SAPR

by Scipio Smith

The Bandit Path (New)

The Bandit Path

The doors of the Skyray were closed, and since she wasn’t in the cockpit, Pyrrha had little way of knowing how close they were to their destination of the Mistralian camp.

Not that it particularly mattered, she supposed; they would get there, as they said, when they got there.

But in the meantime, there was nothing but the waiting.

And, for at least some of her companions, the brooding.

The diminished and re-sorted Team SAPR — herself, Jaune, and Penny — were not the only occupants in the Skyray; Team ABRN had joined them in the airship. They, too, were diminished in number: Nadir Shiko had been wounded and taken to one of the Atlesian medical frigates to receive treatment. How much that would limit the effectiveness of Team ABRN was … for Arslan to say, not Pyrrha.

In any case, Pyrrha’s attention was more upon her own teammates than on Arslan’s. Jaune was sat down, eyes closed, the back of his head resting against the interior of the airship’s fuselage. She might have thought that he was asleep, if it wasn’t for the way that he was gripping so tightly the red sash that he wore around his waist.

Penny was standing, like Pyrrha, in the middle of the airship; unlike Pyrrha, she wasn’t holding onto any of the ceiling straps, managing to stand straight without the assistance. She wasn’t looking at Pyrrha, or at anyone else for that matter, her head bowed and one hand wrapped around her other wrist while her free hand fussed with her skirt, fingertips brushing against the fabric.

Pyrrha couldn’t pretend that she could not understand the cause of Penny’s anguish — or, if 'anguish' seemed too strong a word, then displeasure to say the least. While for herself, she could understand why Ruby would want to sever ties, and bore her no ill will for the doing so, Penny — and Jaune too, for that matter — were more blameless. And being blameless, was it any wonder that Penny would take it harder than Pyrrha herself? Was it any wonder that she should be subdued?

Pyrrha could wish Ruby luck, accepting that she had been in part the cause of this and hoping that Ruby could find more satisfaction and happiness with Team YRN than she had with them; she stood by her words and deeds, even though she regretted that they had made Ruby so unhappy, that hadn’t been her intent. She could only hope that things worked out better for her hereafter. But for Penny, and for Jaune too, perhaps, it was bound to be different.

I should think myself lucky that they do not blame me for Ruby’s departure, Pyrrha thought. If they did, I would be hard pressed to argue against it.

“Well, you three seem bluer than a nose on midwinter’s night,” Arslan muttered as she held onto one of the straps on the ceiling. “You want to gather round the bonfire with some spiced wine?” She grinned.

Pyrrha glanced at her, her eyebrows rising slightly; neither Jaune nor Penny reacted at all.

Arslan rolled her olive-coloured eyes. “Oh, for gods’ sake,” she said, her voice rising. “This is a fine thing, isn’t it, to go into battle with the Vytal Champion, and she’s so gloomy you’d think we were going to our deaths and not to glory? Cheer up! Or at least … you’re supposed to be setting an example here, in courage and resolve.” Arslan sniffed. “Obviously, I don’t need you to model heroism for me, but Bolin does.”

Bolin’s eyes bulged as he let out a wordless sputtering cough.

“And Reese isn’t even a Mistralian, so she’s got no idea how to behave, and you’re putting all the wrong ideas in her head,” Arslan went on. “So come on, buck up and set an example for my poor teammates.”

“Thanks, Arslan,” Reese muttered. “You’re so considerate.”

Arslan smiled close-mouthed for a second, before she who had just bidden Pyrrha to cheer up relaxed her mouth back into a neutral look that verged upon a scowl. “I could breathe on you, if that would help?”

“No,” Pyrrha murmured. “No, I don’t think it would. Please, Arslan, will you not let this lie?”

“I’m not sure if I should,” Arslan replied. “I wasn’t joking, you know. Not entirely, anyway. You’re the Vytal Champion now, P-money, laurels or no; that confers certain … obligations on you.”

“I can imagine,” Pyrrha sighed. “Are they different to the obligations laid on me as the Champion of Mistral?”

“I don’t know; we never went into battle like this when you were Champion of Mistral,” Arslan said. “And if you can imagine what the obligations are, perhaps you should make an effort to live up to them. Seriously, what are people going to think when we land and you step out of the airship looking like that?” She gestured at Pyrrha, who was left to rather imagine the expression on her face in consequence.

“What would you have me do?” Pyrrha asked. “Bound from the airship with a sunny beam upon my face?”

Arslan snorted. “You don’t have to go that far, but you could at least look confident.”

“You don’t understand,” said Jaune, a little testily, as he opened his eyes.

“Oh, don’t I?” demanded Arslan. “So I didn’t see Ruby getting onto another airship with Team Iron, after she wasn’t up in the arena today to watch Pyrrha in the finals?”

Penny looked up.

“That’s right, I’ve got eyes,” Arslan said. “Now maybe you’re right, I don’t know what’s going on between you and her, but … have you considered that you might be better off? I mean, I never—”

“Ruby’s statue hasn’t been pulled down for you to spit on it,” Pyrrha said, softly but firmly, before Arslan could say ‘I never liked her.’ It might be true — the one time that Pyrrha could recall them interacting they had butted heads — but that didn’t mean it would be helpful to hear it at the moment.

Indeed, true or not, in the circumstances, it could sound awfully opportunistic.

Arslan held up one hand. “Alright, fair enough.” She paused. “But something has happened, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Pyrrha whispered. “Yes, it has.”

“Was it my fault?” asked Penny.

Pyrrha looked around, Arslan almost forgotten as her sudden movement tossed her ponytail across her shoulder. “What? No, Penny, of course it wasn’t your fault.”

Penny looked up at her. “But I was the one who suggested that—”

“I think that this was something a lot longer in the germination than a single conversation tonight,” Pyrrha said gently.

Jaune nodded. “I think Pyrrha’s right,” he said. “If Ruby had … if she hadn’t already accepted it, then she wouldn’t have been so … accepting, if that makes sense. She didn’t argue, she just … I think she’d already made up her mind.”

“Already?” Penny repeated. “When?”

“Only Ruby could tell us that,” Jaune said. “If she wanted to.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Penny murmured. “But all the same, so soon after … it doesn’t make sense.”

“Ruby was on her own, or just with … Amber and Dove,” Jaune said. “Who knows what she decided, before…”

Penny nodded. “I … so you really think that it wasn’t what I said? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

“No,” said Jaune. “No, I don’t think this had anything to do with you. You’ve always been a good friend to Ruby, and I’m sure that she remembers.”

“But she felt the desire to walk her own path,” Pyrrha said. “Just as you did.”

“Oh,” Penny murmured. “Oh, I see. Yes, that … that makes sense.” She glanced away for a second. “In that case, I hope that she finds what she was looking for, even if I’m not a part of it. Do you think that she’ll join Team Iron permanently? I mean, there is a spot open, now that Blake is going to Atlas.”

“Perhaps,” Pyrrha said. “Only Professor Ozpin can say for certain, but it would be perhaps the most elegant solution.”

“Where else would she go?” asked Jaune. “I think that will be it, it’s hard to imagine anything else; I mean, she can’t join Team Bluebell, can she?”

No, Pyrrha thought. No, indeed not. She wondered if Arslan or either of her teammates were listening and perhaps wondered exactly why Ruby couldn’t join Team BLBL, but if they cared at all — and why would they? — they probably thought that there were personal reasons that they, as outsiders, were not privy to. Certainly, no one could think anything suspicious of what the three members of Team SAPR were not saying to one another; they were simply the details that friends would omit, knowing they were commonly understood by all concerned.

At least, Pyrrha hoped that was how it seemed.

“There are other teams,” Penny pointed out. “I think. Aren’t there?”

Jaune paused. “Now that you mention it, I … think so? I can’t remember any of their names, though. Pyrrha?”

“Um…” Pyrrha thought about it for a moment. “Team Draper is a name, I’m sure, led by a Jack Darby.”

“Who?” asked Penny.

“Yes, I think he’s rather quiet,” said Pyrrha.

“Well, anyway, wherever Ruby goes, I’m sure she’ll be happy,” Penny said. “I hope she’ll be happy. And that means that we — that I — don’t have any reason not to be happy either.” She paused. “I don’t want to be like Neon, glaring at Ruby and spitting at her everywhere she goes because she didn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of us. I want to be like Rainbow Dash, and be as happy for Ruby as Rainbow as happy for me.” She smiled. “So, let’s do what Arslan said, because she’s right—”

“Always,” Arslan said.

Penny ignored her. “We need to put a brave face on things for the battle, whether people are looking at us or not.” She reached out and took Pyrrha and Jaune by the shoulders. “I know that things are dangerous right now, and that there are a lot of grimm waiting for us beyond the Green Line. I know that there’s … a lot that could still happen tonight, and a lot that we might have to do. But even if it’s not exactly how we would like, even if all the people that we’d like aren’t here, we can still get through this, together.”

Pyrrha nodded lightly. She took a deep breath, and then another, breathing in and out, her chest rising and falling. Penny was right that Arslan was right — there was no point in a grim look, even if she had grim thoughts — and Penny was right moreover that there was little excuse for grim thoughts either. If Ruby was happier where she was, or where she meant to be, than she was with them, then who was Penny to complain about it?

