"Is that… water?"
Weiss strained to listen carefully as she continued down the tunnel, her magnum revolver drawn and held upright. The sound was faint, but clearly present, and seemed to be coming from somewhere below them.
"It sounds like it, yes," Weiss confirmed with a nod toward Yang, who walked at her side. "The central chamber is supposedly far below our starting point, and if it's submerged… getting to any dust that may still be here will be nearly impossible."
"Not impossible… but messy," Harriet replied as she continued to walk at the front of the pack. "We could drain water if we have to, but there's no way of doing it without getting Jacques involved. It would get complicated, to say the least. Let's hope this is an easy smash and grab."
"About that," Yang began. "We're dealing with at least one geist. What's the plan if it possesses and mobilizes dust? Attacking it head-on would be a big problem unless we've got a lot of space."
"Not if you hit only the mask," Harriet pointed out. "If it comes to that point, then surgical precision is the name of the game, and you leave it to us."
"Then why even bring us with you, if you knew that a geist was likely the endgame?" Weiss asked. "Is our role just to redirect it and find an opening for the Aces?"
"Partially… but grimm almost never travel or hunker down solo. The fodder's all yours… or whatever other non-geist grimm we find down here," Harriet explained.
Yang let out a small noise of frustration before rolling her neck.
"…I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. Just don't count us out as totally useless."
"I wouldn't," Harriet confirmed with a brief glance over her shoulder. "I've seen both of you fight. You know what you're doing… but keep in mind, you didn't even make it through a full year of Beacon."
"Even so, we're ready and willing to learn," Weiss reassured. "I'm comfortable speaking for all of us, in that regard."
"It seems that way. Been hitting the firing range with Marrow lately, or so I've heard?" Harriet asked with a smirk that was totally lost in the semidarkness.
"…I have…" Weiss confirmed. "He's been incredibly helpful and professional."
"I'd expect nothing less," Harriet replied before continuing to walk in silence for a while. The women rounded a bend in the tunnel before Harriet began to speak again, her words seeming almost forced. "Marrow… he's a good man. A caring man. Maybe a little too caring, but maybe that's just his style."
"Wow," Yang observed. "Did that backhanded compliment really hurt that much to say?"
"Yang, please," Weiss cut in.
"No, seriously. I'd like to know," Yang pushed as she moved to walk right beside Harriet. "Why is it so hard for you to treat the other Aces like friends, or at least colleagues instead of faceless drones? I know it's 'not just you,' before you play that card."
"Because we've lost one of our own, before," Harriet snapped. "Back before Marrow joined up, we had another man with us, and we lost him in the field. He was a friend, and his death made it pretty clear that keeping him close was a mistake. I don't bother getting close to the people I work with to prevent letting something like that break me again. Is that what you needed to hear? Some people have reasons for being the way they are that they don't feel like explaining every time they're asked."
Yang stopped abruptly, and Weiss came to a halt soon after. Harriet continued walking, leaving the pair behind as the glowing circle from her chest-mounted flashlight bobbed and reflected upon the stone before her. Just as suddenly as she had stopped, Yang began to walk at a brisk pace, her usually confident expression replaced by something far more grim.
"Harriet…"
"I told you that the Aces have our way, and your team has yours. They're both valid, and now you have some idea as to why we work the way we do. Marrow wasn't there for the loss, so he tries to connect with us in ways that not all of us appreciate. Leave it there, and let me keep everyone at arm's length. We'll get along better and work together more effectively if you do. And no, I'm not going to just suddenly want to talk about it on a random Tuesday a few weeks from now, so don't bother asking."
"We won't," Weiss answered for Yang as she hurried to catch up. "And we'll tell the others to keep their distance, without going into detail."
"It's not about 'keeping distance', or disliking any of you," Harriet tried to explain with a brief glance over her shoulder. "It's about respect for the way people handle things. Everyone's got b-"
The echoing wail of an ear-splitting scream rang out through the tunnels, causing all three women to jump and raise their weapons. Two more shorter screams were soon to follow, along with the sound of a heavy thud and scrabbling against stone.
