Grimm Nightmares Chapter 64

Chapter 64 No More the Craven

“They’re everywhere!”

“Above!”

“Keep firing!”

“Left! Left! Shoot, you fucker!”

All across the top of the north-facing wall, men and women shouted directions, warnings and orders, as the different squads of Atlesian soldiers fought to stay the tide of Grimm for as long as possible. What had begun as a mere trickle of soulless abominations had now turned into a horrific reaping tide of teeth and claws, and the efforts of those manning defences were the only thing stopping it from spilling into the base.

Already, the Grimm had managed to clamber over halfway up the wall, clawing over their fallen dead and using them to reach ever higher as they attempted to get the defenders struggling for their lives. They were now so close to surmounting the barrier that the level below the top had been forced to close their firing ports to safeguard the soldiers from the Grimm's snatching claws.

Above, the aerial Grimm continued to flounder and stall as the remaining turrets atop the base's multi-story wall hammered them with lethal precision. But while stalled, the flying Grimm had also practically enshrouded the air above the north wall and made themselves into lethal menaces. The soldiers had no choice but to split their focus, with some firing into the feathery menaces above to alleviate the rain of lethal plumage while the others worked to stall those who attempted to scale the defences.

Luckily for the defenders, the flying Grimm were some of the only ones to suffer significantly in terms of numbers from the dispersing effect of the Horde's breaking. So, while their numbers were tremendous and more than enough to force the Atlesians to hide within many enclosed bays atop the wall, it was not enough to overwhelm the wall altogether.

But it couldn’t last.

A Beowolf clawed its way over the lip of the wall, its bone-white snout scraping against the Dust-crafted stone as it dragged its body onto the structure. Its maw opened as it got its clawed limbs under its body, saliva linking the roof of its mouth to its curved fangs.

“Beowolf! On the right!”

The Beowulf was immediately gunned down by a hail of bullets that sheared into its oil-coloured flesh with such volume as to tear off its right arm. Its carcass slumped to the roof and was found in like company amongst the disintegrating remains of many other fallen Grimm. The sound of a spent magazine clattering to the floor was lost in the din of the continuous gunfire to all but the one who owned the gun.

The young Fox Faunus kept his ears pressed close to his skull, as even with his Aura enhancing his durability, the thunderous noise about him still pained his ears. He was positioned towards the centre of the north wall in the same enclosed pillbox-like structure as the current base commander.

He slammed a fresh magazine into his recently spent rifle and turned to address the only other Faunus currently fighting atop the wall. “We need to alert him; the Grimm are going to start spilling over any moment!”

Salmon looked down to respond to the kneeling Faunus positioned on the other side of the doorway, but never got the chance. Before he could utter a single syllable, the top half of a Beowolf splattered onto the wall just outside the bay they were in. The Grimm snarled and attempted to swipe at their shins, but Salmon was quicker, and with a squeeze of the trigger, his assault shotgun barked, and the Grimm's snout evaporated.

With the Grimm dead, Salmon looked at his fellow Faunus sardonically and replied, “I think he knows.”

“You, Fox!”

Oto jerked around to see the commander pointing at him, “You’re the one with Aura?”

Oto nodded without thinking.

“Poke your head out and let the Slayer know we are moving to phase two!” Commander Silt ordered, not waiting for a response, as he turned back around and began to once more unload into the Grimm that were now nearly level with the top of the wall.

“Fuck,” Oto hissed as he leaned his gun against the wall and looked at Salmon.

“I’ll cover you; just watch your head,” Salmon warned before twisting around the doorway and immediately firing on something Oto couldn’t see. “Now! Go!”

Oto leapt, his hand grabbing hold of the roof of the doorway as he swung himself up and over. His face grimaced as his ribs throbbed in protest, but in one swift movement, he was atop the pillbox and a mere step behind the one he needed to talk to.

Despite the situation, though, he was struck numb in the face of the sheer visage of carnage before him as he once more bore witness to the one known as Jaune Arc.

The tall blond held a two-handed axe in his grasp, the long-reaching weapon swinging about and tearing through black flesh with savage ease. He was once more painted in what was likely several coats of Grimm viscera, his weapon faring no better, and the roof was littered with disintegrating limbs.

But despite this, his movements flowed, his tall frame practically gliding as he stepped into his next swing, his axe going down and a spray of black ichor spewing up in response. Oto caught a glimpse of his face, the slicked-back hair allowing him to catch Jaune’s profile.

Oto was taken aback by the mania in the blond's piercing blue eyes and the flash of his bared teeth, which were also flecked with black. ‘Is he… enjoying this?’ Oto thought, recalling the blond's words as he seemingly taunted the Grimm when he had first arrived at the wall.

The feel of liquid splattering over his brow snapped Oto out of his stupor. He shook his head and cried out to be heard over the numerous sounds around him. “Jaune! Commander says we are moving to phase two!”

The blond paused in his efforts, glancing back over his shoulder as he moved back from the edge of the wall, the broad head of his axe coming up dripping. “… Understood; ensure the lower levels are ready and Huntress Blue is made aware of the situation.”

Oto didn’t know what possessed him to keep talking, but words were already leaving his mouth before he could stop himself. “You should take cover!”

Jaune did not look back as he responded, his voice audible yet not shouted as he replied, “I am yet needed here.”

No sooner had he said his piece than his axe swept out in a blur, and the sound of snapping was audible amongst the crack of gunfire. Oto blinked as he beheld the snapped Nevermore feathers that the blond had so effortlessly struck from the sky.

“We are bait, you and I,” Jaune growled, bringing his axe to rest on his shoulder again. “Observe,” he ordered, pointing with the butt of his weapon to the Grimm below.

Aware of the danger around him, Oto crawled forward nonetheless as he found himself far more afraid of Jaune than the Grimm. He peered over the edge of the wall and saw the truth of the Arc's words by the shape of the broken horde below. One would have to be blind to miss how, despite the length of the north wall, it was the centre where the Creatures of Grimm congregated.

Oto flinched back as a Beowolf, with a running leap, managed to race up the face of the pillbox, but its ascent was halted as Jaune swung his leg around, and with the sound of meat being brutalised, the same Grimm was sent careening back down.

Oto looked up and found a point blue gaze already waiting. “Our part does not change. You and I will be the last to leave. Tell Silt to light it; I am eager to see how these Grimm burn.”

