Chapter 8: Stolen Tongues

"Your honor, my client would like to plead 'based and redpilled' instead of 'racially aggravated battery.'"

— 20 —

Beneath the metro station on Rue-du-Capitaine-Raoul, Coco focused on her breathing and nothing else. It was easier to do on the surface, even in the industrial pollution on this side of the city that made the air sting the lungs. Easier to just breathe that filth than the clean, rocky air down here in the unfinished metro station filled with abandoned excavation machines, the infrequent flood lights that didn't light anything sufficiently, and the outpost of soldiers bivouacked near the bottom of the ladder leading into the hole in the ground.

Whenever she focused on anything, anything at all, her peripherals filled with the blackness of the underground. Professor Oobleck had told her that a human's peripheral dark vision was superior, and a good night tactic to get eyes on something was to look at the edges of your target. But it meant she had to remove her shades and act like she was abusing botox to keep her feelings bottled. And all she saw in her enhanced peripheral vision were the carved cavern of the unfinished station, the low ceiling, the puddles of water, and the fact that the walls were oh so much closer when she could see them.

She and Team CFVY were the last ones down the ladder. Jaune had gone in first, him and his rucksack. Before they had met with LaChance, the boy had insisted they stop at a wilderness outfitters shop geared towards people going to hike on the mountain to buy backpacks and other survival gear. Apparently he was the only one who came pre-equipped with the stuff, and refused to even conscience the mission without it. It was why she had this heavy pack on her back, about thirty pounds. Which only added to the weight of her purse, which carried her minigun folded up. Velvet and Weiss look like they could barely carry it. And Yatsuhashi's pack was the reason CFVY was down last, as Velvet tugged on his boots to get him and his backpack unwedged from what amounted to a glorified manhole tunnel down into this subterranean hell.

Jaune's scroll buzzed. He opened it up and replied to something. With the small bit of light in the darkness, it gave her something to focus on.

Ruby: oh no ur on a mission and didn't tell me!

You: Yee

You: I'm gonna die before you can buy life insurance!

Ruby: no. I'm also on a mission and I've looked look selfie

There was a selfie of Ruby standing in front of a bridal insurance building somewhere out in Vale. Grinning like an idiot, she was flashing him the peace sign.

You: Nah. That's only for a married couples. I have demoted you from wife to bottom bitch.

Ruby: 2 late I've legally changed ur last name

The text that had alerted Jaune was a picture of his dorm room door. Someone had scratched out the name Arc and replaced it with Rose. Jaune Rose.

You: How does Yang feel about this?

Ruby: in case u survive the mission she's the reason I'm guaranteed to collect life insurance on u!

"Really cool of you to be looking over my shoulder at my private texts, Coco," Jaune said, sliding his scroll into his pocket.

Coco looked out across the unfinished metro tunnel, and immediately locked her eyes back on the boy to avoid the growing darkness in her peripherals. "I'm just amazed you're getting a signal down here. Who's your provider?"

"Dunno. Pretty sure I'm on my sister's family plan or whatever and she just hasn't removed me yet," he said.

Velvet finished getting her partner into the main chamber. Yatsuhashi brushed himself off, looking sheepish.

One of the soldiers, standing by the edge of what was probably going to be the metro platform one day, whistled. He was a big man in the camouflaged fatigues of the Royal Army. Not as big as Yatsuhashi, but few men were. The chevrons on his collar labeled him as some kind of sergeant, although Coco couldn't place the specifics. He was leaning on some big, bulky rifle and was the only man there unequipped with a flashlight or night vision goggles.

"Alright, that makes all eight of you. Tunnel is that way," he said in a tired voice like he really couldn't give less of a fuck. "If you decide to come back, don't go too fast or we'll shoot you thinking you're Grimm."

Velvet pulled out her scroll and snapped a photograph of the scene. It wasn't her Dust camera; she wasn't trying to copy his weapon. More or less just scrapbooking this event and keeping a log.

