On the footbridge over the silent freeway, Moka and Sable stared each other down. They shot toward each other, pulled back at an invisible boundary a foot past the tips of their boots, and held against the event horizon. Each would lurch forward but pull back, watching each others' eyes, watching their fists and their shoulders, watching their footwork. Silently, they dared each other to strike first.
And in an instant, their stalemate shattered.
Black claws sprung from Sable's fist as it tore the air apart, half an inch above Moka's head. She sprung back up with a semblance-boosted hook that Sable stopped next to his cheek, and answered with an elbow to her jaw and a hook of his own that rocked her to her back foot. She stumbled, shook her head and regained her footing in time to block his follow-through. Her shield of ice erupted and lightning replaced it, seizing his arm long enough for her to stick a bolt of gravity dust to his wrist, and leave a second at his side with a swift jab. They pulsed in tandem and his arm pinned to his side, leaving him open for Moka to lay into him.
Cords of muscle rippled inside Sable's trapped arm as it tensed and flexed against its own exaggerated weight. He cursed as fists slammed his stomach and side, and swung at his opponent with his free arm, but Moka was faster. She ducked under again and vaulted off the skybridge's guardrail, landing a heavy kick between his shoulder blades that nearly forced him to the street below. She landed, shot ice beneath his foot and pounced on his second of instability, landing three more hits before ducking back again. She went in to repeat, the first workings of a smile spreading across her lips as she zipped around jabs and slashes, and each of her hooks landed.
Sable caught her by the throat.
Her feet left the ground and he threw her into it once, twice, hard enough for the entire bridge to shake. She bounced from the impact of the third, and into the boot he heaved into her ribs. She crumpled around the strike and flung backward, through the glass guardrail that exploded on impact and over a thirty foot drop. A few feet before the concrete she turned backward over her own shoulders, halted herself with two more bolts of gravity dust, and cartwheeled onto her feet.
Clutching her stomach and gasping for breath, she looked behind herself, then up to the bridge. Her tail lashed wildly. Sparks sizzled coursed around her hips and down her legs as she turned.
"Really?!" Sable shouted from behind her. He leapt down from their arena and landed below. "Talk all that shit, and now you're gonna die running!"
Moka glanced halfway over her shoulder. "I made a promise!"
A noise echoed over the street. Something horrific, like a twisting and tearing of steel. Moka didn't look for its source, just bowed her head and ran faster until a hunk of metal crashed into her shoulder. She shrieked in pain, tumbled and fell as a cloud of brown aura rose from the impact. A twisted hubcap landed ten feet beyond her, rolled further and clamored to rest.
Still on her knees, her shaky gaze landed on the approaching juggernaut. It flicked to a fire hydrant between them. She pushed herself up. Found her footing, and staggered to her feet. A bolt of lightning cracked the air past her fist, and the fire hydrant became a geyser. Another punch, and another bolt of lightning refracted in the flood and into Sable's gauntlets. She threw a ball of flame to draw a thick steam over the road, then bolts of ice to freeze its surface.
The massive silhouette in the fog tore its boots from the ice encasing them, and with a flash of purple finally freed its arm from its side. Moka gained a block and a half of distance and cut left, up a series of stair sets and terraces. The city's 'shelter in place' order must have worked. What was a festival or farmer's market an hour before was now still. On a wide plaza, tents displayed wares, half-empty drinks sat upon tables, and trash littered the ground. A shopping center cradled the park, the first floor of its horseshoe shape shielded with plywood, duct tape, and steel bars. Moka caught her breath, and took a step toward the railing to gauge her progress.
Ten feet away, Sable vaulted over.
Moka's eyes shot open and she ducked aside six-inch claws of black titanium. She engaged him for a few seconds– just long enough to land a hook, get her second blocked, and take the claws into her gut. She held his arm there, and lightning danced from her hand into his. She grit her teeth and headbutted him back, creating just enough of a gap to escape. Brown sparks swirled around her waist and down, bouncing back up and into her arms as she ran faster than most could ever hope to. Out of the park, through the boarded-up arcade between it and Main Street.
"Well if it's not you," Sable's voice boomed through the arcade. It echoed beneath his mask, and off the walls, off the floor. "Someone's gonna die today!"