Hearing the dismissal, Oto bid a hasty retreat, the sound of Jaune’s axe swiping through the air following him. He practically rolled off the roof, his shoulder slamming into the stone floor below, but he ignored it as he rushed back inside the pillbox. Salmon was there waiting, latching onto his shirt and hauling him back in as he kept his gun trained behind him.

“You good? Aura still there?” Salmon asked hastily, not taking his eyes off the outside.

“Yeah,” Oto gulped before immediately getting to his feet and facing Commander Silt. “He says to ensure everyone is ready and inform Huntress Blue.”

“Done and done,” Silt responded, pulling his radio up. “Command to all stations, brace for phase two!” There was no immediate movement in the room, and Oto could only reason that everyone was already doing their prescribed jobs.

“We delay as long as we can, Igni. Standby,” Silt said one last time into the radio before he moved to an embrasure and began to fire into the Grimm below. Oto could no longer observe the happening inside the stone structure as Salmon shoved his rifle into his chest and gestured for the door.

The seconds seemed to stretch, but as they passed, the sounds of the Grimm sequestered on the other side of the wall grew louder until they matched the roar of the guns. Another scattering of seconds, and then Oto could think no more as he saw not one but two Grimm claw their way onto the wall.

His thoughts were consumed entirely with the Grimm and putting as many rounds as he could into their oil-black bodies. He gunned down the first, its misshapen form flopping to the ground in such a state that he couldn’t even recognise it. The second, he believed to be a Creep, found its leg blown off, but still, it tried to worm its way to their pillbox.

Jaune’s words danced in his skull as he once more considered the role he and the tall blond played in all this, of being bait.

He squeezed the trigger, and his rifle bucked, sending a burst of bullets careening into the Grimm’s open maw.

It stilled, but there were more already there to replace the dead.

“Silt!” Salmon snapped, not looking away from the Grimm as his drum magazine hit the floor. “How much longer!?”

Oto glanced back and saw the commander at the other entrance to the pillbox, his hand to his earpiece, his brow furrowed. “Command to Igni, detonate! Igni! Detonate!”

Oto’s distraction cost him as something slammed into his leg, and the next thing he knew, his face was slammed into the floor, his Aura flaring to protect his nose. He rolled, the few instincts Eury had pounded into him, screaming at him to be mobile. His leg kicked, slamming into something that yielded beneath the force of his kick.

He scrambled, his hands clawing him back as he looked towards his feet and saw the nevermore that had tried to spear his thigh. Adrenaline mixed with fear, and Oto felt the space around him like a cage, the Grimm’s blazing red eyes like a flare as his heart thundered in his head.

Its wings flapped, and Oto pounced.

He threw himself at the avian Grimm, one hand wrapping around its neck, the other latching onto its leg as he forced the Grimm back to the floor. It squawked and snapped, its free foot raking its talons across his ribs, but Oto ignored the brief flash of pain as his Aura kept them from finding purchase.

He wedged his knee into the smaller Grimm’s chest and, with his full weight positioned atop it, released its leg. His free hand curled into a fist, and before he could even consider another course, he drove his knuckles down into the Grimm’s cranium.

He felt his throat burn as he bellowed over the Grimm’s screeching, his knuckles pulverising the feathered flesh over and over until the resistance they met softened.

With a final downward haymaker, this Grimm’s skull exploded.

The contents behind its mask splashed over his face, and Oto winced as he felt some of the fluid splatter into his eyes. He wiped at his eyes with his forearm, dragging his limb across his eyes as he struggled to get back to his feet, ignoring the corpse of the Nevermore.

“Fox! Fox!” Someone shouted. “You hurt? Your eyes?”

Oto blinked as he looked into the face of the commander, who was looking at him distractedly. “M’fine, Aura protects the eyes, but the sensation of something impacting them is a fucking pain,” Oto explained.

The man paid him only a nod before he was once more talking into his radio, “Igni, report!”

Oto’s ears perked up as he did his best to ignore the pounding of the gunfire around him and listen in on the conversation. “The charges won't detonate; we can’t ignite the Dust!”

Oto’s eyes widened, and the feel of his racing heart seemed to worsen as he digested what he had overheard. The sound of shouting, gunfire, and the monstrous howls of the Grimm were drowning him. His damnable ears could hear it all. He looked at his hands, and the slick coating of Grimm ‘blood’ that stained his reddened knuckles immediately made him think of Jaune.

Then he kept thinking about the terrifying blond.

‘I know what to do.’

Oto got to his feet, tripping and nearly faceplanting as he went, his whole body riding high on its last adrenaline rush. Oto reached forward and snagged his rifle off the ground, his fingers wrapping around the outside of the trigger guard. He saw the commander and others look at him; expressions varied, but none seemed particularly positive. He moved. Voices behind him were talking and shouting; the words were like rain in his ears, fuzzy and without sense.

Oto meant to talk, but his words came out as a panicked yelp, “I need you to cover me!”

Salmon turned to reply, but as he did, there was a break in the gunfire, and Oto saw his chance. He darted out of the safety of the Pillbox once more. He made it two steps before he was forced to bring his rifle to bear, the weapon jolting in his hand as he fired into the upper half of a Beowolf.

It fell away, or more accurately, was pulled down as another Grimm nearly twice its size took its place.

Oto stepped and fired again, the bullets piercing the lumbering thing but not doing nearly enough to stall its ascent.

Click

Oto growled in pure frustration, but he was forced to brush it off as he felt something impact the side of his head, causing him to stumble. The sharp, pinpoint pain gave it away as another Nevermore feather that would have sunk in above his temple were it not for his Aura.

From his knees, he turned to look at where the massive trunk-like arms had been and found the whole Grimm instead.

It was an Ursa.

Oto gulped as the bear-like Grimm rose up on its hind legs. Its baleful gaze was locked solely on him, and its crushing jaws opened wide and let loose a roar that felt as if it physically struck him.

Oto brought his gun up, ready to utilise it as a makeshift club, his Aura extending over the firearm and reinforcing its structure.

“Kid! Fucking move!” the bark of Salmon’s assault shotgun ripped through the air as the Bear Faunus began to unload into the Grimm’s exposed underside. Black ‘blood’ exploded over the floor in a deluge as the Grimm quickly fell back to all fours and charged instead at Salmon.

Oto tried to get back to his feet, to move, to intercept the hulking Grimm’s charge, but he knew he wouldn’t make it.

He could only watch on in horror as-

The Ursa wasn’t moving.

The momentum of its charge was gone in an instant, a sudden, abrupt and most violent cessation.

Oto’s breath was trapped in his lungs, and only when he saw the monster's body shift did the air race out of his mouth in an explosive exhale.

