Chapter 3. I Went to Brockton Bay...
Rain.
That was Jaune's first impression of Brockton Bay, a torrential downpour that drenched him to the bone the very second the portal deposited him in a deserted alleyway. He had experienced storms before, both in Vale and in his hometown, but rarely did he ever get caught outside during one. Even then, not one like this. The sounds the raindrops make blended together in a dull roar that carried on without end. Water streamed past him towards the alley's mouth, where it joined a bigger river cascading down the street. The salty tang in the air has now become near overwhelming.
What a time to be shirtless.
Jaune stowed away the sword part of Crocea Mors, but kept the scabbard in shield form to hold above his head as a makeshift umbrella while he jogged out to the main street. It, too, was devoid of people, which didn't surprise him. He had the excuse of a portal mishap, but otherwise only an idiot would go out in this hurricane. Or was it a typhoon? They're both tropical, he knew that. Maybe one's for the mainland and one's for islands. Could it be a matter of wind speed?
…Dang it, this was going to haunt him until he got an answer.
Whatever. Finding shelter took precedence at the moment.
A storefront stood to his immediate left. The lights were off so it's probably closed. He tried knocking on the door anyway in the hope that a kind stranger might let him inside. No luck. He advanced to the next building. Then the next, and the next, and so on until the shattered window of an electronics store—plus the looted interior—clued him in that he won't find ready aid any time soon.
Taking a closer look at the street, he noted the cars sitting in the middle of the road, not pulled out of parking spaces by the water like he previously thought, but abandoned outright. He also spotted a number of personal items among the trash and debris floating in the inches-high river. Suitcases, bookbags, toys, and the like. All signs pointed to the aftermath of an evacuation order.
Just his luck to get stuck in a storm-hurricane-typhoon-thing powerful enough that people had to use the emergency shelters. He searched the sky for the signal flares that would mark out such places, but saw nothing. And he wouldn't, Jaune reminded himself, because this was a different universe. Standard practices of Vale need not apply here.
His gaze returned to the electronics store, drifting from there to further down where a convenience store sat. An unpleasant idea reared its head. Seeing as nobody was around, and he was in desperate need of clothing—his stomach rumbled to inform him that he hadn't eaten recently—and food, the case can be made for him to, not steal, but shop without oversight. He'd pay, of course.
Jaune paused that train of thought to check his pockets. Unless he lost it somewhere back in Beacon, his wallet should still be on his person. Aaand…Yes! Plan is a go! A few seconds later, he stood on the threshold of the convenience store, peering into its depths.
"Hello?" Jaune called into the room. When he did not receive an answer, he stepped fully inside. The lights were on, so whoever owned this store must have departed in a hurry. An inch of water covered the floor. A selection of memorabilia covered one of the back corners, among which he spied shirts and jackets. That'd be the next stop after he got some food in his belly. His feet made splashes as he passed the front counter and began browsing the aisles.
Any doubts he had that this was another universe faded once he saw the unfamiliar brands. From chocolate to water bottles to something as innocuous as paper towels, everything was sold under different names. He grabbed one of each aforementioned item, then approached the display case bearing an assortment of sandwiches and meals.
"Ooh, turkey! Don't mind if I do." Jaune snatched up the sandwich. Out of curiosity, he also added an 'italian' hoagie to his hoard before returning to the front of the store. It all went on the counter as he checked the prices.
Whyyyy was there a decimal on the price tag?
He was either looking at six and a bit for the turkey sandwich or six hundred twenty-seven written in a bizarre way. For the sake of his meager wealth, he chose the former, dropping two 10-Lien cards down on the counter for the lot. It sounded about right.
After wiping himself dry with the roll of paper towel, Jaune used the counter as a seat as he started on his lunch. The turkey tasted as turkey should, and took the edge off his hunger. The hoagie followed, eaten at a sedate pace so he could try and figure out what ingredient 'italian' was. As best as he could tell, it matched a regular hoagie in every aspect, down to the objectively subpar quality as was wont in this kind of place. The chocolate bar rounded out the meal, washed down with the contents of the water bottle. Feeling alive again, he disposed of the wrappers and moved on to the back corner of the store. There, he perused the wares on offer, with an eye for apparels in his size.
