SAPR

by Scipio Smith

Grimm Tide (New)

Grimm Tide

Cinder stood upon the highest tower in the undercity of Mountain Glenn, the city of the dead spread out before her, lifeless… save for the grimm.

She was connected to them. Salem had bestowed that… gift upon her. It was a burden that she had taken on willingly, and for the sake of her destiny, she had endured it. And now… now, she could feel them.

Not even huntsmen really understood what the grimm were, still less those who huddled behind their walls and armies and dreaded the howling of the beowolves; old, fat Professor Port, prattling about demons and creatures of the night, telling his impenetrable stories, he had no idea what he had been hunting all this time.

They were bound together, their minds conjoined, all bound back through invisible and yet unbreakable chains to Salem, their mistress. Out of darkness, the grimm were made; back to darkness, they returned; and that darkness linked them all in a great song, a rhapsody of death and destruction that echoed through the link, passed from mind to mind, echoing across Remnant.

She was a part of that song now, a violin solo playing amidst a concert of deep brass horns and booming drums and keening woodwind instruments. She was a part of them, just as they were a part of her, and as they were a part of her, they would listen. They would even, to an extent, obey; she was not just one of them, after all; she had the mark of Salem’s favour on her. Plus, she was stronger than they were, and the song of the grimm valued strength amongst its apex alphas.

Whole hordes would bow before her, if she could only gather them in one place.

That was… difficult. Her connection to the grimm did not give her power over them, to move them as she would like pieces on a game board; even Salem would struggle to do thus, at this distance from Vale at least, and Cinder was not so bound to the creatures of destruction as her mistress was. She had placed the chills and the callisto in the path of Sunset and her friends, but she had done that before they had arrived, physically approaching the chills, receiving the obeisance of the callisto, directing them to where she wished them to lie in wait. She was not a general, broadcasting commands to her obedient soldiers; rather, she was more like a feudal lord, who could compel obedience but only with her physical presence.

Only one thing could she do en masse, only one command could she issue through the link, and that was to abdicate control, vest herself of power, and set the grimm of Mountain Glenn free upon their basest instincts.

She could feel them, all of them; the link was… tentative, in places, but it was there. She could feel the beowolves, she could feel the creeps, she could feel the ursai and the king taijitu, she could feel that which men had awoken in the darkness as they delved too deep; she could feel them all.

Some were patient, some were eager, some strained for release. By Salem’s will, they held back, not harming the White Fang, not attacking Ozpin’s agents unless she had given them previous instruction to do so, acting as blockers to deny passage through certain areas to Sunset and the rest, passively herding them where she, Cinder, wished them to go.

The time for that was over now. The train was leaving the station, literally.

Time to set the grimm free.

She closed her eyes, and through that link, she sent a simple message to all her fellow creatures of destruction.

Stay no more.

The effect was immediate and electrifying. There was so much emotion swirling about this city, so much anger, so much fear; the train that had just departed was like a beacon to the grimm, drawing them like bees to honey.

Now, the honey was headed straight for Vale, and the bees would follow and sting whatever they found there.

And die, as bees did, but how much pain would they inflict before they died?

As the howling of the beowolves began, as it tore from the throat of one grimm after another, as the song of the violence and bloodshed echoed from every crumbling wall to strike the false stars that glimmered in the ceiling, as the towers of Mountain Glenn trembled at the sound, Cinder smiled.

Now the real fun began.

---

Gilda raised the boxy Valish assault rifle to her shoulder and fired. Once, twice, three times, the rifle roared in controlled bursts before the beowolf that had been charging towards her finally dropped dead and died about six feet away from her.

She heard someone screaming. It took her less than a moment to see someone being dragged away by another beowolf, the grimm’s claws digging into the back of the rabbit faunus as it pulled him into the darkness.

Gilda gritted her teeth as she slung her rifle over her shoulder, spreading her wings and leaping forwards, gliding through the air to more quickly cover the distance between her and the desperate faunus, his fingernails digging into the earth as he tried to stop the grimm from dragging him into the darkness.