She really was very mature for her age.

Jaune ran one hand through his long blond hair. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right, Penny, it … there’s no point in … so long as Ruby’s okay, that’s what matters.” He, too, breathed deeply in. “What do you think’s waiting for us out there?”

“A lot of grimm,” Arslan muttered.

Pyrrha let out a little chuckle. “Indeed. More grimm than we have ever seen or, with good fortune, will ever see again.”

“But have they ever seen so many huntsmen and huntresses before, that’s the question?” asked Reese Chloris. “If every huntsman is worth ten, twenty grimm—”

“Thirty, at least,” said Arslan.

“Thirty’s a lot, but okay,” Reese allowed. “My point is, we might actually outnumber them in quality terms.”

“I think even if every one of us was worth fifty of them, they might still outnumber us,” said Jaune.

Reese’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously. There’s … that many of them?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Jaune admitted. “But we are talking about … three hordes or something.”

“'Three'?” Reese repeated, her voice growing higher pitched. “There are three grimm hordes?”

“I told you to put on a brave face, not scare my teammate,” Arslan said acerbically. “Reese. Reese, look at me. Look at me, not those losers.”

Reese’s head moved stiffly, as though her neck had gotten stuck in place like a rusty screw that required great effort to turn.

Arslan leaned towards her. Her cheeks puffed out momentarily as she blew upon Reese’s face.

“Do you want to be a Mistralian?” she asked. “Do you want to stand as tall, be as respected, as Jason or Meleager or Medea of their ancient names?”

Reese nodded.

“Then now is the moment,” Arslan declared. “Now is the time when the eyes of Mistral fall upon us! Yes, the odds may be against us, the situation may be grave or grimmer than the grimm themselves, but if we take heart, if we gird our courage and remember that we are the great hearted Mistralians clad in bronze, taught by Eulalia herself to fight, if we take heart and fight like lions bloody red, then we will be thought of as high as the White Tower itself. All we need do is cut into the heart of this darkness and slay the apex monster who commands them all. Do this, and all of … of Vale will be saved, and we will be honoured throughout Anima as heroes true as any old blood scion. Is that not something grand, something almost beyond hoping, something worth fighting for?”

Reese swallowed. “It is,” she murmured. “It really is.”

“Then let us fight for it!” Arslan cried, letting go of the ceiling strap, wobbling a little in her soft slippers as she took Reese by both hands. “Together, you and I.”

Reese nodded once again, and a little smile began to cross her face. “Together,” she repeated. “You and I.”

“Like lions gold,” Arslan said. She nodded too, and released Reese’s hands to grab at the ceiling strap just in time before she fell over. “And that, Miss Penny, is how you make a speech to put some heart in someone.”

“That was pretty good,” Penny cooed. “Did you learn that in leadership class?”

Bolin snorted.

Arslan ignored him. “I may not be the best leader ever,” she said, “but you don’t need a class to teach you how to be a leader; all you need to do is read the classics. Now, I read them because, as a girl from the lower slopes, I was never going to get anywhere amongst the society of the likes of P-money over there if I couldn’t banter quotes from The Mistraliad around the place, but even apart from that, you can learn a lot from the old stories.”

“Those were the Red Lion’s words to his followers, weren’t they?” Pyrrha asked. “From before the Battle Beneath the Red Sun, when he championed the forces of Mistral against a grimm horde.”

“And why not?” Arslan asked. “I may not be the Champion, but I am the Golden Lion, and that’s not a name I took for nothing.”

“So you’re not really going to try and kill the Apex Alpha?” asked Jaune.

“That depends,” Arslan said. “If the chance arises, I won’t let it slip away.”

Pyrrha supposed that the words Arslan had chosen, the words that Arslan had appropriated, were not inappropriate for the circumstances. Hopefully, this night would end … the Battle Beneath the Red Sun had been won, the Red Lion had slain the Apex Alpha and broken the grimm horde that threatened the city, but the Red Lion himself had died in the process, and many of his companions with him. The red sun had risen and set in a single day upon the Red Lion’s glory. Hopefully, the night would end more fortunately for Arslan and Reese.

Penny frowned. “I didn’t—"

She was interrupted by the sensation of the airship beginning to descend, turning in place as it lowered; one of the side doors opened to reveal the Mistralian camp beneath them, blue tents illuminated by the light of dust lamps burning red like smouldering embers in the darkness, burning away in part the shadow of the great battleship Dingyuan that hung in the sky above the camp. As their Skyray descended, joined by a throng of other Skyrays setting down in the same rough area, the open expanse of grass that lay beyond the tents, Pyrrha could see the Mistralian soldiers in blue uniforms standing in rough groups before their tents, awaiting the arrival of the airships.

They were only new recruits. They could not have been in those blue uniforms very long; this army — if it was large enough to be called an army — did not predate the Breach; it was a hastily created thing, the work of panic and a need to be seen to be doing something. What kind of men and women were they that had joined this army, to what purpose, and had they ever imagined, when they joined, when they put those blue uniforms on, that they would be standing between Vale and more than one horde of grimm?

Did the prospect frighten them?

Pyrrha confessed to herself that it made her somewhat apprehensive; to face a single grimm horde was quite sufficient; to face more than one at once? Who would not feel a slight trembling in their knees at the prospect, however much they might wish to hide it?

As Arslan said, we must seem brave.

And it may be that the Valish Defence Forces will hold their line, and the Mistralians will be left with nothing to do and nothing to boast of come morning.

If not … Mistralian valour, the fabled Mistralian martial prowess, will see us through.

She glanced at Jaune, and Penny, and even at Arslan.

Or we shall see one another through, together. Yes, yes, that is far more likely.

Pyrrha and the others dismounted as soon as the airship was low enough, leaping down alongside the other teams from Beacon and Haven. Polemarch Yeoh was waiting for them once they landed, accompanied by eight lictors, officers of the Council bearing bundles of rods adorned with axes, symbols of the authority — the very power of life and death — conveyed upon the Polemarch. She strode out ahead of her soldiers with her arms outstretched as though she meant to embrace Pyrrha, although she soon realised that, in fact, the Polemarch meant to encompass all the students.

Something for which Pyrrha was quite thankful, even if Polemarch Yeoh did seem to be focussing her attentions upon Pyrrha herself.

“Welcome!” declared Polemarch in a grandiose tone. “Welcome to all the heroes of Mistral! How honoured we are to have this opportunity to fight by your sides!”

“I regret that it must come to such an honour,” Pyrrha replied softly. “I would rather you had the opportunity to depart for home without a shot fired than fight with me, and I am sure that others would say the same.”

I would rather so much more than this. Of all things this, this battle, this peril, this entire night, all that has been and may yet lie before, all is so far from my heart that to say 'I do not wish it' seems insufficient.

I would give my laurels up to Weiss, all my Mistralian triumphs and dedications in the temple unto Arslan, all my vain epithets and enthusiastic onlookers if only some god would descend on a crane and grant me the wish to undo this last day and night.

All that I have won for the chance to be back in the doubles round with Sunset, facing Trixie and Starlight. Let me throw the match and see Trixie crowned as Vytal Champion, or Umber Gorgoneion perhaps, and I will take instead some things truly worth desiring.

I would not encounter Cinder last night, not even to triumph over her. I would have Sunset remain at our side, all truths concealed.

I would go east with Ruby, I would take Amber to Mistral, I would have all things bathed in sunlight.

And I would not have this. I would have anything but this.

“Nay, Lady Pyrrha, nay, this is the work of fate,” said Polemarch Yeoh. “To crown our expedition with the laurels of glory even on this same night when your brow has been crowned with the prize of victory. Glory shall be ours as it has been and even further shall be yours.” She paused a moment, and raised her voice yet higher. “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, upon this Vytal night.”

“If only they were here with us,” Jaune observed, “instead of where they are.”

Polemarch Yeoh looked at him. “It is Jaune Arc, no? I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

“Um, sorry, no,” Jaune agreed, shuffling his feet uncomfortably upon the ground. “No, we haven’t. But yes, yes, I’m Jaune Arc.” He stepped a little closer to Pyrrha, ending up with one arm behind her, as though he sought to hide from Polemarch Yeoh.

Polemarch Yeoh smiled. “Photographs do not do justice to the glossy lushness of your hair,” she observed. “Or to the lustre of your sapphire eyes.” She chuckled. “I think the magazines and newspapers must be editing your pictures to enrage the people that someone plain and unhandsome has won the heart of our Invincible Girl.”

Arslan snorted. Pyrrha rather wished that she wouldn’t, but then she heard Penny giggling ever so slightly as well, though she was at a loss to see what was so funny about it.

Although she had to admit that she had noticed that Jaune didn’t look as cute or handsome in pictures as he did in person, but she had attributed that to the fact that, well, a reproduction could never match the quality of the real thing, nor capture intangibles such as the light in Jaune’s eyes, the brightness of his smile. She had never considered that it might be the result of photo manipulation.

But then, she wasn’t sure how seriously she ought to take Polemarch Yeoh at this present moment.

