Chapter Text
"Alright team Technicolor! This is your last chance to pull out," Professor Port shouted over the wind and the noise of the bullhead's engines.
Team TTCE was silent. This was a simple mission. Beowolves were a seasonal problem in these gullies. The herd was predictable, the terrain was well known, and the nearest population center was well guarded with easy evacuation.
In short, Sunrise Gully was one of a few sites that were perfect for a team of huntresses to be given their first extermination mission without oversight.
Traditionally, your first 'unsupervised' trip came in your third year. For gifted teams, it could come in your second. Legends of teams that did it in their first year always circle around.
Getting it two weeks after initiation was unique. Then again, so were the members of team TTCE. They, ah, weren't from around here.
Despite the simplicity of the mission, it mattered to the team. It mattered because freedom from oversight was always useful. It mattered because proving yourself to your employer was good for your prospects. It mattered because stories demanded the exceptional. It mattered protecting the innocent was a pure ideal of justice.
Of course, not all the reasons applied to all members.
"It looks like you're all set! Split into teams of two once you hit the ground, but stay in constant contact with each other! Remember, if you need me, press the button. Or just wave to one of the camera drones."
Doing either would mean an instant failure. Failing to ask for help if Port judged they should have would also result in failure, and in not being allowed to try again for a good long while. This was only supposed to simulate an unsupervised mission, not actually be one.
One by one, the members of team TTCE jumped from the bullhead.
--
Taylor Hebert went first. Not because she was the leader, though she was. Her bugs could confirm that there weren't any Grimm to disrupt their landing. She had chosen the landing zone, even if the clearing wasn't as wide as she liked.
Her parachute deployed a little late, and she had to roll with the landing. She barely felt it through her body armor. She'd arrived in her Weaver costume, but now the armor plates were some dust composite material.
She pressed a button, and her backpack began spooling the parachute back in. She didn't worry about it folding properly, Atlas tech was almost as good as tinker-tech. It some ways it was better, and didn't fail as often. It wasn't as nice as her flight pack, but that had broken before the journey to Remnant. As good as Atlas tech was, it couldn't make heads or tails of tinker-tech.
She breathed in, and went through the senses her bugs were giving her. The bugs here were weird, that was the first she had noticed after she had fallen through one of Khonsu's portals. Well, Khonsu's and Scion's; one of the golden man's attacks had clipped it before she fell through. Strictly speaking, pain had been the first thing she had noticed, but pain was something she was used to.
The point was, her power worked on these strange bugs just fine. She could sense the (sort of) grasshoppers in the clearing, the (near) cicadas in the woods around it, and various critters along the bottom of the stream that ran through the clearing. There weren't any Grimm in range, unless a burrowing type was below the ant tunnels she could sense. Burrowers were slow, noisy, and usually didn't show up in these regions though. Some of the burrowing Grimm looked like insects, she should ask Port to bring one to class to see if she could sense it.
If she could control insect Grimm, she wondered if she should even choose to reveal that information. She needed to be useful enough to get what she wanted: a way back to Earth Bet. But not so useful that they didn't dare let her go.
Or she needed to be so powerful that they didn't dare deny her.
--
Tanya von Degurechaff was next. Tanya was wearing the uniform she had arrived in, and using the same weapons. Well, mostly the same weapons, a few were too useful for any sane soldier to pass up. And Tanya was nothing if not sane.
But the uniform had to stay. If and when Remnant made contact with the Fatherland, she needed to be sure that she appeared to be the model soldier trapped away from command. Ready to follow orders and striving at all times to get back.
Privately, she hoped that contact was never made again. Von Shugel's device malfunctioning and sending her away from the Fatherland's doomed war was the best thing to have happened to her since she got pushed in front of a train in her first life.
Did it hurt to have all the career capital she had spent so much time, and so many risks to life and limb building stripped away? Yes, but pain was something she was used to. Being X was making her a chew toy again, but still proved he fundamentally misunderstood her.
She landed on the ground gently, but she did have to land. Her main flight battery had been shot right before the device had malfunctioned, and no one had figured out how to build a proper replacement. The secondary battery was tiny in comparison.
Taylor had that still look she got when sorting through the information her... superpowers gave her. Tanya supposed it made sense to give command of a small unit to someone who could gather information so easily, but Taylor was the least experienced of the four. And her experience was primarily in law enforcement.
