Chapter 75
Word, it appeared, had been intercepted from a huntress brave and skilled enough to cross the border and make it to Earth, whereupon she learned of the multiple assassinations that had occurred, and the several Grimm attacks still ongoing according to 'Salem's' plan. The Earth's United Nations had, as a result, declared war on Remnant and were rallying their militaries for another invasion whilst simultaneously working to contain their Grimm outbreaks. With naught but days to prepare, Vale Armed Forces had set up a more fortified base in Patch, knowing that the Terrans would no-doubt deign it to be their beachhead for any attacks into Vale proper, and had brought with them multiple scores of huntsmen and huntresses, as well as a conscription order for any non-aura-users over seventeen to report for duty. Ruby spent days in bed, during which either her father or Qrow were at home, but never at the same time, with one or the other assisting in either the rapid training and arming of a militia, or the building of fortifications around the populated areas and coastlines of the island.
Ruby and Qrow brought her team into the loop, as it were. Reactions were similar to Ruby's own - an abundance of shock - but also varied. Yang signed onto 'the good fight' the moment she could after realizing that this was what Ash had, intentionally or not, died for, Blake showed some hesitance before choosing to remain with her team and protect them as best she could, and Weiss' choice came in the form of her tearing a letter with the Schnee family seal on it in half and nodding once. In their own ways, they all chose to honor the ideal that Ash had striven for - that they had the power to protect people, and were here being given a higher purpose than just killing Grimm and making money.
So, Qrow gave them the rundown: Their goal was to find Maidens, and luckily for them, they at least had an advantage in that area: They had a shortlist of identities for Summer and Winter and general search areas for them both, and outright knew who Spring was, even if they didn't know where she was. With this information in hand, as Ruby recovered, her team and JNPR spent those days planning their journey. They knew the only Maiden in Vale would have been Fall, but she had died during the Grimm attack, and they knew that Summer and Winter would - or rather, should - be in Solitas and western Sanus, respectively. Spring's location was the wildcard, and the decision was made to focus on Summer and Winter, whose locations and identities they at least reliably guess at, as opposed to shooting in the dark to try and find Spring. In the end, their choice was to make for Vacuo, both because they were already on Sanus and it wouldn't take too terribly much effort to just make for its western end, and because Weiss seemed hesitant to return to her homeland.
Whenever they weren't planning or packing, Ruby was recovering in bed, and the others filled their time with their own activities. Sometimes they left to assist in the fortifications, but most often they were at Ruby's home, training and preparing. Pyrrha did her absolute best to repaint and repair Ash's shield, and when she was done Ruby could hardly even tell it had been damaged - its red and blue surface, and the white star on its center, shone brightly, vividly, and with pride. Seeing it cleaned and fixed like it was almost lessened the pain of having lost Ash in the first place, it almost feeling as though he were still here, still helping them, still ready to charge into battle at a moment's notice. Jaune spent most of his time outside, training with his sword and shield, sometimes with Nora and Ren, sometimes with Weiss, sometimes sparring with anyone around, or sometimes just alone, with a dummy her Dad had set up. Ruby saw him sometimes, and noticed a lot of Ash's mannerisms in the way Jaune threw himself into the fight, attacking with his shield just as often as he would defend with it.
Yang spent a good chunk of time working on her arm, modifying it and learning its inner workings, as well as refining her combat technique, quoting Ash in saying that as much as her rage helped in a fight, just as often it got her into bad spots she couldn't get out of. Weiss spent several days penning one single letter that she never let anyone read, but that Ruby noticed bore the same seal as the one she'd torn in two, days ago, and then the remainder of her time securing a more expeditious transport to Vacuo than their feet. Blake had several visitors from the White Fang, most of whom she sent away, but some who she at least gave some time to, and from whom Ruby would learn the state of goings-on in Vale. With the Fang's help and the four Kingdom's initial fleet presence, the Grimm attacks had been largely contained, and were now being pushed back wholesale, although Beacon remained lost. It was also from the Fang that Ruby discovered the fate of EMS - the team had fallen apart without Ash. Not even a few days after Beacon fell, Myrtle had vanished, so thoroughly that nobody knew where she was, and after that, a despondent Ecru had nearly died trying to recover Ash's body and was in intensive care, and Srebro thrown herself at the wall and had been had just been killing Grimm ever since.
