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I am making no money from this.
Chapter 44: Interceptor
The weekend had come with inexorable swiftness and now the inevitable could be delayed no further.
The late morning air was dry, which lent its' returning heat an uncomfortable feeling though fortunately the climate within Port Alistair, or at least the grounds of Breaktide Academy itself was not entirely inhospitable as the high walls of the city kept at bay much of the sweeping dust-gales which often buffeted the wastelands; a protection that those students who had trudged passed Counsellor Daichi's expansive flowerbeds and towards the landing pads with grim expressions which seemed out of place on a bright Saturday morning knew that they would soon be deprived of. At the landing pads Professor Ruby Rose, living legend, hero of Remnant, Grimm Studies Professor and the current arbiter of Team MARZ and WULF's disciplinary procedures had been waiting for her students, arms folded across her chest and eyes both gleaming silver and faintly glowing cybernetic peering out from beneath the hood of her signature cape which flew out behind her dramatically in the faint but welcome breeze, looking every part the almost mythical figure she had become as she stood at the open hatch of a waiting transport.
The sight had given Athena-Jade Slate a small measure of comfort, not because she was naive enough to believe that her Aunt Ruby would give her any kind of special treatment in this manner, nor did the snowy-haired Faunus wish to be given such advantages; instead she fought to keep a faint sigh of relief hidden simply because the transport Ruby was waiting for them at was one of the academies' own fleet rather than 'the Pearl', Ruby and Penny's classification-defying personal transport, a decision which Athena believed spoke volumes to the potential level of danger involved in whatever punishment combined with training her aunt had devised at Headmistress Adel's request.
Athena was also left with a nervous and utterly elated smile, alongside a heart-rate more in line with a high-speed chase by the presence of Zirconia Shadowmoon's arm looped around her own in an effort to maintain her balance which the Bear Faunus steadfastly refused to read anything more into but also dared to hope might be exaggerated to allow for this physical closeness.
"Good luck….all of you" Zirconia rasped out, speaking solely to Athena until she seemed to remember that the rest of her friends were also present. Athena regarded her partner for a lingering moment, sapphire eyes drifting beyond the tied off right leg of her shorts where her cybernetic limb was currently absent; her usual grace given an uncomfortable lurching quality by the crutch she held under the arm not wrapped around the Bear Faunus, passed a figure which Athena chided herself for admiring so brazenly no matter how brief the moment was and to her partners' face which was unobscured by her customary scarf, her pink and orange eyes filled with concern and apprehension.
"We'll be fine….It's us, how bad can it be?" Athena managed a weak, toothy smile which Zirconia shot her an expression which, even in silence exuded a judging, yet playful air before she spoke.
"Now you sound like Astra"
"Ugh, I suck" Athena snorted, black button of a nose which resembled that of a bear wrinkling at the comment and causing Zirconia to roll her mismatched eyes with a faint smile which left Athena's throat suddenly dry as she once again reminded herself, forcefully that she had chosen not to act on her feelings for her partner for good, sensible and practical reasons; though at that moment with a girl to whom she was very much attracted hanging on her arm the pale girl had never found the idea of practicality more unappealing.
So instead it became a matter of bravery.
"Stay safe….Please" Zirconia rasped out, betraying a note of genuine worry "Keep the others safe, look after each other"
"Always" Athena nodded earnestly, swallowing thickly and attempting to muster up every ounce of courage she could before speaking again "You didn't have to come down here and see us of….But thank you, I'm glad you did….Can I-"
"Of course, always" Zirconia nodded matching Athena's earnest tone and leaving her heart thundering against her ribs only for it plummet as she realised that her partner had misunderstood when the Grasshopper Faunus adjusted her grip to accommodate a pleasant, warm but strictly platonic hug and though she was grateful for the way her partner nuzzled into her briefly and the ease with which the contact came the Bear Faunus could not deny to herself that it left her feeling somewhat empty when Zirconia broke away and begun limping on her crutch back toward the main body of the campus without so much as a glance over her shoulder.
With the moment lost Athena-Jade squared her shoulders and forced herself to focus on the matter at hand.
Trudging the final remaining steps towards her Aunt Ruby and those she would be leading into the wastes the short and powerfully built young woman regarded her friends and their apparent attitudes towards the current situation. Regalia, who had been denied the use of her jetbike, Clunker in this endeavour paced and fidgeted with her bushy tail erect behind her and hands wringing constantly whilst her features betrayed an internal monologue that was a rapid-firing barrage of calculations and contradictions as she both understood the wastelands of Menagerie better than anybody else present and had an undeniable fondness for them yet that same familiarity gave her a healthy level of respectful caution and wariness for them. Close to Regalia and occasionally engaging her in their own conversation, tense and sparing as it was, were Laser and Ursinia both of whom had their faces partially obscured from view; the former by their opaque visor and the latter by the cowboy hat bearing her emblem which had been nudged low by her tails' stinger to keep the sun from her eyes, Athena noted that the two seemed reserved yet possessed of a resigned calm as Ursinia's straightforward and practical thinking meshed well with Laser's wealth of ill-gotten experience to create a sense of readiness. Close to this small grouping Diabla stood alone, leaning against the hull of the transport and gently brushing the faint scar that curved along the edge of her right cheekbone with a calloused thumb in a way which almost prompted Athena to stride over and ask about the injury, a notion which quickly left her as Diabla seemed to sense eyes on her and glanced in the Bear Faunus's direction; blazing orange eyes hard and intimidating for a moment until the relaxed to a neutral feigned disinterest as she looked away.
The two team leaders were stood a short distance away, hand in hand and Athena fought the urge to throttle Astra at the sight.
Her hesitance proved justified however as she drew close enough to hear the muttered conversation between the pair and properly take stock of them, Astra seemed to be rattling off dozens upon dozens of data points, every conceivable iota of information that they could recall about the wastelands as a whole and what might dwell in them that they felt might be useful despite the fact that Wolfram was a native of Menagerie and such knowledge had been part of his childhood education; the display proved that Astra, despite the ludicrous bravado and insufferable cockiness they affected was taking the matter of their punishment seriously. Shifting her focus to Wolfram Athena noted that the hawk-featured and armoured boy was clearly agitated, which in his case more accurately translated to a nervousness about things he could not act on at that moment which the Bear Faunus felt was strange given his familiarity with the wasteland.
Almost as soon as she dismissed the matter as not being her business in her mind however she found attention drawn to her from all quarters by the sound of her aunt's voice.
"Glad you could join us, we were beginning to think you'd made other plans" at Ruby Rose's comment, the words playful but with an unmissable undercurrent of sternness to remind her students that this was not a field trip and should not be treated as a privilege Astra turned their sea-green gaze towards Athena,
"AJ you ready to go?"
"Of course I'm ready, you gonna put your boyfriend down for long enough to buckle in?" Athena shot back, fighting to keep a sudden and unbidden note of sourness out of what was intended to be playful banter as she made to climb aboard the transport; mentally preparing herself for the unknown mission ahead.
She might not have been brave enough to pursue her feelings, but this required a different kind of bravery which Athena knew she had to spare.
