MARZ Rising

by FandomPariah

It's been thirty years since Ruby Rose saved Remnant from Salem and almost a decade since it was saved again. Salem is gone yet the Creatures of Grimm remain and now a new generation of Hunters are ready to begin their story... By enrolling at the Breaktide Academy of Menagerie where they'll be trained by legends including Team CFVY and Ruby Rose herself. Part 5 of the Spiral-Verse

125. Abomination

RWBY & All associated trademarks are property of Rooster Teeth (RIP Monty Oum)

I claim no ownership of anything except my own original characters.

I am making no money from this.

Chapter 125: Abomination

Zirconia Shadowmoon had been pushed to limits that she was certain would have broken her and then, the moment she had found some last reserve of inner strength that she had not known she possessed and used it to carry herself forwards she had been been pushed even further.

She had spent a night without sleep, leading Gestalt-Prime on a wild goose chase whilst certain that the Alpha Cyber-Grimm would turn upon her at any moment and that she would have to fight for her life against the monster out in the wastelands all so that she could provide Team NUGT a window of opportunity to move against Aefen Cruor only for all of it to be proven to be worthless and her efforts to have been completely wasted upon her return to Pikesreach. Her ploys had been turned against her and Gestalt-Prime had hunted and corralled her through the settlement until she reached Aefen's lair where she had not only learned the true horrific nature and scale of the masked scientists' work but also that Team NUGT had lost their lives following her instructions; with Aefen driving home just how truly vile and unhinged she was by unleashing the creature that Nugget had become upon her. Zirconia had escaped, terrified and sickened in ways that she had never thought possible only for efforts to flee Pikesreach and send word to Damascus Nero and try to evacuate Pikesreach to be cut off by none other than Athena-Jade Slate.

The Grasshopper Faunus would have given anything to have seen her former partner again before that moment; but some final unbroken part of her shattered at the sight of the short but powerfully built Bear Faunus she loved so dearly and had betrayed in ways that neither of them could forgive as she stood there with her new partner, filled with an unrelenting and righteous fury.

And then Athena-Jade and Stygian had attacked and Zirconia was reduced to instinct and fear.

"STAND STILL!" Stygian spat as he teleported into space again the moment she tried to counter, the mere action of aiming Sunriser Cain in his general direction enough for his Semblance to bring the young man close enough to deliver a punishing knee strike to her ribs.

Zirconia gasped for air as the blow punished her already pained and heaving chest even despite the lightweight and stylised tactical armour she wore over her sweater, she had been in the midst of a stumbling and beleaguered attempt at a fighting retreat, more focused on trying to get away from the inevitable doom of Pikesreach than inflicting more pain and violence on Athena-Jade and so she had been unprepared for the sheer force of Stygian's incoming blow; though she managed to recover quickly enough to defend against the Mouse Faunus's follow up attack.

'Double Lightning!' Sunriser Cain was in its' close combat form and she flipped the weapon into a reverse grip as she swung her right hand up overhead and pivoted at the waist to block Stygian's downward slash; the Dust-based arcs of crackling and sparking light that danced around Sunriser Cain quickly transferred into the blade of Sharp Cheese, which Zirconia knew after studying and training alongside her opponent was highly conductive and a moment later she had the desired effect as lighting jumped from the gleaming blade of the katana to the tattooed and blue-haired young man who wielded it which gave her an opening to kick him aside with a single powerful blow which sent him skidding and rolling across the ground.

"DON'T TOUCH HIM!" there was a rage in Athena's voice, something coloured with a desperate urgency which left a thick lump in Zirconia's throat as she realised that it was the exact same tone that the Bear Faunus had used when coming to her defence time after time. Such miserable feelings were pushed aside by necessity as Athena herself came rocketing into view with a glyph serving as a springboard and her new weapon at the ready for a single, devastating blow.

Instinct once again took hold and Zirconia, as she had done countless times before leapt onto the edge of Athena's weapon as the Bear Faunus lunged at her using the force of her follow up to throw her former partner off-balance enough to ensure that there was no follow up strike whilst at the same time being forced to account for the difference between Mould-Breaker and the new, oversized blade Athena carried; with the result being that the two of them simply whirled around to face one another again rather than immediately attack.

"You didn't rebuild Mould-Breaker….You made a new weapon" the words left Zirconia uncertainly, her voice wavering even beyond the breathlessness that she was suffering after her various ordeals; a genuine and heartfelt apology for what had happened already on the tip of her tongue as Athena's next words silenced it.
"Stop talking….Don't make this harder than it needs to be. Just surrender!" The Bear Faunus's voice cracked and Zirconia could see tears in her eyes; that sight alone after everything else she had enjoyed being enough for the Grasshopper Faunus to at least entertain the idea of throwing her weapon down.

But eventually she shook her head.

"I can't….But we can save everyone here, we can stop what Aefen did. We can be heroes….One more time, even if it has to be the last time-" Zirconia choked the words out and Athena let out a wordless and defiant yell at the exact moment her voice cracked; the snowy-haired young woman clearly incensed at the idea that after everything she had done Zirconia had the temerity to suggest things being as they once were.

And then the two were locked in combat again.

Athena came rushing at her with her oversized blade trailing behind her for a ferocious horizontal slash and Zirconia, seeing nothing else she could do coiled her mechanical limbs and sprung forward with Sunriser Cain at the ready in an effort to block her; Athena was just as versatile, acrobatic and ludicrously prepared for any fighter to challenge her as ever though and at the last possible moment she revealed her feint for what it is by dropping Heartbreaker low and changing the angle of her attack, the upward swing knocking Zirconia's weapon almost entirely from her grasp and leaving her struggling to catch herself which in turn left her entirely susceptible to follow-up blows she should have seen coming.

Pain exploded through Zirconia's jaw and cheek as her former partner delivered one of the cartwheeling heel kicks that were such a staple of her fighting style with enough force to knock the mask Zirconia wore partly loose and then quickly followed with a leaping two-footed and spinning drop kick which Zirconia might have avoided were the blow itself not merely a vehicle for the Bear Faunus to form one of her glyphs and throw her opponent backwards and further off-balance. Zirconia reeled and staggered, shifting the rotating cylinders of Sunriser Cain again and preparing to defend herself from the continuing onslaught.

'Hard-light! Ice!' she swung outwards to create a multi-layered barrier only for it be proven to be entirely meaningless as a quartet of phantom Beowolf Claws planted themselves into the ground at the edges of her curved plane of ice and shielding, serving as the only warning Zirconia received before she was subjected to an attack that she had watched Athena develop; the Bear Faunus using the summoned claws to simply hurl herself at the obstacle and crush it with a well placed kick before swinging her new weapon again.

Zirconia managed to back-flip away to avoid the worst of it and landed in a crouch, gasping for air with her thoughts barely coherent as they rattled around her throbbing and jarred skull; shifting her weapon into its' long-barrelled pistol mode almost intuitively.

And then several things seemed to happen in the same instant.

"You shouldn't have ran away in Neo Vale….If I'd brought you in then maybe we could have fixed things" the words left Athena in a hollow, empty and broken voice as she transformed her new weapon into a laser cannon with the same cylindrical body as Mould-Breaker before it and prepared to fire. Zirconia braced herself to leap aside only for the air to distort in close proximity to her weapon.

"I'LL HOLD HER! SHOOT!" Stygian announced his return to the fray by sheathing his sword and simply rushing at Zirconia to seize her so that she could be thrown directly into the path of Athena's laser. The Grasshopper Faunus, with a jolt of some vile, bitter anger that she had not even known herself to be capable of forewent her own weapon and simply leapt gracefully over the attempt to grab her and kicked downwards, deploying the climbing clamps and spikes which allowed her to scale walls from her cybernetic limbs as she fell and using them to anchor herself both to the ground and also to snatch Stygian Blue from the ground entirely.

And throw him into the path of Athena's attack.

"STITCH!" the terror and panic in the Bear Faunus's voice felt like ice and nails to Zirconia; though Stygian's pain was far less metaphorical as she released her hold on him so that the blast he had absorbed could lift him from his feet and send him crashing into a nearby wall with his Aura rippling and an audible thud. Seeing that the Mouse Faunus was alive and conscious with his Aura still holding, but that he was nonetheless momentarily removed from the fight Zirconia turned her attention back to Athena; where the sight of the deep concern on her ex girlfriends' face prompted another outpouring of something bitter and words spilled from her to indulge it before she could stop herself.

"He'll be fine, is he really your partner if you haven't shot him at least once?" the sneering, spiteful and yet ultimately hurt tone seemed to surprise Athena, who could only gawk at her in silence for a moment before shifting Heartbreaker back into its' sword form and leaping onto a glyph which she used to propel herself into a high arc so that the blade could come down in an earth-shattering attack. Zirconia raised her own weapon to shoot and yet her finger simply would not squeeze the trigger leaving her with no choice but to change Sunriser Cain into its' melee form and hold it overhead in an effort to block.