The Ursa slumped, its limbs crumbling under the Grimm’s considerable weight, its head twisted up, revealing the looming figure of the person Oto had rushed out of the pillbox for. Jaune Arc stood between the Bear Faunus and the Bear Grimm; one arm held out, his hand clasped about the haft of a weapon halfway in the Ursa’s mouth.

With casual ease, the tall blond straightened and pulled his arm back, showing off exactly how he halted the Grimm’s charge. A splurge of Grimm ‘blood’ washed over his legs as tooth after tooth of a long serrated length of steel was dislodged from the Ursa’s insides.

Only when the weapon was fully unsheathed from the Bear Grimm’s maw did the soulless monster collapse, and the Arc’s piercing gaze flickered from his prey to those outside the pillbox.

“Why hasn’t the Fire Dust been lit?”

Oto coughed, struggling to get the words out at first, “T-the charges they rigged to the canisters aren’t working; they can’t detonate them.”

Atlesian soldiers had moved to surround them, taking up positions and beginning to lay down a concentrated stream of fire into any and all Grimm visible. The commander walked out to stand across from Jaune, “The fox is correct, we need to begin our retreat if we want to salvage as many fighters as poss-“

“No! We need more time,” Oto exclaimed desperately, his mind already filling with the dreadful image of the Grimm surging over the wall and flooding the base. It would be just like how it was in Bastion.

“He is correct,” Jaune agreed, his azure eyes turning to look out at the many Grimm still kept at bay by the wall, even as others were beginning to surmount it.

Silt grimaced, “It doesn’t matter; the Grimm will overrun us regardless; if we retreat, we can hold out longer.”

“We just need to ignite the Dust!” Oto declared, desperation tinging his voice.

Commander Silt pointed to the edge of the wall just as another Grimm’s snout began to clamber over; it did not even last a second before a soldier removed it. “How do you propose we do that? The charges aren’t working, and the Dust is beneath that!”

Jaune’s gaze came to rest on Oto as he waited for the Faunus’s response.

“We can do it!” Oto stated with confidence that it was almost entirely forced.

He quirked a single brow, “Elaborate.”

Oto gulped but turned to Silt, “The Dust, what form is it in, and how was it stored?”

Silt answered hastily, clearly eager to do something, as the longer they delayed, the worse the situation grew. “It's primarily rough cut, raw crystals in storage containers, in shallow divots; we were working with a time crunch.”

Oto frowned. He hoped the commander would say powdered, as Dust is at its most volatile and reactive at that time. Raw Dust, that is, the unrefined crystals, was actually when it was at its least reactive, but the material was by no means ‘safe’, hence why it was still stored in secure, specialised containers.

But that didn’t stop Oto.

“That shouldn’t matter,” He muttered before looking up and speaking with more false confidence, “Fire Dust is amongst the most volatile of all Dust. We only need to get some of it to activate, which should be enough for all of it to go up.”

The commander growled, “This is pointless! None of that matters if you can’t reach the Dust, and it's still underneath all that!”

“I know, but-“

“We don’t need to reach it-“

The Atlesian and the Faunus turned simultaneously to look at the blond, who was now glaring into the Grimm horde below.

“- Something with activated Dust has to,” he finished before he dropped his gore-splattered weapon, the brutal-looking thing disappearing before it made contact with the ground. “I need a radio; put it on whatever channel Blue is on,” Jaune ordered, holding his hand out, waiting as he took stock of the horrifying Grimm-filled view.

Silt quickly filled the waiting hand, and no sooner was it lifted to Jaune’s face, his tone slightly elevated as he spoke into the receiver, “Huntress Blue?”

“Reading you loud and clear. Why hasn’t the Fire Dust been ignited?” The Huntress asked, wasting no time at all.

“The charges aren’t responding,” Jaune replied just as quickly, taking a step back as he did just in time to avoid a launched Nevermore feather with casual ease. “I have a plan in the works to detonate them utilising more manual means, but I need to know how good you are with your rifle.”

There was a pause this time, the space filled with cries and gunfire, enough for Oto to feel odd just standing as he was in this island of stillness, surrounded by such rampant activity.

“I am confident in my abilities,” Linda responded after a brief moment, her words coming through the radio clear and concise.

“Very well, give me a moment,” Jaune turned back to Commander Silt, leaning down to address the Atlesian more easily. “I need someone up here who placed the Dust; I need to know precisely where at least one of the canisters was buried.”

“Already ahead of you,” Silt replied, gesturing over his shoulder when a glance revealed the elevator already moving.

At this point, Oto could no longer handle his own state of inaction. “What’s the plan?”

Jaune glanced over his shoulder, the blue of his eyes seeming to catch the light in a way that made them look almost luminous, “Manual detonation, stay close, I may yet need you.”

Before Oto could voice a response, he felt something shoved into his chest, an Atlesian was firing up into the air, his face wholly hidden from Oto as he pressed a magazine into Oto’s person. “Reload and shoot something!”

Oto felt a flicker of shame but hastened to take the offered ammo and reloaded his rifle, the weapon once more shouldered as he began to turn his attention to the edge of the wall. He watched the edge of the wall and squeezed the trigger as he saw yet another clawed limb latch on.

No longer was he inactive, but one more body pressed to fight his hardest as the Grimm seemed far too close and all too numerous with the open air exposure. He glanced up, squeezing the trigger and watching as his efforts were rewarded with the sight of a Nevermore plunging out of the sky.

He twitched and saw Jaune's imposing figure; one arm braced against an Atlesian back as he forced the poor man closer to the wall. Oto lifted one of his ears, fighting through the discomfort to listen in.

“- Point. As accurately as you can!” The blond's voice cut through the air, stern and demanding.

The man seemed to lean in only to flinch as a Grimm lunged out of the mass below, causing the poor guy to flail back.

Oto felt for the guy, but his empathy was soon replaced once more by the simmering fear of the man that was Jaune Arc. The young man, his front still painted in inky viscera, had snatched the Grimm up, a Creep, by its tail and proceeded to brain it on the harsh edge of the wall. Two meaty thumps intermixed with a crack that made the fur on his ears stand on end, and the creature's insides erupted from its skull to rain down on the other Grimm below.

Hands still blackened in the freshly spilled innards of the same Grimm, the blond dragged the terrified man up, lifting him bodily off the ground as he held him out. “Point damn you!”