Even without the position of leadership, Tanya could still create a life she wanted. A fulfilling and rewarding career with a comfortable retirement. Not as a huntress, that would be ridiculous. Ozpin had the right idea. Training and directing hunters was where the money and benefits were.
Being X was going to have to try harder than a world full of mindless monsters if he wanted to crack her.
--
Falling through the sky, Edelgard von Hresvelg's hair trailed behind her. She enjoyed the feeling of the wind tossing it around.
Edelgard could almost pretend she was back at the Officer's Academy. That Byleth would be waiting for her once she landed, to quietly correct her wyvern handling skills. That she hadn't made the rash decision to push the professor out of the way, and gotten caught in Solon's trap herself.
She could pretend that she was still home.
But she banished the feeling. Landing would required absolute focus. She needed to hit as many branches as possible, or she would break bones when she hit the ground, crests or no. She could have asked for Tanya's assistance, but this was their first mission. It was important to show you could stand on your own. Or fall on your own, as the case may be.
The ax head of Yagrush unfolded, and the handle extend. After dozens of hours of practice, it finally felt natural. Its similarity to Aymur had helped.
She held Yagrush's polearm form out in front of her, perpendicular to the branches that were rapidly approaching.
She didn't close her eyes as she crashed into the thicket of branches.
Each impact felt like a dozen hammer blows. Branches and trunks snapped and shattered as she smashed through them, sending splinters flying. She grit her teeth and fought to keep Yagrush upright. She needed to keep as tall a profile as she could, to cause as much devastation as possible, all to slow her fall.
Suddenly, there were no more branches, and still an awful lot of falling to do. Her descent had slowed to practically a crawl, but that wasn't going to help if she picked all that speed back up again in the next thirty feet.
Edelgard twisted the grip, and Yagrush's blade folded around a tree branch. Now back in its ax form with the branch trapped in its grip, Edelgard could weigh her options as she dangled.
Shifting her weight, she managed to swing to the trunk and climb down. There weren't any hand holds, but that didn't matter as much when wood could bend and crack in your grip.
Finally reaching the bottom, she let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. She pulled a ragged splinter out of her shoulder, that had found its way in between the sections of her armor. It hurt, but pain was something she was used to.
Silently, she focused her Crest of Flames to heal her wounds. Anything serious would be too much for her, but small wounds like this were well within its powers. Tiny cuts on her face and hands disappeared.
Standing up straight, she wiped away the blood and pulled her hair back into its ponytail, and put it underneath her helmet.
She had considered using her Flame Emperor mask. But that would have been... wrong. Warriors of Remnant carefully tended their appearance. Self expression was paramount. It felt wrong to wear a mask that represented something she would rather not be. Merely had to be.
She took a moment to appreciate the flowers around here. Pale whites and blues. This world was saturated with color. Another constant reminder that this world was different. That maybe she could be different.
Edelgard shook her head. Her path had grown longer and stranger, but remained fundamentally the same. But perhaps this portion of the journey would not require her to be a destroyer.
--
Catherine Foundling splashed feet first into the water. She didn't worry that it might not be deep enough. For one, her Name enhanced eyes could see clear through the muddy yellow water, and she knew it ran deep.
For another, falling was not all that dangerous to Named.
She splashed feet first through the surface, plunging below. She kicked off the stone streambed. The instant she got out, she regretted her choice of landing. Her aketon was soaked underneath her plate. At least she didn't have mud in her sabatons.
She trudged through the pale flowers on the stream banks, drawing her sword. This place looked peaceful, but it was apparent crawling with monsters. She drew the longsword at her hip. It was stronger and tougher than even goblin steel. It was, very importantly, not in any way magical, or even terribly special. Magic weapons would always betray you when you needed them.
Strapped to her back, in a position too inconvenient to draw from, was a sword that was very much magical, very much special, and had very much betrayed its owner when he needed it.
The memory burned. She understood some of Black's fury at the injustice of the universe. She had won. She had stolen her resurrection. The Lone Swordsman was dead, Heiress was bargaining desperately, and then it was all stolen. Gone in an instant.
"Someone who should really know better is interfering. They couldn't do anything about your victory," Bard said, as the dimension began collapsing into the portal.
