A/N: Sorry about the wait for this chapter, especially since I kinda left it at a cliffhanger the last time, but I've been working on a bunch of other stuff in between then and now, and have only just recently gotten this done. Before moving on to read the story, I just wanted to talk a little about the whole issue with Malaysia and . If you aren't really affected by this little...development or just don't really care, you can skip the rest of the A/N and just go on to reading the story. If not, It'd be nice to hear your thoughts on it as well.
I've always known Malaysia as a country that cracks down on media and censorship because its people are sensitive to this sort of stuff, but I just really don't see what they hope to accomplish by banning this wonderful website. The only thing they're going to get out of this is repressing creative Malaysian authors who have produced wonderful works on this website, as well as preventing other M'sians from enjoying other people's works.
Hopefully one day the Malaysian government sees how this ban will only cause more harm than good, but until then its sad to say that the wonderful, colorful country of Malaysia has become one of the only TWO countries in the world to ban this website.
Apologies for going on a bit of a rant, I just needed to get this out of my system.
Out of The Embers
Six Minutes Ago…
Despite having spent most of his arsenal in the fight earlier that day, T still had a few spare explosives and breach charges that he stored in his prosthetic. With some careful planning and placing, he was able to plant them on nearly every airship and vehicle parked in careful rows on the airfields.
Of course, that still left the issue about the vehicles already in use to fend off the encroaching Grimm and the others, but T would cross that bridge when he got to it.
After the distraction caused by SK breaking Mason loose, T had been able to mentally activate his Scroll's local networking function. He was grateful enough that Cinder had given the technology at the base an upgrade, as the power converter or transformer that regulated power to the rest of the building used a wireless signal to connect to Scrolls in order to remotely run diagnostics or reroute power.
From it, it was a simple matter of temporarily overloading the mains to cause a blackout. Under the cover of darkness, he had worked quickly to fry the magnetic bolt on his robot arm, throw Neo to the floor and rush to the cart where they had taken his pistol to retrieve his weapons.
He made himself scarce before the lights came back on, only having to kill one or two goon on his way out. After that, he began his plan of finding a way off the airfield, while also leaving Cinder and the others stranded here for when the Grimm were eventually attracted by the gunfire and fighting.
After strapping a few more improvised explosives to a jeep – which he looted off the body of a White Fang goon who tried to start it up, T was getting ready to move onto the next phase of his plan.
The hacker had to duck as a shower of bullets impacted the jeep he was taking cover behind. Cinder's goons had become reckless and disoriented ever since the Grimm arrived to start tearing up the place, breaking formation from their garrisons and squads and forming their own groups of trigger-happy militiamen. In their confused and panicked state, they fired on anything that wasn't wearing their colours, spreading out without a clear formation as they focussed more on surviving than worrying about what their bosses wanted them to do.
Another jeep with a mounted machinegun sped by T's cover, firing at a pursuing Ursa, as the hacker bounded from out of cover towards the group that had fired on him. Quickly marking his targets with his cybernetic eye, T fired with a submachine gun he had stripped off the body of another White Fang goon as he realised he was running low on pistol magazines.
The wide scatter of bullets that T unleashed met their marks as he swung his aim from one target to the next without releasing the trigger. The weapon's rate of fire was faster than T's eye could track, but he knew that the bullets met their marks from the way the White Fang goons staggered and their Aura shuddered from the impacts.
Running the whole time, T closed the distance between him and the three goons just before the SMG clicked dry. When it did, the hacker picked a target and threw the weapon at him, hitting the Faunus in the head as he dealt a series of hard, quick jabs at the others. Though he didn't hit them hard enough to knock them off their feet, each punch that landed worked to stagger them long enough for T to disarm one of the goons – a dog Faunus – of his rifle. Quickly driving the butt of the gun into the gut of its former owner, T fired from the hip as he fired enough rounds to break through the Aura of the other two goons, leaving them with several bullet wounds in their abdomen as they fell to the ground.
With the goons neutralised, T began scanning the airfield for one of the smaller clusters of airships that he had seen earlier. The hacker had enough time to think through his extraction plan ever since he had managed to slip away from Cinder, and while he would have liked it to be as simple as calling Overwatch and requesting that she bring the Bullhead, he knew that – in its current state, the Bullhead was not suited for a rapid extraction from an area as hot with activity as this one. Not to mention, depending on when his GPS finally synced with the local Scroll relay, the ship might not have enough fuel remaining to make the journey here and back to The Compound.
