CHAPTER 4 – Apotheosis
Their trek to the clearing was uneventfully short.
The team then skirted along its edge to the rear arc of the shack wall in preparation for the operation to begin in earnest.
'…or at least the violent part where we can't use fackin' violence.' Meg thought to herself with a grumble.
Anne had slinked, quiet as she always was, down from her perch and about the tree line to rendezvous with the rest of the group at Qrow's request, appearing from the underbrush rifle halberd hybrid in hand and a single lensed night vision goggle over her left eye.
Meg considered her appraisal of Greene's 'horror-movie-survival-odds' accurate if not underestimated with the realization that the woman's odd choice of night vision gear was specifically to keep her weapon's optics unobstructed.
"Sorry to bring you back down to the ground Anne, but we need everybody we've got in the thick of it for this to work."
Anne waved off the nicety, "It's a capture mission for Grimm, honey. I'd of had some choice words for you if I wasn't called down here."
"Fair enough," Qrow said, turning his attention to the form of the shack hazy through the rain, "Port, protocol's a bitch that we all kiss the ring of, so give us a rundown on the capture targets."
Peter Port lived up to his professor accolade and subdued his excitement to clinically say, "One Ursa and one Beowulve. Both fit the prerequisites for Alpha classification-"
'Then where the hell are their packs? Why aren't they commanding every Grimm on the island at this point? Why haven't they attacked? Why weren't they found anyways? Why- ' Meg rattled off question after question internally.
"-and have potentially walked Remnant for upwards of a century."
Qrow talked half over his shoulder as he formulated the plan, "We're doing this smash and grab style. Two teams with one on either side of the building. Meg you're with me on left. Anne, you get Pete on right. Anne and I are on point. We'll be the first to round the front of the shack and get the targets to engage us. Port, Meg, you wait around your corners with the Popnets and bag em' so we can wrap this up before sunrise."
Qrow's large two-handed sword's grip extended into a polearm shaft as he said this with a click and hiss of metal.
Anne gripped her rifle by the barrel as the stock and grip collapsed into a polearm shaft whilst the axe-head, spear tip, and hammer spike of a halberd mechanically unfolded just before the muzzle brake.
Meg gave a sidelong look to Qrow, "What if the Popnet misses… or the bloody Ursa bursts through the back of the shack to escape? They're old, which means they're smart enough to do that."
Anne shook her head, "Ursa is out of commission."
"How so?" Meg asked turning towards her.
"It's sleeping off an injury."
"…Grimm don't sleep."
Meg's eyes widened slightly as Anne stamped the ground with the butt of her halberd and leaned ever so slightly towards her, "This one does. Which is why you're going to catch it first try, aren't you sweetie?"
The faunus woman fell silent under a glare that pierced her to the spot and sultrily asked, no, seduced her the same way a vampire beguiles a victim.
Through words unspoken Scarlatina was asked to backtalk just… One. More. Time.
Meg turned to Qrow with a sigh that masked the frost crawling on her skin, "Let's get this over with."
/\/\/\
Understanding eluded him.
Frustration.
The Hunger flared and instinct beckoned.
Anger.
The nothingness around him yawned wide.
Determination.
'SPITE YE ABYSS...'
Conviction.
'…SHOW ME…'
Purpose.
'…AGAIN.'
The Axman's last stand repeated.
He felt everything as if he were the human.
And it was not enough to understand.
'SHOW ME MORE.'
Instinct screamed and he-
-a small wooden table barely illuminated by the wavering illumination of a pair of rushlights, a bowl of stew in front of him.
The Swordboy sat adjacent to him before an identical meal, scowling down as he fidgeted at the bandage on his left palm with the fingers of his right hand.
He felt the Axman's… his lips tug upward at the sight, "Si tu continues à t'acharner, ça va prendre plus de temps à guérir, tu sais."
The child frowned and deepened his scowl as he picked up a wooden spoon, "Ça rend mes balançoires d'entraînement bizarres."
He stifled a chuckle, "Vous allez porter des gants lorsque vous maniez une arme, et parfois votre main sera blessée lorsque vous devrez vous battre. Pensez à cette pratique à l'avance."