Rowan Oralie could not help but smile as her plans came ever closer to fruition, neither the uncomfortably tight shackles around her wrists or the chafing of a fresh Aura dampening collar could douse her feeling of nervous, but unshakably hopeful glee. Even the jolting and uneven juddering motion and the oppressive, dry heat of her current confinement reminded her paradoxically of freedom; specifically the many times she and her now-deceased cohorts had roved across the open wastes in search of Grimm to be brought back to the now equally dead Persian Green for use in his fight club.
Rowan had been collected from the jail she had been locked away with that morning exactly as planned, at a time when deliveries were already being made to the premises so the arrival of the disguised prison transport would not arouse suspicions. A small pang of longing for the life she had been forced to leave behind, bleak as it might have been came when she saw one of the pair of towering, slab-like guards escorting her from the building carrying her property box; containing nothing more than the clothing she had been wearing and few other miscellaneous items in her possession when she had been captured by Felix Xiao Long with the only truly asset amongst that which had inspired the brief stab of emotion, namely 'Insolence' the weapon she had inherited from the rogue Hunter who remained the closest thing she had ever had to a loving family.
Cold practicality resumed swiftly however as Rowan was secured and locked into the armoured rear of the van, isolated entirely from both of the guards attending to her and her belongings as they began to drive. The redhead, cunning and alert as she always was had initially kept herself amused by attempting to keep track of her destination through the vans' movements as it went, she had of course deduced each and every one of the various jails she had been moved between in short order owing to her former underlings' hard-earned and intimate familiarity with the island Kingdoms' legal system, even catching herself feeling swiftly swallowed pangs of loss at the sight of familiar names etched into walls with sharp implements in their youth; this combined with her knowledge of Port Alistair's layout allowed her to discern exactly where she was until the armoured van ventured beyond the Capital City and out onto the vast and winding roads which formed a thin web of connections between Menagerie's settlements as they cut across the wasteland. Rowan's tracking and with it her half-hearted considerations of using the location of the Kingdoms' black site as leverage for bribery or blackmail should she discovery it had been dashed shortly after that point as the van began to take a series of turns which the redhead quickly realised had been intended to prevent her from doing just that.
All she knew for certain now was that she was somewhere out in the open wasteland, likely miles from the nearest settlement or road.
"Ah well, it was always a long shot" Rowan mused to herself, making herself as comfortable as her restraints would allow "Even if I did get out I'd probably end running into some Clan-Rats before I get near anywhere I can lay low….I'd probably get boiled in a pot"
"Keep quiet back there ass hole!" one of the slab-like guards thundered, their fist hammering against the Atlesian steel divider which had been closed to separate her from them; realising that her words had been overheard and irked at least one of her current jailers Rowan quickly saw that she had a new means of amusing herself for the duration of her trip, she had after all made no promises to Coco Adel to say she would be polite or tolerable.
"Fuck you, either eat your doughnuts and shut up like a good little pig or keep me amused….You know any songs pig? You gonna sing some Faunus With Attitude? How about 'Fuck the police' I love that one!" another meaty fist slammed against the divider which kept the guards from view and Rowan let out a biting laugh at the ineffectual response which was only encouraged further by the slew of expletives which followed it; the scarlet haired sell-sword found her bitter glee snatched from her only moments later however as the van took a sharp and veering turn which flung her from the seat which her shackles kept her from being properly secured into and sent her crashing face first into the opposite wall.
"Fuck you too, I've got rights!" Rowan spat, wiping a now bloodied nose with the sleeve of her prison jumpsuit as well as she was able to however the expected abuse from her guards never came; instead the van veered sharply again and Rowan, now prepared enough to brace herself soon realised that this was no spiteful and vicious attempt to injure her as beyond the sound of tires screeching against blasted earth she could hear panicked and yelled chatter from her jailers, along with the unmistakable sound of a shotgun firing.
Rowan allowed herself to hope.
As the van came skidding to a halt with a metallic shriek she realised that the armoured wheels and tires had been sufficiently damaged to render the armoured van immobile and from there images entered her mind unbidden, an uncommon look of optimism plastered across her face as she imagined that at that very moment some last surviving remnants of her own followers or even Persian Green's wider operation were moving to liberate her and begin their return to their rightful domination of Menagerie's organised crime, those same thoughts were given a disturbing and graphic weight as the sound of her jailers bursting from the front of the van with their weapons at the ready was cut short, their yells for the unseen attacker to drop their weapons being cut short by a sickeningly violent tearing sound which left screams and wet gurgling in its wake. From that point Rowan's ears strained and her limbs twitched with nervous energy whilst she listened to whoever had halted the van climbing into the drivers' cab in order to retrieve the keys and then trudge to the rear door and fling it open.
Revealing a sight which left ice in Rowan's veins and her deep green eyes wide as she tried not to vomit in sheer panicked terror.
"I've been looking forward to this….I had to kill good people to get to you scum, I'm going to make you suffer for it"
"You" Rowan mouthed simply, the word leaving her as a disbelieving and cracking croak as she regarding the towering and monstrous form of Carmesi Hueso.
"Me" the Komodo Dragon Faunus replied, features morphing into fang-filled rictus grin whilst midday sun glinted in his hateful crimson eyes as he hefted something in one hand for Rowan to see, the trapped rogue quickly recognised it as the box containing her sparse belongings and as Carmesi opened it and began to rummage through what little was within she found herself filled with a faint rage, blood boiling somewhere beneath her primal fear as it occurred to her that he might intend to kill her with her own weapon in a cruel display of symbolism. Instead Carmesi produced the collapsed form of Insolence and showed the weapon to Rowan before throwing it behind him to land on the dusty ground with a clang which sounded ominously loud out in the open waste; from there he lunged with blinding speed into the van, seizing Rowan by the neck before she could think to resist and dragging her out into the open.
"If you're gonna kill me then get it over with" she spat, forcing every ounce of venom she could muster into her words to mask the dread which had seeped into her bones with the certainty that her life was about to end; in response Carmesi simply let out a low and rumbling chuckle before firmly grasping the Aura dampening collar around her neck and tearing it free, throwing the broken device far enough away that the small explosive hidden within it as a safety precaution posed no threat and without wasting a moment he threw her to the ground mere inches away from her weapon.
"Break your cuffs, pick that up and stand up!" he demanded, some of the usual vitriol he used when speaking to those whose crimes he deemed to be somehow less justifiable than his own returning to him. Rowan complied without hesitation, feeling her Aura flow through her body unabated once again and stem the bleeding from her nose she broke her shackles with a jerking motion and leapt to her feet with Insolence finding its' way to her palm and being unfurled in its' naginata form.
"Why are you doing this?" she hissed, eyes narrowed in fearful suspicion which was soon given validation as Carmesi slung the box containing the rest of Rowan's belongings aside and reached over his shoulders to unsheathe Retribution and Vindication once again, their blades still dripping with the blood of guards whose butchered forms the redhead realised she could see laying close to the armoured van in several pieces. With another chuckle, at the same time more genuine and more bitter than the last the bearded reptilian answered her.
"I've been waiting to kill you….I'm going to enjoy it"
Teams MARZ and WULF had arrived at their destination and now Astra was eyeing everything around them, what little that description encapsulated with suspicious and calculating apprehension as they attempted to piece together what Professor Ruby Rose intended.
