Coco approached the cylindrical tank, looking at the half-Grimm huntress floating inside. "This isn't just grotesque," Coco said. "This is impossible. Forget that they fused Grimm parts onto a human body, I heard there wasn't anything left of Pyrrha after Beacon."
"We don't know that," Blake said. "Ruby was the one person who might have watched her die, and she was unconscious when they brought her to the safe zone. I left before she woke up, but there's no guarantee she remembers what happened at the top of the tower, or if it was accurate."
"You don't even know if that's her," Reese said, massaging the shoulder she'd landed on. Nora made a quiet hostile sound, but Reese continued: "Yeah, the human half looks like every promotional image I've ever seen of her, but you didn't see the video Nora and I did. It used weapons, but it didn't fight like her. It was wild, like a gorilla with a hatchet. And it never used her Semblance. Maybe that thing is partially Pyrrha Nikos, but it doesn't have her soul."
Nora balled her fists. "You don't know that."
"I don't, but it's a pretty solid guess. Either way, I hope Coco got a hold of Vale. They're going to lose their heads when see what we've found."
Coco and Blake exchanged a glance, then looked at Nora. Nora pressed both hands against the tube, her face unreadable. Blake took a step forward.
"Nora," Blake said. "Something's been bothering me since I joined the rest of you in Vale. You left the rest of JNPR after one of the worst days of your lives. I thought Vale had blackmailed you somehow, but I was wrong. They knew about this, didn't they?"
Silence. Coco clenched her jaw and stared at Nora. After a moment, Nora sighed.
"Vale didn't know for sure," Nora said. "But they thought it was possible. Their intelligence units heard rumors. They heard about strange things happening in this region, so they dispatched a spy to infiltrate the White Fang operating here by posing as a member from a different branch. He managed to communicate some information back that suggested they might have her here, but he broke cover trying to save villagers in Perfection before he could confirm it. There was no guarantee he was right."
"Why the hell didn't they tell me?" Coco snapped, pushing past Blake. "I was supposed to be the goddamn leader of this mission and somehow they forgot to mention that this was search and rescue. If they thought this was a remote possibility, they should have at least told me so we would be prepared. You should have told me!"
Nora turned to look at Coco, her face weary. "They wanted to ensure that the White Fang didn't know how much Vale knew. That meant telling one person. But Vale's spy mentioned they had a skilled interrogator. They bet on no one asking me. They thought that everyone would pay attention to the team leader, or the defector. But no one would ever guess that Vale would trust quirky, scatterbrained, Nora Valkyrie with sensitive information. Why bother torturing her?"
She gave them a humorless smile. "Plus, if they were right? If she was here? If the White Fang caught us and decided to interrogate me? They knew that I would do anything for Pyrrha. You weren't deficient Coco, I just had something no one else could bring to the table."
Coco started towards Nora, but Blake held out an arm to stop her. She halted and fumed.
"Okay," she said, barely reining in the frustration in her voice. "We'll deal with this later. Vale's on their way, but they won't arrive for hours. Our White Fang friends will probably break through the door by then. Let's fortify this room as much as we can, patch ourselves up a bit—"
"You're lying."
Everyone turned to Reese. Her eyes were fixed on Nora, who looked like she was trying to kill Reese by looking at her.
"Shut up," Nora said. Her voice was quiet, but hard and cold.
"Vale knew Pyrrha was here," Reese continued. She started walking towards Nora. "Why else would they commit so much time and effort to this? Sure, there's only four of us, but as awful as this is, Vale's dealing with much bigger problems right now, so they deployed a skeleton crew. They picked a leader who was competent but expendable, a White Fang defector they could somewhat trust, a heavy hitter that was committed to the mission, and one humble specialist."
"Shut up. That doesn't prove anything."
Reese scoffed. "At the risk of sounding self-absorbed, I'm the missing piece here: There's plenty of huntsmen who know their way around exotic weapons. Why go out of the way to recruit some low-level tinkering huntress from another kingdom?"
Reese pointed at the tank in front of them.
