Chapter 51 – Splinter
What cannot bend, breaks.
"I'll kill you!" Jaune screamed, charging forward with his sword.
Blake hadn't been expecting this murderous huntsman to have gotten the slip on Team Job so easily, but her partner had the right idea here – Velvet or not, they needed to keep fighting. Gambol Shroud opened fire on the man's chest.
There was a flash of gold, and one of the sickles blocked Crocea Mors before it could land. The other snagged around the back of Jaune's throat by its curve. The man pivoted, and Jaune was thrown directly into Gambol's stream of bullets.
Blake stopped firing immediately. She'd gotten a couple good shots on the huntsman and even fewer on Jaune, making it a good exchange overall. Arc had a decent aura pool upon which to draw, after all, and this man probably needed his aura more than Jaune did his own.
The sickled around Jaune's neck pulled away and slashed down onto his elbow. Sliding his weapon down to Jaune's wrist, the two twin curved blades – one on Crocea Mors' blade and the other on its hilt – twisted the sword around to knock it out of Jaune's hands, disarming him.
"The Faunus girl, the one I threw…she was your Constanzo. The strength."
Blake had no idea what this lunatic was talking about, but he had another thing coming if he thought that disarming Jaune would be the end of the fight.
Her sword clashed against his sickles. Both of them were caught in the sickle's curves, putting them face to face one again with naught but blades between them.
tzzz
The man disappeared, and Blake found herself falling forward at the sudden lack of resistance against her blade.
A voice spoke from behind her. "You…I'd wager you're the Thoum of your team. Wisdom abound, a born leader."
Blake instinctively kicked behind herself and was reward with landing a solid hit on soft flash. Her huntsman opponent coughed in pain and keeled over as her heel drove itself into his stomach.
"Mmmphh," he grunted, lips tightly pressed together.
His head lifted upwards, making eye contact with her.
tzzz
He was too predictable with that gimmick semblance of his – Blake was already swinging before he'd even teleported. She missed, of course, not having any idea where he was going to turn up, but she was so close that he fell backwards in surprise.
He's good, but not that much better than me, especially for his age.
The body of the huntsman on the floor was shot by another round for Jaune's stun gun, and his arms tensed up in pain.
tzzz
The man's body zipped straight upwards by about eight feet, taking him well above Blake and Jaune's heads. He twisted as he fell, landing on his feet.
"Ginger, for the blond boy. No skill, no might, but enough heart for everyone."
"Hands in the air, buddy," Jaune said, stun gun at the ready.
"But Constanzo, Ginger, and Thoum are dead. Buried in the rubble of Mountain Glenn. Only I remain – my brains, my heart, my strength."
He threw the sickle at Jaune, knocking the stun gun right from his hands. Jaune barely managed to avoid getting his as the sickle flew through the air…
tzzz
…right back into the hands of the huntsman, who moved behind Jaune to catch it.
"You're not from here. Nowhere, left to right, top to bottom, are you among these people." The man let his sickles fall to his side. "I don't want this. Just go."
Blake raised Gambol again, and Jaune drew his dirk, moving to join her side. "No."
The man sighed and lifted up his sickles again.
tzzz
He appeared between the two of them. Blake moved to a defensive posture to block the hit, but no attack came.
Instead, the huntsman's edged blades flicked towards the wall, cutting two straps.
tzzz
He teleported back to his original position, and something fell right on top of Blake.
What? Did he knock down the entire wall? What just happened?
Whatever it was was wide, broad, tall, and roughly the same shape as the wall behind her. It fell down onto Blake, pinning both her and Jaune to the floor with its weight. Blake struggled to get her bearings in her sudden position on the floor, limbs tangled up in Jaune, until she realized it was the fold-in bed, embedded into the wall, that he'd cut loose with his sickles.
Blake looked forward to see little more than the floor of the room, with the man's feet standing still. Then, after the passing of a moment, they turned around and led him out the door to the room.
FHWAK!
"Eat shit, you dumb manwhore!"
Suddenly, Blake's view of the floor from beneath the bed was filled by a lot more – specifically, the downed body of the huntsman falling down just in front of her and rolling to a stop.
"Velvet!" cried Jaune, reacting far faster than he had. "We're under here!"
The bed above Jaune and Blake wobbled for a second.
"Damn thing's stuck…"
Then, the entire piece of furniture was ripped right off the wall and thrown aside back into the hallway, mattress, headboard, and all. Blake clamored to her feet as Velvet stomped the huntsman's face a few times.
"Dropping a pregnant chick out of a building, you maggot cunt? And making her fucking smash her favorite camera? Eat my boot, you brainless daughter of a dickwad!"
tzzz
The man teleported straight upwards once again, but he disappeared again before he could even fall to his feet.
tzzz
tzzz
tzzz
tzzz
The jumps from position to position were too fast for Blake to even follow, as the huntsman zipped from place to place around the room. One thing she did see, however, was the fact that he always teleported in the same posture and position he'd started in.
Velvet spun around the room, trying to keep up with the teleporting human, but he was moving far too quickly. It almost seemed random, the locations he was teleporting too, for they really offered no tactical advantage other than being unable to track.
