AN: New chapter.
"Rock! Really big rock!"
"Where is it even getting all of them from?"
"I don't know!"
Once again, Ruby was forced to use her Semblance to sweep up her partner and dash out of the way of yet another large rock. A rock of even greater size had been part of the reason it was up to the two of them instead of the full Team RWBY to fight the Geist. In a shower of crushed up boulders, the four had been split in half. The latest thrown rock crashed into the ground, toppled another set of trees to the forest floor with a cacophony of broken wood and rustling leaves, and Ruby made another vain search for either Yang or Blake. She heard gunshots but couldn't see either of the two.
A combination of the dust filling the air and the constant running from the Geist during one of its initial bombardment of rocks.
"What are we going to do?" Weiss had tried to keep the Grimm back but had seen diminishing returns rather quickly, the Geist seemingly opting for crushing weight mixed with nearly unbreakable defense with all the stone it had turned into its latest body.
It kept the pressure on the two Huntresses-in-training it pursued, seemed set to crush them before they could get away.
A collection of rocks shaped into an arm swung down in an attempt to crush the two as it expanded on tendrils of darkness, Ruby firing Crescent Rose in the split second she had. Weiss didn't have the time to set Myrtenaster, to switch her selection of Dust, and once more Ruby used her Semblance to take the two out of harm's way.
The Geist drew its arm back in, launched another attack that toppled more trees to the forest floor and Ruby was forced to speed up once again. She was a blur of red as she dodged between falling trees as the Geist threw itself forward instead of swinging its arms again.
It turned into little more than a possessed boulder, a twisted game of bowling with pins that ran as fast as they could from the ball.
Ruby pushed her Semblance to take her faster, get her and Weiss out of the way as the Grimm finally stopped its pursuit, unrolled itself to strike the ground with massive limbs. It had only grown bigger as a result of the chase, had incorporated the shattered trunks and broken branches of trees into improvised wooden spikes across its massive body.
It pounded on the ground again and again, sent tremors radiating out in an attempt to throw Ruby off her feet.
It didn't work, Weiss finally having a moment to put her Semblance to use. Glyphs appeared at the feet of both, didn't anchor them to the ground more than seemed to glue them there, stopped them from being thrown off their feet. A rather difficult trick to pull off but one Weiss was more than capable of even if she only had a moment or two.
She could also finally take the chance to return fire to the Geist.
She rotated Myrtenaster's cylinder, a Glyph spinning to life at the tip of her blade.
A bolt of lightning struck the body of the Geist but not the mask, the Grimm already in the midst of condensing itself into a ball once more to try and crush the two. Her attack propelled the creature back when it made to go towards the two Huntresses in training, thrown away and through the forest.
From next to her, Ruby took up Crescent Rose as the razor-sharp blade extended out from the shaft/rifle. So far, her bullets had been mostly ineffectually against the Geist so she decided on a different approach. With her Semblance, closing the distance between her and the Grimm would be easy enough.
A new Glyph spun to life at her feet, a white glow enshrouding her a moment later.
Weiss seemed to guess what she was doing, shifted her chosen Dust a moment later to the chamber housing her Hard-Light. She swiped Myrtenaster through the air, created a line of Glyphs that unleashed a barrage of blue lasers that, while they lacked power, made up for it with their numbers. With her limited supply, she couldn't keep it up for long but she could distract the Geist as Ruby threw herself forward in a burst of rose petals.
The Geist tried to swing an arm to throw a boulder at Weiss, try to stop the bombardment, only for it to be severed at what would pass for an elbow for the monster. Ruby had seen it start moving before Weiss, had changed her target from the mask to the Grimm's arm. On the other side of the Geist, Ruby fired what she knew to be worthless shots on the Grimm's stone body as it turned to her. She could at least distract it while her partner through of something else.
Of course, the sight of the Grimm turning towards her, beginning to lumber towards her, wasn't something she was fully ready for.
The creature let out a monstrous roar, slammed its stump of an arm into a tree and tore it form the ground, twisted it into a new arm to swing down on Ruby. The young girl barely managed to get out of the way of the creature as it swung its new arm over the ground.
Weiss couldn't keep up her distraction, the Glyphs responsible for the beams spiraling out of existence. With the moment she had, as the Geist focused on Ruby, she selected the next Dust she had in mind.
Precision clearly wasn't working.
She would need to go with something more powerful.
Ruby kept firing despite the roars of the Geist, as it charged towards her. Before the Grimm could try and crush her with more of the rocks clinging to tis constructed body, Ruby once more made use of her Semblance to flee the Geist. It tried to swing on her regardless to no avail, the younger student outpacing the swing from the way it swung through the rose petals following her.