Swallow strike!

Gilda’s semblance wasn’t the fanciest, and it certainly wasn’t the most powerful; essentially, it let her strike three times with her sword in the time it would have ordinarily taken her to strike once. But sometimes, that was all it took. Like now, when a trio of swift strikes as she fell upon them were enough to slice the offending beowolf in half.

Gilda helped the rabbit faunus to his feet as the grimm started to turn to smoke. She draped one arm across her shoulders and lifted him up. “There’s a wounded man here; get him on the truck!”

Willing faunus ran to help her, and their willing hands took the injured fighter off of Gilda and helped him to one of the trucks now serving as ambulances. Already, the back was filled with injured faunus, with red and raw bite marks on their arms and legs from where the grimm had gotten them. As soon as the rabbit was helped aboard, the truck rumbled and started to roll quickly towards the industrial elevator that was their only way out of this trap.

Damn Cinder Fall and everything about her! And where was she now, anyway? She’d disappeared at a very convenient time, considering that the indulgence with which the grimm had seemingly been regarding them had now run out and they were coming under a ferocious attack. One minute, they’d only had Dashie and her friends to worry about, and the next, it was like every grimm in the city had just woken up and decided that it wanted a piece of them. What had been an exercise in quickly packing up everything that they needed was turning into a scramble to get everybody out in one piece before the creatures of grimm devoured them all.

Beowolves, creeps, king taijitu, even a few ursai were pouring out of the darkness in great waves, intent on devouring every last faunus there. Every hand that could hold a gun was shooting, every faunus that could fight was on the line pouring fire out into the darkness to try and hold their perimeter; Gilda had, in what was probably her greatest break with Adam’s wishes, held back a few Paladins from the train, just in case they came in useful, and they were all coming in very useful now to bolster the defence, their great guns roaring and missiles flying from their racks. They were fighting with everything, every weapon and every faunus that remained to them, but was it enough? Could it be enough against the sheer number of grimm that were hurling themselves at the White Fang from all directions?

No. No, it wouldn’t be enough, just like hadn’t been enough for the humans who had tried to settle this place once before. And the White Fang should have learnt from their example.

The question was not 'could they hold the Mountain Glenn base?' The answer to that was 'no.' The ammunition would run out, the Paladins would fall – Gilda could see one of them being crushed in the coils of a king taijitu, the great serpent seeming to take no notice at all of the robotic fists hammering into it as it curled around and around the armoured body as the Paladin started crumpling under the pressure; another Paladin had been half-buried under a half-dozen beowolves led by an alpha, which were gradually ripping its armour apart with their claws – and the defences would be overrun, no matter how bravely they tried to hold them.

No, the real question was 'could they get everybody out of Mountain Glenn before this place became a tomb for the White Fang as well as for the humans who had built it?' That was Gilda’s challenge, and she very much hoped that the answer was 'yes.'

A boarbatusk broke through the defensive perimeter, trampling upon a leopard faunus before charging straight for Gilda, his tusks gleaming.

Strongheart intercepted the creature on the wall, blindsiding it with her semblance and ramming it onto its side where she shot it four times to be sure. “Gilda!” she cried, running up to her even as she began reloading her rifle. “What are we going to do?”

“Whatever we can,” Gilda muttered. “So long as we can hold for just-”

“Not that, the train! We have to stop them!” Strongheart yelled. “Or they’ll stop the train!”

A part of Gilda knew that Strongheart was absolutely right. The train was the whole plan. The train was everything, and if Dash and her allies stopped the train, then this whole miserable experience would have been for absolutely nothing. They’d spent weeks – months – preparing the train; Adam had almost certainly given his life buying time to get the train – just about – moving before the enemy got to it. The train had most of their men and most of their equipment on board. If the train was halted, then there was no point to any of this.

