Breaking Point (New)
Breaking Point
As the Skyray carried them along, Ruby could feel Yang's eyes on her.
It was only Ruby and Team YRBN — Team YRN, she supposed, or Y_RN, or however you were supposed to spell it when a team was down to three people — were the only ones in the airship. Well, there was the pilot and the co-pilot up at the front, but other than that, it was just the four of them. They weren't having to share the airship with any other team.
At first, Ruby had thought that that was lucky, but now, she was wondering if maybe the presence of another team — not SAPR, but another team that Ruby and YRN didn't know well or at all — might not have proved a welcome distraction.
A distraction for Yang to stop her staring at Ruby, or a distraction for Ruby so that she didn't notice Yang staring.
Ruby was facing away from her sister, looking out of the open doors of the Atlesian airship as it carried them towards the Mistralian command post. The Atlesian pilots weren't willing to take them all the way to the Valish line, so Team YRRN — as Nora had suggested it be called — would have to walk the rest of the way. It shouldn't be too far, though, so they ought to make it before the battle began.
Or at least, even if they didn't make it before the battle began, they should be reasonably sure of making it before it ended.
Ruby looked out. She couldn't see the Mistralians yet, still less the Valish, but it was dark, so they might have been closer to their destination than they seemed; she certainly hoped so, although she doubted that even arriving at their destination and starting to walk would grant her complete freedom from Yang's eyes on her.
She might have to actually say something, as much as she didn't really want to.
There isn't time to talk about everything, and even if there was, I don't know if I'd want to talk about it all in front of Ren and Nora.
I'm not sure that I'd want to talk about it all just to Yang.
Why can't she just drop it?
Ruby tried to focus on what she could see outside the airship, to take her mind of what — on who — was seeing her within. This part of the land just beyond Vale wasn't completely deserted; a lot of it was farmland without the actual farms, sure, but this particular part they were flying over had a couple of small old villages that hadn't been completely swallowed up by the city — yet. Vale was always growing, and so more and more of what had once been little places like these villages and hamlets were being swallowed up by the steady advance of the city limits. Of course, that was part of the reason why the Green Line had been proposed, as a protection not just for the farmland — who needed to protect farmland from grimm, and it wasn't as though Vale had a huge bandit problem — but for the people who lived in growing numbers out beyond the Red Line and the wall. The outer defences had been supposed to protect the spreading suburbs, but also all the little hamlets that Ruby could see directly beneath them, the lights on so that they shone like little beacons in the dark, or the big houses of the people who owned the villages which also sat here and there in this part of the country. The Green Line had been meant to be their shield, not just an outer tripwire for Vale, but a wall for the people who lived outside of Vale's actual wall. Unfortunately, there weren't yet enough people like that, and, well, if you didn't have the numbers, then you didn't matter in a democracy, and so, these people had lost out, just like the people in the countryside and the small settlements had lost out for years to the big cities.
Honestly, if Ruby hadn't known about the Equestrian monster and the mind control and stuff, then Ruby might well have nodded at General Blackthorn taking over the kingdom. Might, not necessarily would, but might. Not because she wanted a tyranny or thought that everyone deserved to lose their freedom overnight, but because there had to be a better way of organising a kingdom, a way that looked out for everyone, not just the selfish majority who thought only of themselves.
A better way than these short-sighted Councillors who had continuously elevated other concerns above the good of the Valish.
Councillor Novo, and Councillor Emerald too, had been more concerned with how things seemed than how they were, more concerned with making Vale look safe, and making its people feel safe, than with actually keeping Vale safe from danger. That was why they were in this position, with grimm gathering in huge numbers outside the walls, because Vale’s Councillors had been unwilling to act to protect the people in case it made them temporarily unpopular.
Vale needed a leader who could tell its people some hard truths, someone who would say what needed to be said instead of what would be well received, who would do what was best instead of what was popular. A shepherd of the people, to borrow a phrase from Pyrrha's Mistralian epics — only without the shearing or the eating lamb.
A shepherd who only cared for the flock, but who didn’t exploit it or want anything from it in return for their protection. A shepherd … who wouldn’t be much of a shepherd at all, would they?
The more Ruby thought about it, the more that phrase seemed to say more about the Mistralians than they realised — or wanted to admit.
Not a shepherd, then. But not a sausage seller either, appealing to the crowd. Protecting people, the highest good and calling, meant sometimes…
Meant sometimes treating the people the way that Sunset and Pyrrha had treated her so infuriatingly.
That’s different! I’m not one of the people, I’m one of their protectors! I’m talking about the people who are weak and in need of strong defence.
As they need protection, as they need and deserve to have their lives preserved, so do they also require guidance; otherwise, they’ll just make choices that make them less safe, less secure; they’ll fall prey to liars with silver tongues who take advantage of their trust.
Even huntsmen and huntresses aren’t immune to that.
Ruby closed her eyes.
I understand that sometimes protecting people, helping them, saving them, means giving them what they need instead of what they want. I understand that it might mean setting limits, the way that a good dad sets limits for his kids when they’re growing up.
I just wanted to be one of the protectors, instead of the protected.
I am one of the protectors, and I wanted to be treated that way.
Ruby could feel Yang looking at her, her eyes burning into the back of Ruby's neck.
"You don't need to keep staring at me, Yang," Ruby said.
"I'm not staring," Yang replied.
"Yes," Ruby said. "Yes, you are."
Yang didn't answer for a second. "I … well, I just … come on, Ruby, this is a little … what's going on?"
"Nothing's going on," Ruby said.
"Then … why are you here?" Yang asked gently.
"I think we're almost there," Ren said, sparing Ruby from replying.
Ruby thought he was right; raising her eyes from the ground to the sky, she could see one of the two immense Mistralian battleships — the one that they hadn't handed over to the Valish — lit up by the moonlight falling on its bulk, its armour, its huge number of guns. Ruby didn't know how good of a warship it actually was — she had a feeling that Rainbow Dash would tell her it was awful — but it was an impressive sight to look at. Someone had actually put that whole thing together, first dreamed it up and then created it, pulled everyone together to make it just how they wanted; someone had conceived this and seen it made a reality.
As for the effectiveness of it all, Ruby was sure it had been a good idea at the time, and even if it hadn't been, that was no reason not to admire the effort they'd put into it.
There was some reason to wish that the ship was further forward — it seemed to be hovering over the Mistralian camp when, if everything went well, then the Mistralians would be sitting this whole battle out — but the ship wasn't going to fly up and help the Valish on the line because … because it wasn't a Valish ship, and the Valish had wasted their ship picking a fight with the Atlesians. Which wasn't their fault, but still…
Anyway, the point was that, unlike the Atlesians, they couldn't expect air cover. They'd just have to make do with their own weapons, their own courage; they'd have to be like huntsmen and huntresses, without any of the fancy toys that the Atlesians used to make their lives easier.
Blake was probably going to get very lazy once she got to Atlas.
The airships proved Ren right by starting their descent, all the Skyrays turning towards the ground, carrying within them the Beacon and Haven students — and Teams UMBR and Team GEAR of Shade, the only teams from Shade, which Ruby thought people should find more annoying than they seemed to; why was everyone just accepting this? Why was everyone shrugging their shoulders at it? Why was no one angry, yelling, cursing them out, screaming at them to act like huntsmen? Maybe it wouldn't have actually helped at all, but it would have made Ruby feel a little less alone in her thoughts. As far as she could make out from Yang and Nora, it wasn't even that the Shade students were hiding because they were afraid; they just didn't want to fight. Somehow, that felt even worse. It was one thing to be scared, it was another thing to just not be bothered.