Therefore, the only solution left was to take one of the airships docked here – and blow up all the other vehicles as insurance that they would not be followed.
After taking a quick sweep of his surroundings and locating one of the groups of airships that he had not rigged to explode yet, T took off at a sprint as another mounted jeep drove by and fired a trail of bullets at him. The shots impacted the ground near his feet, and the fragments of concrete it kicked up caused his Aura to flicker, but none hit him directly.
The vehicle followed him persistently despite T's best attempts at shaking it in the open stretch of airfield. Taking into account the number of Grimm sprawling across the remaining stretch of airfield between him and the airships, the hacker estimated that he wouldn't make it very far with the machinegun on his tail. In a split second, T made a decision to use one of the two reserve explosive bolts that he kept stored in his arm, switching his prosthetic into its crossbow mode, and firing it directly at the oncoming jeep.
Granted, the explosion was not as large as some of the other, larger bolts that T usually carried, but it worked well enough to throw the jeep on its side, spilling out its occupants as they lay prone and still from the shock.
Without having to worry about the jeep, T turned his attention on the Grimm standing in his way with his pistol drawn. Firing only when necessary, the hacker weaved in between the Grimm in front of him as quickly as he could while being careful not to let any get too close, lest his anxiety get the better of him.
Fires from incendiary weaponry and the burning remains of vehicles lit up the black fur and pale bony armour of the Grimm as T passed, making them look even more demonic in the low light of night. Though his eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, passing close by the flames caused the vision his cybernetic eye to flare momentarily, outlining the Grimm as pitch-black shapes against the light.
Despite this, T was able to make it to the cluster of airships with only having to spend a clip of bullets and drive the knife that sprang out of his prosthetic arm into the skull of a Creep. Being so disconnected from the Remnant network and stripped of his power made T felt vulnerable, as if the giants he used to fight with ease were now much more powerful. However, he was able to find better cover among the airships and could more easily dispatch Grimm in the closer quarters.
Being around machines that he could control might also have had something to do with the wave of reassurance he felt.
Not wanting to remain out in the open any longer, T quickly dived into the open compartment of the nearest Bullhead and made his way to the cockpit as fast as he could. Whipping out his Scroll, T put it to the monitor in the pilot's seat as he started up the vehicle, almost immediately beginning the synchronisation process between the two.
However, a second had barely passed to allow the devices to pair before a hard metal hook grabbed T by the shoulder and hurled him back across the hull of the ship's floor. Looking up, the hacker saw Roman Torchwick standing a few feet away with a cocky smirk on his face. Before he could have said anything else, T fired off three shots from his silenced pistol while stuffing his phone in his coat pocket.
None of the rounds met their mark as Torchwick deflected each shot with his cane, each time taking a stride closer to T before getting close enough to kick the gun out of the hacker's hand. The weapon skid across the ground before just falling out of the open hatch of the airship as it was losing momentum.
"You're pretty crafty, T, I'll give you that." Torchwick said in mocking compliment. "I'd go on a rant at how much effort, resources and man-power you've cost us in one go today, but something tells me you wouldn't really care." The end of Melodic Cudgel was then pressed against T's throat, squeezing his windpipe slightly.
"You're right, I wouldn't!" T hissed out as he swiped with his leg, kicking Roman in the side of his right knee. The blow caused the crime lord to buckle slightly, giving T the chance he needed to grab the end of the cane with his left hand and aim it slightly right of his face, narrowly avoiding a concussive blast to the face as Torchwick pulled the trigger to fire.
That was not to say that the hacker broke away from this scot-free, however, as the explosion still went off close enough to give him a mild concussion as his sensitive ears rung from the roar of the blast. T pushed all this aside as he fought through the pain, rolling out from under Torchwick and onto his front where he pushed himself up by his prosthetic arm.
As he turned, the ginger-haired criminal was already swinging his cane to strike T in the hip, but the hacker blocked the attack with his left wrist while going in for a sucker punch with his right.