Ruby felt awful after that. Still so fresh after Ash's death, to pile on his entire team falling apart and nearly dying, Ruby felt like the world became a bit darker, the colors muted, sounds quieter. This atmosphere appeared to permeate the entire house, even - everyone from her uncle to even Ren acted mopier. They walked with less energy, slept longer and harder, and trained less. Ruby found herself thinking more on the lives lost, both now and before, and soon even on the lives she'd ended when the Terrans had attacked. It pained her inside, looking back on all that death and realizing that only ever more would come. It scared her to realize that all of those deaths would be on her shoulders - that preventing them required her strength. Her will. Maybe once this would have filled her with a determination to fight harder, to soldier on, but now? With Ash's light gone from the world, his team having fallen apart afterwards, Ozpin dead and Beacon fallen, she just felt small. What difference could she truly make, if someone as strong as Ozpin, if someone as skilled as Ash, wasn't able to fix things before they became really bad?
She found herself less motivated to get out of bed each morning as these thoughts piled on. The days began to bleed together, and even the realization one day, after she trudged out of bed to eat breakfast, that she'd slept until dinner, didn't really do anything to her. She exhaustedly wondered if it was her, or if she'd become sick, as she pushed herself through the house and into the kitchen to make a bagel.
It was dark out, and everyone was strewn about the house. Her sister was sharing her room with Weiss and Blake, and walking past the guest room, she saw through the cracked open door that Nora was on top of the bed, not even covered up, snoring, and Pyrrha was asleep in a chair in the corner, while in the living room, Jaune and Ren took the couch, her Dad had his room, and her uncle appeared to be out like a light on their porch.
Reaching the kitchen and pulling a bagel out of the fridge, Ruby shuffled past a fresh pot of coffee and dropped the bagel in the toaster, that act alone feeling as though it took all her energy to accomplish.
She missed GEMS, she thought as she opened up a cupboard and retrieved a glass for water, and noticing a thermos was missing. They could have snapped everyone out of this funk - they knew how to make a dark night as bright as the day. That thought, however, only dragged the corners of her mouth down and threatened to pull tears from her eyes.
She heard the front door open as her bagel popped out of the toaster with a light 'ping!'. She didn't look at her uncle as he stepped inside, instead just filling her cup with water, and then pulling the bagel out of the toaster. As she retrieved what she would need to finish the bagel, and applied the spread, she heard her uncle approach.
"Hey." She said, numbly.
Blake Belladonna had to get out of the house - just for a little while, she reasoned. A couple hours wouldn't hurt anyone, and the atmosphere there was stifling, almost oppressively so. Seeing everyone all depressed, in spite of Pyrrha's greatest efforts to pull an Ash and cheer everyone up, it had begun to affect her too, and when she'd woken up this morning and had forgotten to activate her aura, she knew she had to get out and stretch her legs, do as she always did and run.
Patch was an interesting little island - the small-town nature of the place reminded her a lot of her home in Menagerie, but with a distinctly human touch. Everything was within walking distance, everyone knew each other, there were smiles abound, it was refreshing, in a nice way. It made for a great change of pace when compared with the ordered structure of Beacon, and the hustle-and-bustle of Vale. It was like the rest of the world didn't exist here - to the point where not many even talked or even acknowledged the war going on over the pond. That was the best of it all, and it made the weight on her shoulders and the fog in her mind fade away.
She spent the day wandering about, naught but a thermos of coffee to accompany her as she looked at the various shops, even trying the local food, before the sun started dipping down, and she knew she had to head back to the house, lest her friends worry. Their flight was in a few days, and she was pretty sure no one had finished packing - even her. It took her until the sky had gone from red to dark to make it back to Ruby's quaint familial home, but before she even got there, she noticed something was off:
There was an airship hovering a few thousand feet in the air.
Frowning at the vessel, tilted tilted her head, her feline ears twitching at the distant sound of the ship's engines. It was too small to be anything but a private vessel, and she was pretty certain it couldn't be something related to Weiss - the only likely suspect to have an airship come for her. If it had been, the ship would have been newer, sleeker, and branded with the family name. It couldn't be someone sent by Adam, either - they mostly made use of the shoelace express, after having lost quite a number of their bullheads after fighting for Vale.
So who was that?