The soldier reached out and rubbed his eyes. "Don't—don't do that. No flash photography. I haven't seen the sun in days and that camera made me blind. Thank you for that."

"Oh, sorry," Velvet said, before squinting. "You're faunus."

"I didn't think there were faunus in the Royal Army," Jaune said, folding his arms.

"They didn't really talk much about the army where I was from," Velvet said, taking up a position beside her partner. "I thought they were all human."

"There's a lot of them," Jaune's partner, Blake, said. She sounded uncomfortable. "More than you would expect. Most of them come from the city of Vale."

The sergeant pursed his lips. "Hi, yes, hello, right here. Please stop talking about me in the third person to my face."

"I think the bunny girl is being racist, sarn't," one of the other soldiers chimed in, the man smoking a cigarette and lounging in a machine gun nest aimed towards a hole in the far wall.

Velvet's ears stood up. "What? No! How can I be racist? I'm faunus too!"

The big sergeant leaned forward. In the illumination of the floodlight, Coco could see the reptilian scales on his face and his slit pupils. "Yeah. Says the girl whose life is all ears. We ain't the same. You can hide what you is, and I can't. You volunteer to be a Huntress, and I'm a penal legionnaire."

"A what?" Weiss asked.

The sergeant flicked his forked tongue at her, and Weiss shrank back. "Judge gave me the choice between a labor camp or the service. I did my time, and then chose to stick around. Now are you actually going down that there tunnel to vanish out of my life forever, or are we just going to keep playing twenty questions?"

The machine gunner took a drag on a cigarette. "Twenty questions, please! This is literally the most entertainment I've gotten all week stationed down here."

Miming the action of doing push-ups while standing, the sergeant just looked at the man. The machine gunner sighed heavily and got down on the ground to do push-ups.

"That tunnel is where the dig boys broke into the old shit," he said, gesturing into the darkness with his rifle. "We've had a couple of the monsters come out, but never more than one or two at a time. Usually the Humming Lady is around when that happens."

"Huh," Jaune said, tightening the straps on his rucksack. "That rude bitch is down here?"

"At least she's capable of quietly doing her job instead of interrogating me," the sergeant said pointedly. "Now fucking git. I only know how to kill people and do paperwork. None of this talking to children bullshit."

Velvet raised her hand. "Legally speaking, at least my team are all adults."

A soldier appeared out of nowhere, popping his head up from beneath the unfinished platform. He'd written Send Nudes Not Dudes on his combat helmet. "Oh great. I was trying to look up the skirt of a minor."

Weiss snapped her legs together, pulling down on her combat skirt. Looking like she was about to vomit, she shouted, "You what? Creep!"

Oddly calm, Jaune looked over to the NCO and asked, "Yo, big sarn't, permission to kick his ass?"

"I'm not asking for permission!" Weiss snapped, hand on the hilt of her sword.

The sergeant rubbed his eyes. "Just please get out of here so I can kill half of my men without witnesses," he said, like he had given up on life.

The creep soldier ducked back into the hole in the unfinished platform he had been hiding in. His helmet and the rifle he was carrying clinked loudly, almost obnoxiously.

Jaune shook his head and hopped down off the platform. His team followed, with Weiss keeping her legs together tight enough to hide that thigh gap. Unwilling to let the boy lead this endeavor, Coco gripped her purse and jumped after to keep pace with him.

The tunnel lay across from the unfinished platform and what would have been the rail line. Looking a bit like part of the wall and floor had collapsed, beyond stood an infinite abyss of darkness leading into the heart of the world. Coco found her feet heavy, her combat heels dragging across the rock and dust. Some Atlesian philosopher had once claimed that he who stared into the abyss allowed the abyss to stare back into him. But as she looked down at the way forwards, she thought that was wrong. The abyss wasn't something that could stare into you. It was like a mouth. Something that swallowed you whole and devoured you in its infinite nothingness. A nothingness made of inky sunless shadows and walls that were just a little too close together. Without realizing she was doing it, she felt a sudden sense of vertigo and reached out to steady herself with a hand on Jaune's shoulder.

