*Blah*blah*blah* super late chapter*blah*blah*blah*
Chapter 14: Rising Hell
"I'm afraid the Courier has been showing a rather… hostile side as of late." Joshua Graham continued idly inspecting his signature armoury of 45. Auto pistols at Ozpin's desk, managing to create several piles of sidearms on the headmaster's desk, completely occupying the wooden table.
"And…?" Ozpin attempted to prompt extra information from the Burned Man.
"It is rather easy to decipher his path. No doubt he has travelled back to the Wastes to gather assistance from his companions, perhaps his army." Sliding the magazine back into the gun, Graham gently rested the 45. onto the desk, beginning his examination of yet another sidearm.
"Army?" The headmaster questioned, casually observing Joshua in his actions.
"To say the least." Was all Graham returned.
"Hmm…" Ozpin started thoughtfully, "Do you not care for your friend?"
"It would be a step to call him a friend, though his words have swayed my actions in the past and have managed to clear my blinded views." Joshua's eyes grew blank, "So I suppose I should call him a saviour; a companion if other."
Joshua's hands halted, freezing mid-action as he held a 45. auto still in the air.
"As for Ulysses," Joshua started, "I know little of the man other than his past. I don't know his relationship with the Courier, nor do I believe he would hesitate to kill Courier Six if events were shifted."
The headmaster smiled softly, "I'm sure your friend has enough sense of mind to tell right from wrong."
"There is no right or wrong in that man's mind, Ozpin," Joshua replied, "True he may have stayed my hand from committing a heinous act that would no doubt have returned me to my roots, but the Courier acts on his own behalf; uses his own judgement of karma, what is wrongful and what is true to God." Joshua Graham gently set the 45. down on the table, leaning forward to address Ozpin sincerely, "Do not underestimate the predicament you have found yourself in, Ozpin. You are no doubt on the brink of war; you have no idea what that man is capable of doing to another man; even an entire region. I would not take this situation lightly; my fears tell me that your students will be the first to go."
Ozpin looked to the floor, "Then I suppose I must ask for your help."
Courier Six glared ahead in irritable disbelief. His eyes wandered angrily across a vast ocean of blue laid out beneath his feet as he stood perched at the peak of a small outstretched ridge along the large cliff face overlooking a mesmerizingly beautiful sea.
But the Courier was far from joyous at the beauty of the sight, instead adopting anger and confusion into his mind. A full hour of walking only to find somebody had decided to dig up your path home and put an ocean there. He cursed the vast blue for standing in his way.
"I swear this was the right way…" The Courier sighed, exhausted by his own disappointment. Slowly, Six slid slowly down, resting himself onto the ground and carelessly slipping his helmet off and tossing it aside. The helmet toppled, cracking against the rocky ground and tumbling further back into the forest, rolling to a stop and resting itself in the bushes a few metres away.
Six ran his fingers through his hair and sighed in frustration, his breath forming a small steamy cloud beyond his eyes. He watched it quickly dissipate into the air. Winter grew inevitably close; a quick and unexpected change of seasons over the past day, the warmth of the sun dissipating to be overgrown by the frosty wolves that would soon fill the air with their cold climates and unbearable violence delivered in hands of frostbite.
"No... no no no, there has to be another way." The Courier quickly rose to his feet, removing his plasma rifle from his back into a sturdy grip between his veteran hands. His grip tightened with strong determination, "There's always a way… A way for everything…" He muttered to himself as he retrieved his helmet, nestled comfortably in the heart of an overgrowing bush, and secured it over his head.
His feet hammered heavily against the mixture of dirt and rock squelched beneath his boots as he paced through the thickness of the forest. The silence that brushed between the trees filled the air with an eerie disturbance; too quiet compared to his experience during Ozpin's initiation test. The Courier remained on high alert, his eyes constantly probing the dense underbrush for any possibilities of a sneak attack from whatever was stupid enough to lunge out from the wall of darkness that filled almost every turn between the greenery. His pace slowed and the Courier honed his hearing.
Faint squeals could be heard; some sort of pig. The Courier grew closer to the source and squeals transformed to screams; inhuman, like an animal being tortured. The screams cut and the silence returned to the forest, only accompanied by a gentle wind. The Courier continued onward, plasma rifle aimed onward to combat any advancing threats from the undergrowth.
A squelch halted the Courier and he looked to the source of the sound, finding the corpse of a Grimm, torn half to shreds; completely massacred with hardly any identifiable features remaining on its body. Six leant down to examine the amalgamated mess beneath his feet but his attention was snapped back to more high-pitched squealing erupting from the leaves ahead.
Six's finger tensed on the trigger of his rifle as he slowly parted the branches of the tree with his free hand. What the Courier saw next was a revelation his mind could barely comprehend.
