Chapter 12: A Short Chapter Where Everything Looks Like It Might Be Okay For Five Minutes
"He who drinks oceans of blood shall never cease bleeding from the mouth."
— 28 —
It was all in the legs.
In the Army, after my alcohol incident and being thrown out of my workshop helping kill people extrajudicially half a planet away, they sent me to an off-post work site just so I was busy. Brigade or some other higher organization about a month later decided to close down all workshops off base. This left me in limbo, where I was not gainfully employed, and people basically stopped tracking me. I would show up to work at 0900, ask if anyone needed me (the answer was always no), and then be alone with myself in the barracks for the rest of the day. This was when I started getting hardcore into the gym because I had nothing else to do. Where before I was simply fasting and dieting to slim down, running on the weekends for my cardio, now I was lifting almost every day.
When Doc Croaker had fixed up my body, I had gone back to those habits.
And right now, I was thankful as fuck for it. Carrying a rucksack was as much about back strength as leg strength. And adding the maybe hundred-forty pounds of Coco Adel to that only made it worse. All together, I was carrying nearly my entire body weight on my back or in my arms. And my forearms were giving out first, cramping up like they were under a vice from carrying the girl.
As the swarm roared and howled, the skinwalkers backed away, giving us the opportunity to get back up into the fungus, onto more level ground, so we could chase after the flare. It was the only course of action. I had asked Shamrock and Velvet to fire one off if they found a way down, and they had, without fully grasping just how much this would fuck us over. If we died here, it would be on me, because I'd made a stupid call as leader, and hadn't been strong enough to run fast.
"I need to shift you," I said to Coco, already breathing heavily from the climb to the top of the ridge. It was hot down here and so humid, the sweat soaking me to the bone. The fact that the girl in my arms kept shivering and looking cold couldn't have been a good sign.
Coco grit teeth. "Where?"
"Shoulders. I can't keep holding you," I said.
She swallowed and nodded. I got down on one knee to better angle it. "Weiss, help me here."
She didn't backtalk or argue. Weiss just grabbed Coco and helped me move her onto my back. She wound up laying across my shoulders, her center of mass on my rucksack. The straps dug into my shoulders and I knew within the hour I'd have hemorrhages all over. The entire time, Coco just kept her eyes screwed shut from the pain of moving her.
When she opened them, she hissed in a breath. "Look out!"
Weiss spun to face the beowolf. It shoved aside a skinwalker in the fungal forest line and charged at us on all fours. I tried to stand back up, reaching for a weapon. Weiss slashed at the open air, and at first I thought she had just flummoxed everything, until the wall of ice hit the Grimm, freezing it in place. It snarled and struggled, breaking and cracking the ice before Weiss stabbed it through the mouth. It died there.
"Got it," Weiss said, looking far more dry and collected than I was. "But there's going to be more. I don't know if I have enough Dust."
Coco reached out her hand, shaking slightly. "Don't use much. As little as possible. Stick near me and I can make it stronger. My Semblance. It makes Dust more effective."
I was already hiking towards the falling flare. It felt like trying to do a sprint while carrying the squat rack. I couldn't have been moving faster than a brisk jog, when I needed to be balls to the walls fast.
"There's no way you even have enough aura to do that," Weiss said.
Coco made a growling noise as she adjusted her beret. "Just let me do this. I have enough if you conserve your Dust."
"But you need to be conserving it to hold yourself together," she said, jogging beside me as best she could, her form more akin to someone flailing forwards in blind panic than actually running.
"If it keeps us alive, it's worth it," Coco said, and grunted as I jostled her. We were running along the ridgeline, the water to our left. The rocks here were dry enough and without obstruction so we could actually make a good pace. But the monsters closing in on us had to be faster.
"Okay," Weiss said, already starting to breathe as heavily as I was.
A Grimm crawled up from the ridge to block our path. I didn't know what it was, some kind of mammalian praying mantis looking thing about as tall as I was. Its long, stick-like limbs ended in scythes that would make Ruby jealous.
"Now, do it now!" Coco screamed, glowing brighter.
Weiss glanced at her for just a moment, before running two fingers down her rapier. The cylinder within the handle spun around as she stabbed forward once. Sparks flew as the mantis' claws hit her weapon, before a pinprick jet of fire lanced through the Grimm's lithe waist. It severed the monster in two, the bottom half burning and smoldering, the top twitching and flailing like a roach you didn't fully kill when you stepped on it. Weiss drove her sword down through its skull and it stopped moving.