The boy regarded her evenly for a moment, before he took out his scroll. The little hard light screen seemed blindingly bright. "This should be the route they followed," he said. "Weiss and I have the map they was making before they vanished that LaChance forwarded us. So long as we follow it, we shouldn't get lost and hopefully find 'em."

Coco nodded. "Yeah, I see. Should be a straight shot through."

He shrugged. "More or less. Not quick, but we should have plenty of supplies."

Blake came up next to her partner, tugging on the straps of her backpack. "Yeah. 'Plenty.' I feel like a mule with this thing on."

He reached out to poke her, and she jumped back away from him. "If you would have joined me in the gym, your back would be strong enough to carry this easily. Tsk!"

"Soldiers carry rucksacks," Blake said with a scowl. "Hunters are supposed to travel light and live off the land."

Jaune made an expansive gesture towards the cave entrance and what would be the ruins buried beneath them. "I don't know about you, but I'm not really sure I know how to live off rocks and asbestos and whatever ancient ruins were made out of before they invented building codes."

"He has a point," Yatsuhashi said. "If you eat rocks, it ruins your teeth."

"You know this how?" Weiss asked, still casting furtive, uncomfortable glances back towards the outpost of soldiers.

Yatsuhashi shrugged, his massive sword clanking against a cast iron skillet hanging from his backpack. "Back in Mistral, my family were farmers. We sometimes had to mill rice flour by hand when the waterwheel broke for whatever reason. Little rocks get in your flour, and then in your teeth when you're eating."

Weiss made a face. "Just buy flour from the grocery store. It sounds a lot easier."

The giant of a boy cocked an eyebrow. "There is no word for a grocery store where I'm from."

"Why?" she asked.

He gave her a blank look. "I can't tell if you're mocking me, or genuinely don't know what subsistence farming is. I didn't even know flour could be white until I tried baking bread during my time in Sanctum Academy "

Weiss suddenly looked sheepish. "Oh."

Jaune waved away the conversation. "Cultural dissonance aside, y'all got lights like I asked?"

Wordlessly, Yatsuhashi took out a lantern, turned it on with a switch, and hung it against his belt. Velvet was using glow sticks, making her look like the world's least enthusiastic rave dancer. Jaune had flashlights clipped onto the straps of his rucksack. Everyone else had their own light source, keeping them illuminated, and the passage navigable.

Coco took out her scroll and set it to flashlight. "Alright. Ready to go raid ancient ruins together, Jaune?"

He shrugged, one hand on the revolver at his hip. "Like stealing panties from a drawer," he said, and carefully made his way down the pile of rocks into the ruins.

Coco took a long, deep breath and followed. She wouldn't let this get to her. Wouldn't allow herself to think that the walls were just a little too close. About how they were beneath maybe a hundred tons of rock and concrete that could collapse on them at any moment. How easy it would be to reach out and touch the wet walls of the cave, feeling along smooth limestone until it abruptly shifted into ancient black masonry from a bygone civilization.

"Is that something you've actually done?" she asked, listening to the way her voice echoed forwards and backwards.

Shamrock scoffed. "I think it's about the one thing he hasn't done."

Jaune hummed. "Only because it's a terrifying mystery what you store in your drawers. Boxers, lacy underwear, full-on commando. I'm not emotionally mature enough to handle that."

Adjusting her hat, Shamrock said, "I don't think any Huntress even wears lacy panties. Could you imagine how badly that would chafe?"

"Buy some body glide," Jaune said. "I mean, have you seen the way half of the Huntresses dress here? No offense, ladies, but Blake wears stockings and Weiss be in a dress. Don't exactly scream combat gear."

Blake made a face. "I'm actually wearing normal shorts with tights that just look like stockings."

"And all of the zippers?"

The girl gave an over-the-top shrug. "I just think they're neat. They let me adjust. Surprisingly roomy."

"I wasn't aware that booty shorts could be roomy for a girl with what you got going on," he said, acting fascinated.