Even though all he could hear for the time being was a high-pitched ringing in his ears, he still felt the force of his arm making contact with Roman's face through the cybernetic nerves in the arm – nerves that relayed the touch and temperature sense to him, but not things like pain or texture.
Torchwick's mouth opened in a silent yell as he struck back, first with a punch directed to T's gut then with his cane, aimed at the side of his head. T was able to catch the punch with his right arm, but didn't respond quickly enough to the cane aimed at his head.
Raising his left arm, the hard metal of Melodic Cudgel hit his wrist at a bad angle and sent a spike of pain shooting through his whole left arm.
Roman saw this in T's eyes almost instantly and quickly took advantage of it, pressing his advance as the hacker turned to keep his left side as far away from the ginger as possible while fighting with only his right.
He managed well enough with only his right arm while shaking the numbing pain from his left arm, blocking each of the strikes that Roman sent his way. Eventually, Torchwick realised what the hacker was doing and changed his fighting style, dealing light, quick jabs and swings instead of heavy ones so that T could not block them all.
All the while, T kept trying to shake the numb feeling of needles being jabbed all along his left arm. As soon as the feeling left enough for the hacker to feel comfortable wielding a weapon, he reached under his brown long-coat for an emergency retractable harpoon that he kept only for the most desperate of moments. With a quick flick, the harpoon extended to its full length as he brought it around to try and stab Torchwick a split-second later.
The ginger saw the attack coming the second he made it, however, and effortlessly parried the strike out of the way, creating an opening right between him and T. Bringing his cane back around, Torchwick tried to fire off a point-blank shot that, no matter how fast he moved, T had no way of dodging.
Instead, the cyborg raised his right arm and cupped his hand over the end of Melodic Cudgel just as Roman pulled the trigger, catching the brunt of the blast but still managing to carry enough force to throw him out the open hatch of the airship.
T landed with a tumble before righting himself, balancing on both legs and one arm extended to the ground. His eyes instantly found his pistol, glinting in the low light right by the open hatch. Seeing no way of making it to the gun without being first shot at by Torchwick, the hacker shifted the weight of the harpoon in his left hand and threw it at the crime lord like a javelin.
Twirling out of the way of the oncoming projectile, Torchwick managed to dodge the harpoon with minimal effort, the harpoon stabbing into the hull of the ship instead. Spinning back around, he reached for something just out of T's view and causing the hatch to slide shut.
Caught off-guard by the suddenness of Torchwick's actions, T hesitated for just a second before making the sprint to his pistol, holding it in a ready position as soon as he got his hands around it. He held his aim on the closed door for a second, wondering if Roman was going to open it again and try to get the drop on him, however when nothing happened after a couple of seconds, T quickly began making his way around the airship to its cockpit – determined to end the ginger-haired man with a bullet through the glass.
Halfway to the fore of the ship, T jumped back when the engines suddenly shot to life and the airship began rising off the ground. Hot air was being blown in all directions from under it and it caused the hacker's overcoat to flap and flutter as he rooted his feet to the ground and stared up at the airship defiantly when the front light came on and focussed on him, blinding him for all of a second.
With his enhanced vision, T could literally see Torchwick's shit-eaten grin as he stared down at the hacker from his vantage point. A second later, his maniacal cackling came across over the intercom of the ship.
"Did you really think you were going to get out of this alive?" T heard before he saw the weapons systems on the airship cycling up and prepared to duck for cover as the machine guns began spitting white-hot Dust rounds. However, T didn't have to move a step as they missed him by several metres and struck the airship on his far right instead. The process was repeated for the airship on his left before the guns trained back on him. "Any last words, street rat?"
Even over the sounds of battle, T heard his Scroll give off a chime to indicate it had received a notification. Pulling it out of his pocket, he saw that the program he had been running had finished syncing with the on-board controls of the airship.
Staring back up at Torchwick, T held up a middle-finger with his right hand as he used his left to find the function to lock up the instruments in the cockpit and transfer the ship's control to auto-pilot – the auto-pilot he controlled from his Scroll.
Despite having muted the outgoing intercom on the airship, T thought he could almost hear Torchwick's shouts of confusion as the airship turned away from the hacker as he began considering his options.
His thoughts were cut short when a growl from his side indicated that the Grimm he had previously avoided had finally caught up with him. Without a second thought, T tapped a few commands into his Scroll to sync to the airship and paint targeted areas around him for the auto-targeting to spray with rounds.