Her legs buckled and the ground cracked and shook beneath her as she was forced to one knee; Aura rippling and joints of her cybernetic limbs straining in a way which caused painful feedback.

It was then that Athena leaned in close.

"I had to build a new weapon, because I didn't feel like me after what you did….You hurt me in ways I didn't think anybody could" despite the way she tried to sound fierce the pain in the snowy-haired Faunus's voice was obvious "And just as I start to get myself together again, to feel like me and be happy, just a little bit….Here you are again, hurting people. But at least I feel enough like myself to use this"

With the press of a single button Athena activated several of the mechanisms and components that her team-mates had commented on within her weapons, engaging a feature and a mode that she had not yet used for the sole reason that she had not felt ready to do so. Portions of Heartbreakers' blade collapsed inwards, grating against Sunriser Cain in a shower of sparks as they were compacted whilst at the same time the collapsed and cylindrical form of what became the main body of the laser cannon moved to the rear of the weapon in a swift arc, propelled by an armature which extended from the base of the weapons' handle to then solidify itself and extend into a much longer shaft.

Giving Heartbreaker a hammer mode.

Without another word Athena attacked, breaking the stalemate she and Zirconia had found themselves in by flipping the weapon and delivering an upwards strike which smashed against the Grasshopper Faunus's chin and sent her flying through the air to land in a crumpled heap; the act of coughing blood into the inside of her modified gas mask being what prompted her to finally remove the item and cast it aside.

"I deserved that, I really did" she managed to slur the words out with blood tricking from her lips and down her chin as she staggered to feet and swayed on legs that would likely have collapsed under her if they were flesh and blood.

"Stop making me do this" Athena's whisper was barely audible and yet it struck Zirconia like a moving vehicle, her partner, the woman she still loved was staring at her with a mixture of abject horror and total, heartbroken loss as she clutched at her new hammer as though it were a lifeline; the sight of Zirconia's face and the scars from her own clawed fingers being joined by fresh blood bringing her to a halt.

"I don't want to keep hurting you Hops" the old nickname was out of the Bear Faunus's mouth before she could force it down and keep her rigidly enforced fury in place; her words a pleading and desperate sob.

"I never wanted to hurt you" Zirconia shook her head, wiping away fresh tears hand trembling as she remained unsure if she should raise her weapon again, or if she even could.

"But I can't let you bring me in" she wiped blood away from her mouth with the back of her gloved hand "There's too much at stake"

Her words were underscored by the tortured shrieking of something that was at once human and decidedly anything but; a sound so chilling it gave Athena-Jade pause.

---

Fighting Gestalt-Prime alone was a foolish strategy even for a Hunter as capable as the famed Coco Adel and so, despite all of her pride and desire to see thing that had attacked her students, her city and her Yatsuhashi brought low and its' metallic components reduced to twisted scrap that she might turn into trophies and display over the entrance of her academy she had been forced to act more cautiously and use strategy.

Which had translated roughly to a deadly game of cat and mouse, against an opponent capable of levelling buildings with a single attack.

"For an 'Apex Being' I expected something a little bit sportier! My First Year students drive jalopies faster than this!" she yelled over her shoulder as she sprinted down a street as fast as her muscle and Aura would allow, privately glad that none of the people she considered family were present to hear her stooping to such abysmal insults; truthfully Little Fox, whom she considered her son in every way that mattered could have provided better off the cuff.

Coco was not limited to words alone however and as she reached the next fork it the road she span on her heel and turned one hundred and eighty degrees, allowing her to can angle her Mini-Gun upwards as she slowed but never quite skidded to a halt; all whilst scanning the sky for the hulking and fearsome sight of Gestalt-Prime giving chase with their axe-tipped wings spread wide. The headmistress used one of the many hidden features of her sunglasses to find a heat signature of note within the Alpha Cyber-Grimm's form and whilst she was unsure of whether it was some vital power supply for their mechanical components or simply residual heat from their laser weapons she decided that it would make a suitable target all the same and quickly feinted, lunging as though she intended to sprint to her right before opening fire and bolting to the left as Gestalt-Prime Prime thrashed in the air; a hail of bullets ripping into their obsidian flesh and ricocheting against their armoured exoskeleton with a series of metallic pings and sparks which Coco knew better than to believe had actually hurt the monster in any meaningful way.

She knew that Gestalt-Prime could end their chase at any time they chose and was currently doing no more than indulging themselves and toying with their prey.

It was insulting but Coco managed a tight smile and decided that being underestimated worked to her advantage; after all she only had to distract the thing for long enough for help to arrive.

With that in mind she veered slightly and rather than continuing down the road she took advantage of Gestalt-Prime's momentary distraction to flee into one of the buildings lining it. They were laid out with only some semblance or regularity and almost no concept of uniformity, though the buildings were close together that there were multiple options available which Coco hoped would slow her pursuer down at least enough for her to unleash another barrage; each building was also a miniature garrison in its' own right as if Pikesreach had been designed with war in mind from its' very conception however this detail mattered little in the face of Gestalt-Prime's destructive might, Coco had seen the Alpha Cyber-Grimm destroy part of the outer defences with a single blast of their main weapon and had no illusions about the safety her current hiding place afforded her.

Unwilling to give up her initiative she prowled through what she realised was the home of a large family, though none of its' members were anywhere to be found and she could only hope that the children at least had somewhere safe to take cover. Refusing to allow herself to be bogged down by any emotional baggage she shook her head and moved with a degree of haste and caution, slipping as swiftly and silently through the building as she could whilst also carrying her oversized weapon until she reached a window on the opposite side of the home and prepared to climb out of it.

Only for thin beams of crimson to lance through the air at a nearly perfectly vertical angle, leaving Coco rolling back inside the building and covered with glass slivers as the window simply exploded inwards under the heat whilst the outer wall itself was scorched and Coco herself nearly lost the leg that had been extended out of the cover the building provided.

"CRAP!" she yelled hurtling back through the house the way she had come only for the same beams of light to rip through the air once again, this time coming so close that the wooden frame of the front doorway was ignited whilst Coco was still partially stood in it.

"DAMN IT!" her voice raised with anger and a genuine, if repressed and controlled panic at the realisation that whilst Gestalt-Prime was certainly still playing with her the game that the sentient monster was playing was a most deadly one indeed. Coco didn't need to look upwards of venture of the building to see that the Alpha Cyber-Grimm was hovering in mid-air directly above the home she had hidden in, using only their smallest, shoulder mounted lasers to keep her pinned in place and scrabbling like a trapped animal.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" the mantra grew more urgent and aggressive with each repetition as Coco whirled around in search of options; her first idea being to simply blast a new exit into another side of the building and make a break for freedom being discarded for how unlikely it was to work and her second option, namely using Ice and Fire Dust in large quantities to confuse whatever thermal imaging Gestalt-Prime was most likely using and then using the inevitable collapse of the building to disguise her escape being one that she was still considering when the chance to act at all was taken away from her.

She heard the unmistakable howling rush of something hurtling downwards and towards her at incredible speeds.

With a wordless yell that might have been an attempt at yet another curse Coco sprinted in a random direction and leapt beneath the nearest piece of furniture she could use as makeshift cover; her desire to be nowhere near the centre of the building being vindicated when the roof was collapsed by a forceful impact and a hulking shape landed in the ruins with a crash.

Gestalt-Prime had soared upwards and then transformed their wings, merging the limbs with their arms to form bulging and over-muscled arms which ended with crescent shaped axeheads in place of digits and then simply allowed themselves to fall, withstanding any injuries they might have sustained as they cleaved the family home in half as though it were just another adversary to be gutted and felled.

As the dust began to settle Coco wasted no time at all, throwing herself out from beneath the furniture she had used for cover; hauling it into the air and kicking at the Alpha Cyber-Grimm with superhuman strength before shooting it and turning what had been a threadbare but still attractive sofa into mere fragments and a fine haze in a futile effort to cloud the monsters' vision as she sought to run once again.

Her efforts were undone by a dreadful crimson light falling over.

"DAMN IT!" this team her scream was one of fear that could not be controlled or pushed aside and for a single moment Coco thought that her end had come, her life flashing before her eyes as Gestalt-Prime's chest unfurled to reveal a weapon that greatly resembled that which Penny Polendina's first body had carried, or one that might have been fitted on a small warship.