But right now, Gilda couldn’t honestly say that she gave a damn. She’d been sincere and honest when she told Adam that that train was rolling into a death trap, and as she watched a substantial amount of grimm break off their attack on the White Fang base to follow the train down into the tunnel to Vale, she felt vindicated already in her bleak assessment.

And what would the train get the White Fang, really? It was Cinder Fall’s idea, Cinder’s plan, Cinder’s conjuring trick; it might be better if Dash could stop the train early and all the good faunus on it could get out before it was too late.

“There’s nothing that we can do about that,” Gilda said. “The guys on the train will have to defend the train as best they can. We’ve got our own problems.” She gunned down another creep.

“So we’re not going to do anything?” Strongheart demanded. “We’re just going to let this happen?”

“Do you have any ideas?” Gilda asked.

Strongheart didn’t reply. Not at first, anyway. “Do you… do you think they’ll make it?”

“I don’t know,” Gilda said, and she didn’t even know if she hoped it either. What she hoped for was the best chance for them to survive; she just wished she knew what that best chance was. “Like I said, we have to focus on ourselves right now.”

They abandoned their equipment. The guns, the ammo, the explosives, even the dust, everything that hadn’t been packed up and moved out already when the grimm attack started was left behind. None of it mattered in the face of the snarling, bestial horror bearing down on them. The White Fang wore masks to make themselves look like grimm, to become the monsters of nightmare that the humans already thought they were, but in the face of the real deal, with the real monsters howling as they surged out of the darkness to rend, tear, and devour, the White Fang were reminded that they were not monsters, but men, and just as vulnerable to fear and doubt and terror as those whom they had thought to make fear them.

Some fought, some fled, some died screaming and begging for mercy of the creatures that were wholly and utterly incapable of mercy. They retreated. They left the stolen Atlesian property that they hadn’t already moved out. Some of the dust, they detonated as they retreated, some of the grenades and explosives too, turning them into improvised landmines to incinerate whole packs of beowolves in the fire, but it wasn’t enough.

It was never going to be enough.

They fell back. They lost the Paladins as they retreated, the armoured titans falling one by one in the face of the flood of black and bone-encrusted death. They lost faunus too, good people, brave people, bad people, cowards; they lost them all, but the survivors managed to make it to the elevator, cramming themselves onto the platform, crushing each other tightly in their desperation to leave no one behind, knowing that this would be their only chance to get out. Winged faunus began to fly up the shaft, leaving more space for the others who pressed on, tightly together, until only Gilda remained not on the platform.

Gilda slammed her fist into the red button by the side of the elevator shaft, and the metallic mesh doors began to descend as the elevator platform began to rise.

“Gilda!” Strongheart shouted from on the now-rising platform. “What are you doing?”

“Regroup in the hills above the city. I’ll find you there,” Gilda said. “I’m going to get Adam’s body.” If he was dead – and she had no doubt that he was, because there was no way that the Sword of the Faunus would have abandoned the faunus when they needed him in the face of this grim, grimm tide – then he deserved better than to rot in the darkness, to be devoured by rats or grimm or simply left to rot. He might have been born in darkness, formed and forged and nurtured by it, but in death, he deserved to lie under sunlight, properly interred.

And so, as the elevator rose up towards the surface, Gilda spread her wings and soared up into the air, towards the ceiling of Mountain Glenn; fortunately, there were no flying grimm around, and all the beowolves and the creeps below could only roar and hiss at her in abject futility as she flew safely above their heads and beyond their reach.

Some of them clawed and tore at the mesh, but by that point, the elevator was out of their reach as well, and though some of them began to climb up the shaft, they were doing so so slowly that there wasn’t much chance of them catching it, and anyway, they’d still be below the elevator platform if they did.

Which was probably why most of them turned away, roaring and howling and bellowing as they flooded down the subway tunnel after the train.