The airships would be leaving them here, returning to the Atlesian lines for Atlesian purposes.
But they'd be fine without them; they could make do. That was what huntsmen did; they made do the best they could.
The Mistralian camp, which came into focus more as the airships dropped through the night sky, was a sprawling, ramshackle thing, a forest of tents spread out across the Valish fields. Pennants stuck in the ground acted as rough rallying spots for units, while a Mistralian banner had been placed in front of a particularly large tent which Ruby guessed either belonged to their leader — Polemarch Yeoh, Pyrrha had said her name was — or a command post for all the senior officers to meet. Or both, maybe.
That tent was roughly in the middle of the camp, but beyond that, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of order or reason to it. It looked more like everyone had just pitched their tent wherever, like a huge camping trip or something.
The airships flew underneath the looming bulk of the battleship to descend on the edge of the camp, where bodies of men and women had already gathered. They weren't in ranks, but they were in clumps, sitting or standing in distinct groups, waiting for … waiting for the grimm to break through the Valish line maybe, or for them to be called upon, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Waiting for something to happen. Ruby saw some of them turn their faces up towards the airships as they came down.
The Skyrays didn't land, but they hovered close enough to the ground that the huntsmen and huntresses within could dismount easily, leaping down onto the ground below; it was hard and dry from the lack of rain recently.
As the huntsmen leapt from the airships, which barely seemed to wait for them to get out before they rose up into the air again — they really were very keen to get rid of their passengers and return to their own lines — a woman strode out from the clumps of Mistralians. She looked … she didn't look like Raven at all, but she had that same air about her, like she could be fifty or sixty, but she still looked the same as she did when she was sixteen; the Mistralian woman looked like that, ageless.
Maybe Yang would turn out the same way, just like her mom.
The Mistralian woman, dark-haired and wearing a blue uniform, with a sword at her hip, strode forwards … towards Pyrrha, obviously.
"Welcome!" she declared. "Welcome to all the heroes of Mistral! How honoured we are to have this opportunity to fight by your sides."
Pyrrha gave some soft reply, so soft that Ruby couldn't work out exactly what it was she'd said.
The Mistralian woman — was this Polemarch Yeoh? Ruby hadn't seen any pictures of her — hadn't been speaking quietly before, but now, she raised her voice even louder. "Great ones in Mistral now asleep, or huddled gawping round a TV set, will think themselves accursed they were not here to fight with us this night—"
Ruby turned away. She wasn't interested, and there were more important things to do. "Come on," she said to the others. "We should get moving."
"Yeah, we should," Yang said, sounding like she was almost but not quite sighing about the fact.
There was no guide waiting for them, no Valish officer or soldier come to lead them up to the front line, but Ruby and the others could roughly work out where the line was; all they had to do was head due eastwards after all, and if they really needed to, they could look at a map on their scrolls. So, guide or not, they set off, walking across the field they had just landed in in the direction of the Valish position.
Looking around, Ruby saw some other Beacon teams, like CFVY, doing the same, heading off towards the Valish line and the battle along with it. They didn't come any closer to Team YRRN, nor did YRRN seek to get any closer to them, or any other team for that matter. They weren't going anywhere; they just all happened to be going to around about the same place.
"Are you…?" Yang began, then let her words trail off. She was quiet for a second or two as the four of them trudged further away from the Mistralian camp. Ren drifted a little away from the others, casting significant glances towards Nora as he did so; Nora didn't look inclined to go anywhere.
Yang spoke again, "Ruby … what’s going on?”
Ruby huffed. “I don’t have time to expl—”
“Talk fast and summarise,” Yang said. “Because I can’t just ignore—”
“Ruby’s right,” Ren said. “While I understand your concern, Yang, this is hardly the time. We need to keep moving.”
Yang looked over Ruby’s head — at Ren, Ruby guessed, and was able to confirm it by looking around herself.
When she looked back at Yang, she saw that her eyes had turned slightly red.
Nevertheless, when Ruby looked at Ren again, she saw him standing his ground, unfazed by her display of anger.
Because he knows he’s right. Like I know, even though no one else agrees.
Yang frowned but said, “Okay. You’re right.” She turned away and strode in the direction of the Valish line, leaving everyone else running to catch up with her. “But we have to talk about this at some point because…” She paused for a moment. “I like the fact that we get the chance to fight together — really, I do; I wasn’t lying about that — it’s just … you can’t expect me to just see you acting like you have been, forgetting your weapon, everything else, and then not expect me to worry a little bit.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Ruby insisted, albeit in a quiet, almost muttering kind of way..
“Forgive me for being sceptical about that,” Yang replied, muttering a bit herself.
“Don’t be too hard on her, Yang; come on,” Nora said, giving Ruby a pat on the back so firm that Ruby stumbled forwards and nearly fell over flat on her face on the ground. “Sometimes, things just don’t work out, even if you want them to. And sometimes, people don’t want them to work out.” She paused. “I’m talking about them, by the way, not you, Ruby. Sometimes … sometimes, people are just jerks.”
“Yeah, I know,” Yang replied. “But they didn’t—”
“And sometimes, people have different faces,” Nora went on. “Sometimes, the most respectable and respected, the most admired, the most popular guy, the ‘pillar of the community’ will turn out to be the most despicable, the most self-centred, the most … sometimes … sometimes, it takes a while to see the real … them, I guess. Sometimes, people put on a show for the people they want to like them and show who they really are to people that don’t matter. Sometimes, everyone puts on a show for one another except for the one person they’ve marked out as deserving everything that happens to them. I guess that might not all make a ton of sense, but what I’m trying to say is that, just because people seem nice doesn’t mean they always are, and it can sometimes take a while to work out who they really are underneath.”
“It’s not that,” Ruby said. She paused for a second. “I mean, I guess it kind of is like that, but not as bad. Not as … hard. They’re not … they’re not bad people,” and although I didn’t like the way they treated me, they didn’t mean anything bad by it. They just saw me as one of those who needed to be protected, not one of the protectors. “They’re not bad people,” she repeated. “They’re just not for me, and I’m … not for them. We’re too different. I don’t blame them, but I realise now that it isn’t gonna work. It’s nobody’s fault, but … that’s just how it is.”
“That sounds rather certain,” Ren murmured.
“It is,” Ruby replied. “Trust me, I’ve given it long enough. I’m sure. This is just the way it is. It’s not working out, and it isn’t going to.”
“So … what are you saying?” Yang asked quietly, almost whispering the question. “If it isn’t working out with Team Sapphire, then … what?”
“You could come and join us full time?” Nora suggested. “I mean there’s a spot open.”
“Yeah,” Ruby said, a little touch of a laugh entering her voice. That … that would be something, wouldn’t it? Stay at Beacon after all, just change teams.
She could do it. She could do it very easily; it wasn’t even as if she’d told anyone that she was leaving school. The only people that she’d told about it were Leaf and Juturna, Amber and Dove, and two of them weren’t in any position to be asked about it, and the other two … still weren’t in any position to be asked about it, albeit for more benign reasons. The point was that, if Ruby decided, there and then, to change her mind, to stay at Beacon, to join Team YRRN, let Penny join a team with Sunset, Jaune, and Pyrrha, then … who would know? Who was to stop her?