Jaune’s cheeks flushed a little. “I, um, I don’t know—”

“Do not wish for one man more, nor woman either,” Polemarch Yeoh instructed him. “Not great old Chiron nor Lord Rutulus and his Bloody Fox, nor Lady Terri-Belle of the White Tower and all her Imperial Guard, wish not for any of them. We are enough, have strength enough, valour enough, weapons enough to do great things upon this Vytal night without assistance. We need no help from Vale nor Atlas, nor from Mistralians far off and sound asleep; we are enough, we gallant few. Wish not for aid, to dilute the glory that will be ours come morning; we have no need of it.”

Pyrrha felt foolish for taking so long to realise that Polemarch was not really speaking to her or Jaune or any of the other students but to her soldiers, and upon her soldiers, her words seemed to be working; as she spoke them, the heads of the men and women in blue rose, their backs straightened; some of them even moved into something more like formed up ranks.

If her words give comfort, then who am I to contradict?

“As you say, Polemarch,” she said, bowing her head. “For myself, you do me honour by being honoured by my presence, but I at least am at your service and command.”

“And I, too, ma’am,” Arslan added, bowing also.

“You are the Steward’s voice here, Polemarch, a magistrate of the Mistralian people,” said Violet Valeria. “Give the word.”

“Even I shall obey you,” said Umber Gorgoneion, the sound of whose voice came as surprise to Pyrrha who had expected her to leave with the Beacon students. “On this occasion.”

Polemarch Yeoh clasped her hands behind her back. “Last night, General Ironwood asked me to be ready to move should the Valish abandon their position. He hoped that, if the Valish should falter, I and my forces could occupy the position and secure his flank. Meanwhile, General Blackthorn took great pains to assure me that my forces would not be needed tonight and that we should take our ease upon the ground like so many picnickers. They say now that he is mad, poor fellow, but Colonel Sky Beak has asked me to withdraw behind the Red Line and reinforce his troops there,” she said. “I will not do that, but as I told General Ironwood, we will wait here, as a reserve, in case the Valish should abandon their position in front of us.”

Pyrrha raised her head. “That is all very well, Polemarch, but … could we not move closer to their line in case we are needed? At the moment … are we not far away?”

“And what would moving closer to the Valish line avail us, Lady Pyrrha?” asked Polemarch Yeoh. “If the Valish are taxed and require help, then they know where to find me here at my camp.”

“But what if they ask for help, but then the grimm break through before you get there because you’re too far away?” asked Penny tentatively.

“I told General Ironwood that I would move forward, and I will,” said Polemarch Yeoh. “I did not guarantee him that I would get there before the grimm, and he can have no cause to complain that I did not. Nothing is certain in battle.”

“The Valish might have some cause to complain,” Jaune pointed out, though Polemarch Yeoh did not choose to answer him.

Penny said, “But don’t we stand a better chance trying to hold the grimm back on the defensive line, instead of somewhere behind it in these fields?”

Polemarch glanced at her. “You are … Penny Polendina, isn’t it? An Atlas student?”

“I’m transferring to Beacon next year,” Penny said defensively. “And I’m fighting with Team Sapphire.”

If Polemarch Yeoh found that surprising, she did not let on. “Huntsmen and huntresses,” she went on, “are not a Mistralian creation, and yet, they exemplify a Mistralian way of fighting, a way that is sometimes thought of as the only Mistralian way: to face your enemy head on, not only head on but head high also, to meet them openly with a brave heart and a willingness to endure all perils. That is a Mistralian way, old and honoured and celebrated in our greatest works of poetry. But it is not the only Mistralian way; there is another: the bandit’s way, the brigand’s way, the way of those who survived in the face of great power determined to destroy them. The way in which I have trained my soldiers. I must confess to you all I have my doubts that the Valish can withstand a grimm attack of great magnitude.

“Your Atlesians, Miss Polendina, may hold their ground; in fact, I would wager money that they will, because that is the battle for which they are well-equipped: to meet the grimm muzzle to muzzle, with all their panoply of war bent to support them. I have fought alongside Atlesians, I have been saved by Atlesians, and I have witnessed how they fight, with their airships, their spider droids, their fire support. An impressive sight, a terrible sight when one considers what it would be like to be subjected to such … and all of it necessary to fight as they do. To try and fight as they do, equipped as the Valish are, still less as we are, without airships, without droids and artillery, missiles … I fear it is a folly, and I will not throw my command away attempting to imitate Atlesian tactics without Atlesian tools.

“If the Valish request my help, then I will move forward, as I told General Ironwood that I would, but I will have you huntsmen and huntresses move forwards as a vanguard, in advance of my own troops. If you reach the Valish line and find that it is still holding, then send a swift runner back to me, and I will bring up the main body. If, on the other hand, you reach the Valish line, or reach the Valish forces having been driven from their line, then send a runner back to me and then fall back yourselves, to where I will have set an ambush capable of catching the grimm in a deadly crossfire. That is the battle I would prefer to fight, the bandit battle, a battle that will favour light forces bereft of heavy equipment. Yes, if the Valish were to break before I reached them, that would suit me better.”

“As Jaune said, Polemarch, it might suit the Valish less,” Pyrrha declared, thinking that the Polemarch would answer her even if she would not answer Jaune. “Far be it from me to question the plans of a magistrate of the Council, but the Valish, our own classmates amongst them, will they not be overrun?”

“Not if you run swiftly to their rescue, Lady Pyrrha,” Polemarch Yeoh replied, without any sense of offence in her voice at having been so questioned. “I do not ask you to abandon your fellow students; I do not even say that the Valish must break, only that it would suit me better if they did. And if your classmates are wise, if the Valish officers are wise, they will realise that their position is untenable and begin to retreat in such good order as they can manage.” She paused, looking Pyrrha in the eye. “Are your classmates wise, Lady Pyrrha?”

Pyrrha thought about it. It was … difficult to imagine Ruby retreating, but not impossible, not in the right circumstances. “I hope so,” she said softly.

“If they are not, then you must run swift and run to their rescue,” Polemarch Yeoh declared. “I have no doubt that you gallant young huntsmen and huntresses can make it in time.”

How nice of you, Polemarch, to turn my misgivings back upon my own shoulders, Pyrrha thought.

Pyrrha was silent. Polemarch Yeoh’s plan was not what she had expected to hear from the woman who had been chosen by the Council to command Mistral’s fledgling forces — as Polemarch Yeoh herself had said, it was not the traditional Mistralian way of war — but that did not make it an invalid stratagem. It was not expected, it was not traditionally Mistralian — Polemarch Yeoh’s comments on bandits and brigands sounded more like an attempt to coat innovation in the protective armour of orthodoxy than anything else — but the traditionally Mistralian way of war, ancient and august, sung of by the poets of the past, famed in statue and story, had failed in the Great War and died the death at the Battle of Four Sovereigns. These were not the old days. The world had moved on, and perhaps the tactics of the Mistralians must move also.

To ambush the grimm … it was not something a huntsman would have considered, but then, these were not huntsmen; they were neither trained nor equipped to face the grimm in open battle. If Polemarch Yeoh thought that she could pull this off, then there was no reason not to play their part in it — unless one felt that it was somehow immoral not to rush immediately to the aid of the Valish at the fastest speed.

We will be doing that, if called upon; the fact that Polemarch Yeoh will be following on behind more slowly is … some might call it prudent, to send a vanguard in advance of the main force, as was often done with the armies of the past.

Should I rate and rebuke her for a degree of caution?

We will be rushing forward, if we are asked for our help; that being so, why should I complain that Polemarch does not move so swiftly?

Because we may be too late, and all lost before we arrive? If the Valish, blinded by their pride, do not request help in time, then Ruby—

Ruby would rage at this, to be thought in need of rescue by us, to be thought incapable of holding the line alongside Team YRN, to have us rush to her aid before she has even asked for aid.

She would not wish us to come before we are called.

And Yang, Nora, and many other great-hearted Beacon students are there, even if the Valish soldiers are without airships to protect them; they will not be destroyed in mere moments. We must have faith in them.

I must have faith in them.

The faith I did not demonstrate before.

And they are wise, and if they need aid, they will send for it in time.

And we will run swift, as Polemarch Yeoh has put it.

All that being the case, there is no further reason to object. It seems to me, young though I am, and inexperienced, that the Polemarch’s plan is as sound as any.

Not that she said so. She might be the Vytal Champion, but as she was not a Haven student, it was hardly her place to speak for the others.

Although Arslan was looking at her as though it was.

She even gestured forward with one hand, indicating for her to go ahead.

You might as well speak as I, Pyrrha thought. You are the Golden Lion, after all, and a Haven team leader.

Pyrrha looked over Arslan’s head, across the other students. None of them said anything: Violet Valeria, who had led the defence of the fairgrounds; Cicero Ward the Younger, son of a Councillor; Haven students and team leaders were silent, and some of them were openly looking at her.

At last, after some uncomfortable moments had passed, someone spoke; that someone was Umber Gorgoneion, as she pushed her sunglasses a short way back up her nose. “A sound plan. If it works, it may become a model for situations such as these. Eminently feasible for us, if your forces can play their part.”

