaune struggled to get his feet under him. "P-Pyrrha?! What's happening?"
She pointed to her left, where the mass of Grimm roiled in unrestrained fury. Blanching at the black ichor that seemed to fly endlessly from the melee, Jaune looked to Pyrrha as she said, "The Grimm are fighting each other, but if don't move we'll be dragged into it! We need to leave!"
Unable to protest and bent over from Pyrrha shoving his head down to keep from being spotted, Jaune let himself be dragged in an odd, half-over run to where the tank hovered nearby, behind the defense tower the rock sat beside. Out of sight of the mass of Grimm, Nora waved them over as she mouthed, "Hurry up!"
This time, it was Jaune that dragged Pyrrha the last few feet to the tower, and once there he saw Ren desperately trying to pull Nora back into cover to no avail – the girl herself was fascinated by the Grimm's bloodlust, unable to tear her eyes away from the slaughter. It wouldn't have been bad if she wasn't leaning halfway out of cover, fully visible to whatever monstrosity looked their way. And though it was like an Ursa trying to hide behind a stump, the tank had angled itself behind the tower as well, nose to the tower and stern to the pit, hatch open and Connie pounding away at her keyboard.
Pyrrha leapt on the tank next to the cockpit, crouching. "What's the situation?" she questioned.
Impassive through her helmet, Connie didn't tear her eyes from her monitor as she said, "Not good. The VDF Bullheads are about to arrive and the SDC is nowhere to be seen. Nothing on long-range scanners, I can't even hail them from any frequency that they use."
"D-does that mean no help's coming?" Jaune asked fearfully. Now that he wasn't wallowing in self-pity and come back to his senses, a pit of ice-cold terror had settled inside him. The fearsome roars and snarls of the Grimm slaughtering themselves didn't help any.
Connie scoffed, leveling a red-eyed stare at Jaune – somehow, he knew that she was giving him a look of scorn. "Help is coming, the VDF pilots know what they're doing," she said sternly. "I can't say the same for the SDC…"
It was then that an alarm chimed from her controls.
Before Connie could even look at it, a pair of angular-armored Bullheads flew over the tops of the trees and over their heads. A blast of sound slammed into them half a second later, stunning the lot of them as the Bullheads dropped the smoking barrel-like jets strapped to their sides and angled their engines almost all the way back, killing their speed almost instantly as they angled around and positioned themselves almost directly overhead. They could see twin masses of metal attached to the belly of one of the Bullheads, though they were too high up to see what they were.
All of them looked at the Bullheads with wide-eyed astonishment – though Connie merely sported a satisfied smirk – though it was Jaune that broke the silence and said, "Holy crap! Are those the guys?"
Connie's only response were narrowed eyes, hidden by her helmet.
A series of rapid thunks sounded from the Bullhead, the sound of explosive bolts detonating to release its cargo. The cradles they were carried in fell away as they dropped, legs stretching out and arms unfurling before they hit the ground with a titanic crash of metal and dust right next to the group, making the ground shudder violently.
# - Avalanche - Trocadero
The same crash drew the attention of some of the Grimm – while most were still embroiled in their vicious brawl, the nearest turned to the dust cloud that had been thrown from the impact. It cleared, slowly dissipating until the pair of squat, ungainly powered suits were fully visible. Also visible were the rotary cannons on their right arms that were as long as Ruby was tall. The girl would've had an aneurism, Pyrrha was sure of that.
Meanwhile, the Grimm eyed the newcomers with curiosity and hunger.
Connie eyed the powered suits as well, mentally nodding in approval. Bleeds… D variant, equipped with CZ57 Avenger cannons. They'll work.
"This is Flight Lieutenant Rawley, and thank you for flying Air Foe Ha-"
Before the pilot could say anything more, Connie keyed her throat mike. "This is armored fighting vehicle Grendel, ident G-LBT-one-one-seven-nine! SDC evac hasn't arrived! I repeat, SDC evac has not arrived! Recommend dispersal and evacuation of high value targets, blanket fire will commence in five minutes!"
As the pair of Bleeds staggered from having a voice quite literally scream into their ears, the pair of Bullheads swooped down low, hovering just a few feet above the defense towers.
"Acknowledged Grendel, identify targets," a male voice asked.
Connie steeled herself. "Targets include four Hunters-in-training and twenty miners, prioritize and retrieve."
Hoping no one noticed her omission, she punched in a command that sent targeting data for all the people Grendel's sensors could detect.
"Receiving data loud and clear. Joe, get down there and pick up as many as you can carry! Dexter, Lopez, dig yourselves in and give'em hell!"
"Got it!"
"Si, Comandante!"
The two Bleeds stomped forward in an ungainly waddle, garnering even more attention from the roiling mess of Grimm that was beginning to slow as they came to their senses.