"So they sent you on an adventure."
Would the Fifteenth be able to hold together in her absence? Would the governing council for Callow even happen without her? She had technically won in Liesse, but everything that victory had been for was stripped away. Cheating Choirs.
Now the angel's feather was strapped to her back. She couldn't even get rid of it. It was the most metaphysically important object she had on her. With any luck, Masego could use it to track her.
The weapon burned her to touch, and even through its scabbard and her armor it hurt for it to be so close. But pain was something she was used to.
This world was something she was very much not used to. Powered lights in every conceivable space. Instant global letters that most people didn't use because everyone had a scrying device in their pocket. Flying machines. A floating city that wasn't for killing your enemies and being immediately destroyed.
The band of four she was in was another thing she wasn't used to. Not yet. They all clearly had their own stories going on, though if the narrative was even a force here remained to be seen. Balancing everything was going to be complicated.
How did stories work on Remnant? What did Beacon Academy really want from them? Could she get home before it all fell apart? She didn't know enough about this world, about anything.
She did know that she wasn't going to let this stop her.
--
Two hours in, the fighting had gotten nearly monotonous in Cat's opinion. They'd found a well made stone bridge across a narrow but steep part of the gully. The waterfall that splashed below it was a pleasant sight and sound between the brief fights. Honestly, the bridge was so nicely built that it was a shame to use it as a choke point. Years of couples and visitors had carved their initials into the rocks, and some of them had been crossed out or erased by the stresses of battle.
Its loss would have to be suffered. It was useful as a choke point. Immature Grimm were willing to walk into it. Killing them in such favorable circumstances was so easy that Cat could even strike up a conversation.
"So, aren't you a princess or something? Why do you fight like you're used to being on the front lines?" While speaking, Catherine's shadow deflected a Beowulf over the railing of the bridge into the ravine below.
Edelgard's shield scarcely budged as it stopped a flurry of teeth and claws. "My crest grants me strength beyond that of ordinary soldiers."
"Huh. It gets like that for Named as well. I've got thousands under my command, but I still need to be where the fighting is thickest."
It was a slight thing to detect. A narrowing of her eyes. A slight pause before spearing through the next Grimm to lay itself at her feet. But to Cat's enhanced senses, it stood out. These next words were considered, and were important to Edelgard somehow.
"It is much the same for crest bearers. A crest is considered necessary to rule, but bearers are also expected to fight themselves. It is a... misguided practice."
"How so?" Cat grunted as she plunged her sword down through another monster. She winced as she felt a paving stone crack. If this bridge broke, they were going to have to find another choke point.
"I have seen many fine soldiers ignored because they lacked a crest. I have seen fools and monsters granted high station because they had one."
A gout a flame poured from Edelgard's hand, and the remaining Grimm caught fire. Edelgard said it was a spell she couldn't do in the heavy metal armor she had arrived with, but the lighter stuff of this world didn't seem to interfere.
It worked wonders on enemies foolish enough to bunch up in front of it. It tidied off the last of this wave.
Cat sat down a nearby rock that had stayed reasonably clean, she rubbed a knot that had been forming in her left shoulder. One of the 'camera drones,' as Taylor had called them, hovered noisily overhead. Creepy little things. She would have tried to smuggle one back to Calernia, but the Gnomes would raze the continent if they ever got word of them.
"Its a bit like that in my world. The unfairness of it. Named just tend toward the top of any organization they find themselves in. Coincidences pile up. That isn't even counting the outright corruption."
Dig just a bit deeper. Catherine breathed out. "It doesn't stop there. If you're considered a Hero, well... the world will twist itself to make sure you win. No matter how horrible your victory would be."
She heard a noise approaching. Cat groaned as she stood up from her sitting rock. Not even enough time to catch her breath.
Edelgard grasped her shoulder. "Heal." There was a soft white glow, and the pain in Cat's shoulder disappeared.
"My world will also tie itself in knots around crests. I have... heard of horrible things, done in their name. Children bearing them seen as little more than brood mares. Children without them abandoned and left for themselves. It seems there is no limit to what people are willing to justify, if its done in the name of crests."
"I've given up on justifications," Cat said. "They don't matter. I'm going to do what I can, what will work, and everyone with a problem can form a line for my head for all I care."
