More sirens joined the choir, until every one in the stadium screamed in alert and strobed the color of blood. Caspian hadn't experienced any Grimm attacks first-hand since the beginning of the school year, and as far as he knew, Team LSLI's mission to the warehouse was the only other confirmed sighting since. While he spent the school year learning of historical attacks, species of Grimm and exactly how to kill them, he had long forgotten the reality of it all- the mass panic radiating in waves from the crowd in the stadium, the screams of Grimm and human alike, and the massive, savage beasts that knew only death.
Like clockwork, Caspian's heart began to pound. His throat swelled until he could barely breathe, and every part of his body began to shiver.
"Incoming Grimm attack. Threat level: eight," the automated alert system reported, cold voice booming over the alarm. The roof of the stadium began to enclose, shutting out the swarm of winged beasts overhead. "Please remain calm, and do not leave the seating area."
"Remain calm?" Caspian reflected. "How the hell are we supposed to remain calm?"
To his side, Cattleya's eyes were frozen in fear, but Caspian could do little to console her. Moka leaned against a wall, pressing a hand to one ear and placing a call to her mom. Lilly sat off to the side, closing her eyes and wringing the edges of her skirt as she attempted to quell her own nerves enough to use her semblance. The only one with any trace of calm was Snow, but there never was any telling what was actually going on behind that blank, unflinching mask of hers.
There was an unspoken understanding in the room that, as the academy trainees that happened to be most closely related to the school's Headmaster, they would be the first ones called. Still, the fight with the Bullfiend came back to Caspian's mind. Its tar-like drool, its guttural, chortling growl, and the stench of rot on its breath. How a desperate, last-ditch effort had been the only thing to pull him off the brink of death. He was at a huntsman academy, but as far as he knew when he enrolled, the Grimm had been extinct for almost thirty years. He didn't care to fight them ever again, and kept a guilty hope that maybe, just maybe, the school had enough Organds and huntsmen to deal with the attack.
A call from the Headmaster shot it down.
"Caspian. Meet Lazula and I in front of the locker rooms with your team and hers. I'm choosing you to help sort this out."
"A-Alright," Caspian choked. His sigh quivered with his beating heart as he looked up to his friends. "Cat, Moka, you guys can stay here. You should be safe in this room."
Moka shook her head, and bounded to the door. "No way. You guys are down a teammate, so I'll fill in."
"The Creatures of Grimm will kill you. I was lucky I escaped when I fought them last," Caspian reminded.
"I've made up my mind, and I'm coming with. My family is safe for now but I need to help make sure the attack doesn't spread," Moka insisted. "Cat, you coming?"
"No, I think I'm staying here."
Caspian nodded, and held her. "When things are taken care of, I'll call you. Love you."
"Love you too."
Caspian sealed his departure with a kiss, before turning to everyone else in the room with the best imitation of courage he could muster. "Alright. Let's do this."
Lazula's shadow flashed across the walls of the concrete corridor, outlined in blinding white and red as she trudged toward the locker room staunchly ignorant to the lights. She kept her head down and her sword sheathed, pressing forward and figuring out how to ride the whole damn thing out.
"Lazula."
Her father's voice halted her. She balled a fist and stifled a grimace, turning around to him.
The Headmaster appeared at the mouth of the corridor, silhouetted against the gleam of crimson pouring in from the stadium. As he stepped toward her, the light of the hallway's alarms flashed across his glasses. "We need your help. The Red Claw has taken over Seacrest Bridge. They've taken potential hundreds hostage, and Grimm are swarming the city."
"You have huntsmen," Lazula pointed out. "Where is Mr. Verdi? Or Mrs. Kurayami?"
"Helping with evacuation."
"Organds?" Lazula stubbornly continued. "I heard you sent for more after those airships were stolen."
"We didn't predict an attack on this scale. Organds are helping with evacuation, and there will be some on either end of the bridge to ensure you don't end up surrounded." He flicked on his Holoband to check on a map of the stadium. "Caspian is bringing his teammates and yours here as we speak."
"...So I don't have a choice."
"Being a huntsman isn't about winning tournaments, Lazula. It's about saving lives."
Lazula's fist tightened again. She could think of a few choice replies, but held them back. Several steps of hurried footsteps and urgent voices heralded the arrival of Caspian's team and hers.
"Thanks for bringing them here," Headmaster Skye addressed. His eyes scanned the huntsmen-in-training before settling on Caspian. "Where's Noxis?"
Caspian shrugged. "I haven't seen him since our match," he answered. "...We don't get along all that well."
"I'm stepping in instead!" Moka added.
The Headmaster nodded. "Hm. Chino, wasn't it? Moka Chino?"
"That's me!"