First his threat, then the splintering of wood, the shattering of glass. A chorus of screams became louder as their barricade tore away. Moka's boots screeched on the pavement, and her tail flapped as she spun toward Sable. He discarded a shredded wooden board an inch and a half thick, and went back for a set of iron bars. His clawed gauntlets twisted them, tore them, and he pulled them from the window.
"No!" Moka shouted. She threw an icicle between Sable's eyes, but he shattered it with a claw. "If you want a fight, fine. It's right here."
She bolted toward him before he could retort. She led with her right fist, but pulled it at the last second and landed a left hook instead. He caught her next try, stirred up more screams as he slammed her into the barricade and flung her to the ground. She spun out from under his heel, bounced to her feet with her back to the park, and waited for Sable's next move with fists raised.
They locked in another game of chicken for half a minute or so, both sides catching their breath between feints. Moka lowered her fists for a second, glanced aside into the gap left by Sable. He took her bait. Her gravity bolt guided his gauntlet over her shoulder and she grabbed it. A fist bathed in flame struck his gut twice, and Moka shot backward a dozen feet with a flash of her semblance before he could respond. He pursued her nearly as fast, but her semblance jittered and sparked as she dodged each swing and pulled a half-step back with each. Further into the park, further away from bystanders.
She kept it up until her foot crunched a discarded beer can, and she slipped into his grip. Claws ground against waves of aura at the back of her neck and he planted his knee in her gut. Then again, until the fire from Moka's right hand and the lightning from her left became too much. She pulled away but set on her back foot, and sprung forward with a punch that caught Sable square in the jaw, and a second from the other side. Bolts sparked from her legs as she leapt into the air and planted a kick on his shoulder, and he righted himself to block her next swing.
Sable retracted the pneumatic claws of his gauntlets, and a grin spread beneath his mask. In that moment, there was no Red Claw. There was no Frontline Biomedical. The terraced park overlooking the docks was their arena, and unknowable faces behind the shopping center's windows gathered to watch the title fight.
Two jabs landed in his stomach, Sable's grunt accompanying the sound of flame spurting from each impact. Her arms came up to her face and she weaved beneath his hook to clutch his wrist. Her other palm crashed into his side, just below his shoulder. She stepped forward, her entire body glowed with the fervor of her semblance, and she heaved him over the railing.
His fist clenched the scarf her mother knit, and Moka plummeted after him. With one hand she pried it from his grasp. The other cocked back past her ear. They landed fifteen feet below, and with dust crackling around her fist, she became the bolt of lightning that struck Sable.
He cried out and was slow to roll to his side– Moka's semblance-boosted kick to his ribs helped him over. His back smacked the wall and Moka's jab forced his skull back into it. His dazed eyes snapped to focus the instant before her second hit and he ducked aside, forcing her back with a jab to the gut that game with all the force of a cannonball. She shook off the pain, and through a haze of her own aura, tried again.
This time, he ducked her punch. His fist clamped on her tail and Moka shrieked as it bent– snapped– and he flung her into the concrete wall. It cracked behind her, and the last fragments of her aura shattered. She fell forward, toward Sable.
His claws extended again as he lunged at her neck, and he painted the wall with an arc of her blood.
She lay beneath it, choking on her own breaths. Blood surged from her neck on the quickening, waning, beat of her heart. Between her fingers, down her arm, into the puddle spreading beneath her. Sable caught his breath over her and the sun set past him, so long shadows drew across Moka's face. The color drained from it, and crimson splattered across her cheek as Sable stepped closer.
"Decent fight," he muttered. He brought his heel up, and knee to his chest. "Thanks for that."
One shaking hand shot a gravity bolt into Sable's boot. One bloodied hand left a bolt next to her head, and the two attracted each other. With the final, stubborn vestiges of her semblance she could draw together, she threw her body behind her fist, her fist into Sable's knee.
With a crack like a gunshot it bent backward and outward– a stark reminder of his career's end. He roared in agony and crumpled on his inverted leg, writhing in a cloud of black aura before the pain took his consciousness.
"You're welcome."
Blood smeared across the wall as Moka pushed herself upright against it, each move awkward and lurching. She took a shaky step forward with shuddering breaths, and secured four gravity bolts into each of Sable's wrists. Her broken tail flicked with each stair upward and she flinched, took a breath, and pulled herself up the next. At the third from the top, she stumbled to her knees. And rolled onto her back.