"Okay," she said, wiping the sweat off her brow. "Your Semblance does work. Wow."
Coco was moaning softly like a man hungover trying to jerk himself off before vomiting. "Yeah." She spat a dribble of drool to the side. "Told you. Ugh."
Her Aura flickered like dying fluorescents, before returning to a dull glow barely visible in the illumination of our flashlights. She hung her head over me, breathing ragged into my ear.
Weiss squinted, moving her mouth to say something only she could hear. She spun the cylinder on her rapier to purple, gravity Dust. "Coco, can you use your Semblance one more time right now on me?"
Coco nodded. "I'll let you know when I can do it." She let out a weak breath, shakily trying to wipe the sweat off her brow. "Right now, yeah, I think."
"Hm! Do it. I have an idea."
"Do we really have time for this?" I asked, trying to shift my weight from one foot to the other. All the poundage on me made it a lot harder than it should have been on my thighs, the muscles already aching. Every inch of my body was covered in sweat.
"It'll be quick, I promise—you'll thank me later!" Weiss said quickly. "Just stand still."
I watched with distant fascination as she made a motion with her sword, and then summoned a purple glyph on her back. She moved side to side rapidly, before seeming satisfied. She moved to my back, and I would have kept watching her, except I heard the growling of Grimm.
I spun to see four beowolves crawling over the now rapidly melting wall of ice. Swearing to myself, I reached for my revolver, elbowing Weiss in the process. As soon as they had landed, I had the gun up in one hand. In an abstract way, part of me still thought it was bizarre that I could manage to handle and accurately aim this kind of weapon with just the one hand. I remember spending an hour on my M4 back in the Army just to get the site picture right so I could actually hit something during qualification day.
Fire. Fire! Fire! Six shots. The first two rounds blew apart one of the creature's chests. A third went wild. The smoke billowed from the massive revolver as with two shots I slaughtered two Grimm. The last hit one of them center mass, square in the armor. It stumbled back, grabbing its chest, before uttering a low guttural noise and launching forwards.
I flicked the revolver to the side, auto loading in a new cylinder at range. Only to find myself pushed forwards as everything felt way too light. I nearly stumbled, feeling like I wasn't carrying anything at all. Weiss grabbed my shoulder and twirled over me, an action too deft for someone as weighed down as she was. She landed in front of me with a spin, slashing with her weapon. The Grimm's head came clean off.
I just stared. "What did you do?"
She gave me a smile that was almost smug. "Gravity Dust in my glyphs. Attached them to our backs. They won't last forever, but while they are, we should be a lot lighter."
I tried walking forwards and found that my thighs and calves weren't hurting anymore. It felt just like walking normally. A sudden jolt of excitement ran through my nerves. We could actually sprint this. We could actually make it without a pathetic little jog.
"Gun," Coco said, and panted. "It reloads on its own. Give—gimme. I can shoot and load one handed. Please."
My gut reaction was to tell her off. Order her to relax as we ran. But knowing how violent she got at the idea of being useless, and that I was still on with sword and shield, I acquiesced. It was a little awkward handing her the gun, and she took it with a shaking grip, but her fingers were like white iron. She met my eyes briefly and nodded.
I made sure Coco was squarely on my shoulders and wouldn't fall off, and ran. I could still feel the weight, but it wasn't nearly as bad. Like trying to sprint wearing battle rattle, or just plain cardio with the armor I carried with me right now. Something I was used to. Something I trained for.
Coco found a target and fired, the shot going off near enough to my ear that I wished I had ear plugs. But among the many superhuman qualities of Huntsmen was apparently immunity to long-term hearing damage from oversized weapons.
What was the hazard was the fact that now that I could run, I was out pacing Weiss by a country mile. I didn't want to slow down. Far up ahead on the waterline, I can almost see the goal. It was some kind of old stone bridge, more a kind of aqueduct than anything, running across a narrow point in the lake. The flare had come from the other side of the bridge. Nothing major, just a complete bottleneck where we could be ambushed, followed by running across ancient stonework. It wasn't like anything could go horribly wrong and we could just die on the way there. Especially not if we weren't fast enough.
"C'mon!" I said, trying not to let my frustration show.
"I am; you try running in heels!" Weiss called back, panting through every other word.
"And I'm running in boots!" I said, and closed my eyes tightly for a brief moment. Honestly, the fact that she was this fast in heels was kind of amazing. She'd actually probably be a good runner without her weirdly inappropriate choice of footwear. Even Coco had ditched her heels sometime between falling into the cave and getting rescued.