Just as the Axman knew would happen, the boy's eyebrows rose and then fell back down into the usual determined glower he always bore, and he began to eat with an anticipatory grin.
By the Gods he looks so much like his mother-
-screamed.
A mouth to cry.
Eyes to weep.
Hands to clutch himself.
A face to be clutched.
Piece by piece humanhemanthe was remade as manthehehuman remembered.
The pain was unfathomable.
But it was something.
And it had a shape.
+ The form of a man shuddering in the nothing as he became whole… +
/\/\/\
There was a reason Meg Scarlatina was a horror movie buff.
Quite a few people presumed it to be her overcoming timidity, which was true, but that was supposition on her faunus trait being from a rabbit, which wasn't the case.
Her fear stemmed from the other aspect of being a faunus: Natural nightvision and enhanced senses.
In the dark as they were now, she saw colorlessly in a collage of grey hues, and ever since she was a girl the way the world looked right now terrified her. It all felt wrong.
The heightened nature of everything she used to comprehend made that wrongness even more pronounced.
Meg Scarlatina wasn't brave in her own mind.
She was just inoculated to being very, very scared, and not permitting that stop her.
Meg tightened her grip on the Popnet's brace.
It was effectively a convex round shield the size of a buckler with a series of explosive charges set in flanges about it in a hexagonal pattern that launched a heavy cable net encased in the center.
She could tell from letting her Aura flow through the thing the cables were laced with Gravity Dust.
It was ingenious, really. If the target was successfully ensnared, they'd be left helpless hovering in the air.
'Best not miss then,' she thought, her insecurities and doubts steeled by detached professionalism as she followed closely behind Qrow as they carefully yet deliberately moved across the field.
Anne and Port did much the same, but Meg didn't need to look at them to know that, focusing on her partner and the objective while trusting the rest of the team to follow their training as she did her own.
The rain began to fall less intensely midway, the team's pace quickening in response to the threat of their sound cover for the approach leaving on the wind.
They reached the left wall, steps treading silently atop the weeds to muffle each footfall, and Qrow stopped at the cusp of the corner.
Scarlatina's pulse hammered between both her sets of ears.
Branwen's gravelly voice whispered a scream through their earpieces, "GO!"
/\/\/\
'Good tidings at last,' the Young Wolf thought to himself as he felt the flow of water from above stem.
A scent roused him from his reveling at the rain's recession.
Vanilla and woodsmoke carried on the breath.
The breath of a man.
The Young Wolf crept from his sit to center himself upright in the shack's open front.
He craned his ears to tune out the rain and water, rewarded with the subtlest creasing of foliage.
The sound of men.
He permitted himself a single step backwards for spacing.
At a wide angle from the corners either side the shack whirled about two humans brandishing weapons.
Long sticks with bladed and spiked ends… a sword spear and halberd, respectively.
He paid no heed to how he knew these things he didn't understand.
He paid no heed to the headache worsening.
He paid no heed to the Hunger bellowing in his essence to charge.
The Young Wolf merely bent into a form that he did not know was a fighting stance with a determined glower on his face.
'Not a bad end at all.'
/\/\/\
Anne and Qrow held for a handful of tense seconds waiting for the Beowulve to react.
No snarl. No aggression. Just stalwartness, defiance, and resignation.
Qrow took a step forward and jabbed his weapon in a feint before hopping back.
The beast didn't even flinch.
He spared a glance behind the Beowulve to the Ursa lying on its side and spasming in its sleep.
The Beowulve slowly bore its fangs but did not move.
+ …and the abyss shattering at the outstretch of an arm. +
The Ursa went still with a mighty sigh.
The Beowulve's posture went rigid before turning slowly towards its companion.
It took a single step forward with its back to the Huntsmen's blades before a wet crack split the silence.
A spiderweb fracture along the bone armor of the Ursa's stomach appeared.
The Beowulve closed the distance to the Ursa with a yelp, its breath coming out raggedly as it ran a hand over the Ursa's injury.
It stooped over to cradle the unresponsive head of the ancient bear and released a long peeling whimper.