A Beowulf was able to close in on him before the airship started firing, and T was forced to first dodge out of the way of its tackle before spinning back around to deliver a solid punch to the crook of its hind-leg, causing it to buckle to the ground as T jumped on top of it and rammed his folding knife into its neck repeatedly.
Only after he was sure it was dead did T stand back up to his full height and begin reassessing the situation.
The primary problem that T needed a resolution to was the crime lord inside the airship he was controlling. Because Roman had not yet destroyed the last airship parked alongside the others he had, T still had an additional option for escape, and while he could have just as easily gotten into the airship and shot the one Torchwick was in down, it was inefficient to both time and resources, in which Torchwick could find a way to override the auto-pilot.
Therefore, the most time and resource-efficient solution that came to T's mind was the crash the airship somewhere that would deal collateral damage to Cinder's already dwindling forces, while additionally killing Roman Torchwick in the process.
Scanning the airfield as the ship's auto-targeting system peppered the ground around him with bullets, keeping the Grimm away, T saw the battles still raging in front of the hangar that he and the others had been held in, along with the occasional burst or flame or pulse of darkness.
T ran a few numbers through his head before coming to a decision. He whipped out his Scroll and, relative to the airship's current trajectory, plotted a course that would take it straight into the hangar at full speed.
The gunfire quickly stopped around him as the weapons on the airship retracted while it began rotating in mid-air. In his mind, he imagined Torchwick yelling in frustration as the airship flew towards the front of the hangar at his command, stopping briefly to shine its lights down on the six combatants locked in battle before being suddenly propelled forwards by the force of all its backward thrusters going off while firing every readily available weapon into the hangar as it crashed at full speed.
All the while, the hacker was busy climbing into the seat of the other available airship, lifting off as soon as he had his hands on the flight controls.
1 Minute Ago…
"Is that all you got, Fall?" Raiden breathed out in a tired wheeze. "Because…I can give…as good as you…got." The Shadowcaster said in between exhausted breaths as he picked himself off the ground.
Cinder was honestly surprised that the boy had lasted this long. While her powers were surely limited by how little she had drained off the Fall Maiden, the power seemed to change to fit her existing fighting style – complementing her attacks and techniques with more power than she could have dealt out previously.
The drain on her Aura that using the Magic took was still drastic, as its output was only roughly half of how much Aura she committed to the ability. However, Cinder was not arguing with the results. Without her weapons, the ash-haired woman left everything up to the glass she could move about and the Maiden's powers, trusting it to be enough to match Raiden Alexander's umbrakinesis.
And she was right. Leaving things to the raw power she possessed was doubtlessly more tiring just to put on a show, but she saw the way it frustrated the boy – made him painfully aware of how weak he really was.
Now that he could hardly fight back, Cinder went on the offensive, throwing streaks of fire and storms of glass his way that he could only dodge to avoid. The third streak of flames that she threw caught him in the shoulder, breaking through what little Aura remained and threw him to the floor.
As his prone body laid still, the half-Maiden watched in surprise as some of the faint shadows that surrounded him almost seemed to crawl towards his injured shoulder, attempting to shield it or heal it – Cinder couldn't tell which.
Pathetic. She thought while summoning some of her remaining power to call her weapons back to her. They cluttered across the ground as the two blades returned to her hands. It's not like he had much of a chance anyway. Now, nothing will save him.
She only got as far as three metres to Raiden, however, as a spray of machinegun fire and missiles blew the ajar hangar doors apart and an airship came speeding right towards her. Eyes wide in shock, Cinder quickly ducked under one of the ship's wings by first doing a backflip before lowering her body into a crouch. The sleek metal frame of the wing barely passed a hair's width over her head as the airship continued moving forward with its momentum before finally stopping five seconds later.
A moment occurred to Cinder where she suddenly felt deaf to the world as she took in the destruction around her. The hangar laid in ruins; crates of supplies and weapons had been completely obliterated while parts for vehicles and partially repaired ones lay in heaps of molten slag. The building's support structure had also been bent in and dented from all the fighting, and looked as if they might give way any second. Large patches and holes in the structure of the hangar had also been blasted open and were flaming – spreading wider as the fire ate at the wooden parts of the building. What's more, the bodies of many of the men she had hired were scattered about the open space of the hangar, some unconscious but breathing while others were not so lucky. She didn't have the time to come up with the exact numbers at the moment, but just from a glance Cinder could already see that the weeks of work she had spent personally building up forces here to prepare for her next move had been completely destroyed.