"Pinch pennies," I said, holding out my hands, exaggerating the way I held my hand and swung my arms as I ran. "You need to swing your arms better. Transfer the motion of your arms forwards. You want to minimize any energy you put into anywhere but your legs!"
She gave me a skeptical look, before brushing the sweat from her eyes on her sleeve, and trying to mimic me. Sucking in breath of air, she nearly managed to catch up. But I was already slowing down just so we didn't get separated.
"When this is over, I'm taking you running with me, whether you like it or not, Weiss!" I called back.
The howling behind us always made it hard to hear each other. Doubly so over our breath. And the noise of so many bodies rushing through the mushroom foliage, whooshing like wind through tall grass. It was coming at us from an angle, not running with us, but trying to intercept us.
"Maybe!" Weiss said.
"Is a baby who always says yes, I'm glad you agree!" I yelled, leaping over a low rock. The impact on the other side made my knees crunch. "Cardio or die, Weiss!"
"I don't even have any good running clothes!"
Honestly, it was stupid. But trying to keep the conversation going always helped me run. I recall one time keeping pace with a Boston Marathon racer during a training run just because he and I had to begun to talk as soldiers together, and I lost track of how fast I was going without noticing the pain or exhaustion.
"Sweatpants," Coco mumbled, and fired at a small Ursa that crept from the dense foliage. Little flying pink jellyfish-looking creatures buzzed around it as she emptied the entire chamber to kill the monster. It took her a moment of wrestling with it to open the chamber and for a new set of bullets to jump in.
"No!" I said, suddenly laughing. The bridge was so close now. "Sweatpants are for girls with ass, not girls with long backs!"
"How freaking dare you!" Weiss roared, and somehow managed to catch up to me. "If the Grimm don't kill you, I will!"
"Is that a bet?"
"It's a promise!"
"You'll have to catch me first, Weiss cream!" I said, speeding up. Coco kept grunting with every bump in the road. But my cardio was king. And Weiss actually seemed angry and distracted enough to be trying to keep up with me. We were going to make it. Going to get to that bridge, cross it, probably do some heroic bridge exploding or whatever, and then we'd be safe!
It was going to be easy!
— 29 —
The Grimm caught us first. A throng of the monsters, some I could name, others I couldn't, cut us off at the entrance of the bridge—the narrow little bottleneck. Pinned between the crossing and a massive stalactite from floor to ceiling, it was through them or nothing. Clever motherfuckers. I skidded to a halt, the slower Weiss coming up behind me. Coco didn't waste time being surprised, and just opened fire.
"Break through them with me," I told Weiss, holding up my shield.
Instead of letting them come to us, I rammed the nearest Grimm with the aegis. Smaller than the others, I hit it with enough force to carry it forwards and use it as a battering ram. I threw it into the line of horrors behind it like my name was Fred Flintstone. Coco lined up shots and fired.
Weiss was beside me. She didn't fight like a nimble ninja Blake-style, nor with brute force the way I preferred it. She lowered her center of mass and spun around like a dancer, twirling her sword into the snout of a charging boarbatusk, this pig-looking Grimm. She pivoted on her heels, using the motion of her spin and its charge to throw it to the side. Another near-miss duck as I stabbed through a monster's heart; she went under the claws of another mantis, pushing in too close for it to hit her and severing its chicken neck. It was almost hypnotic to see her at the corners of my vision, moving more like a ballerina in action than a brawler. Constantly using her spinning momentum to add weight to her stabs and slashes. And all the while, almost compulsively spinning the cylinder on her sword as if trying to figure out the best Dust for the fight.
She lifted one leg up like she were doing a splits standing, and brought her heel through a Grimm's arm. And then repeated that motion with a spin to stick the pointy end of her shoe right into its eye and kill it.
As Coco reloaded, she said in an almost dreamy voice, "Huh. Damn. She really is wearing shorts under the skirt."
Halfway through trying to flip over the Grimm, she snapped her head towards us and flummoxed the motion. "Wait, wha'? Coco!"
I jumped towards her and threw up my shield to stop a blow. The heavy claws of the monsters scraped across the steel. It snarled. Coco brought up the revolver, only for the oversized werewolf to literally backhand it out of her grasp.
"Fuck!" Coco hissed.
"Don't distract me!" Weiss said, stabbing through the beowolf's jaw where the armor was weakest and into its headcase. "Jaune, look out!"