An oozing creak was heard and the cracks in the Ursa's stomach armor deepened then spread, black miasma seeping out from betwixt newfound seams, and the Beowulve loosed a cry of despair.
In spite of everything, the onlookers could not help their better nature, and shared in the creature's woe.
Then the crack bulged outward as if from some internal impact and black sludge came forth more.
Qrow uncontrollably loosed an expletive over the team's comms.
Another swell saw pieces of the bone plate fall away to the ground and the inky black begin to flow enough to pool beneath the still form.
Peter and Meg rounded their respective corners at their team leader's outburst only to be transfixed by the horror as well.
Even the Beowulve seemed to be frozen in shock before a shape burst forth from the Ursa's abdomen.
A long appendage of pitch dribbling darkness unto the shack floor raised into the air.
At this the Beowulve recoiled back unto its rear then froze still as a statue.
The thing wavered slightly before slamming down into the ground, a splatter of blackness about the impact, and in that mess a shape began to take form.
What appeared to be random lines of dark viscera dug into the rotted wood of the floorboards.
Like a wave receding the miasma began to give way to stark white: Bone.
Bones of a human hand tipped with the claws of a bear.
The pitch waxed then faded away again, this to a layer of pinkness, another of lines across the previous, then yet another of maroon.
Whilst each wave came the shape gained more definition, pulled more itself out from the Ursa's ever so slowly disintegrating mass, the hand connected to an arm which gave way to a shoulder.
The corner of a human face flensed of skin and many a layer beneath that revealed itself, its lidless right eye inset with a pale green iris, before another coating of darkness enveloped it.
The stillness of the abomination's emergence was ruptured as Meg shrieked, that most recent sight too much for her to bear silently.
Galvanized by the sound to stand again the Beowulve stumbled towards the rightmost wall if one was facing the rear of the shack and fell through a weak point between the wall studs.
The Huntsmen were simply too shocked to react before it swiftly disappeared between them into the night beyond.
"Shit! Anne, follow it!", Qrow bellowed after returning to himself.
Anne shook her head viciously to refocus and took off after the Beowulve saying nothing in response.
A dull clang resounded as Meg dropped her Popnet to the ground to hold her face, babbling incoherently as she watched on through the gaps of her fingers.
For she had looked directly into the Grimm thing's eye and could not look away.
It's full head and shoulders were freed now as it strained to free its left arm whilst still pulling with the right.
There was just enough lacking from the emerging man thing's biology for fangs to be visible in the open air along its lipless teeth.
This continued for a long handful of minutes until a final coat of the Grimm essence overtook the man just as he pulled himself free, completing a form with skin the pallor of moonlight and hair blonde as the dusty sands of Vacuo.
With a squelch the naked man thing fell forward to lie still before the disintegrating mass of his old form, unconscious.
French to English Translations
(These are in the order that they appear.)
- Si tu continues à t'acharner, ça va prendre plus de temps à guérir, tu sais. (If you keep pushing yourself, it's going to take longer to heal, you know.)
- Ça rend mes balançoires d'entraînement bizarres. (It makes my practice swings weird.)
- Vous allez porter des gants lorsque vous maniez une arme, et parfois votre main sera blessée lorsque vous devrez vous battre. Pensez à cette pratique à l'avance. (You will wear gloves when you handle a weapon, and sometimes your hand will be injured when you have to fight. Think about this practice ahead of time.)
09/?/22 Post Chapter Blurb(I didn't start dating things until later, this is a guess.)
How I envisioned Apotheosis occurring in my head is why I made this story Rated M. The Brother Gods were callous in how they remade this world after their ultimatum...
The previous chapter was cut into its own section as a build up to this one. It just flowed better to me that way, which is why it was so short.
If you are fluent in French I apologize if the French parts are terrible, I'm using an online translator for this because I don't know the language.
As a final aside, Anne Greene's characterization for this story was a unexpected pleasant surprise resulting from my rewriting around with dialogue for this chapter's final draft around... too many times. Far too many. Thoughts on her or any other character anyone cares to share?
Criticism is expected and anticipated as always.