Chapter 46 – the fall of beaKon

Goodwitch must have been in a forgiving mood, for she accepted her riding crop back without instantly snapping all of their necks. It may have had something to do with the fact that her beloved school was currently subject to the mindless rampages of untold numbers of Grimm. Beowolves, Ursai, Giant Nevermores, even some large Grimm like King Taijitu and Deathstalkers – it was as though someone had up and told every monster in the continent of Sanus to converge on Beacon.

Winter had filled them in. She'd been watching the tournament on her scroll to keep abreast of the developments, hoping to give K an update on what had happened so their alibi could be watching the fight together on the TV.

Penny had been…

Ilia couldn't even think it. She'd seen the happy go lucky girl just hours ago, smiling like she didn't have a care in the world. Apparently, a referee had called off the fight due to some interruption in the computer system recording the whole thing, but Coco Adel, Penny's third year opponent, didn't get the memo. She must've had mental breakdown mid-match and felt the need to unload 5,000 semblance-enhanced mini-gun Hard Light Dust rounds into Penny when her back was turned. Penny's aura had caught the first 200. The rest had…had…well, Winter had been kind enough to not show Ilia the recording, but she could imagine.

They had been keeping Goodwitch in a walk-in freezer closet behind Beacon's cafeteria. When the five of them emerged and looked upon the carnage, Ilia could barely keep in her gasp. This wasn't just some half-assed assault on the school by a handful of Beowolves that snuck past the perimeter defenses. This was what fallen villages in the remote outskirts of the world looked like, not a state-of-the-art hunter academy. Kuroyuri on a rainy day would have made for a prettier sight. Never before had an entire kingdom been so completely inundated with wave after wave of snarling, clawing, biting Grimm.

The Grimm were all wrong, though. They weren't supposed to be this many, so close. Sure, the negativity that had been building up since Mercury's cheating ass was revealed to the world would have exploded and attracted some, but not this many. Flocks of Nevermore and Gryphons were tearing the Valean bullheads out of the air before the hunters on board could even be flown into the school to aid in its defense. The students were fighting back, but what was an unprepared, unarmed first year team supposed to do when they were swarmed by fifty Ursai Major all at once?

There weren't many dead human or Faunus bodies, but Ilia didn't know for sure if that was because the numerous teams of four currently engaged on the scene has successfully evacuated wounded and civilians, or because the Grimm had simply devoured the fallen. The darkness wasn't helping either, as the human majority of the hunters would be having trouble seeing their enemy, while Grimm sensed negativity equally be it a bright sunny morning or the darkest pitch black of midnight.

The school looked like it was on the verge of falling, if the damage incurred so far didn't classify it as already fallen. Fires had broken out in many of the buildings, and some had collapsed entirely. The only seemingly unaffected area was–

"The CCT," said Adam. "Let's go."

Goodwitch turned on him. "If you think you can–"

"Stop us or stop the Grimm," said Blake. "The choice is yourself."

She glared daggers at them, but at this point, they were immune to her angry stares after having been on the receiving end of them in so many classes. While being kidnapped had clearly raised some questions about their intentions, Goodwitch knew that the Grimm were the bigger threat with their mindless aggression than K, and her talents were far better spent on the waves of mindless enemies. She ran off, throwing a purple comet of Dust into the wing of a Giant Nevermore and tearing it out of the sky.

"Should we–"

"With the maiden powers, we'd be able to clear out these Grimm in an instant," said Adam. "The paltry number of lives we could save now would be nothing compared to what pushing the objective and finishing the mission could get us. We need to get you two to the vault."

Ilia and Blake nodded and began to sprint with him towards the tower.

Adam cleared a path for the girls. He could expend as much energy and aura as it took, as long as both of them were completely fresh. Either Blake or Ilia would become the maiden, and they would be able to wipe these Grimm off the face of Remnant in an instant. He personally preferred Blake, seeing as how Ozpin recommended her based on her file and was an expert on maiden power compatibility, but Ilia would also be viable. Whoever they could stick inside the machine first would go.