"That machinery is very difficult to transport active" she said. "The only person that could move Pyrrha like that would be a technician untrained in huntsmen skills—an even bigger liability than me—or someone who met the minimum academy standards that had enough of a knack for tech to keep it working until they got her back to Vale. I haven't worked much with medical equipment, but I could jury rig it to run off a generator or Dust batteries with my Semblance. And the best part is that if we fail, I'm an acceptable loss. If we succeed, Mistral and Vale can convince me to keep quiet. But I think everyone expected us to fail, even you Nora. Because Vale didn't trust Coco to do her job, and since you kept this to yourself, I guess you didn't trust us either."
Nora backhanded Reese hard enough to knock her to the ground. Coco surged forward, grabbed Nora by her collar, and pinned her to the closest wall. Nora pressed against Coco's shoulders and kicked her dangling feet, but the taller huntress held fast and shook Nora, glaring at her.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she shouted at Nora. "It's bad enough that you went along with Vale and had us risk our lives under false pretenses. If you had told us what had been going on, we might have volunteered! But you didn't just lie to us, you didn't include your own team. Did you want to risk someone else dying instead of one of them, or did you just not trust them? Because either way, Ren and Jaune would be very disappointed with you if they found out you hid this from them."
"YOU DIDN'T LOSE ANYONE AT BEACON! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE!" Nora pressed her face an inch from Coco's and bellowed at her. "They just said she'd be here, they didn't know if she was alive, or dead, or trapped somewhere in between! Look at her, we don't even know if we can cure her, we don't know if that's still her in there. Losing Pyrrha was awful, but watching Jaune and Ren die inside made it even worse. I didn't want to give them false hope just so they could lose her again."
Nora's breathing grew ragged and high-pitched. "What if you'd lost Fox? Had him dangled in front of you, then had him taken away again? What if it had been Yatsuhashi? Or Velvet?"
Nora went limp. She tried to say something else, but instead broke into a series of hitching sobs. Coco sighed and set Nora down. She pulled the shorter girl into a hug, holding her until she felt her relax. Coco didn't break the embrace, but she drew back enough to look Nora in the eyes.
"I'm still angry with you for lying to us," Coco said. "But I forgive you. When this is done, you and I are going to have a long talk, preferably over a bottle of something strong and expensive. That sound like a plan?"
Nora sniffled and nodded. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and retrieved her hammer.
"I feel like breaking everything," she said, managing a weak smile.
"Good," Coco said. "There's a lot of people to break."
"About that," Reese said, rubbing her jaw. "What's the plan? We're still running on fumes, and we're all running low on ammo, even with Coco's gun and the stuff you guys snagged from the armory. The door here is toast, and there's not any good place to set up a barricade back in the other room. We could blow the tunnel, but we might not be able to get back out again."
"I have an idea," Blake said. She told them. Reese leaned back against a wall, slid down it to sit on the floor, and placed her face in her hands.
"Oh, you're the worst," Reese said.
…
The door to the lab was constructed from thick steel, almost impossible to blow a hole in without destroying the room on the other side. But as strong as the stone of the tunnel itself was, it was still only stone. Outside the door, one of the soldiers finished drilling the final hole in the rock around the door frame. He slid an explosive charge in, tamped rock over it, and ran back down the tunnel to the assembled splinter group members.
Ash tightened her grip on the weapon at her side to prevent herself from wincing. Her Aura had held up for a while, but she'd lost some of the range of motion in her wings, and her face was swollen with bruises. The ginger needed to suffer, but really any of them would do. It would be slow: Exhaust their Aura. Break their limbs in the smallest increments. Rupture things inside them with her Semblance, maybe use heat or electricity on them first. Finish it off by tossing them to the Grimm. She could make it a morale-booster if they took more than one alive, split everyone into teams and see who could cause the most pain for the longest period of time. One of her men approached, breaking her reverie. He inserted a wire into a handheld detonator and offered it to Ash. She took it, her finger brushing the trigger.
"Everyone ready?" she asked.
When she heard no disagreement, she turned to the door and squeezed the trigger. One set of explosions shattered the stone around the door, while a second set flipped the door forward onto its inner face. Ash's forces, about twenty in total, moved through the smoke with their weapons raised.