Admittedly, and annoyingly to no avail.
Their transport had landed at around midday in the open wastes, according to Wolfram a dozen or so miles from a Mistrali founded settlement known as Conglin-Dahuo which the armoured teen noted had produced several impressive sports teams; the settlement itself however remained far from view even to the keen eyes of the Faunus amongst the group and instead the students were surrounded by open space interrupted only by rock formations and sizeable, jutting plateaus whilst the ground beneath their feet was dry and crumbling yet still, somewhat surprisingly boasted life; patches of a strange blade-leafed grass and dense, tangled bushes of a bone-white and thorny plant erupted from the dusty earth in random clusters though whether this was the product of the very edges of the terraforming efforts showing results, an untapped underground water source like that which produced the Yongheng Plains in which Team MARZ had undergone their first field trip together or simply the tenacity of life remained unknown.
Astra for their part had no mental energy to devote to the question and focused their thoughts on more immediate concerns, namely Wolfram's fingers still loosely intertwined with theirs and the obvious concern permeating their boyfriends' demeanour, Athena-Jade and Regalia a few paces behind them ready and waiting for whatever was to come and finally Professor Rose herself, standing at the nose of her landed and stationary aircraft whilst under each of its' wings sat a parked and open-topped jeep, lightly armed and armoured with a driver ready and waiting.
"Today's lesson is also a punishment" Ruby's voice was more stern than her students were accustomed to "That is not to be forgotten. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes Professor!" Wolfram barked, standing too attention and allowing his fingers to slip free of Astra's in the process; the breaking of the physical contact seemed to trigger some subtle shift in the Deer Faunus and after the faintest pause of barely an instant as they regarded their boyfriend and fellow team leader they followed his lead, the rest of the students present giving their answers with equal certainty in the next instant; Ursinia Red notable for the way she continued to refer to the Professor as 'Ma'am' in her distinctive country drawl.
"Good" Ruby's eyes, silver and faintly glowing cybernetic roved across them for a moment before she continued "The rules of this exercise are simple. Each team will take one of these jeeps, the driver will then take you to a destination of my choosing some distance from here where you will be provided with one flare in case of emergency and one pair of Aura dampening handcuffs per person. This is a competitive assignment and though the objective is not to capture each other you will still be working against one another-"
"Professor" Astra interrupted, something Ruby tolerated only because of the way their hand instinctively shot upwards as though this were a lecture "Team MARZ are at a bit of a handicap-"
"Consider consequences of your actions the next time you want to disobey orders. Neither Grimm nor rogue Hunters or any other enemy you face will give you the courtesy of a fair fight" Ruby's voice was icy, the caped women catching herself off-guard as her realised just how like Arslan she had sounded for a moment before clearing her throat and continuing
"The objective of this lesson is to capture the target, much like a training session I understand you undertook with Team FADE however in this case the target will be allowed to use any means at their disposal to resist your efforts. The lesson will continue until one team is successful, both teams have forfeited or are rendered unable to continue….Any questions so far?"
"Yeah, how does Team WULF have a chance in this kind of mission against Regalia's Semblance?" Diabla noted gruffly.
"Refer back to my answer to Astra's question" Ruby's tone was playful, yet entirely without humour "This is not intended to be fair or evenly matched, if your opponent has a weapon or ability you cannot counter your only options are to improvise or deny to it them"
"Awww nuts" Regalia muttered as she realised that her professor had openly advocated for and encouraged Team WULF to openly target her specifically.
"Aunt-Professor" Athena raised a sheepish hand, once again almost forgetting the situation in which she found herself "What exactly is the lesson we're supposed to be learning here?"
"That will become apparent before the end of lesson provided I've taught it correctly" Ruby's tone was unsettling ominous at that and the Bear Faunus found herself audibly gulping.
"One question Ma'am" Ursinia chimed in "You haven't actually told us what the target is?"
"Or who" Astra noted pointedly, shrugging as eyes turned toward them "You don't put cuffs on a Grimm"
"Astra is correct although there are almost definitely Grimm in the vicinity, hence the emergency flares; though I trust your capabilities enough to handle anything you encounter" Ruby acknowledged, the faith their Professor showed in them doing a little to alleviate the students' spirits "As for the target, well….since this whole day is in response to you attempting to bring in a pair of rogue Hunters, fully qualified and experienced without any authority to do so I felt that a fitting target would be needed to drive home the point-"
"Oh fuck" Laser's body seemed to sag and crumple as he made a realisation that quickly spread through the rest of the students.
"Which is why you'll be trying to capture me" Ruby's words seemed to ring out with unnatural clarity, preceding an unnatural silence falling over the open space as each of the teens glanced from one another; expressions filled with disbelief and defeated dread as they realised that they would be working against not only another but also one of the most famous Hunters to have ever lived.
"That's it man! Game over man! Game over!" Regalia exclaimed, pitching her voice to deliver a passable imitation of a character from a certain classic movie and giving the moment enough levity to bring her friends to her senses; something which Astra greatly appreciated and shot their partner a wink and confident smirk in response.
"Okay you got it Professor. Challenge accepted….AJ, Regalia let's go" the Deer Faunus locked eyes with Ruby for a moment, making a show of popping the collar of their short sleeved and fiery red leather jacket in a ritual that allowed all of the swaggering bravado they possessed to rise to the surface and conceal their very real misgivings about the situation as they began to stride with purpose towards one of the jeeps.
"Astra wait" the sound of Wolfram's voice and their boyfriend's hand on their shoulder, firm but gently and inexplicably trembling faintly brought Astra to a halt and as they turned around Wolfram pulled them into a hug; the taller teen ducking their head to avoid being struck in the face by Astra's antlers whilst they in turn positioned their head carefully to avoid the spiked armour of Wolfram's shoulders and the similarly spiked collar worn around their slanted gorget.
"Hey….no hard feeling whatever happens right?" the Deer Faunus murmured softly, thoughts turning fondly back to the head to head training exercise where the two had first kissed and Astra had used the moment to devious ends as they kicked Wolfram over the side of the downed airship they fought on; that moment felt as though it had led to this and it was clear that Wolfram to was reminiscing on it before he spoke again.
"No hard feelings" he grinned gently kissing Astra's temple "Stay safe, I don't want the Grimm wearing you out before we get a rematch and….I love you"
"Huh? I, uh-yeah" the three words left Astra shell-shocked with their mouth hanging slack and expression utterly lost, strategies and ideas that had already been beginning to form in the back of their mind left utterly upturned and undone as their thoughts were left in total disarray by something entirely unexpected an unaccounted for; leaning back they take in Wolfram's face and almost cursed aloud at the crestfallen expression they found there which stated clearly without need for discussion that an opportunity had been missed and a moment had been ruined.
"We'll talk back at the academy, yeah?" Wolfram sighed, pulling gently away with a sense of lingering sadness and insecurity that was as far removed from his usual decisive control and confidence as his earlier nervousness had been.
