SAPR

by Scipio Smith

A Chill in the Air (New)

A Chill in the Air

The first Bullhead lifted off the ground and turned its bulbous nose back towards the inviting lights of Vale.

The contractors who were working on this section of the outer wall were not getting paid enough to camp out at night on the very edge of what might be called the City of Vale, at a point at which the city itself had faded into a few farms and abandoned cottages, and so, every night, the airships came to pick them up and take them home to the safety of the city itself.

No such luck for the huntsmen and the soldiers protecting the workers, who were expected to camp out here at nights, something which occasioned no small amount of grumbling amidst the privates of the defence platoon.

Yang was much more sanguine about the whole thing. In fact, she kind of liked it out here. Sure, camping on the edge of civilisation was different from when she and Ruby had ‘camped out’ in the garden round the back of the cabin – with Dad sat out on the deck watching them in case any grimm showed up – but it wasn’t so bad. The food was okay, the company was good, and if they had to get their own firewood and keep watch, then so what? This was the life they’d signed up for, and if she hadn’t thought it was a decent life, then she wouldn’t have gone to Beacon in the first place.

If Ruby had been back at Beacon, then she would have missed her, but Ruby was off on a mission of her own right now, and so, it didn’t really matter where Yang was.

And so, Yang lay on her back, her head resting upon her pack like a pillow, and stared up at the night sky. The moon was a little way to the west tonight, and without the lights of Vale polluting the sky – and with no Atlesian air patrols over this particular region to get in the way – Yang was afforded one of the first uninterrupted views of the stars above that she’d had since, well, since leaving Patch really.

She’d missed them.

They were so beautiful up there, all those lights in the sky. It was really amazing how they could be so far away and yet shine so brightly that they could be seen all the way down here.

“They’re as bright as your eyes, Mommy!”

Yang’s lips twitched upwards in a smile. She hadn’t thought about that in a while. That was an old memory, from when Ruby had been so small that she’d been left back home in her cradle when Mom took Yang up onto a hill not far from home to show her the stars.

Back home in Patch, there were precious few lights, not enough to get in the way of the stars like there were in Vale, and so Yang and Mom had been able to see absolutely all of them.

Yang remembered sitting in her mother’s lap with a smile on her face while Mom had pointed out all the different shapes they made and told her their names and the stories behind them.

Right now, directly overhead, she could see the constellation Leucippides, the two sisters.

Can you see it too, Ruby? Are the same stars of the Two Sisters shining down on both of us?

Yang felt her smile broadening as she imagined it.

“That’s me on the right, you know,” Nora declared as she flopped down on the ground beside Yang.

Yang glanced at her. “What?”

“The stars!” Nora explained. “That’s what you were looking at, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, that’s me on the right,” Nora said, pointing up at the smaller of the two celestial figures who made up the constellation. “And that’s Ren.”

Yang smirked. “Oh, really? I knew that you two had gotten up to a lot of stuff before you made it to Beacon, but I didn’t realise that you were already so famous that they named stars after you.”

“Sure they did!” Nora cried. “It was after we saved Mistral from a horde of stormvermin gathering in the sewers underneath the city. I killed the apex alpha with one swing from my mighty hammer, and the people of Mistral were so grateful that they renamed the star signs in our honour.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! And they held a big public feast in our honour, and we got to ride in a chariot, and Pyrrha gave us these fancy crowns to wear, and do you know what she said to me?” Nora slipped into a passable impression of Pyrrha’s more cultured and cultivated tone. “’Oh, Nora, I can only dream of one day being as strong and brave as you.’ And then she kissed Ren on the cheek, and I yelled ‘stay away from my man, woman!’”

Yang couldn’t contain the sniggers that escaped her lips. Her whole body trembled with mirth. “I bet you showed her.”

“Oh, she backed off right away,” Nora assured her. “Not that Ren and I are, you know, we’re not together-together. I just… Ren deserves… I knew that Pyrrha was meant for someone else. Yeah! I was saving her for Jaune, because I’ve got premonitions!”

“Uh huh?”

“Uh huh,” Nora declared. “And with my powers of foresight, I can tell you that Ruby is going to be just fine.”

Yang chuckled. “You can see it with your third eye?”

“I can see it with my regular two eyes; that team is too good to be taken out by a few grimm in the Forever Fall,” Nora said. “I mean, they’re not us, but Team Sapphire is pretty darn special.”

