Chapter 23
The apartment was dead silent when Pyrrha crept out into the living room, quietly shutting the door behind her. The fire was out and Harry and Murphy had retired to their room some time ago. Only the darkened stillness was there to keep her company now.
Pyrrha was dressed in her gear again, with her weapons strapped to her back, and her Scroll comfortably tucked away in her sash. Ready for battle, but not quite sure where that battle was. Luckily for her, Harry had placed the map of Chicago on the table by the fireplace. She didn't dare turn on a light to see, so she'd have to navigate the darkness by memory.
It was a laughably easy task, and Pyrrha crossed the room in complete silence, even her heels quiet against the floor. She reached the table in seconds, and carefully unfolded the map. The crinkling paper was painfully loud in the late night silence, and Pyrrha winced at the noise; she had to be careful, stealth was key right now.
"Whatcha doing?" a small voice asked.
Pyrrha clamped a hand over her mouth, muffling the squeak of surprise. On the table in front of the map, Bonnie's luminescent eyes filled the apartment with a faint emerald glow, her skull face locked in an expression of childish curiosity. Without the light, she hadn't been able to make out the skulls shape on the table. Pyrrha mentally scolded herself for such a rookie mistake, focused on clearing her mind. Sleep still clouded her thoughts.
Bonnie looked down at the map, "What's the map for? Planning a trip?"
The innocence in her question made Pyrrha smile, "Of a sort. I have… to go somewhere for now. It might be part of why I'm here in the first place."
"Shouldn't you grab my dad then?"
Pyrrha cast a guilty glance at Harry's bedroom door, "I considered it, but… I'm just investigating you see. And your dad was pretty beat up today, I don't want him or Murphy getting hurt when it can be avoided."
"Oh, that happens to them all the time," Bonnie whispered casually. "Even when he was pregnant with me, dad always got beat up. It's just part of who he is."
"Maybe. But if I can avoid dragging him into unnecessary danger, I'll do it."
The skull smiled up at Pyrrha, "You're very nice Miss Pyrrha. Thank you."
That almost made Pyrrha reach out and affectionately pat Bonnie on the head, but she resisted the urge and just returned the smile, "You're welcome Bonnie."
A big yawn overtook the young spirit, and she sighed, "I guess I'll go to back to sleep then. When dad wakes up, I'll tell him about your mission. That way he doesn't worry too much."
"That's very kind of you, Bonnie."
Bonnie's skull grinned...somehow.
Pyrrha glanced at the map and frowned, "Actually, can you do something for me real quick?"
"Maybe," Bonnie said in a sing song voice.
Pyrrha rapped the map with her knuckle, "I don't know any of the landmarks in Chicago. I have an address, but I don't know where to find it. Can you help me pinpoint it?"
The frantic pace of the past few days had left Pyrrha without any real chance to learn Chicago's landmarks. A few she would probably recognize, Marcone's castle, the Alpha's 'headquarters', and definitely Harry's apartment. But she didn't know the streets and the address that was now rattling around her skull was useless without context.
Bonnie clacked her wooden teeth together, "That's easy. What's the address?"
Pyrrha told her. Bonnie's eyelights immediately focused, shrinking the emerald glow into miniature spotlights that she swept up and down the map. It took less than a minute for Bonnie to focus along the coast. "Ah ha! The old abandoned industrial zone. Dad fought the Wild Hunt there, it was awesome."
Yet another tale she'd have to learn later. Pyrrha leaned forward and frowned, "How do I get there though?"
Bonnie clacked her teeth again, "Hold on," and some of the fire in her eyes started to leak onto the table. Pyrrha scooted back and watched as the emerald fire twisted and curled across the map in tiny waves. They started at her destination, then trailed along the streets and roads of the map, casually winding between 'buildings' until it connected with Harry's apartment. When Bonnie was done, a glowing green trail had been painted on the map, showing exactly how to get where she needed to go.
Pyrrha smiled and pulled out her Scroll, "Thank you, Bonnie."
Bonnie yawned while Pyrrha snapped several pictures on her phone, "You're welcome!"
Looking at the map one more time, Pyrrha frowned, "That's a ways away from here. I don't think I could make it there on foot in a decent amount of time."
"The keys are by the front door!" Bonnie informed her, cheerfully. "I'd take Miss Murphy's motorcycle, its cool! So I've heard, anyway."
Pyrrha glanced over her shoulder at the door, still frowning. She was already taking a great risk going out on her own without adding to it by essentially stealing Murphy's bike. Granted, she was going to return it, but taking something without asking permission was still stealing, at least, in Pyrrha's mind it was.