Ash scanned the lab as she stepped inside. The room was empty. Still, something was off, slightly different. She raised her weapon, a jitte with a long hook, and tread forward with caution. Something moved by the side tunnel. She spun towards it and let out a screech, using her Semblance to channel it down the jitte and direct it towards the tunnel, concentrating the sound waves around the entrance in a quick pulse. A few sensitive soldiers near Ash grunted in the pulse's wake, but they were drowned out by cries of pain from within the tunnel. Following the voices, Ash noticed a small barricade constructed from desks and crates, a meter back from the tunnel's mouth.
The ginger-haired huntress and the Mistrali popped up from behind the barricade, firing off a pair of grenades and a few bursts of Dust rounds. The White Fang returned fire, and the two huntresses retreated down the tunnel.
"ADVANCE!" Ash shouted, projecting with her Semblance. "SHOW NO MERCY!"
The White Fang surged forward into the side-tunnel off the lab, pursuing them down the tunnel and into the side passage. They fired after the fleeing huntresses, clipping the ginger's shoulder. Her Aura flared and she winced, but she managed to make it into the cell at the rear of the hall just behind her companion, slamming the door shut as she entered. Inside the cell was another makeshift barricade. Blake and Coco stood behind it, pointing their weapons out at the assembled White Fang. Ash halted halfway down the passage. She bared her teeth.
"How desperate," Ash said. "Even if you won your silly little siege from in there, how do you expect to get out?"
"I have a key," Coco said.
"Oh do you now?"
Coco leered at Ash. "I have lots of them."
Without seeing what Coco had done, Ash made the connection. Her heart leapt into her throat. She turned to tell her men to fall back, but Blake had already aimed her pistol. Blake fired, striking the first improvised charge they'd crafted from one of Nora's last grenades. A chain reaction of small explosions burst at each lock along the cells of one wall. Blake fired a second shot, and the cell locks on the other side all detonated too. The assembled White Fang had made it three paces before the contained Grimm burst from their cells and attacked them.
The Komodos were still unable to bite, but their strong tails knocked several soldiers down before they were taken out. The Boarbatusk scattered four men like bowling pins and gouged a fifth, then went down in a hail of gunfire. The chaos the two species had sown in the enclosed space allowed the Ursae and Beowolves to subdue more men than they should have been able to under normal circumstances. An Ursa pinned a man as tall as Clay to the floor, placed its jaws around his head, and pulled until the man's Aura depleted and his head tore free. Half of the Beowolves had cornered most of the soldiers, while the other half and the Beringel chased the rest of the White Fang out the way they had entered. Ash's screech, and bursts of gunfire echoed from outside.
Once or twice the White Fang began to mount an effective defense, but CNBR stopped them, taking potshots at anyone who looked composed or able to rally the other men. Defending against the Grimm and the huntresses diffused the White Fang's efforts, trapping them in a chaotic exchange of claws, blades, and gunfire. After a few short minutes, the hallway was filled with dead bodies and prowling Grimm. Several of the latter were beginning to stalk towards the cell at the rear of the hall. Reese turned white as she gripped her weapon.
"Relax," Coco said. She strode towards the cell door and deployed Belle Mort. "This is the easy part."
Coco nodded and Blake shot the charge they had placed on the lock to their own cell. The door fell out and Coco opened fire, filling the hallway with a hail of bullets. In the space of a breath she shredded the Beowolves and the smaller Grimm that filled the hall. The three Ursae roared and tried to lumber towards them. One went down immediately, another moved a few cells closer. The third, far older than the previous two, had a much thicker bone mask. It pushed forward, staggering through the gunfire, before finally collapsing an arm's length from the cell door.
With the Ursae down, Coco collapsed her gun and led the way back towards the main room, Nora trailing at her right. The lab floor was trashed. The workstations at the far side were scattered, the desks and tables upended by the Grimm. Three Beowolves were gnawing at one of the bodies near one the bottom of the staircase. A pair of White Fang soldiers sat backed into a corner, surrounded by smoking Grimm, injured but still alive. A howl drifted from the entrance tunnel, but the echoes made it difficult to determine just how close it was.
