Blake sat on an ammo crate, checking her gear for the tenth time in an hour. She recounted the rounds in every clip for Gambol and made sure every pocket in her vest had a clip in it. Yang was sitting against the wall opposite her, arms wrapped around her knees, staring blankly at her boots.
"You got all your gear, right?" Blake asked, fiddling with the straps on her pack. It was small and slightly off white, perfect for winter ops.
Yang nodded deadly, "Lightweight sleeping bag, waterproof tarp, med kit, some MREs, and a lot of shells, totaling in at 22.8 pounds, or exactly one fifth my body weight." She sighed, and tried to will herself to make eye contact with Blake.
"I have the same, but with a little less ammo," Blake finished checking her vest, and made sure all the holsters on her vest were locked into place.
Yang cursed under her breath, and looked towards the other end of the armory. Other teams were huddled in corners, or sitting sullenly on benches or loose gear. They all had a similar "last supper" look about them, friends sharing a few more hours together before they would be separated by only god knows what.
Blake knelt besides Yang, shaking her out of her daze. "Hey, hey." She lifted Yang's chin and looked into her eyes. "All you have to do is sit tight and I'll come and get you. We'll both be fine."
Yang snorted humorously, "We don't even know where we'll be, but we can sure as hell bet it won't be safe." Yang pressed Blake's hand to her mouth. "Either of us could easily die out there."
"Then promise me you won't, and ill promise you." Blake leaned her forehead against Yang's and tried to provide some comfort.
"Ok, I promise you, I will come back to you." She tilted her head, "Or more accurately, I'll come save your ass, and then nail you in the back of the transport ship on the way home."
Yang finally smiled, "I'll hold you to that." She smiled, but they were both nervous.
"Look," Blake relented, "We both know this is gonna be really, really dangerous, but we signed up for this, and were really good at what we do, so I know we'll be fine."
Yang pushed herself up the wall so she was standing, and Blake stood with her.
"I love you." Yang blurted out, hugging Blake, squeezing her as tightly as she could. Blake wrapped her arms around Yang and leaned against the cold cement wall, burying her face in Yang's golden hair. She liked being right here, but she knew that they would have to leave any minute, so she just wanted to savor being with her now.
They stood their embracing until the flight alarm sounded, and the armory emptied around them as the teams filed out onto the launch pads, where the choppers were already idling on the tarmac.
Blake pulled back and looked Yang in the eyes. "You will come back to me," She commanded, locking eyes contact. Yang nodded.
They shouldered their packs and headed towards the door. Blake felt at her side, and found Yang's hand. She wove their fingers together as they walked out to the choppers, hair thrown asunder by the blades. Yang looked to her left, where Wiess was inventorying group A's supplies and members. She squeezed Blake's hand once more and turned, heading towards Wiess.
"Wait." Blake called after her over the din of the helicopters, "I have something for you before you go."
Yang turned, and was immediately met with Blake's lips pressed against hers. She instinctively pulled her to her, leaning into the kiss. She wrapped her arms around Blake, snaking her hands to her hips, as Blake's hands came to her cheeks, pressing their lips together.
The kiss lasted forever, and when they finally broke it, they became aware that the entire student body, most of the teachers, and the four chopper pilots were all watching them. Blake looked at the ground and blushed.
"That was possibly the worst way to come out, wasn't it?" She giggled, her face resuming normal paler.
The chopper pilots began to clap, and after an awkward moment, most of the other students joined in.
"Oh fuck me." Yang grimaced as the applause died down. "This is going to be such a long flight."
"I'll see you soon." Blake said as she picked up her pack, and turned to the chopper, and the waiting group.
"…See you." Yang said quietly as Blake climbed into the chopper, and the rest of the students filled in after her, shooting looks at Yang before they entered.
"SO!" Velvet yelled over the scream of the engine, "HOW LONG HAVE YOU AND BLAKE BEEN A THING?"
Yang leaned over so she could be heard. "THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME ITS BEEN NONE OF YOUR DAMN BEE'S WAX!"
Velvet started to say something else, but was cut off as Glynda came on over the ships booming intercom.
After a moment of static and a screech of feedback, her voice became clear "Group A, it is my pleasure to start you officially on your last endeavor of this school year." The speakers kicked off, and then back on, giving Glynda's speech a disjointed feel.
"Right now, we are flying to the eastern end of the Rooth mountain chain, our ETA is four and a half hours." She cleared her throat and, and the cockpit door opened, revealing Glynda standing rigidly, balancing perfectly against the pitch of the aircraft.
"You will be dropped in the top of the easter ridge, and your rescuers, will be dropped at the southern end."
Yang started doing mental math. The Rooth mountain range was 6 hundred miles long, subtract 25 from each side for the foot hills, and that was 550 miles through snow packed mountains at 9 and a half thousand feet above sea level. At a rate of ten miles a day, which would be an impressive pace, it would easily take group B over a month to reach them. Double that time for the return trip, and they were easily looking at three months in the mountains.