"I….yeah" Astra nodded slowly, realising that whatever damage had been done, however inadvertently could not be remedied here. With that they turned away from their boyfriend and back to their team, incomplete as it currently was and found that Athena and Regalia had gone on without them and were now sitting in the jeep silently gesturing at their leader to hurry up and join them.
Which Astra could not help but feel was a bad sign.
Rowan had heard stories of Carmesi Hueso's brutal and murderous exploits from the criminals that had been effectively press-ganged into the Benefactor's service following his assassination of Persian Green and where many gangsters, mercenaries and other thugs had tried to comfort themselves by dismissing the tales as apocryphal hearsay until they had experienced it first hand the redhead sell-sword herself had always suspected that Carmesi was in fact even more capable than these stories suggested and simply toyed with his victims; yet even in her calculations she had not expected the Komodo Dragon Faunus to be an opponent such as this.
Carmesi Hueso unrestrained was a force of nature.
Her opponents' speed, skill and brute strength were displayed once again as Rowan found herself hurtling backwards and striking the hard ground with a jarring ground before rolling to a stop as a result of a punishing blow from Carmesi which her freshly unbound Aura could not fully dampen the pain of; with muscles weakened by her confinement burning in protest she flung herself into a kneeling position and shifted Insolence into its' shotgun form, firing with precision and thanking whatever good fortune had seen her captors leave the weapon fully loaded only for Carmesi to render the attack fruitless with mocking ease as he strode toward her, using retribution in its broad bladed sword form to block the gunfire with a series of languid and effortless swings before hefting Vindication and hurling the blade which transformed from its' forward-curved machete form into its' three-bladed and rotated throwing weapon state as it sawed and zagged through the air on an erratic course which would inevitably lead it toward Rowan.
"Son of a bitch!" the sell-sword spat, using the motion of rising to her feet and shifting her weapon into its' naginata form with a flourish to wipe sweat from her brow before lashing out and with impressive technique thrusting the blade of her weapon between those of the incoming projectile, sending it ricocheting into the earth some distance away where it tore a shallow gouge before falling still in a shower of sparks as some internal mechanism ground to a halt.
Only for Carmesi to reveal that the attack had been a diversion.
The Faunus was on her in an instant, the thrown blade allowing him to close the distance between them and swing his larger weapon with both hands in a blow that came from above and to Rowan's right with a howling of displaced air; the redhead ducked and weaved to avoid the blow before retaliating with all of her customary underhanded ruthlessness, her sidestep carried her under Carmesi's left arm and into the perfect position to slam the base of her naginata into the back of his extended shoulder before swinging the blade of the weapon in a twirling arc which raked across the backs of his knees and calves to leave his Aura rippling faintly. Seeing Carmesi stagger Rowan stepped back a single pace whilst at the same time shifting her weapon into its' ranged form once again and levelling the double-barrelled shotgun at the side of her adversary's head yet before she could squeeze the trigger she was denied, Carmesi's right hand striking out at blinding speed as the man lunged forward to seize her wrist and redirect the attack.
"Scum" he snarled, righteous hate and fury filling the word as he left Rowan's Aura rippling and fluctuating around her right arm with the force of his crushing grip, hoisting Retribution into the air single-handed in a victorious gesture as he prepared to bring the cleaver-sword with its' cruel obsidian teeth down on Rowan's arm to remove it.
Rowan reacted with instinct given urgency by her panic.
In a single, impossibly fast motion the redhead seized the wrist of the hand currently squeezing her own wrist and leapt upwards to lock her legs around Carmesi's right arm and shoulder before using her weight to fling the reptilian face down onto the ground and halt his attack, wrestling against his grip and using his elbow as a fulcrum in her attempts to break his arm until finally he was forced to relent at which point Rowan delivered a turning, stamping heel kick to the scaled bridge of his nose followed by a series of gunshots to his back which his Aura weathered with frightful resilience even as she began to retreat.
A plan had begun to form in her mind.
Their battle had carried the pair away from the disguised prison van and, never taking her eyes off of Carmesi, Rowan began to retreat towards it whilst breaking into the closest thing to a jog she could manage whilst moving backwards. Eventually she reached the vehicle and was unsurprised to find it immobile, its' wheels to heavily damaged to allow it continue moving.
"Fuck" she hissed through clenched teeth, though in truth she had expected little else and instead turned her focus to her immediate goals. Turning her focus away from Carmesi in a calculated risk and similarly disregarding the signs of the Faunus's butchery in the form of blood spattering a cracked windscreen where her guards had offered what meagre resistance they could the redhead readied her naginata and began swiftly hacking and chopping away at the dashboard and the foot-well beneath it, doing everything she could to expose the inner working of the dashboards' electronics and, if possible create an opening through which the engine itself could be reached.
Movement close behind her announced that the moment had come.
Rowan had realised that, vicious as Carmesi's assaults were the rogue Hunter had thus far been sparing in the use of his own shotgun in, what Rowan could only assume was a determined effort to gain the most possible satisfaction from her death by killing her at close quarters; with this in mind she had realised that she could to some extent control the course of the fight by allowing Carmesi to chase her and as the cab of the van was filled the shadow of Retributions' blade as the monstrous fighter swung the weapon through the cab in a single rending arc with a bellowing roar Rowan sprung forward. The desperate, scrabbling motion carried her through the cab and out of the opposite side with only the slightest moment to spare; promptly the redhead sprung forward rolled in the dust and turned to face the van which Carmesi was now perched on the hood of with his blade embedded in the cab and readied her weapon in shotgun mode.
She emptied the last of ammunition with devastating results.
Rowan's sneering cockiness did not extend to the level of idiocy required to believe she could fight Carmesi Hueso in a face to face confrontation and emerge victorious and so instead the redhead had elected to use her Semblance to simply create an illusion which would allow her to put enough distance between the two of them for her to escape, hopefully off of Menagerie entirely and disappear into shadows from which she would never return; Rowan knew that this plan too was insufficient as the abilities of Carmesi Hueso to track his quarry across long distances were well known by Hunter and criminal alike and so the mercenary had realised that she would need to create a distraction so that the rogue Hunter could not see the moment she engaged her illusory Semblance or the direction in which she fled; it was for this reason that she had ripped open the interior of the prison van. The vehicles' exterior was heavily armoured however her salvo had torn through exposed electrics and stuck the engine itself, igniting the Dust within its' fuel tank in a blossoming fireball which engulfed Carmesi and sent burning wreckage flying out in all directions to be narrowly avoided.
"Got him" Rowan murmured under her breath, engaging her Semblance with a liquid rippling of air to impose an image of the expected desolation around herself as she slowly trudged around the blacked and twisted mass of metal that the van had been reduced to, roaring flames still engulfing it. Seeing no movement Rowan waited with bated breath before daring to hope and slowly moving with cautious, silenced footsteps in a wide circle around the wreckage as she sought out any sign of life or movement; thoughts racing and noting that Carmesi's Aura had fluctuated several times in their fight and that it was not inconceivable that he might have been killed in the blast, with that Rowan took a single step closer to the ruined vehicle as she wondered to herself if taking a grisly trophy to prove that she had indeed killed the hated rogue Hunter to the other criminals of Menagerie would serve in lieu of lien.
And then her world was engulfed by pain and crimson.