And if I do that, then Yang might get to join Professor Ozpin’s group as well.
And Ren and Nora. Although I’m not sure if they’d want that.
But it would make Professor Goodwitch very happy, anyway.
Would it make me happy?
Ruby glanced at Yang. It was Yang, it was her sister, it was the person who had always been there for her…
Been there for her and protected her. Which was kind of the problem, wasn’t it? Ruby had had quite enough protection.
But it was still Yang. And Ruby had gotten over the feeling of taint that had started to pervade the whole of Beacon after finding out what Sunset had done; she no longer felt so itchy, so dirty, so eager to begone as she had done. Sleep had done wonders that way, or at least, sleep had helped her to … come to a new understanding. She could stay at Beacon, if she wanted to; even if Sunset did likewise, Ruby wouldn’t be physically revolted by her presence, wouldn’t be incapable of sharing a room with her. Sunset would not be torture to her, instead … she would be like a fly, a buzzing fly, a little irritating to have around, but not really important. Ruby could put up with Sunset’s presence, just so long as she didn’t have to put up with being on the same team as her — still less led by her. She could manage, if she wanted to.
But did she want to? That was the question, wasn’t it?
Did she want to stay here?
Did she want to stay at Beacon?
Why? Stay at Beacon for what? What would she get out of it, other than the pleasure of Yang's company or the chance to get to know Ren and Nora a little better?
Three more years with a different team, with Yang.
With my big sister. Hmm.
Three more years with a team, instead of being on my own.
I can handle myself … probably.
Against a lot of things, definitely.
I can do this. The only question is whether I really want to.
Or whether I want to spend more time with Yang and her friends.
And whether I want to uphold the principle of the system or make it work for me.
Why shouldn't I do what I want? Everyone else does.
Leaf and Juturna had both told her to go for it, in their own ways; so, too, in his own way, had Turnus. Nobody had suggested that she was wrong, nobody had given her a good reason to stay, and though Ruby herself could think of a couple, they were kind of … abstract, was that the word? They weren't about to set her heart on fire.
Leaf had told her, and Ruby thought that she was probably right about this, that there were times when you needed to make a big leap to change your life.
Changing teams just wasn't it.
It might have been fun, it might have been better if things had been that way, it might have been … but it wasn't. And it wasn't to be.
She wanted to protect people. She had always wanted to protect people. Saving people, hunting things, the family business, that had always been her heart’s desire. Why should she put that on hold just to sit in a classroom, when she didn’t have to?
"Maybe," Ruby lied, because she didn't want to have that conversation right now. "I'll think about it."
She would tell Yang the truth … later. Maybe when she told Dad. Best to get it done all at once than have to keep talking about it to different people.
And all of that after she'd spoken to Iona, because if Iona said no, if she wasn't willing to help Ruby cheat the system, if she wanted a graduated and licensed huntress on her side — and that was absolutely her right; Ruby wouldn't blame her at all if she said 'how can I trust someone who can't even commit to four years at school to commit to me?' — then Ruby wouldn't have much choice but to take up that offer on Team YRRN, would she?
It might not be the best thing for her — it wouldn't be — but at least it would be something. It would be better than burning her bridges now, leaping off, and then finding out that there was nothing waiting to catch her underneath.
Since Amber and Dove were … hardly going to be asked about this if anyone saw them again, then she might as well keep this all to herself until the arrangements had been made. Or at least until she found out for sure that the arrangements were possible.
All of this was in the future anyway; it didn't matter for tonight. Tonight, even if it was for just one night only, she was a part of Team YRRN, so tonight, that was all that mattered.
They walked on, through the dark and the open fields, past the odd standing tree and the occasional cottage, past an abandoned old manor house in the distance with an overgrown garden and vines climbing up the walls. They walked on, heading east, knowing that they would have to hit the Green Line soon, at some point, since they could hardly miss it except by turning north to Beacon. They walked past standing stones — or stones that had stood once but had now toppled down onto the ground — past rings of mushrooms glowing with an eerie pale blue light, past silent graveyards where the moss climbed over the half-forgotten monuments.
They walked through the night where the foxes shrieked, where the owls called out into the dark, where the grass trembled and the hedgerows shook with the approach of unseen creatures. The night that belonged to nature and where the huntsmen and huntresses who trudged towards and in search of the Valish line were the intruders.
They walked and walked, and gradually, eventually, they came upon the Valish line.
They came to it in stages, the signs of the Valish presence multiplying as they got closer and closer. First, they came to the artillery, to a quartet of guns with slender barrels, with two metal legs spread out on either side of the wheels. The barrels of the guns were pointed up and eastward, to fire over the heads of the soldiers who were presumably further forwards. A few men and women, no more than four, stood by or sat at each gun, and they all seemed to be staring at Team YRRN.
In the darkness, their eyes seemed to gleam with suspicion.
We are sure the Equestrian monster is dead, right?
"They're not gonna try and kill us, are they?" Nora whispered.
Yang laughed, only a little nervously. "Hey, guys. Is this the way to the front line?"
None of the soldiers in Valish green said anything, but one of them pointed wordlessly in the direction in which Team YRRN had been going already.
"Right," Yang said. "Thanks."
She looked at the others and winced as she led them on, past the guns — Ruby thought that she could see a few more guns, still clumped in fours or maybe sixes — further away, half hidden in the darkness of the night — and further on towards the line itself.
"They were a cheerful bunch," Nora muttered.
"They're probably out of sorts," Ren replied. "It's been a … long night for them."
"It's been a long night for us too," Nora said. "We've been fighting at the arena and down at the school docking pads; what have they been doing all night?"
"Getting orders to start fighting the Atlesians?" Yang suggested.
"It's a good thing they didn't obey those orders," Ren murmured. "But it would be understandable if they've been left confused, on edge, suspicious."
"What have they got to be suspicious of us for?" Nora asked. "Haven't they seen us on TV?"
"All I'm saying is," said Ren, "maybe cut them a little slack."
In front of the guns, they found the tanks, that seemed actually more numerous than the artillery, drawn up in a line behind the line, guns pointed out over the heads of the infantry towards the hordes of grimm that waited beyond. The tanks were pretty old; the company that had designed and built them — Valish Leland — didn't exist anymore; it had … Ruby couldn't actually remember what had happened to it, but they'd made Dad's first car, not the one he had now, one he got when he first graduated, and he didn't have a single good word to say about it in any of his stories, so maybe people just stopped buying their product because they sucked.
Anyway, the tanks were older than Dad's first car, and older than Dad himself in design, if not in manufacture. It was a little weird to think of things that were older than her father being used in battle, but then, people her father's age or older were actually fighting in battle, so why not the equipment too? And, like the old Mistralian battleship that they'd landed beneath, the fact that they were old and maybe not the best at what they were meant to do didn't detract in Ruby's eyes from the engineering accomplishment of them. Just getting things that were that big and that heavy, covered with so much solid metal plate, to move itself, to move its turret, that was impressive, leaving everything else aside.
Most of the tanks, from what Ruby could see, were 'Cataphracts,' with a short-barrelled howitzer emerging out of the squat turrets, but even in the moonlight, Ruby could also see a few 'Archer' variants with a longer, higher velocity gun for dealing with large or heavily armoured targets. Most of the tanks, of whichever type, were facing outwards, with their fronts to the grimm, but a few had turned sideways, with their turrets rotated so as to still point outwards.