And then she was flying backwards, her Aura rippling and crackling around her but ultimately holding even as she struck the ground hard enough to crater it easily a dozen times and carried one rolling to a halt; glasses breaking and cutting into her brow, left shoulder dislocated and beret lost entirely in the blast. Some primal, instinctive drive had pushed her to throw herself into the furthest corner of the room that she could reach and by chance alone she had survived; Gestalt-Prime's attack tearing an entire side of the building away and sending debris crashing through several more buildings with Coco being flung out with the wreckage rather than being obliterated by a direct hit.

But now Gestalt-Prime was done playing games.

"Adel, Coco. Headmistress. Councilwoman. Huntress….Acceptable military target!" the Alpha Cyber-Grimm noted with a cold and merciless chuckle that was human and monstrous in the worst way as they tore themselves free of the ruins of the home Coco had hidden in. To Coco it was the voice of a serial killer and the exact voice that she would have imagined a talking Creature of Grimm to possess, one made more imposing by the fact that Gestalt-Prime was currently stalking towards her with chest panels currently closing and armour moving back into place as their twin axes cut twin furrows into the ground to either side of them.

"You're not so tough….I've survived worse" Coco hissed out through clenched and gritted teeth, Aura still wavering around her visibly as she reached for her weapon and found it mercifully undamaged.

Gestalt-Prime's lasers lanced through the space between her and it, very nearly taking fingers from her right hand.

"Available data indicates that your Semblance is tied to balance….Allowing you to retrieve your weapon would be unwise given that you can likely fire one-handed" Gestalt-Prime noted, voice more casual in a way that made it somehow more chilling as they displayed the extent of the information at their disposal.

"So take a better shot then you ugly son of a bitch" Coco hissed, still unable to force herself any higher than a kneeling crouch but refusing to bow to the monster before her completely.

"You've survived worse" Gestalt-Prime repeated with a sneering edge "Good, you may well be a suitable candidate for the next stage in-"

A shrieking, distorted cacophony of voices ripped through all of Pikesreach, followed by the sound of a building, much larger than the one Coco had hidden in, being torn apart and without a word to their bloodied and presumed beaten prey Gestalt-Prime reared back; splitting their wings from their arms and reconfiguring the limbs with a stretching motion before taking to the air. Coco did not know what the Alpha Cyber-Grimm had seen but their response required no interpretation; a screaming bellow that left Coco's head ringing and yet was merely an expression or rage and defeat rather than an animalistic challenger to whatever had erupted into being elsewhere in Pikesreach.

"RETREAT! PIKESREACH IS LOST, RETREAT!" Gestalt-Prime ordered and Coco watched as those who had traded so much of their humanity away that they would willingly take orders from a Grimm tried to act of the new command; the Cyber-Grimm at their disposal serving as steeds for them to ride on be carried by even if many of them were gunned down by those who had stood against them or simply fell from great heights, all whilst others ran on foot or tried to steal what view vehicles existed in the settlement.

Gestalt-Prime did not flee immediately, it seemed that the Alpha Cyber-Grimm still had some matters to attend to before making their own exodus; though Coco was lost as to what they might he and had no delusions about her ability to stop them.

---

"I looked for a monster….I thought Aefen Cruor would be with her work and that she'd be working on a monster" Regalia managed to force the words out despite her bodies' numb refusal to obey her to any meaningful degree as she and Astra regarded the thing that had erupted from the building that had been the masked scientists' lair.

"Well….We definitely found a monster" Astra's attempt at flippant calmness failed utterly as they joined Regalia in staring up at this new abomination and found that they could do no more than reach out to take her lightly shaking hand in their own.

Both of them had been prepared for Creatures of Grimm, or even Cyber-Grimm but this was a new order of monstrosity entirely.

Unbeknownst to either Astra or Regalia the consumption of Aefen Cruor and the last dregs of what had once been Nugget into the greater whole of the fused mass of Grimm-Zombies had wrought a change; pushing the putrid and repulsive thing to be more active in its' violent urge to consume and destroy and unleash its' spores upon everything around it. After tearing the vines and tendrils which had anchored it in place from the walls of Aefen's laboratory entirely the creature had lumbered and slithered its' way through the scientists' lair until the found the vat of roiling and shifting, unformed Grimm-tissue which had served as the basis for so many of Aefen's failed experiments.

And they had promptly consumed it, adding it to their own mass.

Now the twisted and amalgamated creature would stand at a full twenty five feet in height if it were to rear up fully, with Astra or Regalia barely reaching the knees of a body that could no longer be considered human in any way at all.

The Abomination, for there was no other word for it was bipedal, but hunched over with a stance more like a gorilla simply due to its' own sheer mass; its' legs lacking muscles in the strictest sense and instead being formed of countless thick and pulsating vines and tendrils woven together and given shape by the bone structures around them, ending in appendages which could not rightly be called feet and were instead thorny masses that burrowed and clawed at the ground to root the thing in place and stabilise it between every movement. The body of the abomination was almost beyond description, a tapering and immensely powerful, hulking mass that would have appeared muscular were it not for the mountainous layers of puffy and encrusted tissue growing from it to create some twisted and living furnace with chitinous chimneys erupting up from it asymmetrically, each of them lined with faintly glowing bioluminescent mushroom caps and belching a hazy miasma of darkness into the air around the thing.

Its' arms were truly obscenely powerful, each shoulder easily twice as broad around as either of the Hunters stood before it were at their widest points and made wider still by the masses of gnarled, twisting and interlocking claws and bones piercing through the flesh whilst the lowers arms were entirely asymmetrical; the left arm split into two pieces at the elbow and each of the resulting limbs was connected to the other by thick strands of an oozing, ropey tissue with one section of the limb forming a fleshy, almost simian but misshapen and tumorous fist whose knuckles provided it with more support whilst the rest of the arm appeared to be comprised of several humanoid hands and arms all grasping at and melted into one another with a central pillar of bone running through them which emerged in place of a hand as a jagged and crudely shaped bone-sword laced with obsidian sinew. The right arm of the abomination was no better, a boneless mass of sinew ending a ball of muscle and bone the size of a truck from with dozens of bone spikes, each roughly the size of a person protruded, each of them fostering growth of fungal Grimm-tissue in their pitted recesses.

Yet it was the underside of the Abomination which left Astra and Regalia staring in revulsion.

As powerful as its' back and limbs were the things' chest was skeletal and emaciated, almost buckling under its' own weight and supported only by an armoured ribcage; yet upon closer inspection one could find things writhing and wriggling between the individual ribs only to be disturbed the presence of far smaller limbs which ranged from humanoid, to avian and insectoid and even to formless indescribable things fighting for freedom and an escape from the existence to which they had been confined and giving proof that the Abomination was not truly a single coherent organism. Further proof of the things' horrific nature could be found in its' neck and head, where its' obsidian flesh was stretched almost to transparency and formed into the writhing and screaming faces of several distinct people and lesser Creatures of Grimm, each melded to one another in a cruel echo of what had once been before leading to the things' skull. The Head of the abomination was lined with weaving, lashing tendrils and vast segmented spinal cords which served as hair whilst its' face was a living mask that had been grafted over bone.

A pair of glowing red eyes and not mouth to speak of whilst the wings, horns and tusks of various Creatures of Grimm were represented, curling back from the brow and sides of the head to form a fearsome crown.

The Abomination wore Aefen Cruor's mask as its' face.

"Astra" Regalia fought to keep any degree of composure despite the waves of palpable dread that washed over her, like nothing she had ever experience before as the Abomination scented the air like any predatory animal might "What do we do?"

"First thing's first" the Deer Faunus collapsed their weapons, swallowing thickly before rolling their shoulders back and mastering themselves despite their own sudden fear "I'm not seeing any guns or robot bits….That's just a Grimm, no matter what Aefen's done to it….So I wanna get an idea for how fast or tough it is"

With that Astra was on the move, Regalia's urging for them to be careful lingering in their ears as they began to activate their Semblance.

Before Astra could attack or even fully prepare themselves the Abomination was one them, whether it had seen the fiery red light of their Semblance of if the mere act of using an Aura in the things' presence had stirred it through some additional sense it possessed they did not know but the leader of Team MARS was forced to leap and roll with their Aura construct still growing and taking shape around them as the Abomination reared up to its' full terrifying height; a cacophony of feral screams coming not from its' masked face but instead from the various mouth reflected in the stretched and screaming visages on its' neck as it flung its' flail-arm back as a counterweight and simultaneously brought its' split left arm upwards with the simian lower limb grasping out with unnerving deftness considering its' malformed appearance.

Landing in a crouch Astra, with their Semblance-self fully enveloping and at a height which whilst not equal to the Abomination was still capable of fighting it as they chose to conserve their strength and make themselves a smaller target, went on the attack.

