Tsuruya hopped up onto the bullhead. She turned around and reached out her hand. Cinder took her hand and allowed Tsuruya to pull her up. The two of them joined Neptune and Jaune in the on-board seats. Coco and a young man named Carl Leon joined them. Coco's teammate, a girl with rabbit ears named Velvet, was their pilot.

At the last moment, as the engines were powering up, Pyrrha ran to them and jumped in. She grabbed onto a handle as the bullhead took off, grinning towards Jaune. He laughed. Neptune nudged Carl, who was seated beside him, with his elbow. Coco, still standing, offered the last seat to Pyrrha. The redhead smiled and accepted the offer, sitting across from Jaune and beside Tsuruya.

Tsuruya blocked out whatever chatter the others were going through, concentrating on her hand, which she held out in front of her. She had been thinking about her aura a lot since Pyrrha had activated it for her, two days earlier. Through intensive training, she had managed to earn herself a spot on today's mission.

Sun was piloting Adam's team, and Nora and Ren were with Doctor Oobleck on the third team piloted by a woman named Emerald. Each team would be scouting through a different section of Vale. As Tsuruya had learned, the term 'scouting' was used very loosely here. They were Beacon Rangers. While stealth was a large part of the job, because they didn't want every Grimm in the city coming down on them, what they were really doing was exterminating the enemy.

Part of Pyrrha's lecture on aura included the distinct difference between Grimm and everyone else. They had no soul to speak of. Knowing that, Tsuruya became aware of the mentality that allowed her the idea of enjoying killing endless swarms of the creatures. They had no souls, so it was like tearing through robots or store mannequins. But that wasn't the only thing in Pyrrha's lecture that caught her attention.

Pyrrha had told her that semblance was what they called the outwards projection of aura, and everyone had a different semblance. Pyrrha had taught her how to use her aura to heal or defends herself, recovering from attacks or simply blocking them. An aura only had so much strength, and if used too much it would need time to recover. In Tsuruya's mind, it was a lot like a force-field.

So with the exercises Pyrrha had taught her for inwards healing and protection, Tsuruya had determined that an outward projection would be the exact opposite. In other words, there was defensive and offensive. If there was anything Tsuruya knew how to do, it was being offensive.

As the bullhead flew towards its destination in Vale, Tsuruya focused on projecting her aura outwards. Suddenly, a burst of orange energy sparked from her hand. She jumped back in surprise. "Whoah! Did anyone see that?"

Everyone looked over to her, clearly having not seen it. Cinder was the only one to answer helpfully. "Looks like you figured something out there."

Tsuruya nodded. "Yeah… Gimme a second, I'll do it again." She'd also been practicing her English over the past two days. "Here I go."

Pyrrha watched carefully as another burst of orange sprang up from the girl's hand. She smiled. "You did it! That… doesn't look like semblance, if you don't mind me saying."

Tsuruya frowned. A ball of orange floated over her palm, though she could clearly see orange tendrils connecting it to her hand. "So then what?"

Pyrrha shrugged. "Some people can project pure aura in combat situations. Like Ren. He can utilize his aura for battle without activating his semblance. It's not terribly common, but it is a well-documented phenomenon. Although no one is really sure what causes it to happen in some people and not in others."

Tsuruya smiled again. "So I'm like Ren. Ren's cool. I can live with that."

Neptune commented on the floating energy ball. "Why is your aura orange?"

Beside him, Carl commented as well. "It smells like fruit."

Jaune glanced over at Carl. "Really? I didn't think so?"

Tsuruya cut in. "No, he's right. It smells like oranges."

Neptune nodded in agreement. "Right, so why is it orange?"

Tsuruya shrugged. "Cause it smells like oranges."

Neptune shook his head. "I don't recognize that as a thing."

Tsuruya looked up at Neptune, then over to Pyrrha. The redhead shook her head. Tsuruya laughed, then started to explain. "Well, there's a sort of citrus fruit on my world called an orange. Do you guys not have any of those?"

Pyrrha sat back. "Well, not here or in Mistral."

Cinder copied Pyrrha's movement almost exactly. "Not in Atlas either."

"I'm pretty sure there's nothing that smells like that in Vacuo either..." Neptune finished by looking over to Carl. "So..."

Carl looked around at everyone else. "What? It smells like a fruit. If I saw a plant that looked like a fruit and smelled like that, I'd eat it. You can't tell me that smell doesn't make you think of fruit."

Jaune nodded. "It does, now that I think about it. Yeah, I think I'd eat it."

Coco hadn't turned back to them since they took off, keeping silent watch out the side of the bullhead, so it surprised most of them when they heard her mumbling something. "Might go well in a nice coffee blend..."

The lighthearted topic was cut off when Velvet called back from the cockpit. "We're over the city, guys! There's something moving around down there, and I don't recognize the shape! I can't land! You're going to have to jump!"

Coco called back up to her, everything else forgotten. "Drop us off on the expressway! We'll clear it for you to land!"

"Roger that!" Velvet steered the bullhead towards the elevated streets, calling out whatever she spotted. "Nevermore's perched on that tower to the East! A pack of Beowolves, it looks like, are on the expressway! You're going to have to take care of them before I can land! The roads are collapsed, too! That thing I saw earlier is moving in our direction!"