“But wait a second,” Sun said, finding his voice. “If the grimm break through the Valish line, and we fall back, and you set an ambush … General Ironwood’s forces will have no one protecting their flank, right?”

“That is correct,” Polemarch Yeoh admitted. “But I never promised General Ironwood that I would retake any position taken by the grimm, nor do I believe he would expect me to do so, for it cannot be done, certainly not by my forces and perhaps not even by his. General Ironwood will have to manage the situation as best he can; as one of the great captains, I have no doubt he will make do.”

“But…” Sun began. “But if they … there must be a better way than this?”

“I will do the best I can,” Polemarch Yeoh replied evenly. “But the best I can do is not to charge headlong into a mass of grimm like Lady Aetolis on the field of Four Sovereigns. A sacrifice of my command would avail Atlas nothing.”

Sun was silent for a moment. All the huntsmen and huntresses were silent. Sun’s jaw tightened, and his tail drooped down to the ground between his legs.

Without another word, he turned away and began to stalk off.

“Where are you going?” asked Sun’s blue-haired teammate.

“Where do you think he’s going?” muttered another member of Team SSSN, a young man with red hair and a red jacket slung across one shoulder. “He’s going to find his girlfriend. He’s so whipped I’m surprised he could stay away this long.”

“Why do you have to be like this, dude?” asked the blue-haired boy.

“Why are you defending him after everything that he’s—?”

“Enough!” Polemarch Yeoh declared, firmly but not angrily. “I understand that you are young, and in your youth are eager for the fray, but I have seen war, and I have seen the grimm, and I tell you with the voice of experience that I do not believe the Valish can hold their line. Yet even then, I will not abandon them, though I hope to arrive too late for the sake of my own soldiers. I walk the line between honour and wisdom, though it is a narrow path. I do what I have promised, and no more than any reasonable soldier would demand of me.” She paused. “Though I am a magistrate of the Mistralian people, empowered by them, I have no authority over you. If you wish to depart, I have no right to stop you, nor will I try.

“Nevertheless, I ask you, the pride of Mistral, the hope and blooming roses of our state, to trust me. Trust in my experience, and in my goodwill towards my soldier, my kingdom, and to you — and to our allies also. I do not seek to betray Atlas or Vale; rather, I seek to play my part in the defence of Vale in the manner that will defend Vale and not merely give the grimm a few more corpses to chew upon before they rush onwards to the city walls.

“If the Valish do falter, as I believe they must, then we will be all that stands on this side of the field between the grimm and the city. So ask yourselves, what is in the better interests of Vale: that we should die well or that we should fight wisely?”

No one, not even from Team SSSN, made any move to follow Sun away.

Arslan cleared her throat. “Polemarch, this all sounds fine to me, except … maybe I’m just being ignorant of war, but how are you going to hide that for an ambush?” She pointed upwards towards the Dingyuan.

Polemarch Yeoh glanced upwards herself, as if she needed to be reminded that her ship was there.

“My hope,” she said, “is that the grimm will not take the presence of the airship as a necessary indicator of ground forces below; I hope instead that they will think us incompetent, inexperienced, unable to properly coordinate the deployment of air and ground assets. Of course, when our ambush reveals itself, the Dingyuan will add its fire to that of the infantry.”

“And,” Pyrrha said, “until the Valish request our assistance, what then?”

“Then nothing, Lady Pyrrha,” Polemarch Yeoh said. “Nothing but the waiting.”

---

The waiting was … it had to be admitted that the waiting would not be the hardest part unless the Valish managed to repel the grimm attack with ease and the Mistralians were left with nothing to do for the rest of the need, and perhaps not even then — even if the Mistralians were left with nothing to do, there might still be a need to go to Professor Ozpin’s aid in dealing with Amber — but that did not make the waiting easy.

Pyrrha fussed with the vambrace on her left arm, adjusting it by minute degrees, gripping it and ungripping it, shifting her brown-gloved hand over it, tracing the arrow stamped upon it.

She looked up from the bronze vambrace, looking around to see how others were dealing with the waiting. Arslan was doing push-ups on the grass, hands pressed down into the dirt, while Reese Chloris counted for her; Bolin Hori paced up and down, twirling his staff in his hands; Sun’s blue- and red-haired teammates were not speaking to one another, while their tall, green-haired companion went back and forth between the two carrying messages; young Cicero Ward was writing a letter, using the back of one of his teammates as a rest; Umber was speaking to someone who … Pyrrha thought they might be another Shade student, but not a member of Team UMBR.

Perhaps there were more Shade students here than she’d thought; evidently, there were; she appeared to have maligned them.

Although it did confuse her a little why they should be here with the Mistralians; there seemed no reason for them to stay.

Mind you, there was no reason for them to go forward with the Beacon students to the Valish line either, save that it was where the battle would be fought.

“It’s quiet,” Jaune observed.

“Hmm?” Pyrrha asked, looking at him. “I’m sorry, I was—”

“Thinking?” Jaune guessed.

“More looking than thinking,” Pyrrha admitted. “What did you say?”

“I said 'it’s quiet,'” Jaune repeated.

Pyrrha listened. It was indeed. Aside from the occasional hooting of an owl and the sounds coming from they themselves — and from the Mistralian soldiers as they, too, waited, half-formed in their companies, but not waiting silently in ranks like automatons — there was little to hear.

“Yes,” Penny said, and she seemed to be moved to keep quiet by the quietness of the world around them. “Yes, it is.”

“No sounds of fighting,” Jaune explained. “I mean, if the grimm were attacking, then don’t you think we’d hear them fighting back? We’d certainly hear the Atlesians, right? All those missiles, and whatever else they’ve got, and maybe we’d hear the Valish too. Not gunfire maybe, but cannons. But it’s quiet. So it hasn’t started yet.”

“Yes,” Pyrrha said. “Yes, it … it cannot have begun yet.”

“So everything is fine,” Penny said. “Or everyone is still fine, anyway. We don’t need to…”

Pyrrha blinked. “Don’t need to what, Penny?”

“Don’t need to … to feel bad,” Penny said. “For being here, instead of with them.”

Pyrrha hesitated for a moment, before she reached out and took one of Penny’s hands in her own. “But you do, don’t you?”

“I…” Penny also paused for a moment. “Ruby probably wouldn’t have wanted us there anyway.”

Pyrrha didn’t reply to that. She wasn’t sure what to say.

“I’m sure she doesn’t hate us that much,” Jaune said.

Yes, that, that was what there was to say.

“Do you think so?” Penny asked. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Jaune replied. “I really think so. She just … wants some space. Needs some space. Just like … just like I needed some space from my parents and my sisters, but … I never stopped loving them. And Ruby won’t, or hasn’t, stopped liking you or thinking about you as a friend just because … of this.”

“Far be it from me to intrude upon your conversation,” said Umber Gorgoneion airily as she swept down upon them, her long black coat trailing after her, the moonlight glinting off the toecaps of her boots. The girl that she had been speaking to followed a step and a half behind.

“But you’re gonna anyway, right?” Jaune asked, in a manner that was not entirely friendly.

Umber smiled thinly. “I won’t presume to comment on your relations with … Ruby, was it, but as to whether or not you should have remained here or, as Beacon students, gone with the … other Beacon students, I think that you made the right choice. While, from my perspective, it is unfortunate that … would you say it is honour that demands that we must make some effort to succour the Valish if they ask for our help?”

“Isn’t that just the right thing to do?” asked Penny.

Umber chuckled. “If it were only the right thing, Penny Polendina, Mistralians wouldn’t be doing it; they very rarely concern themselves with the right thing. But they can occasionally be stirred to do the honourable thing.” She turned a shark-like smile on Pyrrha. “Is that not so, Lady Pyrrha?”

“I think it is a little harsh,” Pyrrha said. “There are many examples, old and new, of Mistralians doing the right thing. Camilla Volsci’s destruction of the criminal underworld—”

“Vengeance, sanctified by venerable tradition and the demands of honour,” Umber said. “But, in any event, if Polemarch Yeoh’s plan works as she hopes, it seems much more sound to me than any attempt to hold this Green Line by force of arms.”

“You seem very sure of that,” Pyrrha said softly. “Is that why you’re here?”

Umber chuckled lightly. “No, I must confess that I, that we … forgive me, Lady Pyrrha; allow me to introduce Elektra Fury of Team Gear.”

Elektra was a young woman of average height, a little shorter than Arslan, but not much more, with a dark skin tone reminiscent of Atlas — or Argus, considering her name. Her hair was red and worn in ringlets down the back of her neck halfway down her back; she wore a black tunic, loose fitting and leaving one shoulder bare, with a blood-red sash draped from her uncovered shoulder down to her other hip and beyond it, trailing down almost to the floor. A skirt with a flame pattern of gold and orange fell down to her knees. Upon both wrists, she wore golden bracelets shaped like snakes coiled around her skin, while like Umber, she wore a silver armband on her right arm. She bowed her head. “It is an honour.”

“And a pleasure,” Pyrrha said. “And please, Pyrrha will be perfectly well.”

“In this company, I fear it would see us torn to pieces,” Umber observed. “As I was saying, I am here because, having resolved to fight … Mistral is the land of my birth, though it is not the land of my choice. Being so, where should we better take our stand?”