“Yeah,” Yang replied, her voice softer than the breeze that stroked their cheeks. “Yeah, they certainly are.” She paused. “It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

Nora was silent for a moment. “Think what?”

“That we can be here, looking at the stars, and Ruby can be miles and miles away with the very same stars shining down on her from all the way up in the sky,” Yang said.

Once more, Nora took a moment to reply. “Yeah,” she agreed. “That is pretty amazing.” She turned her head to look at Yang. “So have you always liked them?”

“Huh?”

“The stars.”

“Oh, right,” Yang said. “Yeah, well, almost always, anyway. I… one of my earliest memories is my mom taking me out one night to watch the stars. Where we grew up, way out in the country with no cities and barely any towns to speak of, you could see them all as bright as… as bright as my mother’s eyes.” She sighed wistfully. “Unfortunately, that was before they got renamed after you and Ren.” Yang chuckled. “I was taught that those stars up there were two sisters.”

“Two sisters, huh?” Nora asked. “Two sisters named Yang and Ruby?”

“No!” Yang exclaimed. “But, well… I remember when I took Ruby out one night, up to the same hill where my mom had taken me, and I remember that the stars were as bright as Ruby’s eyes that night, when I told her all about the stars, and how they were two sisters, just like us. And I told her how they’d always be together, just like us.”

Nora made an affirmative noise. “Together. That’s the important part.”

“What do you mean?”

Nora’s tone was earnest, moreso than usual. “You can call them sisters if you want to, but the way I always saw it… you notice how one of them is bigger than the other.”

“Yeah,” Yang agreed. “She’s the older sister.”

“But Ren’s taller than me, too,” Nora said. “And it’s really hard to be sure that they’re both girls, what with them being stars and everything. My mom never took me up any hills to tell me all about them, but when Ren and I were on the road… a lot of the time, there wasn’t much to do but look at the sky – that and tell stories – and Ren told me the same thing: that those two would always be together. Just like us.”

Yang turned her head to regard her teammate silently for a moment. “You’re really lucky, you know that?”

Nora’s eyebrows rose. “You think luck had anything to do with me and Ren getting on the same team together? Girl, that was the result of planning and forethought. When it comes to Ren, I don’t trust luck.”

“I can believe that,” Yang murmured. A sigh escaped her. “Perhaps I should have planned ahead when it came to Ruby. Only…”

“Only what?”

Yang shuffled where she lay. “At the time, I thought that it might do Ruby good to get out of her shell, meet some new people.”

“Well, if it helps, I think she couldn’t have done better in the people she met,” Nora said.

“Oh, sure, I know,” Yang agreed. If Ruby had to be on a team without Yang, at least she was on a team with the kindest, most caring people in Beacon – and Sunset Shimmer. “But still…”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Come on! Who can you tell if not your best friend?”

“Nobody,” Yang admitted. “But… it really doesn’t matter okay?” Nora might be her best friend, but that didn’t mean that Yang was ready to tell her about Raven yet. “It’s probab-… it’s nothing.”

“Well, okay,” Nora said. “If you say so.”

"Yang," Ren's voice, raised higher than his usual soft volume, carried across the night even as Ren himself crossed the open ground briskly towards the two girls. "Mister Danvers should have been back by now."

Yang sat up. Jett Danvers was the professional huntsman whom Team YRDN were shadowing on this mission; only, he hadn't seemed particularly keen on the whole 'shadowing' aspect of the deal. It wasn't so bad, for the most part, since they were just there to stand guard, and they could easily do that alongside him, but when he had gone out scouting, he had refused to take any of the young huntsmen along with him, claiming that they'd only slow him down.

Only Ren was right; he was slow enough already. He should have been back by now. It had been – Yang checked her scroll – more than two hours; how much scouting did he feel the need to do?

Yang scrambled to her feet. On the plus side, they had heard no gunshots, nor the roaring and howling of any grimm, and it was unlikely that he could or would have gone so far that they wouldn't have heard any of those things if he'd gotten into trouble. On the other hand, however, the fact remained that he should have been back by now, and he wasn't. And it wasn't as though the grimm were the only dangers lying in wait in the dark. He might have fallen and hit his head for all they knew.

"Have you tried calling his scroll?" she asked.