"Well, thank you. We'll need all the strength we can get."
As Caspian strapped into his combat outfit, then followed a team of Organds to the waters' edge to board the sleek, crescent-shaped Swallow-Class submersible, his father's instructions echoed in his head. "As you've heard, the Red Claw has taken over Seacrest Bridge. I've already dispatched Team MDLN to the cargo ship to apprehend the Red Claw's commander, so I'm leaving the bridge to you. Team LSLI will start at the South end, and work their way North. Team CRLN is to start at the North, and move South until the two teams meet. Ensure the safety of the civilians on the bridge, and take out the two anti-aircraft guns the Red Claw has mounted. Expect fierce resistance, from Red Claw and Grimm alike. You have full permission to use your weapons."
The deep blue world beneath the surface, lit only by the front lights of the submersible, was deceptively still. All within the sleek, oblong bubble of a cabin were silent; the only sounds being the buzz of machinery coming from the controls, and the occasional radio transmission. A school of small fish flittered by the window, completely unaware the surface was under attack by hideous beasts the world had been much better off without.
The glass dome broke the surface and slid apart as the Swallow-Class sub connected with a dock in the shadow of Seacrest Bridge. The world suddenly exploded with sound; silence broken by alarms and screeches, and shouts of fear and rage. Caspian took a second to watch the sky as his teammates joined him outside the ship.
"You've landed, correct?" the Headmaster's voice asked through his Holoband. A high-fidelity simulation of the area projected from it in countless lines of azure blue. A cluster of dots moved along a line, from the dock and across the road, up a hill and finally onto the bridge. "I've sent directions to your Holoband. Unfortunately with the Red Claw's weapons and all the roadblocks we've set up, we can't take you any closer than this. I'll be monitoring both you and Lazula. Good luck."
Good luck, and directions. All Caspian had in his fight against the Creatures of Darkness.
A fishery supply and some kind of boating club sat along the road crossing under Seacrest Bridge, but both looked closed, and all but forgotten for the day. A scratching of claws and a nasty snarl caught Caspian's attention as he stepped off the sidewalk. Three Beowolves. Not particularly big, but as he learned in Grimm Studies, what the smaller ones lacked in raw power, they made up for in unbridled savagery.
Caspian pulled Undertow from his back, metal twisting and locking into place as he lined up the barrel of his gun. He managed to knock one down by the time he transformed his weapon back into a sword. Lilly whipped Elysian Bloom back and forth, casting a layer of ice across the pavement. One Beowolf lost its footing, catapulting directly into an uppercut from Moka. Sparks surrounded her legs as she sprung after its faltering form and landed two more punches. The other monster leapt at the faunus with a roar and wild swing of its claws. As Caspian finished off Moka's original foe, she hopped back and Rowan stepped forward, cleaving off an arm of the third with Sanguine Storm. Lilly whipped her umbrella around, the ice on the street following her and shooting upward in a series of spires to impale the beast.
"Why can't we trade Noxis for you?" Caspian managed to joke. "We could be Team CRML."
"Or if Moka's leader, we could be Team MCRL!" Rowan added
"Like, mackerel? The fish?" Moka asked with a tilt of the head. "I think I'd prefer caramel. Caspian makes a fine leader anyway."
"Either way, we wouldn't have to deal with Noxis," Rowan replied, heaving his sword back to its sheath and beginning to work his way up the hill.
"I've never met the guy. He's that punk-rock-lookin' dog faunus, right? Is he really so bad?"
"Huge jerk," Rowan confirmed.
"He has a point sometimes," Caspian recognized. "He's just... not very nice about making it." He shook his head. "Let's not think about him too much. Grimm will feed off that."
Caspian and the rest fought off a few more Grimm on their way to the top of the hill, all handled with as much ease as the horrible beasts would allow. At the top of the hill, where a main road intersected with the oncoming traffic from the bridge, two lines totaling what must have been fifty uniformed androids blocked the way. At the mouth of the bridge, the remains of a truck still smoldered amidst a gridlock of abandoned and wrecked cars. To the North, the main promenade lined with usually-lively restaurants, bars, and small storefronts, all nestled in the first few stories of mid-rise apartment complexes, sat empty. Still, lights from inside bathed the street, and at the nearest restaurant, a neon sign proudly declared it open.
"Hey, think we should check on those places?" Caspian asked. "Lazula probably won't have an issue making it up here. There could be a lot of people in there..."
His Holoband blinked to life once more. "There's no need for that. Stick to the plan," Headmaster Skye insisted.
"No need for that? What do you mean?"
"Strange as it is, the Grimm attack is almost entirely localized to the bay. We've already ensured the safety of those in surrounding areas, and the androids are equipped to deal with any Grimm that may enter the city."
