Chapter 10

As everyone was launched, Clayton sailed a good bit shorter than the rest, as he weighed more and was less aerodynamic. That, however hadn't hindered him in the slightest. Once he hit treetop level, his raw upper body strength and arboreal locomotive skills allowed him to swing from tree branch to tree branch, in an attempt to catch up to Ruby.


With no real other options, Ruby used her gift of speed, to meet the forest floor running, the effect of her semblance allowing her to then appropriately decelerate to a complete stop without injury, looking left then right, She decided that Clayton had to of landed behind her, and turned around to run back West.


In the air above, Pale held his hat in place with his left hand, while preparing to snag his bayonet into the side of a tree with his right hand, making an attempt to slow his fall. The blade dug deep into the bark of a thick oak timber, and all forward momentum was halted, as he started sliding down, the edge of the oversized knife stopping him only a foot from the forest floor.


Weiss at the apex of her flight, created an angled glyph with her hand, the barrier effectively providing a platform for her to land on. Once she'd slid to a stop on top of it, the heiress of SHI, created more glyphs, forming a sort of escalator, as one would appear below and in front of her, the one she had stepped off would disappear, allowing her to safely walk to the forest floor.


Siniy, accepting that he was SOL for a real landing strategy, just decided to let his aura take the hit from the fall. He went limp, dropping his gun, and bounced off the ground twice before coming to a stop. With a pained groan, he stood up, cracked his neck, and retrieved his weapon. There was very little chance he would run into any grimm that his gun wouldn't be able to keep at a distance, and Siniy himself was capable of far worse, so jogging around at a quarter his normal aura was acceptable.


Yang was more than happy to expend the magazines of both her gauntlets to slow her flight down to a manageable speed with recoil. Once at a "safe" velocity, she used the same effect of recoil to jump from tree to tree, as she dropped lower through the forest with every assisted jump, until finally she hit the ground and rolled over her shoulder. "Nailed it!" She said to herself once on her feet.


Pyrrha cheated a little. Using her semblance, though hidden to the world, she was able to push away from her shield, and rapidly slow her flight through the air, before using the metal disk to slam through several tree branches, the last of which she was able to roll over onto, straddling it. Surveying her surroundings, Pyrrha saw Jaune careening through the air, his heater shield acting as a sort of drag chute and less like a battering ram. He'd hit the leafiest parts of a tree not far from her, before tumbling through the underbrush, and then landing on his feet, though stumbling forward onto his shield. Pyrrha cringed. Even with a large pool of aura to draw from, that had to have hurt.


Blake, feeling her righting reflex working overtime to get her feet and hands facing the ground, saw no reason to try hiding her nature as a faunus in that particular moment, and extended the claws on her fingers, allowing her to grab at the nearest tree, and scrape her way down. Stopping a few feet off the ground, Blake ripped her fingers off the tree, and shook her hands out, the feeling of her claws being friction burned stinging a little, before she hid them once more.


Halcyone attempted to use the recoil of her gun to slow her fall, the few patetium rounds she had being only just enough to make the crash right into a tree acceptably less painful than it would have been otherwise. Once she'd dropped out of the broadleaf oak, felt her left leg buckle upon landing, fell over, cried internally for a whole minute in pain, shoved her knee cap and tib-fib back in place, then adjusted her leg brace accordingly, she started heading north towards the relics. If she found someone along the way, more power to them for becoming her partner.


Ren's landing was rather par for the course, considering this wasn't his first time dropping off a cliff into a forest. Sinking Stormflower's blades into the trunk of a tree, he rode down and around on his momentum, before rolling over his shoulder once on the ground to equalize his energy. Standing, Ren put his weapon's away. He wouldn't need them, at least until he found a partner. Naturally, he could hear Nora incoming from overhead. "WEEEEEEEEEEE!" She screamed in joy, before slamming gut first into the tree branch above him. Ren looked up, then rolled his eyes somewhat in good humor. "Ah!" Nora said, as she let go of the branch to help tuck in her legs and skirt out of modesty. Consequently she fell out of the tree. Ren stepped one pace to the side to avoid being landed on, and looked down at Nora, who took a breath. "Berrrra!" Nora said, before she giggled at her own attempt to make a sloth noise.

"I don't think sloths make that sound." Ren commented as he helped his lifelong friend up.

Nora blew a raspberry before she pulled her hammer off of her back. "Come on Ren, let's go kill us some grimm." Nora said, as she started walking north. Ren sighed, as he followed behind her, watching the manic girl "sneak" up behind an Ursa, this giant bear grimm, to smack it. Looking to his right, Ren saw a beowulf about 20 feet away that had its back to him, likely searching for the screaming that Nora had done on her way into the forest. Clearly Ren was still off its "radar" so to speak, but it had been a few months, and Ren wanted to see if he still had "the big sneak" as Nora called it. He whistled sharply to get the monster's attention, and it turned. Looking directly at him, the beowulf locked eyes with Ren, and then turned away. Ren smirked, before pulling out his right pistol, and sending a burst of bullet's into the grimm's back, killing it.


Clayton thought he saw movement off to his left, and altered his course to find whatever he saw. Dropping to the forest floor, and walking the last five feet on three limbs, Clayton shoved a tree branch out of the way with his shotgun axe, and was immediately met with the muzzle end of a rifle, and a long bayonet attached to it. "Ah great." The boy in gray said, lowering the gun.

"You don't seem too particularly happy to have found a partner so soon after landing." Clayton said, pointing out the long engraving down the nearby tree.