Pyrrha leaned forward, braced against the open hatch of Grendel and hovering right above Connie's head. "What are they doing, they're going to get killed!" she exclaimed.
Connie smirked. "Watch."
Their slow waddle sped up, turning into a heavy, sure-footed lope as the Bleeds charged at the Grimm. The few Beowolves that had been watching them stumbled back, confused why their own prey was attacking them, when the fearsome, multi-barreled cannons spooled up with a loud squeal of metal.
It was loud, enough so that they could feel their Auras working to repair the damage that threatened to turn them deaf. At first they thought it was a buzzsaw – an incredibly loud buzzsaw – but soon they realized that it was the rotary cannons making the deafening racket. The Bleeds handled the recoil incredibly well, leaning forward as the cannons spat out 5 milimeter rounds fast enough that all the four of them heard was a long, continuous gunshot. They were fed from the massive drum magazines bolted to the backs of the Bleeds, giving them more than enough ammunition, and with the rounds containing an explosive filling and detonating fuse the bullets tore through the throngs of Grimm with devastating ease, turning the frenzied melee into a bloody massacre.
With her hands clapped over her ears, Nora grinned psychotically as she screamed, "I want one!"
Ren refused, giving her a flat-out, 'No,' with a mere deadpanned look.
As the five watched the bloody spectacle, Jester and Foe Hammer had drifted over the middle of the seemingly abandoned mine, though they were all perfectly visible on infrared imaging, with the miners huddled in the remaining buildings. Flight Lieutentant Rawley flicked on her craft's loudspeaker and called out, "Attention miners of SRD-04! Your evac is late, and unless you want to face down hellfire and brimstone falling from the sky I suggest y'all get out here for extraction!"
At that, twenty miners piled out in seconds, waving their hands in an effort to be noticed.
Carol smirked. Works every time.
As the pair of Bullheads drifted to the ground, extending landing legs as they did so, the pair of Bleeds raked fire over the mass of Grimm as they tried to get away. Black ichor had sprayed the machine's faceplates as more and more Beowolves and Boarbatusk fell to their weapons, until all that remained of the dozens of Grimm was a mess of dismembered parts that were rapidly evaporating. With the threat eliminated, the Bleeds waddled their way back to Grendel, their pilots chortling over the radio.
In total, they had been firing for only fourteen seconds.
That knowledge was incredibly humbling for Pyrrha, as well as Ren. For a reigning champion and an Aura control ace to be so beleaguered was… disgraceful.
The two Bleeds reached them, the right-hand one thudding its bare left arm into the shoulder of its partner. "So, ya beat my record yet, Lopez?"
"Creo que si – tengo cuarenta y ocho."
"Shit, you only got eight? Sorry, dude."
"No! Cuarenta y ocho! Aprender español, idiota!"
"Oh, so you forfeit? Thanks for the easy win, man!"
"Joder mi vida."
Suddenly, Pyrrha and Ren weren't feeling so down on themselves.
Connie rolled her eyes, more than used to such bravado. "Bleed One and Bleed Two, status."
The pilots turned their machines around, keeping their weapons trained on the forest around them as the right-hand pilot looked over his shoulder and, surprising all of them, said in a professional tone, "Two hundred and fifty two rounds remaining."
"Doscientos y tres balas."
At this, Jaune blanched. "You guys have more bullets?!"
Connie bit down on her annoyance – the Arc boy, despite his somewhat apparent strategic abilities, was really wearing on her nerves. "Mister Arc, those weapons are CZ57 Avenger rotary cannons. They fire over three thousand rounds per minute. The ammo they have will be barely one second of continuous fire."
Surprisingly, it was Nora that went quiet. "So they can't do that pew-pew thing again," she observed.
Connie nodded. "At least not for long," she said, a little too calmly. "But you don't need to be concerned about that, the four of you will be in the air within the next twenty seconds."
The Bleed pilots said nothing, scanning the treeline for any threats.
A wave of relief swept through all of them, Jaune especially. Training or not, nothing had prepared them to face down an Emergence, on their first actual patrol, no less. Even Pyrrha let out a sigh of relief, her headache having worsened in the chaos and wanting nothing more than to collapse in her bed and relax her weary muscles.
It was then that Pyrrha realized something, something that made her insides go cold with dread. "Wait, the four of us? What about you?"
Her teammates went pale with realization.
Connie said nothing. She merely hit a control, slamming her cockpit hatch shut.
"Connie, wait!" Pyrrha shouted, hoping to grab the edge and pry the hatch open, but to no avail. She settled for pounding it with her fist. "Open the hatch this instant!"