"YOU CAN'T ESCAPE JUSTICE! NOT THIS TIME SCUM!" Carmesi's roar echoed out through the wastes as he emerged from the wreckage, revealing that he had been buried and crouched beneath it as he lay in ambush; clothing singed, scales and leathery brown flesh burned and blackened in several places and with his dark hair freed from the tight bun he wore it in to fall about his face yet these were not the facts that registered in Rowan's mind.
What mattered more was that her Semblance had failed.
Carmesi was engulfed in the crimson, arterial spray coloured light of his own Aura, yet its' texture had changed with the use of his Semblance and the manifestation of the mans' soul had taken on a glassy looked as it coalesced with shuddering, jerking motions into a miasma of crimson spikes and blades which he thrust out in a sphere of destruction. Rowan's eyes widened as the spikes of solid Aura made contact with her Semblance and tore through the illusion in several places with each point of contact creating a rippling effect as the false image dissolved; the shock and pain of mental feedback from her destroyed Semblance left the redhead reeling to such an extent that as she staggered backwards she was unable to fully avoid the still-moving spikes and felt pain erupt from her left shoulder.
"Today you die" Carmesi's rumbling laughter held the faintest notes of panting exhaustion as his Semblance was released, causing him to sag forward and betray a moment of weakness from which he swiftly recovered. Seeing this Rowan glanced at her bloodied shoulder and saw a slowly spreading stain darkening her prison jumpsuit; without hesitation and running on adrenaline fuelled instinct she tore the upper half of the garment open and tied it about her waist much as she had done the black boiler-suit which had been her customary attire, exposing her broad, muscular and bloodied shoulders before readying Insolence in its' naginata form; its' depleted ammunition leaving her no other options.
"Last guy to try got his skull cracked with a prison phone….come try it, I've been looking forward to making a new pair of boots out of you" Rowan's sneering taunt rang hollow as she was unable to fill it with any of her customary conviction and instead she simply began to circle Carmesi who responded in kind, the two of them twirling their weapons and seeking out an opening.
Rowan quickly realised that if she did not find a new plan and some other means of escape she would likely be dead very soon.
Team WULF had been deployed by the driver in Ruby Rose's employ some time ago and now that they had been left in the open wastes with a monumental task ahead of them the four teens were taking to it with all of the unwavering dedication expected of them by their Professors and Wolfram himself. The leader of the team had himself suffered a momentary shaking of his spirits following the admission of his feelings and the lacking response that he had received however the tall and burly young man had, as was his custom pushed his feelings down and forced himself to focus on the mater at hand and do what needed to be done.
Which was why he had paired himself with Laser.
It had been easy enough to convince his team-mates to split into pairs and fan out to cover more distance, it was unlikely after all that Professor Rose would simply wait where they had left her in order to be caught and with Team MARZ added to the equation they needed to act swiftly and with decision, though Wolfram had also noted that being caught alone or unawares in the wastes was a bad idea and so had insisted that they work in pairs to cover one another's blind spots, with the two halves of the team remaining close enough to reach each other if the need arose; the decision for Wolfram to partner with Laser earning him a nod of approval from Diabla whilst Ursinia and the boy in question remained nonplussed, the blonde teen in question roaming a few paces ahead of Wolfram at that moment with a peering intensity as his visor saw things which Wolfram's eyes could not. Studying his team-mate for several moments longer Wolfram finally let out a slow sigh and rolled his shoulders back, finding his his own hesitance repulsive and so casting it aside to finally speak.
"Hey Laser, we need to talk man"
"What is it?" Laser complimented the reply with a needlessly dramatic cartwheeling leap to bring himself to face Wolfram, the expected chaotic showmanship doing little to hide the subtle hardness in the boys' voice; for a moment Wolfram considered telling him to remove his visor so that could at least see his friends' face whilst they spoke but instead forced himself to dispense with all distractions and commit to the course of action.
"I wanted to…." the words fizzled out on his tongue and a wordless sound of annoyance escaped Wolfram as he toyed with his blue-grey hair in a gesture he had almost certainly picked up from Astra before pressing onwards "Look I've been a dick to lately and I shouldn't have….ever since Hammerfall-"
"Since I used my Semblance"
"Exactly" Wolfram nodded, realising that he might've answered too earnestly and too hastily at that "I mean you saved our asses that day, that fucking talking Grimm nearly threw me over the edge of the outpost….I just-fuck I hate talking about feelings and stuff-Your Semblance is a part of your soul y'know, what you can do scares the crap out of me and I don't like being scared….So I got angry instead; you didn't deserve that"
"No I didn't" Laser shrugged, turning to trudge away "But whatever….not the first time it's happened-"
"But it shouldn't have" Wolfram shook his head, speeding up to keep up with his friend who in turn peered at him, tilting his head so that sickly and vibrant greenish-yellow eyes could be seen over the edge of bis signature visor.
"Y'know what bothers me more?" he asked, the conversational tone of his nasal and faintly whining voice holding a rare note of genuine anger "Being used. As soon as you knew how my Semblance works, or at least part of it you wanted me to use it on other people-"
"To help Astra!" Wolfram objected.
"But you didn't ask me first!" Laser snapped back "It's always the same, it was the same back in the Overspill, as soon as people see what I can do they want to use me and keep me at arms' length at the same time; 'cos I'm just a freak and a quick way to get access to other peoples' Semblances….Do you have any idea of the shit I've been pressured into doing, or the fucked up reasons people want me for?"
"I'm not sure I want to know" Wolfram murmured, once again cursing his own frankness as the words left him only to breathe out a sigh of relief as Laser let out a biting laugh in response.
"A lot of weird and useful Semblances can be used in a lot of weird and useful ways, something to think about" Laser's eyebrows waggled faintly above his visor, the gesture getting a faint laugh from Wolfram and signalling the beginnings of a return to normality.
"I guess we've all got our hang-ups about being ridiculously bad-ass" Wolfram snorted, making to stride ahead so that they two of them could resume their mission until Laser stopped him, head cocked curiously as he asked.
"Oh you've got Semblance issues?" Wolfram gave a gruff, wordless grunt and gave serious consideration to brushing the question off before realising that any attempt a proper reconciliation would require honesty and openness on his part, no matter how much his previous attempt at such things with Astra still smarted.
"Your Semblance is part of you" Wolfram repeated, unable to keep himself from bristling and keeping his face out of view as he added "So what does that say about me?….I mean my Semblance is literally a weapon….Like that traitor Huntsman Team MARZ were fighting, so what am I just meant to hurt people? My Dad was a fucking hero and I'm just good for tearing stuff apart"
"So…." Laser trailed off, a lopsided smirk forming on features that remained thin and sunken even after months of ready nourishment "See you in counselling?"
"Fucking ass-hole" Wolfram grumbled, shaking his head as the two of them made their way through the wastes at a leisurely pace "This is what talking about feelings gets me-"
"I mean you could've just said sorry-"
"What the fuck is a sorry worth to anyone?" Wolfram demanded, unable to keep the words back and leaving Laser momentarily reeling with the scathing vehemence.
"You uh….Wanna talk about it?" the Vaccuan asked quietly, lifting their visor enough to show the genuine concern on their pale features.