The young faunus accelerated her pace, going from a leisurely stroll to a brisk walk, and could practically feel the change in the air as she came within eyesight of the house. It was like something had settled upon her shoulders and was weighing her down, but she shook off the feeling when she saw something else, going so far past 'off' that it rocketed beyond 'strange' and landed in 'alarming':
A second, smaller airship, like one she'd never seen before, was sitting idle in Ruby's front lawn, a ramp leading inside a room-sized cabin lined with seats fastened to the walls.
And ascending this ramp was a stranger - hanging from his back was Crescent Rose, and bundled in his arms was -
Ruby! Blake's eyes snapped open, she dropped her coffee thermos, drew Gambol Shroud, and charged without a second's thought.
Only to be stopped dead at a sound she'd never heard before. An unearthly wail that filled her ears, shook the air around her, and dropped her to her knees - not from pain, but because she suddenly felt sapped of the very strength to stand. Her sword felt like it weighed a million pounds, and even Ash's deceptively light shield felt like it was made of lead.
Blake laboriously dragged her head up and looked in the direction of the wail, and as it stopped, she saw where it had come from, and her heart went cold:
It was a Grimm. One unlike any she had ever even heard of before, but she knew that whatever it was, whatever it could do, it had to be responsible for the fear gripping her heart, and the change in the atmosphere around the house these last few days suddenly made a visceral amount of sense: This wasn't everyone reacting poorly to bad news, this had been a coordinated effort by someone to abduct Ruby, and Blake knew there was only one person with the resources to manipulate Grimm like this, who also may want the young Rose.
She saw out of the corner of her eye the figure entering the ship stop, and turn to look at the great gangly Grimm, before turning to her. She lurched forward, pushing herself to her feet and trying to continue her advance on momentum alone - if she could just get close to the ship, she could try and shoot out its engines, maybe even throw some switches and activate them, try to incinerate the Grimm, and throw off whatever it was doing to her.
She saw the figure shake its head, and place Ruby inside. The brief glimpse she had of the pajama-clad Rose showed her that she'd been bound and gagged, before the pilot of the ship fastened her to the seat on the wall, and then turned to lean out of the the ship.
"Alright, Slendy." He called out, his voice sounding strange - first like it was being broadcast from a set of speakers, but then like it was being altered, garbled, scrambled. "Thanks for the help, but you freak me out."
Blake then witnessed the Pilot lift his dark hand, and clench his fist.
The Apathy's neck twisted around a full three hundred and sixty degrees with a loud snap. It vanished into smoke just a moment later, and the cat Faunus felt her energy suddenly fill her again, and the oppressive weight in the air around her vanish.
She was on her feet in an instant, her pistol in one hand and cleaver in the other, as she fell back to a defensive stance. She turned to look at the pit of smoke wafting away where the Grimm had been, face contorting into a confused frown as she tried to understand why he would just kill it like that. But her confusion was wiped away when she heard the ship's engines whine, increasing in pitch. Her head snapped over to the ship and she saw its ramp shut, and it began lifting off.
"No!" She gasped, shooting forward, even as the ship already raised itself her height and half again off the ground.
Thinking fast, Blake gripped her pistol as hard as she could and then threw it at the ship. It twirled several meters through the air before its blade buried into the ship's hull, and she soon was taken for a ride as the ship took off.
The Pilot seemed not to care, or not to notice, and the ship continued climbing towards the larger airship. Blake gritted her teeth and slid her sheath onto her back, before grabbing at a piece of the ship's hull and dragging herself further up. She ripped the bladed pistol out of the ship, reached up, and then jabbed it back in, using that as an improvised piton to help her climb to the top of the ship.
Reaching its roof, the pilot either now noticed she was there, or chose now to act, and she had to act fast - ripping her sheath off of her back, exposing its cleaver-like blade, and ramming it into the ship's roof, holding onto it for dear life as it began spinning so fast that she felt her blood pounding in her ears. She clenched her eyes tight, her feline ears flattening against her head, and prayed that the bladed sheath was in deep enough to be stuck fast.
Although, where she hoped the pilot would respond by ceasing his attempts to buck her off and exit the ship to deal with her personally, she only got one half of that. He stopped spinning, but he didn't exit his ship.
Instead, she heard the engines grow louder.
She opened her eyes, and turned her gaze to the front of the ship - and felt her heart jump into her throat as she realized that the madman was accelerating towards his airship!