A low roundhouse kick, less flamboyant than many variations of the move they often favoured but still punishing in the extreme struck the abominations' left knee with a sickening crack of shattering bone and Astra quickly drew the leg back before it could be tangled in the mass of limp and pulsing vines of rubbery, fungus-laden tissue that spilled from within the exoskeleton which gave them shape. The Abomination screamed again, its' face continuing to remain stoic as it rotated the left arm at the point of its' elbow where it split and became two separate limbs so that it could swing its' colossal bone sword at its' foe which Astra countered by driving an elbow into the point of the horrific mass of twisted and grasping smaller limbs where a wrist might have been before slamming their heel beneath the arm and delivering a snapping front kick into the ribs of the Abomination.

The ground shook with the force of its' counterattack.

"ASTRA LOOK OUT!" Regalia's words pierced the chaos of the battle and yet Astra was still unable to move aside fast enough as the Abomination pivoted and dropped back into its' hunched, gorilla like stance as it brought its' monstrous morning-star of flesh and bone around for a catastrophic blow which left a contrail and after image of spores and a midnight black haze in its' wake. Astra's Semblance-self remained intact as the weapon struck them in the chest but it was a narrow thing, the Deer Faunus themselves left staring directly at spikes and claws that had pierced through solidified Aura to land less than a foot away from where their body rested all whilst the entirety of their construct form was slammed into the ground and its' fiery red colour was all but lost beneath a spider-web of white cracks and fissures that spread across it. Worse still, Astra realised with a visceral terror was that there was more to the attack than first seemed; the Deer Faunus watched and felt in a way that was more than merely physical as the fungal growths nesting in each of the spikes adorning the weapon currently pinning them to the ground began to take root in their Aura construct and grow pulsating, burrowing tendrils of their own which threatened to dig and lacerate their way through the entirety of Astra's Semblance and form a cage around them.

There was only one clear route for Astra in that moment; escape.

Without hesitation they released their Semblance and rolled aside, managing to avoid the crushing weight of the Abominations' weapon as it struck the ground and deploying Buckshot Ares once more as they leapt to their feet, slashing and swiping at any writhing Grimm-tissue they could reach until they felt the familiar pull of Apex Scavenger's harpoon as Regalia pulled them back to safety.

"Maybe I'm just new to this whole rescuing thing, but this, to me, might be considered kind of a step backwards, wouldn't you say?" the Racoon Faunus asked, quoting a movie that Astra remembered enjoying as a child in an effort to hide her fear which was betrayed by the wavering in her voice.

"The spores" Astra gasped out frantically, to which their partner nodded

"Those spores?" she aimed her shotgun and fired, incendiary Dust rounds igniting the hazy cloud of darkness which followed the Abominations' flail as the thing dragged it along "What do they do?"
"I don't know exactly but I don't want to find out" Astra answered pointedly, a sentiment underlined by the way the towering behemoth before them shifted its' weight, the rootlike structures forming its' legs and feet shattering the ground beneath them as it anchored itself again and belched another cloud of spores into the air from the chimneys on its' back.

Only for parts of that cloud to be ignited in turn, by searing crimson lasers a moment before a winged form tore through the space that had been left.

"Holy shit!" Astra spat, heart feeling as though it had turned to ice "That's Gestalt-Prime!"

"Heh, at least they're not coming for us right? I mean not right now at least?" Regalia added, her hopeful and optimistic assertion being given some weight by the way the Alpha Cyber-Grimm failed to acknowledge their presence at all, not offering so much as a cursory strafing run before tearing their way into the building that the Abomination had emerged from, venturing downwards from its' roof in search of whatever was more important to them than revenge against a foe who had so grievously wounded them before.

"I don't think they need to!" Astra exclaimed as the Abomination uprooted itself and began a slow and lumbering but inexorable charge towards them; leaving the idea that Gestalt-Prime had simply abandoned them to a fate they deemed violent enough an entirely plausible option.

---

Athena-Jade, despite her momentary pause had refused to allow herself to give up the fight against Zirconia Shadowmoon.

Every blow the two of them exchanged felt like a knife being twisted in the very core of her being and the idea that she might find some closure or catharsis in such a moment had been rendered a cruel and absurd joke.

Yet still she pressed onwards relentlessly, refusing to let her heart or a willingness to believe that things could be any other way and that she and Zirconia could be on the same side once again; bitterly dismissing those notions as weak and treacherous every time they occurred to her and finding fresh resolve every time she caught sight of Stygian who still lay almost totally immobile and with wisps of smoke still rising from a body wreathed in a continually flickering Aura as he struggled to recover enough to return to the fight after a direct hit from Heartbreaker at such close range.

"DO YOU WANT EVERYONE HERE TO DIE! IS THAT WHAT THIS IS?" Zirconia screamed in frustration, blood flying from her mouth and flecking Athena's face with their closeness "ARE YOU SO DESPERATE TO BEAT ME THAT YOU'LL LET PEOPLE GET HURT?"

"DID YOU THINK YOU WERE JUST GONNA GET WHAT YOU WANTED? THAT YOU COULD JUST LIE TO ME AGAIN AND I'D BELIEVE YOU?" Athena shot back as she launched another flurry of blows; opening by pivoting at the waist and bring up her left arm so that the partially collapsed blade of her weapon which now sat at the base of the hammers' shaft would rake across Zirconia's armour only for the Grasshopper Faunus to spring over the attack, Athena followed up with a flying knee-strike which knocked Zirconia out of the air and then brought her hammer overhead for a downward blow which Zirconia once again managed to evade; though this time her dodge to the left was far less graceful.

'Double Ice!' Sunriser Cain's synthetic voice gave Athena the moment of warning she needed to evade and counter as Zirconia tried to freeze the head of Heartbreaker to the ground and hold her in place, retaliating with a single, back-handed swing of the weapon which the Grasshopper easily weaved beneath and prepared to fire again only to be struck by the follow up blow Athena had carried her momentum into, namely one which involved throwing herself into a single-handed handstand and using her weapon as a counterweight as she kicked Zirconia in the face and chest.

From there Athena gave in to her anger and heartbreak enough to dispense with technique and strategy altogether and instead land in a crouch from which she surged upwards and forwards in an attempt to tackle Zirconia by the waist and drag her to the ground so that she could be held in place until she could be properly detained.

Her lack of composure saw Zirconia take the upper hand.

"JUST STOP!" the Grasshopper Faunus lashed out with a kick with Athena was powerless to avoid and which left her bent double as her entire body crumpled and folded around the blow, the air leaving her lungs as her feet left the floor; from there Zirconia whipped her leg back and shifted Sunriser Cain into its' melee form in the same motion in order to swipe Athena's jellied and unstable legs out from under her.

"AND LISTEN!" Zirconia continued to scream, voice raw and ragged as she knelt on Athena and placed a metallic limb across her chest in order to keep the Bear Faunus from rising; punctuating her outburst by slamming her left fist into the ground beside Athena's head which allowed the blue-eyed and snowy-haired young woman to realise that whilst her former partners' right hand and forearm were encased in a glove and armour she had a simple, stained and faded but ultimately familiar jade bandanna wrapped around her left wrist.

"You kept that….After all this time?" tears welled up in Athena's eyes and despite her anger, at the absurdity of such a simple thing being what broke her as well as everything else that had brought the two of them to this point the Bear Faunus felt the fight leaving her.

Glancing up and meeting Zirconia's eyes however she saw that the mismatched pink and orange irises she had gazed into so many times were glowing faintly as the pupils of her eyes spread and diffused, clouding the whites until only illuminated darkness remained and the familiar chill of Zirconia's Semblance began to set in as Phantasmagoria took hold and enveloped the two of them in a total darkness and silence.

"I'm pretty sure your new partner can't get in here" Zirconia noted, any effort she made to hide her scathing anger being utterly inadequate as she rose to her feet; though she took a moment to steady herself with a deep breath before adding "Can we please just talk?"

She collapsed Sunriser Cain and holstered the weapon, giving Athena the perfect opportunity to use her Semblance in any number of ways or to jump to her feet and attack again or see if Heartbreaker was still in the confines of the darkness after she had discarded it.

Athena-Jade did none of those things, instead she dragged herself to her feet.

"Talk" she huffed, anger fading into mere petulance and a hurt expression that was certainly justified "What is Nero planning, where is he hiding?"

"That's not what's important right now" Zirconia wheezed out, wiping her mouth again and suffering from her own injuries as much as Athena-Jade was with hers "This is Aefen's work, not his-"

"Oh bullshit-"

"JUST LISTEN!" Zirconia actually stamped a foot as she snapped, the impact sending a roiling wave of darkness through the fathomless bowels of her Semblance.

