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BREAK

"Come on, hurry up!" This close to the town square, it was hard to hear mom's voice over the siren. Regardless, Rose and Indigo picked up the pace, walking closer to me as I led the group to the bunker. Behind me, the rest of the family, sans Sapphire, walked in a tight group while Weiss brought up the rear.

All around us, families walked in panicked huddles. Some ran, some walked with their heads down, as if they were headed to the gallows. I remembered the drills. People waking leisurely towards the bunker, laughing and joking, even as the siren rang in our ears. Now, almost no one spoke, and the siren seemed a thousand times as loud for it.

Ansel's town square was not a large one, and it was packed. They crowded around the town hall, pushing one another as if it would get them in any faster. At the doorway, I saw a pair of police officers that I vaguely remembered seeing around the town on occasion, though I couldn't recall their names. People were sent inside in small handfuls; family units being allowed in together to keep them from panicking even more.

Maybe it was the siren, or the atmosphere, but I felt my dread build. I hadn't felt like this since Mt. Glenn. The Grimm didn't scare me anymore, not like they used to. But that wasn't the case for the others: Mom, and Rose, and Indigo, and Violet, and Lavender, none of whom could defend themselves.

What would happen to them if the Grimm got to them?

I shook my head. It wouldn't come to that.

"Seven?" One of the police officers asked, doing a quick headcount as he went to mark something on his clipboard.

"Five," Weiss and I piped up at the same time, speaking loudly so we would be heard over the sound of the siren. "We're Huntsmen students." The man nodded at the explanation.

"What?" Evidently, he hadn't been the only one to hear, and Mom didn't seem nearly as happy about it.

"We're going to help Mom; we're going to meet up with Sapphire now." She frowned, concerned.

She looked me in the eye and went to speak but stopped before any words left her mouth. She took a step forward, and for a moment I thought she might argue, that she'd found her nerve. Instead, she simply dragged me into a hug so tight that I wondered if my aura would drop a couple of points. She let go a moment later and did the same to Weiss, who looked more than a little uncomfortable with the treatment. She couldn't hide the little smile she sported after, though.

"Be safe you two," she said, giving us another quick once-over. She still looked worried. A year ago, it would have made me angry. As if she didn't trust me to be able to survive this. Now I recognised it as something different, something… more. It was the same look she gave Sapphire, or Jade, or even Dad whenever they went out on missions.

"We will be," I promised, though I couldn't help but wonder if it was a lie. I shook it off.

I quickly hugged the others, whispering promises of trips to the arcade and the mall and all sorts to my little sisters. They smiled, looking for a moment as if there wasn't a horde of Grimm bearing down on them. And then they went inside.

Weiss and I gave the police officers a final nod before heading off towards the meeting point. It wasn't far, the clocktower two streets over being the tallest building in town, giving us the best view of the town.

"How're you feeling?"

"What?" Weiss looked at me with wide eyes, almost as if she'd forgotten I was there in the first place. "I'm fine… fine." She looked back at the road, keeping her eyes front and centre, even as she fiddled with Myrtenaster's handle.

"Hey," She looked back, "we're going to be okay."

"Yeah." She said, her voice a little stronger now. "We will be."

The streets were almost empty now. Beyond the single straggler sprinting to the town hall, we met no one else on our way to the clocktower. It gave the town a haunted appearance, as if foreshadowing some kind of abandoning of the place. I knew it was possible. If the damage was too great to repair, if the death toll was too high, that whatever survivors were left would move to different cities and towns instead.

No, it won't come to that.

Weiss and I made it to the top of the clocktower, and then onto the roof in short order. The roof was a flat thing, covered in gravel with a slight lip at the edge. There was a single table on it, a cheap wooden thing covered completely with a large map. Around the table, the Huntsmen of Ansel were gathered.

Sapphire stood on one end of the table, alongside another man who couldn't be much older than she was. Bruno, I thought. I'd never met him myself, but I'd heard about him plenty. Sapphire and Jade both ran missions with him on occasion, and from what they'd said he was a reliable Huntsman, if too quiet for their taste.

On the opposite end of the table was a trio of older men. They didn't look very old, but even a couple of wrinkles on a Huntsman meant something. The healing properties of aura made the skin healthier and kept one looking younger for longer. Two of the men were unfamiliar to me, though they must have been brothers. With dark hair and skin that was as pale as paper, they were memorable enough that I would have remembered meeting them.

The last man, though, was someone I recognised. Walter was a tall, older man, with a shiny bald pate and thick beard. He looked regal now, standing there in his silvery armour, his spear and shield slung across his back as he went over something on the map. He turned to me.

"Jaune!" His voice was loud as we approached, booming over the siren that still rang in our ears. "It's good to see you. Beacon's done wonders for you." He smiled, but he couldn't hide the worry in his eyes. I couldn't tell if he was worried for himself, for me, or for the people in general, but I supposed it didn't matter.

"Are mom and the others safe?" Sapphire asked. I gave her a quick nod, and she returned it before looking back at the map.

"Alright," Walter said, "We don't have much time, but this is the plan. With the seven of us here, we won't be able to hold out forever, but we don't have to. Reinforcements are on the way; all we need to do is hold out for three hours."

I felt myself relax for a moment, though the moment was short lived. Three hours didn't seem like a long time, but looking out over the edge of the roof, I couldn't help but feel apprehensive. From this high up, you could see the entire town and further, into the forests and plains that surrounded Ansel. Only now, I couldn't see the plains at all, instead all I saw a single mass of black. It almost looked like a wave, or a tsunami even, as Mistral sometimes faced.

