CNBR Chapter 10:

Reese woke to a sharp pain in her chest. She moaned and rolled onto her back, gingerly hugging herself. A damp odor filled her nose; moss and mud, with a hint of animal musk. A sheen of moisture clung to her exposed skin, and her clothes were so soaked with water and mud that the cold she felt seemed to have weight, pinning her to the ground. There was a foul taste in her mouth, like rancid food and silt. She shivered and hugged herself tighter, wincing when she put too much pressure on her chest. Somewhere in the dark someone coughed. Reese opened her eyes to absolute darkness. She propped herself up on one elbow and peered towards the sound.

"Blake?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," Blake said, her voice a low rasp.

"Do you have my pack?"

"I do."

Reese took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. "There should be some glow sticks in a pocket in the main compartment."

The bag zipped and its contents rustled. A few moments later Reese heard a pair of cracks and Blake appeared in the gloom, a stick in each hand, lying sprawled against the wall of their shelter. Her clothes were smeared with broad splatters of mud, and the green light gave her a pallid, sickly look. She rose, wobbling a bit as she did so, her knees bent a little to avoid striking her head on the ceiling. She wedged one stick in the ceiling, then sat back against the wall of their shelter and shivered.

The room wasn't large. It had the area of a six-person tent, with an irregular, oblong layout. The floor was made of packed earth, though the top layer was still damp enough to smear mud onto anything that touched it, and it sloped down to a pool of water at either end of the room. The walls and ceiling consisted of logs and branches held together with more mud, and the low ceiling was dome-shaped.

Reese rubbed her brow, trying to stave away the groggy feeling in her head. "Where are we?" she asked.

"A Majava lodge a few miles downstream from the waterfall," Blake said.

Reese gave Blake a blank stare.

"Beaver Grimm," Blake said. "They're only found in Vale and the southern parts of Atlas. This lodge looked like it was abandoned a long time ago, and we needed a place to hide before the Fang caught up to us. They don't seem like the type of people to assume we're dead just because they can't find our bodies."

Reese nodded. "How did we get here, and"—she swallowed and grimaced—"why does it taste like something died in my mouth?"

Blake raised her hand and brushed away a damp lock of hair plastered to her forehead. "After I went over the falls, I managed to climb onto a rock in the middle of the river. I realized something was wrong when I found your board drifting before I found you. I made it to shore, went upstream a bit, and found you floating face down in the water. A strap on your pack caught on a tree limb that fell into the river. That probably saved your life because I don't think CPR would have worked if I had found you any later. You threw up a lot of water."

A sheepish look crossed her face. "I might have broken a couple of your ribs in the process. Sorry about that."

Reese waved her hand in a weak, dismissive gesture. "Hey, it beats drowning. What happened next?"

"You passed out afterwards, but you were still breathing, so I tried to move you. I couldn't carry you fast on foot and I was afraid of leaving tracks, so I laid you over your board, used it as a lifesaver for the both of us, and floated downstream for a while. I found this place, checked to make sure there wasn't anything hiding inside, and brought us in. That was about ten minutes ago."

Reese stared at the floor, silent.

"Do you think they're okay?" she finally asked.

Blake's shoulders sagged. "I don't know, but we've got our own problems to worry about. We're both running low on Aura, and we'll probably develop hypothermia if we don't get warm and dry soon. I'd start a fire, but smoke coming out of a giant beaver lodge tends to attract attention."

Blake shivered again and drew her coat around herself. Reese eased onto her hands and knees with a grimace, and crawled over to her pack. She rummaged through it and removed several items before she produced a sealed plastic package, and a thick nylon pouch the size of a large folded laptop, a buckle fastening one end. She opened the package and unfolded a large plastic ground cloth on the floor.

"It might not be warm," Reese said, "but it'll be dry."

A faint smile touched Blake's lips. "Do you have an electric heater in there?"

"No, but my dry pouch has the next best thing."

Reese undid the buckle and unrolled the pouch's opening. She laid two changes of clothes, a camp towel, and a folded survival blanket on the ground cloth. Blake raised an eyebrow.

"I'm surprised—thankful, but surprised—you have all this."

Reese shrugged. "A lot of what my team leader from Mistral tells me goes in one ear and out the other, but after one of my teammates had a near-miss with frostbite, I paid attention to her emergency equipment checklist. It's not as good as a fire, but it should work."

Blake stood, staggering a bit, and walked to a section of the lodge where some branches protruded from the wall and ceiling. She hung her coat on one. Then she pulled off both of her boots and hung them upside down, hooking their toes over the branches. Then she reached for the hem of her shirt, pulled up—

Reese blushed and quickly turned around, listening for a safe moment to turn back. She slowly pulled off her sweatshirt, drawing out the action as long as she could. She dropped it on the floor, where it created a small puddle. She shivered, folded her arms, and pulled the ends of her shirtsleeves over her hands, eyeing the layer she had just discarded. Behind her, she heard the ground cloth crinkle as Blake stepped onto it.

"You take surviving an ambush and falling down a waterfall in stride, but changing in front of another girl you have trouble with?" Blake's voice sounded slightly amused.