"Shut up—at least it's not a dress!" she snapped with a slight blush.

"I don't wear dresses anymore!" Weiss huffed, gesturing to her legs. "See this? It's a combat skirt."

"I'm pretty sure you just made that term up, but what do I know?" Jaune said, idly looking down at the map on his scroll. "I'm wearing denim and a little cape."

"Is it just the skirt?" Coco asked, not wanting to feel left out of the conversation.

"Excuse me?" Weiss asked, tilting her head fractionally.

They paused at a little intersection. What had been a cave had given way to old masonry. Bricks covered in moss and lichen, with small, skittering things occasionally crawling around. Mostly bugs and the occasional crab. The path towards the right had caved in, and the directions indicated Team CCHS had gone to the left. Jaune paused to examine what looked like an old fresco on the wall depicting a man and a woman holding hands standing in midair before the sun, surrounded by a crowd of worshipers. Velvet took out her camera and snapped a photograph.

"I mean, you seemed pretty offended someone was trying to look up your skirt," Coco said with a shrug.

"Because the guy was a creep?" Weiss said, turning it into a sarcastic question. "I'm wearing compression shorts like I do in my school uniform. I don't think there's a girl at Beacon who doesn't. Have you seen how insanely short our skirts are?"

Coco followed Jaune's eyes and his examination. "I heard it used to be that we couldn't do that because. Anything besides the exact blouse and skirt wasn't 'in uniform' and we would get in trouble."

"And then feminism happened, right?" Jaune asked, somehow making a joke of it. It seemed to annoy Yatsuhashi. "A Huntsman I know called Qrow claimed it was the reason girls aren't wearing tiny miniskirts in every outfit by law or whatever."

"Miss me with mass politics," Coco said, waving a hand. "Like any good heroic cause, it was all done by a girl who had balls."

"Do you want to rephrase that?" Weiss asked.

"Nope," Coco said, popping her P. "See, I don't know if it's true or not, but old girls' locker room talk says there was a girl who hated the old policy. So she just went full commando in protest. She claimed it was for psychological warfare reasons. They tried to have her expelled, but she fought back, claiming that technically the uniform policy didn't explicitly mention underwear, and yet they were expecting her to fight and do flips and stuff while wearing it, and complained about chub rub."

Jaune looked over his shoulder, seeming to forget the ancient fresco. "What the hell is chub rub?"

Blake and Weiss awkwardly exchanged glances. They both looked like they were hoping the other would explain it first so they could remain silent.

Coco laughed. "Chafing, Jaune. It's what girls call underwear chafing."

He made a face. "Girls have their own word for it?"

"What do you call it?" Velvet asked, sounding equal parts uncomfortable yet deeply curious.

The boy looked at Fox and Yatsuhashi for help. They shrugged him off. So he just said, "Iunno. Just chafing. I wear pretty roomy underwear and change frequently. Next you're going to tell me there's a specific word for boob sweat or whatever."

Blake very slowly raised one arm in a shrug. "Eeeeh?" she said, like she was trying to agree, but basic décorum meant she couldn't actually elaborate.

"This conversation is weird," Yatsuhashi said.

Coco adjusted her beret, not really because it was out of place, but more just to give her something to occupy her hands with. "Point is, because of that girl, whether or not she's real, the school basically stopped enforcing girls' uniform policy so long as you look normal enough. It's why people like Ruby can get away with wearing a cape and me my beret."

Jaune shook his head, rubbing his eyes. "Alright. Panty politics aside, what's the deal with the art here? Mean anything to anyone?"

Weiss took a spot beside the boy, examining the faded colors. "It's the Final Emperor. The floating motif gives it away."

"Who?" he asked.

She gave him a look like he was stupid. Running a hand through her white hair, and tightening her asymmetrical ponytail, she said, "The Final Emperor. The god-monarch of the Final Empire. The villain of several national origin legends who probably never really existed. The man who tried to conquer the world and built the Oldwalls. Credited as the inventor of coffee. How is none of this ringing a bell for you?" She waved her hands at him

Jaune was staring back blankly. "How is he the last emperor of anything? I swore someone told me Mistral had an emperor to this day."