“There! There! In front of the pillbox, ten paces roughly!” The Atlesian managed to get out, his voice cracking. Oto half expected Jaune to toss the man aside now that he had what he wanted, but instead, he merely pushed the scared man back towards the Commander.

Now possessing the information he needed, Jaune once more talked into the radio, “Blue, can you see me?”

Oto shuffled closer, greatly desiring to stay in the loop, one ear now wholly raised off his head, “I see you out on the right of the central bunker. You're hard to miss.”

“The central pillbox, roughly ten paces out from the base of the wall,” Jaune directed.

A pause, a slight crackle of static that even Oto could comprehend, should have been wholly inaudible with all the noise. “I’m repositioning; get some light on the target,” Linda replied, causing Jaune’s eyes to narrow.

“I can do better,” Jaune spoke aloud, though Oto got the impression it was not without purpose. “Hold that, stay here,” He ordered, the radio tossed casually to Oto, who nearly dropped his gun to catch it.

Oto didn’t bother nodding or responding as the most terrifying of the Arcs he had met was already moving even closer to the edge of the wall. His strides were long and purposeful, and he cleared the distance with such comfortable ease that it was somewhat captivating.

An odd twisting combination of confusion, awe and envy spiralled in his mind as he wished he too could move like that in the presence of imminent death.

However, his train of thought was thoroughly rocked when suddenly two warm glows appeared in Jaune’s hands. Squinting, the Fox Faunus quickly realised that the source of the light was flames atop rags.

Rags that were inserted into the top of bottles.

“Are those… Molotov’s? What are you, some arsonist magician!?” Oto questioned, alarmed at the sudden appearance of the firebombs. He had long since reached his threshold for strangeness, and the night’s stress had stripped him of nearly all semblance of calm.

For his outburst, Jaune paid him an over-the-shoulder glance, a single brow raised and a look that Oto could at best call affront gleaming in his stark blue eye.

The Arc said nothing as his attention returned to the task at hand. With two swift tosses, the flaming cocktails soared into the black of the night, burning light in their wake.

The sound of the shattering bottles was lost, but the sound of the burning Grimm was not.

A screeching series of howls exploded from somewhere below that Oto could not see, yet he could picture it so clearly. It was there in his mind as if seen by his own eyes: a mass of tangled, inky bodies armed with ivory-white claws and fangs writhing beneath a sheet of fierce flames.

In a flash, or rather as a result of Oto’s distraction, Jaune was before him again, the radio he had tossed returned to his grasp as he spoke into the device. “Blue, can you see?”

A pause, a crackle and then the voice of the Huntress crackled through the device, “That’s a neat trick… but we have a new issue, I can see the flames, but only just, I don’t have a clear line of sight from back here.”

Oto’s hands clenched, and he felt a sting as his nails broke the skin. His arms shook as he tried not to give in to despair.

“Can she move?” Salmon, the other Faunus, shouted, having moved closer to the tall blond, his shotgun barking out a lethal burst of gunfire that splattered yet another unfortunate Nevermore.

The male Arc shook his head, “She’s on Alpha watch.”

The Bear Faunus sniffed, leaning over to speak into the radio, “Don’t suppose your Huntress superpower is bending bullets?”

“Negative.”

Salmon cursed, but something flickered across Jaune’s stoic features as he brought the radio back up to his mouth. In a confident, steady tone, the gore-coated blond declared, "We ricochet the shot.”

Salmon blinked, confused, and Oto was in the same boat, but the two were not in like company, as Huntress Blue’s voice came back tinged with doubt. “Your idea has a few holes, Arc. For one, my rounds aren’t exactly low velocity, for another, Fire ammunition tends to go on impact.”

“Assume it doesn’t, would it still be able to penetrate the canisters and activate the Dust?” Arc asked.

A pause, a moment to consider. “If it were to survive the ricochet… John’s rounds are still designed for penetration, so it might even be for the best, allowing the round to bleed off some speed.”

A break in the conversation, but Oto had no time to think about it as he watched Jaune lash out with a kick that shunted Salmon aside. The Bear Faunus went down with a grunt, but he did not complain for even a second as his eyes settled on the Nevermore that had attempted to swoop him.

A bark from his shotgun, and the thing split into pieces. Oto cringed as he realised how close the other Faunus had come to death and refocused on firing at the feathered mass above. But despite he renewed effort, he kept one ear focused on the radio conversation.

The radio came to life. “Good save. One last question: What the hell am I supposed to bounce this bullet off?”

A series of popping noises drew Oto’s attention to Jaune’s right hand, his eyes widening as he saw how the blond's fingers flexed and stretched, the knuckles popping as his veins pressed against the skin.

“I have something that should be sufficiently durable, but we will need to time this right,” the blond informed as he glanced between the illuminated patch below and roughly where the Huntress should be. “I will do what I can to aid you, but I am afraid you will be doing the heavy lifting.”

“Just do your best to keep whatever I’m shooting at angled less than 90 degrees and moving smoothly,” she replied, the sound of her chambering a bullet into her massive rifle audible over the radio.

“Will do, be ready for when I move,” Jaune affirmed, glancing back to give a nod.

Oto watched as the blond turned back, his eyes darting to his own for a moment before they bounced to somewhere behind him, his ears twitching as a new energy seemed to fill the air. He glanced back to see who the blond was looking at and in that brief lapse of time, another Grimm was reduced to a mangled corpse, the back of Jaune’s knuckles smeared in its innards.

Oto wondered if the blond even thought of the Nevermore as a threat.

“Commander!” Jaune called out, tenor voice cutting through the noise, “There is a chance, but I’ll need some room to manoeuvre!” He finished his sentence by blatantly looking up, indicating his meaning.

“… We’ll do it, but you have to succeed, Slayer!” Silt entreated, his radio barking out another report of Grimm beginning to clamber onto different segments of the Wall. It painted a grim picture of their situation, and Oto found his desperation giving ground to a fresh wave of guilt.

Jaune again shoved the radio, still keyed into Huntress Blue’s channel, into Oto’s chest, “I will do my part!” He called back to Commander Silt.

Nothing more was shared between the two as the Commander called for his men to begin spilling forth a renewed hail of bullets into the Nevermore that swarmed above. Jaune separated from the Atllesian and moved purposefully, commanding Oto and Salmon with a nod.

He moved swiftly, joining the taller man, his rifle pointed down, but that did not last long as Jaune barked an order, his hand pulling forth yet another weapon from seemingly nowhere. “We hold the front! Oto with me, Salmon keep to the rear and cover the flanks, if things get too dangerous, then fall back to the Commander.”