A city's souvenirs said a lot about its culture. Vale liked to print its most famous artworks onto t-shirts and drink coasters. Mistral went in for decorative hand fans and other traditional items, while jars of colored sands sparkling like gemstones were Vacuo's specialty. His one family trip to Atlas revealed the kingdom's penchant for patriotic messages (and patriotic puns) emblazoned on the usual fares of mugs, pens, clothes, and such.
Brockton Bay's souvenirs outed it as nerdtown, with comic book superheroes taking center stage. Dozens of them. Names like Dauntless, Vista, Clockblocker (his immature mind got the joke all too quickly), and Battery jumped out then fade from memory as soon as his eyes left their picture due to the sheer number of characters represented here. The superheroes leading in popularity seemed to be a bearded man in blue futuristic armor, a woman garbed in a tri-color bandana and the sort of combat fatigues that Ansel's militia would wear, and a pretty blonde girl sans mask in the most superheroine-esque costume of the bunch (it's the only one that has a proper cape). The three of them featured on a good half of the merchandise.
Jaune imagined how he'd look with their faces on his clothes, and cringed. He wouldn't do that for even his favorite characters, X-ray and Vav.
In the end, he settled for an 'I Heart Brockton Bay' T-shirt (which in his opinion didn't roll off the tongue like 'I Heart Vale' would) paired with a Panacea Poncho (white-and-red ambulance themed). Their purchase set him back another sixty Lien, an absolute ripoff of a price for the cheap-quality goods. Shaking his head in disgust, Jaune exited the store before he could be tempted to reconsider a spot of thievery.
He reared back when the ground in front of him exploded, struck by a man-sized projectile—no, wait. He was wrong. As asphalt and dirt pinged off him, Jaune watched the woman-sized woman crawl out of the crater that was fast filling up with water. She didn't even notice him standing behind her, looking into the distance and mumbling to herself.
"I'm okay. I'm okay. I can totally take a hit. J-just get back in there. I'm okay."
Interspersed throughout her mantra was a second voice, female but synthesized, speaking from an armband she wore.
Chubster deceased, CD-5. Good Neighbor deceased, CD-5. Hallow deceased, CD-5.
…deceased?
"Uh, miss—?" The question died on his lips, for she was no longer in front of him.
Now, a person impacting the ground from a great height was nothing new. It's called a 'landing strategy', and everybody should have one. As for launching up, he had seen people like Pyrrha and Weiss use that move as an opener. They always come back down.
Not this girl. She floated in the sky, three stories high with nary a foothold. Her cape billowed, blonde hair whipping in the powerful winds. Then, she shifted her body into a corkscrew motion and blasted off across the city. Within two heartbeats, Jaune lost sight of the girl. He continued to stare.
Conventional knowledge would say the girl possessed a flight-type Semblance, even if that was something thus far only theorized as possible. It made a whole lot more sense than the word bouncing around in his head, one spurred on by the memory of a blonde in an identical outfit printed on a t-shirt inside the store at his back.
An impossible power? Check.
A cape? Check.
In a vacuum, those two details would just make her a Ruby Rose kind of person. When coupled with the line of merchandise for a certain Glory Girl, the possibility existed that she's a—
"Superhero." He breathed out the word. "And if she's real, all of those comic book characters might also..."
A moment of stillness followed, during which time he wrapped his mind around this new piece of information. Worked through the various implications. Really internalize it.
Then he full-on sprinted in the same direction the girl flew off to.
Whatever the 'Event' this Instance has dropped him in, he'd bet it was happening over that way. Where the superhero was going. Where, with luck, he can find more superheroes.
If anyone would be able to help him, it'd be them. And since it sounded like they were fighting, maybe he could pay them forward by pitching in.