"Do I ever?" Wolfram huffed before running his hands through his hair and realising that he had committed to the course of action as planned, the only way forward now was to push through his inhibitions "I hate hearing sorry, I hate saying it….I guess it's been that way since my Dad died"
"He meant a lot to you" Laser noted quietly, the blonde fighting the compulsion to note that many things with Wolfram seemed to lead back to his later father as he sensed that the taller boy might actually strangle him there and then. Wolfram for his part simply regarded his team-mate with a confused look.
"He was my fucking Dad man" his voice was thick and watery with suppressed emotions, quickly pushed aside with a shake of the head as he both focused himself and remembered, with a stab of guilt that Laser was not privileged to have been raised by loving parents "He died doing his job, saving people and fighting Grimm; but he wasn't alone though….there were other Hunters out there with him that day and when they broke the news all they could say was that they were sorry, they were sorry that they couldn't do their jobs well enough, they were sorry that they stood their and watched my Dad go toe to toe with the Grimm….What the fuck is sorry worth? Fuck talking and fuck apologies, if you're sorry then know better and do better….and this, this is me trying to do better okay?"
With that Wolfram draped an arm over Laser's shoulders and pulled him into a loose, friendly hug.
"You know I can pick your pockets from here right?" the Vaccuan laughed, delivering a playful elbow to the ribs as he took Wolfram's gesture in the way it was intended; namely a way to show that he would endeavour to overcome his own issues and responded in a way that Wolfram would understand and appreciate, showing that the apology had been accepted and that there was no need to abase himself further.
The pleasant moment was ruined a moment later by the sound of explosion close by.
"Up there!" Wolfram barked out, pointing at where a cloud of smoke and raining embers obscured moving shapes within; he knew well that Professor Ruby Rose could indeed use her incredible speed in order to fly if the situation called for it however what little he could see of the forms in the smoke did not seem to be her.
"Winged Buffalo!" Laser exclaimed as he snapped his visor back into place and used one of its' many features to effectively disregard the smoke covering his target "Less than a dozen, looks like Ursinia got a few of 'em with that grenade….More shapes in the distance though, looks like the girls are starting a party without us-"
"The hell the are! Come on!" Wolfram ordered, drawing Berserker from his back as Laser unsheathed Permadeath in its' katana form with a flourish and without another word needing to be uttered they sped off towards the beginnings of a fight. It was not the objective of their mission and if Wolfram were honest with himself he knew that Ursinia and Diabla would handle the matter without complication however he considered himself to be a man of action and did not intend to wait and watch from a distance.
Especially not when carving through Grimm would be so cathartic after the emotional conversation.
As Regalia made her way through the open wastes beside Astra and Athena-Jade the Racoon Faunus found herself struggling to complain aloud about how much easier the mission would be if she had been allowed to bring Clunker.
The trio had been searching the open wastes for some time now, the pretence of wandering aimlessly steadily falling away as Astra continued to struggle to formulate a plan to capture one of the most famous Hunters in history, whilst obviously distracted by other matters which their friends had not yet chosen to broach with them. Regalia for her part was arguably handling the situation with the least discomfort, where Astra was lost within their own thoughts and Athena-Jade was reduced to wiping sweat from her brow at regular intervals in the unwelcoming climate the Racoon Faunus simply strode onwards unbothered by the dry heat and dust to which she had long since become accustomed, though the hazy grittiness of the air hindered even her own keen eyesight at distance despite the heavy goggles with lenses tinted the same shade of purple as her own eyes covering much of her face.
"Hey Regalia" Athena breathed out, removing the jade green bandanna from her left bicep to wipe at her forehead before continuing "Do you have any idea where Aunt Ruby would hide out here?"
"The nearest settlement isn't one that Clan Aiktishaf trade with….This is the edge of Clan Lijani's territory. My people aren't at war with them but we're not exactly allied or friendly either" Regalia answered, wringing her hands and cocking her head as she peered around the open wastes and considered the more immediate matter "I thought she might try setting up on one of those plateaus near where we landed….We'd have to climb up to her and she'd have lines of sight no matter where we came from but I can't find any trace of her"
"Have you tried using your Semblance again?" Astra asked, the Deer Faunus breaking free of the hold their own thoughts had over them enough to focus; their features contrite at the question despite the understand between themselves and their partner that this mission fell outside of the realm of things Regalia had refused to use her abilities for.
"I can try again now" she shrugged, coming to a halt and focusing herself; secure in the knowledge that her friends would cover her as she sought out any trace of their elusive quarry which gave her a sense of calm that few could afford in such surroundings. Her calm was quickly replaced with a sense of irritable disquiet as she was faced once again with proof that her Professor had managed to find a way to render herself invisible to Look-See.
Namely by appearing as though she were everywhere at once.
"She's moving too fast" Regalia sighed as she disengaged her Semblance and blinked away the painfully bright after image beneath her goggles.
"What do you see?" Astra asked, the beginnings of a thoughtful expression forming.
"The usual marker that my Semblance gives things but….Like a mirage" the nomad explained, gesturing between several points in the distance "She's in that direction but she could be anywhere between there….and there. I think she's running back and forth at her top speed so I can't get an exact location"
"That's a few miles away" Athena noted with a frown which only deepened as she estimated the distance between the extremities of her aunts' path "And more than a mile from end to end"
"I think we should split up" Astra murmured, words musing and thoughtful as their concentration turned inwards; mind focused wholly on the mission now yet still struggling to fathom out the missing pieces of their route to victory.
"I don't like it" Athena shook her head, the usually gung-ho Bear Faunus frowning as she considered the idea "We're already at a disadvantage without Zirconia and we have other things to worry about….what if one of us runs into Team WULF alone?"
"It's risky" Astra admitted "And I don't have it figured out yet, but I feel like the best way of handling this is gonna be to split up and try and corner Professor Rose; we can't catch her unless we can limit the amount of space to move she's got-"
"No. AJ's right it's too risky" Regalia spoke with a rare sense of dominant and assertive surety which left Athena and Astra turning to her in mild shock, her partners' expression darkening a fraction at the objection before they controlled themselves and splayed their hands wide in a gesture of assured confidence.
"Team WULF aren't dumb, if they see us acting like we've got a plan then Wolfram will probably have them follow us so they can use your Semblance second hand rather than take you out straight away" Regalia listened to the response, Astra's rationale making sense only in the context of one who had never truly experienced the wastes and did not understand the dangers that could be found
"That's not the-"
"Are you worried about Grimm?" the Deer Faunus snorted "Come on you're a bad-ass you'll be-"
"YOU'RE NOT LISTENING TO ME!" the blasted and desolate ground cracked under Regalia's boot as she stamped her foot in a display of anger that caught even herself unawares; taking advantage of the momentary silence that hung over the trio the Racoon Faunus crossed the space between herself and her partner and gripped them firmly by the shoulders, fighting the urge to shake them violently as her voice cracked "You promised me that you'd listen Astra, you promised!"
"Okay…..You're right" Astra breathed out, gently removing Regalia's hands from them before speaking again "I'm listening. Why is it too risky….that other clan you mentioned?"