Ruby could not imagine why they had done that unless it was to look cool.
"That," Nora said, as she, too, took in the tanks with their turrets and their hull-mounted weapons and their side sponsons and the machine gun near the hatch on top of the turret, "is a lot of guns."
Ruby nodded. "The idea was to cover as many different angles as possible so that the grimm couldn't get into its blindspots. Because it wouldn't have any," she added, in case that wasn't clear.
"What about the back?" asked Ren.
Ruby hesitated. "The back … yeah, it still has one blind spot. The back is where the engine is."
"So, are they any good or what?" Nora asked.
"Well," Ruby said, "the only time they've ever really been used was around Mountain Glenn, and that…" She didn't go on. She didn't need to go on. Everyone knew what had happened around Mountain Glenn. As the city grew, the Council had assigned soldiers to join the huntsmen who had protected the initial fledgling colony, and tanks like these had been part of the aggressive defence that had sought to keep the grimm away by hitting them hard before they could draw near to the city. It hadn't worked, and the Valish units assigned to undertake it had been wiped out, never to be re-established.
And the city had fallen anyway, so it hadn't even been for anything.
Tanks had not saved Mountain Glenn … the next uncomfortable thought was that no one should expect them to save Vale either.
But Vale isn't Mountain Glenn; we've got the Atlesians helping us, and the Mistralians. And we're here too. Tanks might not save Vale, but we will.
"That's reassuring," Nora muttered.
"They might have blind spots at the back, and the armour might not be able to withstand all grimm claws," Ruby admitted, "but the guns still work fine, and so as long as they stay behind the line, then it should all be okay."
It wasn't just tanks parked behind the line; there were armoured cars and some armoured transports as well, long-bodied vehicles with small turrets and small guns, which — along with some unarmed and unarmoured trucks — must have belonged to the infantry. The crew … Ruby and the others couldn't see the crew of any of these vehicles; no one was sticking their heads up out of the turrets; nobody was standing outside the tank or the transport; everyone was buttoned up inside.
Or else there was no one inside, and the tanks were just empty, sitting there like so many sculptures or statues or whatever. But that couldn't be right. Where would everyone have gone? They wouldn't just walk off and abandon their vehicles, and if they had, then Team YRRN and the other students would have met them coming the other way. No, they were in; they were just being very quiet.
At least, Ruby hoped they were. She would have rapped on the armour — or asked Yang or Nora to do it; they'd make more noise than her — to see if there was a response, but if there were people inside, then she didn't want to disturb them; they were probably concentrating.
So they kept on walking, past the tanks, at which point, it was only a short distance to the infantry and the front line itself, their destination reached at last.
The infantry were dressed in green jackets and black trousers, with black helmets and green cockades. They weren't wearing any body armour. It was hard to tell who was supposed to be in charge, as the troops were slightly unevenly spread out across the line. In some places, they stood upon incomplete sections of wall, looking out over the parapet, while in other places, the gaps between the wall, they had strung barbed wire between the walls and made a barricade out of sandbags, on which soldiers rested their rifles. There were some old-looking machine guns, so old that some of them were on wheels or big clunky tripods, others more modern-looking, lighter and leaner. The line was uneven, and not everyone was standing or kneeling at the sandbags; some people were standing just behind the line, casting anxious glances outwards towards the grimm or envious glances back towards Vale.
One of them, a sergeant with three stripes on his arms, was the first to notice them. He was a man about Dad's age, maybe a couple of years younger, with short, curly red-brown hair and a sharp nose. He had a bulky, square Valish rifle slung over his shoulder, and his hands thrust under his armpits, although Ruby didn't think it was that cold.
He said, "Alright, what are you—?" He paused. "I know you, blondie, you're the one who was on the telly today, wasn't you?"
Yang chuckled. "Yeah, that's me. Yang Xiao Long, of Team Iron."
"Name's Robbins. Sergeant Robbins, Patch Light Infantry. You was robbed, let me tell you. Daylight robbery. You 'ad that in the bag."
"Eh," Yang shrugged. "You win some, you lose some."
"It was a disappointment to my little 'uns," Sergeant Robbins went on. "I've been stuck 'ere instead of 'ome with them, but they called me up to tell me so. They thought you were smashing."
"I'm happy to hear that and sorry to have disappointed them," Yang said. "But, uh, sergeant—"
"So what's a bigshot like you doing out 'ere, anyway?" Sergeant Robbins went on, without waiting for Yang to finish.
"We're here to fight the grimm," Ruby said.
"Didn't anyone tell you we were coming?" asked Nora.
"Told?" Sergeant Robbins cried. "We've been told a lot of things tonight. First, General Blackthorn gets on the 'orn to all units, telling us to fight the Atlesians; then Councillor Emerald gets on the blower and says that we're not to fight the Atlesians, and by the way, General Blackthorn's been committed on account of being as mad as a box of hoppin’ frogs, thank you very much. And everyone's to go back to barracks. Except us, probably, we're to stay 'ere. Then we hear from Colonel Sky Beak if you please of the La-Di-Da Dragoons, and he says that we're definitely to stay 'ere and prepare to receive attack, and Vale's counting on us, but no word of reinforcements, no, nor any sign of relief. It's enough to make your 'ead spin, let alone wonder if you're coming or going. I don't know who we're supposed to be listening to."
"Anyone but General Blackthorn," Yang said.
"I get that it must be confusing," Ruby added. "It would probably confuse me too, but that doesn't matter now. What matters is that…” She paused, wondering if she ought to keep going. It was clear to her just from what the sergeant had said, from the silence of the tanks, from the sullen looks in the eyes of the Valish soldiers that verged upon hostility, that morale around here wasn’t great. Understandable, but not a good thing, considering. These people, these soldiers, could do with something to inspire them.
But could she do that? It had been shown that she … she didn’t really get other people. Things that seemed right to her, obviously right, didn’t seem that way to everyone else. It might be the same here; her words might fall on deaf ears, or do more harm than good.
But all the same, despite the risk, she had to try. She couldn’t just say nothing.
She would just have to keep it as simple as possible.
“I know you must be scared,” she said. She wasn’t scared, but she guessed that everyone else was. “I know that it’s pretty scary out there. But isn’t Vale your home? The sergeant’s children live there; what about the rest of you, don’t you families? If we don’t stop the grimm here, then who’s going to protect them? You have to fight, we all have to fight, because Vale really is counting on you, just like Colonel Sky Beak said. And so is everyone who lives in it. So is everyone you care about, everyone you know and love,” she added, because most people didn’t care about people they didn’t know, did they? “They’re all depending on you to protect them from the grimm, so just think about them and let the thought of them give you courage. Fight for everyone you love, and you’ll see them again, safe and sound!”
There wasn’t much of a response. Ruby didn’t need to get a cheer or anything, but this dead silence wasn’t encouraging.
Sergeant Robbins didn't reply for a couple of seconds, before he said, "Well, if you're here to help, then welcome to our 'umble battle line. Make room for the 'eroes, fellas; they've come to take the loads off our backs."
"We're here to help," Ren said calmly.
As they moved to take their places on the firing line, Ruby felt a hand — Yang’s hand — upon her shoulder.
“Not bad,” Yang said. “But you missed the part where you explain how we’re going to hold this line.”