-o-
What he would give for the ability to fly. City block after city block he ran, his journey seeming without end. Vision and hearing obscured, he relied on the mental map of his path to keep on the approximate heading. The water has risen to about a foot by this point to waylay him with submerged debris and unseeable divots in the road.
The first hint that he was finally near to the goal occurred in the form of a rainbow lightshow brightening the sky. Booms echoed off to his left, and he course-corrected. Two blocks later he started to pick up more than the storm's background noise; shouts, screams, the occasional burst of gunfire and strange zapping sounds. Further along, shapes developed within the thick curtain of rain. All of it converged into clarity—into a roaring cacophony—until, abruptly, he was in the midst of a battle.
As it turned out, superheroes came in far greater numbers than the souvenir corner had shown. Colors bright and dark, outfits flashy and stark, close to a hundred people were present at the small intersection he had stumbled upon, loosely split into two groups on either side of a huge figure to prevent its escape. A miniature sun that hurts to look at blocked one of the other routes; behind the orb stood a person in a black bodysuit adorned by red suns. A gray cloud hemmed in the last exit. A dozen fliers hovered in the air. Together, they've got their foe—a hulking creature with green scales, thin limbs, long claws, and a long tail that moved like a whip— boxed in.
The superheroes unleashed attack after attack upon their target, though none did so more ferociously than a flying man in a skintight blue-and-white outfit. He was the cause of the pretty lights that guided Jaune's way, blasting dozens of laser beams down on his foe. In retaliation, the creature lashed out with its tail.
Oddly, the appendage canceled the movement, coiling back. Jaune's eyes bulged in shock as a tendril of water in the shape of the tail continued the original motion, on course to hit the laser-flinging hero, who had to dodge. The faux-tail crashed against the fourth floor of a building and left a deep gouge in the concrete.
The beast has a range attack. That used water. And they were in the middle of a storm.
At the back of the crowd, Jaune lifted his shield and kept it at the ready, because holy hell nowhere was safe from this thing.
Then, stamping down on his rising trepidation, he took a step forward. Battle instincts spurred him on. Here was a monster, and he a Huntsman. Where else should he be but in the fray?
That idea ground to a halt as the laser barrage redoubled in intensity. Motivated as he was to pitch in, trying to reach his optimal fighting range would be tantamount to suicide by friendly fire. Unsure of what else to do, he cast an eye over the cohort he'd joined. Beyond those able to fling projectiles, there were people deploying defenses to block the monster's blows... and that looked to be about it for the active participants. The rest of them were in similar circumstances to him, lacking the means to fight from a distance and thus reduced to milling around. A frown stole over his face.
Shouldn't there be someone organizing them into a more effective formation?
If the fliers were to stay lower to the ground, they can angle their shots to hit the big upper body. That would give the melee combatants an opportunity to whale on the legs, and maybe neutralize the tail. As things stood, only a fraction of them were contributing to the offensive. A powerful fraction, when they take into account Mr. All-the-lasers over there, but there's clear room for improvement.
One fruitless search for a commander later, Jaune readjusted the plan and began to circle along the edge of the crowd, hoping to put himself in a visible spot from which he could communicate his observations to people in a better position to do something about it. It was not to be. Someone else made their move.
"Fire in the hole!" Yelled a woman at the front of the other group—Miss Militia, he recognized her from the red, white, and blue bandana—before she raised some sort of Hard-light grenade launcher that reminded Jaune of Velvet Scarlatina's weapon projections, and fired a succession of projectiles at the monster. One exploded into a mess of gold ribbons that adhered to its green scales and to the road. Another explosion turned a part of the thing's shoulder to crystal. The last expanded to a shimmering sphere, trapping the waist and a leg in its grip. The beast tore through the first like paper, barely slowed on the next, and struggled with the third long enough for a ragged cheer to break out among the superheroes. The budding hope died when it managed to pull free.
Quick as a flash, the tail plunged into the ranks of fighters on Jaune's side of the intersection to pluck three people off the ground, hurling them at the sphere where they hung suspended and unresponsive. Simultaneously, the monster slashed its hands in an 'X' at the second team. The sharp claws fell short of the heroes, but blades of water shot out in their place to bridge the distance. Shields formed of mysterious energy sprang up to protect the opposite group.