"No" Regalia shook her head, forcing herself to overlook the swell of mixing emotions that rose up in her now that her partner seemed to be taking her seriously and focus on the practical matters "If Clan Lijani didn't want us here then we'd already know about it-"
"Are we trespassing right now?" Athena interjected, giving a sheepish and apologetic look as she realised that she'd interrupted.
"Heh, property is a different concept in the wastes; besides the Kingdoms never ask when they try and build roads through a Clan's territory" there was a lot unsaid in that comment, not least the implication that Menagerie's settlements had been forced to concede ground before, however Regalia allowed the momentary look of anger to fade from her features and instead continued "The field trips that the academy has taken us on haven't given you a fair idea of how dangerous the wastes actually are….there's Grimm out here and then there's the wild animals, or poisonous plants, or bugs in the air. On top of that….my people don't deal with Clan Lijani but what I know of them is that they live underground, the original caravan that they came from Vaccuo in fell into a sinkhole"
"Caverns?" Astra murmured, comprehension dawning slowly on their features as they began to understand "Of course, all the Grimm that Salem unleashed….some of them were subterranean-"
"And right now we're walking on top of ground that's been tunnelled and hollowed out" Regalia nodded "I don't have a map of the tunnels or know exactly where the weak points that might collapse under us are but I know what to listen out for better than you do"
"How deep are the sinkholes?" Athena asked worriedly, thinking of the hollowed mountains into which Atlesian cities had been built and the tremendous depths one could fall within them.
"Enough to break your neck" Regalia shrugged, leaving an oppressive silence hanging in the air until it was broken by Astra whose features suddenly carried an unmistakable air of cunning that their friends found a little unsettling.
"And that's how we catch Professor Rose" they cackled "Set off one of the emergency flares, let her come running to us and lure her into the sinkholes….force her to slow down"
"That's….honestly disgraceful" Athena gasped, appalled at the display of underhanded thinking she wouldn't have expected even from Laser "Not to mention using the flare for that would probably be classed as cheating-"
"Who knows" Astra shrugged "I mean the Professor never actually told us what lesson we're supposed to be learning here so-"
"I think-" whatever Regalia thought went unheard as the ground suddenly rumbled beneath them with a shuddering tremor which each of the trio felt. Exchanging nervous glances between one another they each tentatively tested the ground beneath their feet with cautious steps and found it to be solid.
"Okay so we're not falling" Astra noted quizzically, Athena-Jade finishing their thought in the next instant as she unfurled Mould-Breaker in its' hammer form.
"Which means something's coming up!"
"Aww nuts" Regalia sighed, deploying Apex Scavenger a split second before the ground was splintered in dozen places in a rough circle around them.
The monsters that emerged to surround the trio were relatively small by the standards of Creatures of Grimm, their forms insectoid resembling a fire ant and measuring no larger than a mans' forearm, showing only the faintest traces of armoured exoskeleton as they chittered and buzzed. From the dozens of ruptures in the ground hundreds of the things erupted outwards, piling on top of one another with the glowing red eyes of many being lost within the mass of bodies which quickly began to lose cohesion as bodies ran into one another with a disturbing fluidity.
At which point Astra realised that this was a species of Grimm that they were at least somewhat familiar with.
"They're Infernal Devices!" they exclaimed "They can combine….this is gonna get a little tricky"
With that they deployed Buckshot Ares and sighed as they realised that capturing Ruby Rose would have to wait.
Fox Scarlatina could remember a time when they had not been allowed to enter Coco's office.
Truthfully the black-haired Rabbit Faunus, dark and somewhat floppy ears adding to the already towering yet unimposing height that he had inherited from his father remembered life in another home elsewhere in Port Alistair, before Breaktide Academy had ever been opened and along with that he also remembered the steady transition in his parents' lives from careers as active duty Hunters to teachers and in Coco's case a politician.
As a child he had thought that the change might mean he saw more of them all, a notion he had quickly been disabused of though that was unimportant at that moment.
Whilst he remembered his previous home Fox gave little consideration to it, Breaktide Academy was the result of his families' hard work and represented the culmination of their dreams as well as a starting point in the stories of a new generation of Hunters; even with his own interests and goals laying in other fields the teen had understood for some years now that to call Breaktide his home was a privilege.
Even if it was one he routinely abused by lording it over his peers or trying and failing to flirt with student Hunters.
Whilst he had, for most of his formative years been given a considerable amount of freedom to go where he pleased within the grounds, a freedom tempered with stern warnings about interfering with training areas and equipment there had still been a few places which he had been denied access to, Velvet's private workshop, student dormitories and Coco's office however the latter restriction was one that had been slowly eased in recent years. Fox understood, in a deep and repressed part of himself that of his three parents Coco harboured some sense of insecurity which she could likely not fully articulate herself and saw herself as an outsider in the relationship between Fox and his biological parents; something which Velvet and Yatsuhashi did everything in their power to assure her was unfounded and it was this, along with her own tastes and sensibilities which had prompted Coco to establish herself as the 'cool' parent, a mirror opposite to the way she interacted with her students and someone to whom her son could talk about anything at all without fear of judgement which the teenager could admit, at least to himself he had used to his advantage in ways he was not proud of. Coco's relaxing of previous rules were then an extension of this with a twofold justification; firstly the headmistress saw it as a sign of displaying trust in her son, treating him with the respect his age deserved and showing him that she respected him enough to trust him with responsibility and secondly it simply allowed her to spend as much time as the boy as possible as Fox would be leaving for college in just a few short months whilst Coco was kept busy by duty and demands that ate up her remaining time with her son at an alarming rate.
All of that was why Fox and Coco were planning on venturing into the Capital City, spending an enjoyable afternoon together in the sun, both of them trying to overlook how few opportunities they would soon have to do so.
Coco herself was still waiting in the entrance hall, her students acknowledging her with the usual awed respect as they passed whilst Fox had returned to the upper reaches of the campus and stopped at his mothers' office on the way to the apartment in which his family lived; seeing the blinding sun and feeling the dry heat he had declared that he wanted to change outfits as he would likely pass out if he ventured into the city as he was, a decision which Coco could only roll her eyes at whilst noting that she only had herself to blame for his fashion sense. As he had departed Coco had asked him to look in her office for a document she had left on her desk, something of no great consequence though still time sensitive enough to warrant being delivered in person since the two were headed in that direction.
Though now Fox could not find it.
"Come on Mum, don't tell me you already posted it and forgot" he sighed to himself, pacing around his mothers' desk slowly and deliberately, unable to shake some faint nerves and the feeling of being an intruder as he leafed through documents in a futile attempt to find what Coco had asked him to retrieve, taking the time to wince at the poor grades of a student he didn't know before. From there he glanced at the heavily damaged hard-drives which Velvet had spent some time working on but quickly disregarded them upon seeing that there were no papers trapped beneath them, knowing that Coco kept her draws locked and that if she had replaced the document in them he would have to traipse down to the entrance hall again and waste more time he found another solution.
"Fuck it, I'll just print it again" he shrugged to himself, whilst he had been allowed in the office his mother had never allowed him to use the computer on which she handled duties pertaining to her roles as Headmistress, Councilwoman and other matters of grave importance which he was not privy to though for such a small thing the teenager doubted it would make a great deal of difference and with that in mind he wondered which of Coco's easily predictable passwords he would need to access the files.