Edelgard quirked an eyebrow.
"Forgive me for prying, but it sounds like you care about justice a great deal. You care about who can and cannot call themselves a hero. It seems more like you object to how your world defines it. What they call justice is unreasonable, and that offends you."
"Abstract justice as a goal doesn't work well," Cat said, shaking her head sadly, "Its too easy to spin around, and too easy to make anything sound right. Why you do it doesn't matter. Justifications don't matter. The only thing that matters is what happens."
"If we are willing to abandon even trying for justice, what separates us from the monsters?"
"Apart from the fact that we aren't raving loons trying to conquer the world with an army of invisible tigers? The real monsters are the cackling madmen. Or they are the people who never compromise, no matter what. Ideals have filled more graves than spite."
"I suspect, that even in your world, and perhaps even in this one, apathy is the most prolific killer of all."
Cat would have liked a minute for them both to stew on what the other had said, but it looked like she wasn't going to get that chance. The next wave was coming. She just hoped her sitting rock stayed clean.
--
Taylor avoided clenching her jaw. Outwardly, she was perfectly impassive. She was running out of Grimm within range. Well, her publicly advertised range. This mission was a careful balancing act. Appear powerful enough that she could make demands if she needed to. Keep enough hidden that she could catch them off guard if relations ever soured.
She looked at the camera drones. Tiny little things, four propellers each. They were filming everything. Any slip up would be captured, recorded, and reported back to Beacon.
"I'm not seeing any hostiles," Tanya said. "Are you?"
Even if the drones weren't there, anything Taylor said or did was making its way to Ozpin. Because the tiny girl in front of her would tell them.
"There is nothing in my range that I can make out clearly," Taylor lied. There was a Beowulf of unusual size right at the edge, and she could make out its shape perfectly.
"Your powers are an amazing force multiplier. You will make an incredible asset for Beacon."
Everything from the way she stood and dressed to the way she spoke just screamed deference to authority. From what Tanya had told the team, she was a high ranking officer in an incredibly militaristic country, and she had been at war, killing people for serving a different country, since she was eleven.
The fifteen-year-old child soldier would report whatever she did up the chain of command, and not even realize it was a betrayal.
She would have preferred to have the others here. If push came to shove, she wanted to outvote or at least outnumber Tanya. But the current test demanded they split into partner pairs.
The situation was still manageable. She didn't need to use her full capabilities. She was in a forest. There were more bugs than she knew what to do with. Even if she weren't, her more obvious tricks worked just fine on immature Grimm. They would react badly to swarming and biting, which made finishing them off trivial. Older Grimm knew most of their biology was decorative. Like Endbringers, though orders of magnitude less powerful.
Mostly, she lured the larger Grimm into an open area to have their heads blown off by Tanya. Eventually, she would encounter Grimm that either couldn't be lead like that, or wouldn't go down with a shot to the head. There were a number of plans for those, but they hadn't needed to implement them yet.
The hillside was currently clear, with good sight lines to the valley below. The path up was rocky enough that anything really dangerous would have trouble climbing, especially while under fire. There was a gorge nearby that Tanya could fly them both across if they were getting overwhelmed, but that would expend her battery almost instantly.
Actually seeing through her swarm was difficult. The bugs were different here. But she always knew where her bugs were, and so it was practically impossible for anything to get near her without Taylor knowing exactly what it was. All in all, everything was going perfectly.
The four camera drones picked that exact instant to fall out of the sky. No build up, no fanfare. The lights turned off and they clattered to the ground. One was flying higher than the others, and shattered when it landed. Shards of white plastic scattered across the stones.
Taylor pulled out her scroll. Dead. Tanya already had hers out. The shorter girl tapped a few buttons, then shook her head.
"Damn it. Cat and Edelgard are out of my range."
Tanya nodded, and loaded a flare. "Yellow?" she asked.
Yellow was for retreat back to town. Green was the all clear, or a request for a response. Red meant help immediately.
There would need to be a lot more monsters before she was concerned about actually losing to them. But this mission was ultimately pest control. The Grimm would be here tomorrow, so there wasn't any reason to continue if something unexpectedly dangerous was happening. Port might even fail them if they didn't come back after communications were cut.
"Yellow," Taylor confirmed.
