Weiss spun backward and drew her rapier up, holding it parallel to her cheek as she pointed the tip outward. She pressed hard into the cold steel at her back as she leaned into Jaune, sweaty and breathless.
"Hey," the boy said between his own gulps of air. "You doing okay?"
"Just fine," Weiss replied aggressively before clearing her throat. "Their numbers are thinning, but something just… doesn't feel right."
"I know what you mean," Jaune agreed. "Maybe all of the negativity in the air?"
"Maybe," Weiss pondered as she began to take count of the remaining sphinxes. A rattle of gunfire and barrage of missiles from the airships overhead drowned out her mental efforts in a din of explosions, and she shook her head to try to chase away her building headache.
"Still, it's…" Jaune paused as something in the water caught his eye. A series of bubbles began to froth upon the surface, the depths appearing dark instead of their usual pristine color. "Weiss? What's that?"
Weiss paused and eyed the water suspiciously, her stomach dropping at the familiar sight.
"That's… oh, no…"
The girl squeaked in surprise as a second back pressed to hers, followed by a whirling flourish of red and gold in her peripheral vision.
"Heya!" Sun chirped with a cheery grin, looking somehow even sweatier than his friends. "We got reinforcements over there, and Corsac's working with them. Figured I'd check in on you t-"
"Everyone get back!" Weiss yelled as she broke from formation. The two boys gave her quizzical looks, only for something odd, black, and twisted to break the surface of the water where bubbles had once been.
Sun's mouth hung open as he took in the sight of an entirely unfamiliar species of grimm. The horse-sized creature had the torso of a female human, her face and chest replaced by gleaming, sodden bone. Wispy strands of waterlogged hair hung all in her face and from her waist, where legs should have been. Without warning, the creature's tapered rear rose into the air as it arched its back and the hair fell away to reveal a long, snout-like mouth lined with rows of several eyes and entirely too many teeth. The creature's maw opened before it dove for Sun, the humanoid part of the grimm trailing behind it in midair. The faunus barely leapt out of the way in time, only for Weiss to let a crackling blast of electricity fly from one of her glyphs.
"What the hell is that thing!?" Sun shouted as he skidded along the ground.
"A selkile!" Weiss yelled back as she concentrated to keep the beast paralyzed in place. "They live in deep waters all around Solitas! Quickly, stab the tail!"
"Which part's the tail!?" Jaune asked as he ran in, holding his sword aloft.
"The… the woman's head!" Weiss replied, only to watch Jaune sink his sword directly into the target. The long, toothy maw opened in a scream before the grimm dissolved in place, leaving all three teens in a breathless, horrified state.
"I… I've never seen one in person," Weiss commented as she used a hand to wipe her sweaty bangs from her face.
"You're about to see more!" Everyone, back!" Sun yelled as he pointed to the water, where more large bubbles were trailing near the surface.
Jaune steeled himself and took a deep breath as he watched a seemingly invisible shimmer pass by toward the streets of Mantle, only for a woman with a long blue ponytail to appear from the edge of the veil.
"Come on! This area is lost! Our defender will be here momentarily!"
"Defender?" Sun echoed. "We're holding the line! We can… we…"
The boy's shoulders sank as he watched more selkiles emerge from the water, numbering nearly a dozen. Weiss took several steps backward, and Jaune trailed closely behind while holding up his shield.
"Sun, I hate to break it to you, b-"
"I know!" the faunus yelled as the blue-haired woman, and her veiled charges, disappeared from sight. "Group up with the others on the docks! We only fall back if we need to!"
Weiss let out an annoyed grunt as she began to run down the pier, the collection of grimm readying their heads as their humanoid parts began to scrabble along the ground to drag their massive bodies forward. Jaune followed as Sun backpedaled, firing shots into the false heads of the beasts as he went. Several crossbow bolts whizzed past Sun and found their marks in the tails of the grimm, eliciting screams as the crowd began to fan out and keep their distance.
"You're leading them to us," Corsac pointed out as the blonde woman beside him reloaded her arm-mounted crossbow. "Last stand?"
"Something like that!" Sun agreed as he took position with his friends and formed a wall. A selkile dived forward, only for the sheep-eared faunus to extend her arm and seemingly absorb the creature into her palm.
"…handy, as Yang would say," Weiss joked as she planted Myrtenaster into the ground and began summoning her Arma Gigas once again.