She looked out on the blue of the sea. Painted in hues of sunset, a shaking arm raised a Holoband to her chin.
Destroying the second Grimm Nexus was easier than the first. It was a matter of finding its hiding place at the top floor of a parking garage, dropping a handful of Griffons from the sky, then burning it, jolting it, and freezing it until its shadow faded and its metal shell lay inert. CRLN made their way back down to the ground floor, then sprinted half a mile to the foot of Vale's CCTS Tower.
On the circular plaza before it, Caspian had a second to catch his breath and wonder why they were on a time limit in the first place. LSLI's mission was to stop Kraken from interfacing with Frontline's main server. In all likelihood, his goal was to shut it down. But if that were the case, why would his team have to wait until immediately after LSLI succeeded to shut down the CCTS? At that point, why cause a global headache by shutting down communications at all? Something didn't add up. And he didn't like knowing he sent Moka off against Sable for a reason he didn't entirely understand.
He felt Lilly's hand on his shoulder, and turned toward it.
"You remember Moka's match against Lazula, don't you?" she prompted. "She's incredibly strong. If anyone can take Sable, it's her."
Caspian managed to nod. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right."
She gave him a smile. One that put him at ease, but also carried a subtle slyness to it, as if she knew more about his feelings than she let on. But a scream washed the smile away.
It was loud, though it could have come from a mile away. His imagination had to stretch to register the noise as human. It was primal, feral. The tortured cry of prey fallen to its predator. The kind of scream that silence followed.
"That was her," Caspian muttered. "Fuck, that was her."
"No…" Lilly whispered. She turned her head from the sound, and it shook weakly. "Oh, no."
Rowan flicked open his Holoband. He poked at it until Moka's portrait smiled back at him. Beneath it, her empty aura gauge. He closed it, and his fist clenched. The four fell silent.
"If Sable… won," Noxis finally spoke through grit teeth. "He's headed for us next. We need to keep moving. Her distraction can at least be worth something."
"I… I don't want to just leave her out there," Caspian stammered. "We can't just leave her to die."
Noxis crossed his arms. "What's the alternative? Send someone else off to die alone? I didn't want it to end like this either, but it sounds like it's too late. We need to cut our losses, and keep going."
Caspian was frozen, fists wrung so tight the skin of his knuckles threatened to split. His boots, and the ground between them, grew blurry. He blinked away the tears. It didn't matter to him that even Noxis seemed to have difficulty forcing his words out. He felt a second away from screaming, or crying, or turning Undertow against his own teammate. The cries of Grimm were getting louder, too. Vibration at his wrist pulled him from the edge. When he saw the name calling him, he lunged for his Holoband.
"Are you alright?!"
"I won, but… he got me good," Moka said. Caspian heard the labor behind each word. "Can you send someone? Quickly, please..."
Lilly nodded fervently. "I'll go!"
"Good idea. If she's hurt, your semblance could help calm her down." He fought himself to force the slightest smile. "Thanks, Lilly. Good luck."
CRLN, another member lighter, walked into the grand circular lobby of Vale's CCTS Tower. It was a single ring around a central pillar– almost drab in comparison to the gratuitous opulence of Port Cyrreine. Grey marble floors, a grey ceiling fifty feet above, grey walls with doors to various connecting halls and meeting rooms radiating off in spokes. The central pillar, up a half-set of stairs, housed the elevator. The last Grimm Nexus had been overturned before it, so a thousand gallons of tar spilled down the steps, into the lobby.
"That's not good," Rowan muttered. He clutched his blade tighter.
"It's still the same amount of material," Noxis noted. Renegade transformed in his hand, and his boots echoed off the floor as he stepped toward the squelching Blackened Pool. Lightning danced off his weapon's spikes, and cast his shadow sharp in sickly blue light. "We're down Lilly, so give it everything you can."
He heaved Renegade over his shoulder, and it smacked the inky surface. The pool disturbed only slightly, and the sparks that flung from Noxis's weapon only coursed three or four feet through it before disappearing into darkness. Some of it pulled with his weapon as he wrenched it free, and slammed it down again. Rowan's energy beam tore a line straight through and splattered ink on the elevator's door, but black sinews stitched together and became whole again.