"Aefen has double-crossed us" she continued, speaking more hurriedly and allowing the usual cultured and delicate tone of her rasping voice to become something more urgent and frantic

"She was supposed to be developing Cyber-Grimm, she isn't. She's making Grimm-Human hybrids or at least trying to; team-damn it Team NUGT are dead AJ someone needs to know so somebody can tell their families because I don't think any of them told anybody that they left Neo Vale with my….With Nero's people, she turned them into monsters and had them try to kill me….That's what that thing we heard was! But it's still not finished, Aefen she said-she said that only people with an unlocked Aura can survive it-"

"Survive what?" Athena demanded, horrified but confused by the notion "Someone with no Aura can't fight a Grimm anyway-"

"But this isn't going to fight them. It's going to infect them….Like, like-" Zirconia's blackened eyes widened, her glowing irises flickering with surprise which almost cost her the focus she needed to maintain her Semblance "Like Petrol, like the infected mech-suit that was trying to eat him alive; but it spreads through spores that it gives off….If we don't get people out of here then everyone in Pikesreach is going to be killed, or worse"

"Damn it….Damn it, I hate this! I hate all of it! I hate…." Athena let out a choking, strangled sob and let out a bitter laugh "No, I don't you….And I hate that I don't, that I can't-"

"AJ I-"

"I told you that you don't get to call me that!" Athena snapped, meeting Zirconia's eyes; transformed as they were by her Semblance and being almost totally overcome by the urge to reach out and gently stroke the taller girls' cheek, to take off the gloves she wore and run her fingertips along the scars that she herself had cut into the left side of Zirconia face before finally composing herself.

"Okay fine. Saving people is a priority" she breathed out "But you're coming with us afterwards. You have to surrender"

Zirconia remained silent for several, impossibly long seconds and for a single blissful moment Athena thought that her former partner might actually be willing to consider a course of action that would allow for some sort of finality; a proper ending that the two of them could move on from one way another.

"Athena, listen to me-" whatever Zirconia had intended to say beyond that remained a mystery as the familiar wincing and look of disoriented discomfort which signalled that something had breached Phantasmagoria from the outside crossed her face. Athena-Jade cast her eyes around quickly and found the blade of Sharp Cheese in the midst of slicing an opening into the darkness with Stygian himself quickly following the weapon; any hasty and guilty-seeming attempts the Bear Faunus might have found to explain the scene Stygian had stumbled in on were cut short by the Mouse Faunus himself, staggering limping and clearly in pain as he let out a frantic yell.

"GET DOWN! TAKE COVER, IT'S-"

Phantasmagoria was stripped from existence by a single beam of crimson light.

Athena had thrown herself to the ground through simple well-honed instinct and found that Stygian had done the same; though when the ringing in her ears subsided enough for the world to make sense again and she dared to scrabble to her feet and look around the Bear Faunus felt as though the floor had vanished beneath her.

Zirconia was gone.

No sign of the rogue Huntress's Semblance lingered on the ground and Athena had almost been ready to admit that there was no sign of Zirconia herself, yet as she turned her sapphire eyes skyward she saw that the answer was perhaps even more bleak than that. It was Gestalt-Prime who had swooped in and delivered a punishing blow and Athena now saw that the Alpha Cyber-Grimm was streaking away from Pikesreach carrying sizeable amounts of computers and machinery in their arms whilst their tail was wrapped around Zirconia who seemed to be struggling to free herself.

It was an abduction more than it was a rescue and that fact chilled Athena to her core.

"HOPS!" the panicked scream had left her before she could think, yet the moment rational thought came to her she wheeled around and frantically rushed to Stygian's side "Stitch, Stitch are you okay?"

"What the hell was that?" the Mouse Faunus demanded as he pushed through his pain and reared up to his full height, giving Athena a look that was mercifully more confused than accusatory.

"She told me some of what Aefen was doing here" Athena answered, any insistence that her former partner and lover had been about to surrender beyond pushed aside by more urgent matters.

"Stitch, we've gotta find Astra and Regalia and start getting people out of here!" she was already grabbing his arm and pulling him along with her as she spoke "It's our only chance of saving people!"

---

Astra and Regalia had continued to do anything and everything they could think of to halt, injure or at least slow the Abomination and at every turn they had been thwarted by its' sheer unnatural resilience.

"Is Look-See giving you anything we can use?" Astra asked, evidently worried as they pulled Regalia around a corner and hopefully out of the immediate view of the Abomination, ducking behind a corner of an already burned and partially ruined building; though any misplaced notions of safety they might have had were easily taken away from them by the titanic footsteps of their foe as it gave chase at a slow and deliberate pace with each step forward inflicting more damage as it uprooted and anchored itself once again.

"Nothing" Regalia admitted as she slumped back against the wall, brushing dust away from the ragged and hooded cloak she wore and pulling her goggles up onto the top of her head so that she could run at eyes which had begun to itch after repeated uses of her Semblance "It just tells me that thing is the answer, heh I mean I guess we both already knew that so at least it's still working right?….I'm sorry"

"It's okay" Astra assured her, breathless and distracted as they tried to think of a new plan whilst straining all of their senses to keep watch for the Abomination even as its' gushing spores began to cloud the already smoke-filled sky "It's big and it's scary, like nothing I've ever dealt with before….But it's still a Grimm. We'll just have to break it down into smaller pieces"

"Heh, there's the Astra I know and love" Regalia beamed nudged their shoulder playfully, even as the ground shook with the approach of the Abomination "Have you got any ideas?"

"The trick we did with the fire Dust and the harpoon earlier, the one that cut a Cyber-Grimm in half?" Astra suggested "Will Apex Scavenger be able to do it again, maybe with Ice Dust? We can take off one of that things' legs?"

"It's a good idea" Regalia quickly examined her weapon again to ensure that it could withstand such abuse "Maybe if we-ASTRA GET DOWN!"

This time it was the Racoon Faunus dragging her partner clear of danger, flying at the Deer Faunus to take them by the waist and haul them up over one shoulder as though they weighed nothing at all and simply leap clear of an incoming attack.

The Abomination, likely with senses beyond simple sight had found the two of them and it was only Regalia's noticing the shadow that fell over the entire building they had been crouched behind which saved the pair when the colossal monster took the bone-sword growing from its' mutated and separated left arm and simply drove it through the entire structure.

"Holy shit!" Astra yelled as the two of them were flung to the ground by the force of the impact, instinctively rolling over and using their body to try and shield Regalia from the worst of the flying debris "Are you okay?"

"I, heh I think so?" Regalia coughed the words out dragging herself first into a sitting position and then shakily to her feet; brushing away more dust and checking herself for injury simply so that she had something to do with her shaking hands whilst her bushy tail stood erect behind her and pressed itself into her back and her breathing came in shallow and trembling pants which slowly subsided into something more regular as it became apparent that the Abomination was not pressing its' advantage by simply swinging its' enormous flail and tearing through much of the immediate vicinity with a single swipe no matter how easy it would be.

The reason for its' reluctance becoming obvious as a beam of ephemeral green light lanced through the air and ignited part of the haze of spores that hung in the air around the Abomination.

"LOOK!" Astra yelled, gesturing for Regalia to follow their gaze and then immediately readying the guns of Buckshot Ares, filling them with Ice Dust and firing directly into the legs of titanic monster in an effort to slow it which Regalia quickly added to with similarly freezing Shotgun blasts.

Athena-Jade and Stygian had joined them and managed to distract the Abomination.

The laser cannon of Heartbreaker had managed to leave a glowing trench gouged into the bony back and living chimneys sprouting from the monstrous thing yet this seemed to do nothing to effectively limit how many spores it could spew. The laser had also allowed Stygian to teleport with the use of his Semblance however and the moment the Mouse Faunus reappeared on the back of the Abomination he thrust the blade of Sharp Cheese into a point where bone met pulpy, fungal black flesh before imbuing the hyper-conductive blade of his katana with Hard-light Dust, allowing him to rip a sizeable chunk of what may or may not have been meat away from the Abomination; the monster let out shrieking wails from mouths that were not on its' face as it retaliated by swinging its' living flail up and onto its own back in an effort to strike the Mouse Faunus whose answer was to teleport again, this time appearing near the head of the flail and quickly swinging himself out of the path of its' contrail of spores before driving his sword into the beast again, this time powering Sharp Cheese with ice Dust to freeze yet more of its' sinuous tendril-ridden physique solid with the hope of it shattering under its' own weight.

With his work done Stygian leapt away from the Abomination and onto the first of a series of Glyphs which Athena-Jade began to create for him even as she prepared to unleash her own attack. Seeing that the things' flail and legs were at least momentarily frozen to some degree the Bear Faunus used the technique she had developed for the Vytal Tournament; summoning four Spectral Beowolf limbs each with a Glyph of their own at their paw and using them to launch herself upwards like a missile only to replace the claws with glowing and ethereal feathered wings at the peak of her ascent before swooping downwards.