"I'm going to play Whack-a-Grimm," Nora said. She hefted her hammer and advanced towards the Beowolves. Blake watched her leave.
"Nora can take care of herself, but should we—"
"You go," Coco said. "Reese and I will handle the loose ends."
…
The surviving White Fang drifted at the edge of consciousness. After disarming them, Coco made certain they were relatively stable, then she and Reese dragged them into one of the rooms along the back wall and locked them inside. Nora and Blake met them at the back lab's door. Nora carried her hammer over her shoulder, a determined look on her face, while Blake kept glancing towards the entrance tunnel.
"You hear something?" Reese asked Blake, pointing her chin towards the tunnel's mouth.
"No," Blake said. "Just a weird feeling. Let's get Pyrrha ready to move."
Apprehension crossed Reese's face, but she nodded. Blake and Nora led the way into the back lab and moved towards the observation room, while Coco and Reese took up the rear.
The moment Reese stepped through the door an ear-piercing screech sounded from behind them. Though short, it was loud enough to make all four of them scream and flinch in pain, clamping their hands over their ears. Reese turned back just in time to see a blur rushing at her from the ceiling outside the door. She dove to the floor and it passed over her. Blake was already curled up on the floor, her arms wrapped around her head to protect all four of her ears, but Coco and Nora didn't turn in time. The blur clipped Coco's arm, spinning her to the side, and it struck Nora in the chest at full force, sending her sliding across the floor.
Ash stood, her shoulders heaving, her jitte raised to strike anyone that moved against her. Nora began to rise, hefting her hammer. Ash pointed the jitte at Nora and shrieked again. A column of air the diameter of a grapefruit shot out from the tip of the jitte, rippling the air. The sound hurt everyone's ears, but the column of air physically knocked Nora off her feet again. She climbed to her knees, and remained doubled over as Ash strode towards her. The bat Faunus wound up and swung at Nora's head. Nora ducked away from Ash's swing, but the weapon struck her on the shoulder and rolled her over.
Ash raised the weapon over her head to crack open Nora's skull, when gunfire whizzed by her wings and shoulders. She zig-zagged away from Nora, turning to see Reese firing the White Fang rifle at her. The shock from the initial sonic burst had degraded her aim, but she was accurate enough to repel Ash without landing a direct hit. Ash heard gears whir and looked to see Coco deploying Belle Mort. Its barrels spun, sending a hail of gunfire after Ash.
Ash dove to the ground and slid in front of Pyrrha's tank, forcing Coco and Reese to cease firing. She channeled her Semblance down the jitte twice in quick succession. The first blast drove Coco back. A series of harsh snaps sounded from inside her gun, and Coco dropped to her knees clutching her ears. The second blast was more sustained. It ripped Reese's weapon from her hands and blew her into a wall. Ash fired a short burst at ground beneath her feet, launching her up and forward. Though she couldn't launch unassisted, her wings still spread far enough for her to glide. She swooped down at Reese, aiming a swing at her head, bearing down on the dazed huntress.
Coco slammed into Ash from the side, wrapping her arms around her torso and gripping tight as they tumbled across the ground. They rolled until Coco had pinned Ash to the floor. A 'pop' came from beneath Ash and she cried in agony. She drew a breath for another sonic attack, but Coco slammed her fist into Ash's throat. Ash made a wheezing noise and struck Coco's temple with her jitte, letting her escape and climb to her feet. As Ash stood she looked back to find her wing flopping like a dead flower, dislocated where it connected to her shoulder. She turned back to see Coco heft Belle Mort and squeeze the trigger. The gun made a grinding sound, slowly rotating two barrels without firing, followed by a loud clank as the barrels locked up. Ash let out a dry laugh.
"Fancy weapons always become fancy dead weight," she rasped.
Coco squeezed the conversion switch. The gun made another grinding sound, then collapsed into its compact form. Coco assumed a defensive stance.
"Dead weight can still crack your head open," Coco said. Her eyes were defiant, but her free hand was clutching her head where Ash had struck it.
Ash thrust her weapon forward in a feint, spun to swing at Coco's neck—then stepped back deflecting a blade aimed at her ribs. She assumed a defensive stance that let her watch Coco and her new assailant.