"It's just what he called himself," she said, almost dismissively. "He was supposedly arrogant like that. As though he thought he himself was the end of history. It's usually part of the object lesson in the stories where he is the bad guy, before he dies and his entire empire goes with him. This is basic stuff, Jaune. Why is your knowledge of basic things so eclectic?"

"I thought we had long agreed by now that my schizophrenic knowledge of basic concepts was part of my charm," he said, holding his hand to his breastplate as if in offense.

"They sure are chatty," Fox sent into Coco's head. She nearly jumped, it was so unexpected.

She gave him a look, wishing she had her shades on. The boy simply shrugged, a gesture he had to perform a little more expansively than normal given the blades on his arms.

"Let them have their fun," she sent back. Coco still had absolutely no idea how she managed to do it, keeping her internal monologue to herself and the thoughts she wanted to communicate going forward. The boy's Semblance was like a two-way radio that, once you got into, you seemed to just intuitively understand. It was kind of like walking: something you just knew how to do, even though you couldn't really articulate exactly how to move every single muscle to keep your balance and go forwards. "I'm sure they'll eventually see something traumatic enough and become stoic like any good Huntsman."

"If you say so," Fox sent.

"I'm not saying it. I'm thinking it out loud."

He rolled his eyes.

Jaune held up his hands. "Alright, alright. Enough history lessons and the finer points of wearing panties in a skirt. Everyone form up and let's continue walking until something gives."

— 21 —

Coco found herself realizing this wasn't exactly a cave, but it wasn't exactly some buried ruin either. It reminded her more than anything of her grandfather's old wine cellar, carved into a natural hollow beneath his cottage. There had been shelves full of aging wine, but the floor had been natural stone simply found that way. That was what this was like. Parts of the labyrinth definitely looked artificial, man-made, but other parts were without a doubt natural cave formations in the limestone. There were even some rooms that were a mix of both, like the current one, where natural dripstone fed a shallow basin carved to look like a little girl holding a bowl over her head.

Jaune stopped before the statue, dipping his fingers into the water and making some gesture she didn't recognize. Forehead, heart, and then the shoulders, where he brushed against the crucifix Ruby had given him. He seemed to find it funny for some reason.

She was about to ask him what it meant, before he gripped the edge of the bowl and leaned forwards, scowling at something.

"Follow the white rabbit," he said in a low voice so quiet it was nearly lost over the trickle of water.

"Excuse me?" Velvet asked, putting down her camera. She had snapped a photo of this scene too. Odds on favorite were she only heard him because of her ears.

Jaune lifted his flashlight. On the wall above the basin was a little chalk drawing. It didn't really look like a rabbit to Coco. Just kind of looked like a random marking. She supposed if she squinted and tilted her head, it maybe looked like the ears of a rabbit.

Blake was staring at the symbol.

"You think Team CCHS was marking their path?" Coco asked, holding up her scroll and the map displayed on it.

"Should we be doing that?" Yatsuhashi asked, practically hunched over to fit in this room. Coco felt awful for the boy. She almost wished they could have left him behind for his own comfort, except that wasn't how teams worked. She had already bumped her head a couple of times and was regretting wearing heels.

Jaune turned back, only to meet his partner's eyes. He suddenly looked a little less casual. The moment lasted briefly, and once again he was facing everyone else. "Honestly, I hadn't even considered marking our path. I was kind of distracted by the map. Wouldn't be an awful idea, in hindsight. Anyone got chalk? Maybe some string for the Minotaur?"

"The what?" Shamrock asked.

Jaune made a face. "Nevermind that."

Fox reluctantly raised his hand. When he spoke, his voice croaked. He hadn't been using his vocal cords all day. "I've got chalk dust. The kind you put on your hands to help climb. I thought it might be useful."

Jaune nodded. "Cool. Coco, you wanna help him draw something?"