On a collision course with the Abominations' skull.

Astra, Regalia and even Stygian who was descending by leaping from one Glyph to the next watched in awe as their team-mate transformed Heartbreaker into the hammer mode she had waited to unveil, revealing as she did so that whilst it was arguably not quite as powerful as it had once been owing to the pressures of new components and functions; the head of the hammer could still be used as a rocket booster of sorts which would transform any blow into a blur of motion and explosion of force.

The sound of Athena striking the Abomination in the face was like a thunderstorm condensed into a single moment and the thing visibly reeled as part of its' face splintered.

"THAT WAS AWESOME!" Regalia cheered as Stygian and Athena joined them, allowing Team MARS to regroup as a whole; though Astra merely gave Athena's new weapon a nod as the Bear Faunus was being helped to the ground by her partner.

"So you've had that the whole time and held back just to be dramatic?"

"Pest, when did you have a problem with people being dramatic" Athena shot back with a toothy smile before the brief moment of relief was undercut by Stygian.

"That thing's still alive, we need to move and start getting people out of here!" all eyes turned to the Mouse Faunus for a moment until Athena nodded and gave context.

"Gestalt-Prime just snatched up Zirconia and took her, it looks like at least some of the Cyber-Grimm and Nero's people are running-"

"You saw Zirconia?" Astra arched an eyebrow.

"She was gonna surrender….Not important" Athena shook her head and focused "What's important is that thing, it's Aefen Cruor's work but it's not finished….It's supposed to make Grimm-Human hybrids but it kills everyone it infects and it's going to infect everyone who doesn't have an Aura"

"Holy shit" Astra found themselves cursing again "How do we fight that?"

"We don't!" Stygian urged "We fall back and start an evacuation! If any of our Auras break this close to it then we're dead!"

The realisation was a sobering one. To face a Grimm without proper protection meant almost certain death in any event but something about what was being suggested seemed far more unthinkable.

"Looks like we won't have to fight it; looks like we've got back up from….Whoever the other side was in that skirmish!" Regalia declared pointing to the sky but in a direction away from where the Abomination was blocking out light with its' spores and mass. Team MARS could only watch in shock and with a relief that each of them felt guilty and conflicted about as a collection of half a dozen Cyber-Grim, each of them already visibly damaged to some extent came hurtling through the smoke-filled sky with all weapons firing at the Abomination; their movements coordinated in a way which spoke of human control as they sought out anything which might appear to be a weak point on their targets' hulking form, the frozen segments of the Abominations' body being targeted relentlessly until it became apparent that the tissue beneath the ice was already beginning to heal.

And then the Abomination retaliated.

The first Cyber-Grimm to be claimed by the Abomination was blown to pieces as the various gaping maws around the titanic monsters' neck gaped wide and the stretched and transparent skin stretched over each of them bubbled and finally split to allow streams of some viscous fluid which ignited and exploded on contact with the air to be spread; wreathing the Abomination with a fiery halo and ripping the Cyber-Grimm which had flown too close apart. Its' smoking body was caught before it fell the ground by the countless grasping limbs snaking through the ribs of the Abomination and Team MARS could only watch in horror as any lingering Grimm-tissue was sucked and siphoned from the wreckage before the emptied metal husk was discarded.

Another Cyber-Grimm was destroyed moments' later in a way which was perhaps worse.

The Abomination reared up, flinging its' flail back to balance once again and simply caught the Cyber-Grimm in its' single simian hand before reaching back towards the vents and chimneys which sprayed spores, with Team MARS realising with utter horror and disgust that it was deliberately coating its' victim with the noxious and infectious substance. From there the Abomination crushed the smaller monster in its' hand, the sound of grinding and screeching metal components muffled by diseased flesh before it drew back its' mutated arm and threw the crushed and compacted Cyber-Grimm wreckage directly into one of Pikesreach's buildings which had thus-far remained standing.

Team MARS shared haunted looks as they realised that the people operating the Cyber-Grimm had likely been inside that building and they were beyond saving now.

---

Coco Adel had refused to give in to her fear, exhaustion, pain or the utter chaos that conspired in their efforts against her.

After being run ragged and almost slain by Gestalt-Prime over the course of her efforts to distract the monster Coco was barely able to stand and yet stand she did, placing one foot in front of the other despite the way her limbs shuddered with every motion and her entire body felt as though it had been bruised to the bone, her mini-gun dragging behind her with a grating noise which assured her that the weapon would need maintenance when she finally returned to Breaktide Academy.

For the moment however she simply forced herself to continue and see the goals that had presented themselves over the course of the recon missions' spiral out of control; the Abomination shrieked and wailed as it advanced through Pikesreach and from the small flashes of violence she had seen thus far Coco could tell that Team MARS, her students were amongst those fighting the monstrosity and yet, despite every fibre of her being demanding that she do so the Headmistress did not immediately join the fray as understood that there was very little that she could realistically add and that she would be better served tackling other problems whilst waiting for back up, hopefully spearheaded by Ruby to arrive.

To that end she let out another commanding yell, uncaring for the pained and wheezing note that her voice had taken on; her breathing faintly laboured as though her Aura had not entirely spared her ribs from the brunt of Gestalt-Prime's violence.

"GET INSIDE AND STAY THERE! LOCK YOUR DOORS AND BARRICADE YOUR WINDOWS! THE SITUATION IS NOT SAFE, MOVE!" whether it was that years of living under the thumb of Hunters, followed by the utter chaos of the current situation had left the people of Pikesreach pliant and willing to follow any orders that might keep them safe or simply that Coco, with her natural charisma and years as a teacher could command respect and obedience she did not know and frankly did not care; deciding simply that not having to argue or force the issue made things more simple and that she was grateful for it.

She had, through the course of her roaming the streets managed to apprehend one of the locals and gain some measure of understanding of the situation.

This was not an uprising, at least not entirely and instead those people of Pikesreach who were fighting to reclaim their home were simply taking advantage of a schism that had erupted amongst Nero's forces. Now that Gestalt-Prime had fled and taken their loyal followers with them however there was only one faction from that particular spat remaining and Coco had become very aware of the fact that if Ruby did arrive and manage to defeat the Abomination which had emerged from Aefen Cruor's laboratory then there would be nothing else for Nero's followers to do but attack as they found themselves surrounded by Hunters and with seemingly nowhere to run.

And Coco was still unsure if Nero had outfitted his monstrous creations with any particular methods of countering a Silver-Eyed Warrior.

"STAY INSIDE!" Coco continued to yell, prowling the streets of Pikesreach and ensuring that civilians who had no place in a battle were taking cover that could, hopefully act as suitable shelters from the worst of the violence owing to their sturdy construction whilst also using her efforts as a ruse that would allow her to find whatever building was serving as a makeshift control centre for the faction that opposed Gestalt-Prime, the place where the operators were taking cover whilst the sent their Cyber-Grimm out to do battle so that she could incapacitate them before they managed to turn their attention away from the enormous Creature of Grimm lurching through Pikesreach and towards her students.

Deep brown eyes widened with shocked numbness and a distant, detached shock born of seeing several horrors of war in her life as it became clear that the Abomination had found the operators first.

The crushed form of a Cyber-Grimm hurled through the air like a comet, with a hazy contrail of the same spores which hung about the Abomination if a faint miasma and the building it struck was utterly crushed by the impact; its' roof buckling and the entire structure seeming to implode under force that had been delivered with calculating precision. Allowing her horror to be felt more keenly and with a need to do good, to save her fellow people from disaster no matter what they had done Coco sprinted forwards and found a fresh burst of energy and endurance as she did so, shouldering her weapon and gritting her teeth as she ran despite the pain every movement caused her until finally she reached the collapsed form of the building and dropped into a crouch as she prepared to begin hauling rubble away and searching for survivors.

Only for the rubble to be sent flying outwards as someone escaped.

Only it was not someone, as Coco realised with sinking dread. It was a something and each of the others that followed in its' wake were the same and suddenly Coco understood on a base, visceral level what the spores pouring from the Abomination were and exactly why Nero had chosen for this research to be conducted away from his main base.

The people that had been in the building were no longer people, instead they were infected Grimm-Zombies whose flesh had been split, melted, sloughed away and in several cases worn like grisly robes and trophies by twisted and malformed beings whose own obsidian flesh was more fungus than animal and spread like a rot as it grew over, in and through the bodies of those it had taken root in to create inhuman forms which screamed and wailed as the shambled and lunged directly at Coco.

She aimed and fired without hesitation.

"Oh my…." she trailed off, instinctively clamping her mouth shut as the bullets riddled the first Grimm-Zombie and reduced their form to the expected mist, yet that mist was not only red and instead had the darkness of dying Grimm tissue and more of the same spores that had caused the initial infection within it.