Blake had no time to come up with any kind of plan to avoid the incoming impact before the Pilot scraped the top of his personal craft against the bottom of the larger airship. Her aura definitely took the brunt of the impact, but she still felt a lot of it, and that didn't stop her momentum - she smashed, head and chest first, into the airship. For a moment she felt weightless, until her momentum was all lost and gravity took over, pulling her down to the ground and initiating a fall that would surely kill her. She almost immediately saw stars, and the world turned gray for a moment before her adrenaline kicked in and it all snapped back into focus.
Here, as she began sinking towards the ground faster and faster, Blake fell back on a lifetime of training and experience, keeping her head cool and coming up with a solution in the seconds she had before any opportunities she had would be lost forever. Thinking fast, Blake used the only thing she had on her - her pistol, and its ribbon; and alongside the damage dealt to the airship by the suicidal pilot, she had a perfect spot to throw the gun and anchor herself to the ship. She spun the gun around in one revolution before throwing it at the airship's belly, and like a grappling hook, it spun around a hunk of exposed metal, wrapped around itself, and then dug its blade into the hull.
She felt her sudden stop in the back of her head, blood pounding in it as her ribbon went taut and she was left hanging from the ship, dangling thousands of feet in the air.
She let out a brief sigh of relief, not wanting to know how she would have survived falling that far.
However, those feelings, and her plans to board the airship, were both dashed when she heard the roar of the smaller craft's engines from behind her. Turning around, she saw the ship, damaged, and her cleaver sticking out of it, hurtling towards her - some small vestigial object now spinning.
She gasped, and yanked on the ribbon as hard as she could, just as gunfire blasted through the air. She pulled herself just high enough to avoid the gunfire, but the pilot again displayed his absolute disregard for his own self preservation, and smashed the front end of his ship into her. Now with a second concussion to accompany the first, Blake was taken for a ride as the hood ornament to a personal airship, her pistol ripped off of the airship and no whipping about in the air, nothing keeping it from falling below but the ribbon attached to her wrist. Struggling against the speed of the ship trying to flatten her against it, Blake slowly straightened herself out and pushed herself up, managing to peek over her sleeve. She found that she was on the ship's glass canopy, and directly underneath her, separated only by several inches of glass, was the Pilot.
And in his hand was a gun nearly as big as his head.
He fired the gun, but clearly had no idea who he was dealing with - the gigantic slug shattered the glass canopy, shooting out from inside the ship, but where it would have blown the faunus off of the ship, instead her semblance flared to life and she was, in the blink of an eye, several inches to the left, leaving behind nothing but a shadow to take the shot for her. Feeling a cold sweat sprout on her head, Blake frantically pulled Gambol Shroud back to her and tried to come up with a plan. The only thing she could think of was what she acted on - and she threw the gun inside the canopy, practically using it as a fishing line as she wrapped it around the ship's controls. She knew better than to try and forcibly crash the ship - Ruby was in there, and she was unconscious. Her aura wouldn't be active, that kind of a stunt would kill her.
What she could do, however, was force the ship down where the Pilot clearly intended to land it: On top of his own airship. With a grunt, she pulled at what the control stick and caused the whole ship to lurch as it pulled up. It arced up and around from underneath the airship and then stalled for a moment, its engines struggling to keep up, before gravity overtook it. Now falling right for the top of the airship, Blake disengaged her gun and pulled herself up onto the ship's hull, and as she scrambled away, the Pilot inside merely sat back, crossed his arms, and waited for the inevitable.
The smaller vessel collided with the larger one with a great crash, the sound of metal tearing metal and glass shattering to pieces. It skidded for several feet, tearing apart the top of the airship, and nearly reaching its front end before it finally stopped.
Gasping for air, Blake pushed herself up and ran over the top of the smaller craft, snatching her sheath out of its roof, and leaping down to the 'ground' below. Now on top of the larger airship, she first used took a quick look at her weapons and, confirmed they were still ready to fight, turned to the smaller ship, trying to come up with a plan for how she'd get in.
She found, however, the Pilot had done her job for her - he'd torn open a hole small enough to walk through, and was standing there in front of the downed ship. The Faunus could hear little else but the wind whistling in her ears, and her head and neck throbbed with pain, but she pushed through it, and adopted a defensive stance, stowing her pistol in its sheathe and taking ahold of it with two hands, keeping it held in front of her defensively, like a great cleaver.