And all because of a band of expendable thugs.
The ash-haired woman clenched her hands into tight balls as she heard motion coming from within the airship, rattling as one of the hatches was forced open. She prepared and attack to strike at whatever came out of that ship, but had to suddenly stop herself when the near-unconscious body of Roman Torchwick fell out instead.
Halfway through the motions and in a blinding rage, Cinder almost skewered the ginger with a spear made of melted glass as he crumpled to the floor, striking the ground next to him instead, which caused him to roll onto his back and aim his cane at her. "Whoa, Boss! It's just me!" he shouted in an effort to deter Cinder's rage, which worked for once – much to Roman's surprise.
With the rage on her face still evident, she marched over to where Roman laid on the ground and picked him up by the collar of his shirt. "What. Happened?" she demanded, the look in her eyes promising to end Torchwick if he answered wrongly.
"The little twerp with the robot arm hacked my airship – what else?" Torchwick managed to wheeze out right before Cinder tossed him across the hangar floor, hitting the concrete hard before sliding across the ground for a couple of seconds.
"If you want something done right…" Cinder grumbled under her breath, holding her weapons at her sides as the lights of another airship flooded through the openings of the hangar entrance which were not obstructed by debris. "It's time to end this."
Meanwhile…
It had all happened so quickly.
One moment SK was getting ready to take on Emerald again – preferably to finish her this time, then the next an airship – Vale-made twin engine model by the looks of it – came in low out of nowhere. The rogue was probably too distracted to notice it anyway even if it had been loud enough to hear over the fighting.
He had to squint and shield his eyes when the front lights of the airship shone down on them, but when he did he quickly noticed that Torchwick was the one in the cockpit after increasing the magnification on his glasses.
Upon realising who was in the pilot's seat, SK prepared to either defend himself or turn invisible when the crime lord began raining bullets down on them, but was stunned when the bullets and missiles from the airship missed him and the others completely and struck the hangar doors instead. He was even more shocked when the airship rammed into the hangar at full speed, crashing hard and throwing bits of debris and metal everywhere.
Tanner had to side-step out of a length of rebar that impaled the ground where he had been standing.
For a couple of seconds, no one moved as a couple combustible things exploded outwards from where the airship had crashed. SK even shot a confused glance towards Neo, who shrugged in response.
Eventually, Mercury spoke up. "What the hell just happened?"
"T?" Tanner said, leaving the question hanging.
"T." SK replied, absolutely sure that the cause of the airship crash had to be none other than the hacker.
"Well," Mason spoke up flipping the axe in his hand. "Everyone in there's probably dead."
"I think you're underestimating Roman Torchwick's survival chances." Tanner commented as he finally pulled his eyes away from the destruction. "Can't speak for the others though – now, where were we?" he asked rhetorically while taking a small shard of Fire Dust out of his pocket and creating a fireball in his palm from it. No sooner had he asked the question that he hurled it in Mercury's direction, missing by a few feet as they dodged out of the way of the warning shot.
Before any of them were able to fire back, however, a much faster, much hotter fireball sailed right by Tanner, who moved quickly enough to dodge out of its way, while its embers singed his black coat as it flew by. The fireball came from Cinder, who had emerged from the wreckage with a look of murder and pure hate on her face.
Almost reflectively, the black-haired rogue took a couple steps back and held his falchion out defensively. Looking out to his side, SK saw that even Mercury, Emerald and Neo backed away ever so slightly as he stood just a step in front of Tanner.
The only one that didn't seem intimidated by Cinder's display was Mason, who let out a boisterous laugh. "At last, I will have vengeance!" he shouted before charging straight at the ash-haired woman with yet another strange war cry that sounded more like gurgling.
Just as he got within a yard of the woman, Cinder suddenly raised her empty hand at him and blew Mason off his feet, sending him flying further away from her than where SK and Tanner stood with an amber pulse. He hit the ground hard as embers scattered from where he landed, losing his grip on both his weapons. Rolling onto his back, SK saw that the embers had come from his clothing, which were now burnt from Cinder's attack.