The hard metal didn't budge, and the girl had already disconnected from the link between their four scrolls. The tank began to move, forcing all of them to get off as it maneuvered in front of the Bleeds with its barrel covering the treeline, scanning for targets.
Down in the mine the two Bullheads had finished loading up the miners, Tinker Joe with considerably more packed into his cargo hold. With his task done, he angled his craft high into the air and tilted his engines forward, sending the Bullhead rocketing into the distance as Foe Hammer piloted her own machine closer to where the group huddled at the edge of the pit. Rawley saw the tank maneuver in front of them all and, having seen the state of Church and Lopez's ammo counters on her own display, knew instantly what was going to happen.
If nothing else, she was filled with respect for the tank pilot.
Team JNPR looked up when the lone Bullhead drifted closer to them, coming in for a landing before the machine finally settled on its landing struts.
"Alright y'all, pile in! We're running out of time!"
As if to answer Rawley, a cacophony of howls and snarls ripped from the forest, filling all of them with dread. The Grimm were back.
"But what about Connie?" Pyrrha demanded.
Having heard the Huntress over the U-OS line, Rawley sighed before she switched over to the student's private line, speaking only to them through their scrolls. "Look kids," she said, "your friend knew this would happen one day. She's prepared to do what's necessary to ensure your survival – all of us are. You kids are too important to the future to simply die in this pit. So are you going to mope around and let yourself get killed, or are you going to make sure that your friend doesn't die for nothing?"
Pyrrha glared at the Bullhead, and then at Grendel. All of them did. "No sacrifice is worth it. We're not leaving without her," Pyrrha stated, filled with conviction. Her words even moved Jaune, and he was compelled to stand taller in defiance.
Having witnessed all this, Connie sighed and tapped a control. "Bleed One, Bleed Two, get them out of here," she said over her loudspeakers
Before any of them could react, the Bleeds had gotten behind the team and swept them up into an iron bear hug. Pinned between an armored chest and an arm, none of them could get themselves free as the powered suits stomped to the waiting Bullhead, where six of the miners were waiting in the crew compartment.
"Stop! We can't leave Connie!" Nora screamed in distress, trying in vain to bring Magnhild to bear.
"Keep hold of them!" Dexter yelled over the scream of the engines, struggling to keep a grip on Pyrrha and Nora before he unceremoniously dumped them into the waiting arms of the miners. Pyrrha barely hit the metal grating of the floor before she was snatched up once more, with her arms pinned behind her and an arm looped around her neck – Nora was given the same treatment, as were Jaune and Ren when they were dumped in as well.
The door of the Bullhead began to close.
"No!" Pyrrha shouted, struggling for all she was worth, and her last sight before the door closed completely was that of Grendel scanning the treeline.
This wasn't right. This couldn't be it. She couldn't claim to know Connie well, but no one deserved to be at the mercy of Grimm.
And so, she began to struggle even more.
-O-O-O-
Connie sighed as Team JNPR – her charges – were carried away. It niggled at her pride that she failed them, but at least they would live to see tomorrow.
Strangely, Connie felt… tired. It was an entirely foreign feeling, but it brought unbidden memories to the front of her mind. Her mother. Her father. And finally, a girl with a red hood and a scythe, who was too persistent for her own good.
The thought of Ruby gave her pause. It was true that, even now, Connie still didn't trust her, but Ruby had at least shown her that she might be able to. Or, could have. Still, she was thankful that she'd at least met Ruby. She was glad to have met the one person who could possibly have been the most innocent girl on the face of Remnant.
She paused, the calm still filling her as she reached out to make one final broadcast to JNPR's scrolls.
"Jaune Arc, Nora Valkyrie, Pyrrha Nikos, Lie Ren… thank you for allowing me to provide an escort today," she said quietly, not knowing whether or not they would be able to hear. "Please take a message to Ruby Rose for me."
Connie paused. "Tell her I said thank you."
She pondered saying something more before she abruptly closed the line, just in time to see the first Beowolf bound outof the forest. Her thoughts were blank as she spun Grendel around, heading away from the Bullhead as she leveled her tank's crosshairs over the Grimm and fired.
-O-O-O-
"Tell her I said thank you."
Pyrrha thrashed against the miner that held her, slamming him into the wall of the Bullhead. Holding her captive was the foreman himself, veins in his arms bulging as he struggled to contain the superhuman woman, his face scrunched in concentration as he hissed in her ear, "Calm the fuck down – you want to bring us down?!"
His question was directed at all of them, with each member of Team JNPR trying to break free. While Jaune meekly pulled at the single miner that held his arms at bay and forced him to stay pressed against the wall, it was Nora that was struggling even more than Pyrrha, repeatedly slamming the three grown men against the side of the Bullhead with enough force to make the aircraft shudder with each blow. And while Ren wasn't struggling, Pyrrha could tell the truth – she could feel his Aura gathering within his wiry frame, something that only another attuned to Aura could tell. It was tightly packed like a spring, ready to be called into action at a moment's notice.