They failed to neutralize the attack in full. The beginning of a scream cut short as blood flew in the air. Jaune heard the synthetic female voice again, this time coming from multiple armbands but most audible in the one worn by the skinny, long-haired figure sporting a dark costume beside him.
Jotun deceased, CD-6. Dauntless deceased, CD-6. Alabaster deceased, CD-6. Miss Militia deceased, CD-6.
A startled gasp escaped his throat. Bile threatened to follow. His gaze zeroed in on the three people trapped in the sphere and the bisected remains of Miss Militia.
This was wrong. All wrong.
Superheroes weren't supposed to die.
In a daze, he watched the battle with a sense of detachment. Two giant, armored women rushed out to pin down the monster. It darted away, ending next to a building which it ran up at speed despite bearing a massive bulk. The trailing tail hooked on an open window, allowing the beast to swing onto the roof. A copy of itself—not just the tail or claws, but the entirety of the body—that was composed of water carried on the previous course, shooting into the sky to impact a glowing barrier conjured by a floating younger teen. The energy construct tanked the hit but shattered afterward. The blond boy, huffing and puffing in clear exhaustion, slumped onto another flier, a girl about Jaune's age who shared a similar outfit.
Refusing to let up, the monster leapt from the roof like a spring. A hundred feet high put it in the midst of the fliers. Deadly as a snake, the tail whipped at an armored hero hovering on a board. He threw up his hands in a futile attempt to stop the blow. Everyone knew he wouldn't survive.
Just before it would hit, the tail zig-zagged behind him to strike from a blindspot at the true target. The laser-hero.
It had not forgotten the hoverboard-hero. The tail's watery afterimage tore him apart. Both fighters tumbled out of the air.
Kid Win deceased, CD-6. Legend deceased, CD-6.
The monster landed on cat's feet, the water hardly disturbed despite its size. It was greeted by a silent battlefield.
Jaune, the lone outsider, looked from face to face. With slack jaws or wide eyes, hitched gasps or tears, horror etched the uncovered portion of every mask. Even those whose expressions were hidden within helmets betrayed their fear by the way their bodies shook.
Why? What could have stopped their assault even as the beast readied its next attack?
The hero that fell. They called him Legend.
A grand name. A great power. The dots connected.
Jaune had wanted to find the commander of the heroes. That was him, there. Lying face down in the foot-deep river. Dead.
Fuck.
"SHIELDS!"
Jaune's shout rang through the battlefield to correspond with a water-whip barreling at his side of the street, and the crowd awoke with a start. A wall of interlacing steel swords rose up, and the pair of giant warriors braced their shoulders on the impromptu barricade to keep it in place. A blue forcefield sputtered to life behind them. The water carved great rends in the steel wall, in the two women, and crashed against the second line of defense, making the forcefield flicker. It held.
Fenja down, CD-6. Menja deceased, CD-6.
The monster, relentless, turned its attention to the next target. With a mere look, a geyser blew a large hole in the strange fog blocking an exit, which struggled to reform into a person. Another scythe-like water blade shot at the second group of heroes. Prepared by Jaune's warning, energy shields in various colors were at the ready and overlapping so as to form a solid front. They prevented the ranks from being shredded.
Their foe gave them no further thought, having moved on to the last target. It juked at the miniature sun, then immediately rammed its talons into the street to halt the maneuver. A water-copy surged forward, instead. Most of it collided with the orb to create a huge eruption of steam, but a portion traveled close to the ground and continued its uninterrupted journey, headed straight for the lithe figure behind the sun, the summoner of that ball of molten fire.
Before it ever reached her, Jaune was there.
For him, the moment the beast dispersed the living fog yet did not escape spoke volumes. Throughout the fight, it demonstrated a clear ability to run anytime it pleased. Opportunities to retreat were given up in lieu of meting out death and destruction. Altogether, it suggested a bleak reality.