A brilliant yellow star, bright even in broad daylight, shot into the air. At the apex of the arc, a small charge of gravity dust detonated, leaving it to drift above the treetops.
Moments later, Cat and Edelgard answered with their own flare, also yellow. Good.
Taylor had her bugs run patrol routes. Even if she couldn't see through them perfectly, she would still know if they ran into something. Flies zipped through the trees. Bees and hornets gathered in strategic locations. Ants listened underground. Tunneling Grimm weren't native to the area, but nothing was supposed to be able to take out the electronics either.
She activated the taser mode on her knife. It was dust powered, and it hummed to life without complaint. She began walking. Tanya followed, three or four paces behind. It was a long way back to town, and she didn't want to get caught out of breath if they were attacked. Well, when they were attacked. There was no way this was an accident.
"Theories?" Taylor asked.
"Bandits, " Tanya said. "They are basically unheard of in Vale, but if anyone were to start, Sheffield is a reasonable target, provided you can disable the defenses. Far from support, forests for air cover, dyes are expensive and easy to sell."
"I don't buy that random thugs can just make an EMP like that. Someone has been lying to us. Even the White Fang shouldn't have the resources to make one," Taylor said. Her eyes never stopped scanning the trees.
"Either way, this feels like a distraction."
--
Cat sprinted back to Sheffield, wondering if she had just doomed the rest of her team. She had the fastest land speed unless Tanya had somehow gotten more flight time, so she was sprinting ahead. She could get to Port sooner and learn what was happening. Edelgard was left far behind, but she would send up a red flare if she needed help.
Would she? Even back home, it would still be in doubt. Cat had left just as the situation was developing, which usually meant she would return to a disaster. But Cat was also the teammate sent to fetch reinforcements, coming back at the darkest hour. Virtually guaranteed survival.
But did either story have power? Did any story have power in Remnant? Did stories even have power over her any more? She had her Name, she had her powers, but would they respond normally? The time had never been right to test an Aspect.
Her enhanced strength and speed were at least working properly. This pace wasn't even uncomfortable. The only part of her that hurt was her back and shoulders, and that was because of the Penitent's Blade. She hated the name, but if she renamed it, that would make it her sword, and that had to be avoided at all cost. She was simply next to it. Hopefully, angel feathers could be scryed across dimensions, making all this hassle worth it.
She heard Sheffield before she saw it. Loud cracks that her instincts said were sharpers, but her mind knew were guns. That was bad. Sheffield was under attack. Worse, the turrets she had seen on the wall were huge. And that mechanic had bragged about being able to fire hundreds of shots a minute. There wasn't nearly enough sound for that.
Sheffield was a small satellite town of Vale. It had a concrete wall, surrounded by long fields of some distant domesticated descendant of the flowers that had been in the forest. They grew on raised trellises, their long roots harvested for dye.
Those trellises had fallen over, the flowers trampled. Smoke billowed up from behind the walls. Large holes had been clawed through the stone, and dark shapes climbed through them. Atop the walls, the turrets lay silent.
Even with all the differences between her world and this one, Cat could tell that this city had been too long at peace. Buildings had been allowed to get too close to the defensive structures, providing cover. In one place, it was bad enough that a determined athlete could probably scale the wall.
That was useful, because all the real entrances were occupied by monsters.
Cat scaled the wall, with minimal effort. A Beowulf was using the same path she was, but it was young, and had no armor. She cut through it, and it had begun evaporating before it even hit the ground.
From her vantage point, she could see a significant fraction of Sheffield. The town was is in disarray.
Pockets of resistance were holding out near the landing pad. Irregular militia mostly, wielding rifles.
The town, all in all, was in no position to provide help. In fact, it rather needed help. Alright then. It was time for an ironic reversal. Instead of going to get help, Cat was going to call for help from her team. If they had to, they could fight their way through.
She loaded a red flare. Just as she fired it into the sky, she saw a bright light in the distance.
Arcing over the trees and trailing smoke, was a red flare. Then a second. And a third.
Fuck.
She had to decide, and she didn't know enough to make the decision properly. Go back to her team alone right now, or save Sheffield and hope her team held out long enough for her to come back with an entire militia?
She didn't know how soon they needed help. She didn't know how much help they needed.