Coco nodded. "We'll clear them out!" She turned to everyone seated. "Everyone ready! Teams of three! Jaune, take Cinder and Pyrrha and clear out the Beowolves! Neptune and Tsuruya are with me after the unknown incoming! Carl, stay with Velvet in case those Nevermores get too close!"

Velvet called back one last time. "In position! Jump! Go! Go! Go!"

Coco turned on her heel and stepped out of the bullhead, dropping away out of view. Everyone was out of their seats in an instant. Pyrrha jumped after Coco, followed by Neptune and Cinder. Tsuruya stopped at the edge, looking down just in time to see Coco land. It was a very long drop and, though she'd been told about how her aura would protect her, natural Human instinct told her it was counterproductive for her to jump.

Jaune stepped past her, flashing a smile. "Took me a while to get used to it, but it's easy. Just think about the coolest way to land, and then do that."

He jumped before she could respond, but his words struck her as sensible. She'd seen it work, and the others had all just done it. She had the same abilities as them now. They could do it, she could do it. Simple as that. She took a deep breath and prepared to jump down…

"Incoming!" Velvet pulled the bullhead to the side just in time to avoid the giant Nevermore that swooped past.

Tsuruya fell out the side of the bullhead and landed a moment later. She was stunned for a moment, trying to figure out why she hadn't fallen very far, before she realized that the surface she was laying on was feathered.

Drawing her sword, she tried her hand at swearing in English. "Ah, ship."

Down below, Coco watched the circling Nevermore while her weapon switched modes. She wasn't sure, but she thought she had seen… "Ah, fudge. Neptune! Tsuruya's on that Nevermore! We need to get her down!"

Nodding, the blue-haired young man aimed his gun carefully. "A few feathers clipped?" He pulled the trigger.

Finding it too difficult to get her footing any other way, Tsuruya stabbed her sword into the giant bird's back. The Nevermore flapped its wings heavily, halting its forward movement and causing her to nearly slide right off its back. She couldn't tell exactly what was happening, but the sounds of small explosions going off near her told her that the others were shooting at the bird.

Neptune landed a particularly solid blow dead center on the creature's chest, knocking it back and almost out of the air altogether. Regaining its balance, the Nevermore started gaining altitude and turned to fly away from those that were causing it harm. Tsuruya took the opportunity offered by the Grimm bird's ascent the push herself off and fall to the nearest surface below her, which was a higher section of the many elevated roads in the city.

Tsuruya ducked as soon as she heard gunfire ripping over her head. Coco's stream of bullets shredded the fleeing Grimm above her head, then went silent. Standing up, Tsuruya got a good look at her surroundings. Now that she was in the city during the day, it looked a lot different. She could see the Grimm in the distance in just about every direction. The only exception, of course, being directly behind her on the expressway. They weren't in the distance there.

Looking down at the section the others were on, she saw they were now engaging a pack of Beowolves and tearing through them with ease. She checked the Grimm behind her to find they were now charging. Getting caught up in a fight with, if she remembered correctly, an Ursa and three Boarbatusks all on her own was not how she wanted to spend her first mission as a Beacon Ranger. There was a slanted section of broken expressway caught between the higher road she was on and the lower road the others were on.

She turned around to face the closing Grimm. It was one-liner time. "Sorry, but no autographs today."

She turned and vaulted over the railing, falling three meters and landing on her feet, and then sliding down the ramped piece of broken expressway. At the bottom, she jumped over the remnants of the railing and slid to a stop. Looking up, she saw that the Ursa had climbed over the railing and was now sliding down the broken road after her.

Putting her foot up on the railing, Tsuruya angled her sword at the broken section. "Maximum allowed weight exceeded, sir!"

A focused blast of her aura channeled its way down the sword, gathering at the tip as she stabbed downward. The entire section cracked and crumbled, taking the Ursa with it when it fell to the ground far below.

Coco appeared beside her, looking down at the fallen Ursa. "Huh… neat."

Tsuruya sheathed her sword, keeping one foot up on the railing. "There were piggy things up there too, but I don't think they can follow me now."

Coco nodded. "Probably not. Look, we got something a lot bigger on its way and we don't know what it is. We need to take it out before Velvet can land, and to fight it we need to figure out what it is."

Tsuruya managed to pull herself away from her victory pose, hand remaining on the hilt of her sword. "I hope it's a dragon."

As if to answer her, a massive distinctly dragon-shaped head rose over the side of the expressway and covered them in its shadow. It was joined by two more giant dragon heads. Then three more rose up from the other side. Not far off, more heads came over the side and surrounded the others.

Tsuruya drew her sword, unsure exactly how to fight six massive serpents. "I only wanted one..."

Coco grimaced. "It is one. It's a Hydra."

Author's note: New Grimm! Always more new Grimm! Because it's that kind of story, and once you've seen a Beowolf get chopped up, it's not really all that threatening anymore, so you need something bigger, and what's better for the job than a dragon? Hydra, by the way, has a darn lot of heads. This will be quite the fight scene... next chapter. Thank you for reading, and please review.