Blake stood ready, wielding both halves of Gambol Shroud. She wobbled a bit on her feet, still unsteady from the attack on her sensitive hearing. She'd stuffed gauze into her ears and bound it in place with the ribbon she used to tie her hair. Ash would have laughed at her appearance had she not looked so furious. Instead, she bared her teeth at the pair.
"Good," Ash said. "This won't be boring."
…
Reese rolled onto her hands and knees. Her ears were still ringing, and it felt like someone had rammed steel spikes into them. The rest of her head wasn't fairing much better, as a stabbing pain pulsed in her temples. She retrieved the combat rifle and forced herself to stand, bracing herself against the wall as she regained her balance.
To her left, Coco and Blake were fighting what should have been a one-sided match with Ash, but fatigue was catching up with them. Coco's strikes were sluggish and easy to read, while Blake's were tentative. She was moving faster than Coco but her retreats were slower than usual. If her attack didn't land a decisive blow on Ash, she wouldn't be able to evade the counterattack. The two huntresses had forced a stalemate by carefully timing their attacks, but Ash appeared to have more stamina than either of them, despite her injuries.
Reese aimed the rifle. The barrel swung drunkenly and she swore. Her coordination was still shot. She staggered forward, the gun held ready to fire from the hip if she got a reasonably clear shot. They just had to hold out until Nora could rejoin them. As ragged as they were, Ash couldn't fight all four of—
Reese stopped. Where was Nora?
Looking towards the Pyrrha's tank, Reese saw Nora slowly edging sideways towards the far side of the observation window, her eyes fixed on a point on the other side of the glass. Before she could slip out of view of the window, her eyes widened and she bolted the opposite direction. The metal door Nora had bent back earlier flew through the reinforced glass, impacting the spot where she had stood. She ran towards the fight between Ash and the others, only for a large Grimm to climb through the window and jump into her path.
A Beringel. Its arms were like curving muscled tree trunks, and its hands were large enough to envelop Reese's head and shoulders. Bone plating protected the ape's forearms, chest, belly, spine, and massive shoulders, and demonic fangs lined its squat sturdy jaw. It roared at Nora, rearing up on its hind legs to beat its chest before slamming back down on all fours, rattling the floor beneath them. Nora squared her shoulders at the Grimm. Then she spun her hammer, converting it into its grenade launcher form, and pulled the trigger. It clicked, empty.
Nora swore, leaping back as the monster slammed its fists down where she had been standing a moment before. She switched her weapon back to its hammer form and landed a hit on one of the Grimm's fists. It roared in pain, then began swinging at Nora, forcing her to hop back twice before she could swing again. This time its fist met her hammer before she could bring her swing to full strength. The strike made her rock back on her heels, forcing her to stagger backwards to keep from falling over.
Reese stood rooted to the floor, her eyes wide. The rifle shook in her hands. The Beringel didn't have acid spit like the Komodo, but it was quick, and its strikes and furtive movements around Nora suggested it was more cunning than it appeared. Even on all fours the Grimm towered over Nora, its shoulders broad enough that all four huntresses could ride it. A massive enemy…and a massive target.
Reese aimed the combat rifle and held down the trigger. The shots flew out in a wide spray, but most of them struck home. Some dug into the flesh of the massive Grimm, but just as many ricocheted off the bone plates guarding its vulnerable parts. It roared, clearly irritated by the shots, but remained focused on Nora. It continued to swipe at her, forcing the small huntress to parry its fists instead of taking the offensive.
The gun clicked empty and Reese went to grab another magazine. A few loaded with regular rounds and one loaded with flame ammunition, but no electricity. She reloaded and began firing at the Beringel again.
…
Coco bellowed as she leapt forward, raising her compacted gun in an overhead swing. Ash side-stepped the blow and swung her weapon into Coco's lower back, sending the huntress sprawling onto the ground. She raised the jitte over her head to crack the back of Coco's head open, but as she swung down, she spun the weapon into a reverse grip, channeling the momentum into a reverse thrust. She felt the weapon strike something soft behind her and heard Blake gasp as the blow struck her stomach.