Perfect.
Catching Jaune's eye, Pyrrha was inwardly pleased when she saw a calculating look of his own, watching Nora pound her three miners into submission, and gave a subtle nod to her and Ren. Jaune waited, wincing every time a body collided with the steel bulkhead until Nora finally turned just the right way and slammed a miner headfirst into the hydraulic piston that held the portside door closed.
He dropped faster than a sack of potatoes.
Much like Team JNPR, the miners were accustomed to helping their own – it would be impossible for one of them to ignore the fact that one of them had just been rendered unconscious by a girl. Wearing nauseating amounts of pink. It was this moment of distraction that Jaune was waiting for. When he felt the hands keeping him seated slacken, he shouted, "Now!"
Pyrrha snapped her head back, smashing the back of her metal circlet against the man's nose. He fell away with a cry of pain, letting go in the process, only to catch a heel to the temple from Pyrrha's lightning-fast roundhouse kick. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.
Jaune's plan was to wrench his arms away, pull out his sword, and slam the hilt into the man's head. In reality, he jerked forward in his struggle until the miner lost his patience and trapped the teen in an iron bear hug, lifting Jaune off his feet with an undignified squawk and his legs kicking naught but air, bouncing uselessly off the man's knees.
With her right arm already free, Nora wasted no time in grabbing the one holding her left arm back. With a savage grin she grabbed the man by the scruff of the neck and tossed him at the bulkhead between the cargo hold and cockpit, leaving the man to slump to the ground in a heap. The miner that had her in a chokehold fared no better – with both arms free, Nora effortlessly reached over her shoulders, grabbed the man's ears, and with a keening wail of pain from the man hauled him up and over to slam him headfirst into the metal floor, silencing him in a daze of pain.
Out of all of them, it was Ren that took out the miner restraining him with the least amount of effort. While it was true that he didn't have endless pools of Aura to call upon or the strength to physically overpower the man, he did have one thing that none of Team JNPR had; control. With the deftness of a surgeon, Ren called upon his already-primed Aura and willed it to travel through the man's arms, blocking nerves along the way, up through his shoulders and up through his neck to physically pinch the pons, a small piece at the base of the brain that stimulated sleep.
The man was out cold before he even realized they were being overpowered.
"What the hell is going on back there?" a voice called over the intercom, belonging to the Bullhead pilot. They would need to work quickly, though it was especially lucky that the cockpit was sealed from the cargo bay itself in military-built Bullheads.
Now free, the three of them looked to their leader… who was now turning a deep shade of blue, being crushed against the miner's chest as the man backed closer and closer to the corner nearest Ren, looking at the Hunters-in-training in abject terror.
"Help…" Jaune squeaked.
With a sigh – as close as he could get to rolling his eyes – Ren crept along the wall, crossing the distance between him and the miner within moments before the man realized he was there. With a quick chop to the back of his head, the miner was out. Unfortunately, after he was rendered unconscious he fell forward onto Jaune.
This was lost on the rest of the team as they faced the door they were shoved in moments before. Still, they were fortunate – the Bullhead was still on the ground. In truth, Carol Rawley was waiting for the Bleed pilots to clamp onto her Bullhead, cursing out Lopez in her mind when it turned out that his left manipulator claw had jammed. It didn't help that, to save on costs, no cameras or intercoms were installed in the cargo area of Bullhead-FD variants. While it did help keep the pilots focused on their task in the event a friend was dying, it made them deaf and blind at the same time.
Giving the hatch a glare, Pyrrha reached out and pressed her hand against it. She knew what she was about to do would most likely get her in trouble with the VDF. Not to mention it put herself, her team, and this entire Bullhead in danger if she lost her concentration for even a moment, as well as spit in the face of what Connie was trying to do. However, if Pyrrha was perfectly frank, she didn't care, and she would rather take the chance than let someone die in her place. She refused to allow that to happen.
If the repeated explosions were anything to go by, Connie was having a difficult time.
Ren placed a hand on her shoulder, giving Pyrrha an encouraging nod at seeing her hesitate. With a smile, she nodded back before turning her attention to the hatch once more, focusing her Aura on it and letting it latch into the metal itself.
"Cover your eyes, there's going to be shrapnel," she warned, before she pushed out her Aura in a quick, violent burst. Her entire body glowed with black aura that she directed at the hatch, ripping it off with such ease that it actually made her wary of her own power for a brief moment. Just as she said, the screech of metal was accompanied by a spray of metal shards, luckily stopped by the very magnetic field that ripped the door off.