There was no time for affirmations as Jaune lunged at the first Grimm to clear the wall, his weapon flashing out in a blur of silver. Oto was a step behind, taking aim and squeezing his trigger as he unloaded a controlled burst of gunfire into another Grimm’s exposed flank.

With Salmon to the rear, Oto focused on any Grimm Jaune missed as he began moving through the mass of blackened bodies and ivory fangs. Oto’s whole world became that which was before him, the young man trusting the Commander’s group to put down the Grimm above.

He was rewarded for this by the light splatter of Grimm ichor that rained down on him from above as he put another spray of bullets into a Grimm’s freshly bisected upper half.

He quickly noticed that most of the still-moving Grimm he shot were not whole, his aim trailing Jaune’s efforts as the Arc efficiently cleaved through his prey. He moved, and behind him were left limbs and splattered black, chasing a blurred blade.

Until he stopped.

A flourish, a swipe and what was spilled from the Grimm was discarded to allow the light to dance upon reflective silver as Jaune ceased his slaughter, allowing Oto to see clearly what he wielded.

Unlike his other weapons, the sword initially appeared simple, but that assessment was swiftly discarded as Oto took in the beautiful blade. The silver sword, unmarred in any way, sharpened to what Oto had no doubt was a terrifyingly sharp edge and decorated along the fuller where the metal grew darker until it met the guard.

A click that was felt as much as it was heard broke Oto’s train of thought as he looked down at the rifle in his arms, startled. He squeezed the trigger twice more to no effect.

Empty.

He gulped before crying out, “I’m empty!”

Jaune gave no outward response that he had heard Oto’s declaration at first, no tilt of his head, no sound of confirmation. Instead, there was only a blur. Oto knew if he had blinked, he would have missed it as the tall Arc appeared by his side, a hand clasped around his shoulder.

“You need to give me a boost, with everything you’ve got!” The blond ordered, his hand tugging up on Oto’s shoulder with enough strength to nearly lift his feet from the ground.

“Wha-“

Oto didn’t have time to speak, Jaune didn’t allow him the chance as he marched towards the edge of the wall, the howls of monsters to his front and the bark of Salmon’s shotgun to his rear. Oto threw his gun away, knowing he would need both hands; his heart thundered in his chest with each step they took closer to the edge.

A wolfen snout appeared over the wall just as they reached it.

Jaune’s heel came down with crushing force, snapping it savagely, the Grimm falling limp.

But it didn’t fall far as the space below it was filled with even more soulless abominations waiting for their chance to brutalise any they could get their hands on.

Oto breathed in, his inhale short and sharp at the scene of so many Grimm so close by.

Then a flash robbed him of his sight, and in its place was the sound of screaming Grimm as they screeched beneath searing flames.

“Ready yourself!” Jaune roared, the sound of his sword slicing through something practically next to Oto’s ear, sending a chill down the Fox Faunus’s spine.

Oto dropped, his knees thudding the ground hard enough to be painful, but his Aura didn’t flare.

He forced it back, recalling Jaune’s orders.

‘Everything I’ve got left!’ Oto thought as he shifted, slamming his back against the short lip of the wall, squatting as low as he could, his cupped hands low and his fingers interwoven.

Then he shouted, his voice cracking as he did so, “Ready!”

Jaune moved, darting back, his left hand filling with what Oto assumed was a pistol that fired as soon as it was levelled.

The bullet collided with something above his head, and Oto felt hot liquid spill over the back of his neck.

Oto gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore it as he watched Jaune come to a halt, his legs bunching slightly as his posture shifted and his left hand became empty once more.

Nothing more was said as Jaune’s Arc blue eyes met Oto’s dark marble orbs.

He lunged, slower than Oto knew he could move if he wanted to, but still fast enough that Oto had to fight down the urge to flinch.

There was no time to think, only react.

Jaune’s foot slapped into Oto’s waiting palms, and he reacted.

His Aura, the manifestation of his Soul, drained and exhausted as it was, flared as he supercharged his whole body and exploded upwards.

His legs protested, threatening to shake.

His arms screamed in protest as he lifted the blond with as much force as he could muster.

His breath came out in a pained hiss between his gritted teeth, leaving a faint coppery taste in their wake.

Then Jaune’s legs straightened, a shimmer of crimson that could have just as easily been a blood vessel bursting.

Jaune fired off as if launched by a cannon.

Oto was thrown to the ground, rolling painfully across the floor, dizzy and in pain as he felt his Aura flicker dangerously.

Still, he lifted his head.

He needed to see this.

Aided by his innate night vision, Oto watched Jaune fly up and over the wall entirely, the Commander's efforts giving him the space he needed as he soared into the Grimm-infested sky. His sword swiped, Oto saw a clump of Grimm stop flapping and fall, his eyes straining to track the blond as more and more Grimm seemed to flock around him.

He searched frantically for any sign, doing his best to follow his trajectory.

‘There!’

The flock of Nevermore that had swarmed bulged and broke apart to reveal Jaune having reached the apex of his ascent.

Only his weapon had changed.

Gone was the sword, and now, instead, was a colossal hammer that looked impractical for its size.

But the sight of its large head was like the final puzzle piece that Oto needed to realise what was happening.

Then he began to fall.

Jaune’s hips twisted, his body falling as he did his best to maneuver the hammer as needed.

Oto found his fingers clawing at the stone he lay upon, prayers and pleading slipping from his lips as he could only watch.

Jaune fell and fell…

Oto felt his chest tighten as the blond came close to being nearly level with the wall-

A spark.

A piercing little shard of light, like a shooting star but far closer, slammed into the angled face of the hammer.

Oto saw that flash illuminate pale flesh hidden beneath a layer of spilled black viscera, a hint of red barely visible in the brief instant.

Then it was gone, a star careening to the earth.

A sound trailed it, an echoing crack that was distinguishable even amongst the onslaught of gunfire, at least to his ears.

Then there was fire.

Oto slammed his eyes shut as quickly as he could, but was still too slow to spare them as the flash seemed to do its best to blind him permanently. The instant he had to be concerned about the pain was cast away and lost as something slammed into Oto, shunting him onto his back once more.

With the wall of force came a roar that eclipsed everything; the monstrous noises of the Grimm and the stuttering crack of gunfire were subsumed beneath the birth of a truly colossal conflagration. Finally, there was a feeling of stifling heat pressing down on him, his filthy, bruised flesh prickling as the suffocating heat washed over his frame.