Weiss waited for Ruby to get out of the line of fire before she made her move.
The Schnee slashed her rapier's blade through the air, a Glyph burning to life in the air before a stream of fire threw itself forward and towards the Geist. She couldn't melt the stone it had made the bulk of its form but she could set the wood it had chosen to incorporate into its body aflame. The Geist let out a screech that almost made Weiss fall and cover her ears but she fought the urge, focused on burning the monster instead.
A jet of flames aimed to deal the decisive blow to the Geist, burn through the mask, to no avail. It brought massive arms of rock up to shield its mask, let loose another deafening screech. Weiss winced but stood her ground, refused to back down from the monster. She tightened the stream of flames, knew she couldn't keep this up for much longer but pushed her Semblance.
If she could tighten the flames enough, condense them into a beam, she could slice through whatever the Geist tried to block it with.
"Weiss!" Ruby tackled her to the ground.
A black tendril erupted from the ground where she had once stood, deadly claws at the end aiming to grab hold of her. They withdrew and, a moment later, the Geist tore free of its latest body and fled into the trees.
"Come here you beast!"
Professor Port made his appearance with such a bellow, Blowhard raised to his shoulder and one eye closed to take aim. A round of Fire Dust failed to strike the mask, managed to draw a screech from the Geist as it clipped the beast but could do little more before it fled.
"Drat." Professor Port lowered his weapon, a frown on his face for only a moment. By the time he turned to Ruby and Weiss, a grin was on his face. "Well done you two! You had the beast on the ropes! I see you've been taking all of my lessons to heart if you sent it running again!" He made a show of looking around. "If I may ask, where's the rest of your team Ms. Rose?"
As if Port had summoned them by way of asking of the two, Blake swung in from above using Gambol Shroud and Yang flew through the air from Ember Celica. She crashed into the ground in front of Ruby, red eyes looking her over before lilac returned in the time it took her to blink.
"Ruby! Did you get it?" From the looks of things, the two had been in a fight.
Port frowned once more. It went unseen by his students as he turned away from them as the four reunited, compared notes on what had happened to separate them. For now, Peter took the chance to make use of this lull in the hunt to take out his Scroll.
"Harold, you're running a bit late aren't you? Mind telling me what's keeping you?" The other end of the line was silent. Peter frowned as he waited for a response, waited for a message of some sort.
He got nothing.
"Dammit, what's going on?" Peter hefted Blowhard as he pocketed his Scroll, would keep the earpiece in if nothing else. Once this was over, he was going to talk Harold's ear off over turning his Scroll off. "Well, as grand of a reunion this must be for you students, we best be off!"
Peter's grin was wide and encouraging when he turned to Team RWBY.
"We're not quite done with the hunt yet!" Without waiting for a response, he headed off deeper into the forest. A Boarbatusk tried to attack him with a roll, much like how the Geist had tried to do the same to Ruby and Weiss on a larger scale. Unfortunately for it, the plan was doomed from the start with its snorting and scratching at the ground beforehand. It's rush to attack only earned it a shot from Blowhard.
"We going to follow him?" Blake directed her question to Ruby, took the chance this lull brought them to reload Gambol Shroud with a magazine of Fire Dust instead of her normal rounds. The last few Grimm that had attacked her and Yang had been problematic, had made her fallback and rely on Yang to beat them into the ground.
"We are." With deft and well-practiced motions, Ruby collapsed the blade of Crescent Rose. She took a moment to check her loaded magazine before pulling back on the bolt to load a round and heading off after Professor Port.
The rest of Team RWBY followed her.
With a shrill cry, one of the flocks of Nevermore came around over the treetops. Yet again, another salvo of gunfire cut them down one after another. The soldiers were quick to take cover when they drew too close, either taking aim with their rifles or switching out their primary for their standard issue swords on their backs, extending them to their full length.
The Grimm that drew too close were surrounded and hacked to pieces, those that stayed at range were cut down in a hail of gunfire.
It was easy work but their numbers made it challenging, time-consuming. There was seemingly no end to the Grimm, the soldiers having cut down over a dozen just in this latest swarm, dozens more before that. And all of them were young, all of them throwing themselves into this mindless attack.
Like they were being directed by something.
Another flock made their approach on the other side of the soldiers.
To anyone watching from above, it was a crude pincer attack in action.
Specialist Leonard Church took aim and fired, gunning down the flock one after another. With the sudden drop in their numbers, the flock abandoned their attack, swerved and broke away. They fled back to the treetops for cover, the Specialist keeping an eye on the Grimm, waited for them to swing back around.