From what he understood of the maiden powers, a fully trained maiden could flick her fingers and level and entire five story building. The girls would lack practical training, but their mental acuity and discipline was top notch after spending a life as Atlesian special forces, which would probably be a good enough starting point.

Wilt beheaded a Beowolf before it could howl to its allies. Adam smashed its corpse into the ground to stop the convulsing death throes, then flung it at a Gryphon that descended from the skies block their path. A Creep ran up to him from his right and tried to gore the side of his leg with its horns, but he kicked the monster's extended nose to snap its neck, all the while staying in motion and heading towards the CCT. Every second he lost was a second that Blake didn't spend in the air, cremating Grimm from afar and turning this battle in civilization's favor.

"Wait!" called Winter.

Adam skidded to a halt.

"Weiss…she's still my–"

"Go!" Adam roared. Then, he added, "Rally the students! Get them to corral the Grimm in a smaller area!"

While he certainly would've preferred to have her by his side, there was no time to argue. Adam may have been a walking bullheadedness joke, but when Winter set her mind upon something, rarely if ever could she be deterred. However, they could still use splitting up to their advantage. If they acted methodically, the students of the four academies could push the creatures of Grimm into a deserted section of the school, or maybe the forest around it, actually making it easier for the maiden to destroy them all in one hit. He didn't know for sure, but he assumed that scattered Grimm would be harder for Blake to pick off. Winter nodded and ran off, summoning Glyphs beneath her to augment her speed. Her last action to aid K was to unleash a summoned stream of juvenile Nevermore into the air and setting them upon the nearby Grimm, acting as a beacon within Beacon to summon them away from K. Not all of the monsters went after her, but it certainly made their path much clearer.

Good luck, my love.

She and the horde of Grimm following her disappeared behind a building, and Adam kept running. With their route to the CCT emptier, Adam was now able to mostly pick off the Grimm in the way with Blush. We're almost there…

"At least there aren't paladins," said Blake from behind him, shooting at the center of mass of a pulsating black cloud of small Nevermore.

"What?"

"I was saying, at least it's just Grimm. There aren't any hacked Atlesian drones or reprogrammed airships that we also would need to fight simultaneously."

Ilia looked at her strangely. "O…kay? Why would there be?"

"There wouldn't. I'm just saying, that would make this a whole lot tougher. We gotta look on the bright side of things."

Adam ignored Blake's cryptically backhanded positivity and pressed on. From here, he could see the entrance to the CCT. If they just pushed on a little further–

The ground shook.

Adam steadied himself, then waited a second. No further seismic activity happened.

"What was that?" asked Ilia.

"We don't have time," answered Adam. "Whatever it was, we'll deal with it later."

It was probably just another Grimm, this one bigger or mutated to have some strange Remnantquaking powers – perhaps an elder Goliath, or a Deathstalker that hadn't bothered to die in centuries and was now overgrown. No Grimm, regardless of how big it had grown, ever survived more than three slices of Adam's semblance, so he didn't think about it any further.

A Gryphon landed in front of him, but before Adam could dispatch it with a carefully aimed shotgun blast to the throat, a metal foot landed directly on its back, breaking its spine. The Grimm sputtered and screeched until a second foot kicked right through its skull.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the animal kingdom themselves."

Mercury Black climbed off the decaying Grimm corpse and stepped in their way.

"Just between us, I was hoping to–"

Adam Wilt popped out of its scabbard at full speed, severing Mercury's right leg clean off. Without aura to protect his extremities, he was no more dangerous than a Schnee robot, the likes of which Adam cut down by the hundreds.

Mercury swung his arms around to catch himself, then hopped a few steps to his right to steady himself. "Gah, you stupid son of a–"

Adam didn't stick around to listen to the lopsided boy's insults, to finish him off, or even to give him a gentle push and watch Humpty Dumpty go tumbling down. He was a non-threat. The Grimm would probably pick up on how pissed he was and do the job for Adam. Running right past the barely bipedal but definitively enraged huntsman, Adam did make sure to grab his sword before continuing on, though.

When they got to the CCT, the elevator didn't respond when Blake pushed on its control pad. Blake pressed the open button again and again, but it seemed entirely powered down. That's not a good sign.