He worked through the aching exhaustion, pulling his hands away from his face and blinking, his ears rising in a twitching manner as the sharp ring in his ears refused to abate entirely.

He blinked, his vision still spotty as he tried to -

Fire.

It wasn’t his eyes that were the problem, the Fox Faunus realised as he squinted at the sight before him.

A wall of burning fire that was even taller than the wall, as if a gateway to some burning hell had opened and a wave of fire had raced out to leave a swathe of Remnant blazing. He looked up and saw that the air previously filled with Grimm was now instead painted with a smattering of burning projectiles.

He followed one as it fell and crashed into the central pillbox.

It was a blazing Nevermore, flapping wildly as its body was consumed by fire.

Oto blinked as he digested the fact that the air was filled with burning Grimm.

Oto gulped as he forced his eyes away from the blaze to take in his surroundings, looking to where he last thought Salmon to be.

The older Faunus was cringing, a feather illuminated by the fire sticking out of his arm where it had pierced his bicep. His assault shotgun was up, the weapon firing at a Griffon that had crashed atop the wall, its back ablaze, as Salmon did his best to put it down.

It was not the only Grimm atop the wall.

Oto could see Commander Silt and two other Atlesians firing a continuous stream of ammunition into a Boarbatusk that was on its side. Its stomach was quickly reduced to a black pulp as the monster went still.

As Oto’s hearing recovered, he heard shooting from behind, quickly rolling over to see what Grimm had got behind him.

He saw nothing.

Nothing but the edge of the wall.

Panicked, he darted towards the interior of the airbase and looked down off the top of the wall.

There were tiny pockets of conflict all along the base of the wall where a handful of Grimm had either slipped past the defences or been thrown over by the explosive force of their delaying tactic.

More were joining them as avian Grimm continued to plummet down, though from what he could see, most died on impact or soon after.

Oto swallowed as he watched a group of the base Faunus work together to bring down a flaming Creep running around madly.

A group of what looked like engineers were using makeshift weapons to bludgeon a Nevermore, one of their number lying prone next to the group, clutching his arm and screaming.

Oto could see the blood on their high-vis jacket even from this distance.

Cries of alarm, the sound of metal twisting forcefully, and a fresh burst of gunfire drew his attention to an area below another segment of the wall.

What he saw there made his heart drop into his guts.

Boarbatusk, fleeing into the base.

His pain was forgotten as his hands darted to his belt, his hand enclosing around the rad-

A sense of impending doom raced down his spine.

Oto rolled just in time as the space he rapidly vacated was filled with a snarling mass of blackened fur.

He snapped a kick out, an instinctive lash rather than a planned attack.

His foot thudded right between the hooked claws of a smoking Beowolf that glared with burning crimson eyes.

The wolf Grimm lunged.

It was intercepted, the staccato stream of a rifle firing a spray to the left, heralding the arrival of the Commander. His gun clicked as he charged, and rather than pausing to reload, the Atlesian soldier hurled himself through the air, a knife drawn as he tackled the wolf Grimm around the shoulders.

The Grimm backpedalled, fighting to keep its balance as the Commander swung around its back, his knife clipping around its collar, leaving gashes in burnt flesh.

The knife found purchase, and the Grimm went berserk.

It leapt back, all attempts to maintain its balance forgotten.

The Commander couldn’t react and found himself sandwiched between the floor and the jutting bone spines of the Beowolf.

A crack, a wounded cry of pain.

Oto snapped forward.

The Beowolf was not idle, rolling off Silt to attempt counterattacking, but Oto was quicker, and all it received for the attempt was the bottom of his shoe’s crashing against its ribs.

The Grimm was tossed back, and Oto, having landed atop the Commander's legs, immediately scanned his torso for any apparent injuries.

He felt relief at the lack of red but did not linger on it long, as the Beowolf was already back on its feet.

He pushed up on his elbows, his face a rigour of rage and arm raised to shield his face as the Beowolf’s legs bunched up beneath it, the Grimm readying itself to pounce

Crunch

Oto blinked, his arm lowering.

The Grimm that had been about to pounce was laid out, its head either smeared along the floor or flattened beneath the hammer that had just crashed down atop it with all the force of a meteor.

Oto looked towards the flames, and there he was.

Even crouched on the edge of the wall, he was large, his tall frame scrunched up, making him look akin to a gargoyle Oto had seen pictures of. Wafting off his body was a combination of smoke and disintegrating Grimm essence, leaving him looking like some demonic wraith with fire at his back.

The strangest part was the coat that fluttered at his back, which he certainly did not have before. The tattered brown thing danced in the updraft of the raging inferno, and the blackened cape attached to it whipped about like a frenzied serpent. The high-neck collar of the attire left Jaune looking as if he possessed a frilled neck, doing nothing to help with his currently monstrous appearance.

His hair raised as he found himself again caught in that chilling gaze, this time framed by a hellish inferno.

But he swallowed the lump in his throat and shouted his warning in a cracked voice.

“J-Jaune! Grimm in the base!”

The blond heard him, Oto knew it by the slight widening of his eyes, the way his lips peeled back ever so slightly, and his shoulders shifted.

The blonde hopped from his perch, coat billowing as the black particles of slain Grimm and wisps of smoke trailed behind him as a haunting ephemera of his carnage. His steps devoured the width of the wall, and he did not even pause by Oto or the Commander, his arm held out with curved fingers.

Curved fingers that pulled a long, cylindrical barrel from nowhere.

Jaune smoothly slid into a kneeling position, the stock of the long rifle braced against his shoulder as he looked down its length. Oto could see no sights, but this didn’t deter the blond as his breathing slowed and the tip of his firearm moved ever so slightly.

When it fired, it made him jump; he didn’t know why. It wasn’t like the gunshot was unexpected, nor was it the only one presently firing.

But something about that almost archaic crack made the fur on his ears stand up and his blood chill.

He ignored the strange unease and instead did his best to track the pair of Boarbatusk that were now past the internal defences and rushing towards the centre.

He smiled as the rifle's round hit its mark. It must have been a near-perfect shot for the projectile downed the pig-like Grimm in a single shot and sent the armoured monster skidding along the ground.

Jaune adjusted on the spot, the barrel of his rifle moving to the second Grimm, but soon a curse in a language Oto didn’t know slipped past the blond lips as the Boarbatusk began to roll and gain speed.

Oto flinched as Jaune threw the rifle over the wall, his eyes ablaze with a fury the fox Faunus had seen earlier when the blond had disembowelled Simon.