When they did, the flock of Nevermore was gunned down by the next series of shots from Specialist Church's drawn pistol, the standard issue sidearm for any Specialist. With his last round, an old habit making it a Dust round designed for high impact instead of the less powerful standard issue, he took off the creature's head just like he had the last six. He dropped the empty magazine and drew a fresh one from his side, slid it into place and sent the slide forward.
He didn't see any more Grimm.
"Sergeant Lane, what's your status?" The Specialist didn't take his eyes off the treetop, waited for another attack. With how sudden this one had come, now wasn't the time to get sloppy.
"Nothing on the motion sensors. We're in the clear." The Specialist, if only slightly, relaxed at the news, gave orders for the NCO to check on his men while he took in the damage.
Personnel wise? They were fine. One casualty and that amounted to a feather to the arm, something that'll bruise at best courtesy of his armor.
Equipment wise? That was more concerning.
The sudden attack had done more damage than he had initially thought, had knocked out their short-range communications before he had even stepped out into the fight. While they could still use the CCTS, piggyback off the worldwide signal coming in part from Beacon Tower, the Specialist wasn't keen on using an unsecured network for military transmissions. Even if this was an Academy exercise, there was no reason to break protocol.
Although, the more he learned from his brief survey, the more tempted he was.
Half of their antennas had been slammed into until they had broken while the other half had been ripped into the air and carried off. The control hub for their, now downed, fleet of drones had received much the same, Grimm crashing into the screens, tearing at wires, destroying everything around them.
Even if they had been riddled by bullets in the process, they had attacked the equipment instead of the soldiers.
'And the Geist is old enough to direct Grimm.' It didn't take a genius to puzzle that out. Pack behavior was usually observed in Grimm like Ursa and Beowolf but was by no means restricted to them. Older Grimm had always carried the ability to influence younger Grimm, why older ones led the massive packs that surrounded the kingdoms. 'This just gets better and better.'
He turned and frowned at the state of the Bullhead, the damage done to it by a sudden rain of feathers from the flying Grimm.
"Specialist Candidate Thyme." His call didn't receive an answer from the student in question when he called her name, Church holstering his weapon with an annoyed sigh. "Of course, this happens. First, I get this damn school assignment straight from the General himself and now my comms get taken out. This is going great."
Church headed to the door he had shut when he left to deal with the sudden attack, had to physically pry it open from the other side with hard won strength. It was just another sign that the attack had done more damage to the Bullhead than anything else, that the power had been knocked out in addition to the comms. The Faunus he had left inside wasn't frozen, was working with the handful of soldiers in the Bullhead with her in an attempt to get their communications back up.
They were lucky the lights hanging from the ceiling were battery powered, that the soldiers had flashlights on their helmets or else they would be working in the dark, most of them as good as blind. Judging from the light coming from the hole she was working in, Thyme had put on a helmet as well, one small enough for her to wear.
"We're still down!" Thyme reported what he already knew, Church able to look and see where the sudden barrage of feathers had punched through the roof of the Bullhead. The student was currently up on the shoulders of one of the soldiers, her hands in the electrical guts of the Bullhead's comms array. Tools appeared and disappeared when needed, a pair of goggles over the student's eyes as she worked.
The rest of the soldiers were working on getting the airship's power back on to no avail.
Church bit down on a desire to curse.
Now wasn't the time to lose his temper.
He was a soldier.
He was a professional.
He was a representative of Atlas both in and out of uniform.
"Keep at it." Church spared a glance up, just as quickly dropped his head and covered his eyes when he nearly received a shower of sparks to the face for his efforts. Thyme kept to her work, didn't notice the near accident.
Church wiped his face with his gloved hand and moved on. There was nothing he could do here, knew his time would be better spent outside.
If nothing else, he had calls to make on his Scroll.
Port and Mulberry would both need to know about the changes, he needed to get word to both Captain Fields and Captain Anderson out in the field, and he needed to warn them to be on high alert. This wasn't the first time Grimm had taken out their communications and it wouldn't be the last, why they established secondary and tertiary lines of communication.
Between Port and Mulberry, he decided on the younger Huntsmen. It helped that Captain Fields would likely still be with him, would let him talk to both at once.
He dialed twice, first Mulberry and then Fields, and received no answer both times.
He moved on to Port.
The Huntsmen must've kept the line open and, by consequence, blocked any attempts from the Specialist to call him. He went straight to voicemail.
"You've got to be kidding me." He moved on to Captain Anderson. He was grateful when the man actually picked up. "Captain Anderson, this is Specialist Church, what's your status?"
"Port's moved to find the students and we're establishing a forward line. Grimm are about what we expected heading into this. Plan's going fine."
"Do you have anything in the air?"
"Regular drone package but that's it. Bullhead took a hit to one of the engines. Going to take a few hours to get it limping back to Beacon."