All the Courier could do was stand erect with his mouth slightly ajar as he witnessed the scene presented before his eyes. Six's instinct quickly took hold of the strings pulling his body and he threw himself quietly against the trunk of the largest nearby tree he could find, hugging his plasma rifle as close to his chest as he could. His breath sped as he tried to calm himself.
"Fuck…" was all the Courier uttered before peeking his head around the side to catch another glimpse of the beast. There it sat, a hunchbacked, bipedal reptilian creature with long humanoid arms that rose to an intimidating height of near nine feet. Its hide bore the colours of the Mojave winds and the creature's razor-blade claws dug deep into the bowels of a squealing Grimm creature. The Boarbatusk writhed in immense pain as the creature rooted its claws about its innards, as if searching for something among the animal's organs.
"Fucking Deathclaw…" the Courier jittered as he spoke, pulling his plasma rifle back into a firm and ready grip in his hands. He slowly inched his head around the tree trunk once more to be met only with the creature's pure white eyes staring through him. Startled, the Courier jumped into action, raising his weapon and readying his finger on the trigger as he took a crouched position, steadying his aim on the Deathclaw's head; a much broader target than the heads of most other things the Courier had senselessly slaughtered through his journeys in the Mojave.
To Six's ultimate surprise, the Deathclaw made no further move to cleave him in two, simply staring deeply at the Courier with its beady eyes. It continued to idly root about in the Boarbatusk's corpse, the Grimm creature having died some few seconds ago.
"Come on then!" The Courier yelled, "Come a little closer so I blow your brains out like the rest of your friends!" Oh such distinct memories the Courier had of the countless bloodbaths he had been involved in… though most of the Deathclaw bloodbaths had usually consisted more of his own blood than the creatures'. He could've sworn he had died during one of those… the memory was hazy.
The Deathclaw, instead of performing the casual Deathclaw response to most things and attempting to cut the Courier in half, rose to its full height, heaved out a long breath, and lumbered back into the forest. The rustle of leaves was all that sustained to mark the Wasteland beast's departure from the scene, leaving behind only a newly-slain corpse, freshly ripe with the taste of blood fluttering about the air. The Courier, still startled with confusion rushing about his mind, lowered his rifle slightly.
"What… the fuck?" the Courier returned to his casual upright stance, cracking his neck a couple times, "Yeah… you better run… bitch." The Courier holstered his weapon and walked over to examine the Grimm corpse, kneeling beside it and examining the treeline to ensure the creature would not return unexpectedly.
"I swear to God I have no idea what just happened…" The Courier carefully parted the wound that cut through the Boarbatusk's belly with his forefinger and thumb; robbed completely of organs. If the Courier could recall his extensive research on Grimm anatomy correctly, the Grimm definitely had organs. The only conclusive drawing was that the Deathclaw had taken them… for what though? Food? Perhaps.
"It sure as hell aint safe here anymore…" The Courier spoke to himself, laying out his options, "and I sure as hell am not going back to that damn school… Shit." Six greatly objected against the idea of wandering around a forest with a Deathclaw, especially considering the dense underbrush and cat-like agility and speed of Deathclaws; It was no safe place to be. The only logical solution was to head to the city... it would be feasible if Six actually knew the way to the city from the unknown predicament he had found himself in.
The next thing would be to find a cave or large clearing where he would have his back against a wall and a suitable place to sleep, seeing as the sun was already dipping below the treeline. The Courier could salvage his survival skills and manifest a small campfire and pray to God that he wouldn't attract any unwanted attention. Luckily for him, he could already see the perfect basecamp.
He set foot cautiously inside the mouth of the cave, slipping the Mysterious Magnum from its holster and holding it at the ready. He would need to be sure the cave was clear if he were to set up camp for the while. His helmet's in-built night vision function aided the courier through the darks of the cave until he came to a split-section, two individual corridors leading off in completely separate directions, each a seemingly tight fit for a man his size. Taking the armour off would perhaps ease his time squeezing through each of them, but removing his armour even temporarily put him at a greatly increased risk of injury and death, the latter being slightly more intimidating as a consequence. Seeing no other option, the Courier urged himself through the tightly-formed passage, slipping through sideways.
The passage was pitch-black, not an inch of light; the perfect environment for his night vision. The tunnel continued for a painful length, the journey seeming to take around ten minutes to complete in its entirety, quite the time to be sandwiched between two solid stone walls.
The Courier eventually came to the end of the passage, desperately trying to force himself out the small crack in the wall, only just able to wrap a hand around a stone stalagmite to stop himself from toppling down into the vast open cavern beneath the ledge he was now situated on.
"Holy shit…" the Courier uttered, staring out into the stretch of open cavernous floors beyond him. There had to be at least an acre of open space before the Courier, just laid out, completely vacant of all life. The darkness spanned for days, blotting out the farthest ends of the untenanted space with splotches of thick black.
"Fucking jackpot." The Courier smiled, "Now all I need is an army."