So without enough information, she decided on what she did know. She looked at the three red points, and turned around.
The streets of Sheffield were in chaos. Cat jumped, rooftop to rooftop, just barely above it. Her eyes scanned the battlefield, never pausing on anything for more than an instant. Her stomach curled at some of the sights, but she pressed on. She could save some of them, probably, but they weren't who she needed to save.
She needed to find the pivot. The one point one which the whole battlefield turned.
To do that, she needed to save a specific person. The thread was tenuous. But there was space there for a story to work, if stories still worked. She didn't know what an ee em pee was, or how the turrets broke, or why the hand carried weapons hadn't broke. But that sounded like a mechanical problem, and she knew a mechanic. A shy woman who had opened up when talking about the towns defenses. Anna, or Alice, or something. It had been a really short conversation, and it had mostly been about guns.
It was a long shot. It relied on two unknowns colliding in the exact right way to be helpful, and either unknown being slightly off could have horrible consequences.
Horrible consequences were already happening. Her team had enough fire power and smarts to hold out. But the town was dying around her. She'd been in dying towns before. This wasn't her homeland. This wasn't even her home world. But for all that it was different, a town under attack sounded just like what she remembered.
Confusion. Desperation. Screaming. Fire.
The sword on her back burned as she drew on her name for strength. This should work, she was the Squire, squires were supposed to deliver weapons. Not normally in the heat of battle, but still. She'd never actually focused on that part of her name, but there was a first time for everything.
Streets and alleys blurred past below her. Occasionally her sword would flash out, carving a gash through a Beowulf that had climbed up some rubble. She saw faces, some brave, some terrified, some dead. But not the woman she was looking for.
This was taking too long. She needed to get up higher.
There was a tall building nearby. It looked like a temple, though not to a god that Cat recognized. She scrambled up the side in leaps and bounds.
When she cleared the roof and got to the steeple, the gaps in the stonework were too small to fit her gauntleted fingers in-between. She made to take them off, but had an idea halfway through. She concentrated for a bit. The blurred edges of her shadow grew defined, then sharp. In a short, violent motion, her shadow arm lashed out at the steeple while her flesh and blood arms stayed still. A small chunk of the mortar was cut, making a decent handhold. Then another, and another. Her shadow continued to cut as she climbed.
The angel feather grew even more uncomfortable. She wasn't even using her Name that much! This wasn't even an aspect. But hers was a Villainous Name, sort of, and she was destroying a church, sort of. Once she got to the top, she shoved off the metal symbol to leave a flat space, wide enough to crouch down on.
Breathing in, she drew on her Name again. The sword on her back felt like she was standing a hand's breadth away from a raging bonfire, but Sheffield snapped into focus. She could make out everything, and everyone. Rapidly, she went from one face to the next.
She saw Professor Port. He was currently being a decent hammer in a hammer and anvil strategy with the largest and most organized groups of militia. A group would engage Grimm, holding them down, and when Port got there he would destroy them before moving to the next group.
Grimm that got to close the rotund man didn't just die, they splashed. His weapon whirled between its forms. He would shoot one Grimm, disintegrating it, and use the recoil to shoulder-check another into the ground, where it died to his ax.
But he was one man. He was moving fast and trying to keep a safe zone, but it was a big town, compared to one huntsman. He wasn't who she was looking for.
Where was she... There! Cat jumped off the steeple. The wind whipped past her, and she rolled with the landing. She turned the roll into a jump, and she was on the next roof. She felt the movement get lighter as she kept leaping from one roof to the next. Finding her stride and building momentum. She frowned, but banished the thoughts. Win first, worry later.
Cat hit the ground, on a street just inside the wall. It was a long ways away from the bullhead landing pad. And from Port. And from any of the shelters. It had been hit badly, with burning debris from the nearby houses.
A young woman was running along the same street, towards Cat. It was definitely Alice. Same red hair, same rabbit ears. She was dragging along a boy in a blue jacket, desperately fleeing from the Beowulf behind them. It was probably her brother, he had the same ears as her, though he had light brown hair.
Her brother was stumbling, not fast enough to outrun the Beowulf. Alice probably wouldn't even be fast enough without him.
Cat though? Cat was fast enough.