On the other hand though, time was most likely not on her side. While Rashid had planted the message in her mind and probably assumed it would be some time before she could act on it, sprinting across Chicago would be an unnecessary waste of time. She'd need a better alternative, something in the middle.
A light flickered on in her mind and Pyrrha smiled, "Bonnie, what's the cab fare for Chicago?"
As it turned out, Harry had an emergency stash of cash hidden on the inside of Bonnie's skull. He had it stored in case of emergency, and given the situation, Pyrrha figured this qualified. She only took about forty dollars, and left the rest inside the wooden skull.
Flagging a cab wasn't exactly difficult. Loathe as she was to admit it, her outfit really did stick out in a place like Chicago, and even in the dead of night, taxis still prowled the street in search of paying customers. The cabbie was a bit confused by the address Pyrrha gave him, but promising to pay in cash was enough to make him shrug and go along with it.
The route wasn't long, and Pyrrha was glad she didn't have to try and navigate using the directions Bonnie gave her. Chicago was a maze and even with a map, she'd have probably gotten lost among the twisting towers and spires of the city. Her driver on the other hand, drove the streets with no delays.
It was still a long enough trip for Pyrrha to be left alone with her thoughts. As she stared out the window, watching the city pass her by, Pyrrha went over the facts. She knew that someone was bringing in the Grimm, and that according to Rashid's message (provided it was accurate) there might be another incident related to the incursions at the address. However, his insistence that she go alone was troubling. What could Harry possibly do that would place the mission in jeopardy?
Again, presuming this was an actual mission. There were too many questions that weren't adding up. Why tell only her? Why leave a message in her mind, a known and dangerous form of magic that straddled the line between good and evil magic? It didn't make sense.
Pyrrha sighed and rubbed her temples.
"You alright back there miss?" the driver asked. He was a man in his mid forties, a little portly, with a head of thinning blond hair and pale blue eyes,
"I'm fine, sir, just tired." Pyrrha said, and smiled, "Thank you."
"You're welcome, though if you don't mind me asking," he glanced up in the rearview mirror, "What's a young lady like yourself doing wandering the streets alone in a getup like that?"
Another sigh and Pyrrha looked out the window, "It's… a long story. I'm sorry, but I'd rather keep it to myself."
He shrugged, "Fair enough, just curious. Chicago can be a pretty freaky place at night, especially if you're alone."
"I can handle myself, and besides, I'm meeting with colleagues anyway." It wasn't a total lie. Technically, she might meet with someone, if there was any truth to Rashid's statement.
"If you say so, miss," the cabbie shrugged and the rest of the drive was in silence.
They arrived at a fenced off area a few minutes later, and Pyrrha got out of the cab. She offered the cabbie his pay, but he waved her off, "First ride's free tonight miss. You sure this is the place?"
Pyrrha raised a quizzical brow and tucked the cash away, "Yes, I am. I can still pay you sir, it's not an issue."
"It's fine," he insisted, and put the car in drive. Before he left, he looked at Pyrrha with a wary expression, "You be careful kid, alright?"
She smiled, "Alright."
Pyrrha watched the cab drive off. Once it was out of sight, she turned to the gate and the buildings behind it. Bonnie hadn't been kidding when she said it was an abandoned industrial zone. A big sign hung from the chainlink fence stating the buildings were slated for renewal at some point in the unspecified future. Beyond the industrial zone, she could see the lake Chicago had been built around, though its name escaped her.
The years had not been kind to the to this steel mill. Walls and buildings had decayed into masses of steel and concrete rubble, leaving only the largest structures still standing. A trio of concrete walls stretched in the distance and several older warehouses still stood, barely. Pyrrha could see the old remains of steel mills that still hadn't quite been cleaned up. Most were sequestered in the aging walls, a few lay in the abandoned warehouses. Regardless, they had not seen use in decades. Pyrrha shuddered, there had to be a years if not decades of bitter resentful memories in a place like this. The Grimm would fester in it like an old wound until they spilled out onto the city.
She scaled the fence in seconds and silently landed on the opposite side. That may happen someday, but not that day. Pyrrha slung her backpack off her shoulders and pulled Miló and Akoúo̱ from them. She left the pack behind and took off in a silent jog toward the first warehouse.
The building was about three stories high, and covered in rust. Windows had been boarded shut, but the side door had collapsed years ago. Pyrrha came to a stop by the open door, pressed herself against the wall, and listened while keeping her breathing calm. At first she heard nothing but the lakeside breeze, but then it was joined by…
Footsteps?
Pyrrha frowned and pulled out her Scroll, then extended the camera past the doors threshold. She took several pictures, then retracted the device and scrolled through them. In the darkness, Pyrrha hadn't dared use the flash for fear of drawing attention to herself. Luckily, she hadn't needed to.