"He didn't answer."

"And you didn't hear anything?"

Ren shook his head. Not that that meant a great deal; one of the pieces of advice that he had given them was to put their scrolls on silent, lest they be given away when they least wanted to be.

Yang's brow furrowed a little as she walked – with Ren and Nora following behind her – across the grass in front of the wall in Dove's direction. As she walked, Yang and her companions passed beside the campfires of the soldiers as they sat around said fires in groups of five or six, brewing tea or cooking desiccated rations. Most of them were about her age or not much older, boys and girls in green jackets with red facings on their cuffs; her age, but much less well trained. Maybe a couple of them were combat school dropouts or people who had failed to get into Beacon, but for the most part, they didn't even have their auras unlocked, who had joined the Defence Force less because they wanted to protect humanity than because they thought the army would teach them a skill.

That would probably sound a little judgemental if I said it out loud. But it wasn't meant to; it was just a fact: she had the skills, and so did her team; they… didn't.

To be honest, she felt the same way about the Atlas military; why did they need so many ordinary soldiers when they had huntsmen?

Yang's thoughts were drawn away from that as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lieutenant Whittard put aside the book he had been reading and get to his feet, weaving his way through his men to intercept Yang on her journey.

The commanding officer of the Valish platoon was no older than the bulk of the men he commanded and only a couple of years older than Yang at most; he was thin and a little pinched in the face, with a pair of round spectacles resting on top of a thin nose. "Miss Xiao Long," he said, his tone oddly deferential for someone older than she was, "is anything amiss?"

Yang smiled reassuringly. "No, El-Tee, nothing's wrong. We're all good here, aren't we?"

Lieutenant Whittard frowned. "Sergeant Trent tells me that our huntsman has been away too long," he murmured.

Yang glanced briefly at Sergeant Trent, the only man in the platoon who looked over the age of twenty-five, let alone thirty. "It… has been a while," she admitted, "but I'm not that worried. We're talking about a real huntsman here, after all. And we haven't heard anything that suggests he got into trouble."

"Are you sure?" Lieutenant Whittard asked. "I don't need to be reassured there are no monsters under the bed, Miss Xiao Long; I need to know the truth."

Yang snorted. "Sorry. Natural big sister habit, I guess. The truth is… I don't know where Danvers went, but I'm going to take my partner and go see if we can find him but leave Ren and Nora here with you, okay?"

Lieutenant Whittard nodded carefully. "And if… if you don't come back either?"

"Then call for Bullheads," Yang told him. "Because if we don't come back either, then it means there's something out there."

Lieutenant Whittard paled visibly, which was quite a feat considering how whey-faced he was ordinarily. "I… I see," he murmured. "Good luck, Miss Xiao Long."

"Thanks a bunch, Lieutenant," Yang replied affably before she left him behind and covered the rest of the distance separating her from Dove. The fourth member of her team was standing sentinel, his back to the incomplete wall and the platoon of soldiers, his sword gripped lightly in one hand.

"Do you see anything?" Yang asked, as she came to stand alongside him.

Dove's blue eyes glanced towards her. "I haven't seen any grimm… but I haven't seen Mister Danvers either," he said.

Yang sighed. "You and me are going to take a look around. Ren, Nora, stay here and guard the soldiers."

"There's something rather absurd-sounding about that statement, don't you think?" Dove muttered.

"You know what I mean," Yang replied. "Ren, if we don't come back-"

"Don't talk like that," Nora said sharply, cutting her off. "Come back, okay? You've got so much to come back to."

"I mean to try," Yang assured her. But I bet Mom meant to try and come back, too. "But if we don't, call Professor Ozpin. Or Professor Goodwitch. Call somebody." And tell Ruby that I'll always be with her. Not that she said that out loud; it would have been too gloomy for words, and she'd regret the melodrama of it once they found Jett Danvers and it turned out that he'd just fallen down a hole and broken his leg or something.

Ren nodded. "Of course," he said, his tone clipped.

"Thanks," Yang said. "You ready, Dove?"

"I think so," Dove replied.

"Okay then," Yang said. "Let's-"

She was interrupted by the sound of a dry twig snapping underfoot, somewhere in the darkness beyond the reach of the light of their fires.