I turned and saw the raptor-looking thing. I gasped, stepping back just in time to avoid getting my face bitten off. I made the gesture with my hand to recall XO, feeling the microtech humming to life in my palm. And then did the only thing I could think of to buy myself the moment until it got back: I swung my open hand right at the Grimm as if trying to teach it a lesson on how to fight like a little girl. My hand hit one side of its face, as XO tried to fly right back into my palm and hit the other side. Its skull broke to pieces and splattered across my face.
"Holy shit," Coco said as I just stood there, equal parts stunned and amazed that that had actually just fucking happened. The monster went limp and began to ash like a dying cigarette.
I blinked, and nearly elbowed Coco in the face as I tried to hand her the gun again.
"Pay attention!" Weiss screamed, whirling her sword around. The fire Dust chamber ignited as she swung towards me and the Grimm trying to take advantage of my distraction.
Coco made a sound like someone had just stepped on her ovaries. She lit up her Aura. "Got you, girl."
Weiss' eyes went wide. "Wait, no—!"
The little jet of fire whipping from her rapier turned into a tidal wave of flame. I saw it coming at me and the Grimm around my person just in time to flinch with my shield up. And then remember it could only cover my center mass, and not the girl on my shoulders. I kept raising my shield higher, propping my arms up like I was hanging from a pull-up bar.
My Aura came up right as I felt my flesh cook.
"Coco, I wasn't ready for you!" Weiss shrieked, standing in place. The fire danced in her eyes, igniting Grimm and fungus alike. The creatures in the little tree line roared and backed away as the ones hit directly rolled on the ground, twitching and flailing.
Burning Grimm smelled of nothing at all. Just the nearly tactile sensation of heat in your nostrils.
"Jaune?" Coco and Weiss said in unison as I lowered my arms, shaking. Hissing in greedy, choking gulps of oxygen.
Weiss was on me in seconds, slapping Aura shielded hands against burning bits of clothing. It was almost impossible to notice her. My armor had taken the brunt of the heat, but that turned my own body into a convection oven. I managed to throw off one scolding gauntlet before realizing my bare hand couldn't remove the other. I gripped it between my thighs and pulled it off, shaking the raw flesh like a wet dog. Everything else was either thick enough not to absorb the heat, or had a layer of cloth separating me from second degree burns.
I just stood there, breathing, looking at myself, before Weiss touched the particularly raw part of my chest. On reflex I shoved her away.
"I'm sorry!" Weiss said, nearly tripping over her words. "I wasn't expecting Coco to use her Semblance. I—I—I—!"
Against all odds, the feather on my chest was still white and pristine. Completely unharmed and unbothered by the fire. A fire that was now spreading through the fungus, and keeping the Grimm back.
"Shut the fuck up," I said in the tense, breathless voice. I sucked in another breath through my nose, nearly dancing in place as I kept shaking my hands. "Just stop, just stop, just please stop. I'm fine."
Weiss held her hands over her mouth, just staring at me. "But—"
"I'm fine!" I snapped, and she flinched. She looked like the day she had thrown away my alcohol and drugs, when I stepped towards her in a blind rage. Only this time, she wasn't holding her ground or trying to look tough. Suddenly I had the overwhelming feeling that I had done something wrong.
My breaths came out as pained pants.
In a softer voice, as soft as I could manage, I held up my slowly blistering hands and said, "Like I said. I can take it so long as it kills more of them than it kills me. We knew this could happen. My fault. It was a good idea, both of you." It sounded fake. It felt fake. A polite fiction a best.
It was almost a force of will to take her eyes off me and look at the fire storm she had ignited. "They're—they're holding back. They're scared."
But that didn't make them any less anxious or angry. If anything, the horde seemed even louder, baying like starving bloodhounds.
"Yeah," I said weakly. "Let's go while we have a moment."
I collapsed my shield back into a sheath. Touching anything hurt like a bitch. Not in the pleasant way like hurt muscles, but more like the feeling of having ripped out a nail because I was too engrossed chewing them during a horror film. It was almost a background feeling, not like getting punched, but this pulsating sensation of pain with every pump of blood through my extremities and core. I grit my teeth and undid one of my bandoliers. Unable to really touch my gloves, I used it to carry them without burning myself.
"Jaune?" Coco whispered.
I swallowed hard and walked towards the bridge. And then I was on the old masonry. It was a long, long walk to the other side. I couldn't tell if everything felt heavier because of the pain and exhaustion, or if the glyph was starting to fade.
"Jaune!" Coco said with more force. It still sounded weak coming from her right now. She was still in way worse shape than I was. Was part of the reason why I just had to take it one step at a time. It wouldn't do to just succumb to my injuries like a complete bitch while she was still trying to fight as broken as she was.