With all the burning wreckage on the road, there wasn't enough room to pass them. That didn't matter. She jumped to the side, and ran for a few steps along the wall. Before her momentum ran out, she kicked off it. That gave her lunge enough leverage to go clear through the Beowulf, shoulder to shoulder.
As the creature dissolved, Cat stepped up to the people she had just rescued. The boy was cheering, but Alice was still trying to pull him along.
"Alice, you know a lot about the guns, can you get them online again?"
Alice did a double take, suddenly recognizing Cat. But she didn't waste any time. "All of them? No. We upgraded ten or fifteen years back to the same shielded circuity. It broke anyway. But one of the turrets might, uh, not be as up to date as its paperwork says it is. It should still have the full manual override."
One gun, against a horde. It would have to do.
Alice looked around, nervously. "I was almost there when that Grimm chased us away. Could you get Peter somewhere safe? I'll go back and fix the gun."
Before Cat could respond, Beowulf, by the dozen, began to scramble around the corner, from the direction that Cat had come in. They tripped and fell over the bits of burning building, and over each other, as more and more came. There was no other exit that Cat could take while carrying a squirming child. The only way out was towards the gun.
Alice scooped up her younger brother and ran.
"Go! I'll hold them off," Cat said. She had always hoped she would never have to say that.
Right. Time to strategize. The problem was that she was the only thing standing between a horde of monsters and the only thing that could save the town in time to help her team. Her resources were herself and about one block of distance to retreat over. She would have killed to have Juniper solve this problem.
First, try to get more resources. She fired off her orange flare. She'd already used her red one, but maybe someone would get the idea. She wasn't counting on it.
Second, use the environment. Cat primed a sharper. She didn't care that the shop owner had called it something else, it was clearly a sharper. She threw it at a tall building lining the alley. One fiery explosion later, and it collapsed into the narrow street just as the stampede was passing underneath it.
Bricks and wooden beams spilled into the street.
It didn't crush them all like she had hoped. There wasn't nearly enough debris. Instead it looked like it was only slowing them down, and not even all of them.
Cat could use that. There were only a few that had scrambled over and around the crumbling brickwork without pausing. For their efforts, they got a flash of steel through the skull.
The trickle of darkness became a river, and it was all she could do to swim in the flow. Her name roared in her ears, hungry for blood, or whatever it was that Grimm had.
Black had said that leading a band of Named in battle was more like conducting an orchestra than anything else. This was a solo. Frantic and violent, but there was music in it all the same.
The distance set the tempo. Up close and personal, the beat was fast and frenzied. Desperate strikes, and snapping jaws in half as she pulled them off of her armor, or flesh. Far away, the beat was slower, as she played for spacing and single, devastating lunges.
Her shadow kept its own voice at all times. Fast and precise, making small cuts. Paws were tripped, rubble was thrown. Anything to keep the opposing movement from swelling to a point where it would overwhelm and kill her.
And always, constantly, falling back. Getting surrounded was death. Running out of room was also death. So she made them pay for every step backward. Not it lives, they had lives to spare. She made them pay in time. She didn't give up ground until she had to, and she was covered in cuts from when she should have given sooner.
She took another step back. She was pouring sweat, and her breathing was pained. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed it. A small alley. It was lined with the detritus of small shops and small handicrafts.
It was an utterly unimportant street in a fairly unimportant town. It was only remarkable because it was the last exit. From here, there was nothing but strong brickwork to her left, and the hardened stone of the wall to her right.
If she took one more step, she was committed. If she tried to run down the main street, she would be hunted down exactly like a deer by a pack of wolves. The side alley was her last exit.
She breathed out, and took another step back.
The swarm pressed in, and the tempo of the battle increased. The soft noise of cutting and the high notes of shrieking Grimm were replaced by harsh clangs as her sword met hardened bone plates. The younger Grimm from before were exhausted. The new ones were older, tougher, and knew how to strike when her back was turned.
That, of course, wasn't enough. With a grace that didn't fit its size, a massive two headed snake was coiling its way past the flimsy barrier of rubble she had thrown into the street earlier. A King Tie-something.
It wasn't even a normal two headed snake! A normal, a proper, gods-fearing abomination of a two-headed snake should have two heads and a tail. This one's tail was its second head. At least it had a black-and white motif, one for each head.