Gilda could only hope that her comrades on the train would be okay. And, as strange as it might sound, she hoped that Dash would be okay too. She might be the enemy, she might be a dog of the Atlesian military, she might have betrayed their friendship and not even mentioned Gilda to her new friends – what was that about? – but she was still, in spite of all of that, Gilda’s friend. She deserved better than to go out that way.

Nobody deserved to go out that way.

Stay safe, she thought, as she began to search for Adam. Stay safe, everyone, even you, Dash.

It was a forlorn hope, and a stupid one at that, because there was no way that everyone was going to be safe, and if even a few survived, it would be a miracle, but as she flew, the last living person in a city once more reclaimed by death and darkness, looking for the body of a great man for whom a decent burial was the last and only way she could yet serve him well, it was the only hope she had to cling to.

---

The train sped down the tracks, rumbling and rattling as it went.

And death followed after.

Grimm hordes – like the one that the team leaders had dealt with in the Emerald Forest, like the one that had descended on Vale after Mountain Glenn fell – typically moved slowly. They let fear and panic run before them like heralds, and in their slow, meandering progress, allowed the fear of those upon whom they bore with the inexorable nature of the tide to draw yet more grimm forth to swell the numbers of the horde.

But they could also move with thunderclap speed when the mood took them. And it had taken them now. It was only the fact that the train was barreling down the track at truly ridiculous speed that was keeping it ahead of the grimm who ran after.

To the howling of the beowolves was added snarling, growling, roaring, hissing, all the sounds that grimm could make as they swarmed after the train, pursuing it down the rails like a dog chasing a car. They swarmed down the tracks, they swarmed in from the city streets on either side, they swarmed in from the metro stations, having descended from the city above. They bared their fangs and swiped their claws and leapt at the train from the side only to rebound off the cars, and they pursued. As the train entered the long tunnel that would take it towards Vale, the grimm followed after in a great black tide.

A tide which held them captive. They were spellbound by the force of destruction which followed them, mesmerised by the darkness and the bony black masks. None of them could tear their eyes away from it.

“Was this… was this the plan all along?” Jaune asked, his voice cracking. “Was this what they meant to happen?”

“No!” Blake cried. “No, it can’t be, this… everyone on this train… the grimm won’t care who’s White Fang and who isn’t; they’ll kill everyone.”

“Everyone,” Pyrrha murmured. Her face was pale, and her gilded adornments had lost their lustre in the darkness of this tunnel. “If the barrier is breached, if these grimm get into Vale-”

“Then Atlas will stop them,” Rainbow Dash declared.

So sure? Sunset thought to herself. There are so many, and they roar so loud. What can men do against such numbers and such reckless hate?

“Are you sure?” Blake asked. “Are you sure that they can? There are so many of them-”

“And that won’t help them one bit when they’re stuck trying to squeeze their way through a bottleneck into the teeth of our fire,” Rainbow insisted. “Once Twilight tells the General what’s happening-”

“Twilight only knows about the White Fang,” Blake said. “Not the grimm.”

“Bullets will take care of them both,” Rainbow said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ruby declared. “Because neither the grimm nor the White Fang are going to get anywhere near Vale, because we’re going to stop this train and block the tunnel. That will hold the grimm too, right?”

With those numbers? Sunset thought. I’m not so sure.

“For a little while, at least,” Applejack said. “Until someone can come up with something else.”

“Then nothing’s changed,” Ruby said. “We have to get to the front of the train.”

“Yes,” Pyrrha agreed, nodding her head as if she was seeking to reassure herself. “Yes, you’re right. You’re right, Ruby,” she repeated, glancing down at Ruby with a faint smile upon her face. “Thank you.”

“Does it strike anyone else here as a little weird that we’ve been allowed to stand her yabberin’ on and nobody inside the train has tried to throw us off?” Applejack wondered aloud.

“Well, now that you mention it,” Rainbow muttered, and as everyone turned and aimed a gun, if they had one, towards the door into the first car, Rainbow pushed it open with the muzzle of her shotgun.