"I wouldn't say I took the waterfall in stride," Reese said.

"If you want, I promise I'll close my eyes until you're finished."

"Ha-ha," Reese said. She looked over her shoulder to see Blake dressed in sweatpants and a dark thermal top lying down on the ground cloth, her eyes closed and an arm tucked under her head. Reese quickly hung her wet clothes, dried herself as best she could, and slipped into a set of dry clothes identical to Blake's. Reese lay down next to Blake and pulled the towel over herself. Blake cracked an eye open.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm a little shorter than you," Reese said. "I can use the towel so you can use the blanket."

"That's stupid, you'll stay cold."

"I'll be fine."

Blake pursed her lips for a moment. Then she yanked the towel off Reese and tossed it onto one of the protruding branches. Reese sat up and began to protest, but Blake gently pushed her down and spread the silver thermal blanket over both of them. She turned the smaller huntress onto her side and pressed against her back, draping an arm over her waist.

"Feel warmer?"

Reese relaxed a little and nodded. "You're very…comfortable with this situation."

"This is not the first time I've had to share body heat with someone to stay warm. Spend enough time in the White Fang, and you get used to sacrificing modesty and personal space when the need arises. That said, I'd prefer that what happens in the Grimm nest, stays in the Grimm nest. I know a guy who will never let me hear the end of it if he finds out I spent the night cuddling another girl."

Reese let out a quiet snort. The room was silent for a minute, save for the sound of their breathing and the low rumble of the river outside.

"This feels wrong," Reese said, quiet. "We don't have time for this, we need to find the others."

"We aren't in any condition to help them. The people who attacked us would tear us apart right now without breaking a sweat. Catching our breath is the best way for us to help Coco and Nora."

Reese turned over and met Blake's eyes, shining amber in the gloom. "It feels like an excuse."

"It does," Blake said. "But that doesn't mean it's not true."

"But they could be hurting them! Or they might…" Reese trailed off, looking down.

"There are two possible scenarios," Blake said. "Coco and Nora are tough. If they're alive, they can handle themselves until we can help them, even if it gets bad."

Blake took a deep breath. "If they're dead, they'll still be dead later."

Reese started to say something when a loud crash sounded from somewhere outside their shelter. Both girls flinched at the sound and wrapped their arms around each other. Reese buried her face in Blake's shoulder and let out a tiny whimper. Blake didn't make a sound, but she dug her fingers into Reese's back, bunching up fistfuls of her shirt. The noise came several more times, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away. Eventually the forest outside grew still and both girls lay frozen, listening to every tiny sound that penetrated their shelter with paranoid intensity, before they eventually succumbed to fatigue and fell into fitful sleep.

…

Coco stirred, roused by a splitting headache. She groaned and opened her eyes, only to see a pitch black void. She jolted awake and her breathing grew quick and shallow. For a few moments she fought the urge to scream.

Eldest Brother, I'm blind! she thought.

Then Coco noticed a dim glow below eye level some distance away: light coming through beneath a door. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the scant light until she could see the vague outline of her own body, and some other shapes obscured by the gloom. She sighed, relieved. Feeling a glimmer of encouragement, she assessed what she could in the meager light:

She knelt on a hard cold floor that made her knees ache, and her back rested against a wall of identical construction. She tried to move her arms and found them bound above her head at the wrists, suspended by a long chain. She tried to pull herself up, then hissed in pain as the cuffs around her wrists bit deep into her skin. Water dripped from somewhere above her, dulling her headache the barest sliver as it froze her scalp. Coco sat on her heels and ground her teeth in frustration.

A groan came from her right. Coco turned to see a silhouette a few yards away in the darkness restrained in the same position that she was. Though she couldn't make out much detail, the person appeared to have hair falling just past her ears.

"Nora?" Coco said, her voice hoarse. "Nora is that you?" Coco heard chains move, but the figure didn't respond. She tried to shuffle closer, but she jerked to a halt with a clink after a few inches, her ankles fastened to the wall behind her with shackles.

"Nora wake up, we need to get out of here!"

Coco was debating shouting at Nora to wake her up, when a lock turned in the door with a loud clunk. The door opened and light flooded the room, blinding Coco, making her flinch and turn away. She heard the door close, and the hum of ceiling lights flicking to life. She cracked open her eyes and confirmed that her fellow prisoner was Nora. Her head hung forward, her hair obscuring her face. Her arms were covered in scrapes, but she otherwise appeared unharmed.

Footsteps approached, and Coco turned to see the bat-winged Faunus walking towards her. The lizard Faunus followed close behind her, dressed in a sleeveless tunic. His left arm looked shriveled, like someone had tried to cook it over a fire, but it moved normally when the man folded his arms in front of him. The woman stopped in front of Coco and crouched so she was at eye level.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Kind of weird," Coco said. "I'm locked in a damp jail cell, I have a massive headache, and I don't remember the last several hours. It's like the morning after my senior prom all over again."

The man growled, but the woman tittered.

"Oh good," the woman said, her voice eager. "You didn't lose your spunk."