"The one time you're actually funny, and it has to be now!?" Jaune said with exasperation as he joined the vanguard, taking blows against his shield from the ravenous mass of grimm.
Sun shook his head as he focused on gunning down the remaining sphinxes that came to join the fray. His arms moved with lightning speed as he tracked his targets, working with the blonde woman to thin the crowd.
"Just… focus, everyone! We can do this!"
A deafening roar from the approaching leviathan drowned out Weiss' reply, and Sun braced his arm over his face as a flash of brilliant green light leant an almost sickeningly neon tint to the surrounding area.
"She's here!" the blonde woman with the arm-mounted crossbow yelled while pointing up to the sky. "Finally! Ground forces, listen to the faunus and hold the line! This is winnable!"
Jaune's jaw dropped as he followed the unfamiliar woman's outstretched arm. There in the sky was a floating, redheaded girl with green jets of flame emanating from ports on the soles of her feet. Her outfit had a green digital theme that seemed to blink and glow with blinding intensity even from the ground, and a circular cone of floating swords was rotating at high speed before her. From the center of the swords, a wide, concentrated beam of dazzling, emerald energy flew forth and focused in on the leviathan's face, giving the colossal beast pause in its advance.
"Penny!" Jaune cried. "Guys, look!"
Despite the situation, Weiss offered a wide grin in response as she beheld the floating girl with enthusiasm and admiration.
"I see her! That's incredible!"
"Yeah, it is!" Sun agreed before refocusing on the selkiles ahead. "If we were ever going to get a morale boost, I couldn't ask for one better! Let's do this, people!"
Sun whirled his pistols and reformed them into one long staff as he ran forward with Jaune at his side. The two boys waded into the fray as Weiss' Arma Gigas took up position beside them while the girl slung bolts of ice forward for cover fire. Sun cracked his staff harshly against the nearest selkile's woman-shaped tail, eliciting a cry of agony from the sodden grimm as it reeled backward. A boomerang flew into the fray from somewhere nearby and embedded itself into the grimm's massive mouth, before Harriet sprinted in and delivered a devastating uppercut beneath its jaw. The beast made it several feet into the air before dissolving into a cloud of ash.
"Alright!" Sun yelled while pumping his fist and watching Harriet slide into a crouched runner's stance. "No idea who you guys are, but thanks for the assist!"
"We're doing our jobs," Harriet replied coldly. "Focus, and do yours!"
The boomerang whizzed from its place upon the ground back into Marrow's grip, and the faunus offered the assembled defenders a wide grin.
"Looks to me like they're doing pretty alright! We're just here to help finish things!"
"Of course they are!" a burly, tanned woman with short, choppy black hair yelled from her place behind Marrow as she approached the dog faunus' side. She whirled a massive hammer over her head in a circle before sinking down into a low stance and charging forward to engage a lone selkile. "After all, they're Ilia and Yang's friends! If those two are anything to go by, these kids will do great things!"
Sun perked up once again at his friend's names and allowed himself a quick glance to the side as he landed from a jumping kick into the side of a selkile's maw. There next to Marrow were Ilia and Yang, and all three began to move in tandem to join the frontline defenders.
"'sup?" Yang asked with a grin as she aimed a gauntlet and fired off a shotgun blast at a selkile limping behind Sun. The beast dissolved quickly, and Yang cocked her weapon before cracking her neck.
"Not much. Eyes on the sky for a sec," Sun replied with a confident smile. Yang looked upward and her facial expression changed to match his as she caught sight of their flying friend, who had redirected her beam into the center of the leviathan's chest.
"Hell yeah! Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" Yang called as she bashed her fists together. The blonde girl fired off two shells backward and propelled herself deeper into the crowd of selkiles, only to end up next to a whirling spout of water. A selkile bit cleanly through the swirling liquid, only for the water to seemingly jump to the side and reform into a transparent, light blue facsimile of Ilia. Yang used the opportunity to plant her metallic arm vertically between the grimm's jaws and fired off several shells into its throat with the other arm, only for the beast to burst into a cloud of ash.
"Hot," Ilia commented as she reformed into her usual body.
"I try," Yang said with a shrug as she readied her fists once again. "We've all been through worse."
"With worse people at our sides," Ilia added. "With the exception of one."
"I heard that," Corsac said flatly as he approached and offered Ilia her weapon. The girl took it and gave it a few lashes against the ground to test that it was still in working order. "Still, you are not wrong."