"That…probably wasn't the best idea." He groaned out as everyone turned their attention back on the half-Maiden.
"You four have no idea of the setbacks you've caused today." Cinder's tone was acidic, but surprisingly even and stable.
"Suppose I should take that as a compliment." Tanner replied back, keeping wary of any attacks that Cinder might try to lash out.
"You think too highly of yourselves. You're just vermin – pests that are hard to kill." The ash-haired woman shot back. "But now I am going to end this."
"You can try, bitch." Tanner said while raising his sabre. "But there's only one way this is going to end, and that's-" a surge of fire cut off the swordsman as he dodged to the side.
SK took the opportunity to lunge at Cinder with his blade raised, aiming for her exposed throat, not expecting the half-Maiden to react so quickly – let alone parry his strike and push him onto his back with a single empowered swipe from her duelling swords.
He tried to roll back to his feet as soon as his back hit the ground, but Cinder was quicker – firing a pair of glass shards that pinned him by his cowl to the ground. Before he knew it, the woman was already standing over him with one of her swords raised and ready to run him through.
She would have succeeded if the ground around them had not exploded with heavy calibre machinegun rounds from another airship that fired in two lines around them. To protect herself from the shower of dirt and concrete, Cinder raised both her hands to protect herself, giving SK the opportunity he needed to dislodge the glass shards holding him in place and rolling out of the way.
The jagged shards of glass left cuts on the palms of his hands and a couple stray bullets grazed his face and shoulder when he rolled out from under Cinder, but he counted his blessings and was just glad that he didn't have a hole in his chest.
When he finally righted himself again, SK saw that Cinder was now focussing her attention on the airship firing at her, sending volleys of fire and glass at it while it did its best to evade her attacks. Seeing a chance to get a shot off at the ash-haired woman, the rogue raised his falchion to eye-level while activating its laser rifle mode. As soon as he had her in his sights, however, his aim was thrown off when a kick from Mercury knocked his blade off aim and he turned his attention on the speedster.
"Oum dammit, Mercury! Why do you always ruin everything I do?" SK shouted as he took a few steps backwards and adopted a defensive stance.
The silver-haired boy shrugged his shoulders before replying. "Dunno, must be a gift."
Tanner had a clear shot at Cinder when T flew in with his airship and began drawing her fire. Had being a past tense, however, as Emerald had engaged him as soon as Cinder's cronies recognised that even she was outmatched at this point.
At this point, the swordsman's attacks and defence were being heavily weighed down by the fatigue gained from all the fighting earlier. As such, his movement was much slower, and he couldn't summon his Aura as well to fight.
This seemed doubly so for Emerald, much to Tanner's relief, which put them on even ground once more because of how mutually tired they were.
"Just give up already, Em." Tanner shouted over the roar of machinegun fire when they broke away. "I'm considering just leaving you be right now if you drop your arms."
"Not this time, Tanner." Her voice was coming from his left and sounded much closer than it should have been, and before he could realise his mistake the mint-haired girl lunged at him, striking twice with her long-pistols and dropping the rest of the brunette's Aura as his body hit the floor.
She fired three times from her guns; missing Tanner twice before the third hit the guard of his sabre and knocked it out of his hands. At this point, Tanner was sure that even if he tried reaching for it, he wouldn't be able to move fast enough before Emerald put one between his eyes.
Instead, the swordsman raised his hands in surrender – almost daring Emerald to do it. You won't do it. His stare on her hardened at the thought. I know I wouldn't if I were in your place.
For a moment, the look in the illusionist's eyes told Tanner that she going to actually shoot him dead, but she hesitated a second too long as a net of black chains flew into her left and wrapped themselves around her as it knocked her to the ground.
The girl hit the ground screaming and Tanner used the opportunity to scramble on all fours and knock the illusionist out with a single punch to the face. Hesitating for a second, the brunette put two of his fingers to the tanned girl's neck just to make sure that she still had a pulse, before his deductive reasoning kicked in and Tanner turned on the source of the dark chains.
Holding out one hand while the other rested on his knee, Raiden was breathing heavily from exertion as he lowered his outstretched hand, allowing the chains around Emerald to dissipate. "You?" Tanner asked, his brows furrowing in confusion as he slowly rose to full height.