Yang assumed a boxing stance, her Ember Celica snapping back to expose the guns concealed within the vambraces; Dove raised his sword; Nora pulled Magnhild over her shoulder and unfurled it; Ren's StormFlowers appeared in his hands.

The four members of Team YRDN spread out a little, presenting a less inviting target than the four of them clumped together in a single mass.

Of course, they didn't know that it was anything bad out there, but better to be safe than sorry.

Even if it was alarming the soldiers a little bit, judging by the way that heads had turned towards them. Some of the young men and women snatched up their rifles. Lieutenant Whittard had one hand on his holstered pistol as he began to gingerly step forward, the burly figure of Sergeant Trent keeping pace beside him.

"Hello?" Yang called into the dark. If you're not a grimm, now would be a good time to say so.

A figure shambled out of the darkness and into the light; Yang breathed a sigh of relief: it was Jett Danvers, their professional huntsman. "Hey," she shouted. "What took you so long? We were getting worried back here."

Jett ignored her. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with black hair descending to just beneath his ears, dressed in a dark parka and jeans. He carried a billhook, the weapon resting lightly on his shoulder as he gripped the shaft in one hand.

His head was bowed a little as he walked with an unsteady, almost stumbling gait. He ignored the young huntsmen completely and walked towards Lieutenant Whittard and Sergeant Trent.

Lieutenant Whittard laughed. "Mister Danvers," he said, "you gave us all quite a scare there for a moment."

Jett did not reply. He walked closer, head down covering the distance between the two men, and then he swung his billhook and drove the hook into Lieutenant Whittard's head.

Yang's eyes widened in horror as the young officer, his head so suddenly misshapen and his face frozen in a look of stunned surprise, collapsed to the ground. Sergeant Trent cursed but had only started to raise his rifle when Jett drove the billhook point-first through his throat.

"Run!" Yang shouted at the soldiers, her voice rising above the panicked hubbub that was beginning to rise from their throats as they saw their leaders fall to the weapon of an ally. "Get back!"

They didn't need to be told twice. The soldiers began to scramble up, fleeing from their fires, running towards Vale, running away from a huntsman who outclassed them in every respect.

This was not a fight that they could win.

But it is a fight that we can win.

Yang launched herself forward, firing Ember Celica behind her for thrust like a pair of rockets strapped to her hands. She flew above the ground, the tips of her boots scraping the blades of grass beneath her as she threw herself bodily between the huntsman and the hapless soldiers he would make his prey.

"What are you doing?" Yang demanded as she faced the man she was supposed to learn from.

Jett's eyes were black and pitiless, and he said nothing at all as he brought his billhook down upon her head.

Yang stepped forward, catching the wooden shaft upon her wrists. She could feel the pressure of Jett's strength as he pressed down against her, yet somehow, it seemed less than she would have expected of a seasoned huntsman. "Why?" Yang demanded. "Why are you doing this?"

Jett stared at her, and wordlessly, he released his grip upon the billhook and began to reach out for Yang.

Yang felt someone collide into her from the side, someone who turned out to be Dove, who had barged into her from the shoulder and, in the process, knocked her to the ground – he too went sprawling a moment later as the momentum of his rush carried him over her in a stumbling fall. They lay on the ground, their legs tangled up.

Jett's face was blank as he reached out for them.

Dove roared in anger as he slashed at Jett's outstretched hand, slicing off his fingers with his sword. Jett drew back but did not cry out in pain. He just stared blankly at the stumps of his fingers.

"Huh?" Yang said. "But his aura-"

"It's not a huntsman," Dove declared. "It's a Chill; we have to get back."

"Oh, gods," Yang whispered under her breath as she and Dove both scrambled upright and retreated from what had been Jett Danvers.

Professor Port didn't need to cover Chills in his Grimm Studies class, and not only because Doctor Oobleck was covering them in legends; nobody came to that class unaware of the story of Poppy and Oak, of the grimm that had no body but could steal any body it wished, even one that was protected by aura. If it had laid a hand on Yang, then she would have perished in an instant, and her body would have become the new plaything of the Chill.

"We have to kill it," Yang said. She raised her fists. It wouldn't be that hard, so long as they kept their distance. It was possessing a human body, but it didn't have a human aura. So long as they didn't let it touch them. So long as… so long as she couldn't notice the human face, the body of the man who had once been a protector of the world.