Blake kicked the closed doors. "Stupid thing's stuck!"

"Just force it open!" roared Adam. "Blake, you and me! Ilia, catch the doors before they close when we go in!"

Adam stuck Wilt through the doors' opening at the top, and Blake did the same at the bottom. Together, they pried it open, using their advanced weapons like simple crowbars. It was a good thing Ruby wasn't here to see it; she would've thrown a fit at the mistreatment of 'their precious babies.'

Ilia put her hands on the rims of both doors when they were open wide enough to pass through. Adam and Blake crawled through, and Adam held the portal open for Ilia as she followed. The doors violently returned to their original closed positions and sealed behind them the second he let go, nearly crushing his fingers as he slipped them out in the nick of time.

Ilia held her hand up to the key pad to input the code, then cursed.

"What's wrong?"

"Take a look."

Blake peeked down. The entire pad had been destroyed, with bits of crushed metal and cut wires sticking out.

"The school is already in chaos," asserted Adam. "We've come too far to stop here. Screw low profiles – we're getting down there, one way or another. Blake, hit me."

He held out Wilt. Blake slammed Gambol Shroud across the flat of the blade thrice, and it began to glow.

"Hold on tight."

Adam swung upwards, destroying the roof of the elevator and the cables that kept it tethered. The entire carriage shifted once, then a second time, then dropped into free fall. Blake felt weightlessness as she rapidly began to descend into the dark hole in the ground.

The shaft looked like it went down forever, but Blake could see the end coming after only a few seconds of falling.

When it was close, Blake stabbed her sword into the walls around them, slowing her descent. Adam did the same, and the elevator beneath them crashed into the ground while the two Faunus controlled their falls. Sparks erupted from the friction of the blades cutting through the stone walls.

Ilia, on the other hand, waited until the last second and threw up Lightning Lash like a grappling hook. It wrapped around Wilt, still embedded in the walls of the elevator shaft, and went taught. Ilia used her whip to convert her vertical momentum into horizontal speed, and she landed in a somersault inside the chamber. Blake dug her sword out of the wall and hopped down to join her companion.

The vault was so much bigger than she'd been expecting, and taller too. From the description Ilia had given (said description based only on Hazel's hurried speech before the poison killed him), it sounded like a tight, narrow hole in the ground where Ozpin confined his dirtiest secrets to avoid the light of day from ever shining upon them. This massive, spacious chamber was more like a grand hall befitting a larger than life king's castle in a storybook fable, or perhaps one of Vacuo's mighty cathedrals. The fact that there were no Dust-powered lights, but instead green flaming torches embedded directly into the pillars themselves only added to the parachronistic mystique of the room.

And there, at the distant end of the room, was the aura transfer device. Despite defining such an important part of their lives, it actually seemed so tiny, at the back of the hall, dwarfed by the twin pillars that rose side by side out of the ground next to it. Ozpin stood at the control console, turning around to face who had suddenly intruded upon his inner sanctum. His cane was unclipped from his belt, and the look on his face told them that they were not going to be received kindly. Blake also could see both pods of the machine, with a golden light flowing through the cables that connected them.

Inside one of the pods was the scarred, lifeless body of a woman that Blake assumed had to be Amber, the former Fall maiden. Her entire dark skinned body was exposed, save for a few thin strips of plain cut white cloth that covered her breasts and waist. Burns made out by the discoloration on her skin fell down across both sides of her face, primarily on her cheeks, but some extending as far as her forehead. There was a glow around her body, but it was fading away, and Blake had a feeling that she knew why.

Inside the other pod was the screaming, thrashing, convulsing body of Ruby Rose, the woman that Blake assumed had just become the current Fall maiden.

Author's Notes

Well, there's no going back from this. We've still got one death left to cover, and now that...uh...um.

Yeah. Never mind.

Apologies for another short chapter. If anyone is wondering why they didn't force their way into the vault on day one given that they had the ability to do so, recall that K was trying to avoid breaking the Vale-Atlas treaty. There's no way they could've brute forced into the CCT in broad daylight, given how frequently utilized it is.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!