"Hey, you know your way around a sword?" came a friendly, male voice.
Corsac looked to his left to find another new arrival- a man dressed in colors much like Marrow and Harriet's, his outfit comprised of white, deep blue, and splashes of red. His hair was closely shorn and light brown, and his features were sculpted and rigid in contrast to his friendly, confident gaze. At his sides were twin broadswords with odd, rectangular protrusions on the ends of the hilts.
"Familiar enough," Corsac replied as the other man offered him one of the two weapons and took up a stance of his own. "My thanks."
"We're all in this together," the man replied as he drew his remaining sword. "Now let's finish this!"
Farther down the docks, Weiss and Jaune continued to fight side by side. The Arma Gigas cleaved cleanly through the last two sphinxes in the area, their bisected halves dropping and dissolving before they hit the ground. Jaune let out a triumphant yell as he bashed one of the last selkiles upon the snout using his shield, and then impaled it through the jaw only to let it break apart into ash.
"Excellent! You've improved so much since Beacon!" Weiss praised as she gracefully hopped backward, out of reach of another grimm's vicelike jaws. "There are less than ten to go!"
"And more than ten of us!" Jaune encouraged.
Another deafening screech drew attention from everyone on the docks, including the selkiles, as the sky flashed an assortment of reds, greens, and violent oranges. The Atlesian airships perched around the edge of the city fired their salvos of missiles directly at the leviathan, and the projectiles crashed into its chest one after another. The beast reeled backward, stomping through the water as it tried to maintain its balance. Penny flew forward as she disengaged her beam and watched as the leviathan finally fell back and began to dissolve. Mounds of ash flittered down through the air and began to pile onto the surface of the water, rendering the area past the docks inky black instead of its usual deep blue.
The remaining selkiles began a rapid retreat back into the water amid the cheers of the people assembled upon the docks. Sun leapt and pumped a fist in victory as the people around him rose their weapons, and Ilia had her arms around him almost before he hit the ground once again.
"We did it!" the girl said enthusiastically as she squeezed her friend tight.
"Yeah, we did!" Sun agreed as he ruffled the girl's damp, unkempt hair. "What about the… the thing? Is it safe? Where's Maria?"
"Maria's fine," Ilia insisted. "And she's got the thing. She gave us an address, a-"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, now," the brown-haired male said as he approached the pair, holding up a hand. Marrow, Harriet, and the other woman with the hammer assembled around him, forming an intimidating wall of muscles and high-tech weaponry. "No one's going anywhere until we have a little chat- after all, from what I've heard, it was your ship that brought these grimm to Mantle along with it. Care to explain?"
"They were being chased," the blonde woman with the arm-mounted crossbow interrupted as she stepped up to Sun's side, her sheep-eared friend standing opposite of her. "May saw it. She was at the docks when they arrived. This isn't their fault! Talk to them all you want, but don't treat them as hostiles! They're helping Mantle!"
"Be that as it may," the man replied, "we will need an official report about what happened here. We haven't seen selkiles in Mantle in ages, and the people are going to want an explanation for that leviathan creeping up on Atlas."
"And you'll get one, I'm sure," the woman insisted as she moved a bit closer to the man. "But for now, what matters i-"
"Hold that thought," Sun insisted as he slipped past the man and began to jog down the docks after Weiss, Yang, and Jaune.
The green flames coming from Penny Polendina's feet died down slightly as she slowly and carefully guided herself into an upright landing. The android girl immediately put her hands upon her hips and blew out a breath as the teens approached.
"Well, that was quite a fight," the girl mused before offering the group a wide smile. "Mantle hasn't been under threat like that since l-"
"Penny!" Yang yelled as she swept the girl into a bone-crushing hug. The android blinked rapidly in surprise as her arms were pinned to her sides, and she looked down into Yang's tangled, damp mass of hair.
"…'Penny'?" the girl repeated as she tilted her head. "And… do I know you…?"
Yang's heart suddenly felt as icy as her soaked skin and clothing as she pulled back and gave her friend a horrified look.
"What… the hell are you talking about?" Yang asked cautiously as Weiss raised a hand to cover her mouth, looking equally stunned.
"Who is Penny?" the girl asked as she quirked a brow. "And who are all of you…?"
Author's Note:
That… is a lot of characters. Time to finally check back in on Blake, and maybe Ruby's crew.
-RD