Sun revolved twice in midair, his sectioned staff wrapped around himself as he spun. Just as he landed, he lashed the weapon out in a wide, sweeping blow with devastating force. The staff let out a thunderous crack as it impacted the neck of a sphinx, sending the beast down to the ground and causing it to evaporate instantly. Sun landed in a low stance, his staff snapping back together into a singular, rigid piece as he braced his free hand into the dirt below. Corsac swept Ilia's electrified whip in a wide arc over the boy's body, stunning two other sphinxes and leaving them open. Sun tucked into a forward roll and broke his weapon down into a set of twin pistols before firing off shots behind himself, piercing the skulls of both beasts in tandem.
"Well fought," Corsac offered as he snapped his borrowed weapon back into a straight rod. Sun rose to standing and dusted off his deep purple dress shirt before engaging Ghira's gauntlet to let the armored plates snake down and over his left arm and hand.
"You too, man. I just hope the guys up top are focusing on the big boy out there. Only so much we can do by controlling the fliers by the shore," Sun pointed out.
The grimm leviathan had inched closer to the city and was standing barely a hundred feet out into the water. As if on cue, a volley of missiles flew from the airships high above as they slowly maneuvered into view. The deadly projectiles crashed into the leviathan's chest and neck, eliciting a cheer from the fighters on the ground, Sun included. The boy pumped his fist into the air and did a small hop, while Corsac merely allowed himself a subdued smirk.
"Alright! I knew Weiss' sis would come through!" Sun yelled.
"Don't get complacent just yet," an unfamiliar, feminine voice called out from behind. "Maintaining advantage on the ground is just as important as taking that thing down."
Sun and Corsac turned together to find a woman clearly older than Academy age, though perhaps not by much. Her pale blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and her violet eyes held a deep, determined expression. Upon one of her arms was what appeared to be a crossbow stylized as a steel eagle mounted atop a bracer. Two other women with matching staves- a faunus with tousled white hair and sheep's ears, and a human woman with long blue hair- stood at the woman's sides, looking equally serious.
"Right on," Sun replied with a nod. "Let's refocus and push them back!"
Sun's encouragement was quickly followed up by the grimm leviathan opening its mouth and firing a sparkling, yellow laser toward the docks. The beam cut through the water as the beast swept its head back and forth, causing wide sprays of heated mist to fly up into the air. The assembled fighters at the docks quickly backpedaled to put distance between themselves and the surprise assault, only for another volley of missiles to interrupt the deadly beam. The grimm leviathan let out another deafening roar as several more Atlesian ships crested the edge of the floating city and suddenly came into view from the ground.
"Change of plans!" the blonde woman yelled before turning toward the blue-haired woman next to her. "May! Cloak yourself and all of the civilians and get them out of here! You two!" she continued, while nodding toward Sun and Corsac. "Are you willing to fight and hold back the tide of lesser grimm?"
"Born ready," Sun affirmed with a nod.
"I stand with him," Corsac added as several men in white armor walked up, carrying assault weapons.
"Miss Hill!" the man at the front called. "We're here to provide fire support!"
"Alright," the woman said with a nod before turning to face the sea again, where the numbers of the sphinxes had thinned and more missiles were flying. "Everyone, bring down as many grimm as you can!"
Yang threw out a hand, eyes wide as she watched her companion run straight toward the manticore's open maw without a care in the world.
"Ilia!"
The chameleon faunus didn't reply as the massive beast lunged forward with a powerful bite, only for its jaws to clamp shut around where the girl once was. Instead, it received a mouthful of flames for its efforts, and the embers traveled to either side of its face before reconvening on the giant grimm's back. The manticore's fur burst into flames as the swirling, burning specter of Ilia grabbed hold of its fur and yanked its head back to expose its neck.
"Now!"
Yang wasted no time in running forward and beginning to pummel the throat of the screaming horror. Her fists crashed into the soft tissue of the leading grimm's throat as she began to yell, working herself into a merciless fury. With one final punch punctuated by a deafening shotgun blast, she tore a hole through the grimm's throat and caused it to dissipate rapidly from head to tail. Ilia fell to the ground as her grip upon the beast was lost, and the embers within her body scattered off to the sides as she regained her normal skin.