The other students in the chopper had obviously done the math as well, and were exchanging worried looks. You will not be required to stay where you are left, but the other group has been given the location of the place where you will be dropped, so staying in the area is advisable."
Glynda pulled a military duffel bag from the cockpit and started handing out noise canceling headsets to all the students.
"These will cut all noise from the choppers, and allow you to talk to one another, I suggest you use this time to orient yourselves as a team, and learn a little about each other."
Glenda stepped back into the cockpit and closed the door.
Yang switched on her head set and the engine noise instantly disappeared.
"Oh that's nice." Yang could hear Velvet perfectly, and looked over at her. Her headphones were elongated and made to fit over her ears, clearly they had thought about other species when they had made these.
"Alright!" Wiess called out, clapping her hands, though no one heard, "I think we should all tell everyone a little about ourselves, fighting style, specialties, anything that would come in handy for being stuck in the mountains for 6 weeks."
Wiess gestured to her left, "Well start here, and go around, ending with me."
The girl on Wiess's left shrugged, "Alright, My name's Sarah, My weapon is Chaiker," She raised her hands to the light above, and Yang could see several strands of fine wire pulled between her fingers.
"They're super strong, and I've got about 900 feet of them wrapped through my clothes," Sarah continued. "I fight well with other, strong fighters to create opportunities for, since my wires don't have a lot of stopping power." She cocked her head, "Other than that, no special abilities."
"I'm next," The boy next to Sarah waved to the rest of them. "I'm Rennaldo, my weapon is Under Taker." He kicked a long rod at his foot. "It's a 90 pound steel rod, and its modified to transmit my aura, so I can smack shit really hard with it, other than that, I can cook anything that can be eaten, and I know how to hunt, learned from my uncle back home."
He turned to his left, "I think your next," He said to the girl next to him.
She wore dark glasses, and hadn't put on her head set, instead she left it on the seat next to her, but had a death grip on the leg of the guy next to her. He tapped her hand, and started moving his hand quickly in hers, making complex shapes and motions, all while she kept her gaze straight ahead. After a minute, she started gesticulating in the air in front of her, and the boy started speaking in jerky sentences.
"I'm Nami," He said, pausing again for a moment, and then it hit Yang. The girl was deaf and mute, which would explain why she had never noticed her before.
"I don't have any special fighting ability," He went on, eyes focused on her hands, "But I project aura into things, so I can assist in almost any fight to make people stronger, faster, and more agile."
She laughed, sounding only a little alien, and kept signing, "I can also sense any creature of Grimm from a hundred times farther away than any of you. I'm also blind, but I can see aura's." The boy finished, and turned to the group.
"I'm Norton, I'm both Nami's interpreter and her boyfriend," He had been signing the entire time, his hand in Nami's, and when he mentioned he was her boyfriend, she smacked him in the side, signing furiously.
He laughed and kept talking, putting his arm around her, "I'm good with distance," He patted a rifle on his lap, a strange design with the barrel the center of double edged sword. "She's my other girl, I call her Caitlyn, she's a 90 cal. Rifle with explosive rounds, so not great for hunting, but pretty go for fighting."
The rest of the group went, and the tension in the group gradually diffused. Before long, they had broken down into friendly chatter, aided by someone's discovery that they could enable private chat channels.
After prompting from Wiess, they got in channels with their teams, chatting idly about the test, and what they might encounter in the mountains. Time passed quickly, and it seemed like no time had passed when Glynda came back on over the intercom, cutting through their conversations.
"Students, in one minute, the bay doors will open and you will officially begin the test." She paused, "I wish you all the best of luck, and hope I will see you all well soon."
The air of comradely was gone in an instant, and everyone had gone quiet, fastening packs, zipping up thick thermal jackets, loading weapons, and donning gloves to stave off the freezing mountain air outside the confines of heated transport ship.
"Drop in thirty seconds." Came the pilots voice, accompanied by a rush of frigid air as the cabin vented. The drop in temperature was immediate and harsh, stabbing Yang and ravaging the little skin not covered in thick thermal garb.
Yang checked everything was strapped tight to her pack, tying off a loose chord that wiped haphazardly in the strong wind. In front of her, Norton was strapping a disheveled Nami to his chest. She had her hand behind her head, one finger over his lips, the other touching the tip of his tongue as he spoke, reading his lips where everyone else was deaf.
Wiess was at the edge off the door, preparing to be the first to jump. She would go first, and use her vectors to help the ones not capable of landing the jump on their own reach safety.
The noise of the wind was deafening, drowning out even the racket the engines made. Yang saw the light above the door blink three times red, than go to a solid green. Wiess jumped.
She was lost immediately in the hail of wind and snow, her white outfit making her impossible to spot. Yang strained her eyes, attempting to locate her, but only saw the snow and mountains outside. Yang was jostled by the people behind her as those in front took the jump after Wiess, and she heard the sounds of gunfire as they slowed their momentum and landed.