Unaware or uncaring of the Faunus’s fear, the blond snatched the radio off his belt, which had not left his side for even a moment.

The one keyed to the same channel as his sisters.

“Jade, Sky, are you there?” the blond spoke into the device, his eyes still tracking the Boarbatusk as it rolled further into the airbase.

Oto did his best not to glance at him as a popping noise rung out, and his sense of smell was afflicted with scents that had no right to be present through the miasma of burning air.

“Jaune-“

“Jade, there is a Grimm rapidly approaching the hangars, alert the guards and prepare yourselves immediately,” Jaune instructed, getting the information out as quickly as possible.

“Right.”

Oto didn’t doubt for a second that the tall blond’s little sisters would jump into action immediately.

‘This whole family is far too intimidating,’ he thought, the absurdity of the thought granting him a brief break of levity.

“They know Jaune, we’re ready! That Grimm won't get near the hangars!” Jade’s voice crackled over the communicator confidently.

A pause that made Oto’s heart skip a beat.

“… Jade, the Grimm is a Boarbatusk.”

Oto cringed at the way Jaune delivered that information, recognising it in a way, the sort of delivery that was akin to ripping off the bandage. Oto didn’t have to be a genius to piece together that the type of Grimm mattered in this instance, that the fact that it was a Boarbatusk was important.

A silence persisted.

A second, then another…

“… I got it.”

Oto blinked, his ear twitching at the declaration uttered with such confidence.

“Jade?” Jaune uttered in a calm yet questioning tone.

“I’ve got it, Jaune,” Her voice came back over the radio.

Oto looked towards the older Arc, hoping to glean some insight into his mindset, but his efforts were hindered by the gore-coated, expressionless mask that was his features.

Though despite his lack of reply, his sister still managed to read her brother better over the radio than Oto could in person. Without a prompt, Jade’s voice came back over the radio, “I’m an Arc, too, Jaune.”

His façade cracked, a twitch subtle enough that Oto was almost sure his mind conjured it between roaring flames and the disintegrating Grimm viscera.

He responded, uttering only a single syllable.

“Go.”

YVYVYVYVY

Jade hurriedly placed the radio on the table, shooting her younger sister a stern look, silently communicating her order to hang back.

Sky smiled, her dirty face seeming a little lighter for its appearance.

She didn’t say anything, and for that, Jade was grateful. Her mind was busy enough without having to manage the effort of communicating.

It was too busy warring with a truly daunting amount of fear.

Despite the terror that was threatening to wash over her, to rob her hands of their steadiness and leave her paralysed, Jade refused to be stopped. She walked quickly, weaving around engineers and the splayed remains of machinery that had been butchered and scavenged and tossed.

She could not speak to their efforts as she was not nearly so versed in engineering to understand whether they were achieving anything. She hoped they were, there was indeed some new type of device being built, and if nothing else, the many different technicians seemed focused.

She cleared their workspace, sliding out of the hangar doors and immediately finding the Atlesians who were standing at the ready, their rifles drawn and pointed north.

Jade’s eyes lingered on their rifles.

She pulled her sidearm, the smaller weapon of similarly Atlesian make… but smaller.

‘Small…’

When Jaune had warned her of the Grimm, she had felt anxious, rightfully concerned that she would already be seeing Grimm despite the short amount of time that had passed.

Then her brother had announced the Grimm to be a Boarbatusk, and that same nervousness became a lead weight that felt as if it was pulling her down.

She felt small again.

Anger, hot and noxious, flared to life and joined the storm of frenzied thoughts spiralling in her mind. Self-loathing taking an obnoxious and odd fitting place in the scape of her very real and pressing concerns.

It left Jade wanting to spit.

‘Is this all it takes?’ She thought, shoving her sidearm back into her belt. ‘A bit of separation and a Grimm and suddenly I’m-‘

Jade snarled, lips pulled back as her teeth clenched.

One of the Atlesians took notice of her, “Miss, it's not safe-“

“I need your rifle,” Jade cut the Atlesian off, the taller man’s mouth shutting with a click.

Jade knew that her request sounded utterly absurd. She was no Jaune; she was not some looming monolith of raw violence crammed into a deceptively thin frame. She didn’t have a hope of matching her brother’s ability to intimidate and unsettle with a glance.

She knew, she had always known, Jaune was special, and though she did try in many ways to replicate her older sibling, she knew she fell short.

But that didn’t matter right now.

“Pardon?” came the Atlesian’s confused response.

“I need to kill this Grimm, the Boarbatusk, I need your rifle,” Jade elaborated.

She felt betrayed by her own voice, by her own words, and she fought against the desire to cringe as she spoke.

‘Small.’

The Atlesian soldier clearly thought the same as he pulled back, his shoulders squaring, his body indicating refusal long before he said anything.

But he was stopped.

The other soldier stepped past, and despite everything, Jade found her arms filled with a rifle, just not the one she requested.

“What are you doing?” the soldier she had approached asked, looking at his compatriot with what Jade assumed was an aghast expression.

The second soldier spoke, their voice was more lyrical, softer… but this did not soften their words.

“She’s the Slayer's sister,” they answered as if it explained everything.

Jade was sure the first Atlesian was about to argue, to make some point about what was proper and responsible, but she could not bring herself to care.

She had a Grimm to kill.

She marched past them, slinging the rifle's strap over her shoulder.

Jade couched low and shouldered the larger firearm as she peered down the sight. She could see the flames in the far distance as they flickered over the top of the wall, cutting the dark of the night like a blade.

Her gaze dropped, moving from the wall to the vast space that separated the central hangar from the northern defences.

She did not struggle to find her quarry.

Bone white flashed beneath the lights of the airbase as the Grimm barrelled closer and closer with each breath.

Jade breathed in, the air suddenly smelling like upturned soil and damp rotting wood.

‘Small.’

Jade squeezed the trigger.

The rifle bucked, and a controlled burst of bullets launched from the end of the barrel in a short, precise spray.

Jade did not even blink as the bullets impacted her target ineffectually.

In the wake of the gunfire, her ears filled with the phantom sounds of monstrous snorting, of cracking wood and shifting dirt.

Guttural grunts drowning out her cries as sharpened tusks inched-

The rifle barked again, bullets slamming into the rolling Grimm and failing to punch through its bony hide once more.

The Grimm didn’t even slow.

Jade’s head reared up from the rifle and glared down at it.

Her eyes slipped past the ineffective weapon to another that was on her person.

Jaune’s Challenger.