"That… was awesome," Yang complimented with a wide grin as she took up a fighting stance once again. Ilia raised her fists and pressed her back to Yang's as the lesser grimm encircling them kept their distance, showing signs of hesitance. "How's your arm feelin'?"
"Sore," Ilia admitted. "And my aura's half burned out after those two stunts. I'm also unarmed, so we need to be careful. I can't blow my entire load and risk taking a real hit."
"You did good, and saved my ass," Yang reminded. "Take it easy for a minute and distract them. I'll clean up here. These little ones aren't really much tr-"
Another deafening screech cut off Yang's words, and the blonde's face paled as she recognized the characteristic call of another manticore. She looked up to see a pair of manticores circling overhead, before a third flew in low over the rooftops of the nearby apartment block.
"You have got to be shitting me," Ilia cursed under her breath. "Yang, we need to run…"
"I know," the girl agreed as the circling pair of manticores landed on opposite rooftops and leered down at the girls. The third took off in another direction, hovering just above the streets as it began scouring the area for more potential victims. "Take the relic, cloak yourself, and go."
"I'm not leaving you!" Ilia insisted. "We didn't make it this far just to fail!"
"Then what's your idea? Fight? Pray for backup?" Yang questioned as the ring of sphinxes began to move closer.
"…yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right, at this point," Ilia confessed as she stomped forward into the cobblestone and jerked her head, trying to intimidate one of the encroaching sphinxes. The move worked, only for the manticore closest to her to leap off the roof in the second she was unbalanced.
"STAY!"
Ilia slipped as she tried to dodge to the side, her leg scraping along the cobblestone as she twitched in surprise at the booming, almost divine masculine voice that had seemed to come from all directions at once. The manticore almost froze to hang in midair, falling at an impossibly slow speed as its claws flexed and splayed, clearly aimed for the girl. The sphinxes near Yang had also started to move in, only to slow to a similarly pathetic crawl.
"What… the hell…?" Yang said slowly as she looked around in confusion. Ilia dragged herself back up into a standing position as she looked left and right, only for a speeding, bladed boomerang to slice through the air with a shrieking whirr just above her head. The device flew up and wedged into the manticore's mouth faster than the grimm could react, and the girls watched as it reflexively bit down in slow motion, the bladed ends of the weapon beginning to pierce its palate and lower jaw.
"Incoming!" called another familiar, though far higher and more feminine voice from the rooftops. "Hold them just a second more!"
"You got it, Hare!" came the reply from the first stranger, though his voice lacked the echoing, authoritative quality that it had had during his initial yell. Ilia and Yang finally caught sight of the figure- a dark-skinned, black-haired, dog-tailed faunus seemingly in his mid-twenties stood atop a nearby balcony, his finger pointed firmly at the slowed manticore. "Hurry, though!"
"Harriet!" the woman corrected as she came into view over the edge of a nearby rooftop. Just like her companion, she wore a uniform primarily white in color, with swatches of dark blue patterned into the skintight fabric. Her hair was a short, buzzed, brown mohawk that matched her skin tone, with tufts of blonde hair spiked up in the front. "And you know I always do!"
The woman named Harriet kicked hard off the edge of the roof and tucked into a midair roll as mechanical full-length gloves sprouted from a device upon her back. The weaponry clasped to her arms and hands as she extended them during her fall, and she crashed her right fist down onto the skull of a time-stopped sphinx as she landed. Immediately upon making contact with the ground, the woman began to run a wild circuit around the collection of grimm, throwing hard punches as she left a trail of crackling lightning in her wake.
"Y-you good?" the man upon the balcony called, his arm visibly shaking with effort as he grit his teeth.
"Release! C'mon, girls, heads in the game!" Harriet called as she skidded to a stop, and time resumed its normal cadence for the captured grimm. The sphinxes affected by Harriet's punches reeled back and several knocked into each other, while the falling manticore closed its jaws around the thrown boomerang and collapsed in a heap before evaporating as it hit the street below.
Yang darted for a pair of confused sphinxes and began another series of quick blows against them. She cracked the skull of one of the grimm clean open before what appeared to be a bolt of lightning lanced through the other as Harriet slid along the ground, a mechanically-gloved hand scraping the cobblestone as she tried to slow herself down.
"There you go, press the advantage!" the woman yelled, only to pull herself up into a fighting stance and begin working over another pair of grimm.