"He's not helpless," she said a little quickly. It was almost a snap. There was something vaguely irritating about Jaune giving her commands when this was technically her mission. But then, why hadn't she had this idea. She found herself rubbing her forehead, wondering just how far off her A-game she was down here.

"Chill, Coco. It's alright" Fox sent her. And then, out loud: "I kind of failed art class back in grade school, so anyone got ideas for what we should draw?"

"Your tribe had grade school?" Shamrock asked, looking towards one of a cave passage so narrow you would have to crawl on your hands and knees to get through. Coco was very studiously trying not to look in its direction.

Fox shrugged. "No. Why would you even—stop being from Vacuo. You're ruining my attempts at levity."

Shamrock held her hands up in mock defense. "Sorry. Here, lemme help. I actually know how to draw."

A moment later and they had an arrow marking the direction they had come from and the way they were going. The chalk dust didn't work quite as well as a stick, but it did the job. Coco didn't really imagine Fox needed help drawing it, and Shamrock seemed a little too eager to help try to guide and touch Fox's hands.

"They're chatty and also a bunch of weirdos," he sent to her.

In any other circumstance, she might have laughed. But right now, Coco was busy trying not to look in uncomfortable directions, and avoiding the urge to hug herself. That wouldn't do. It would look awful. Everyone would see her and they would think she was weak and couldn't be a team leader and she would let everyone down.

She made due by white knuckling her purse. It was a heavy thing, giving her something to ground her with its gravity. And the fact that at a moment's notice, she could turn it into a minigun and ruin someone's day. That helped.

Belatedly, she realized she was waiting for someone to press them onwards. Jaune seemed oddly reluctant. Which meant the burden fell on her, as the leader of her team, who were chaperoning Team Bass.

She couldn't really find the words to push people on. All she could do was swallow, aim her light in the direction the map was pointing, and move. Her footsteps echoed. But at least this passageway was masonry. The artificiality made it somehow more comforting than the raw limestone.

Jaune hung back with Blake. Coco would have looked back and urged them to follow along, but they were standing a little too close to that insanely narrow passageway. It was better to keep her eyes forward.

In the end, it didn't matter much. The two caught back up with the rest of the Hunters a couple minutes later. The passageway was narrow enough that Yatsuhashi needed Fox to pull him and Shamrock to push. Coco could feel her shoulders brushing against the walls. She kept her teeth grit, unable to really reach back and help her giant teammate. It slowed them all down to a crawl. Which was the last thing she wanted right now, because the mushrooms nearly went up to her knees here, glowing with a faintly off-blue light. Little glowing worms crawled beneath the mushroom caps, spinning threads like silk between them. She saw a pair of worms feeding on a bat that had been caught in a web, and it was all she could do to avoid the urge to start running.

"This place is gross," Velvet groaned. "It smells like shoes and creepy old man."

"Creepy old men have a specific smell?" Weiss asked, holding her sword out in front of her to part the mushrooms. In the weird light, her combat skirt looked see-through. Coco would have appreciated the sight in any other context.

"They do to me," Velvet said. "Old moth-eaten suit jackets worn by the kind of creeps who think it's okay to ask if I know how to multiply. Ergh." She shivered.

"I would have thought your hearing was better than your sense of smell, given your ears," Weiss said cautiously, as if worried that mentioning Velvet's very obvious ears would offend her. "Or maybe your eyes."

Velvet peeked her head around Yatsuhashi to look at Weiss. "I don't have night vision."

Weiss sucked on her lips. "But… aren't you a bunny faunus?"

Velvet pulled in a breath through her teeth. "Personally, I identify more as a rabbit. But that's neither here nor there. Not all faunus see well in the dark. Don't racially profile me." She tilted her head, staring at Weiss. Despite her word choice, there wasn't any particular heat in her tone. More like she was just stating a plain fact.

Coco suspected that Velvet had gotten used to this kind of thing to the point where it was hard to really get particularly worked up over it anymore.