Yang reached the doors a moment later, and looked out into a sea of white, broken only by the occasional mountain side that didn't happen to be covered in snow. She hesitated only a moment before throwing herself out the doors.
The wind buffeted her, and she spread her arms and legs, trying to regain her center of gravity and slow her decent. Her eyes stung and watered in the wind, but she forced them open, searching for a way to land.
There. One of Wiess's vectors, a hundred feet to her left. She angled her body, and moved towards it, assisted by firing shells away from it. She hit the vector hard, knocking the breath out of her, but changing the angle of her decent to one she could survive.
She spread her body into the wind, creating as much air resistance as possible, rushing towards the ground faster than she wound of liked. At the last second before her impact, she curled into as tight a ball as she could, tucking her head and praying she wouldn't break something.
The snow was not forgiving. She hit the hill fast, and had plowed ten feet into a bank before stopping.
"Oh, fuck me." She muttered, assessing the damage. As far as she could tell, no bones were broken, but her face, the only exposed skin on her body, was covered in a web of scratches and shallow cuts from the snow she had so unceremoniously belly flopped into.
Crawling out of the hole she had made, Yang assessed her surroundings. She was in the middle of a snow field, perhaps three or four hundred feet above the tree line, just barely visible through the snow.
She looked in the direction she had come from, and saw her team mates extracting themselves from the snow.
Yang pulled herself to her feet and unzipped her jacket, liberating a large amount of snow from inside it before fastening it and repeating the process with her boots and gloves. Her pants, thankfully, had been tucked into the jacket and thus spared the snow packing.
Yang tucked a few stray lochs of hair into her cap, and set off in the direction she had come, the direction everyone was moving now, in an attempt to reconvene with each other. She paused for a moment to retrieve a glove someone had presumably lost in the fall, before noticing the feet of the owner, just sticking out above the snow.
"Hey there," She called into the ground, "Need a hand?"
"Please." Came the muffled response.
Yang grabbled the boots and pulled hard, but only succeeded pulling herself into the snow up to her shins.
She cursed angrily, and was about to give it another go when she heard someone behind her.
"You two look like you could use a big guy, whatta ya say?" Yang turned, and saw Rennaldo behind her, hefting Under Taker across his back.
"Be my guest." Yang stepped back and let Rennaldo liberate the buried guy. Before long, a disheveled Jaune sat panting in the snow before them.
"Thanks guys, was kinda stuck there." He nodded to Yang and Rennaldo as he fumbled his backpack on.
The three of them trudged in silence towards the small crowd that was gathering around Wiess, who was already issuing orders, forming the scattered crowd into organized groups.
"I know why they chose her to lead now," Rennaldo commented as Wiess barked commands to the crowd.
"WE NEED TO GET BELOW THE TREE LINE BEFORE NIGHT FALLS" Wiess yelled, straining to be heard above the wind. "Team Seraph, I want you in front clearing a path, knock down as many trees as you can, I want the other group to know where we went."
She pointed to Nami and Norton, "You two, stick by me, we need her to keep an eye open- er, to look out for,- eh, to stay tuned for Grimm, she's the most sensitive, tell her that," She paused to think, "Team Cringe, take our left flank, team Vain, you take the right, Rend, cover our rear." She waited for everyone to get into their teams, giving messages for Norton to relay to Nami.
"Alright everyone, safety's off, and move." She called, and they started their trek forward through the snow.
The wind began to die as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, casting long shadows down the snow fields. Yang looked off on their left, watching for any movement.
It took nearly an hour to get to the trees, and another two before they found a suitable place to set up a camp.
It was a rock overhang, about twenty feet deep, and a hundred long. The wind went over it, so there was minimal snow, and there was a running stream of snow melt nearby. Yang had just pitched a tent and covered it in a tarp when Wiess called to everyone.
"Hey, HEY!" She shouted as everyone abandoned what they were doing and looked towards Wiess.
"Okay, Nami told me that we got a pack of at least 20 Grimm coming this way, about half a mile off, I want all of you to be ready." She tunred as Norton whispered something to her, Nami sighing furiously in his hand.
"Ok, change in plans, we got triple the original number, heading straight for us, I want everyone in the trees, melee in lower branches, ranged in upper, Sarah, get wires connecting the trees and creating a mesh around the camp, Ruby, I want you to start shooting as soon as they clear that ridge, Norton, stick to Nami like glue," She assessed the rest of the group, "Cardin, back up and guard the healers,"
Cardin scowaled, and was about to protest, but a death stare from Ruby silenced him before he said anything.
"Melee fighters, as soon as they hit the trees, engage using Sarah's wires for cover, anything that runs into them will be cut in to."
She pointed to Velvet, "You, I want you in the trees, you see someone injured, have Yang get them to you, I don't want you in a compromised position."
She jumped nimbly into the lower branches of the trees, and the rest followed suit.