The Pilot, meanwhile, simply stood there, arms hanging limply at his side, head inclined, shoulders slumped, back slouched. What, was he bored? If Blake didn't know any better, she would say he looked morose.
"Give her back!" She demanded, her words barely making it to him over the sound of the wind. "Give her back, right now!"
The masked man rolled his head about in an exaggerated facsimile of one rolling their eyes, and raised one of his hands, and then made a slapping motion. Blake grunted as she felt as though she'd been hit in the side by a battering ram - but she was more than capable of jabbing her cleaver into the ship's hull, carving it open and stopping herself before she went over the edge. She then pushed off, briefly soaring through the air, before she flipped end over end and landed exactly where she'd started, landing in a pose befitting of her heritage, expression unchanged, as though challenging him to to better.
The masked Pilot shook his head and sighed, "can you do me a favor and just skip to the part where I've kicked your ass and you're shaking your fist at the sky, please?" He asked, his voice garbled by both his mask and whatever was catching and broadcasting it. "I've been getting bitch-slapped with a lot of world changing news last couple'a days, and I really just want to get this -" He indicated the trashed airship, inside of which the unconscious Ruby lay blissfully unaware. "- over with so I can sleep and get ready for the whirlwind that will be the next two or three months."
The faunus raised an eyebrow, "you're kidding, right?" She called back.
And he shook his head, sighing. "Unfortunately not." He said, drawing his comically over-sized pistol and leveling it on her. "I'm really not. I'm not like the others you will be meeting soon, Kit - I don't fuck around. I will kill you if I must... But I'll also afford you the chance to fight another day."
Blake's silence was her response, and when he sighed, she readied herself, and when he opened fire, the first slug hit not flesh, but the shadow thereof, and the Faunus who had avoided the gigantic slug ducked underneath it and darted forward. To his credit, the Pilot could lead his shots well, and each time he fired he hit something, but every something was the shadow that remained of his intended target, and when she reached him, she pounced. Lunging upwards, she held down the trigger of her pistol, it carving a swath of destruction up the Pilot's chest, as she swung her sheath up in a reverse grip, slashing at his stomach and his chest, before twisting her grip around to a proper one and chopping down at his shoulder.
When the blade stuck fast was when Blake realized that the man had barely reacted to her pistol, and appeared to almost literally shrug off her cleaver.
To this effect, when her bright yellow eyes met his T-shaped visor, he merely sighed, and reached up with his left hand, grabbing the sharp blade of her sheath and pushing it off.
"You're going to have to hit a lot harder if you want to hurt me, Kit." He rumbled, pushing Blake's secondary blade off of his shoulder, and forcing her to back up a step, eyes wide, as she tried to come up with a new plan.
Aside from scorch marks on his shirt - which, now up close, she could see had a metallic sheen - he didn't even look phased by her initial assault. To his credit, just as she was reconsidering her strategy, he was doing the same - stowing his pistol on his hip and cracking his knuckles, before pumping each fist in turn as he stalked towards her, his slow pace either the result of his apparent reluctance or an attempt at intimidation. The faunus had time to try one tactic before he reached her, so she snapped up her pistol and let loose a volley of bullets at his head. This had a markedly improved reaction over her attempt to shoot him in the chest, as he actually recoiled from this, but they, like the others, failed to breach his armor.
But as he reached her, she realized something: None of her bullets had struck aura. Not once had she seen the telltale muted flash of an aura defending its user. He couldn't not have aura, could he?
No - She thought, ducking under a lightning-fast jab that hit the nose of the shadow she left behind, and cutting at his legs next - again succeeding in hitting him as though he had no aura, but again discovering that he was cloaked in that same chainmail from head to toe, resulting in little more than a slashed pantleg. No, he used a semblance to try to throw me off the ship! She rolled backwards and out of the way of the knee that would have rammed into her forehead, and as she rolled upwards, she gasped and twisted out of the way of roundhouse - the Pilot having just suddenly been there, ready to attack.
Knowing that trying to cut through his armor was appearing less and less likely to get her her desired results, Blake switched tactics and, taking ahold of her cleaver in two hands, brought it around and smashed its jagged end into the back of the Pilot's knee. This finally gave her the result she'd desired - and he fell to his knee with a grunt, allowing her to hop up to her feet and chop down on the man's head. He, however, twisted around and blocked the attack with the bracer on his forearm, the sharp edge of her sword digging into its metal surface and scraping against it, not even leaving any marks.