“For most of the other Shade students, the answer seems to be nowhere,” Jaune pointed out.

“Yes…” Elektra said softly. “Vacuo is … Vacuo has many excellent qualities; it is a land of light and darkness as all are, but it has a certain reputation, and it is a pity that so many of our fellow students are content or even willing to live down to it. But there is more to Vacuo than that reputation, let us assure you. Though it be less visible, another Vacuo grows in the desert sands, a better Vacuo, a bolder Vacuo, a Vacuo … a Vacuo that, if the gods are good, will resemble the Mistral that should have been but never was, the Mistral that is sung of but which never truly lived.”

Pyrrha frowned. “You speak … I fear I do not take your meaning.”

“You will, perhaps, in time,” Umber replied. “In time, you may look back upon this conversation, and it will be as if a light was switched on in your mind, and you will understand everything, but for now, it is enough to say that, although we love Vacuo, the Vacuo we love is not afraid to stand its ground.”

“But you’d rather be here than standing with the Valish or the Atlesians,” Penny pointed out.

Elektra grinned. “She has us on the hip, Umber.”

“Indeed you have,” Umber agreed. “There is some worth to the idea of defending what belongs to one, what one has worked for and built, but just because that is true, it does not follow therefore that the best strategy is simply to plant oneself foursquare between danger and that you would protect. When faced with a stronger danger — and if it were not stronger, would it really be a danger at all? — one should be wise and cunning, as well as bold. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that cunning is to be preferred to boldness in such circumstances. The Atlesians, by means of having stolen everything of worth from Vacuo that wasn’t nailed down and dug up much that might have been solidly secured beneath the earth, become rich enough and powerful enough and technologically advanced enough” — she spat those words — “that it can afford not to be cunning anymore, for its cunning in the past was sufficient to ensure its success. So now, they can be as muscle-headed as they like and stand like stones and make a wall against the power of the grimm. The rest of us, Vacuo, Mistral, and Vale if they would be sensible, are of a different sort. We must be cunning; we have no better hope.”

“You make it sound hopeless for the Valish,” Penny murmured.

“I do not hold out a great deal of hope that a grimm horde can be repulsed by a static defence, no; I am of the Polemarch’s mind in that,” Umber said honestly. “I may be proven wrong, but—”

She was interrupted by a thunderous sound from the east, a rolling thunder that began softly and then rose and rose in intensity, thunder rolling on and on because it wasn’t really thunder at all; it was the firing of all the guns along the Green Line, Atlesian and, presumably, Valish also. Looking to the north, Pyrrha could see the Atlesian cruisers were firing immense barrages of missiles down to the ground, and she could see the flashes of laser fire, the red lasers of the cruisers, the green lasers of the smaller airships, she could see little lights like flares rising up out of the darkness and then falling down again. Some rose and fell slowly and singly, others flew more swiftly and in torrents.

That variety was only seen to the north; directly east of them, they only saw the single flares, spread out, which must have been conventional artillery coming from the Valish.

Pyrrha hoped that it would be enough.

Atlas has many weapons and airships, but the Valish have the Beacon students; that must count for something.

If technology is all that matters, then Umber is right: we are all lost, save only Atlas.

Penny clasped her hands together across her chest and bowed her head. She whispered, but despite the softness of her voice, she could be heard nonetheless by those who were close by.

“Lady of the North, um … you probably don’t like me very much right now, and I don’t have any right to ask you for anything … but I’m not asking for anything for myself; it’s for someone else, and that person hasn’t done anything to upset you! I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this, but let’s see if I can remember how this goes: stand with Ruby and Team Iron, and with all the other Beacon students, I guess; stand with them against the grimm and keep them alive. I suppose you must be very busy standing with Ciel and the Atlesians at the moment, but Ciel’s got Rainbow Dash and Blake and General Ironwood looking out for her, so could you maybe spare some attention for someone who doesn’t have all of those things?”

Pyrrha wondered — she could not help but wonder — if Penny really believed that that would have any difference.

Or whether it brought her some solace nonetheless.

Arslan stopped doing her push-ups and started to walk towards them. “It’s started, then,” she said.

“So it would seem,” Pyrrha replied in a soft voice.

Arslan reached up and played with one of the beads of fire dust around her neck. “I should carry more of these around at a time,” she muttered. “There’s a lot more firing coming from over there than there is from that way,” she added, pointing a thumb eastwards.

“Over there is the Atlesians,” Penny explained.

“Oh, yes, right, yeah, of course, I should have known,” Arslan murmured. “Do you wish you were over there instead of here?”

“No,” Penny said at once. “I’m … I don’t wish I was over there.”

“Fair,” Arslan muttered. She folded her arms and turned her attention westwards, in the direction of the city itself, where the lights were partially by the wall of the Red Line, but which could still be seen gleaming over it, the lights shining though the source of the light was concealed. Vale could not be seen, but its presence could be discerned.

“This place has rotten luck, doesn’t it?” Arslan asked.

“For the moment,” Pyrrha said, thinking that it might be Mistral’s turn to have some ‘rotten luck’ next.

After all, if Amber did succeed in carrying away the Relic, or if someone else did, or even if the Relic of Choice remained secure at Beacon for now, then Salem would need all four relics to complete her foul design. It stood to reason, then, that at some point, every kingdom in Remnant would endure some ‘rotten luck’ when Salem turned her gaze in their direction. It might be Mistral’s turn next, or it might be that Atlas or even Vacuo would come under attack first, but Mistral’s turn would come eventually.

And when it did … all the misfortunes that had this year fallen upon Valish heads would fall on Mistral; would her home, petty-proud and obsessed with what must be admitted to be rather trivial things, be able to bear the weight of such?

She wished that she could believe with all her heart that it would.

Certainly, Mistral had no cause to look at Vale with any smugness.

“Maybe it does,” Penny said. “But at the same time, I think that Vale is very lucky, that when its luck has been so bad, it’s still had so many good friends to help it.”

Umber sniffed. “What an Atlesian attitude, to think someone fortunate that they have suffered misfortune in such a way that allows Atlas to swoop in and save the day — and steal all the money they can get along the way, no doubt.”

“No,” Penny said. “This isn’t about Atlas, or at least it isn’t just about Atlas; it’s about everyone, being here, at this moment. At just the right time.”

Perhaps Salem should have chosen a quieter time to try and bring down Vale and acquire the Relic.

“Help!” a voice cried out from the darkness. “Help!”

The eyes of all the huntsmen turned eastwards, to where the sound was coming from. The voice was not one that Pyrrha recognised. It sounded like a woman, but she could say no more than that.

She prepared to summon Miló and Akoúo̱ into her hands, as she saw other huntsmen and huntresses reaching for their weapons, and the Mistralian soldiers began to finger their weapons too.

And yet, the Valish guns were still firing to the east, and surely, if the grimm had already broken through, then they would have ceased to fire by now, the guns overrun or dragged away to prevent them from being lost. They were still firing, which must surely mean the Valish were still fighting, no?

Pyrrha looked and watched the Valish fires as they rose and fell, rose and fell; were there fewer guns firing now than there had been, or was it just her fears that told her so? How bad was it really?

“Hold fast,” commanded Polemarch Yeoh, striding forward. “There is no need to panic.”

“Help!” cried the voice again, a voice that soon revealed itself as belonging to a Valish soldier, dressed in green, as she burst out of the darkness with eyes wide, darting this way and that as she looked around. “Help, who… who’s in charge?”

“That would be me,” said Polemarch Yeoh, approaching her with swift strides. “What news, soldier?”

The Valish soldier took a deep breath. “Help,” she gasped. “We … need help. Lot of grimm out there.”

“Is the line holding?” Polemarch Yeoh demanded.

“I don’t know,” the soldier replied. “I was sent for help before they attacked.”

“I see,” Polemarch Yeoh murmured. She paused for a moment, drawing back her shoulders. “Soldiers! Webbing on!”

Pyrrha had no idea what she meant by that, until she saw the Mistralian soldiers throwing what looked like capes or ponchos made of net, with what seemed to be leaves or twigs or grass stuck of the netting, which covered over their blue uniforms and draped down to the ground, leaving only their arms free. They also, as she watched, started to pull similar nets on over their helmets.

“Huntsmen and huntresses, pride of Mistral, move forward,” Polemarch Yeoh commanded. “We will follow, expecting word from you of what lies ahead.”

The huntsmen moved. No one gave the command, no one ordered them forward, but they moved nonetheless, almost as one; they didn’t move perhaps with Atlesian discipline, being in more of a rough clump than an organised formation, but they moved forward nonetheless.

Miló and Akoúo̱ flew into Pyrrha’s hands as she began to run forwards; Jaune scraped Crocea Mors free of its scabbard and transformed the scabbard itself into a shield; Floating Array emerged from out of Penny and hovered over her head as she ran alongside them. All the huntsmen and huntresses had their weapons ready — except for those like Arslan who barely used weapons — in case the grimm had already broken through the Valish line.

Although, if they had already broken through, then that meant … that might mean…

No, no, she couldn’t think like that. None of them could afford to think like that. They needed to maintain their focus; Pyrrha needed to maintain her focus.