Coco realised that every Grimm-Zombie she killed with such spectacular violence would become another vector for infection and quickly began to retreat, taking care to not trip over her own feet as she began to unload and reload her signature weapon; taking only a moment to make decision between whether Fire Dust or Ice Dust would be better suited to eradicating Grimm which had learned to behave like a germ.

It was a moment that the Grimm-Zombie made good use of, shrieking as they split up and began to shamble, gallop and slither their repulsive forms in various directions; each of which would see them interacting with the people of Pikesreach in a matter of moments and Coco found herself coming to the most terrifying realisation of her career as a Hunter.

That she might soon have administer mercy kills en-masse to the people of Pikesreach.

---

The Abomination continued to crush and roll over everything in its' path like a fleshy, rotten wave of manifest darkness; claiming two more Cyber-Grimm in a single swing of its' meaty, spiked flail-arm which left only two of the original six remaining; continuing to act on their last orders despite the death and consumption of their handlers.

That those Cyber-Grimm had managed to distract the titanic mass of Grimm-tissue for so long had probably made enough of a difference to keep Team MARS alive and allowed them to keep fighting.

"ARE WE EVEN DOING ANYTHING TO IT?" Stygian demanded as he was brought back down to ground level by Athena-Jade's Glyphs after once again using his Semblance and his katana to tear and slash at every part of the Abomination he could reach, realising in doing so that the rubbery and diseased flesh of the monstrous Grimm was not conductive enough for Lightning Dust to be truly effective and that the thing could heal and regenerate itself at a vastly accelerated rate.

"Heh, I think we're managing to annoy it?" Regalia offered, optimism coloured by a hint of sarcasm as she fired her harpoon into a fuel-drum which had been left between two buildings and had some how managed to go undamaged thus far; hauling the weighty container up into the air and towards the Abomination before blasting it with the shotgun component of Apex Scavenger and sending a blossoming fireball and wave of burning, viscous liquid washing over part of the Abominations' chest and underside to scorch bone and reduce many of the frail, twisted and grasping limbs protruding from between its' ribs to a blistered and putrid slurry even as the fires began to gutter out in mere moments.

"Well that means that it's focusing on us instead of everyone else and that it's not trying to leave" Athena-Jade noted, setting Stygian down safely before punctuating her words with a renewed assault from Heartbreaker whose jade green laser beam burned and carved a path through the flesh of the Abomination whilst her team-mates were left harrowed by the notion of the thing simply setting off into the wastes "We've just gotta keep it busy until help gets here….Or until Astra comes up with something?"

"Working on it!" Astra exclaimed, their voice vaguely sing-song in tone as it rose loud enough to be heard over their own ongoing deluge of firepower though inwardly the Deer Faunus's mind had raced in futile circles until they had realised that the situation in its' current state was hopeless.

Their Semblance had been countered and overpowered with ease, their weapons were doing little if anything and Astra simply could not think of a workable solution to the problem they faces; they understood that evacuating Pikesreach and getting the civilians was, in light of what Athena had learned from Zirconia of utmost importance but the spores being pumped into the air remained a threat to the very people they needed to save and the fact remained that there was no way for Team MARS to disengage from their fight against the Abomination.

A point which the Abomination itself proved by continuing its' assault.

"GO, GO, GO!" Astra yelled, their guns falling silent as they leapt and threw themselves aside and allowed themselves a single relieved breath upon seeing their friends do the same when the colossal mass of obsidian flesh sent the two remaining Cyber-Grimm reeling through the air with the backswing of its' flail arm and followed up by lunging forwards and thrusting its' giant bone-sword forwards through the cloud of spores and smog it left in its' wake; with Team MARS managing to avoid the path of the blade as tore through the street they had stood on.

"Come on!" the Deer Faunus yelled, taking the moment as an opportunity "Break off, we need to regroup with Professor Adel!"

The idea was a sound one and Team MARS set off, racing threw the streets of Pikesreach with Stygian rushing ahead to lead the way whilst behind them the sound of the ground being shattered as the Abomination lurched after them filled their ears, uprooting itself and burrowing into the ground at a frightening pace as it gave chase. Astra turned, vague notions of standing firm and unleashing another salvo and using their Semblance once again when the Abomination drew close forming in their mind; the leader of Team MARS willing to hold the line and buy a few more moments for their team to run like Professor Adel had done.

They were abruptly disabused of such notions when they saw the Abomination destroy the final two Cyber-Grimm with a single use of the flaming and explosive halo it spewed from the various mouths and faces buried within its' neck, ridding itself of the annoyance they posed with such casual ease that it neither slowed down nor looked directly at the Cyber-Grimm as it destroyed them.

And yet, just beyond the Abominations' enormous spiked shoulder Astra found hope in the form of a single, silver speck of light which grew closer with every passing second.

"COME ON MOVE!" they yelled turning back and racing after their team-mates in a desperate hope to find their headmistress "PROFESSOR ROSE IS GONNA BE HERE ANY MINUTE!"

That simple truth was enough to give the four of them a second wind and allow them to continue in the face of an otherwise certain defeat.

Their path carried them through Pikesreach and passed buildings that were in the process of being sealed and secured as much as possible with the materials available, it was an admirable attempt but each of the Hunters knew that it would be of no use in the face of an airborne Grimm plague; they soon found hints of what they sought however in the form of a fresh cacophony of gunfire and shrieking which saw the four teenagers ready their weapons with fresh fervour, all the while being painfully aware of the Abomination lumbering behind them.

"PROFESSOR!" Astra called out as they caught sight of Coco Adel, bruised and bloodied but unbeaten as she aimed and fired her mini-gun into a monster whose shape defied description as it ran at the door of a home with the obvious intention of charging through it; the maelstrom of Ice Dust rounds freezing the thing solid. It was then that Team MARS collectively saw the multitude of frozen horrors whose forms were scattered through the surrounding area in some obscene display and managed to make sense of their twisted and mutated forms to truly understand what the things Coco was shooting were and what they had been.

And then, just as the Abomination shattered the ground and its' shadow loomed over them all; it ended.

Ruby Rose struck the ground with a booming shock-wave of light and concussive force, hood covering her face as she glared up defiantly at the Abomination with light streaming from her remaining Silver Eye and planted Crescent Rose firmly into the ground beside her. Bracing her entire body the Silver-Eyed Warrior and hero of Remnant let out a wordless yell of exertion and unleashed every ounce of power she possessed in a flash of light that simply refused to subside.

Team MARS found themselves ducking and taking cover as though it had been an enemies' attack as their Grimm Studies Professor reduced the world around them to a blinding whiteness and yet, taking a chance to open their eyes Astra found that they could still make out what was happening to some extent simply by the flashes of brighter light and the twisting and writhing of the shadows within it as they came apart. The Grimm-Zombies were unmade as the light washed over them, Grimm-tissue being vaporised to leave bodies that ranged from almost thankfully indistinct sacks of flesh to the still somewhat recognisable dropping to the floor and spilling their viscera around them whilst the Abomination was slower to perish; yet still it perished. Astra watched as its' bloated and fungal mass began to lose cohesion and break into smaller, thrashing pieces which began to dissolve more quickly all whilst the gaseous miasma of darkness that it had been pumping into the air began to ignite, with clusters of spores coalescing into clusters that became visible to the naked eye, foul things that were at once cancerous and vaguely invertebrate with formless limbs that curled into themselves before their forms fizzled and popped like grisly fireworks.

And then it was over.

"AUNT RUBY!" Athena, still blinking spots from her vision began to stagger towards the legendary Huntress as her eyes closed; Ruby's cybernetic straining in a way which made it clear that it would need some degree of recalibration whilst her entire body sagged and her efforts to use her weapon to keep herself upright finally failed as she began to lose consciousness; though before she could fall to the floor Coco, clearly struggling with her own injuries managed to catch her and set her down gently.

"She's okay….This happens sometimes when she goes all out, not seen her have to push herself like that for years though" Coco murmured, voice reduced to a pained and barely audible wheeze which did little to soothe Athena's nerves; though before she could answer she, along with the rest of Team MARS had her focus drawn entirely to a new sound from within the pile of ruined bodies that had been within the Abomination, a pile which Athena knew contained her former classmates Team NUGT amongst others.

A ruined, tortured and broken but still distinct voice laughing.

"WE'VE GOT SOMEONE!" Astra yelled, with their team-mates rushing to join them in the next instant and in mere moments the Deer Faunus was using their forearm mounted blades and the edges of their shields to move bodies aside whilst Regalia shifted Apex Scavenger into its' oversized pickaxe mode and did the same until they could uncover the source of the retching, agonised cackling.