"You're not exactly my first pick, to put it lightly… Shit, might as well play nice… Names Pale." The now identified boy said, holding out a hand. Curse his luck, damn it all, to perdition with it. Why'd Pale have to be found by the monkey of all people… Pale couldn't stalk the Belladonna if he had a teammate constantly on his back that was one of the animals, worse still if the ape was one of the White Fang. With a sigh, Pale decided to bite the bullet and accept his teammate. He could work around this once conditions were different and not immediately life threatening. Speaking of life threatening, was that a growl coming from behind him?


Halcyone hadn't seen any action for the entire 10 minutes she'd been walking. No grimm either, though that could have been good or bad. A tingle in the base of her neck was about all she needed, the well honed survival instinct of a Vacuo native told her there was something charging towards her. Rolling to the right, Halcyone just managed to scrape by as a black demonic boar, shrouded in darkness, came wheeling through the bushes behind her. She pulled her rifle out, popped it to its full length, and pulled the trigger as many times as she could, as fast as her finger would allow, spraying down the monster, riddling its backside with bullets.

Turning quickly, as she felt another one creeping up behind her, Halcyone converted her rifle into its machete configuration, and cut deep into the faceplate of the grimm pig. Kicking the beast in the head, to dislodge her machete, she wound up, and swung back into the same cut, cleaving clear into the monster's brain. A howl came from behind her, there was a beowulf with the two boarbatusks.

Attempting to free her weapon from the still fading body of the grimm, she panicked for a second before a hand grabbed her by the scruff of her jacket, yanking her, her weapon, and the corpse of the boarbatusk with it. She landed on her ass with a thud, and watched as the short man she'd seen the day prior began to hose down the creation of darkness with his machine gun, as he fired it from the hip, the lead ripping chunks of flesh out, before a cluster of rounds practically decapitated the monster.

Halcyone got to her feet, and looked down at the man, and nodded as he turned to look at her. "Halcyone Lacquer." She said slowly, holding a hand to her chest.

"Don't insult my intelligence, and don't belittle your own." He said, before lifting his gun so the muzzle pointed towards the sky. Halcyone was not expecting him to sound so sophisticated. "Name's Siniy Garnet… We should keep moving." He said, turning to leave.

"Lead the way short king!" Halcyone said jovially.

"And don't call me short." Siniy said over his shoulder.


As Ruby doubled back towards where she thought Clayton had landed she came sliding to a halt, finding herself face to face with none other than Weiss Schnee. The two girls looked each other up and down, with weapons drawn, before Weiss "hmmmfph"ed. "I'll tolerate you as a partner." She said, before turning, and walking away. "But by no means does this make us friends." She added.

Ruby held a finger up, before puffing air into her cheeks, and restraining herself, before conceding to follow Weiss.


Stepping through the underbrush, Pyrrha found Jaune stembelling his way north. "Jaune." She said, catching his attention.

The tall blond turned to look at her, and smiled. "Oh… Well, I guess we're partners now." Jaune said, before the sound of a chaoked roar came from the nearby brush. Turning, Jaune shouted, "WHOA!" as a house cat sized grimm with only two legs, ran out from the shrubbery, and locked it's jaws around Jaune's left leg. The blond yelled in shock, as he tried pulling his leg out of the monster's grip, all the while spinning on one foot. "Get off, get off, get off!"

Pyrrha, having never actually had to fight grimm before, tried lining up a quick downward thrust with her spear, but at seemingly every chance, Jaune hopped away. "Stupid creeps!" Jaune said, before planting his left leg, and kicking the grimm's head with his right foot, the monster hissing in annoyance still locked around his leg. The initial shock wearing off, Jaune had calmed down enough now to realize that the grimm biting into his leg wasn't doing any real damage to his aura. "I hate these things." Jaune said to Pyrrha, before finally stabbing the monster through its back twice with his sword.

As the creature died, Pyrrha looked confused. "Are you alright, Jaune?"

"Huh?" Jaune asked, as the monster's jaw unlocked from around his leg as it faded away.

"Are you alright?" Pyrrha repeated.

"Why wouldn't I be? It's just a creep. I have to kill these things at home all the time." Jaune said, kicking what was left of the grimm's corpse lightly.

"It's just that you seemed a little…" Pyrrha trailed off. "Calm, all things considered?" She settled on.

Jaune shrugged. "I mean it spooked me at first, but like I said, it's just a creep. Most damage one that size could do is bust a tractor axle with their tunnels. I might not be any good with it, but I've got enough aura that I could have let that thing keep biting me all day."

"Is that… A normal size for a creep?" Pyrrha asked.

Jaune raised an eyebrow before he spun in place. "No, usually, creeps are a little bigger, think... Atlesian Shepard, in size."

Pyrrha shivered at the thought. "Well then, let's get moving north before anything worse shows up."


Yang had slowed her pace to a brisk walk, as she was having a hard time finding anyone. "Helloooo!? Ruby!? Clayton?!" Yang asked, before she jumped over a fallen log. "I'd settle for Jaune right now." She said to herself before coming around a thick tree, and stopping herself as the blade of a wakizashi was held to her throat. Glancing left, Yang saw a raven haired girl, with dark purple sunglasses obscuring her eyes. She tilted her head down to make eye contact with Yang over them.

The girl pulled the sword away from Yang's neck before speaking. "You're making too much noise." She said, sheathing the weapon in it's metal cleaver scabbard, before walking away. "North is this way."

"And who might you be then?" Yang asked, an eyebrow raised.

The girl looked over her shoulder. "Blake, Blake Beaumont."

Yang smirked as she started following the girl. "Alright then, Blake, I'm Yang. Guess we're obligatory friends now." She said cheerfully.

Blake rolled her eyes playfully from behind her sunglasses.