The heroes had not trapped it here with them. They were trapped here with it.
By the time the monster lashed out at the other hero team, Jaune was already in motion, fully anticipating the fourth attempt. Skidding across the last yard, he positioned himself in front of the girl. The attack was coming in low, so he slammed Crocea Mors into the concrete road, propping himself to push against the shield in an unsettling mirror of the pair of warriors earlier. Oh please oh please let Great War blacksmithing and Aura be good enough to survive this.
The water-copy, weakened as it was by the mini star, still slammed the shield with the force of Yang's strongest punch. His very bones rattled under the blow, and Crocea Mors scraped a line in the concrete as he slid a full body's length to hit the Sun-summoner. Fortunately for them both, most of the momentum had bled off, so all Jaune felt was a light impact on his back followed by a soft "Oof!" from the superhero. Success!
The monster was staring at him.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck—
It turned away.
Jaune blinked in confusion at this unexpected mercy. Before he can ponder overmuch of it, the beast conjured a wave with the water gathered at its feet and blasted it at the crowd formerly headed by Miss Militia, then dropped onto all fours to bullrush the team Jaune was a part of.
Ah. It had better targets.
Was it shameful, that his heart soared with relief at the thought of that thing directing its ire elsewhere?
Maybe so, but it was also understandable and he'd bet everyone here agreed with the sentiment. This monster…despite the drastic difference in size, this monster set off the same alarm bells in his head as the Grimm dragon. His instincts screamed at him that he had not a hope of a prayer if he faced such a creature head-on.
In some ways, this smaller foe inspired even greater terror than the dragon, for its overwhelming lethality possessed a sense of focus on the immediate area. Any who stood on this field, lived at the whim of the beast.
In the time it took for him to muster his will and take the first step back into the battle, the wave had scattered the heroes on one side of the street in the manner of bowling pins. Their defensive line collapsed in an instant. And on the other side, where the monster roamed, Death arrived, announced by the armband of the girl behind him.
Escutcheon deceased, CD-6. Herald deceased, CD-6. Velocity deceased, CD-6. Crusader deceased, CD-6. Stormtiger deceased, CD-6. Othala deceased, CD-6. Aegis deceased, CD-6.
And then, the battle stalled out.
The rain fell. The injured cried in pain. A massive column of iron raised by someone's power fell over.
But the monster remained motionless.
A beat, and pandemonium broke out. Everybody started shouting. Some were calling for help, some were yelling for people to tie down the monster—Jaune finally learned its name due to how often they repeated it here; Leviathan, the same as the 'Event' listed in the scroll.
Still others simply began firing at the beast. For whatever reason, their attacks failed to even scratch it. A bullet struck inches above a superhero covered in what appeared to be clocks, who was standing way too near to Leviathan. Jaune peered closer, cursed, and started running at the drowning figure trapped in the shimmering curtain of water that was somehow just hanging in midair.
Halfway there, the clock-hero flickered and in the next moment was replaced by the body of a fallen combatant bearing a trumpet icon on his chest. Jaune spotted the former a distance away, getting checked over then evacuated.
"Listen!"
A strong voice that brook no argument silenced the crowd.
All eyes turned to the speaker, a bearded man in blue futuristic armor—Armsmaster, as named on the souvenirs—standing in front of a trio of superheroes; a man in a wizard costume, one in a green cloak with a glowing-green mask, and the last in a silver-and-gold knight's armor wielding…wielding…
Did Ruby design that? A massive sword/cannon hybrid sure seemed like something she would make. Jaune made sure to commit the knight-hero's equipment to memory. When he gets back to Remnant, and after he saved everybody, he was going to commission that weapon and armor set. The motif, the color scheme, they fitted him to a tee. The cannonblade looked like it can annihilate any Grimm.
His gaze flicked to the frozen form of Leviathan.
If he gets back to Remnant.
Author's Notes: Welcome to Worm, where bad things happen quickly, suddenly, and all over the place.
And then it got even worse, by upping the raid boss's ability by half a percent.