It would be embarrassing. Almost emasculating.
Someone once told me that the key to success was to always pretend that hot girls are watching you, and at the slightest mistake will mock you to your face, behind your back, and tell all of their friends about how pathetic you are.
So when hot girls actually were watching, it only made the paranoia worse.
"What?" I asked, listening to her shuffle slightly on my shoulders.
"That fire isn't going to last forever," she said. "Once it's gone, they're going to cross the bridge."
I paused and turned around. Weiss was walking just behind me, and averted her eyes when I tried to meet them. It was stupid. And that tinge of irritation was enough to give me an idea.
"Weiss," I said.
"Yes?"
"Stop that," I told her, trying to smile. "Stop acting ashamed or embarrassed. Just aggressively pretend everything is okay until it is. That's the only way to get through times like this. Okay?"
She made an uncomfortable noise.
"And right now, I need you to vigorously pretend everything is okay, reach into my rucksack, and pull out some of my bathtub semtex."
Weiss made a face. "Your what?"
I shrugged one shoulder, and it wound up pulling some blistered skin. I winced, saying, "My mail order catalog for plastic explosive ingredients finally delivered. I imagine I would use it for something really cool, maybe some badass chase scene or destroy some tunnels. It's in little bricks. Weiss, I need you to fish it out, put it on the bridge, and then blow it with some magnesium wire as we make it across."
"You're going to blow up the bridge?" Coco asked.
"Yeah. I'm all for architectural iconoclasm. Unless you have any better ideas."
"What if we want to make it back across?"
I tried not to sound annoyed. "Why would we ever want to go back there?"
Coco didn't reply.
I guided Weiss through my rucksack until she found the bricks of plastic explosives. Halfway across the bridge as we were, she got out by spools of magnesium wire, tied them all together to the charges and we started walking. And walking. Until it felt like a safe distance.
There on the other side of the bridge, I could make out figures. Mostly in the flashlights and glow sticks they were using, but there were definitely more than a couple, more than just Shamrock and Velvet. Behind us, the fire spread, sending plumes of smoke up to block the ceiling, probably killing off an endangered species of silkworm or whatever.
Weiss struck the wire, and shielded her eyes as the burning strip of magnesium went for the bombs. I know there were probably usually a lot more safety precautions involved. There're lots of proper procedures you should follow in blowing shit up. Especially when it involves destroying thousand-year-old ruins just to save yourself the possibility of being ambushed later on. There's care and procedure and practicality. Right now, I couldn't care less.
I was just too tired. And, in a more physical sense, literally burned out.
I couldn't even bother to do that cool guys don't look at explosions stuff. We'd explain what we had done when we met up with our teams.
All three of us watched the center of the bridge explode in a roar of light. The shockwave wasn't even that bad. We couldn't feel it or the heat at this distance. I was almost convinced it wasn't going to be enough to destroy the masonry. Until the pillars holding the bridge up above the water collapsed, and the rest of the bridge started coming down with it.
In hindsight, I have no idea why we were still on the bridge, except that it was a really long bridge, and I guess I must have thought for some goddamn reason that only the center would collapse.
It came down like dominoes in both directions.
"I'm retarded," I said, turning to run.
The flashlights on the other side of the bridge were waving frantically. I could hear people yelling for us as Weiss and I legged it across, just running. My sweat soaked shirt chafed against my burns.
Not even ten yards from where the bridge ended and the solid land resumed, Weiss let out a heavy grunt. She nearly tripped and stumbled on nothing at all.
I grabbed her by the collar and kept her up. "Weiss, what—"
And then I felt it too. The sudden oppressive pull of gravity, of the weight of my rucksack and the girl on my shoulders. I gasped, my legs straining under the weight and pain.
My first reaction was to just try to grab Weiss and push myself as best I could to the other side. Until I realized we weren't alone out here. I wasn't thinking clearly at all.
"Guys, a little help!" I called out.
Blake, Velvet, and Yatsuhashi raced onto the bridge. There wasn't any fanfare. No one was asking questions or demanding answers, like why we blew up the bridge and set everything on fire. The extra set of hands was enough to get Coco off my shoulders and drag me and Weiss to safety.
The bridge collapse didn't even go this far. It held up somewhere behind us, smoking and dusty. Probably kicking up a cloud of asbestos.
As soon as my feet were on solid ground, I let out one final breath, and let myself collapse.
Rescue mission complete. No fatalities. Just the worst leg day of my life and a lot of burning.
Fuck everything about this place.