It was Aefen Cruor.

"No….No way is she still alive" Stygian whispered in disbelief and disgust as he stood beside Astra and looked down at the architect of everything that had been done to his childhood home. The woman once known as Shirley Aefen, the exiled scientist turned cult leader was clearly only moments away from her ending; she was unmasked and her face like every other part of her flesh that was visible looked as though she had been eaten alive from both within and without, her entire body having passed beyond pallor into necrotisation even as she still drew breath.

"I-I was a part of something bigger….Something beautiful" Aefen managed to speak, seeming to sense even with unseeing eyes that someone was close "I saw the world the way the Creatures of Grimm do….We were all one, we were united….No fear, no lies, now weakness….It was beautiful. You all laughed at me once, but-but now nobody on Remnant will ever laugh at me again"

With her last words uttered Aefen Cruor allowed herself to succumb to her injuries and died amidst the ruins of her work.

Author's Notes:

Whoo! There it is!...The big pay-off of our body horror voyage
Also, looks like I did get it uploaded on time as well.
I had a lot of fun writing this and I hope it shows.
One more chapter left of Vol.07, where we'll be taking the various hanging threads that we have here and arranging them in a way that sets up Vol.08.
ALSO….Writing up to Chapter 125 was one of my goals for the year and you probably won't be reading it until August/September, but I hit this particular goal in June.

But anyway, let's summarise shall we?:
Being pushed to the absolute edge and then pushed even further feels like a running theme of this whole chapter.
Everything about how Athena interacts with her current and former partner in this chapter and how Zirconia sees those interactions was gold.
The contrast between the absolute pummelling that AJ was handing out and the "We could have fixed things".
Okay, that was Zirconia being a bitter ex as well as a good fighter….Throwing Stitch into the firing line and then deliberately drawing attention to the moment being a parallel to the training match against Team BASL in Vol.01, where AJ accidentally shot Zirconia.
FUCKING SURPRISE!….But seriously, I've been putting it in the text directly that Heartbreaker has hidden features; so now this is a three mode weapon, like Harbinger.
The way all of AJ's fight left her when Zirconia's mask came off….Oh these two messy, heartbroken dorks.
And naturally we end the scene with the big bad screaming bloody murder because it had to be present to some degree for the entire chapter.
Coco absolutely wanted to go full Saga of Beowulf and nail one of Gestalt-Prime's severed limbs over her mantle piece.
Yeah, as scary as she is Coco might have lost some of ability to trash talk over the years just due to a lack of people willing to regularly talk back to her.
Okay the ducking into an abandoned building might have worked if it wasn't for Gestalt-Prime's visor having things like thermal imaging….Which she actually did there as completely pin herself.
Look, we all know that I wrote Gestalt-Prime doing the axe thing to rip the building apart because I need Coco to survive this scene and if they'd decided to stop playing with their food it would have been over with one good shot….But the image of Gestalt-Prime dive-bombing a house with two giant axe arms is cool.
….As we see by the consequences of even a glancing hit.
Okay so Downward Spiral predates the novels and my version of Coco had a Semblance which completely mitigates her weapons' recoil and gives her perfect balance rather than her Dust-amping canon Semblance; which is why Gestalt-Prime was right to try stop her from grabbing her mini-gun even with a popped shoulder and why we see her still using it later.
I delayed the reveal of the Abomination until after Gestalt-Prime had seen it just to build tension, because once they saw it and immediately decided that Pikesreach was a lost cause you knew things were gonna get nuts.
Okay in terms of inspiration for the Abomination I drew from a lot of places; the Last of Us, the Thing, Tyranids, Bio Broly from DBZ, the Bear from Annihilation, Lilith from Evangelion, various different Kaiju and the new version of Aefen's mask having vines and spines behind it like dreadlocks gives it a vaguely Predator vibe.
Kudos to Astra for keeping their wits about them and immediately seeing a lack of robot bits then deciding it was worth trying to fist fight it at least once.
See the key thing there is that the Abomination can be damaged, just not in anyway that matters….'Cos it's a fungal piece of shit.
All of its' big hits leave a contrail/after image of spores….Kinda like Leviathan's Macro-Hydro-kinesis if you've read Worm.
That thing is made up from people who were turned into Grimm-Zombies because they were infected whilst they still had active Auras….Astra's Semblance is a really bad move to use against it.
And despite all of it Regalia managed to find time to quote the Emperor's New Groove; because of course she did.
Gestalt-Prime knows Pikesreach is a bust and that Aefen is gone, but they also know where she kept all of her research; always secure the bag.
AJ really thought she was gonna get closure from this LOL, nope….We respect the rule of threes here, this is only round 2.
AJ really did hand out all of that ass-whooping just to get so mad that she dropped her weapon and tried to tackle one of the most mobile fighters in the story.
In both fights they've had now Zirconia has spent the majority of it trying to get away or de-escalate and every time she really snaps and actually tried to fight AJ properly for a few seconds she's pretty fucking scary.
The bandanna though….It used to be AJ's, AJ took it off and wrapped it around Zirconia's head to cover up a cut after the battle of Port Alistair, where she first kissed Zirconia and Hops has worn it ever since.
See Zirconia's giving AJ intel is important because it does a lot of work for Hops's character, it gives Team MARS information and direction but also; the comparison to Petrol and the Grimm-infested mech-suit steers thoughts in a specific direction.
"I hate that I don't hate you" oh the fucking angst.
She was gonna surrender, she was so close.
And now Gestalt-Prime is gonna run….They have Aefen's research and Zirconia; considering that they know damn well that a war with Pantheon is inevitable and that Nero is now the only person with the means to make more Cyber-Grimm those are some pretty useful pieces of leverage.
Stitch's "What the hell" is definitely valid.
Astra continues to have plans but the simple reality is that there was nothing they could really have done that would have mattered to the Abomination; even if they'd taken control of some the wall mounted turrets and started shooting it with those it could have shrugged off the damage.
Gotta give points to AJ and Stitch for style, that was one hell of a Team MARS reunion.
Yeah, that makes the Abomination a massive threat, any Hunter that goes down fighting it is basically gonna be switching teams.
So Astra and Regalia were careful about tipping the scales too much and inadvertently helping Gestalt-Prime last chapter, which has played into their hands here because it means that there are still some people helping….And these would actually be the people more loyal to Nero/Pikesreach as the people loyal to Aefen/Gestalt Prime have already fled.
The Abomination breathes fire from its' neck-mouths as an upgrade of the bio-shotgun that the Nugget-Zombie had.
….Well they were helping, it was brief but you've gotta admit that the Abomination's trick with the crushed Cyber-Grimm was cool.
Coco does not stay down, even when she is pretty much one giant bruise.
She's right to admit that there is nothing she'd really be able to do against the Abomination and it was smart of her to get answers about what exactly is happening.
Also setting herself up to take out the Cyber-Grimm operators was smart, as well as plot relevant.
Yep, that's the operators gone and now Coco has actually seen the Grimm-Zombies, which means the heroes now know what infection means and what Aefen was working for whilst allied with Nero.
It also naturally means that Coco has got to shoot things that were people less than a minute ago.
If Team MARS had been able to coordinate with the Cyber-Grimm in some way they might have been a little more effective.
Astra's panicking does highlight two really big problem; how can you evac people when the air outside will kill them and how do they do it when they still have the Abomination on their backs, it's not like they can just walk away from that thing.
I had the Abomination finish the Cyber-Grimm off before Ruby got there because I didn't think there was anything for them to add; I honestly toyed with the idea that Nero had an order in their programming to self-destruct if they came into contact with her specifically but honestly what's the point? Nero knows how fast Ruby is and he knows that Ruby would exploit a self-destruct command like that mercilessly by just running through Cyber-Grimm lines and letting them take themselves out.
Team MARS saw the Grimm-Zombies as well; just for a little added trauma.
Ruby's arrival here is, to use another comparison to Worm, like Scion arriving to an Endbringer fight.
So that's that problem dealt with; all of of the Grimm tissue is gone, including the spores so there's nothing left to spread.
Oh come one you knew it was gonna be Aefen when you heard the laughing.
And that is how you give a villain an ending; absolutely horrific, no last minute 'What have I done' and in fact, in a way victorious….but still ultimately dead and defeated with everything they worked for in ruins around them.

Thank you to MajorBrony95 for their review on the last chapter.
Hey now...Most of the characters I kill stay dead, the only person to actually come back is Penny; the rest were variations who had their own characteristics.
Ruby was never in Atlas, she was somewhere else on Menagerie?
Remember, rule of threes...This is only the second fight between AJ & Hops.
I hope the abomination lived up to the hype.

As always thank you to everyone that reads this, with a special thanks to those of you that follow, favourite and review.