Still, now that the door was gone they were free to get Connie out of there, whether she liked it or not. Even from here Pyrrha could see the tank endlessly firing shot after shot, though no matter could much the pilot pushed to keep the hordes at bay, Pyrrha could tell that the Grimm were slowly creeping closer.
She would drag that girl out of her steel coffin if she had to.
Still, there was one thing she didn't realize.
Cl-clunk.
A shudder ran through the floor, throwing off their balance.
"Y'all back there hold on to your butts! We're goin' up!"
The only thing keeping the Bullhead grounded was Lopez' malfunctioning claw, and he just fixed it.
With a scream of turbines, the Bullhead shot into the air with enough force that the three fell to the floor. The pair of Bleeds dangled from the tail section of the aircraft, secured only by the thick, metal handholds that their claws held on to, firing what little ordinance they had left as they rose higher in the air. Disoriented, it took Pyrrha all she had to crawl to the open hatch and was stunned to find that they had already risen nearly a hundred feet in the air, well above the defense towers that guarded the mine. She had a clear view of the lone tank that was slowly being pushed back by an endless sea of writhing black, giving ground for just a few more seconds of life to stave off being torn apart by the demon horde.
Such a fate was too cruel. It was one that Pyrrha refused to allow.
Leaning against the bulkhead, Pyrrha reached out of the Bullhead at the tank. Her Aura stretched out, invisible tendrils that searched for a specific target to latch on to. One by one they disappeared as she spread herself thinner and thinner, sweat accumulating on her brow as she urged her Aura to reach farther than it ever had before.
Just as it felt like she would pass out from the strain, her Aura latched on. Her strength returned with enough force to nearly knock her over, but she cleared her head in time to see the hordes of Grimm break through the tank's defensive line.
It was still enough time to gather her Aura around herself, latch her body to the metal around her, and pull.
-O-O-O-
When Connie saw Team JNPR unceremoniously dumped into the waiting Bullhead, she expected to feel peace. She expected… something, anything but the hollowness in her chest. It hurt- why did it hurt?
Her mind was in another place as her body threw Grendel into maneuvers that, quite frankly, should have made her black out. While her hands and feet moved to make Grendel dance as she never had before, she wondered why she cared so much, why she cared at all. The mission was a success – the miners had been extracted, the young hunters were on their way to safety. It was a textbook operation, at the cost of a single Faunus and a replaceable hovertank. All she had to do now was stop. Lay down and-
-O-O-O-
A thirteen year old Connie stared down the barrel of her professor's gun, eyes wide and frozen at her desk. It had been so quick – one little question, and the bear of a man had her in his sights with an uncaring, unfeeling stare, like she was insignificant. A bug on the sole of his shoe. The man stepped around his desk, the gun never wavering as he walked among the other students in the classroom, each of them staring at him with equally wide, terrified eyes.
"What was that?" the man asked, his voice deathly calm.
Connie gulped, throat dry as she broke out in a sweat. "I-I… wha-I don't –"
BANG.
The gun went off, drawing screams even louder than the gunshot. Having felt the heat of the bullet graze by her ear, Connie was too stunned to notice the professor fire another shot into the ceiling, silencing the students. It was only when the gun was pressed to her forehead that she snapped back to reality.
"What was that?" the man asked again.
Connie willed her trembling body to cooperate – even when her brain was screaming at her to run the hell out of there – as she rushed, "The-the armor. It doesn't stand up to Grimm. How do we defend ourselves?"
The man smirked. "In any formation, the Faunus units will be deployed ahead of our Hunters to find what the situation is, as well as soften any hostiles."
"But… sir, shouldn't our Aura be unlocked? If our Armors get destroyed, how will we defend ourselves?"
"…Have you ever heard of the term 'cannon fodder?' The Hunters are the important ones – if things play out like Ironwood expects them to, you'd damn well better take down as many hostiles as possible with you. We need as many Hunters as we can spare, and if your bones distract the enemy, so be it."
At long last he pulled the gun away and holstered it, making the entire room breathe a sigh of relief. "I like your spunk, kid. Most piss themselves at the wrong end of my gun," he said, walking back to his desk. "But if it ever becomes apparent that your death is the best course of action, just lay down and die."
-O-O-O-
Lay down and die. Lay down and die. Lay down and die.
With those four words swirling around in her head the overwhelming feeling of nothingness vanished, only to be replaced by a strange, serene calm that coursed through her veins. As she distractedly commanded Grendel to move and fight, Connie tried to make sense of what it was. It burned through her, focusing her mind, bringing clarity despite the horde threatening to overwhelm her. She could see every strand of fur and reacted faster than she'd ever had before, making Grendel dance at her command.