Maybe that's what he's doing – dodging for a moment while he gets his wits back together.
If that was the case, now was a free moment for Team Job as well. Blake sidestepped towards the edge of the room and retrieve Crocea Mors
"Head's up," she called, tossing it Jaune's way.
"Thanks," he said, before fumbling it and having to pick it up off the floor once more. "S-Sorry."
tzzz
tzzz
tzzz
Velvet was still caught up in the whirlwind of brief, short distance teleportation events, but so far the huntsman hadn't actually done anything to attack her. He was all over the room, everywhere except near Velvet.
Blake had Gambol Shroud, and Jaune had his crossbow, but it was impossible to line up a shot without wasting the ammo. They could fire willy-nilly and hope for a lucky hit, but the huntsman was probably burning through his aura at this rate. If Team Job just let him run himself dry, they could –
tzzz
The huntsman stopped teleporting. Wobbling on his feet, he tilted to the side and grabbed onto a wall for support. From the looks of his face, he was about to throw up, but he somehow managed to look up.
tzzz
He was then behind Velvet.
tzzz
Then, he and Velvet were outside the building, teleported fifty feet above the street with nothing beneath them. Both of them fell right out of the sky and plummeted to the ground.
The man twisted his head around to look at Blake.
tzzz
He teleported back into the apartment, leaving Velvet behind and dropping onto the ground with a thud.
He couldn't get away with using the same trick twice, though, not when it was so obvious. Blake threw her ribbon out and managed to hook it around Velvet's foot, then gripped the nearest heavy object, a wardrobe, that she could for weight. Instead of crashing into the ground below, Velvet swung into the flat face of the building three floors below.
Youch – it looks like her aura took the hit, but we really don't wanna keep doing that, especially with her baby and all.
Meanwhile, Jaune had tackled the huntsman and wrapped him up in a full body hug. "If you wanna teleport, you're gonna have to take me with you, B-word!"
As soon as Blake was done lowering Gambol's ribbon and setting Velvet down on the ground, she ran to the bed that Velvet had torn out of the wall. As expected, it was furnished with sheets that were a little too large, but she did spot a pillow in a cloth case that was much more sizeable for her needs.
Yanking the case off, Blake held it open with both hands, stepped over to where Jaune and the huntsman were wrestling, and threw it over the man's head.
"No good," he hissed, seeing it coming but being unable to do anything about it. "No good."
Every time before he teleported, he was always looking ahead. When he was lying on his back and teleported to right himself, it took him straight upwards, the same direction his eyes were facing.
"You need a line of sight to where you're going," Blake confidently stated as the man's screams were muffled. "Try teleporting now, you –"
He didn't teleport, but he did manage to break free of Jaune's grasp by elbowing him in the stomach. Blake had dropped Gambol Shroud to pick up the pillowcase, so she had to dive backwards to get it.
Not only did being blinded prevent the enemy from teleporting – it also rendered him unable to see Blake whacking him with the flat of her blade directly in the throat. She followed up with a clean stab to the stomach, hitting into his gray aura.
The golden sickles moved faster than she'd expected. One came from the right, and the other the left; both hooked Gambol Shroud in the middle with a heavy strike.
Blake's weapon snapped down the middle. And shattered.
The sheer surprise of the attack's success floored Blake, and she fell backwards. Her hands reached the floor for a weapon, but her own weapon, the only one she knew how to use, was destroyed, and there was nothing there for her.
It hadn't just split it in half – Gambol had fragmented where it was hit like a brittle material, and the portion directly where it had been bisected was in shards. The hilt was still intact, as was the last foot of the blade, but the rest was completely gone.
The huntsman pulled the pillowcase off of his head and sighed. "You –"
Jaune's dirk stabbed into the back of his shoulder, popping out at the other end.
"Gah!" screamed the huntsman. "You –!"
His aura was flickering around the wound, indicating that it had been a failure in control rather than depletion and breaking that had let the wound be inflicted, but Jaune twisted the blade, and the huntsman screamed again.
Jaune's arm wrapped around the man's throat. "Gotcha, B-word!"
The huntsman looked straight at Blake, and for a second, she feared he was about to teleport inside of her and explode her from the inside out. But then, he looked over at the hole in the wall, then at the door to the bedroom through which they'd all entered.
"Ginger was never all that much without Constanzo or Thoum to back him up," he said enigmatically.
His eyes turned back to the opening in the wall, and both he and Jaune disappeared out of existence.
Velvet, panting for breath, ran into the room for the third time. "Okay, I'm not getting dropped another…hey, where are they?"
Blake crawled over to the opening in the wall and looked out to the street for signs of Jaune or their murderous enemy, but there was nothing. Neither of them nor any of their weapons were visible.
"Blake, wh-where'd they go?" Velvet asked again, curiosity mixed with a desperate concern.
Blake's gaze lifted upwards, and every rooftop in the city of Vale came into view.
Coming Soon: Second Location
Jaune finds himself trapped in the clutches of a very reasonable madman.
Author's Notes
A shorter than usual chapter this week, but I'd really rather just have the high intensity fight and cliffhanger than pad it with filler and make it boring. I hope that's okay.
Next update will be a little longer to compensate for it.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!