The Grimm didn't even react properly. They should have formed a ring for the two elites to fight in. Instead they pressed in even closer. She could barely get proper leverage on her sword strikes.
The snake struck with its white head, and she barely rolled out of the way in time. The street shattered. The massive white snake had slammed snout first into it, its jaws snapping shut where her feet had been moments before. It then flicked its head up, and was annoyed that there wasn't anything to swallow.
The place Cat had dodged to was better, but not by much. She was buried in a pile of teeth and claws, that found mostly steel, but more found exposed skin than she was comfortable with.
She drew deep on her Name, and her shadow exploded out of her, sending the Beowolves flying.
She was bleeding, exhausted, and surrounded, but at least—
"DUCK!"
Oh, now what? Oh. The gun. The gun that this had all been for. It was so large that you didn't carry it, you rode it, in a clunky steel cage behind a long gleaming barrel of death.
Alice had gotten it armed, and was pointing it at the Grimm in the street. The problem was, Cat was in the middle of the Grimm that they wanted to shoot at. Ducking wouldn't help, and even if it did, it might get her eaten alive before...
Oh.
Cat saw the black snake rear its head, and got a horrible idea. A horrible idea that was obviously her only way out.
She crossed her arms in front of herself, and did a little hop.
Quick as a blink, the jaws of the black snake slammed down around her. Its fangs scrapped against her sabatons as its mouth closed shut, and she was enveloped in darkness.
She felt a violent jerk as the snake head flicked into the air. She was almost started to slide down into its gullet when she stabbed with all her might, drawing on the dregs of her Name's power.
Her sword didn't pierce its flesh like she thought it would. She supposed that made sense, you wouldn't swallow fully armed humans if you weren't armored on the inside too.
But she didn't need to kill it, just slow it down.
There was a thunderous noise. Even from inside the Grimm, it sounded like an entire tenth was trying to wake her up by beating her eardrums with a hammer as fast as they could.
A second of weightlessness, as the muscles trying to swallow her went limp.
Cat braced for impact as the dead snake crashed into the ground, throwing her free.
She was surrounded by carnage as she stood up. The defensive gun had chewed through the mostly unarmored Grimm like a scythe through wheat. The snake that had swallowed her had been sliced neatly into white and black halves.
All while she had been safe in the literal jaws of death, above the line of fire.
The gun hadn't killed all of them, but what was left here was only clean up. And they would need a way to leverage one functioning gun into a saved town, but Cat could feel it in her bones. This story beat was over.
Alice's little brother raised both fists into the air and cheered. "That was totally awesome!"
Yeah. Definitely over.
–
Cat waited on the wall of Sheffield. She paced. Port had been unwilling to leave the town unprotected. He was the only one able to drive the only vehicle they could get working.
As he had left, there was a massive explosion from the forest that Cat could feel in her teeth. Ten minutes ago, Port had fired his green flare from somewhere withing the trees. So everyone was either safe, or already dead.
Cat paced the walls.
Had she made a mistake?
In the distance, she could make out figures leaving the woods. First one. Then a second that had to be Port. Then a third...
She waited. Just barely, she could see a fourth figure. Cat breathed a sigh a relief. Everyone was walking under their own power.
Cat had done everything right. The tension left her body.
Her teammates made it back to town. They were coated in soot and gore, but they were unharmed. Tanya was more upset about running out of flares than anything else. Taylor was upset that she'd never even confirmed the existence of whoever was behind this.
Working cars made their way into Sheffield, carrying supplies and aid. For a breach in the walls, the damage had been quite light. Team TTCE was able to hitch a ride back to Beacon on the second or third departure, all the wounded already being seen to.
As the truck started to roll away, a voice called out to wait.
Alice caught up, holding her brother.
Peter handed her a bright blue scarf. It was clearly something he had made himself. There were missed stitches, broken lines, and it was only even if you squinted really generously.
“I—I wanted to, I wanted—you're just so cool and” He stopped and started a dozen times, too excited and too shy to stop himself from tripping over his own words.
His sister took mercy on him, smiling. “He wanted to give something to the Hero of Sheffield.”
Cat's smile went brittle as she took the scarf.
She felt the weight of the Penitent Blade. She could maybe, barely, feel the heat. Or maybe she was just pretending she could.