Sun brought up the rear of the party as he walked backward, whirling his nunchaku and firing off several rounds for incoming sphinxes in the process. As his heel lightly bumped into a set of stone stairs, he looked over his shoulder and turned to quickly ascend and stand before his assembled team. A cluster of roughly twenty armed men and women including security officials and dock workers took place beside them and opened fire at the grimm as Sun paused his assault to speak.
"Alright, people!" Sun yelled as he swept his eyes over the party. "We've got a bunch of objectives! One- keep everyone safe! Two- watch each other's backs! Three! I need someone to run the r-… the bag deeper into the city, somewhere safe!"
"Leave it to me," Ilia offered as she held out her free arm toward Jaune. "I can cloak myself and go somewhere far away from any grimm."
"Wait!" Weiss called out as the bag was transferred into the faunus' hand. "It… remember what it does. What Maria told us it does," Weiss added icily as she locked eyes with Ilia. "We need someone who can fight to transport it, in case the worst happens."
"Then let me go with her," Yang offered as she cocked her gauntlets. "None of us should be alone anyway."
"I know of a safe place," Maria added as she raised a hand. "An old friend who can keep it, and us safe, in a pinch."
"Then the three of us can go together," Ilia replied as she secured the duffel bag over her shoulder and gripped the strap. "Maria and I are just in the way, otherwise, and Yang can be our bodyguard. We don't have time for debates!"
"Okay, then!" Sun agreed. "Get moving, and good luck! Weiss and Jaune! Head farther left down the docks and stand your ground! Corsac, you and I will defend this section of the dock!"
Ilia and her crew took off running into the streets of Mantle as Weiss and Jaune simply offered a pair of nods and made their way off to the neighboring dock at a sprint.
"You're doing a remarkable job keeping your cool thus far, Wukong," Corsac complimented as he cracked Ilia's electrified whip against the stone while staring down the oncoming swarm of sphinxes. "Again, Adam was wr-"
"If you're running with us, then shut up about Adam!" Sun snapped as he rejoined his staff into a single piece and whirled it behind his back in a ready stance. "Let the past go, and focus on the now!"
"'Running with you?'" Corsac questioned as he watched the dawn sky darken even more with an ever-growing cloud of grimm on the horizon. "I'm your prisoner."
"Yeah, I dunno, at this point," Sun replied as he narrowed his eyes at the encroaching enemies. "Puttin' yourself out here like this when you've got the perfect opportunity to cut and run? There's gonna have to be a discussion about what to do with you once this is all over."
Corsac let out a singular, humorless laugh as he leveled his weapon toward the sky and shook his head.
"So naïve…"
Jaune instinctively ducked and raised his shield as a sphinx flew overhead and extended a fierce swipe downward for his head. The boy raked the sky with Corcea Mors and split the beast's chest open, eliciting a scream and subsequent rain of ash as the grimm seemingly evaporated before it hit the ground.
"Y'know, I've had a question for you for a while!" Jaune called as he looked to the side, where Weiss had summoned her Arma Gigas. The summon and summoner fought back to back as sphinxes swirled around them, each moving and coordinating their blows as though they were sharing a brain.
"What's that?" Weiss replied as she spun and drew two fingers along the flat of Myrtenaster's blade to summon up a rotating glyph. A torrent of fireballs flew through the air and downed several flying grimm into the waves and dockside wall.
"How do you fight in heels? I could barely walk in them!" Jaune cried as he dove in front of a vulnerable dock worker, using his shield to deflect a divebomb from a sphinx. The man thanked the teen profusely as Jaune rose back up to his feet and readied his sword once again. He cracked a small smile as he heard Weiss' characteristic noise of disgust and didn't bother to look over to her as he kept his eyes on the next target.
"Really? Is now the time?" Weiss asked rhetorically. "Also, these are wedges. Additionally- when and why have you worn high heels? Do I even want the answer to that question?"