Her hands and arms trembled. Ember Celica did not fire. Nor did Dove's gunblade, for that matter, which was shaking more than Yang's arms. Dove, the loveable dumbass, put himself between Yang and Jett as though it were better for him to be taken out than her, but he didn't shoot, and judging by the tremors, Yang wasn't sure if he had it in him to use the bloody blade again.

Mind, it would be hypocritical of me to blame him for that.

Nora had switched Magnhild into grenade launcher mode, but it too was silent and showed no sign of speaking soon. Nora's eyes were wide, and Yang could understand why; this was the strength of a Chill: they hoped that nobody would be able to shoot someone wearing a face they knew.

But someone was.

"Hey!" Ren shouted, drawing Jett's attention as he dashed forward.

Jett turned slowly towards him.

Ren raised his guns and fired. He continued to charge, StormFlowers spitting, green flashes bursting from the muzzles and as he fired, and charged, the body of Jett Danvers twitched and spasmed and swayed in place as red spots sprouted all over his torso, the parka jacket withering under the fire, the bullets tearing into the aura-less body.

The billhook dropped from Jett's hand.

Ren emptied the last rounds in his StormFlowers as he closed the distance between himself and Jett. He stopped, spinning in place, and with the blades that hung beneath his pistols, he sliced off Jett's head. Still spinning, Ren tossed one of his StormFlowers up into the air and thrust out his palm towards the trunk of the man who had been Jett. Ren's aura pulsed, and the body was silently flung backwards into the darkness and out of sight.

Ren caught his pistol before it hit the ground. He was turned away from Yang. His head was bowed, in a way that made Yang afraid for a moment that the Chill had transferred to him. But it was not so; she could see it was not so when he looked at her, and she could see Lie Ren in those eyes, though it was a side of Ren that she had never seen before.

Nor was she certain that she wished to see it again.

"That wasn't a man," he said, his voice trembling. "It was once, but not anymore. It deserved no mercy."

Who are you trying to convince, Ren? Me or you?

Ren didn't wait for a response from Yang. He turned away and walked off a few metres, moving with a weary tread as though his frenetic burst of activity a moment ago had exhausted him. He stood facing the darkness, silent, almost expectant, although what he was expecting, Yang could not have said.

"That…" Dove murmured. "That was…"

"He saved our lives," Yang replied.

"I know," Dove admitted. "But all the same."

All the same, it's scary to think that I don't really know him at all.

"Call Beacon," she instructed Dove. "Tell them… tell them everything."

"Of course," Dove murmured. He knelt and wiped the blood from his sword upon the grass before thrusting it into his belt as he turned away and reached for his scroll.

Yang began to walk towards Ren.

"Don't," Nora said, her voice quiet and soft as she interposed herself between the two of them. "Ren… give him some space, okay?"

Yang looked over Nora's head at Ren, who had not moved. "Are you sure space is what he needs?"

"I try every day to give Ren what he needs," Nora replied. "But sometimes, I have to settle for giving him what he wants."

"Which is space?"

Nora nodded, although her expression was so melancholy, it was clear that she didn't like it one bit. Yang didn't much care for it either, but Nora knew him best.

Nora turned around, and together, the two of them watched as Ren stood, as still as any statue.

"Sometimes," Nora whispered, "I feel as though there's a wall like glass between us, and it lets me hear him and see him… but never touch him."

Yang glanced up at the stars which continued to shine above them all. "Are you sure that you shouldn't go to him? Together always, right?"

Nora looked around at Yang, her expression hesitant. Yang nodded in silent encouragement, and after a brief second more of hesitation, Nora approached Ren. He looked down at her, but when she didn't say anything to him, he didn't say anything to her either. Ren looked away, but he didn't move away; he allowed Nora to continue to stand beside him as the moonlight fell upon them both, bathing them in silvery light.

I don't know where you are right now, Ruby, but I hope your mission is going better than ours.

The howl of a beowolf split the night air.

Me and my big mouth.

“The fear!” Nora cried. “It’s attracted more grimm.”

Yang bared her teeth. What was that you said about spinning straw into gold, Professor Goodwitch? Well, I guess the wheel’s in front of me now. Now, what were those five points of a speech you talked about in Leadership? Oh, yeah, right. “Okay, listen up!” she shouted, as more beowolf howls echoed through the darkness. “We don’t have much time, and I’m not much for speeches, so it’s a good thing that you guys don’t need me to talk you into bravery.