Noxis's eyes flashed over his shoulder. "Caspian! You need a written invitation? Come on!"
Caspian remembered where he was, remembered he still had a mission to see through to the end. "Right. Sorry," he said, and aimed Undertow at the darkness. His shots drew grey steam and light pulsed from each tiny impact, but they felt like raindrops in a puddle, if anything.
The Blackened Pool bubbled at two points, and he saw shapes stir from within. They rose evenly, one spine at the tip of a pointed black shape, but he couldn't be sure what he saw emerging. His bullets hardly marked the stirring form, and the pool expanded far enough neither Noxis nor Rowan could get a solid hit without stepping in it– a fate worse than death, according to their Grimm Studies books.
In a gust of wind that carried the stench of rot, a pair of gargantuan bat wings spread above the three. They came down, and their claws punctured the floor to heave the rest of the monstrosity from liquid night. One crocodilian head burst from below. Then a second, and a third. Armored down the spine, with a dozen eyes lined down the sides of each snakelike neck.
The Grimm that emerged wasn't anything Caspian had seen before. It didn't resemble anything from his textbooks, and he couldn't be sure it was a known species at all. It was more an abomination of nature– an erroneous jumble of features, few of which were congruent. Though each wing spanned at least twenty feet, they couldn't hope to lift the body of an alligator. Its legs were disproportionately long, covered in spines from its shoulder down to a raptor's talons. Its tail almost fit its body, but ended in a haphazard bundle of spikes seven feet across. And at its front, a chestplate of bone. Red veins spread from a grapefruit-sized orb at its upper center. Its closest resemblance was that of a dragon– even then it was merely a corrupted suggestion.
The impossibly deep growl of an alligator shook the floor, reverberated around the chamber and into Caspian's core.
Two heads struck at Noxis and Rowan. Noxis swung Renegade into its jaw, knocking it back just far enough for him to aim his shotgun and fire. He may have taken an eye or two, but the central head clamped down on his steel arm and flung him to his back ten feet away. He bounced, flipped, and tore up the floor with a semblance-encased hand to slow to a stop.
Rowan spun his blade in a flash of crimson, and his two slashes intercepted the head that struck at him as well. Its jaw opened, wider than Rowan was tall. He planted one foot between jagged teeth in its lower jaw and drove forward until Sanguine Storm sank a foot and a half deep in the roof of its mouth. The Chimera's roar flung his hair back and its head whipped recklessly. Rowan held tight to his blade, at the Grimm's mercy before his weapon dislodged and he landed fifteen feet away. As he stumbled, barely caught his footing, the monstrosity's tail cast him into the wall. He slammed flat against it with a sickening slap, and fell to the ground.
Three wild flaps of the Grimm's wings threw gale force winds spiraling around the lobby, and the ground shook as it leapt closer to Rowan, closer to Caspian. Its gargantuan mace of a tail bore down on the prone huntsman, and his arms flashed crimson to hold his blade flat against the blow. It still ripped a wave of aura from him, and pitted the floor next to his ear two feet deep. Noxis sprinted after the monster, and a jawbone shattered under his savage swing.
Rowan became an arc of crimson light as he stood, and the Chimera's head separated from its neck. He let the first traces of a grin sketch across his face, and nodded at Noxis. He didn't return the look, and instead used his semblance to shield against two strikes from scimitar-sized talons.
More of the viscous black liquid the abomination was born from dribbled from its wound, gurgling, sputtering, boiling over. Then in half a second the neck split down the middle, and two more heads sprung out from within. Rowan looked like he was about to gag. But swallowed, and clutched his blade tighter.
Fighting Grimm had become almost automatic for Caspian. Of course his heart still pounded into his throat every second of combat, and the claws that raked his aura were still just as sharp, but after slaying a couple dozen Grimm and crossing blades with the Heads of the Red Claw, it was easy to forget the stakes. Losing Uncle Douglas was his reminder– one which Caspian had only begun to recover from. But every time he remembered his name, or his smile, or how it had begun to fade in his last weeks, it would feel like a knife in his gut. He didn't want to go through that again. He couldn't go through it again. He thought of losing Rowan, one of his closest friends, who dodged a swipe of the Chimera's claws with only an inch or two to spare. Or Noxis. Though he couldn't exactly claim him as a friend, it would still hurt to lose him just as he decided to turn his life around.