"Don't tell me you've forgotten already?" Jaune asked as he spared her a quick glance. "The dance, back at Beacon!"
Weiss echoed the boy's smile as she shook her head, before blasting another flier with shards of ice from her floating glyph.
"Right. That seems like ages ago, and yet… almost yesterday," Weiss mused. "Pyrrha was so h-"
The heiress stopped herself immediately and punctuated the pause with thrusting Myrtenaster through the chest of a sphinx, which dissipated to ash in midair atop her blade. She slowly turned to face Jaune, and found that his smile was somehow still present, though tense.
"Jaune, I am so s-"
"No," the boy interrupted as he used his shield to block several swipes from a sphinx that had taken an interest in him. He thrust the shield outward to unbalance the beast before lopping off its head, and turning his attention to Weiss, instead. "It's not taboo anymore. Sun and I talked, and I'm working through it. Not quite there yet, but… I'm making an effort. It's time I started living for myself. Right now, what I want is to protect these people, and keep my nerve up by bantering with you."
Weiss felt an odd sense of pride as she dropped her guard ever so slightly to give Jaune a small smile.
"Then banter we shall," she confirmed as she raised her weapon once again. "I just hope my sister got the word out, and Atlas is mobilizing against that thing. Otherwise, we may not be able to protect these people for long at all…"
Jaune bit his lip as he stared up at the grimm leviathan. The beast was still several hundred feet out to sea and walking slowly through the shallows as it approached the floating city.
"She'll get it done," Jaune resolved as he steeled himself into a combat stance once again. "She's one of us, right? I believe in us."
"As do I," Weiss confirmed as she and her Arma Gigas joined Jaune's side in ready stances of their own.
"Point me!" Ilia cried as she kept up her sprint. Her injured arm rocked wildly within its sling as she ran, her chest heaving and forehead sweaty.
"Left!" Maria cried from her place in Yang's arms as they reach an intersection. She held her black duffel bag in her own arms, and Yang grunted with effort as she skidded slightly along the cobblestone before beginning to run after Ilia once again.
"You know, I can't decide whether I love or hate you, overall," Yang commented as she shifted her grip upon the smaller woman.
"Young lady, do you know how many times I've heard those exact words from an ex?" Maria quipped. "It's all part of my charm."
"Give us directions before the turn, next time!" Yang griped as she took off at a hard run. She watched as Ilia spun into an alleyway and shifted her colors to blend into the wall as a manticore flew over the nearby streets and began to circle. The dust-powered lamp posts in the area flickered their lights to red one by one as sirens began to sound, and Yang put Maria down without hesitation as she cocked her gauntlets once again.
"Really? We're not far from where we need to be!" the older woman complained. "Security forces will be here soon, and we can just slip aw-"
"No," Yang said authoritatively as the manticore caught sight of her. The beast screeched a deafening call as civilians began to scatter in all directions, causing Yang's coattails to billow behind her. "I'm a huntress. I'm not letting that thing run wild on Mantle and its people."
"Suit yourself," Maria shrugged. "I'll wait here with Ilia. Go get 'em, spitfire."
"Spitfire," Yang repeated while she punched her fists together as the manticore hovered menacingly above her, surrounded by a flittering escort of five sphinxes. "I like that."
Ilia hissed through her teeth as Maria joined her side in the alleyway. She stared out into the road as three sphinxes landed and charged for Yang, only for the blonde girl to launch into a frenzied assault of punches.
"Hey, how do you know if a broken arm is healed?" the chameleon faunus inquired as she shifted her skin tone back to its natural brown.
"…worried, are you?" Maria asked as the slats on her goggles narrowed. "It takes a long time to fully mend, child, but the limb is generally usable again in a few weeks. If you want to go out there, I'm not about to stop you."
Ilia narrowed her eyes as she watched the fight continue, her mind racing.
"…Sun'll kill me," she seethed through clenched teeth.