"I can fix that," the lizard Faunus said.

"Don't...Sass in the wild irritates me, but sass in captivity is delightful."

She moved closer and stroked Coco's hair back from her face. "It's so satisfying to break them when they fight back."

"So you enjoy restraint and pain," Coco said. She grinned at the woman. "Listen, I talk a big game, but my thirst for excitement begins and ends with hunting Grimm. I'm a red wine and rose petals kind of girl."

The woman let out a warm chuckle. "So mouthy. Appropriate, since you were the one giving orders in the village. As the leader of your merry band, would you care to explain why you're operating so deep in the wilderness?"

Coco tilted her head back and sniffed at the woman. "You're going to ask about my business but you won't even show your face? How rude."

The woman reached up and pulled her mask away from her face. She was older than Coco, but still young, somewhere in her late twenties. Dull brown hair fell to somewhere between her ears and her shoulders, framing a face with a debutante's features. A jagged scar covered most of her right cheek, stretching back until it disappeared under her hair. She gave Coco an easy smile.

"You can call me Ash. The gentleman behind me is Karah. Now that you know us, you can introduce yourself and tell us why Vale sent you out here."

Coco squared her shoulders as best she could and looked Ash in the eye. "My name is Coco Adel, my huntress license number is three-one-six-six-five-nine-one-four-five, and we were assigned to perform a search-and-destroy to clear out the Grimm in the region."

The slap cracked like a gunshot in the cell and Coco's head whipped to one side. Ash stretched her wrist, limbering up for another strike.

"Liar," she said, with a tone of amicable reproach. "Huntsmen rarely travel to this region. Vale is held together by threads right now, and you expect me to believe that they've finally decided to help these people? Let's try again; why are you here?"

Coco turned back to Ash, her left cheek bright red. She let out a heavy sigh and stared at the floor.

"You're right, that's not why we're here. We were actually foraging for rare mushrooms. There are chefs in Mistral who'll pay a fortune for the right kind of—AH!"

Ash slapped Coco again, leaving a handprint that stretched from her jaw to her temple. A welt rose in the middle of her cheek. When Coco turned back to Ash, her eyes burned with fury.

"This is amusing," Ash drawled. "But despite the fun I'd have dragging this out, my companions would prefer to receive answers sooner rather than later."

Coco lunged at Ash, rattling her chains as they jerked her to a halt.

"Fine!" she shouted. "You know what we were doing? We were hired by a group of Faunus in Vale who were tired of you giving them a bad name. I don't blame them. If people associated me with a bunch of psychopathic cowards and freaks too scared to fight fair, I wouldn't want you around either!"

Karah lunged past Ash and landed a fist on Coco's jaw so hard her head struck the wall. Spots filled her vision and she tasted copper. She spat on the ground and worked her jaw, then started laughing.

"Seriously?" she said, looking up at him. "That's how hard your good arm can hit? No wonder four huntresses and a bunch of farmers kicked your asses."

Karah drew a knife and pressed Coco against the wall. Coco grimaced, staring him down as he brandished the knife.

"You're not smiling anymore," he said, flourishing the knife. "Would you like some help with that?"

Ash's wings flapped irritably. "Enough Karah, she's just saying lies to provoke you. You said yourself they didn't sound certain the White Fang was operating in this region."

Karah hesitated, but didn't lower the knife. Coco sneered at him.

"That's right, listen to the Bride of Dracula like a good little—"

"Coco, stop antagonizing them!"

Coco looked to her right. Nora was watching the rest of them with a weary expression. Her eyes were lidded and her face was scratched. One corner of her mouth twitched up.

"Just because he was dumb enough to lose his own arm doesn't mean you have to rub it in."

Karah let go of Coco and moved towards Nora, but Ash grabbed him by the shoulder before he could touch her. She had a finger pressed to her ear, and she nodded as if receiving instructions. Her wings flapped, restless. She lowered her hand and looked at Karah.

"There's a problem."

"They can wait for us." Karah said.

"It's in the pens. Besides"—she nodded towards Coco and Nora—"they clearly aren't ready to talk. We'll come back once they've had some time to think."

Karah grumbled, but sheathed his knife and left the room, Ash following close behind him.

"Hey Ash," Coco said. The Faunus woman turned back to look at Coco.

"If it's not too much trouble, could you keep an eye out for my hat?"

The door shut, plunging the cell into near-darkness again. Coco heard Nora sigh and the clink of metal.

"I understand putting up a strong front," Nora said. "But I think you overdid it a little."

"You made fun of his arm," said Coco.

"To take some of the heat off of you!"

"I had everything under control."

Nora made an irritated sound. "Whatever. Do you have a plan?"

Coco pressed her face against the wall, letting the cool stone dull the pain a bit. "I'm working on it. Did you see anything on the way in?"

"No, they knocked me out. But before they did, I didn't see them grab anyone else. Reese and Blake might have gotten away."

Coco sniffed. "Great, one huntress. We can expect the cavalry any day now."

Nora puffed, blowing some of her bangs out of her face.

"Coco," Nora said. "You're not wrong, you're just a bitch."