"Wait… you want us to jump out?" Yimesz asked, incredulous.
It wasn't exactly something that seemed particularly safe. At least with the initiations, they were in a controlled plane, with plenty of space between them and the ground in case of a mishap. Vertiya's aura was still recovering, and if she messed up her landing, it could well be extremely painful. Pushing herself to her feet, she had to hold her injury briefly as the movement sent a sudden, sharp pang of discomfort through her head, but after grimacing for a bit, she let go. "How high up from the ground are we at the moment? I'll need to know so I can adjust my landing," Vertiya asked Professor Naranja, who looked out the door briefly.
"Probably only a few hundred metres at this point, and that number is dropping," the professor replied. The way the aircraft was shaped definitely helped to slow the descent, but before long it would simply start plummeting, and Vertiya knew that. "We need to move. Now. You jump first, I'll head out when I know you've all safely left."
Ruzovi was the first to head out, getting her staff in hand as she acrobatically leapt out of the cabin door, her bo spinning as she started to descend. Yimesz went next, taking a running start as he sprinted towards the door, diving through the exit and curling up into a usual ball as he vanished from sight. Pluto was rather calm on his walk over to the door, giving one last look back to Vertiya to make sure she was alright, before swapping his flask back to cannon form. Vertiya realised Pluto was the only one who she didn't know about in regards to how he intended to reach the floor, but her query was soon resolved when Pluto put his cannon on the floor and stood on it, similar to how one would stand at the top of a mast, before the cannon fired a blank, but with enough force to send it and Pluto out the door.
After this, it was just Professor Naranja and Vertiya left in the still-falling aircraft. Vertiya slowly made her way to the door as she was still a little uncomfortable, but soon enough she was at the position where she could jump. "How long before we can make contact with Atlas, do you think?" Vertiya asked.
"Can't do anything instantly, but we can discuss that more when we're not in a crashing plane," Professor Naranja replied, looking down to her. "I don't mean to rush you, but we are reaching the ground at an exponential rate."
Vertiya nodded, and after taking a breath and getting a hold of both brown and pink cards, simply leaned forwards, falling out of the aircraft. As she fell, she spun in the air so she was facing up, before throwing out her cards in the same formation she had used a few months back, and nailing it again, she managed to safely glide down to the ground with her card parachute. By the time she hit the floor, the rest of her team had grouped up, and were next to her as she landed.
"Has Professor Naranja touched down yet?" Vertiya asked, holding the side of her head for a brief moment as another pang went through it.
"Not ye-" Pluto said, getting interrupted by a huge crash from behind him, and a shockwave that almost knocked the four of them over. A little disoriented, they turned, and saw a dent in the ground, with tiny fissure-like cracks sparking out of it. In the centre of it, shield facing towards the ground underneath her, was Professor Naranja, one arm and both legs holding onto the shield.
"Yeah, the shield isn't large enough to double act as a parachute," Professor Naranja explained, as she stood up off her shield, picking it up off the ground and dusting off the dirt residue on it. "It does result in a rather grand entrance, however."
"I was just concerned something had happened to you, but I'm glad to see you managed to get down safely," Vertiya said, with a relieved smile. "Did you manage to find any way of contacting Atlas?"
"Unfortunately not. Any means of direct communication will be hardwired into the aircraft, and as such chances are they will now be destroyed," the professor said, checking her scroll. "No signal… Atlas should send out a rescue party when they realise we're not back on time or are unable to communicate with them, but that could take anywhere from half an hour to a whole day. Until then, we will have to fend for ourselves. The city we were at is close enough, most likely twenty minutes away, but as I'm sure you noticed there are more Grimm than the five of us alone can take on. We will need to stay close enough to the city anyway, so I would recommend staying in a building on the outskirts of the city, which will give us a clear escape should we need it."
"We should probably go to the aircraft first, and scavenge any supplies we can get there before heading to the city, especially if we could be staying there for a while," Vertiya suggested. They could not see the sun behind the clouds, but it was clear that it was starting to get a little darker, and night would be upon them within an hour or two. "Did you see how far away the crash was?"
"By the way it was flying, in that direction, and probably around a forty minute walk away from here," Professor Naranja said, pointing almost directly away from the way to the city. "We'll need to move now if we intend to get back before sundown. Keep your guards up."
The actual journey to the crashed aircraft was filled with a lack of anything, either hostile or otherwise. It was eerily silent, which although was reassuring at first, soon became a concern as Vertiya could only help but feel like there was a trap somewhere that they'd walk headfirst into. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. Or at least, not entirely.
Once they got to the aircraft, the five of them had to quickly dive behind cover due to what was roaming around. A pack of Beowolves had beaten them to the crash site, and were scouring the aircraft, looking for the remainders of any survivors – which there wouldn't be, but the Grimm didn't know that.
"No point going for a stealth option here, the Grimm will spot us after we've killed one or two of them off and there are too many for that to be worthwhile," Professor Naranja said in a hushed tone, behind one of the trees. "Best bet is to just take them head on, go full force and catch them off guard. Vertiya, I'll stay near you if you would like, just in case that injury spikes up because I know it should have mostly healed but you cannot attest for everything. Hylae, Hawkrest, Saffyer, go nuts. I know you'll like that Hylae."
Yimesz had a grin, but also an inquisitive look to his gaze. "How come V gets her first name, but the rest of us get surnames?" he asked Professor Naranja.