Think only … think only necessary things tonight. Think only of battle, and not of nightmares.

They moved forward, without knowing how close or how far behind the Mistralian forces would be; considering Polemarch Yeoh’s avowed intent to set an ambush for the grimm, Pyrrha thought that the distance would be a little more than discreet.

As they moved forward, it became impossible for Pyrrha to deny that the Valish fire was slacking off, or to dismiss it as paranoia, fear, just her imagination: the guns were falling silent. Fewer shells were rising and falling, the thunderous sound was dying down — a little at least; the Atlesians were keeping up the volume, so sound was the most unreliable indicator at present.

Nevertheless, the other indicators did not look promising. It seemed that, though they had set off before the attack began, the Valish runner may have arrived … too late, as messengers so often did.

And then, before they had reached the Valish line, before they had even come in sight of it, the last gun fell silent, and there were no cannons firing on the Valish line whatsoever.

“They’ve stopped shooting,” Penny said.

“Maybe … maybe they ran out of ammunition?” Jaune suggested.

“So soon?” Penny asked. “But that would be … that would be pretty incompetent, wouldn’t it?” She paused. “Maybe they are incompetent. Rainbow Dash would say that they’re incompetent, Rainbow would laugh at them for running out of ammunition, and Ciel would say something quiet that cut like a sword, and then Blake … Blake would be very quiet and not cutting at all, just quiet. Maybe it’s like that. Maybe they’re just bad at this … but holding the line all the same. Maybe we’ll get there, and it’s all fine apart from ammunition.”

“Yes, Penny,” Pyrrha agreed, without much conviction in her voice. “Maybe.”

She had a hard time believing that as Penny said it, and it became harder and harder to believe it as they moved forward and encountered more and more of the remnants of the Valish defence streaming the other way: Valish soldiers casting their guns aside, Valish tanks with loud, growling engines that forced the huntsmen to scatter out of the way as they rushed heedlessly on, stopping for no one. Unless they were stopped, as happened to one tank that they saw drive into a tree and get stuck, the engine growing louder and more insistent as the crew tried to free it before finally giving up and bailing out.

“Excuse me,” Penny called out to some of the fleeing soldiers, to the trucks and cars that drove on by, raising her hand towards them as she tried to hail them. “Excuse me? Could you … could you please wait just a moment?”

They didn’t wait. They didn’t stop. They just kept on running or driving, pushing through the Mistralian huntsmen in their zeal to get away.

And some grimm were even pursuing them. A nevermore swooped down out of the night sky, talons outstretched towards a tank that was swerving wildly — as wildly as the slow and heavy vehicle could, at any rate — to try and avoid it; a soldier was half out of the turret, firing a pistol at the nevermore. The grimm paid the fire no heed at all.

It did take heed when Penny opened up on it with Floating Array, beam after emerald beam lancing up through the darkness towards it. The nevermore shrieked and turned away, wings beating; it was briefly silhouetted as it passed across the moon, and then it disappeared.

The tank crew did not stop to thank Penny for their deliverance. They just kept on driving, nearly running over Reese who had to swerve her hoverboard out of the way to escape.

“Cicero,” Violet said, “go back and tell Polemarch Yeoh that the Valish defence is all swept away.”

“I will,” Cicero said, and yet, he did not go straight away but paused for a moment. “Will you follow on my heels?”

Violet paused for a moment. “Not yet, I think,” she said. “We will go forward, meet the grimm, then draw them back with us while giving Polemarch Yeoh time to set her ambush.”

She looked around, as if daring someone to contradict her.

No one did.

Cicero nodded. “Very well. I’ll come back as soon as I’ve brought word to the Polemarch.”

He turned and disappeared back the way that they had come.

The rest of the huntsmen and huntresses pressed forwards.

The nevermore that Penny had chased off was not the only sight they saw of the grimm: a couple of griffons were chasing a group of fleeing Valish soldiers, but at the sight of so many Mistralian huntsmen and huntresses — and after a couple of arrows and javelins and gunshots had been hurled their way — they, like the nevermore before them, decided that discretion was the better part of valour and flew off back the way that they had come.

“Carrying word of our coming, no doubt,” said Violet Valeria.

“Word to who?” Arslan demanded. “Do they understand one another’s growls and shrieks?”

“Perhaps they do,” replied Lily Cornelia. “And if they do, they’ll have a tale to tell.”

“Let them tell it,” said Arslan. “Just because they know we’re coming doesn’t mean there’ll be anything that they can do about it.”

“Perhaps we should slow down or stop,” said Violet. “Lily can scout ahead, concealed by her semblance.”

“Stop?” Pyrrha exclaimed. “No, we must press on; we’ve still seen no sign of the huntsmen and huntresses from Beacon; they may still be fighting and in need.”

Violet bit her lip. She was a little short in stature, standing somewhere between Ruby’s height and Penny’s, but with more muscle on her arms than either of them; she wore her brown hair in a pageboy cut, with violet highlights at the tips that matched her eyes. A bodysuit of flexible, utilitarian armour, trimmed with blue highlights, embraced her form, with a short skirt decorated with golden thunderbolts dropping to just beneath her thighs and a cloak of hair boarhide hanging from her shoulders. A necklace of boar’s tusks hung from about her neck.

“I … I know that they’re your friends and classmates, Lady Pyrrha—”

“It’s not just that,” Jaune said. “If the grimm are warned of our coming, then we should move as quickly as we can before they have time to react; if we delay, then we might see what preparations they’re making, but it would be better to catch them before they’ve made their preparations, don’t you think?”

Violet was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “Very well, let us press on.”

And press on they did, until they started to encounter other huntsmen and huntresses, like the three remaining members of Team CFVY, retreating from the battle.

Unlike the soldiers, they did stop, looking a little less terrified than the Valish troops in green had been in their headlong flight.

“Nice to see you all,” Coco said, sarcasm lacing her voice. “But you’re too late; the Green Line has already fallen; the grimm will turn the Atlesians next, I’m sure. We’re falling back to the Red Line; you’ll do the same if you value your lives.”

“We have a plan that requires us to go forward first,” Pyrrha said. “But what about Team Iron, did you see them?”

“They were to our left,” Velvet explained. “But we lost track of them. I think they were slower to get away than we were.”

“What’s this plan?” asked Coco. “The one that means you have to go forwards towards the grimm?”

“We’re going to lure them into a trap,” said Penny.

Coco took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I’d like to see that. What do you say, guys, have we got another fight in us?”

“Without a doubt,” growled Fox.

Other Beacon students joined them as they advanced, having previously fallen back but still with the aura and the valour to turn around and face the grimm again now that the odds of success were better.

Now, though they couldn’t hear the guns, they began to be able to hear the grimm, in all their snarls and roars. They still couldn’t see them in the dark of the night, but if they could hear them, then they must be close.

"I see them!" Penny cried, pointing straight ahead. She gasped. "They're surrounded!"

The swords of Floating Array converged in a tight group around Penny's chest, the blades folding up into their carbine configuration as the tips glowed green.

"How far?" Pyrrha asked.

"Not that far," Penny said. "Close. A hundred yards, maybe two hundred."

"That isn't far," Arslan said. "We can do that in a run."

"On Penny's shot," Pyrrha said, "we move forward."

Nobody questioned her, which Pyrrha was grateful for in the immediate circumstances.

Penny fired, an immense laser beam blasting into the darkness, momentarily illuminating a roiling mass of grimm, an immense tide of darkness dotted with white bone masks.

“For the honour of Mistral!” shouted Violet, brandishing a javelin above her head. “For the pride of Haven!”

"For Mistral!" cried Lucius Andronicus, brandishing one of his flamethrowers before him, fire leaping from the tip.

With shouts and warcries, wordless and not, the huntsmen and huntresses charged, weapons at the ready. Pyrrha's hair and sash alike trailed behind her like the banners of an army as her long legs and swift stride bore her to the forefront, outpacing Jaune and Penny and even Arslan too. Moonlight glinted off her shield and her gilded armour as she charged.

She could see them now, just as Penny had said; they came into view as if emerging from out of a wall of darkness, although it was the different wall of darkness that concerned Pyrrha, the grimm that had them surrounded. Penny's shot had cut close by Team YRRN, and the grimm were taken by surprise — Jaune had been right then about the advantages of moving swiftly — and had not yet filled in the gap.

But the grimm were still surrounding Team YRRN on three sides, and partially on the fourth.

But not for long.

Pyrrha threw Miló in spear form as she closed the distance, skewering a beowolf in the chest as it turned to face her. The spear hurled the grimm back a few paces, but Pyrrha reached it before it had dissolved and plucked her spear from its decaying corpse. She spun on one heel, sash fluttering around her as she slashed with Miló all around her to wound the beowolves that pressed about. They recoiled, whimpering and howling; one of them recoiled straight into Nora's hammer which bludgeoned its face into ruin. Pyrrha threw Akoúo̱ at a beowolf behind her even as she skewered another in front, recovering her shield and twirling once again to use its edge to sever the head of another from its body.