Is he relying on the armor, and not even using his aura? She gulped, the dark part of her mind wondering if she were even capable of hurting him if her continued assaults on this man were proving so damned ineffective, this armor reminding her of Ash's shield in how well it protected him. Her only viable target seemed to be his head, and he learned from his mistakes and failed tactics far too fast, so such an idea wouldn't work forever. She either needed to hit him harder, or find some kind of chink in his armor.
Her blade still digging into his armor, the Pilot slowly lifted himself to his feet, his strength winning out over hers as she tried to push down harder, but failed to keep him on his knees. When he fully straightened up and nonchalantly pushed his arm to the side and allowed her blade to scrape off the side of his arm, she backed away a step, fear in her wide eyes as the Pilot appeared to tower over her in the bright moonlight, his shadow enveloping her.
Looking him over, Blake realized he did have a weakness - a single linchpin in his armor which, when bypassed, could open him up to further attacks. It was subtle, almost invisible if one didn't have her keen eye, but now that she'd noticed it, it was obvious - and exploiting it wouldn't require any more effort on her end than anywhere else. She could even call it trivial - all she had to do was get in close, and not get hurt.
And with her semblance, she was uniquely suited to do just that.
Clenching her jaw, Blake stowed her cleaver on her back and straightened up, grasping her main blade in both hands and holding it in front of her, glaring at the Pilot, as though challenging him. His only response was a tilt of his head, before he raised his hands in a boxer's stance and readied for the attack to come. Blake waited a moment, the only sound being that of the whistling wind, before she charged forward, crossing the distance between the two of them in the blink of an eye. The Pilot seemed surprised at her speed and fell back a step, bringing his arms closer to his core as she threw a wide horizontal swing, the blade slashing across both of his bracers with the sound of steel scraping against steel. She kept up the momentum, quickly following up by bringing the blade around and chopping down at his head, the Pilot threw his arm up and blocked the attack, and just as she hoped, took advantage of her opened core, and threw a heavy jab at her stomach.
She felt the familiar, cool sensation of her shadow enveloping her body, like cold water washing over one's skin, and was similarly graced by the feeling of being pushed out of the way, of being forced to unoccupy the space her shadow was now taking up.
But then something went wrong - she felt something push against her back, forcing her to stay in one place, even as her semblance tried to push her to safety. Her semblance adapted almost instantaneously and tried forcing her to duck down, but again something resisted her - she felt as though her body were encased in concrete, unable to move, unable to twitch. What was -
The Pilot's fist smashed through the shadow, causing it to dissipate, and his fist surged straight into her gut. Her aura took the hit but she still grunted in pain - and then, quick as a flash, the Pilot lunged forward, letting her blade scrape off of his bracer and taking his raised arm and locking it around the nape of her neck, roughly grabbing at and bunching up the skin as his fist opened up and grabbed at her stomach.
Even as the otherworldly force that had immobilized her vanished, Blake could do nothing as the Pilot bodily hauled her over his head and then brought her down in a wide arc, smashing her face-first into the hull of his airship before he grabbed at her leg and then hauled her over again, smashing her back into the hull. After this he let go of her leg with one of his hands and bunched up his fist, and in the blink of an eye he sent it forward again, pounding it into the side of her knee and causing it to bend at an angle so painful she shouted in pain. But, as he reared his fist in another attempt to break her leg, she saw her opportunity - her one chance to salvage this - and she took it.
She bent the knee of the leg he was holding so tightly, in effect pulling herself up into the air and towards him, and as the distance between them closed, she twisted her blade around and, in a reverse grip, jabbed it upwards into the sole weakness in the pilot's otherwise impregnable armor:
The gap between his neck and his helmet.
Now the Pilot's lack of aura worked against him, and Blake felt the unfortunately familiar feeling of her blade catching flesh and tearing it open. The Pilot barked in pain and let go of her leg, but she wasn't done - with a angry pull, she used the blade as an improvised crowbar and pried the mask from the Pilot's face, before kicking off of his chest and separating the two of them - leaving only the mask to flip through the air and fall to the hull of the ship below.