A man was inside the warehouse carrying a rifle with a flashlight slung under its barrel. He was dressed in a sleeveless white robe with black pants and an undershirt. He wore a grey mask that covered the upper portion of his face, concealed by a black hood. A familiar emblem was painted on his right breast, a blood-red wolf's head, with three slashes behind it.
"The White Fang…" Pyrrha whispered.
A group of Faunus extremists, the White Fang had surged in power and boldness in the months leading up to the Vytal Festival, culminating in Torchwick's attack on Beacon that nearly caused a breach in the city for the Grimm to pour in through. While Pyrrha certainly felt sympathy for Faunus that experienced discrimination and saw such acts as reprehensible, she held no sympathy for the White Fang. Lives had been lost because of them, human and Faunus.
Pyrrha shook her head, now wasn't the time to worry about that. The more important issue was finding out how the White Fang had arrived on Earth, and what their relationship with the Grimm was. They had been surprisingly well equipped, but interdimensional travel seemed to be a little much.
"Let's find out the truth." Pyrrha murmured, and readied Akoúo̱. After taking a moment to gage where the breeze was coming from, Pyrrha flung her shield through the doorway. The makeshift discus spun through air in an upward arc, then abruptly turned down and sailed straight into the White Fang's skull.
He hit the ground with a thud and his rifle went skittering across the floor, casting long shadows all through the warehouse. Pyrrha rushed inside and caught Akoúo̱ before it had time to hit the ground, then planted its convex side on the Faunus's throat. In total, it took less than ten seconds for the guard to find himself on the ground with Pyrrha's knee in his gut. He was understandably surprised.
"Wh-what the?"
Pyrrha placed Miló against his neck and said, in a calm tone, "Try to warn your friends and you'll regret it. Tell me what I want to know, and I'll let you go, understand?"
Weighing his options, the man decided that trying to piss off the mysterious woman with a sword to his throat would be the epitome of a Bad Idea. "Okay, okay, I'll talk. What do you want?"
"How did you wind up here, and where are the rest of you?" Pyrrha demanded, and pressed a little harder with her knee.
The White Fang choked, "I-I don't know! There was this portal thing we went through, but I have no idea where it came from, honest!"
That made sense, Pyrrha admitted.
"And where are the rest of you?" she repeated.
He pointed down the hall, "Down the hall, with all the old smelting equipment, you can't miss it!"
Pyrrha nodded, "Hmm, alright. Thank you for your cooperation."
"You gonna let me go-"
Before he finished, Pyrrha lifted Akoúo̱ from his neck, and slammed it against his forehead once. The White Fang went limp. Pyrrha checked his pulse and let out a relieved sigh. She didn't like doing this interrogation nonsense, and would avoid killing a an unarmed enemy if she could. She was a huntress, not a murderer.
Pyrrha went to his fallen rifle and shut off the light, then she took off down the hall. In the late night darkness, she was careful not to run too fast, there was no telling what might lay on the ground around her. The only source of light she had now, was the faint moonlight shining through holes in the roof and walls, and even that was obscured by the heavy cloud cover.
As she moved farther in though, she noticed that the darkness was beginning to recede. Shadows grew longer, shapes began to form around her, and she could see more than five feet in front of her. Pyrrha slowed to a stop and looked around. Much of the old machinery still lay where it had been abandoned, and above it, she could see the remains of an abandoned catwalk.
That would do.
She scrambled up an old steel press and jumped onto the catwalk, hauling herself onto it and wincing at the racket its brittle frame made. It didn't collapse though, and was surprisingly stable, so it would have to do. Pyrrha crept along the catwalk until she finally came upon the source of the light.
It came from a large room filled with old pipes, chains, and pieces of rebar still jutting from the walls. Whatever purpose this room had served, it was long forgotten by time. The large number of pipes and chains though, made for excellent cover for Pyrrha to get a good look without giving herself away. She positioned herself behind what might've once been a smoke stack, and peered down onto the open floor.
A generator had been placed in the center of the floor, with several floodlights attached to it. A dozen members of the White Fang were scattered around the generator, all of them armed. The air around shimmered with what appeared to be intense heat. It took Pyrrha moment to realize that it wasn't heat, it was the air literally being warped by a greater source of power.
The downside to her hiding spot was that she couldn't see everything down and had to reposition herself to see if her suspicions were right. Pyrrha moved along the catwalk slowly, aware that doing so would put the White Fang between her and her escape route. But she had to see if this was indeed a portal.