It was strange, this feeling… but, then she realized that she'd felt it before without truly noticing it. It fueled her desertion, kept her alive even when her mind had shut down during training. It was what compelled her to go the VDF and retrieve her tank. It was what made her test Ruby.
It was her drive. It was her mistrust. It was her anxiety.
A low growl bubbled up her throat as she was brought back to the present, the feeling twisting and morphing within her as she realized what it was. It was a constant companion, fueling her like it was her own guardian angel.
It was wrath.
What she felt was against her training. It went against all she knew. But right then, she couldn't bring herself to give a shit.
Connie snarled as she swung the barrel, batting aside a lunging Beowolf before aiming at the feet of a pair of Boarbatusk. Lay down and die? At the claws of these vermin overwhelming her? No, no, no – Connie refused to give up and die like an animal. A growl ripped from her throat she fired as fast as Grendel's beleaguered reactor would allow, urging her machine back towards the edge of the pit.
"I'm not going to die today," she hissed, blowing away an Ursa. And then another. And another.
And they just kept coming, like a swarm of rats after half-dead prey.
"I'm not going to die today!"
The feeling pooled and bubbled in her chest, her cold fury rising to new heights every second until it felt like her chest would burst.
And then it did.
It felt like she'd been struck in the chest by one of the SDC's four-railed trains, a fist slamming her back in her seat as the dam broke. Connie was breathless, actually letting go of her controls to grab at the front of her piloting suit. She was so busy making sure that her chest actually didn't explode that she missed twin streams of bullets ripping into the horde from above, giving her a much needed reprieve to collect herself.
Connie shook her head. Her wrath had abated, though she could still feel it just beneath the surface.
Any further thought was interrupted when a snarling Beowolf lunged at Grendel, forcing Connie to swing her tank to the side. She was about to swing her turret around when she realized that the beast had already fallen down into the pit, yeowling all the while. It saved her the trouble, but that also meant one thing.
Her tank was right at the edge of the pit.
The Grimm seemed to know this, too. Instead of all rushing her they hung back, forming a half circle around the tank to ensure it couldn't escape. It was either die by them, or die from the fall.
Connie bit her lip, that feeling bubbling up once more. It was mixed with nausea, and she brought a hand to her breathing mask. "…I don't want to die," she whispered, surprising even herself at the realization.
It was then that she saw them. The Grand Boarbatusk and the Elder Beowolf, having fallen back amid the chaos, had made their way out of the trees and through their respective packs. It was a testament to their strength that they were able to control all these Grimm, let alone the Ursa. The pair of beasts seemed to know it too, baring their teeth in feral, bloodthirsty grins as they broke through the surrounding mob and faced her down.
That was it. They wanted her to be cornered, like a rat in a trap. The leaders would get first pickings at her before leaving her for the rest, a thought that sent chills down her spine.
Connie felt numb, hands falling from her controls. It was going to end, just like that. She wouldn't be remembered. She wouldn't be mourned. Just gone, like a pebble into the sea. Tears in rain.
Unnoticed by her, a faint shimmer crackled over her knuckles.
The Elder Beowolf snarled and prepared to lunge.
An image of Ruby flashed through Connie's mind in her last moments…
Or, they would have been her last moments, if a slab of metal hadn't flown through the air and slammed into the back of the Beowolf's head with enough force that it was knocked off its feet and dragged headfirst into the ground.
Connie stared at the twitching corpse, half-buried in a mound of dirt. And then she realized the slab of metal for what it was – the portside armored hatch to an FD-Bullhead.
It could only be Team JNPR.
With the Grimm stunned at the loss of one of their leaders, she looked to the Bullhead and was dismayed to see that they were ready to leap back into battle, orders be damned. A quick mental look at her objectives told Connie that everything had already been accounted for, so there was no reason for them to stay, except for her.
It was… flattering.
And then the Bullhead shot into the air. It quickly rose out of reach, from both Grimm and humans.
Connie let out a shakey breath.
Finally, it was done, and all she could feel was… sorrow.
But, Connie thought, looking back to the Grimm as she readied her controls, I can make it as difficult as possible for these monsters.
During the confusion, Connie had been edging her machine farther and farther over the edge of the pit. With the time that had gone by, she had managed to get nearly half out Grendel's stern hanging in midair, her rear thrusters screaming in protest, but it was necessary for what was to come next. The noise drew the attention of the closest Grimm, including the Grand Boarbatusk.
Connie was undeterred, shoving aside the ache in her chest. She hit a switch, cranked her external speakers to the max. "Creatures of Grimm," she said, unbothered that the beasts couldn't understand her. "I am Private First Class Constance Carlisle. You'll pay dearly for me."
She rammed her throttle open, sending her tank rocketing forward. "COME!" she screamed.