An ursa sailed over Pyrrha's head as Nora punted it into the air with an uppercut to the jaw. Whether it was dead before it landed in the midst of the Haven students coming up or they killed it didn't seem to matter very much.

"Hey, Pyrrha," Nora said, even as she turned around to bring her hammer down on a skittering stormvermin, crushing it beneath the blow. "You got here just in time."

"Don't flatter her," Yang said as she punched out an ursa until it was dead on the ground. "We could have taken them."

"Well, I'm grateful," Nora said, rolling her eyes a little as she hit three beowolves with a single swing of her hammer.

Pyrrha idly stepped on a stormvermin's head, crushing its skull even as her attention was upon the alpha beowolf trying to restore order to the disorganised grimm. She charged towards it, throwing Akoúo̱ before her. The spinning shield hit the grimm square on the snout, flying back towards Pyrrha as the beowolf recoiled. Pyrrha leapt onto Akoúo̱ then kicked strongly off of it, gripping Miló in both hands as she flew through the air. She tucked her legs in, rolling as she passed over the alpha beowolf, falling down behind it like one of the Valish shells that they had seen lighting up the darkness from far off, falling as she had risen. Falling behind the alpha beowolf.

The beowolf looked up, and Pyrrha wrapped Miló around its neck and planted her feet squarely on its back. Her footing was a little tentative between the spurs of bone erupting out of the creature's back, and Pyrrha could feel the bone scraping against her skin where it met the patch of bare leg — larger on the inside — between her cuisses and her microskirt. Nevertheless, as precarious as her footing might be, she braced against it, hauling Miló backwards into the beowolf's neck. The alpha flailed its arms wildly, swaying this way and that, trying and failing to throw Pyrrha off. Pyrrha felt her feet slip once or twice, but she held on and kept on pulling. The alpha was distracted as the swords of Floating Array slashed at its chest from the front, trying to find a way through its armour. Other beowolves tried to leap up to get at Pyrrha, but Jaune made a running slide between the alpha beowolf's legs — very impressive — to cut the legs out from underneath one of them, while Ruby took out two more with a swing of Crescent Rose.

Pyrrha pulled back on Miló until the spearshaft went right through the alpha beowolf's neck, severing its head from its body. Pyrrha leapt backwards, backflipping again before she landed, idly driving her spear into an ursa's chest.

"Showoff," Yang muttered.

"Do you think there are enough of us now to retake the Green Line?" Ruby asked as she brought her scythe down on a creep.

"No," Jaune said, getting to his feet. "We're going to retreat and lure the grimm into an ambush that Polemarch Yeoh is setting up behind us."

A beowolf hurled itself upon him. Jaune brought up his shield to defend himself, holding the grimm at bay as its claws tried to reach him around the shield, before he drove Crocea Mors into its shoulder and unleashed a blast of lightning dust down the blade. The grimm twitched and writhed, guttural sounds tumbling out of its mouth before it fell over dead.

"I really hope they didn't understand what I just said," Jaune added.

"Okay," Ruby murmured. "If that's the plan, then—"

Bolin cried out wordlessly as he was flung backwards through the air, tossed by a powerful blow from the trunk of a goliath that was storming forwards through the ranks of the grimm. Beowolves, creeps, and stormvermin either fell back before its passage or were trampled aside by the immense creature which advanced, heedless of whoever might stand in its way.

Reese Chloris tried to circle around it, firing both her pistols, green bolts of energy lancing up to strike the goliath's armoured head.

The goliath turned a baleful gaze on Reese as its trunk snapped out and wrapped around the huntress' waist. It was Reese's turn to cry out as the goliath hoisted her up into the air, enduring the continued fire from Reese's pistols as it lifted her over its head.

The goliath trumpeted triumphantly as it slammed Reese down into the ground in front of it. It continued to stride forward majestically as it lifted Reese up and drove her back down into the ground once more.

Reese's pistols dropped from her hands.

Arslan threw herself onto the ground directly athwart the goliath's path. The goliath advanced, raising one foot to bring it down upon her.

Arslan raised her Nemean Claw and drove it straight into the bottom of the goliath's foot as it descended.

The goliath roared in pain, rearing up on its hind legs, dropping Reese as its trunk twisted and waved in the air in pain.

Arslan was on her feet in a moment, catching Reese before she hit the ground, carrying her backwards out of the path of the goliath whose eyes seemed to be blazing an even brighter red now than they had been before.

It landed on all fours with an earth-shaking thud, and its trumpet was a low warning sound as it advanced once more, enduring bullets and arrows and blasts of dust as though they had been spit and flecks of dirt. Lucius Andronicus hit it with two blasts of flame from both his flamethrowers, but the grimm strode through the fire seemingly unharmed by it. Cicero Ward used his semblance on it, a booming shout blasting out of his mouth, but the goliath seemed barely fazed by it.

"Jaune," Pyrrha said. "Give me a boost, and then let me lift you."

Jaune didn't look as if he quite understood the necessity of the second part, but he comprehended the first part of Pyrrha's request quite well enough. He lifted his shield up like a platform — a beowolf tried to rush him, but Ren dived in front and took it out with a few well-placed slashes from the blades on the ends of his Stormflowers — to support Pyrrha as she jumped onto it.

She felt Jaune's semblance spreading up her legs, washing away the lingering feeling of the beowolf's bone upon her skin.

She leapt, a powerful jump far greater than she could have achieved on her own, carrying her higher into the air than when she had just leapt over the alpha beowolf, a leap that carried her over the heads of beowolves and ursai and onto the back of the rampaging goliath.

Goliaths didn't develop a lot of bone, even as they grew older; Professor Port said that the very oldest goliaths did grow armour plate upon their flanks, and some grew links of bone-like chain which drooped down towards the ground to protect their legs, but until they reached that greatly advanced age, their bodies remained black and oily and without spurs or spikes emerging out their backs or anywhere else. Only their heads were armoured, and that was quite bad enough.

That meant that Pyrrha didn't have to worry about anything protruding out of the goliath's back to obstruct her, but it also meant her footing was somewhat insecure, the goliath's back uneven and slippery. Pyrrha drove Miló down into the Goliath's back like a climber driving a pick into the rocky surface of a mountain, clinging onto her spear with one as the goliath thrashed from side to side. Pyrrha lost her footing and would have fallen otherwise, but she clung onto Miló, and her spear was driven deep enough to bear her weight.

The goliath reached for her with its trunk, fumbling blindly for her over its head, but Penny drove the swords of Floating Array into the black flesh of the trunk, stabbing at it over and over again.

"Come on, Pyrrha!" she cried.

Pyrrha recovered her footing and held onto Miló yet with one hand even as she reached out for Jaune with the other. Her free hand glowed black as she picked up Jaune by his armour and lifted him up through the air to join her on the back of the goliath.

She wrapped her arm around his waist, holding onto him with grip and Polarity both as she held onto Miló.

"It's weakest at the nape of the neck," she explained.

Jaune understood. Leaning back a little, leaning into Pyrrha, his body resting against her arm and shoulder, he lifted Crocea Mors up above his head and then lanced it downwards like a thunderbolt into the goliath's neck just behind its armoured skull.

He unleashed all the lightning dust that he had stored in the sword's pommel, yellow lightning piercing into the goliath, rippling up and down its black body — snapping at Pyrrha and Jaune a little too; she could feel it nipping at her aura — as it trumpeted in pain.

Jaune used all the lightning dust; he didn't stop until the phial was empty, the yellow glow completely extinguished.

The goliath stood still, silent. Then, like a crumbling old building, it began to topple over sideways.

Pyrrha jumped away, carrying Jaune with her, landing a trifle heavily upon her feet before she set him down.

Penny's swords sliced through a quartet of beowolves behind them.

The huntsmen had done well, not only breaking through to relieve Team YRRN but inflicting losses upon the grimm who had been startled by the sudden attack when they must have thought their enemy beaten and in retreat. But now, as the goliath's attack had just demonstrated, the grimm were beginning to reorganise, the advantage of surprise fading away, and no doubt, they would be faced with more goliaths soon if they stayed here.

Jaune discarded the empty phial of lightning dust, slamming a phial of light blue ice dust into the pommel of his sword and sweeping it before him, conjuring a wall of ice between the huntsmen and the grimm as they began to retreat back the way they had come.

Unfortunately, with the amount of ice that he had and the number of grimm arrayed against them, it seemed to take no time at all for the grimm to smash through the barrier and commence their pursuit.

"They'll try and encircle us," Yang warned.

And so it proved, the grimm constantly trying to get around the Haven and Beacon students, to get behind them and cut them off; they never quite managed it, but it was touch and go, the formation of the huntsmen — such as it was, they remained rather amorphous in their grouping — shifting like water to fend off attacks from one flank, then another, then the front, then from both flanks at once. The grimm died in great numbers, pierced by sword and spear, burned by fire, shot; but there were always more grimm, and often, there seemed to be larger and stronger grimm than those that died, while the swords grew heavy in the arms of the huntsmen, and their supply of ammunition and dust began to run low. Reese's aura had been broken by the goliath; she had been fortunate indeed to escape injury, but Bolin — whose aura was not in great state itself — had to carry her, or she would have fallen behind. Lily Cornelia of Team VLCA had to be helped along by Cicero Ward after a beowolf's claws broke through her aura and raked across her back. As injuries and aura breakings mounted, Pyrrha found herself hoping that they would reach the sight of Polemarch Yeoh's ambush soon.