"I-ilia?" Yang asked, her eyes wide as she frantically looked over at Weiss.
"Well it sure as hell isn't Elm!" Harriet said as she gritted her teeth and engaged the bionic harness from her back to extended and wrap around her arms. "Come on! We have to get there!"
The tunnel was suddenly illuminated in full by crackling flashes of lightning as Harriet disappeared, leaving Weiss and Yang to begin running after her in a full sprint. Weiss transferred her revolver to her left hand and drew Myrtenaster with her right, as Yang cocked Ember Celica and extended the gauntlets down into their fully outstretched forms. Another scream rang out as they reached an intersection of tunnels, and both women immediately turned to their right and began to thunder down the path.
"Yang, do you have any signal down here!?" Weiss asked in a frantic voice.
The other girl pulled her scroll from her pocket, only to suck in a tense breath as she slipped the device back into her pants.
"None. We're on our own, though Ilia's team should be with her. The hell is even going on!?"
"Only one way to find out! Keep running!" Weiss encouraged as they reached a long, downward slope.
A flicker of lightning flashed near the bottom, and Weiss was the first to jump onto the angled stone and begin riding the path downward.
"Ilia! We're coming!" Yang yelled over the sound of terrified wailing down at the base of the slope.
Within seconds, she and Weiss had arrived into the wide, dust-lined chamber that Ilia had entered mere minutes before. The chameleon faunus was backed up against a perpendicular wall with her head in her hands, sobbing hysterically as Harriet kneeled before her. Another set of voices was yelling from down a tunnel next to the girl, though Weiss' attention was on the pile of boulders taking up most of the center of the room. The ceiling was a high, concave, dome-shaped fixture from which the rocks had obviously fallen, and beneath them was a sight unlike any the girl had ever seen.
Buried beneath the rubble were several bodies, reduced to bone and wearing tattered rags. The half-crushed skull of a faunus with ram's horns was visibly poking out from beneath a rock, with several smaller bones shattered and strewn about around it. Several arms and legs in various states of destruction were jutting from within the rocks, and the stone floor beneath the rubble was discolored to a sickening, deep brown. Several errant pieces of bone were scattered about the chamber, along with discarded articles of torn clothing. A skeleton's entire torso reaching desperately toward Weiss from underneath a boulder caused her to turn away and bring her hand up over her mouth, both to keep from screaming and vomiting at the sight.
"Ilia!" Yang cried as she rushed forward and kneeled to join Harriet. As she put her hand upon Ilia's shoulder, she was met with another panicked wail, followed by sharp nails slashing across her skin. Yang retracted her hand with a hiss, but gripped her friend's shoulder once again all the same. "Ilia, snap out of it! It's us!"
"Ilia!" Sun's voice called faintly from down the tunnel. "Ilia, we're coming!"
"What…?" Harriet asked as she stood and began to approach the obstructing rocks and the shallow water beneath them. "Hey! Sun, are Clover and Elm with you!?"
Harriet was answered with a resounding bang, the source of which was powerful enough to dislodge several of the boulders blocking the tunnel on her side. She quickly backed up and shone her light upon the walls, checking for any sort of cracks or structural weaknesses. Just as she opened her mouth to give the all clear to the team breaking their way through, high caliber gunshots rang out behind her.
"Grimm!" Weiss yelled before firing off another shot. "Coming down the slope! We're trapped in here!"
"Break through now!" Harriet called as another impact hit the barrier of rock, dislodging several stones. The head of Elm's hammer became visible through the gap, and Harriet waved to get the woman's attention. "We've got grimm! Get in here!"
"On it!" Elm called before pulling back for another swing as Harriet ran off toward the sound of gunfire.
With another mighty swing, Elm shattered a large boulder and created an opening the size of a small window through the barrier. The moment she pulled back her hammer, Sun flew through the gap and began to sprint down the tunnel, his gunchuks whirling and his face set into a rigidly serious expression. He flung one of his weapons outward as he saw a beowulf walk past the tunnel opening and fired off a round, catching the beast in the chest and sending it flying toward the heap of boulders in the center of the room.