And of course, Moka. Every time that scream echoed in his mind, he felt like he would be sick, and his legs could hardly hold him. He couldn't stand the thought of never seeing her smile again, never hearing her laugh, or her voice, or the way it sounded when she called his name. He cherished the light that danced within her eyes, and couldn't stand to see it fade.
Noxis's voice shook the thought from his mind.
"Caspian! The FUCK are you doing?"
He snapped back into the lobby of the CCTS Tower, back to the mission at hand. Back between the deep red jaws of the Chimera, closing around him. A sudden, immense weight crashed into his back and drove the air from his lungs. His boots cleared the ground, and he lay flat upon the cold floor.
The jaw full of daggers snapped shut around Rowan instead.
Sanguine Storm poked out through a gap in teeth. His arm, only visible past the elbow, stuck out at an odd angle. Then his legs below the knee, thrashing against jagged blades that tore against his aura.
Caspian swore under his breath. Scrambled back, away from claws that shattered the marble floor, until a hand encased in shadow clutched his collar and hoisted him to his feet. Noxis ran forward, bashed aside the head that hadn't yet turned its attention to Caspian, and his semblance spread across his chest. His left arm, encased in it, clutched the monster's lower jaw. His right, made of steel, clutched the upper, and he began to pull.
Caspian's grasp tightened around Undertow. Another head bore down on him but he skipped aside at the last second, and teeth shattered on the ground. He drove Undertow deep into one eye, withdrew it, then slashed three times where he found gaps between armor. Its tail came back around, and he dove aside before the floor exploded into a rain of shrapnel.
When he rolled back to his feet, shielding his eyes with his armguard, something had begun to change. The atrocity's spined chestplate began to separate like a vertical jaw. Barely, at first. Then a few inches. Then it split open to show countless rows of teeth, hooked and jagged, spiraling into an abyss.
Noxis fought against the vice grip of the abomination's jaws, and its slow, adamant, pull toward the hole in its chest. He planted his boots on the ground, stumbled and gave a couple feet, and his scream echoed through the chamber as he planted them again. Black haze began to rise from his back, and his semblance spread across it. With nowhere to go past his right shoulder, spines began to spurt off at random angles. The jaws began to give, half an inch at a time. But a second head bore down on him.
Caspian ducked under another snap of jaws, and sprinted at Noxis and Rowan. He tapped the pinned huntsman's boot. Red melded with blue, and blue with red. The blue shot across his chest, into his other arm, and as hard-light sprouted from his armguard, he felt the burst of force Rowan's semblance created. With a dramatic crack, teeth shattered and its lower jaw hung limp. He lashed out with Undertow, which cleaved between plates of armor, a foot deep into the flesh of the Chimera's throat.
Obsidian armor grew across Noxis's core. Down his back, and across his chest. As it rose to encase his neck, his screams became something less human, more bestial. Caspian remembered, for a second, the night of October 1st. But the rage he fought that night now protected him, and another that had once been his enemy. Rowan's arm moved first, then his leg pulled in and his foot planted behind a tooth to help pry himself out.
Black steam began to rise from the gaps in Noxis's prosthetic. A wave of shadowed aura pulsed across it– past his elbow, past his wrist, down to the tip of each finger and back. Shards of his aural armor grew slowly at first, testing the edge between man and machine. Then in an instant they flashed across his prosthetic arm with enough force to crack one of the chimera's foot-long teeth. He heaved. The monstrosity's jaws shattered in a burst of darkness.
Rowan crumpled to the ground, holding Sanguine Storm against a hail of bony shrapnel. He rolled to his side, stuck his blade into the floor, and used it as a crutch to haul himself to his feet.
"Out!" Caspian yelped. He waved the two toward himself. "Everyone out, I have a plan!"