"Yeah, me." He responded while leaning down to pick up Tanner's discarded weapon. "I don't know what you hope to gain out of this fight with Cinder, or why you're fighting her in the first place, but I have a hunch that if I want to live through this, I'm going to need to be on your side." The shadowcaster explained briefly before tossing the sword to the brunette.
Tanner caught it without much effort, holding it at his side as he took a few careful steps towards the black-haired boy. "Glad you could see reason. I'm not sure Cinder would be this merciful."
"Probably not, no." the sound of fire hitting metal drew their attention to the fight still going on between Cinder and the airship. "I'll help you get out of here, but you need to help me out in return."
"Sounds fair enough, now if we only had a-" Tanner was cut off by the strong buzz that his phone gave off in his pocket. Pausing, he reached down to find that T was calling him and answered the call without hesitation.
"Make some cover – I'm going in for a hot extraction. Be there and bring Raiden with you." T hissed before the brunette could even get a word out.
"Yeah, no problem. It's not like I'm out of Dust or something like that." Tanner mumbled while sliding his Scroll back into his pocket.
"What was that?" Raiden asked in between putting shells in his shotgun.
"T's got a plan to extract us, but we need to give him some area cover. Only problem is I'm out of Dust and nearly dry on Aura."
Raiden paused for a moment, seeing to think something over before looking at the inner lining of his black jacket. "What do you need?"
There was a brief expression of surprise on the swordsman's face as he wondered how any of them might still have Dust on them after all the fighting they've gone through, but he dismissed the thought quickly. "Fire and ice – as much as you've got."
The shadowcaster tossed three vials towards the brunette a second later. Catching two in one hand and the third in the other, Tanner looked them over to see that only one of them contained Fire Dust, while the other two had ice. "It's all I have left. I'd recommend checking the supplies in the hangar, but…" he thumbed in the direction of the burning hangar, and Tanner got the message.
"This will have to do." He muttered to himself while keeping his eyes trained on Cinder, waiting for a moment when he'd have an opening to get closer to her. He saw it when the ash-haired woman prepared a particularly powerful attack that took a while to build up. With her concentration on the attack and her target, Cinder hardly noticed Tanner taking a run towards her while the vials of Dust in his hands began to glow.
She fired off the surge of flame, which hit T's airship directly, but only seemed to do damage to its exterior. By then, Tanner had gotten close enough and quickly smashed the vials together just as Cinder took notice of him. Truth be told, the brunette had been exaggerating when he said that his Aura had run dry; he always made sure to have at least a sliver of Aura in reserve in case of emergency, but this might actually push it into the red.
The resulting explosion created a thick fog that acted as a smokescreen, cutting off Tanner's visibility drastically as well as Cinder's. Reflexively, he dove backwards to avoid an attack that may or may not have come from the woman, but nonetheless gave him the advantage of putting some distance between her when she did send out a couple slices of fire.
Crawling on his back, Tanner quickly found his way out of the fog and was helped up by Raiden just as he felt the last dregs of his strength slipping away. "C'mon, your guy's coming in low!" he heard the shadowcaster say as his arm was swung around the other teen's neck and they moved quickly.
Drained of energy and finally feeling all the injuries and fatigue over the past few hours catching up to him, Tanner allowed Raiden to take the lead for this one and instead took in the battlefield around them.
The Grimm were starting to pour in again – this time in greater numbers than before. However, the others with him didn't seem to acknowledge their presence, locked in battle with one of Cinder's cronies as the airship T was piloting lowered itself to the ground. Mercury seemed as fatigued as SK, and as such they matched each other in fighting capabilities and were locked in a stalemate, while Neo seemed to have an infinite amount of stamina as she continuously flipped and danced out of the way of Mason's tired, lumbering attacks.
He had to do something to give Mason an opening to retreat. "Mason, get back!" he warned while drawing Crossed Star. His words seemed to reach both of them, as they turned in his direction as he aimed the modified flintlock at Neo's feet and pulled the trigger.
Only to be met with two dry clicks.
"Dammit! Why does this always happen to me?"