Blake backflipped back to her feet and skidded to a halt, head snapping up to watch as the Pilot stumbled back, one hand grasping at his heavily bleeding face, and the other -
Blake gasped and dove out of the way as the Pilot opened fire, still somehow managing to shoot with perfect accuracy despite his hand and his blood covering his face and his eyes. The hull practically exploded with each slug that hit it, and it was all Blake could do to dodge the incoming fire - until she was too slow, and one of the giant slugs hit her.
And again, her semblance failed her - when the shadow appeared and tried to push her to safety, she was again held firmly in place, and that resulted in the slug exploding off of her and sending her flying dangerously close to the far end of the ship. She rolled to a stop, her hand dangling over the edge and her head swimming.
That has to be him. She gasped shakily, feeling the damage to her aura that shot had done - it felt like getting hit by one of Crescent Rose's bullets. But... What is it? She wondered, can he nullify semblances? Is he magnetic? Telekinetic? Can he freeze me like that Grimm did? She asked herself, forcing her aching body and her bruised chest to her feet. He... He must be telekinetic. She thought, remembering his attempt to throw her from the ship. Damn it... He had both been trying to kill her and forcing her to use her semblance during that exchange of gunfire - so he could figure out how it worked, and then exploit it with his own power by forcibly immobilizing her whenever her semblance activated.
And since her entire fighting style relied on her semblance to take hits she couldn't, Blake realized how bad of a situation she'd been put in. Again the instinct to run gripped her, but her horrible concern for her friend overrode it - she couldn't leave without Ruby. She couldn't.
She turned to the Pilot, able to see him clearly even from this distance thanks in no small part to her heritage. She, however, only caught the most fleeting glimpse of his face as he bent down and retrieved his mask. He snatched it up with his free hand, and wiped his bleeding face with the other - the bad angle affording her no look at her handiwork. The blood running down his neck and staining his white, metal shirt, however, told her enough: She'd got him good.
I... I may be able to do this. She gulped - he was bleeding now, and he was bleeding heavily, she might have even gotten his eye. For whatever reason he didn't use his aura, it didn't matter - with how badly he was bleeding, all she had to do was outlast him now. Eventually he'd start suffering from the effects of bloodloss, and from there he'd start making mistakes - mistakes she could capitalize on, even it it meant holding out just a little longer until he collapsed.
But... She gritted her teeth and charged him again, and forcing herself not to think of what he would do to adapt to this situation.
She figured out when she reached him and slashed at him again - he fell back one step and bent down on one knee, throwing one hand up towards her blade. She felt his semblance take ahold of her dark sword and witnessed as this madman guided it into his open palm. Armor or not, that wasn't something one just did! But he did, and she realized why when his fingers closed around her blade and it scraped to a halt in his palm - his other hand, clenched into a fist at his side, came roaring up in a heavy uppercut.
The sound of mechanical whirring and expanding metal following it.
Before Blake could even comprehend it, she was smashed in the soft part of her chin by a sharp edge of metal. Her semblance kicked in but again the Pilot stopped her from moving, resulting in her head snapping back as something firm and unyielding scraped skin from her chin. As she recoiled from the blow, he reared his hand back and threw it forward again - but Blake had enough sense to respond, and her first thought was to leap upwards, using the blade he was keeping ahold of as a fulcrum to swing over him and around to his back, and as she did, she pulled her cleaver from her back and made to strike at the back of his neck with it.
Only to find it stopped when he thrust his hand around his head, and her sword hit a shield.
Blake gasped, realizing that the gun hadn't been the Pilot's only weapon - his bracers could expand outwards, and formed a kite shield, instantly increasing his range and defensive ability.
He'd been holding back this entire time.
Shaking her head, Blake yanked back her primary sword and broke his grip on it, before backing off a few steps, warily watching as he slowly got to his feet and turned to her. Bright red blood was still leaking out from underneath his mask, painting half of his metal shirt red, which almost absorbed the moonlight above them. The Pilot raised his off hand and clenched his fist, pumping it up and down and causing the second bracer to expand outwards, creating a second shield.
Blake cast a brief look behind her, praying that Ruby, despite all odds, would wake up and maybe even help her - she'd seen him bringing her weapon along, after all.
But no, she was doomed to keep fighting him alone.
"Are you finished?" The Pilot called out, attracting her attention.
She turned to him, and saw that he'd relaxed his posture - he'd gone from bent legs, a curved back, and a defensive stance, to having straightened his legs and back, and slumped his shoulders.
Blake blinked.
Was he bored?