It was smaller than the rifle… but its bullets weren’t.

Jade’s eyes darted back to the rapidly approaching Boarbatusk, the Grimm now much closer and consequently much larger.

That alone made up her mind for her.

Jade left the rifle drop, the strap catching it as she stood… needing to be tall, needing to not be-

She drew her brother’s gun, her mind a storm of chaos and barely directed panic managed to spare some stray thought for the feel of the sidearm. Its weight, its balance… the grip.

The grip was made for a hand bigger than her own.

It was made for Jaune’s hand.

She felt his absence like a chill that laced the bones in her arms.

Her thoughts slowed as her finger found its way to the trigger guard.

“Ma’am…” one of the soldiers called out.

Jade ignored them as she opened the Challenger, finding the break-action sidearm was indeed still loaded. The single bullet inside caught the light, seeming to almost shift beneath the blaring floodlights and reflect a liquid sheen.

Like a droplet of silver instead of a bullet.

Jade closed the weapon back up with a click and flicked the safety with her thumb.

“Ma’am!”

She adjusted her footing, bringing the large pistol up, holding it in both hands, and trying to make her stance as perfect as possible as she got the barrel of the weapon to point at the Boarbatusk.

It was now about twenty meters away.

She could make out the cascade of debris torn up and tossed behind as the monstrous thing moved with incredible speed, tearing up the ground below as it rolled unnaturally. For all that some Grimm may take on the appearance of animals, the fact would remain that they most assuredly were not.

Her finger found the trigger.

“MA-“

She fired.

Jade had been ready for the Challenger’s greater recoil; there was simply no way that a gun meant for her brother and customised by Orr was not going to have some kick. Her palm throbbed as it bucked back into the meat of her hand, pushing into the bone.

Jade paid such an ache no heed as she had eyes only for the Grimm.

The bullet hit.

The Grimm kept moving.

Jade didn’t.

She tensed up; the Grimm raced towards her.

Cries of alarm went up behind her as the Grimm was nearly on top of her.

But they hadn’t seen what Jade did.

They didn’t see the spray of inky black ichor that painted the air behind the Grimm.

The Boarbatusk fell out of its rolling charge, its stubby limbs crunching into the ground as it violently jerked to the side and its exposed underside hit the harsh stone of the runway.

Jade did not move, her body paralysed as it skirted by, the rush of air in the Grimm’s wake blowing up her shortened hair as a trail of blackened viscera painted the ground beside her. She heard the Grimm roll, the wet crunch of its broken body, the only thing in her head.

When the noise stopped, she looked down.

There to her left was a long black line… like a giant had taken an ink brush and dragged it across the landing pad.

Jade’s head turned slowly, her eyes tracing the same line, following it up to the Boarbatusk, spasming on its side with its internals all very much external.

Stiffly, almost mechanically, she put Jaune’s challenger back into its holster, her hands instead coming up to grip the rifle.

She paid no heed to her whitened knuckles as she began to approach the dying Grimm.

She didn’t even notice the soldiers watching her.

Nor did she notice eyes as blue as her own peeking out from the hangar.

She had eyes only for the pig-shaped monster in front of her.

She stopped, two steps from its downed form, aware of its cracked and misshapen legs and its bloodied, mangled snout.

Still, she was wary.

Its eyes were locked on her, baleful red and filled with such a blazing unnatural animosity.

Even mangled as it was, the thing wanted her dead.

It was all it wanted.

There was nothing behind those eyes save the desire to kill, destroy, and ruin.

A soulless abomination.

A Grimm.

But Jade saw something else.

She saw something…

‘Small…’ Jade thought, seeing how she towered over the Grimm, the same kind of Grimm that had dogged her dreams for over a decade. The same sort of Grimm that would have killed her all those years ago if her big brother had not been there to save her.

The same Grimm that made her glance at wooded areas with trepidation.

The same Grimm that had seemed ginormous to a little girl hidden in a rotting tree trunk, that’s grunts and snorts sounded like rumbling thunder and had shaken the ground with its attempts to reach her.

The Grimm that had made her feel… small.

…

She wasn’t small now.

Jade took another step forward and the Grimm reacted, flinching, struggling and letting out wet hacking grunts that had its ‘blood’ misting the air from its ruined maw. It tried to move, no doubt some kind of an attack and all that it got for its efforts was the sound of something wet slopping out of its open abdomen.

Jade lifted the rifle she had borrowed from the Atlesian soldier and pointed it at the Boarbatusks' already ruined underside.

The Grimm snorted and sprayed another slick of black across the tarmac in front of it.

Jade took it all in.

Memorising every single detail.

Her tongue darted out, wetting her dry lips.

She swallowed.

Then she spoke, the words slipping free, escaping from her mouth without any real thought and dragging with them a tightness from her chest. “… How small you are.”

It didn’t respond beyond more wet choking sounds and twitching spasms.

Spasms, Jade ended with a squeeze of the trigger.

Her hands strained, but her grip did not falter as the gun unloaded into the Grimm below.

Click

The rifle ceased abruptly, its magazine spent.

Her finger left the trigger, shaking slightly as her arms lowered, revealing the results of her efforts in full.

The Boarbatusk was still, utterly unmoving and wholly dead.

Black ichor painted a gruesome picture about its ravaged corpse, but more than that, it decorated the Grimms' killer as Jade quickly discovered. Her eyes meander from the brutalised Grimm to the top of her shoes, up her pant legs to her entire front.

Splattered in oily black gore… Jade smiled.

It spread across her face like a crack in an ice shelf.

She laughed, it spilled from her like a sob and erupted into a snorting cackle.

For a single thought danced across the forefront of her mind.

‘Not the messiest I’ve gotten while painting.’

Her amusement dimmed but did not fade, and Jade, satisfied, departed from the corpse of the slain Grimm before it had even begun to disintegrate. She marched back to the Atlesian Soldiers, her eyes locked on the one who had lent her his rifle.

She removed the strap and, upon reaching the pair, held the spent weapon out with a grateful nod, “Thank you.”

The slighter one let slip a chuckle of his own as he took back his weapon, “Don’t mention it.”

Jade walked off, hearing the two soldiers immediately begin a terse conversation, but she found herself wholly uncaring as she made her way back to the hangar and her younger sibling. She knew that they were still in the midst of a crisis, but as the Grimm ‘blood’ on her clothes began to disintegrate and float off her person… it all felt beneath her.

Because this time… Jade Arc had beaten back the nightmare.

This time, Jade Arc slew the monster.