Ruby looked up at her. “Is that an important part?”
“Professor Goodwitch would say they’re all important,” Yang replied.
“So how are we going to hold this line?” asked Nora quietly. “Because I kinda wouldn’t mind knowing that myself.”
There was a pause in which nobody, not even Ruby, said anything.
By shooting everything that comes near, and then hitting everything that comes closer?
Is that it, or does it need to be more specific?
Ruby glanced down the line; not too far away, she could see Team CFVY, and other teams beyond them, joining the Valish line; she wondered if they were having similar conversations to the one they had just concluded with the soldiers where they were.
She could imagine how things could have gotten confusing for them, but hopefully, now they would find things a lot simpler.
Now that the grimm were about to attack.
And they were about to attack. Ruby could tell. Now that they had finally reached the Valish line, the grimm were plain to see, for all the distance between them, for all that it was dark and the grimm were usually harder to see in the darkness. Maybe it was the moonlight, because the moon was bright tonight; or maybe it was the fact that there were so many grimm out there, and they had no interest in hiding. They didn’t want to blend in with the darkness of the night; they wanted to be seen. Just like they wanted to be heard.
There were so many of them. So, so many, spread out across … Ruby could look from one side to the other, and she couldn’t see where the grimm started or where they ended, and she certainly couldn’t see where they ended at the back. There were so many of them they made the horde that had pursued them down the tunnel from Mountain Glenn seem like just a pack of beowolves by comparison.
There were so many of them, and they were making so much noise too. They were all roaring, all howling, all shouting to the broken moon like they wanted to break it further with the noise they were making, like they were going to charge the night sky, and not the Valish line. The goliaths that rose above the other grimm like the tallest trees in the forest trumpeted to the stars. The beowolves in the front ranks beat their chests and bared their teeth.
There were a lot of grimm. Had there been this many grimm at Ozpin’s Stand after Mountain Glenn fell? Or was Ruby face to face with even more grimm than even her parents and Uncle Qrow had been up against when they made their names?
Ruby closed her eyes and bowed her head for a moment.
Let me be brave.
Let me be as brave as you.
She looked up and opened her eyes again. “What’s the plan?”
“Who are you asking?” demanded Sergeant Robbins, his voice shaking. “You’re the one what goes to school for this; you tell me. What are we supposed to do against … against all that lot, eh?”
Ruby pulled Crescent Rose out from behind her, spinning the weapon in her hand as it unfolded its thorns, slamming the scythe point down hard into the earth on the other side of the sandbags. “The plan…” she began, then trailed off, because she still wasn’t sure that ‘shoot all of them, and then engage in close combat’ was enough of a plan to count.
Unfortunately, faced with the sheer numbers of the grimm in front of them — and what was honestly not the best defensive position to try and defend, it had to be said — there weren’t any better plans coming to mind.
“The plan,” Yang said. “The plan is that we try and take out as many of them as we can, with our fire, before they reach us. If it looks like they’re actually going to reach our line, then we’ll fall back towards the Mistralian camp — and while we’re on the subject, send a … who's actually in charge here?”
Ruby couldn’t help but notice that Yang’s plan wasn’t much more complicated than the best she’d been able to come up with.
That was reassuring to her on one level, even as it was maybe a little concerning on another.
“Major Wills has been the commanding officer since Colonel Blackthorn got promoted up to General Blackthorn,” Sergeant Robbins said. “But I’ve not heard much out of him lately.”
“Okay, then send someone back to the Mistralians and tell them we could really use their help up here right now,” Yang said.
“We’re going to retreat?” Ruby asked. Not hostilely, just to make sure, to clarify for her own benefit.
“If we have to, yes,” Yang said. “There aren’t enough of us to go head to head with them in close combat; there are too many, and we’re spread too thin; we’d be encircled. We shoot at them, and if they get too close, we open up more space so we can keep shooting. We fight and retreat.”
“What about when there’s no more room to retreat?” Ruby asked. “What about when we reach the wall?”
“Then we’ll stand on the wall!” Yang snapped, a whiff of smoke rising from her hair. “I’m trying my best here, Ruby.”
Ruby swallowed. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” Yang said quickly. “I know, it’s just…” She hesitated. “We can’t just stand here until we get overrun; what good will that do?” She grinned. “I didn’t lead you here for a last stand.”
“And I didn’t come here to make one,” Ruby said softly.
She looked down the scope of Crescent Rose; the grimm immediately grew larger in her sight; she could make them out so much better now; they were individual grimm and not just a black mass distinguished by the occasional really big grimm that stuck out above the others. She could see the smaller, immature beowolves in front — typical horde behaviour; send in the cannon fodder first to spare the older, larger grimm the initial fire from the defenders — and she could see the creeps stalking in between their legs; she could see the ursai behind; she could see the really big grimm, the goliaths and the cyclopes; she even thought that she could see a few beringels, as big as some ursai, although it was hard to say for sure because they were keeping themselves to the middle of the horde, if they were here. So many different grimm — was that a stormvermin? She thought it was; again, it was down low, moving around the edges of the beowolves. So many different kinds of grimm, big and small.
“Send the runner!” Yang ordered.
“R-right,” Sergeant Robbins said. “Forshie, run back to the Mistralians and tell ‘em … tell ‘em we could use some ‘elp, on the double, yeah.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice, Sarge,” one of the other soldiers said before she scrambled away and began to run off, past the tanks, into the night in the direction of the Mistralian camp.
Ruby hoped that she found it okay. It was hard to look at all these grimm, especially up close through the scope like she was looking at them, and not think that they could use all the help they could get.
"Hey, Ruby," Nora said. "Do you think if you were to shoot one of those guys, it would shut them up for a second?"
The grimm fell silent. Even the flying grimm, the nevermores and the griffons and the teryxes hovering over the heads of the horde — and they were worrying Ruby a little bit, because it wasn't as though they had any airships to take them on — stopped shrieking. The whole horde, or at least the part of it facing them, went quiet.
As quiet as death.
Nora blinked. "Huh. Who knew we just needed to say something?"
A single immense roar ripped from the grimm's collective throat; before, they had all roared separately, like a disorganised mob all wanting something different, all trying to make themselves heard. Now, they roared like a crowd in the Amity Colosseum, like all the Mistralian fans joining together to sing about how it was coming home.
Now, it was the grimm's turn to roar with one voice, a voice like the storm, a voice like a hurricane, a single voice crying out that tonight, they would be the ones bringing it home.
And as they roared, they charged.
The beowolves and ursai, who had been standing on their hind legs, dropped onto all fours as they surged forward, the smaller, wirier beowolves swiftly outpacing the lumbering ursai and the stumpy creeps; only the scurrying stormvermin could keep up with them, and Ruby wasn't sure if they were trying to. Goliaths made the earth tremble as they jogged forwards as part of the packed mass; the tails of the deathstalkers with their golden stingers waved above the heads of the other grimm like battle banners. Nevermores and griffons sliced through the air, wings beating furiously up and down.
Ruby started firing. She might be the only one who could fire right now, but she didn't see the point in waiting. The grimm were going to come closer, their black stain devouring the landscape, covering up the grass like they were corrupting it, but that was no reason to let them keep coming on undeterred, was it? Especially if Yang didn't want to let them get too close. She squeezed the trigger and was rewarded with a beowolf's head exploding. Sure, it was only a young one, but every dead grimm was a good grimm, right?