Ilia backed off instinctively as she scanned the area for another useful surface to absorb with her semblance. She never got the chance as the owner of the masculine voice dropped from his balcony and landed just in front of her while offering a quick salute and charming smile.
"Hey there! You okay?" he asked, beads of sweat pouring from his hairline as he took greedy, labored breaths. Despite his obvious exhaustion, he had his chest puffed out, and was clearly trying to hide his condition.
"I'm fine!" Ilia groused as she raised her shoulders defensively. "I'm just… unarmed, right now!"
The dog-tailed faunus snapped his fingers, and a green light flickered to life upon the surface of his boomerang. Almost instantly, the weapon sailed from its place within the pile of ash that was once a manticore and back into his raised hand.
"It's okay. We'll handle this quickly!" the man encouraged, only to whirl and point once again. "STAY!"
The second, airborne manticore slowed greatly in mid-flap as it started in on a divebomb attack. Ilia watched in awe as Harriet took the echoing yell as a cue and ran up a nearby building, lightning trailing in behind her once again. The woman flipped backward off the brick surface as she neared the rooftop and landed atop the neck of the frozen beast, before throwing an impossibly fast volley of punches into the grimm's skull and shoulders.
The male of the duo dropped his hand as Harriet delivered one last, forceful punch to the back of the grimm's head, and it burst into a cloud of ash almost immediately. Harriet landed hard upon the ground in a runner's stance just as Yang fired off one final shotgun shell, causing the last sphinx in the area to dissipate.
"Who… are you guys…?" Ilia questioned as she looked back and forth between her rescuers. Harriet moved to stand near her companion, who answered for her as she clapped an arm upon his back. The man gave her a weak smile, and she merely shook her head as she gave him a glare in return. The faunus looked away with a guilty grin and rubbed at the back of his head.
"Marrow Amin, and Harriet Bree," the man said with a winning smile that reminded Ilia just a bit too much of Neptune's for her liking. "We're members of the Ace Ops. Let's get you two to safety quickly. Harriet and I need to rendezvous with the others and continue to clear the streets of grimm."
"No dice," Yang denied as she threw an arm out to the side in a dismissive motion. "We'll help you fight. We've got friends in trouble, and we have business to attend to immediately after we help them out. Are you guys like cops or something?"
"Cops?" Harriet repeated, seeming almost insulted as she dropped her hand from Marrow's back. "We report directly to General Ironwood, and you two need to stay out of our way."
"If you report to Ironwood, then we need you to take us to him as soon as we're done here," Ilia insisted. "We have something we need to deliver to him that could be extremely important. Something from Haven Academy."
Harriet and Marrow exchanged unreadable looks, though it was clear that an entire conversation had occurred between them during the brief silence. Immediately afterward, Harriet nodded to another set of red lights down the street and cracked her knuckles.
"Save it for when we have the all clear. Follow along, and don't cause any trouble. And Marrow!"
"Yes ma'am?" Marrow replied as he stood straight, his face pouring sweat and shoulders shaking slightly.
"You overdid it again. We will be having words after this," Harriet threatened as she turned and began to walk.
"Yes, ma'am…" Marrow replied in a defeated tone before falling in line to jog beside Harriet as she picked up speed.
Yang and Ilia exchanged uncertain looks of their own, before the faunus' heart skipped a beat as she turned to look down a nearby alleyway.
"Wait- where's Maria…?"
Yang froze in realization as she followed Ilia's gaze, and then shook her head.
"She said she knew safe place. Call her while we're on our way to the next wave. Let's go!" Yang suggested as she took off at a run. Ilia withdrew her scroll from her pocket and raised it to the side of her face as she began to run, feeling uneasy.
"Come on, old woman. Pick up…"
Author's Note:
Well, looks like the battle for Mantle will be three chapters, instead of two. The conclusion will go up sometime on the weekend or Monday, and then it's back to Blake and Ruby's crews for a bit. As a sidenote- Joanna of the Happy Huntresses and Vine of the Ace Ops will not be appearing in this story. Figured I should get that out of the way now, just to clear any confusion/let some people down gently. There's quite frankly no room for them here, and I don't really see the point in either character in canon. I don't see the point in Elm, either, but I at least feel like she gives me something to work with and build on. I can't stand Clover, so expect massive changes to him. See you all next time.
-RD