"Now, we're going to split up into two teams. Team one will be myself, Sapphire, Patrick and Percy. We're going to be holding the line here." He pointed at the map, drawing a line with his finger. "The streets will funnel most of the Grimm into us, so we won't be surrounded. It's going to be our job to cull the herd."

"Now team two will be Bruno, Jaune, and Weiss," he struggled to pronounce the name, giving her an apologetic smile. Weiss, though, didn't bat an eye and simply nodded. "Your job is to guard the town hall. Any stragglers that get through could be dangerous to the people in the bunker. It's not invincible, and if enough Grimm get in there…" He didn't finish, but he didn't have to. He coughed. "Anyways, we'll slowly fall back as we need to and group up with team two when the time comes. Questions?"

I shook my head. So did the others. It was a simple plan, especially when laid out like that. And yet, I couldn't stop my eyes from darting over the roof's edge again, looking for that sea of black. So much for simple.

"Jaune?" I paused as I turned to leave, to go and take my position at the town hall. It was Sapphire. "Good luck." And then she was gone, having leapt to one of the nearby roofs before I could even offer her a response.

The siren cut off, then. Its absence made my ears ring, and I almost didn't hear Bruno when he told us to follow him. We didn't take the roofs to get back to the town hall, simply walking instead. It was only a short moment, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

"Alright," Bruno said as we arrived at the town square, "do you two have rifles?" He looked uncomfortable taking the lead, as if every word was a chore.

"No," Weiss answered. Bruno didn't answer, but I could see the grimace that came to his face clear as day.

"You two guard the doors, I'll take the roof." And with that, he was gone.

Weiss and I stood there at the entrance, looking around the square for any sign of movement. For a while, there was nothing. No fighting, no sound, no Grimm, and then I heard the first shot. It was fired off in the distance, but quiet as it was, I didn't have any issue picking it up.

And then I felt it. It was a familiar feeling now, but one that still caught me off guard. In the distance, I felt the others fighting, The Pack bringing me an awareness that couldn't be replicated. I felt them moving, fighting, cutting down the Grimm in droves as they tried to approach. With a rasp of steel, Crocea Mors left its scabbard, and a black sheen covered my shield as it expanded.

And then I saw the first Grimm approach. It was a Beowolf, rushing through the two streets leading up to the town square, giving us a clear view of its mad rush. It didn't even make it into the square. A single, sharp crack from above us reduced its skull to shards of bone and black flesh before it turned to dust.

It was anticlimactic in a way. There was a lull, and then the next Grimm appeared near the square. Another Beowolf, which was similarly shot down before it got anywhere near us. Another came, then, and then another. The numbers steadily increased as the minutes ticked by, the team out in the city clearly doing a good job distracting and thinning out the herd. There were so few at first that Weiss and I didn't even need to move for several minutes.

And then they reached us.

The first Grimm to do so was an Ursa. It was big, burly and had taken more than one shot before it got to us, but Bruno was quickly forced to focus his attention elsewhere, leaving it to us.

4187 Dust

A slash through its unarmoured belly as it reared up was enough to put it down. Before the corpse had even finished turning to dust, another Grimm took its place, a Boarbatusk this time, it's heavily armoured form resistant to the bullets Bruno was using. A glyph appeared in its path, glowing white, seemingly doing nothing. The second the Boarbatusk rolled onto it, though, the glyph flared, shining brighter and launching the thing up into the air.

Unable to control its path in the air, the Boarbatusk squealed at a pitch so loud and high that it drowned out the steady gunfire coming from above. I stepped forward, bringing my shield to bear, and wound my arm back. When it came close enough, I didn't even bother activating Berserk, its momentum would provide more than enough force.

Even through Chitin Shield I felt the impact as it hit my shield. Bone plating cracked and shattered, crushing and tearing the softer flesh beneath it, killing the Grimm instantly.

3282 Dust

The gunfire had picked up now, the cracks now coming out in sharp bursts, each taking out one of the Grimm that threatened to approach. But, like water trickling through a broken dam, the Grimm just kept coming, more and more slipping through the cracks as the minutes ticked by.

And then came the time for us to join fight in full. It was… hard to describe what the siege was like. Weiss and I couldn't move much, forced to hold in front of the doors, lest one of the Grimm slip past them and somehow make it into the bunker.

"Left!" I called out the Grimm as it neared Weiss, and she didn't even bother to turn. Like a shield, a glyph formed to her left, blocking a blow that would have turned any ordinary person to pulp. It gave her time enough to pull Myrtenaster from a dissolving Beowolf and turn to the more dangerous opponent.

I didn't get to watch the rest of the fight, instead I was forced to turn back to my own. A group of Beowolves bore down on me, rushing at me in a mass of black. The first to reach me, a big, burly Beowolf covered in large bone spikes, was the first to die.

AND END:

It sucks to end it off on this, but I've realised that I'm not getting anywhere with this. I've been stuck on this chapter for more than 4 months now, and I can't seem to get passed it. I've written myself into a corner and I've realised that I just don't like how I did the story very much anymore. I've learned a lot and I've got a lot more to learn too, but I think I've finally outgrown this version of the story.

Now that doesn't mean I'm ending it all here. I'm doing a rewrite, and the first chapter is going to be up in the next couple of minutes. It will follow the same rough lines as this one did (and actually continue on into the rest of the story beyond the first year), just with much better writing, a more structured plot that doesn't feel so anticlimactic and the same 10 vigor we all love and hate.

Anyways, I wanted to put all these chapters out here anyways, just so I didn't leave you all hanging on this. Stay tuned on my profile for the rewrite and I hope you guys all enjoy it.