Ash spun and struck Blake's left wrist, making Blake drop the cleaver half of Gambol Shroud. Blake moved to counter with the katana half, but Ash trapped the blade between the jitte's prongs. She wrenched the katana from Blake's grasp with a quick twist of her weapon, then struck Blake in the face with the jitte's hilt. With a flowing series of swings she struck Blake's ribs, arms, and collarbone as she tried to protect her head and neck. Ash delivered a blow to the side of her knee, making her double over, then delivered a kick to Blake's lowered shoulder, knocking her onto her back. Ash swung one final time, slamming her weapon into Blake's ankle. Blake cried out and curled up on her side, clutching her foot.
"There," Ash said, with breathless satisfaction. "Won't be dancing around anymore, will you? Just sit tight, and I'll"—Ash spun, bracing her weapon across her body to block Coco as the huntress swung Blake's cleaver at her.
Ash grinned. "Don't worry, I didn't forget about you."
Coco and Ash parted, then swung at each other, trading blows that sent tremors up their arms and filled the room with the clang of steel on steel. Coco growled in fury and launched into a flurry of swipes that kept Ash blocking, finishing with a hooking slice aimed at Ash's head. Ash held her weapon parallel to the ground, caught the cleaver in its prongs, and ripped it from Coco's hands as she spun away from the strike.
But instead of trying to maintain her hold on the weapon, Coco let go and lunged forward as Ash spun away. She seized Ash's dislocated wing and wrenched it, making her drop the weapons and scream in pain. Holding her by the wing, she drove her fist into Ash's neck three times as Ash tried to pull free. Growling like an animal, Ash changed tactics by leaping back at Coco. She slammed the back of her head into Coco's nose, making Coco cry out and loosen her grip. Ash slipped free, grabbed Coco's wrist, and slid behind her back, twisting her arm like a pretzel.
Coco grunted, and Ash wrapped her neck in a headlock with her free arm. Coco's free arm writhed like a beached fish as she tried to struggle free. She staggered backwards, trying to shove Ash off, but all she succeeded in doing was moving back a few strides. Spots appeared in her vision as she struggled to draw breath.
"Any final words?" Ash hissed. Coco felt Ash's Semblance ripple through her body, and her vision grew even darker.
"Oh shut up," Coco wheezed.
With one final burst of effort, Coco crouched, bending at the waist. She snatched Ash's leg with her free arm, then snapped her legs straight again and leaned back. It wasn't much, but it was enough to send them toppling over. Coco leaned to her left as they fell, her vision blinking out as she leaned further into the headlock. Then she heard a wet meaty sound and felt a sudden burst of pain. She found she could breathe again, and her vision slowly returned.
Ash's arm was still around her neck, but it simply lay there without tension. To her right, a katana blade had erupted from Ash's torso, gouging an ugly cut in Coco's flank. Something shifted beneath both of them.
"Please move," Blake groaned.
Coco rolled off, wincing, then helped shove Ash off of Blake. The White Fang operative wasn't dead yet, but she was deep in the throes of shock. Coco kept a wary eye on her until she saw the last of the light fade from her eyes. After that she collapsed and clutched her side.
"Nice aim," Coco said. "Shame. We're still going to die."
"Nah," Blake said, her voice slurred with pain and exhaustion. "Abdominal wounds are overrated."
Coco nodded towards the back of the room, where Nora was fighting the Beringel. "I was talking about that."
Blake followed Coco's gaze, then gave what might have been a shrug had she possessed any more energy. Then Blake passed out, utterly spent.
…
Reese watched Nora leap back from another heavy swing of the Beringel's fists. Her dodges were as quick as before and her strikes were just as forceful. But she took longer to wind up for a swing, she evaded the beast by narrower margins, and she no longer attempted to knock back or turn away the strikes with her hammer. She was fading. The Grimm appeared to be fading as well, but its size and considerable strength were still ample enough to threaten Nora in her dwindling state, even as Reese emptied a third magazine into the beast's back.