She heard voices, vaguely familiar, before she reached a better vantage point. "I don't get it, why are we even here? This whole thing is a waste of time." a young man's voice complained.
"Mercury, were you even paying attention? If the portal isn't powerful enough, then Cinder can't get through" this time it was a woman's. Those names sounded familiar to Pyrrha, but she couldn't quite figure out why. Luckily, she reached another opening between the pipes and chains and found the source of the voices.
The young man was tall and lean, with a mess of silvery grey hair and matching eyes. He wore a black and grey zip up jacket, black pants and boots. A set of rerebraces and vambraces were attached to his arms. He was leaning against another generator with his arms folded and an annoyed look on his face.
The woman was shorter and slender, with light brown skin, mint-green hair and dark red eyes. She wore white pants and brown chaps, and a series of white strips of fabric around a very small green undershirt that exposed her stomach arms and plenty of cleavage. She was looking at the young man, Mercury, with an exasperated expression. They must have had this conversation often.
Pyrrha noted there were two other figures with them. One was hidden in the shadows by the White Fang, though she could make out flashes of… pink, maybe? The other was crouched by the portal, dressed in all black robes that hid their gender.
The portal itself was placed dead center on the factory floor. There were two Blackstone's set up, and the cloaked figure held a third in their hands. Pyrrha couldn't make out what they were doing exactly, but the intent was obvious. She had just found whoever was setting up the stones all over Chicago!
She reached for her Scroll and began snapping pictures, while Mercury shrugged and said, "She got through just fine the first time. Even got that idiot to give us a way to track him down."
"Yeah, but last time it cut her off from her powers. The only other one big enough to let her through was destroyed, so that's why we're here."
Mercury raised a brow, "See, that's another thing I don't get. How does it just cut off her power like that?"
"How should I know? She's not exactly able to explain it to me, and he's not willing to share anything with us."
The cloaked figure spoke up, his voice deep and possibly irritated, "Children. This is very delicate work. Keep your needless ramblings to yourself, or I shall silence the both of you. You are not as indispensable as you believe."
"If you'd just let us come through first, we wouldn't be here in the first place," Mercury replied.
The cloaked man scoffed and returned to the stone, "You and your ilk are far from subtle, child. You know nothing of how this world works, and should you have gained Dresden's attention sooner, this entire operation would have fallen apart."
Harry? They knew about Harry? Oh that was bad, that was really, really bad.
Pyrrha put away her scroll and started back down the catwalk. Mercury had mentioned that this woman, Cinder (Who was she, why did her name make Pyrrha's head hurt?) had already found a way to track Harry. This must've been why the Gatekeeper gave her the message, so she could warn Harry. But why not just warn him, instead of-
Pyrrha didn't get far before a light flared to life and blinded her. She raised a hand to cover her eyes and took a step back, readying her shield for an attack that didn't immediately come. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the light, and Pyrrha lowered her hand.
A small woman, shorter even than Murphy, stood on the catwalk in front of Pyrrha, hand on her hip. She wore a black and pink coat, with tall black boots and pants. In one hand she held a black umbrella laced with pink trimming, in the other she held the flashlight she was pointing at Pyrrha. Her hair was long and had two colors. One half was bright pink, the other dark brown, and the curtains matched the windows, so to speak. Her eyes were pink and brown as well.
"Um…" Pyrrha said, slowly.
The woman smiled and held up the hand with the umbrella in it, and… a detonator.
Pyrrha didn't get a chance to react. All she heard was a low beep, a roar, and then the world began to spin. She crashed off one of the pipes and fell through a curtain of chains before she hit the concrete with a thud.
The world didn't stop spinning, and flashes of light kept flashing across her vision. A small part of her realized it was her Aura. The… explosive had to have been either very powerful or right next to her when it went off for her Aura to be broken. Around her, bits of flaming debris rained onto the ground, and a thick cloud of smoke and dust was rapidly filling the factory. Pyrrha blinked her eyes a few times and tried getting her body to respond, while the distant shouts of surprised guards spurred her to move faster..
It was a useless process, her limbs felt like concrete, heavy and unwieldy. Pyrrha had only just got her arms under her, when she heard the sound of heels on concrete. The short woman's face appeared above her own a moment later, and smirked. She raised her boot over Pyrrha's face, and...
Everything went dark.
A/N: An admittedly short chapter, mostly bridging the gap and partially because I have been suffering an incredibly headache the past day or two that came in the middle of this chapter. So expect a possible rewrite in the future when my head doesn't feel like someone took a jackhammer to it.
Not a lot else to say, lotta big plot elements went down, and the next chapter is one of the first things I had planned when I started this story. Expect things to get...
Crazy.