"Odd," Caspian thought. "If anything, there should be more people further from the bay, in the city's center. More people, more panic, more Grimm."
It was almost as if someone were controlling them.
Caspian, Rowan, Moka, and Lilly continued past the Red Claw's makeshift barricade and found themselves in an entirely different world. Emergency lights flashed from each pair of headlights. Ursa, Beowolves, and an assortment of other small Grimm tore through the packed streets. Screeching beasts of darkness blotted out the sky; Nevermore, Griffons, and another Caspian had heard of during the unit on Vacuoan Grimm. The Anzuraze, bony mane and face of a lion, with the body, talons, and wings of a massively oversized eagle.
A burst of sound like a bout of rolling thunder just overhead nearly made Caspian's knees buckle. One of the Anzuraze, wingspan the width of both lanes, opened its mouth as it screamed past, letting loose a breath of napalm over the street. Lilly held out an arm to beckon the others back, before opening the cover of Elysian Bloom to tame the radiant torrent. It gathered in a ball above her parasol and she flung it off the side of the bridge, melting the wings of an oncoming Nevermore.
A shattering of glass and a bout of horrified screams drew Caspian's attention away from the shots he fired into the sky. Four cars ahead, a Beowolf's snapping jaws filled the passenger's side of a blue SUV. The man in the driver's side window was sealed to the opposite door, shouting and kicking for his life. Caspian aimed Undertow and fired three flaming shots into the beast's side, drawing its head out of the vehicle. If Caspian didn't know Grimm any better, he would have thought the fierce look in the Grimm's beady red eyes to be a mixture of rage and confusion. He sprinted forward, slashing twice across its chest with his unsteady blade before the beast faded away.
He turned to what remained of the window. "Is everyone alright?"
"Y-Yeah. Th-Thank you," the man sputtered.
Caspian looked into the back seat, where a tiny child cried next to a pile of broken glass. "Is it just the two of you in here?"
The man nodded, and Caspian pulled around to the front license plate. "Dark blue SUV. Plate number RNP2191. One adult male, one child," he poked into the notes of his Holoband. He returned to the man. "You'll be safest in here. I've accounted for you, so as soon as we clear out the Grimm, we'll send a team of Organds to get you."
With Moka's fists and Rowan's wildly swinging blade at the vanguard, and Lilly keeping watch over him, Caspian continued accounting for each vehicle he could. A family of four in the white four-door, license plates SND4519. A couple going out for a night on the town after watching the tournament at home. Red hatchback, plates VJB5229. Just one man making a delivery in the white big-rig, plate number FTP1200. Those that were particularly panicked- not that Caspian could fault them for it- got a dose of Lilly's semblance.
He just hoped they would still be there to rescue when the androids came for them.
Rowan held off the swing of an Ursa with the flat of his blade, then pushed it back and swung into its gut. The beast let loose a roar, the gash in its stomach apparently not enough to end it. Rowan dodged around its heavy swing and turned with the momentum of his blade, channeling his strength-boosting semblance into his arms as he tore down the creature's side. He glanced aside to two pairs of jaws closing in on him. He grinned, steadied his grip and lowered the tip of his blade toward the two Beowolves. It folded back and his sword widened, crimson sparks dancing around the newly-presented barrel.
The claws of one more shredded the hood of a truck as it pounced at Rowan. Moka sprung up to slam its jaw with a forceful uppercut. A small bolt of dust, glowing like a blacklight, caught under its chin, and Moka fired a second from her other gauntlet into the ground in front of the red-haired huntsman. The Beowolf flung like a ragdoll into the concrete, the two bolts of gravity dust crashing together.
As his weapon burst with focused energy, all three Beowolves evaporated.
"Hey! I think I see one of those aircraft guns!" Moka called, pointing down to something on the far side of the tour bus she landed on.
The claws of a Beowolf met Caspian's armguard. He couldn't quite hold them back, and its steel edge smacked painfully against his forehead before he hopped back to blow out the beast's knee, and shove Undertow into its nearing jaws. He let out a shaky breath, and looked up to her.
"Where is it?"
"The base of the tower there!" Moka explained.
Caspian walked around the side of the bus, and instantly saw what Moka pointed to. At the base of the bridge's tower, next to a black moving truck with its back emptied out, two sleek barrels reflected the headlights behind them, aiming to the sky above the bay. A handful of dark figures stood around it in callous serenity, the Ursa and Beowolves scratching past, and ignored by the demons above.
"HEY!" one of the silhouettes shouted. Caspian winced as its shoulders squared up to his, and it pulled something from its back. A bat, a pipe, or a blunt sword, he couldn't tell.
"WE'VE GOT HUNTSMEN!"