Noxis's eyebrows stitched and he gave the monstrous Grimm a double-take before complying. Rowan was unstable at first, limping a bit and aided by his weapon, but broke out into a run. Caspian heard stone shredding underneath the Chimera's claws, felt the wind born from the beat of its wings whip through his hair. But he wouldn't look back. Jaws snapped shut what must have only been two feet behind him, but all three made it to the exit a split second before the glass doors exploded into diamond dust. The four heads chased them until their necks could stretch no more. Growling and snapping ravenous jaws, the creature pulled back.
Caspian had to take a second to catch his breath. He pointed back at the tower's door. "Alright. When that thing had Rowan, a hole opened up in its chest," Caspian addressed. "I think it's fair to assume the heads are more like appendages, and that's its real mouth. If we could get it open again somehow, and shoot into it, we could do some serious damage."
"So, what? We use one of us as bait?" Noxis questioned.
"We might have to."
Rowan flicked open his Holoband and grimaced. "My aura can't take another hit like that."
Caspian pursed his lips. "Noxis. Would your semblance hold against it?"
"Probably," Noxis answered. "You won't freeze up again, right? Gonna be pretty pissed if you don't follow through."
"I won't," Caspian pledged. Noxis, who had refused even the thought of following Caspian's plans in the past, was on board with this one. The least he could do was hold up his own end of it. He shook his head, and held eye contact. "Lilly has things handled. All I can do now is trust her."
The ground shook, and a horrific noise drew all three of their heads back toward the door. The wall around it bulged and cracked under the immense force of the Chimera's shoulders. Its heads stuck again out the ruined doorway. Two snapped at the huntsmen, tongues lashing wildly. Another stared them down with its eyes of crimson. The last, Noxis had ruined. Tar sloughed from half of a lower jaw clinging to a neck that dragged across the concrete.
Caspian looked back to Noxis. "Looks like we don't have long. You sure you're up for this?
"Yeah."
The air ruptured by the force of the Chimera's scream. Waves rippled across the fountain, Caspian's hair tousled in the shockwave, and it clapped against Downtown Vale's wall of high-rises half a mile away. On the wind, a cacophony of shattering concrete. Fractures spread halfway across the base of the CCTS Tower, and for a second Caspian feared it would fall. It held, but fragments of its wall flung hundreds of feet– one near enough Caspian had to duck. It tore up the pavement a dozen feet behind him, cracked, and two halves rolled into the fountain.
"Alright," Noxis muttered. His semblance spread again across his chest. Down both arms. Down his back, down his legs, and up his neck until it fully encased him. He looked down at his right arm, saw its steel ridges and grooves beneath the black glass of his semblance. He nodded, then looked back to the oncoming demon. "Let's do this, you ugly piece of shit."
Undertow transformed in Caspian's grip, and he lined up a shot. Sanguine Storm transformed too, and crimson sparks jittered around its barrel. They held steady. Noxis walked forward, his steps quickened, and he began to run. He leapt, and disappeared in the Chimera's false jaws. The plaza fell silent for a second. The Chimera's neck twitched and writhed, and Caspian knew Noxis tore it apart from inside.
Its chestplate split again, and viscous black drool spattered to the ground.
"Get ready," Caspian commanded, and half-pulled on his weapon's trigger. Its azure glow grew to a crescendo, becoming a beacon in his hand vibrating with power. Rowan's weapon did the same. The sound grew and resonated, and Caspian felt the hair on his neck pricking up with the energy in the air.
The abyss opened a couple inches wide. One foot, two. Then it gaped, its neck pulling Noxis in toward its darkness.
"NOW!"
Two beams– Caspian's thin and light blue, Rowan's three times as wide and burning red– seared the air. They met their mark within the Chimera's chest and disappeared into the darkness. Caspian couldn't tell at first whether his plan paid off. It pulled back, shrunk into itself for a second as a pulse of purple wracked its body. More of the thick, tar-like liquid spurted from the the abyss. But it kept pulling Noxis in. It slowed. One head slumped to the ground, another opened its jaws in a silent scream then did the same. In an eruption of bone, ichor and tar, Noxis tore his way out of an eye socket. Another wave of tar surged from inside and splattered across the pavement. Its legs faltered beneath the weight of its own body. It fell, and its wings still tried to lift it as it began to dissolve into the twilight.
Caspian looked up to the tower that stood alone against the sky. He swallowed a knot in his throat.
"That should be our last obstacle. Let's keep moving."