"Ilia!?" Sun called again, only to emerge from the tunnel right next to her.
The faunus girl had tears streaming down her face, though she had finally gotten to her feet and taken up her weapon. Her entire body shook violently, and her eyes were full of terror. The pointed tip of her weapon shook, tracing an unsteady path through the air as she pointed to where Weiss, Yang, and Harriet were busy fighting off a flood of grimm emerging into the tunnel. Sun's eyes followed the path, only briefly lingering on the broken bodies near the center of the room.
"S-sun, w-we can't…"
"I know, we don't have time!" Sun agreed as he turned and assembled his weaponry into a staff. "But the second we get out of here, we're spending the rest of the day comforting you!"
Immediately after his reassurance, Sun leapt into action and summoned forth his semblance. Three sparkling clones began to bound toward the slope as he took up a meditative stance, controlling their movements through sheer power of will. The phantom faunus stood sentinel near the tunnel entrance, beating back any additional grimm that tried to claw their way through the blockade. With a flourish of Myrtenaster, Weiss erected a black sigil just before Sun's team of spirits, effectively slowing down the movements of the writhing black mass beyond it.
"Alright, people, we need a plan!" Clover announced as he and Elm ran into the chamber. "I need your consent to manage everyone's aura levels! Are you with me!?"
A series of affirmations rang throughout the room as Harriet and Yang contended with the pack of beowulfs that had made it into the chamber, near the wall inlaid with natural dust.
"We should head out the way you came!" Harriet called as she slammed a fist coated in steel into the jaw of one of the invading grimm. "Start a retreat!"
"Weiss!" Clover called. "How long can you hold that glyph? I can funnel aura to you to extend it as we make our way out!"
"I… usually, only a few sec-"
Without warning, Sun's summoned clones disappeared entirely as he felt his aura siphoned away. Before he could even react, he was left defenseless as stacked barriers of multiple colors coalesced around Weiss, giving her entire body a rainbow sheen.
"Focus, and keep it on! Everyone, back through the t-"
A deafening blast rang throughout the chamber as the body of a beowulf slammed into the wall coated in dust, triggering a small explosion. Almost immediately, the entire chamber began to shake as the mass of boulders and bodies sank straight through the floor, creating a large hole into a cavern far below. Harriet and Yang both stumbled backward as more of the floor began to collapse, while Sun, Clover, and Elm managed to leap clear of the falling section of floor. The ground fell out from beneath Ilia as she ran to reach for him, and Weiss was caught off guard as she fell backward into the pit amid the rain of crumbling stone. Her protective glyph dropped almost immediately, and several grimm flew from the tunnel and began clawing through the air as they poured through the opening and straight into the massive hole.
A panicked noise left Sun as he scrabbled toward the edge of the hole, his breathing wild as he reached frivolously down toward the pit. Far below was a massive waterfall pouring into a deep pool of water, which was glowing due to the giant dust crystals growing from the stone at the bottom. Sun watched helplessly as Yang threw her arms behind herself and blasted her way through the air to solid ground, as the other three continued to fall toward a massive body of water.
Weiss was next to save herself, the rocket mechanisms on her heels triggering and sending her flying through the air as she twisted backward and summoned a pair of black glyphs in midair. Ilia fell straight through the center of one, her fall slowing slightly until she landed atop a white sigil placed just beneath it, only a few feet above the glowing water. Harriet's momentum carried her just past Weiss' efforts, and she barely missed the glyph. Before Weiss could try again, Harriet tumbled down into the glowing pool amid the falling fragments of rock and grimm, just as several tangles of long, black hair began to break the surface of the water.
Author's Note:
…four chapters. The mines are definitely going to be four chapters in total.
Arboretum is still slated to return next week, though the update schedule will be somewhat different. Arboretum and Enough is Never Enough will be updating on alternating weeks from here on out, while this story gets weekly updates until Volume 7 is finished.
One final note, because I keep forgetting to mention it- I actually like Jaune quite a lot, but dunking on his hair is way too much fun to stop. He's already played a significant role in getting Corsac on board, and will continue to be significant in this volume and beyond.
-RD