"I—I wasn't!" Weiss stammered, nearly tripping on the bones of some small mammal. For some reason, she looked at Blake as if for help.

"It depends on your animal trait," Blake said. "You wouldn't expect someone with gills to have better agility, or someone with a tail to be a better swimmer. It's really diverse."

Velvet pursed her lips. "Don't say animal. Just, don't. Please?"

Blake hesitated. "It's just a word. It's the context that can make it offensive."

"You're talking about me. I'm the context. So please don't."

Blake didn't really seem like she knew how to reply to that. She just looked away unhappily.

No one seemed to be able to speak. The air felt heavy and musty with more than just the mushrooms and bugs. Somehow, the silence made it worse for Coco. It meant she couldn't as easily ignore the scraping of her shoulders in the passageway, or the skittering of insects in the fungus. They had been crawling through this labyrinth for hours now and this passageway felt like the worst yet. Coco just wanted it to end. She wanted to widen out. To be able to spread her arms and breathe again without worrying about touching the walls or inhaling spores.

Fuck this place.

Fuck this labyrinth. Fuck these caves. Fuck the endless waiting and walking. Why couldn't something happen to distract her? Where were the Grimm? Or maybe signs of the White Fang. She really hoped they weren't involved with this, but anything would be better than the silence of walking in this damp, cramped hole.

Was this how Fox perceived the world? Blind to everything that didn't have lifesigns or Aura? She had a vision suddenly of a Grimm clawing her eyes out and having to live in a world like this forever. Where the walls would be everywhere and nowhere at once, because she couldn't see them, but she would know they were there. Just not how far. Not how close. Could she ever deal with life like Fox did as a matter of course?

Something brushed past her leg. Coco felt her entire body spasm with goosebumps. She twitched, spine arching fractionally. It was gone in a moment. Then she had to keep walking. Make more space for the others to push and drag Yatsuhashi.

Velvet gasped softly. "Does anyone else hear that? Wait, no, of course you can't. I'm being rhetorical. But there's something up ahead."

Coco felt a ray of sudden hope. "How far?" she asked, trying to project confidence.

"How should I know? Sound is funny in a cave," she said. "But I think I hear water. And singing. Humming, maybe?"

"Wait, is it that rude Humming Lady?" Coco asked. "I think that soldier mentioned she was down here somewhere. She said she was dealing with things in the tunnels when we met her."

Velvet shrugged. "I don't—I can't say. It makes me think of someone using a tuning fork. It's faint, but up ahead."

"If it's her, well, she might need help if she's all alone," Coco said, adjusting her beret, her sleeve dragging against the moisture on the wall. "C'mon!"

With a conscious will of effort, she made herself go faster. She kept stepping on mushrooms and knocking over the bigger ones with her knees, no longer careful to try to avoid them as best she could. There was something up ahead. Maybe someone else. Maybe a wider room. And then maybe this goddamn tunnel would end and they would find somewhere where she could breathe. It had to be up ahead. Through the darkness her light barely seemed to illuminate. Around a little corner where she had to duck her head to avoid hitting the ceiling.

There! There was something ahead in the darkness. Or rather, an absence of something. The kind of darkness where there's only space and room, because you can't make out a faint outline of objects you can't see. She could feel herself being able to breathe ever so slightly more, picking up her pace. Trying to get out of this goddamn tomb and into whatever chamber was beyond.

She was out. She couldn't feel the walls pressing in on her shoulder anymore. Even the glowing mushrooms weren't growing out here. At the very edges of her perception, she could make out that humming noise. And though he thought she might be imagining it, a sound like water falling somewhere. The ground here stopped being mason work and became the raw cavern again. Was it somewhere bigger? Was she actually somewhere she could stretch her arms out without feeling the walls?

Coco nearly ran into the room. "Guys!" she called back, sounding a little more frantic than she had realized. "There's a pretty big space up here. I—"

Her leg extended, her foot expecting to hit the ground. But it didn't. It just kept going, taking her weight and momentum with her.