Her sudden charge stunned the lot of them into inaction, save for the Grand Boarbatusk. It let out a challenging roar before it ducked into one of its species signature attacks – a wild, kamikaze wheel of death that was all the more dangerous from its tusks and jagged spines. Connie immediately focused fire on it and fired a trio of shots that slammed into the Boarbatusk's hide, completely ineffectual in knocking it off course at her. With a curse, she juked Grendel to the side with a blast of her portside thrusters.
The Grimm squealed in fury as it passed barely a foot from the tank.
Connie swung her tank around, firing into the mob of spectating Grimm before charging at the Boarbatusk once more, which was only now coming out of its roll and trying to turn around. The Boarbatusk screamed as Dust explosions wracked its body, burning the unprotected flesh of its side as the force nearly knocked it off its feet. Those precious few seconds as it recovered were all it took for to Connie throw her machine into the narrow gap between it and the edge of the mine, firing shot after shot that further enraged the beast.
Grendel shuddered, rattling before it stabilized once more.
"Warning, power fluctuations detected."
"No, not now!" Connie fearfully shouted.
Again, unnoticed by her, a faint shimmering flowed over her hands.
Connie gritted her teeth as Grendel wobbled beneath her – the capacitor was still supplying power, sure, but in all the confusion and panic she hadn't realized that the main reactor had been leaking this entire time. The capacitor was doing all it could to stabilize the seizing reactor, but under the new strain of firing and circling the Boarbatusk, there was only so much it could do.
Grendel stuttered, losing power for a split second before it caught itself on its jets once more.
The Boarbatusk, enraged and in pain, bellowed as it blindly lashed out in that split second she wasn't firing, clipping the nose of the tank and sending it into an uncontrollable spin straight for the horde of waiting Grimm.
Her mind was blank.
And then, it happened. There was a lurch, followed by an odd, warbling squawk from Grendel's systems as power to the thrusters completely died. The reactor had lost what little stability it had left to remain functional. Connie expected to feel a jarring impact from her machine hitting the ground, and then blinding pain as she was ripped apart and eaten.
Her sensors, however, told her a different story. Her machine was being bombarded by intense magnetic fields that shut down the reactor, but more than that, she was flying. The oddity of her tank flying without any aid from its thrusters was disconcerting, frightening really. It was surreal, almost dreamlike as she watched Grendel leave the ground, pass inches above the heads of the nearest Grimm and move higher and higher into the air. With the object of its rage getting further and further out of reach, the Grand Boarbatusk, still blinded by pain, took its rage out on the beasts around it.
Connie shook herself. There had to be an explanation.
She popped her hatch, her piloting suit protecting her from the harsh winds as she looked up at the Bullhead. She was dragged about twenty feet behind the VTOL and nearly fifty below it, giving her a good view of the twin Bleeds that were still latched to the VTOL, ruling out that they'd sacrificed themselves instead of her. There was no winch of any sort that could grapple onto her tank, let alone that Grendel wasn't attached to the Bullhead by any means she could see.
Just what on Remnant was going on?
"Connie!" she heard a voice scream. She looked up, only to be shocked at the sight of Ren, Nora, and Pyrrha leaning out of the open hatchway… with Pyrrha reaching for her…
Filled with trepidation, Connie manipulated a control that panned the turret camera up and zoomed in, clearly showing the three with worried expressions. But that didn't get her attention – what she was focused on was the black, shimmering Aura flowing around Pyrrha's hand. While Connie certainly didn't know to how to use Aura herself, she could certainly see the signs of someone straining themselves.
Whatever power Pyrrha had, it was clearly taxing on her.
Connie grabbed her radio, patching into the U-OS line. "Pyrrha Nikos, what the hell are you doing!?" she growled into her radio, once again annoyed by the fact that people wanted to do her job.
How the hell was she supposed to protect them if they kept putting themselves in danger?!
"¡¿Qué?! ¿Cómo está ella aquí ?!
"What the- How the hell is she here?!"
"Girl, you must have some kind of luck, 'cause I know I don't have a grappling hook on this thing."
Connie ignored them all, glaring at the monitor as if she could send her heated glare straight through it. "Pyrrha Nikos, release your Semblence immediately. You are going to deplete your Aura."
Pyrrha made a gesture with her head, and Connie could see a scroll held to her ear. She could hear the girl's ragged breaths as she wheezed, "You… risked your life for us… we wouldn't have… made it out of there if… it wasn't for you."
The girl clenched her fist. "I'm going… to do the same for you."
Even as Grendel came closer to the Bullhead – close enough that Connie could see the three hunters without looking through her monitor – she stood from her seat, leaning against the buffeting wind and yelled, "How am I supposed to protect all of you if you keep throwing yourselves in danger?!"
With only twenty feet separating them, Connie couldn't miss Pyrrha's own heated glare. "No one asked you! I didn't! I chose this!"