Reese scanned the room for an alternative strategy. No sources of electricity for Nora except for the conduit to the machinery around Pyrrha's tank. Disturbing that before she was ready to rig together an alternative power supply could harm Pyrrha, or worse, wake her up. Coco's gun was too broken for a quick fix, and even if it wasn't there was a chance Reese would accidentally shred Nora if she managed to get it working. That left the magazine of flame rounds, but the Beringel was so tough it would likely burn Nora before the Dust effect brought it down.
Nora swung at the Grimm's right arm, knocking it out from under it—and the Grimm brought its left arm down, catching itself and pinning Nora's hammer to the ground. Nora crouched to leap back, but the Grimm was already swinging its right arm. Nora flew back through the air and crashed into the far wall of the room, crumpling into a heap on the floor. She groaned, stunned by the impact. The Grimm contemptuously threw aside her hammer and began to trudge towards her as she made weak, slow attempts to rise.
Memories of the last several months flooded Reese's mind, rooting her to the spot: Dangling helpless over the pit of Grimm, the fight with the Komodo in the rain, the ambush by the Griffon and the Beowolf at Beacon. She had frozen every time. Even when she had put up some sort of half-hearted resistance, she had turned into a cowering wreck. This was it. The Grimm would kill Nora no matter how many times she shot it, and then it would come for Reese and her incapacitated teammates. Death would be quick, but brutal.
Reese watched Nora grit her teeth and find her footing. She didn't try to charge the Grimm or run. Nora ignored it entirely, limping towards the medical tank, her eyes fixed on Pyrrha's human half. She reached the tank and began pounding her fists against the glass, like a child at an aquarium. She had given up fighting the Grimm, but she remained focused on her teammate instead of self-preservation, something that Reese had failed to do at Beacon. A failure that had created a rift between her and her team, and a rift in herself.
A rift she would never mend if they died here.
Reese let out a wild shout and charged towards the Beringel's back. She leapt onto the creature and climbed up its fur to its shoulders. She grabbed a fistful of hair with one hand to keep herself steady, pressed the barrel of the combat rifle into the back of its neck with the other, and fired. A burst of rounds pierced the Grimm's muscled neck and ignited its flesh, making it roar and toss back and forth to throw Reese off. Reese swung back and forth, dropping the rifle, but she held on despite the Grimm's thrashing, echoing its roar. She reached for the revolver tucked inside her pocket, when the Grimm stopped shaking. It reared onto its hind legs and reached back with its forearms, grasping for Reese.
Reese let go of its fur and dropped to the ground, but she had barely fallen a foot when the Grimm managed to snag her by the hood of her sweatshirt. It yanked her over its shoulder and slammed her into the ground, knocking the wind out of her, then it swept her up in an overhand arc and slammed her down again to its side. It yanked Reese up a third time, but this time she heard a ripping sound and felt herself travel away from the Grimm. She sailed across the room as the Beringel was left holding her hood.
She struck the floor and slid to a stop. Reese coughed, tasting blood in her mouth. Her Aura had burst, along with what felt like her remaining unbroken ribs. She wheezed, rolled onto her back, and felt for her revolver. She drew it and pointed it back the way she had come.
The Beringel was aflame from its head to its waist, like a monster from a huntsman's darkest nightmares. It beat its chest, the flames dancing along its arms as it roared. They would all die slightly hotter than if Reese had done nothing.
Reese smirked. This was better than nothing.
The Grimm charged towards her and she fired, her shots missing or causing no harm at all to the raging beast. Its feet shook the floor as it drew closer, its bulk looming both dark and bright at the same time, filling Reese's vision.
Something slammed down from above, pinning the Beringel to the floor close enough to Reese that she felt the heat of the flames. The door the Grimm had thrown through the window earlier had crashed down on top of it. It rose into the air and pivoted until it was perpendicular to the floor, almost touching the ceiling. Then it shot down like a guillotine blade, decapitating the Grimm. It slowly settled to the ground as the beast began to smoke.
Reese stared at the door, bewildered. From across the room, she heard Nora crying again. She looked over to see her collapsed against the tank. Inside, Pyrrha's human hand was extended towards the glass, surrounded by a faint black glow. The glow faded, and her hand floated back to her side, as if drifting off to sleep.