"Ah, just let me do it." Raiden said as he untangled Tanner's arm from over his neck and took aim with his shotgun-sword in both hands. Unready for the sudden action, the brunette nearly smacked his face on the concrete as Raiden fired off a couple of shotgun gauges in Neo's direction – the first causing her to jump out of the way before she used her open parasol to block the second.
"Mason, get to the airship – we're pulling out!" Tanner shouted without waiting for a reply before staggering over towards the opening hatch of the airship.
SK beat him to the open hatch after hitting Mercury with a well-placed blast from his laser rifle, leaving the speedster to lie on the ground until his Aura recovered. Once at the hatch, the rogue offered Tanner a hand up, which he gladly accepted shortly before Mason came sprinting and dove into the open hatch.
"That's everyone! Go, now!" SK shouted over the sound of the engines into his Scroll.
"Wait! We can't leave without Raiden!" Tanner shouted back at him.
The shadowcaster was only a couple metres away, dispatching a couple Grimm that threatened to cut him off. With his free hand, Tanner reached out to help the teen into the airship. Raiden was halfway between accepting the hand when his expression suddenly widened and blood trickled out of a puncture wound in his chest.
Just inches from the airship, the teen fell to the ground as his legs gave out from under him, the shaft of a black arrow protruding from his back. Due to the close proximity of the airship to the ground, the force of the wind it kicked up had helped to blow away the fog that surrounded Cinder, giving her a clear line of sight on the airship.
"Shit!" SK cursed as Cinder began notching another arrow. "Cover's gone, T! We got to go – now!" the next arrow she fired was aimed straight at him, which he caught with the bracer around his left wrist.
This time, the airship began rising into the air and the doors started sliding shut. Tanner wasn't about to leave the shadowcaster to die, however, and unfurled his scarf just in time to flick it out like a rope that wrapped around one of Raiden's arms. He pulled as hard as he could while the airship rose into the air, glancing at SK then Mason in a silent request for help.
"Cover fire!" Mason shouted as he got to work firing back at Cinder, despite their distance giving him a massive disadvantage and making the concept of covering fire pointless. The Vacuo-born rogue held his judgemental gaze on first Tanner, then the unconscious body of the teen that dangled from the closing hatch. It only lasted a second longer as an arrow stabbed itself into the base of the hull, just barely hitting the lip of the hatch instead of its intended target.
"Argh, to hell with it!" SK cursed again as he smashed his fist on the hatch override before moving to help Tanner pull the boy up and allowing the hatch to close the rest of the way – the last thing they saw through its opening a fireball heading their way as parts of the airfield around the hangar suddenly burst into flames.
From the lack of falling to a fiery demise a couple of seconds after, Tanner could only assume that they had gotten away. After breathing a sigh of relief for himself, he turned his attention once more to the still-breathing body of Raiden Alexander, who was quickly losing blood.
"What do we do about him?" Tanner asked, his eyes never leaving the arrow still going through his chest.
"Let's eat him." Mason suggested, which was met with dead stares from the others currently in the ship's passenger hold. "What? Best to get them fresh."
"The airship should have a patch-kit somewhere, but it won't have anything to stop the bleeding fast enough." SK thought out loud, pulling the boy's jacket away to assess the damage the arrow did. "It's going through the right of his chest, which means that it hasn't punctured the heart. Also judging by the fact that he's still breathing, probably doesn't mean it punched his lungs either." There was a short pause as he contemplated what to do before he spoke again. "There should be enough painkiller in the first-aid to numb the pain so that he hardly feels a thing."
Tanner ran the logic through his head twice, wondering how it was going to save his life, before it dawned on the brunette that the rogue wasn't trying to save him. "You just want to let him bleed out and die?" the question was pointed and fuelled by anger.
"We can't save him." SK shot back. "The only thing for him now is to end his suffering."
"I refuse to believe that!"
"Tanner…"
"He saved my life down there – maybe even all our lives!"
"Vermillion!"
"I won't be a part of this!"
A moment of silence passed in the passenger compartment of the airship as no one said anything and no one made any moves – except for Mason, who was licking his lips at the prospect of fresh meat. It was eventually broken when the rogue rose to his feet and picked up his falchion. "You won't have to."
Pausing briefly to transform Scorched Divide back into its blade-form, SK uttered a quick prayer under his breath before raising it as high as the tight space of the airship would permit before bringing it down.