“The grimm are coming. I don’t know how many there are. It could be half a dozen, or it could be a horde, but they’re coming with teeth and claws, and they’re going to give us a fight, and it could be a tough one.

“If we run, if we die, if we don’t hold this position, then there’s nothing to stop the grimm until they reach the Red Line, and all the farms and cottages behind us will be vulnerable to these monsters. But if we win, if we fight hard and kill them all, then all of those people will be safe. They’re counting on us, and we’re not going to let them down.

“We’ve trained for this. We’ve studied for this. We were chosen for this.” Yang turned around and gestured to the wall behind them; the Green Line was a hodge-podge of half-completed defences for which there had not been enough money or resources at the time of its initial laying-down, but this section, the repairs of which Team YRDN had worked on, was a fully-fledged wall of red brick, stout enough for modest field guns to be mounted atop it and for men to fight from it if there had been men. There was only one problem: it wasn’t finished; there was an unconstructed gap which the contractors had been labouring to close up, but it was still a dozen feet wide. “They’re going to go through that gap,” Yang declared. “It’s quicker than going over the wall, but that gap is going to be where we stop them. Dove, you’re with me in the breach. Ren, get up on the wall and shoot down on them as they come. Nora, you’re our reserve; stay behind us and mop up any that get past us.”

Nora saluted. “Yes, ma’am.”

“This might not be easy,” Yang admitted, “but we can do this. Beacon and Vale have trusted us with this. Let’s earn that trust.”

Dove, his face a little pale, nevertheless nodded in acknowledgement of her words. Nora was already grinning in anticipation. Only Ren failed to acknowledge her or what she’d said; he remained facing out into the darkness as the howling of the grimm got closer and closer.

“Ren?” Yang asked.

He turned around. His face was stern-set, but his voice was soft as he said, “I won’t let anyone else die.”

Yang forced a smile onto her face. “That’s the spirit.”

They retreated towards the bottleneck of sorts formed by the incomplete wall. With a single bound, Ren leapt high enough to reach the rampart, and as he took his position there, Yang could only think what a pity it was that there weren’t any heavier guns emplaced up there that he could use. Nora retreated about twenty or thirty feet back behind the front line, Magnhild still held in grenade launcher mode.

Yang and Dove stood between the two sections of the wall, hearing the howling grimm come on.

Dove bent his knees, holding his sword before him in a low guard. “Yang,” he said softly, “when… when you were growing up, when you were a kid, were there a lot of other children around? Did you have a lot of friends?”

You’re asking me this now? “Uh, no,” Yang replied, wondering if Dove just wanted to distract himself. “We lived kind of out of the way, on our own. It was just me and Ruby.”

Dove nodded. “There were a lot of kids in our village,” he told her, “and in our village, there was this rise just outside my grandfather’s house, and it wasn’t much, but when we were kids, it seemed like a hill, and it had a rock sticking out of it. And we used to play a game: someone would stand on top of the rock, and anyone who wanted to could try and shove you off it and down the hill, and the winner would get to shout ‘I’m king of the hill!’”

Yang grinned. “Sounds fun.”

“It was,” Dove agreed. “Nobody could shove me off that hill. Not anybody.” He took a deep breath, and then another. “King of the Hill,” he muttered. “King of the Hill. Dove Bronzewing is King of the Hill!”

The grimm burst upon them, beowolves emerging out of the darkness with eyes gleaming red and their masks and fangs alike a shining white under the moon and stars. Ren’s StormFlowers cracked as he fired, both barrels blazing from atop the wall as he unleashed his bullets into the onrushing demons, and over Yang’s head flew grenades with pink smoke trailing after them as Nora fired over their heads to thin the monstrous ranks. But still, they came, though they died to Nora’s grenades and – fewer – died to Ren’s StormFlower rounds, yet they came, growling and snarling.

They came for the gap in the wall. They came for Yang and Dove. Their formation narrowed as they drew closer, becoming a clump as they fought to get ahead of one another, the first to reach the fight.

The first to die. Yang’s Ember Celica roared as she threw shadow punches which fired her gauntlets, and beside her, Dove’s gunblade barked as he shot all the rounds he had into the black and bone-faced mass of death.