At this, Connie stilled. Her annoyance faded as she stared at the Hunters-in-training, all watching her, and not a trace of fear or panic among them.
She sank back in her seat, feeling… empty. They were right. They didn't ask her. They all became Huntsmen and Huntresses knowing full well that they would die someday.
Left to her thoughts, she didn't notice the horde behind them flowing down the sides of the mine, a bloodthirsty sea of black that came from all sides. She didn't notice as they rounded on the massive, bunker-like door to the main tunnels.
She certainly didn't notice the screams and burning tracers as twenty inch shells streaked by the Bullhead, thundering into the mine with massive gouts of flame and shrapnel. The shells didn't stop coming until well after they had entered Beacon's airspace nearly an hour later, whereupon Pyrrha, exhausted, released her hold on Grendel and let it drop the remaining twenty feet to the landing pad, passing out immediately after.
With nothing more than a bruised tailbone, Connie followed the procession of doctors as they rushed the champion to the infirmary.
-O-O-O-
"Hello, I am Lisa Lavender of the Vale News Network, live from the C.I. Headquarters in Atlas. Carlisle Industries is one of the world's most rapidly growing technology development firms, with a primary focus on weapons design. This network is lucky enough to have an exclusive interview with the company's CEO, Eduard Carlisle. How are you today, Mr. Carlisle?"
"Just fine, Lisa. And please, just stick with Eduard. Ed works, too."
"Very well, Mr. Eduard. Now, your company is on the cutting edge of weapons technology. This has many people worried that a single company is in control of such weapons, including many people in the military who commission your company. What is your opinion on this?"
Chuckles. "Well, you go right to the hard ones… Lisa, what needs to be understood is that this company is small. We don't have the capability to mass-produce weapons, it's not my vision for the company. We make prototypes, concept designs, test types – that's all we can do. We get commissioned for an idea, we recreate that idea, and we present it to the buyer. Furthermore, we don't stockpile weapons, only designs and plans."
"I see. Then, what are your thoughts on the White Fang? Do you think there will be a point that your weapons will be used on them?"
"No. The White Fang are a desperate group of people who see that violence is the only way to get what they want. What they need is a solution, not a big stick cracking them over the head."
"Then are these reports of your technology operating in suspected White Fang territory false?"
"Those reports are true. Control of the M3B2-L was superseded by my Board of Directors without my knowledge and sold to Atlesian Robotics. The Atlesian Knight-130 is unfinished, I just hope they don't hurt any Faunus needlessly."
"Will this action be taken as a threat?"
"Personally, I have no clue. I hope not. I just hope war won't break out."
"And what of your family?"
Glare. "Excuse me?"
"You are married to a red fox Faunus, and have a red fox Faunus daughter. If war were to break out, what would you do?"
"…What exactly are you saying?"
Any viewer could detect the hostility in his voice, something that Lisa Lavender saw with smug satisfaction. His response was sure to stir up the taboids.
"What I'm saying, Mr. Eduard, is that if you were forced to choose between your 'family' and a human town being threatened by the White Fang, which would you choose?"
Sigh. "I see. You're trying to make me seem like a Faunus hater or a Faunus sympathizer."
"No, of course not! I am only trying to –"
"You're trying to make a fool out of me. You want an answer? Fine. I would expend enough ordinance that nothing would be alive to threaten anyone anymore."
"Then you would condone the slaughter of Faunus if you had to?"
"I would condone the slaughter of whatever son of a bitch that threatens the peace we have today."
Grunts, footsteps.
"M-Mr. Eduard! Please sit, the interview isn't finished!"
"Yes it is. You want a story? Here you go. Carlisle Industries makes weapons. We also make technology that helps people. It isn't technology that kills people; it's the people controlling technology. The Atlesian Military has over ten thousand AK-130's on back order, but no one cries whenever a soldier guns down a family during a panic attack. We make big sticks so that we can have peace, but if someone threatens that peace I will bludgeon them to death, Faunus or otherwise. Good day."
-O-O-O-
EXTRA
Left alone on one of Beacon's two landing pads, the VDF Bullhead stood a sentinel watch over the distance pinpricks of light that could be none other than Vale. It was a pleasantly cool night, with the moon shining overhead. The view would be quite enjoyable for however decided to stop and watch.
However, it was quite an unenjoyable night for one Jaune Arc. He moaned, ineffectually thumping his hand on the metal grating of the Bullhead he was locked in. Of course, it didn't matter if it was locked if he couldn't get up. Hours had passed, and he was still trapped under the bulky miner.
Who was still unconscious.
And snoring.
Jaune moaned again. "Get. This. Guy. Off of me…" he whined, sniffling. "Pyrrha, help me…"