"When you actually pass a test I give you, maybe I'll think about referring to you by your first name," Professor Naranja said back to him coolly. "Besides, if I referred to you both by your surname, guaranteed you'd get confused in due course. Anyway, there are Grimm to kill. When you're ready."
The four of Team VYPR looked at each other, and Vertiya gave a certain glance which the other three nodded to. Slipping a few red cards in between her fingers, Vertiya nodded, before throwing the cards in one clean sweep, causing them to split off and fly at different angles towards the Grimm. At the same time, Ruzovi got out her bo, and Pluto changed his flask to hammer form, the two of them putting the ends of their weapons together as Yimesz took a few steps backwards, facing away from the Grimm. As the explosions started firing off from Vertiya's cards, Yimesz ran towards the connecting point of Ruzovi and Pluto's weapons, jumping into a ball just before he hit them. With a sling shot-like effect, Ruzovi and Pluto used their combined efforts to launch Yimesz towards the Grimm, sending him like a bowling ball through the trees before he crashed into the Beowolves, taking out a few immediately on impact. As expected, the Beowolves turned to face the newcomer, and snarled at Yimesz, some running their paws in the dirt as they prepared to leap at him. Yimesz, still in the middle, grinned as he raised his fists and got into a standing posture, bouncing on his toes whilst slowly turning, making sure he knew where all the Grimm around him were. However, neither he nor the Grimm were the first to make a move.
Seizing the opportunity during the standoff, Pluto had sent a cannon blast at some of the Beowolves, heavily damaging the first it hit and disorienting a few around it, and at the same time Ruzovi had ran around to flank some of the others, catching them unaware with a few well aimed arrows. The Grimm, now with three adversaries they could directly see – Vertiya was still hiding in the forest, waiting to find a good spot to catch out unaware Grimm – they turned, splitting to deal with each of them. That was what Vertiya was hoping for.
Lining up both a red and a brown card, Vertiya pushed them together, before throwing both of them as one card into the centre of where the Grimm were. As they hit the ground, a huge cloud of smoke blasted out from where the two cards landed, and in the split second the Grimm were distracted by it, the three in the mix of the Grimm swapped to melee, and made their attack.
If there had been more than just a pack of Beowolves, Vertiya would have more than likely instructed her team a little differently, using carefully executed moves to take out what they would be up against. However, as it was just a pack of Beowolves, Vertiya was comfortable letting them all do their own thing whilst assisting with a few cards here and there, and before long most of the Grimm were eliminated.
Ruzovi still had a couple left, and as she slammed down her staff on one Beowolf to finish it, the other one behind her had leapt towards her, claws extended. Ruzovi hadn't quite noticed it, but thankfully for her, Vertiya had, and had yelled, "Duck!" whilst chucking a green card.
Ruzovi, hearing the shout and seeing Vertiya's card bent backwards in a matrix style, causing the green card to narrowly skim the top of her face as it flew over her, hitting the Beowolf smack in the face and causing its head to dissolve, followed by the rest of its body. With that, all of the Grimm had been dealt with, and the team were able to regroup by the wreckage of the aircraft. However, just as they had grouped, Professor Naranja met with them as well, with her shield on her back and a notepad in hand.
"I was just about to ask where you were," Vertiya said, with furrowed eyebrows. "Were you not behind me?"
"Oh, I was, but don't forget alongside a Huntress who is assisting you I am still your teacher, and I need to keep an eye on your progress as students and if there's any mistakes you make which I can pass over to Professor Lazuli," Professor Naranja explained, looking up from her notes. "Besides, you looked more than capable of handling the Beowolves by yourselves, and I soon realised I only needed to step in if something went awry, which was not the case. Therefore, I left you to your own devices, and you managed to do a reasonable job with dealing with the Grimm. Anyway, we can discuss that later, night is closing upon us and we should be aiming to get back to the city before darkness hits."
VYPR nodded at that, turning to the crashed aircraft and heading in, looking for anything that they could take with them, mainly food or water, and within five minutes they had managed to find the backup supplies and a bag to carry them, which Pluto took up the job of doing. Pluto was fine carrying Vertiya not too long ago after all, so a bag of foodstuffs and water was hardly anything for him. Once they were out, they went back the way they came, with a slightly faster pace than before.
Vertiya expected there to be some Grimm out on the path, but yet again it was eerily empty for the entire trip back to the city. "Do you think there's a reason why there haven't been any Grimm or people here?" Vertiya asked, to no one in particular.
Ruzovi was the first to respond. "Well, I guess, maybe it's because this road doesn't have people travel on it because there's nowhere to go to, and therefore there's no Grimm because there aren't any people with negative emotions or such?" she suggested. "I can only guess they've been in the city because there were once people there, and when the Grimm destroyed the cities, they had no reason to migrate anywhere else."
"Been paying attention in class Saffyer, I see," Professor Naranja said, with a small smile. "That is most likely the case. There have never been known people who can control Grimm away from a place, and I don't see why a person wouldn't have made themselves known, either as an ally or a hostile."
However, that was not entirely the case. From atop a cliff a good few hundred metres away from the path Team VYPR and Professor Naranja took, watching down on the road where the five were travelling, sat a small, platinum blonde woman who did nothing more than follow the five people's movements with her sky-blue eyes as they made it to the city. She watched as they climbed their way into one of the skyscraper buildings near the edge of the city boundaries, and once she saw an orange glow from one of the upper rooms, with a faint glow through the darkness, she smiled to herself. Standing up, picking up her wand as she did, she walked past the bodies of hundreds of Grimm piled up on the floor, humming a tune to herself as she headed away from the city.