"And if the grimm kill her?" Maria questioned. "More will be coming, and soon. Do what you think is right. I can watch the relic, if you want to mix it up. Keep in mind, though- you have no weapon."
"I don't need one," Ilia protested. "Not with a semblance like mine."
Yang let out an almost feral yell as she careened a fist into the side of a sphinx's jaw. The girl triggered a shotgun blast on impact, and the beast's mandible tore clean off its face before its entire body fizzled out into an ashen cloud. Where the sphinx fell, two more landed, only for Yang to let out a low growl as she threw her arms down to her sides and balled her fists.
"Yeah!? Well, come on, then! I've been looking for an outlet all week!"
The catlike pair of grimm bounded toward the girl, only for the beast on the left to leap over its partner and attempt a lunging bite. Yang dipped to one side and rose into a forceful uppercut, firing off a backward shell as she did so to rise into the air with the blow. She grabbed the side of her gauntlet and let forth a full-on blast of every round in the bracer straight into the beast's face, only to catch a hard swipe from an unseen attacker at her back. Yang went down hard and rolled along the ground, her aura flickering as she slid to a stop.
"Ugh! Cheap shot!" the girl complained as she punched the cobblestone and rose to her feet in a boxing stance. Three more sphinxes had landed in the street, and from the cries overhead, Yang guessed that more were on the way. The girl spit down onto the street and ran a quick thumb across her nose, before hunkering down into a deeper stance.
"C'mon! I've handled worse!" Yang yelled, before running forward. The beasts split off and worked to surround her as she once again worked herself into a frenzy. Yang turned and fired off shots to scare off a sphinx as it tried to encroach upon her from the back, only for the monster to backpedal out of range. "Not gonna work a second time, dumbass!"
Yang narrowed her eyes as she heard a scrabbling of claws on the stone behind her and whirled into a spinning backfist to catch another sphinx making an attempt at a similar move across the jaw. The assailant flew sideways and into a Schnee Dust Company shop window, shattering the glass of the storefront. Yang had only a moment to smirk as a bright orange glow became overpowering in the sky to her left, and she looked up just in time to see where the manticore at the head of the pack had moved to.
The massive flying grimm had moved just out of Yang's sight line to charge up a gargantuan fireball in its mouth, beating its wings all the while. Without giving her a second to react, the manticore spit forth the giant ball of flames, and the projectile sped downward toward its prey in a swirling, superheated ball. Yang raised her arms to block as best she could and closed her eyes, expecting the projectile to easily tear through her aura and likely leave her burned. Instead, she felt absolutely nothing bar the errant heat of stray embers scattering around her.
Yang opened her eyes and blinked in confusion at the sight before her. Just in front of her stood Ilia- or rather, what appeared to be a statue of Ilia. The cobblestone around the girl had been stripped right off the street and seemed to be coating her skin, giving her the appearance of a sculpture as she stood with her good arm out before herself. Slowly, she began to move, flecks of rock dislodging and falling lightly to the ground as she shifted in place and cracked her stony neck.
"I'm not letting you take them on alone," Ilia declared as all of the stolen stone dropped from her skin to join its brethren upon the ground.
"But your arm…" Yang protested softly, only for Ilia to shake her head as she calmly walked over to the shattered window. The faunus knelt and scooped up a ruby red dust crystal in her previously injured limb, her sling no longer anywhere in sight.
"I don't care. This is too important, and I'm probably alright, now," Ilia offered as she closed her fist around the hexagonal prism. Suddenly, her entire body became transparent and then enwreathed in flame, to the point where Ilia herself seemed to become a swirling, girl-shaped vortex of fire. She pointed upward toward the manticore and offered Yang a confident grin. "Now, let's take it down together!"
Author's Note:
Next update will be much sooner than last time. Sorry for the delay- the last week was rough, for many reasons. I'll try to do better with updates in the future. I'm also splitting this battle for Mantle into two chapters, instead of making one giant one. See you all soon.
-RD