And then Dove was out of shots and Yang was out of time as the grimm reached them.

They couldn’t move. That would have left Nora out behind facing all the fury of the grimm, not to mention defeated the point of making their stand between the walls like this. They had to stand fast, they had to make their bodies the wall and go toe to toe against the mass of teeth and claws that lunged for them, maws open.

It wasn’t Yang’s kind of fighting; she might have been trained to punch, but she was also trained to move, to weave and jab, and all of that was denied to her here. All she could do to hold the line was stand and take it, let her semblance consume the damage and turn it into even stronger punches with which she disintegrated the grimm who hurled themselves at her.

They came. She punched. They threw themselves at her, and she killed them. She tried not to let any of them get past her. Their claws reached for her, they fueled her semblance, but they also drained her aura. As Yang punched harder and harder, she could also feel the shield of soul that protected her getting thinner and thinner, and still, she held the line.

Until there were no more grimm left and only the dark of the night before them.

Yang drew in deep breaths and exhaled just as briefly. “Hey, Dove, are you okay?” She glanced at him, and her eyes – returning to their usual lilac colour – widened at the sight of a trio of scratches – still bleeding slightly – on his cheek. “Dove?”

“I’m fine,” Dove assured her, waving her concern away. “It’s fine.”

“Did your aura break?” Yang demanded.

“Just a little bit,” Dove said, although she could see there were scores upon his armour, too.

“'A little bit'!” Yang repeated. “You should have-”

“Left you to fight by yourself?” Dove finished questioningly. He shook his head. “Not going to happen.”

Yang snorted. “Ruby will always be the bravest person I know… but you might just be the second, you know that?”

Dove smiled. “From what I know of Ruby, I’m flattered.”

“And I’m worried,” Yang said. “Too much courage could get you hurt.”

“And it might spare someone else,” Dove said. “I’m fine, really. Still king of the hill.”

“King of the hill? King of the wall.”

“King and queen of the wall,” Dove corrected.

Yang chuckled. “I like the sound of that,” she said as a Bullhead roared overhead and descended with an engine whine and a gust of wind right in front of them.

The doors opened, revealing Professor Goodwitch within.

“Mister Bronzewing,” she said, an unusual touch of alarm entering her stern voice. “You seem to be injured.”

“It’s just a scratch, Professor.”

“Have it checked out when we return to Beacon,” Professor Goodwitch instructed him. “You seem to have had an eventful evening, Miss Xiao Long.”

Yang laughed. “You could say that, Professor. Dove should get that looked at, but I don’t know about the rest of us coming back to Beacon. The mission isn’t finished yet.”

Professor Goodwitch stared at her for a moment, and for a moment, Yang thought she saw a glint of approval in the combat instructor’s eyes.

“As you wish, Miss Xiao Long.”

Comments

[Antiquarian]

Good on ya, Dove.

[MSie95]

The Grimm Child is one of my favourite tales. The creature itself is terrifying. At least one death you can do nothing to prevent.

Hope Ren'll be fine. Did what you have to.

[Jimbalaya]

Wait. Jett? Billhook?

https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Jet

My boy just can't catch a break.

[Animatorsnake]

10602886
Even in another world, in a fandom story, he’s still be trashed on

[Animatorsnake]

In honesty this scared me shitless, I didn’t know this kind of Grimm existed - and is canon - imagine this Grimm making an actual appearance in the series, terrifying

[Maelaeran]

To be honest, she felt the same way about the Atlas military; why did they need so many ordinary soldiers when they had huntsmen?

I always figured that an unlocked Aura had to have a downside in that it attracted more Grimm due to the person literally bearing their soul to the world. It would explain why having Aura unlocked isn't a basic requirement for everyone living on the deathworld that is Remnant.

[Snowdrifter]

“Oh, sure, I know,” Yang agreed. If Ruby had to be on a team without Yang, at least she was on a team with the kindest, most caring people in Beacon – and Sunset Shimmer. “But still…”

[Snowdrifter]

“Oh, sure, I know,” Yang agreed. If Ruby had to be on a team without Yang, at least she was on a team with the kindest, most caring people in Beacon – and Sunset Shimmer. “But still…”

I can also see this:

Yang: "Friends! Fellow Huntsmen and Huntresses! Bacon hair!"

Sunset: "Hey!"