Oh shit, it's a fucking cliff face, she thought, more annoyed than surprised. She couldn't see the bottom. Her flashlight cascaded into empty blackness. If she were a normal girl, this would probably be it for her. She'd stupidly just run off the edge of a cliff and into complete darkness.

Game over. Do not pass go. Do not grab your purse and the weapon inside, flaring your Aura to whip out it to shoot and fire. Ganduja was a big piece of equipment; It wasn't the fastest to unravel and use. She jammed her fingers into her purse and grabbed the trigger mechanism, firing the rounds prematurely. These weren't loaded Dust rounds. They wouldn't propel her back on their own. She would need to rely on pure recoil for that.

It was oddly calming. For once, she wasn't thinking about the mountain of ground above her head or the walls of the darkness. For just a moment, she was back during Initiation, perfecting her landing strategy before she crashed into the Emerald Forest. It felt almost therapeutic, the way the rounds ignited in her purse. How she hit the recoil like coming face first with a wall, and then got dragged backwards by it.

One foot was still on the edge of the cliff. Several rounds later and both were back on it. Her weapon still hadn't entirely unfolded. She was burning her Aura now, a sort of cool, dispassionate motion of panic, as paradoxical as that was.

She thought about how she was going to explain this blunder to the people behind her. How she was going to look like a complete klutz in front of her protégé. She wondered if she could lie convincingly about something, anything at all, to explain this satisfactorily.

Coco thought that—she felt it at the edge of perception. There was a hole in reality. The icy cold chill of the complete antithesis of soul and life itself. Perfect hatred made manifest. Close enough that she could nearly touch it, but in a vague way she couldn't entirely articulate.

Grimm.

And oddly, all she could feel was relief. Violence and action to distract her. And the perfect excuse for why she had been forced to fire her weapon. Everything was coming up Coco. Hell, she could show Team BASS how it was really done out here when the chips were down. Oh yeah, this is going to be good, and she felt great.

Until she turned around and saw it smiling at her.

Smiling.

Coco blinked.

It was standing there, inches away from her face. No bigger than she was, maybe a little smaller.

Human eyes looked out at her, framed in a face that looked almost human, but wrong in all the most important ways. The distances between mouth and chin a little too wide. The arms a little too long, almost dragging on the ground, with claws that looked like they could reach out and tear her throat out in a moment. The exposed bone white of armor amidst leathery black skin patch-worked with white, human flesh.

The Grimm blinked back at her. Coco was pretty sure Grimm didn't blink, right? Or if they did, she'd never paid attention to that. It almost looked like some edgy teenager's Grimmsona or whatever.

It opened its mouth, and made a series of clicking noises. The bones making up its body twitched, shifting under its flesh.

"They call her the mother of sows," it whispered, its voice like the recording of a child curled up in bed on a stormy night. It. Fucking. Whispered. "Do you like games?"

No. No. No. Uh-uh. Fuck everything about this. Fuck everything about this cave, this mission, this whatever the fuck it was. Absolutely fucking not!

Unconsciously, on pure reflex, Coco stepped backwards. To no one's surprise, she stepped into the empty air.

Those arms that looked perfect for snatching up little children twitched and launched at her. It grabbed her by the wrist in an iron grip. And it blinked again, its body twitching, the skin shifting colors. It was the only thing keeping her from falling.

"There's a pretty big space up here; I have something to show you," it said in her fucking voice, like an old tape recorder. Not making the correct cadence, the right space between words, but repeating them all the same.

Coco watched as its eyes changed colors. Until they were her eyes. As it smiled, with her smile. As it looked back at her with her face. It made that series of deep, guttural clicks in the back of its mouth again.

"I like games too," it croaked, grabbing her purse with such force that she couldn't hold on to it. It let her go, and then shoved her forwards into the abyss.

The last thing she did, all she could do, as she fell was reach out for Fox and his Semblance. They were still close enough, even if he was nowhere in sight.

"That thing wearing my face isn't me!"

And she felt her spine breaking as she landed.