It became apparent why nobody inside had rushed to attack them: because there was nobody inside. The car was bare, just an empty metal box rattling along the rails, with nothing and nobody in it.

“Huh,” Applejack said. “Ah guess they didn’t have time to load up every car before they left.”

Blake scrambled up the ladder climbing the back wall of the car, getting up onto the roof as the train sped along. Her wild tangle of black hair flew out behind her, blasted back by the movement of the train.

“They may not have had time to load every car,” she observed, “but they loaded enough of them.”

Sunset teleported onto the roof to stand beside her, even as Blake cleared space for the others to climb up as well.

They could see the White Fang, hundreds of White Fang by the look of it, advancing across the roofs of the railways cars with blades and guns held in their hands, a mass of men in white masks bearing down upon them.

And beyond, Sunset thought she could see Paladins beginning to stir to life like giants slumbering beneath the earth for untold aeons.

“I guess they know we’re here,” Jaune groaned.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Rainbow said. “Applejack, you, Blake, and Winona go through the train. Pyrrha, Jaune, and Ruby, you’ll go over the train with me. Sunset, once they’re committed, you can teleport behind them and get to the front of the train before they can do anything about it. We’ll catch up.”

“And leave the rest of you?” Sunset demanded. “No!”

“We’ll catch up,” Rainbow assured.

“Then why do I need to rush ahead?”

“Because the sooner we stop the train, the better, right?” Rainbow asked.

Sunset sighed. She didn’t like this. She did not like this one bit.

“You will watch your friends die all around you.”

“You will be powerless to help them.”

“They will be taken from you in an instant.”

“One by one, they all shall fall: to darkness, and to me.”

Get out of my head!

She didn’t like this. She did not like this one bit. But she couldn’t confess just why she didn’t like it, and so… and so… so she would do it.

Her words will not come to pass. They will not.

“Everyone ready?” Rainbow asked.

Blake leapt down to rejoin Applejack. “Ready,” she said.

Winona barked.

“Ah’m ready, Sugarcube,” Applejack declared.

Ruby cocked Crescent Rose. “Ready,” she said eagerly.

“Okay then,” Rainbow said. “Let’s go!”

And so they charged forwards, over and through the train, into battle with the White Fang.

And the grimm horde followed them.

Comments

[Aemon Targaryen]

Uh.

Interesting.

I actually have nothing else to say.

[Mastermind4892]

This one was TENSE!

I’m also very glad that AJ is here on the train. That will give Rainbow much more perspective over what’s about to happen.

[Scipio Smith]

10989226
Yeah, Rainbow's attitude is probably the biggest change in what is about to happen, and the biggest change in character, as opposed to in events, in the entire story.

[Mastermind4892]

10989252
That’s good to hear. There’s nothing that Loyalty won’t do for friends. It is the foundation of Rainbow Dash’s sense of duty, to fight so that her friends won’t get killed.

[Kiue Jin]

I think it says a lot about what kind of leader Adam was that he could inspire what appears to be hundreds of people to such hatred of Vale and Humanity in general that even when they can see and hear the tides of ravenous death chasing after them, they're still willing to commit to their plan to destroy Vale without any of them thinking 'We have made a mistake'.

Then again, Gilda's message likely connected with the members of the White Fang who possessed either a sense of morality or self preservation and thus those people didn't get on the train anyway...

Plus there is also the fact of 'Even if they had a change of heart, what the hell are they going to do about it now?'

[Scipio Smith]

10989320
Once you're on a literal runaway train there isn't much to be done.

[Revanche]

'Towards Vale' is also 'Away from the Grimm'.

[Snowdrifter]

She could feel them, all of them; the link was… tentative, in places, but it was there. She could feel the beowolves, she could feel the creeps, she could feel the ursai and the king taijitu, she could feel that which men had awoken in the darkness as they delved too deep; she could feel them all.

Fly, you fools!