If that … Ruby wasn't sure if that made sense.
Never mind. The point was killing grimm was good. She killed another one with another headshot, then a third, then a fourth. She fired and fired, and with every well-aimed and carefully placed shot, another juvenile beowolf lost both head and life, its trunk collapsing to the ground to begin turning to ashes as the rest of the horde trampled it underfoot.
Ruby squeezed the trigger. Crescent Rose clicked. She was out of bullets. Ruby tore her eye away from the scope and reached for the pouches on her belt for another magazine; she had some loose bullets on her belt as well, heavy armour piercing ones, but she was going to save those either until she really needed them or she had no other ammunition left. Magazines were easier and faster to load anyway.
She pulled out the magazine and slammed it into the mag well of Crescent Rose, yanking back hard upon the bolt to chamber her first round.
"Lucky you, having spares," Nora muttered as she fired a grenade from Magnhild. The missile left a pink trail through the night air as it rose, and then fell … fell short, exploding just ahead of the charging grimm. Nora cursed. "I don't have that many of these."
Ruby glanced at her. "You mean it's just those?"
"These grenades are pretty big to carry around," Nora replied apologetically. "And the dust isn't cheap either."
Nevertheless, she fired again, and this time, her grenade did not fall short; the grimm had kept on rushing forward, and so Nora managed to put a grenade behind their front line, exploding in a shower of pink in amongst the older grimm that hung back to let the younger and less experienced bear the brunt of the fire.
That hadn't worked out for them this time, if the grenade had landed where Ruby thought it had.
"Nice work!" Yang cried.
"Just do your best with what you have," Ruby said. "That's all we can do." She looked through the scope again and spotted an ursa moving towards the front of the horde. Like the beowolves, it looked young — it had no armour plates and hardly anything in the way of bone spurs — but it was still bigger and more dangerous than the beowolves. Ruby fired. Her first shot hit in the head but didn't penetrate the skull; the ursa faltered, shaking its head from side to side.
There was a crack in its bleached bone.
Ruby took careful aim, waiting for the ursa to start running again.
The grimm looked straight ahead as it bounded forwards once more.
Ruby fired, and her second shot shattered the bone mask and the ursa's head along with it. The body stumbled forwards to the ground and was covered up beneath the grimm tide like rocks on the beach being covered up by the rising water.
"Might be nice if some of those cannons would start firing right about now," Nora said.
There was a boom like thunder from behind them, and a shell arced over their heads to burst in a flash amongst the grimm.
Nora gasped. "I've got a magic voice!"
Ruby grinned. "Maybe you should ask for them to fire faster," she suggested as she shot another beowolf dead, then shot a stormvermin through the stomach for a bit of variety. It was true that the Valish artillery was beginning to fire, shells passing overhead, but it seemed not enough to her; they were firing too slowly, there were too big gaps between the shells, and they were firing almost randomly, not together, just every gun firing for itself when it could. What were they aiming at? The grimm, obviously, but which part of the horde? The front, the middle, the back? Did it matter? Maybe not, if killing grimm was all that mattered, and it was true that Nora had managed to hit the ones in the middle herself, but … it just seemed a little disorganised.
The fact that one shell actually landed behind them, showering Ruby's hair and cape with dirt as it exploded in a fountain of earth, sending a wave of heat that passed over Ruby and made her neck tingle, didn't make them seem any less disorganised.
Then the tanks started to fire, first one, then another, then the whole line of them opening up, guns roaring so loudly that Ruby half wanted to let go of Crescent Rose and cover her ears. She didn't, she kept on shooting until she'd exhausted another magazine, then reloaded, then started shooting again, but as the shells of the tanks shrieked overhead, she couldn't help but wonder if she'd be able to hear okay after this.
Hopefully, her aura would repair her eardrums.
Yang shouted something, but Ruby didn't catch a word of it; she couldn't have even begun to understand what her sister was trying to say. The tanks behind had muffled all other sounds.
But though shells from tanks and cannons burst amongst them, the grimm kept on charging. They weren't thinning their numbers fast enough, not even though other huntsmen besides Ruby and Nora were firing too; Ruby could glance down the line and see Coco from Team CFVY firing her rotary machine gun, and more fire coming from other teams that were too far away for her to make out. To the left, it looked like the Atlesians were supporting the Valish flank, missiles raining down from one of their cruisers onto grimm that were headed towards the Valish, not the Atlesian line.
It wasn't enough. There were still immature beowolves at the front, all black and little bone; they hadn't even winnowed them away yet.
And the flying grimm descended on them. Coco Adel raised her rotary machine gun and tore one nevermore apart with a stream of deadly fire, but other grimm, the nevermores and the griffons and the big teryxes that were supposed to be rare but didn't look it right now, they all dropped out of the sky down onto the Valish and the huntsmen.
Some of them fell upon the troops themselves, ignoring the panicked rifle fire of the Valish soldiers as nevermores scooped up one or two men — or even whole handfuls for the biggest, oldest nevermores — picking up the screaming, writhing, wriggling men and carrying them off away into the night.
Some of them ignored the soldiers and dived down on the tanks behind the line. Ruby raised her eyes from her scope and turned to watch as a teryx grabbed an Archer by the long barrel of its gun, physically lifting the tank up off the ground — a soldier emerged out of the turret to fire the machine gun into the grimm's belly, but the teryx didn't seem to feel a thing — and haul it over the Valish line before throwing it through the air to land with a crash and a smash and metal thrown everywhere amongst the charging grimm. It must have crushed some, hurt or killed others with the debris that flew in all directions, but the remaining grimm didn't seem to care as they swarmed over the wreckage.
Ruby was glad that they covered the tank from view; she didn't really want to see what they did next.
She found herself hoping that the crew had died in the drop.
Few grimm were large enough to do what the teryx had done, but a nevermore was able to flip a Cataphract up onto its back like a turtle, treads spinning futilely in the air as the crew scrambled out the hull hatch. Two griffons landed on the top of another tank and started trying to claw their way through the turret.
Yang leapt to the tank's defence, bellowing furiously as she ran across the grass, throwing punches at the air and firing her Ember Celica in the process, shot after shot flying from her gauntlets to strike one of the griffons in the flank. The grimm turned, shrieking, only for Yang to leap off the ground onto the hull of the tank and punch it square in the face. The griffon's head was snapped sideways as Yang shot the other with her free hand. Ren was firing now, firing at the two griffons, his Stormflowers crackling as the barrels blazed green. The first griffon, the one who'd got punched, lunged at Yang, beak open, but Yang swayed aside, somehow managing not to fall off the tank as she did so, and grabbed it with both hands by the neck as it beak closed on the air.
Now, Yang leapt off the tank, slamming the griffon down head first onto the ground and punching it in the throat with a blast from Ember Celica for good measure.
The second griffon leapt on top of her as the first one died, driving Yang down to the ground, face down. Ren ran to her, still firing, jumping onto the griffon's back like it was a horse, slashing at its neck with the blades attached to his guns.
He leapt off again as the griffon fell down dead, collapsing onto its side.
Ren rolled to his feet and offered Yang a hand up.
She didn't take it, but she did say, "Thanks," as she got up.
And some more of the flying grimm ignored the tanks the same way as those that were attacking the tanks had ignored the soldiers, swooping past the armoured vehicles into the night beyond.