Until they did, all they could do was keep on retreating, as large grimm began to press through the ranks of the horde once more, like the towering cyclops that was advancing through the smaller grimm, arms like ancient oak trees swinging from side to side, its long, sharp teeth seeming to grin as it bore down on them. At the pace at which they were retreating, it would surely catch up to them soon.

Their retreat was now taking them past some of the detritus of the Valish rout that they had encountered on their way forwards, such as the tank that had driven into a tree and been abandoned by its crew.

"Pyrrha!" Penny cried. "Can you throw that tank at the cyclops?"

"I think so," Pyrrha replied, slinging Akoúo̱ across her back and reaching out for the tank with one hand. The black outline of Polarity covered her hand and the abandoned tank alike. It was a heavy thing, very heavy indeed, and Pyrrha had to concentrate. The weight of the tank resisted, to say nothing of the fact that its original crew had jammed it in place; she was contending against both those facts. Pyrrha gritted her teeth with the effort and fought against the urge to grunt as she pulled upon the tank.

It came free, shattering the tree in the process unfortunately, but Pyrrha had no time to dwell on that as she swung the abandoned tank through the air and hurled it straight for the cyclops' face.

The cyclops tried to catch it, raising one meaty hand to grasp the tank, but Pyrrha lifted it up over the waiting hand and down towards the cyclops' single eye.

Penny fired a single laser from one of her carbines. The green bolt shot upwards, striking the tank in the side, piercing its armour.

The tank exploded in an immense ball of fire that consumed the head of the cyclops, a fireball that burned bright even as smaller explosions rattled within the flames, flaming debris falling down to land on the ground below.

The headless cyclops crashed to the ground, crushing numerous smaller grimm beneath it.

"I was right about where the magazine was," Penny said.

"Great job, Penny!" cried Ruby. She paused for a moment. "And you, Pyrrha."

Pyrrha didn't answer. There was no time to answer, no time to do anything except keep on retreating, falling back, always back in the face of the numbers of the grimm that pursued them. And pursue them they did, pursue them eagerly, hungry roars rising from their throats as they pressed hard upon the huntsmen before them.

They had reached a little hamlet, empty by the looks of it, a cluster of buildings spread out across the flat terrain, with barns and walled farmhouses — none of them lit up, none of them showing any signs of occupancy — spread out across the barren fields, while sunken lanes and deep drainage ditches criss-crossed the land. There was no sign of Polemarch Yeoh and her Mistralian forces.

But the battleship Dingyuan hung in the sky. The lights of the great ship shone, but that was the only sign of life as they approached the empty, deserted-seeming hamlet.

The buildings were empty, and the battleship was silent; it hung in the night sky, its light shone, but its guns did not fire and seemed oblivious to what was going on beneath it, as though they were ants to an oblivious god.

Some of the huntsmen reached the crossroads, Bolin carrying Reese between the dark and silent buildings, Cicero helping Lily along.

The grimm pressed hard upon their heels, snapping and snarling.

The Dingyuan began to slowly turn, presenting its broadside towards the onrushing grimm.

Fire rang out from out of the darkness, rifles cracking in the dark, the brief lights of muzzle flashes lighting up the darkness as fire from both sides slammed into the grimm. Beowolves fell, and even ursai too, trembling as they were hit again and again before they finally dropped. The grimm advance faltered, the grimm turning this way and that as the bullets continued to fly.

The smaller grimm faltered, at least, and now would have been the perfect moment to round on them in a counterattack if the larger grimm, smug in their invulnerability to small arms fire, had not continued to advance, striding through their disordered smaller cousins.

One side of the Dingyuan was consumed in flame as its guns opened up, a deafening roar echoing through the land just as the flash of the guns illuminated the darkness.

The shells struck home, exploding in a second wall of fire that consumed goliath and cyclopes and the smaller grimm unfortunate enough to be caught between them.

Polemarch Yeoh, it seems events have proven you correct about everything, Pyrrha thought.

I can only hope you are correct also that General Ironwood will retrieve the situation on his flank.

Author's Note:

While 'Thin White Line' showcased the Atlesian military in its best-case scenario, while 'Breaking Point' showed how the Valish attempt to do Atlesian-style warfare on the cheap was almost foredoomed to failure, this chapter attempts to show how a force of light infantry, without any of the Atlesian advantages in equipment or air support, can nevertheless prove effective. There was a little bit of foreshadowing for this sometime earlier when it's mentioned that Polemarch Yeoh is winning the wargames being held with the Valish because she keeps ambushing them.

Comments

[Kiue Jin]

I believe a bit of Ruby's inexperience just showed here. The fact that she believed, if only for a moment, that the gathered huntsmen with her might have been able to push back and recover the Green Line.

This also raises the rather interesting question about why Remnant armies don't have the unlocking of aura as mandatory for its members. Yes, producing full blown Huntsmen takes time and resources, but it seems like having basic solders (humans who have dedicated their lives to being prepared to fight for their Kingdom, most likely against the Grimm) have some ability to not die instantly if the Grimm get into melee range seems like a reasonable idea. It's not even that resource intensive, you just need someone willing to unlock someone's aura.

[Mastermind4892]

This was an interesting chapter about honor between Mistral and Vacuo. Of course, Vacuo’s message of becoming strong and cunning over the other kingdoms falls a little flat, considering nearly all of the Shade teams were knocked out in the tournament’s first round.

That being said, I can’t help but notice the timing. The last time this story showed such firm beliefs from Vacuo was just a few months after Dune 1 showed us the value of “desert power.” Now they’re finally speaking up again just after Dune 2. Coincidence?

11894964
I believe it has to do with RWBY’s premise of Huntsmen and Huntress being elite and special. Keeping aura for them alone thus allows them to be the anime-like heroes of the setting. That being said, it doesn’t mean that every military is incompetent. The militaries of Earth show how capable an army without borderline supernatural abilities can be, provided they are still properly trained and well-funded. Vale and Atlas in this instance are polar opposites.

[Doge of Venucci]

Love powerfull broadside salvo.

[DirtyFinger]

So, the people here have anti-gravity, robots, AI, super fast vehicles and planes as well as the Internet and WiFi, but they use runners to send messages across the battlefield, because they have not invented the radio?

[BeardedRedMane]

11894964
Honestly I always ignore this fact, in any society who wouldn't want to just have their aura unlocked? Especially if you are a farmer living outside of city walls. I take it just as a not well thought of plot hole in RWBY because frankly you could have mandatory combat class in all schools to where everyone has basic knowledge and use of their aura if not also unlocking their semblance. At the very least have the average person not be completely helpless against the weakest grim.

11895048
Fucking this. Like the only thing I can think of is that they can't build cell phone towers because the grim destroy them... but then we also have the CCT network and Juturna and Ruby chatting over the phone so... idk.

[Scipio Smith]

11895048

11895071
Well... if I was pushed for an explanation I would probably say that a lowly sergeant doesn't have the Polemarch's number; if the Valish commanding officer had been at all present then he might have been able to get in touch with her more efficiently.

[Stet709]

No word on Sunset yet. I guess Penny or Pyrrha didn't call her up and ask to meet (though Ozpin still could...)
Looks like Sunset could show up and surprise everyone just like in the original, though I wonder if she'll work out her spell combo on the way over...

[Snowdrifter]

11895103
But Sunset can't show up yet in this version.

She doesn't have her note...

[Stet709]

11895126
Honestly, that was the the funniest short-lived recurring thing in the original.

"Hey, what are you doing here?
Sunset: "I have a note"

[Christopher28]

11894964
Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but regarding "why don't they unlock everyone's Aura?" I believe I once saw an answer to that.

From what I've read, Aura acts a bit like a beacon to Grimm. Someone with an active Aura is more attractive to the Grimm than someone without. Negative emotions draw the Grimm regardless, but even if you're not afraid, having an Aura makes you more of a target than not having one.

Without training, a normal person with Aura only takes a bit longer to chew on then a normal person without Aura. If you're part of a newly formed rifle infantry company... having Aura won't help much, because by the time a Grimm is chewing on you, you're probably dead meat anyway... because you won't have the skills to tank or block them. Your only chance is that the massed fire of your unit will mow the Grimm down before they reach you... or that you have huntsmen or specialists to hold the front line for you.

Now, huntsman wear bright colors and act flamboyantly to boost moral of the civilians, but ALSO to attract the Grimm when trying to DEFEND civilians, and this is aided by the fact that their greater Aura's also draw the grimm, meaning a few huntsmen can defend an entire small village... if they react quickly enough, as the Grimm will go for them first instead of just attacking everyone at random.

That, and unlocking Aura usually takes a lot of training and willpower, beyond a normal civilian. Jaune Arc is an exception to this, as it's well established that he has an unnaturally large Aura pool to start with.

[Mastermind4892]

11895103
She didn’t work that out until the Grimm Dragon appeared and she realized that Grimm are made from magic. After which she applied a form of Dispel Magic.