She gritted her teeth, "not even close!" She called back over the winds, defiantly.
The Pilot sighed, "fine." Said the garbled voice. "Fine." He raised his hand, fingers splayed out. "I am, though." And he twisted his hand around, palm facing him, and then clenched it into a fist.
Blake felt Gambol Shroud get torn from her hands with so much force that her fingers stung afterwards. She stumbled forward a step, and then felt her heart stop in her chest as she realized what he was doing. Head snapping up, she saw him finish sheathing her blade, and then under-hand toss it off of the roof of the ship.
No... No! She gasped and shot forward, hoping beyond hope that she could reach him in time before -
He swept his hand from one side to the other, and Blake's feet were stolen out from beneath her. Then, as though conducting an orchestra, he flicked his hand upwards with a flourish, and she found herself pulled up into the air and pushed to the side, something slamming into her back like a speeding truck.
She was sent careening so far over and past the edge of the ship that she hadn't a snowball's chance in hell of grabbing onto it.
She screamed as she tumbled through the air, her last look at the Pilot being that of him leaning over the edge and peering over it, watching as she fell down to the earth below. Picking up speed, the airship shrank smaller and smaller as she grew further and further away from it, and more and more close to the ground. Her arms flailing, her body twisting, Blake felt a deadly, icy fear grip her very soul as she realized her life was measured in seconds. This wasn't the Beacon cliffs, this wasn't training - this was real life, she had nothing to save her here, no weapon, no -
Weapon! She gasped, closing her mouth and twisting around so her stomach was towards the ground; she threw her arms and legs out and tried to increase her drag as much as possible, as her yellow eyes scanned the air below her. Anyone else and it would have been too dark to see the black blade, but she didn't have that problem - and by some blessing of the Gods, she found it.
Pressing her arms and legs together, Blake, no less terrified than she had been a moment ago, owing to the fact that she could see the ground coming closer, sped through the air and plummeted towards Gambol Shroud, her trusty blade and sheath spinning through the air. She nearly overshot it, her shoulder smacking into its hilt and causing it to tumble away, but her hand shot out and grasped the edge of its ribbon.
Falling faster with each second, the ground growing so close that she could see the breaks between trees, she ripped her sword out of its sheathe and collapsed it into its pistol form. She wrapped the ribbon around her arm and clenched her gut as tight as she could to push the fear away, as all she could do now was wait until she grew close enough to try and snag a tree with it.
She did, with Gambol Shroud's blade snagging a thick branch and stopping fast.
But then she came face to face with the problem with her plan: It did nothing to slow her down. If anything, when the ribbon went taut, she only sped up, as all her downward momentum was transferred into it and she swung from it like a grappling hook, so fast that she left a faint contrail in the air and could hear nothing but the wind whipping at her ears.
It happened so fast that Gambol Shroud cut halfway through its branch - only barely staying put.
But it didn't save her from smashing chest-first and practically folding herself over the branch of another tree. The impact was harder than taking a hammer-strike from Nora, it broke more than her aura and it knocked the wind out of her so thoroughly that it felt as though her lungs had flattened like pancakes. Blake could only croak as her hands went limp and she fell back, swinging back towards the tree her pistol was secured around and slamming her back into it - she could feel the bark dig through her shirt and cut open her back. Now dangling from Gambol shroud, Blake hung there for a second, her world nothing but pain, agony, and asphyxiation before her weight undid the hastily tied knot around her arm.
And then she fell again.
And it felt like she hit every branch on the way down.
The sound of branches snapping was joined by the horrid sound of her own bones crunching and snapping alongside them. She hit her leg first, and it bent in a direction it had no right bending in, causing her to tumble forward - where her head hit the next branch. This knocked her unconscious, but only for a second, as the pain of the next branch she hit and the arm it broke woke her right back up. Spinning uncontrollably, she fell through a much thinner branch next, the leaves and twigs leaving a suite of cuts and bruises in their wake before, finally, she hit the ground with a horrific thud.
Eyes glazed over, and nothing but the sound of her lungs wheezing, a wet, croaking sound coming from her throat as she tried to inflate them, Blake convulsed in pain.
Unable to hear the jet the Pilot had come in crashing down to the ground near her, or the airship as it departed, the Pilot callously leaving her for dead.
She couldn't even think, only drift off into darkness as her chest barely managed to inflate and rattle air in and out of her lungs.