The guns, Ruby realised. They're going for the guns.
Sure enough, the fire from the artillery behind began to falter, becoming even more sporadic than it had been before.
Now, Ruby understood why the Atlesians were always banging on about their air power; if the Valish had had airships — or if they hadn't thrown them away at the whim of an Equestrian creature — then none of this would be happening.
And the grimm, the main body of the grimm, all those beowolves and ursai and all the rest, they kept on coming.
Ruby returned her attention to her scope and shot another beowolf down dead. "Come on, fire!" she shouted. "We need to shoot them!"
Some of the soldiers did begin to fire, their boxy rifles with the square barrels barking, bullets flying into the grimm, but the grimm kept coming.
Their red eyes seemed to gleam brighter with anticipation.
"Oh, sod this!" Sergeant Robbins cried, a moaning wail as he threw down his gun and turned away, and ran away, trampling the grass beneath his boots.
"Hey!" Ruby cried. "Come back!”
But he wasn't the only one running; right where they were, it was as if his departure had been the crack that brought down the dam, all of the Valish soldiers retreating, some backing away a few steps, most of them just doing as Sergeant Robbins had done and running off back in the direction of Vale, running from the grimm with their teeth and claws, running from the nevermores who swooped down from above, running from the danger that was storming towards them.
And not just the soldiers near them; Ruby could look up and down the line and see soldiers everywhere, first small groups and then in whole streams, scrambling down off the fragments of wall, throwing their guns away or just abandoning them along with their positions, flooding away from the Green Line in a headlong rush towards the Red.
Ruby … Ruby could understand it. For the Valish Defence Force, tonight had been one shock after another, she supposed. Sergeant Robbins had told them as much, starting with the orders to fight the Atlesians, then the fact that their commander had been taken away in a straitjacket and there was a new commander, shock and surprise and confusion and now … now this. Not to mention the fact that, as a huntress, as someone with aura and training and a custom weapon, you could sometimes forget how scary the grimm were to people who didn't have all those things. What was just a beowolf to be brought down for Ruby was a terrifying monster to Sergeant Robbins, something out of his nightmares.
They were scared, just like Sunset had been scared, just like Amber was scared, and as they were scared, it was hard to blame them.
Didn't mean Ruby had to love it, though.
"Come back!" Ruby shouted. "If you run away, they'll just pursue you! Vale is counting on us! We need to hold them off as long as we can!"
Her words didn't seem to have much, or any, effect. They were too frightened, too confused, too shattered, too broken. They didn't have it in them to stand and fight, only to run. Or to drive away, in some cases, as tanks began to reverse backwards, or slew around and drive off, engines grumbling and sputtering and growling as they made the best speed they could — which wasn't very fast; that would be why some crews abandoned their tanks, leaping out of hatches on the hull and the turret and taking to their heels instead of trusting their tracks. But while they were doing that, some of the soldiers were trusting wheels over feet, hurling themselves into trucks or armoured cars and trying to drive away, with even more soldiers clinging to the outside of the vehicles rather than be left behind.
"What about your families?" Ruby demanded. "Don't you want to protect them?"
Even that failed to move them; it seemed they would rather return to their families than fight for them.
Nevermores swooped down from above on the fleeing soldiers. Ruby shot one, twice, which wasn't enough to kill it but did make it wheel away from its intended victim; other Valish soldiers weren't so lucky, plucked off the ground in the nevermore claws and carried off into the darkness. Trucks were torn into, armoured cars were thrown aside like toys, but it still wasn't enough to make the Valish soldiers fight. They still kept on running.
Fear had undone them all.
"We need to fall back," Yang said. "Nora, you and I will be the rearguard, Ren and Ruby will be behind us and provide covering—"
"No, we can't retreat now," Ruby declared.
"We can't hold this line by ourselves," Yang said. "Without the soldiers—"
"If we retreat now, the grimm will catch the soldiers; they'll be massacred!" Ruby cried. "We have to buy them time."
"Buy them time to run away?" Nora asked incredulously.
"Yes!" Ruby cried. "Because even if they're cowards, we're not, and we have to fight for them regardless."
Yang looked left and right. "Ruby…" She took a deep breath. "They get a one minute head start on us, then we're falling back; steadily, but we're falling back, fighting as we go until we meet up with the Mistralians coming the other way. Understood?"
Ruby nodded. That was fine by her. A minute didn't seem like much, but it was amazing how much ground you could cover in a minute when your adrenaline was pumping, even without a semblance.
Yang nodded too. She pumped both her fists, audibly cocking Ember Celica. "Then let's do this."
They stepped up to the line of sandbags that ran between two sections of the wall.
The grimm charged at them, a black wave topped with bony, red-eyed foam, claws out and teeth bared.
All four members of Team YRRN opened fire. Flames leapt from Ember Celica, Crescent Rose snapped and snarled, Stormflowers crackled, grenades like pink-tailed comets leapt from Magnhild to explode in clouds amongst the grimm.
One pink elephant, two pink elephant…
The grimm fell before them, a crescent of death appearing in the ranks of the hordes as gunfire and explosions swallowed up the grimm in front of them.
Ten pink elephant, eleven pink elephant.
Grimm charged in from the flanks of the crescent, but not flanking them, coming in front, just from the sides a little bit while those that were just rushing straight ahead faltered and slowed down. Ruby and the others switched their focus, Yang and Ruby firing to the right, Nora and Ren to the left.
Twenty-one pink elephant, twenty-two pink elephant.
"I'm out of grenades!" Nora cried, switching Manghild into its hammer mode.
Yang held up an arm, allowing a stream of spent cartridges to flow out of Ember Celica to fall down at her feet. "Ruby, how are you fixed for ammunition?"
Ruby slammed a fresh magazine into Crescent Rose and charged the bolt, chambering a new round. "I'm getting through it," she admitted as she shot another beowolf. They were getting to some of the larger ones now, the older ones with more bone on them; whether that was just where they were or the grimm were being thinned out all over, Ruby couldn't tell.
Not to mention that 'thin' was a very … what was the word, relative, yeah, it was a pretty relative term when it came to these grimm hordes. They might have killed all the little ones, but there were still tons and tons and tons of them behind.
Thirty-five pink elephant, thirty-six pink elephant.
It would be really good if I could use my silver eyes right now.
Then I'd be asleep for the rest of the battle, probably, but I've already slept through the start; what's sleeping through the end?
Thirty-nine pink elephant, forty pink elephant.
A beowolf came at them from behind, snapping and snarling. Yang killed it with a single punch, but it wasn't a good sign.
"We can't stay here; the time we've given them will have to be good enough," she declared. "Everyone back up, now!"
Ruby obeyed. She didn't argue, she didn't question, now wasn't the time for that. They didn't have time for that.
They backed away, slowly at first, as slow as they could without being surrounded anyway, still shooting at the grimm as they backed off — well, three of them shooting at the grimm; Nora was left to wait for them to get closer, even though they didn't actually want that to happen.
The grimm were slowed by the barbed wire; some of them leapt over it or climbed over the sections of wall, but others were mired in the wire or had to spend time tearing it apart, trying to slice the fine wire with their claws.
Or they could just trample over it, like the big ursa major which forced its way to the front, trampling down who knew how many grimm to get there, and proceeded to trample the wire too, crushing it beneath its feet.
It strode over the remains of the wire, and the rest of the grimm followed, knocking down the sandbags, spreading sand across the ground, stamping it into the grass.