"You too then. We just got hit a few minutes ago. Lost our radios."
The silence coming from the other end was telling. It lasted just long enough for Captain Anderson to put some distance between him and the rest of his men. They didn't need to hear this, why Church had done the same moved as far away as he dared in a Grimm infested forest.
"…Sir, how old is this Geist?"
"Too old. This kind of advanced thinking, the control over lesser Grimm, and it's been actively avoiding a fight until now. Consider it as smart as us. So, we're all but guaranteed to be walking into this without the advantage." Church gave his raw and honest assessment of the situation.
"Hear anything from Fields or Mulberry sir?"
"I'm afraid the bad news continues Captain. I can't reach either of them. And, after that attack, the Bullhead I was running everything from is about as useful as a paperweight. I can't track them anymore. I need eyes on them. The sooner the better."
"I'll see what I can do on my end. Drones should have enough range to get over their last known position. I'll scan out from there. Anything else?"
"Don't let you guard down. If things look too easy, they are. Be ready for a fight."
"Understood sir. I'll pass the word on to Port."
"Good. Once you see anything, let me know. We'll figure something out from there."
"Yes sir. And what about the students, should they know what's going on?"
"That's on Port or Mulberry. They're on the Beacon network, not ours. We couldn't contact them if we tried. Lucky for them, we seem to be the main target for whatever the Geist has planned."
"How lucky." Anderson shared his sentiment on just how lucky they were.
"Like I said, stay on guard."
"Understood sir."
Until Captain Anderson got word back to him, there wasn't anything else he could do but manage things here.
Like making a call when it came to their damaged Bullhead.
Spend the time to repair it, not even sure if it could be or abandon it and call in for a new airship.
Although, with his current personnel, a third option was available.
He spent the next few minutes merely watching as order was restored, as damaged equipment was collected and either stowed away for repairs or, if deemed too damaged, set to be destroyed with Fire Dust. New Hard-Light Dust shields were put into position, guards taking positions, and chatter gradually picking up.
As rattled as they were from the attack, his men were professionals. They wouldn't let this get to them anymore than it already had.
His checkup done, all that was left for him were his thoughts.
'But why launch these attacks?' He was under no impression that Captain Fields and Mulberry hadn't been attacked by Grimm at this point, their comms no doubt knocked out as well. The only question was how severe the damage had been that he hadn't heard from them at all. 'What is it after with something so obvious?'
It didn't fit its previous strategy of avoidance, of survival.
Something had changed it, had made it reveal itself.
With how things were progressing, he was hoping for the best but it was well past time to prepare for the worst.
That in mind, he headed back to the Bullhead.
"Everyone outside!" His shouted order was obeyed, the damaged Bullhead being emptied from its minimal repair crew. "The rest of you, form up!" His shout was echoed around the camp, all eyes turning to him.
Once he was sure he had everyone's attention, he began speaking.
"This isn't getting off the ground anytime soon." He made a decision as the only Huntsman present and the highest-ranking soldier deployed in the field. "We can't stay here. Sergeant, are your men ready to move?" His question earned a nod, the soldiers only needing to refresh their ammunition after the sudden Grimm attack. With that in mind, he turned to the Specialist Candidate still with him. "Thyme, pack it up." In the same vein as the Sergeant before her, Thyme nodded. She stepped forward and, at a touch, the Bullhead appeared to turn to dust as it vanished.
Even if this wasn't the first time he had seen Thyme's Semblance in action, he still took a moment to be impressed by it.
For not the first time, he wished he had known Thyme was going to arrive. If he had been able to contact Specialist Ebi beforehand, even a few hours before she left, he could've had her bring a replacement Bullhead as a precaution, could've requested a whole platoon of Atlesian-Knights to support their operation with Beacon Academy.
The possibilities it created were almost too much to think about. The only downside that Atlas Academy had reported was that she couldn't take in organic manner, that what she stored away had to be inorganic.
"I'm sure all of you have figured things out but I'll say it anyway: This was an attack designed to blind us, one that worked. Captain Anderson was attacked just like us and we've lost contact with Captain Fields. I'm going to guess the same happened to the Bullhead he, Mulberry, and Bree left on. Port's engaged the Geist we're after with one of the student teams but that didn't change what happened here. At this point, assume there's more than one of these Geist. At least one of them old enough to plan this out, know what to direct the Grimm that attacked us to hit."
His new plan was far from detailed but it would work.
While he was sure his men had expected an easy, if boring, assignment, they were ready for this as well.
"Everything clear?"
"Yes sir!"
"Good. Let's move."
He was the first to head into the forest.
AN: New chapter within the next 1-2 weeks.
Review/PM if you want.
Peace.