Only to find that the computer was already running.
"Weird….she hasn't even been in here today" the Rabbit Faunus muttered to himself, willing to dismiss the fact with the reasoning that Coco had simply left the machine running overnight for some reason until his drooping ears perked up sharply at a faint rustling of fabric; reflexes that were by no means as sharp as those of the students he shared his home with saw the boy whip around frantically with a sense of dread overtaking him just as darkness fell across him when a shape that had perched silent and unseen on the wall in defiance of gravity behind him lunged, the blindingly fast and fluidly graceful movement giving him no chance to react as a weapon collided with his skull.
Author's Notes:
God I love cliffhangers.
Anyway, next chapter is the mid-season finale and as you can see there's gonna be plenty of things to unpack….It's probably gonna be a longer than average chapter as well.
There might be a week or two break after next week though because I want to have everything up to and including the start of second year/Vol.04 planned out properly before I go any further.
Oh and, it's spoilers and I mentioned it on Tumblr but obviously Vol.04 is gonna mean new outfits (Not that there's any art for Team MARZ & WULF right now) which I'm having fun playing with.
And on a really fun note, I also mentioned this on Tumblr BUT: Someone has asked for my permission to translate my MHA story "Acid Reign" into Russian, which is an achievement I didn't even know I could unlock.
But that being said, let's summarise shall we?:
Y'know it's bad when people are dreading the weekend.
Ruby was definitely playing up the imposing bad-ass vibe, she's still fifteen and goth at heart.
AJ, if you can stop checking her out for like two minutes.
I mean yay for the fact that Zirconia doesn't stiffen up at hugs any more but also….Oh you poor girl.
Things like the body language and little gestures do a lot to flesh out a character.
Astra's not a complete idiot, they know when to focus.
Yeah Wolfram has his own issues to deal with today.
Did anybody really think this was gonna end well or that the prison transfer would be a success/
Rowan knowing exactly where she was in Port Alistair reminded me of a scene in one of the Sherlock Holmes books where he's bundled into a carriage with blacked out windows and happily starts commenting on which streets they're taking him down.
Felt like Rowan might be getting a little too much sympathy so I had to remind y'all that she is openly and casually bigoted.
But also fuck cops.
Oh she allowed herself to hope…..Never hope, hope a lie at times like this.
Did you really think I'd deny you all a proper showdown? I am Persian Green just got shot in the back of the head but he was never a fighter anyway, this is different.
So the teams are out in the open wasteland, but I'll say it now….nowhere near Rowan and Carmesi.
Oof Ruby is milking it with the bad-ass routine now, channelled a little of Goodwitch, Arslan and Coco with that speech.
"That will become apparent before the end of lesson provided I've taught it correctly"….I think it should have been clear at that point that it was gonna be a beat
down.
I think Regalia quoting Aliens was the perfect response.
Does Astra think they can win? Honestly, not really….At that same time, this is Astra so they're never gonna admit that.
Oh no, Wolfram tried to be open and honest about feelings; he used the L word and Astra was too busy being distracted by the mission to say it back.
Yeah just from the outset this fight is gonna be crunchy.
Honestly I had her take one of his blades out early on just because it was one less moving part to remember.
I feel like the fight did well to show that Rowan's natural inclination is always to sneak off and hide, let someone else take the fall….But right now it's just the two of them out in the open.
Yeah Carmesi isn't ending this feud with anything as impersonal as a gunshot.
Admit it, her plan was a good one, she basically made him step on an impromptu landmine.
Surprise!
And that's why I gave you a little taste of Carmesi's Semblance in the fight with Team MARZ, because I already had this scene planned….He can use his weaponised soul at range and it will also do physical damage, not just break a Semblance related barrier.
"Last guy to try got his skull cracked with a prison phone….come try it, I've been looking forward to making a new pair of boots out of you"….I mean she's at least gonna die like a boss bitch.
Here we go, he's actually gonna do it….He's actually gonna willingly engage in a conversation about feelings.
Yeah, Laser has absolutely got some unresolved issues that are gonna take several therapy sessions to get into.
And look, we even get to see what Wolfram was hinting at last chapter….And it's kind of a fair point, you can see why he's self conscious about a Semblance that seems to function similarly to Carmesi's; but I do have a fun resolution for that little dilemma planned for the finale.
And since he's on a roll let's get into that deep-seated refusal to ever say the word sorry which Astra has been copying….Laser is right about one thing, if he'd actually said "Yeah most things do" at that point Wolfram would have killed him.
Wolfram can have a little violent mayhem, as a treat.
You didn't really think that Ruby Rose wouldn't have a plan to counter her own First Year student? Basically all Regalia can see is a blur of motion in her Semblance-vision.
On the surface Astra's thinking isn't bad, but they're not a native.
Finally Astra is taking their partner seriously and fucking listening.
Clan Lijani and the sinkholes are honestly a bit of world-building that I might come back to later on, they're just here to give a little flavour to the scene and the wastes to make them feel more real and lived in….Also, I've been reading the Dune trilogy so, think Remnant's version of the Freman.
Okay that is some absolutely filthy logic from Astra….But desperate times call for despserate measures and a short-handed team trying to take on Ruby is definitely desperate.
In the meantime however, I've honestly been looking for an opportunity to bring back the Infernal Devices, they didn't get enough time in the initiation scene they were a part of.
Let's be real a lot of the final scene was filler and fluff to give context and character because I couldn't just write "And then he got clocked in the head" still fun to write though.
Coco is absolutely insecure about plenty of things under that mask of coolness and her urge to be the cool parent is absolutely a part of that.
I mean yeah, her only child is leaving for college and she's busy with smugglers, monsters, criminal empires and idiot students….Of course she wants to spend every minute she can with him.
I think you all had an idea of where this was going when I mentioned that the hard-drives were still there, definitely when the computer was already running.
And now we have someone inside the academy, inside Coco's office no less for purposes I'm sure you can guess.
Thank you to SumoSnipe, Lurkweed and MajorBrony95 for their reviews on the last chapter.
Oh yeah Coral's pincers will do damage.
Winter?….Are we forgetting that Weiss and Whitely have both terrorised the original Henry Marigold in Downward Spiral, are we forgetting Gangrel? If Henry Marigold the third were to do anything untoward he would become Henry Marigold the decimal point because he'd be in pieces.
Yeah Astra's recurring issues are going to get jolted into the right direction before the end of this volume.
I love how much people love Regalia, she's fun to write but I sometimes have trouble figuring out exactly what to do with her as a character.
Oh please, Astra' neck is used to carrying that thick skull around all day.
This isn't Coco's plan, it's all Ruby; Coco just let her handle it herself.
I mean I feel like the root of Astra's attitude had been hinted at but never stated outright.
We've known what Wolfram's Semblance is since Vol.01, it's that move he does where he turns the air into a solid plane and uses it as guillotine blade.
Come on we all knew that Carmesi and Rowan were gonna throw down at some point.
As always thank you to everyone that reads this, with a special thanks to those of you that follow, favourite and review.