Ruby shot the big ursa, then fired again, neither shot seeming to injure the giant grimm. Bone spines as big as Crescent Rose unfurled jutted out of its back, and its paws were about the size of all Yang's hair.
The ursa major strode forwards, and the grimm followed behind it.
Team YRRN backed away, their speed increasing a little.
Ruby ejected her latest spent magazine. She hauled the bolt back, exposing the chamber, and plucked one of the special long silver rounds from out of the bandolier slung across her waist.
She chambered it, snapping the bolt back into place.
She stopped moving, taking careful aim at the ursa major as it advanced, its huge paws swaying from side to side as it strode towards them.
Ruby's finger tightened on the trigger. She fired. The ursa major recoiled, head reeling backwards, its whole body swaying as though it might topple over onto its spiky back.
It didn't. The ursa righted itself, staying upright, rubbing its head with one paw.
Ruby reloaded, chambering a second of her special rounds. This ursa had a tough head; she would have thought one of these armour piercing bullets would be enough for sure.
The ursa roared, mouth opening gaping wide.
Ruby fired again, putting the bullet into the ursa's roaring mouth to blow clean through and out the back of its head. Now, the ursa tumbled backwards, landing on the ground with a crash like a falling tree.
"Nice work, Ruby," Yang said, throwing out shadow punches to fire Ember Celica in a stream of fire out at the grimm.
The grimm flowed around the decaying body of the ursa major, some of them heading straight forwards, others trying to get around and behind Team YRRN. Some eager beowolves darted close indeed, close enough for Nora to catch them with swings of her hammer, or Ruby to get them with her scythe. Others were more circumspect, waiting, enduring the fire from Yang and Ren and Ruby, waiting for the right moment to arrive.
The four of them quickened the pace of their retreat — they had little choice, with the grimm flowing around them — trying to stay not only ahead of their pursuers but also ahead of those seeking to cut them off.
It didn't work. The grimm moved faster than they could retreat, and while they were able to hold them at bay in front of them — at a cost to their diminishing store of ammunition — there was nobody to stop the grimm from flowing around the flanks of Team YRRN and closing the ring of black and bone around them.
There was nowhere they could go without a fight and no direction they could fight without exposing themselves to attack from all other directions.
They stood back to back, shoulder to shoulder, waiting. Yang's fists were raised, Nora's hammer was drawn back, Stormflowers and Crescent Rose were pointed at the enemy. The beowolves, the ursai, the stormvermin gathered around them, bony faces with red marking and gleaming red eyes all turned to them, staring at them. Other grimm moved around them, heading away from Team YRRN, continuing towards the Mistralians, towards Vale. Only some of them stayed, surrounding the four huntsmen.
Ruby wondered what they were waiting for, why they didn't just attack, bury them, get it over with.
Maybe … maybe they knew the first to attack would die and so none of them wanted to be the first to step forwards.
That would be … kind of funny, if it was true.
Funny, but not able to last forever. Already, the grimm were rocking back and forth, back and forth on their legs, tensing themselves, ready to sleep.
A beowolf in front of her coiled back.
A green beam, an immense beam of laser fire burst through the ranks of the grimm, turning whole rows of the monsters, beowolves and ursai and stormvermin, all of them to ashes in an instant. Grimm yelped in surprise, heads turning westwards.
West to where Penny stood, her carbines grouped around her, tips glowing like the embers of a dying fire.
"For the honour of Mistral!" came the cry from out of the dark. "For the pride of Haven!"
"For Mistral!" came the shout torn from dozens of throats as Pyrrha and Jaune and Arslan and all the swords and fists and guns of Mistral charged out of the night and slammed like a closed and armoured fist hard into the masses of the grimm.
Stats
Page generated in 0.105 seconds
Total duration
1,039 users online
2,052,135 hits today, 1,872,792 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
And so the Vale Line Fall, and we see a little more of how fucking disconnect Ruby seems from the rest of the world.
Ruby’s problem is that she puts the Huntress job and the idea of protecting people so above everything else in her worldview, including her own life, that she fails to see how the world doesn’t work that way, and that people wouldn’t want her to die. Ruby wants to protect people, be a protector, but she’s unable to protect herself from her own death wish, and she’s resentful of those that would prefer that she didn’t die chasing a shadow of a mother that abandoned her to a life of a huntress. Ruby wants to be a protector, but she is someone that needs to be protected from herself.
I really think that Lady Nikos could be a real someone to talk to her as she herself lost people to the life of a hunter, but I think the real world may knock onto her before she has the chance to talk.
_APP to the rescue! I hope we may have a badass entry to Sunset like in the OG story, but I’m still anticipating some problems before things get better. The Horde is advancing and it will not stop, and we may have to see what Ruby will do when there’s no good way out of a no-win situation...
This chapter was BRUTAL!!
Ruby still be annoying as fuck with that "holier than thou" attitude she has going on. But I am glad that Yang is noticing that happened between her and her team.
And with Ruby's interaction with Sergeant Hoppins, it's very clear WHY Ozpin didn't choose her to be the leader. I mean seriously, she SAYS that she's not trying to make a last stand but it seems to me that she wanted to.
And I get that she's still upset with Sunset (we all know she is with her delusional ass), but I'm not enjoying her constantly putting Sunset down as a coward, ESPECIALLY someone willing to sacrifice (in my eyes if anyone feels different) others and herself for some twisted sense of duty.
Anyways, enough about Ruby. Sonata is dead now, but she did managed to deal a blow in Vale by damaging the effectiveness of the Valish army, it makes me wonder just how much more that affected the Grimm invasion other than that.
But loved this chapter, as always, and I'm looking forward to the next chapter!
At this point I can only ask, can Ruby's wake up call be that she losses her arm not Yang?
11891277
11891281
Something to consider. A part of Ruby's psychology that hasn't been explored, even during her dream sequence... but which may have briefly poked its head up a little here.
Ruby idolizes her mother and being a huntress to a zealous degree. That to be a huntsman or huntress means being ready and willing to sacrifice your life for others in a heartbeat.
The reason for this is almost certainly because Summer didn't come back one day. That a young Ruby needed her mother to be this perfect hero that didn't let the fact that she had a family at home stop her from giving her life to save other people... because the alternative was that if she didn't die to save other people or trying to achieve some greater good for mankind... then she died for nothing, leaving her family shattered and poor Yang having to try and hold it all together because her father was a broken man. If their suffering couldn't be justified by Summer doing some great good that she died to do...
I think the true lesson of Summer, that Ruby hasn't learned, was that Summer went out alone... and died alone. The lone wolf is often rabid and been abandoned by the pack to die.
Here’s a reason, Ruby: You need a Huntress license to carry a loaded weapon. And your student license, by definition, only works when you’re a registered student.
11891401
Well said! That’s been my impression as well. It was the only way a five year old girl could cope with the loss of her Super-Mom. That Summer was less than perfect. That she couldn’t keep her promise. That her loss was anything but a noble thing.
I mean, I'm glad Ruby's somewhat considering just joining team Iron... even if it's a last resort because...
No, no you can't, Ruby. You need a team. You're an effective sniper and good at long range, but your close quarters skills are lacking. Plus you need someone keeping you from seeking a death wish.
Pyrrha might be able handle herself, or Yang, or Nora (though she'll always have Ren), but you need somebody.