Reaper 1.6
Seeing my apprentice injured and surrounded made the kid gloves come off from the very beginning.
A wall of massive ten foot long swords plunged between Leona and the bandits followed by a rain of glowing swords that plunged into the ground for all of a couple seconds before detonating like small bombs, and the only reason the explosions were that small was because Leona was too close to use anything bigger without possibly hurting her or the towns people behind her in the process.
It was still enough that three of the five weren't getting back up again.
I glared at the remaining two as the dust settled. Despite my bombardment, they actually seemed nearly completely unharmed.
One looked like he had managed to hide before my attack detonated, slipping around a building. He was either impressively fast or managed to get an early warning somehow. The second was the exact opposite, going by the blast marks around his feet, he had withstood the equivalent of several magical RPGs going off in his face without moving an inch.
I kept my eyes on him even as I landed next to Leona, only sparing a glance to see how bad her injury was. From my perspective it was just a gash on her arm, but just to make sure…
"You okay?" I whispered to her, eyes back to carefully watching the two remaining bandits.
I felt her nod next to me. "It's just one scratch. My Wards deflected most of their shots, but one of them shot something that almost ignored them entirely. It looked like he was using fire instead of the normal bullets the others used."
I took a moment to consider her words. Leona had naturally modified her defensive Wards after seeing what guns could do, but neither of them had managed to test them against Dust rounds. Those were restricted to Huntemen or people with active Auras. Something the two of us didn't have and couldn't prove.
At the time it hadn't been a priority because neither of us were expecting Leona to end up in a serious fight anytime soon while we were fixing the Horizon. Now, I kinda wished I had insisted on getting my hands on a few since Dust could apparently cut right through her magic.
I'd have to be a little more careful, too. My defenses were different from Leona's but they were also mostly magical. The last thing I needed was to end up shot because I assumed I could take a bullet only to find out I was wrong.
"I'll keep an eye out for that." I muttered. "You need to get everyone into the ship or headed towards the east gate. The walls were breached, we're abandoning the town."
Leona inhaled sharply at the news but recovered quickly. "What about you?"
I gave her a grim smile. "I'm going to deal with those two quickly." The smile fell away, "And then I'm going to help escort all of you to the gate. At least nine bandits snuck in, I'm not betting your safety that was all of them." Especially if that portal came from who I thought it did.
My apprentice gave me a single nod and moved to start herding the townspeople towards the vehicles, only slowing down to allow a woman to tie a temporary bandage around her wounded arm.
That was all the attention I could spare for her though. It was time to meet the bastards that decided to kill a town just to fuel their own greed.
Two swords making up my impromptu wall dissolved into blue sparks as I stepped through the gap. I instantly spotted the bandit that had tanked my attack standing in roughly the same place and couldn't help but frown.
I exploded the better part of a street and put down three of his friends. Even if he was confident in his skills, he shouldn't be taking me this lightly. So the question was, stupid overconfidence or earned arrogance?
"So you're the one messing up our operation, huh?" The bandit said, giving me a lookover. "Gonna be honest, I was hoping for someone that didn't look like they still belong in one of those fancy academies just so the Boss wouldn't chew me out as bad for how things went to hell. This was supposed to be my big break, you're making me look bad blondie."
"If it's that big of a problem I don't mind cutting you down." I said coldly, as Monohoshi-Zao appeared in my hands. I quickly brought the long blade to sit up next to my face. "Won't be your problem after that."
"Heh, scary." The bandit scoffed, raising his own single handed axe into a ready position. "You sound just like her when she gets mad. Of course, she wouldn't be mad over something like this either. The strong take what they want and the weak fall in line, blondie. That's the way of the world."
"Then you don't mind if I take your head." I muttered as I dashed forward.
As much as I wanted to see what someone with an active Aura could do in a real fight, this wasn't the time to experiment too much. I'd end things as quickly as I could and then get the townspeople to safety. Getting revenge on the bandits for causing this in the first place could wait until after that. The only thing I was going to test in this fight was the effectiveness of the blade in my hands.
I'd picked Monohoshi-Zao because it was a good litmus test for the rest of my projected blades against Aura. A normal sword overall for a Noble Phantasm, but one that almost guaranteed a hit.
Not that the bandit seemed like he was planning on dodging.
Even as I quickly closed the distance, he didn't show any signs of even taking a defensive stance. Just setting up for some sort of counter attack without guarding himself in any way, obviously willing to bet on either his Aura or Semblance tanking the hit like he did for my earlier attacks.
"Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi."
One sword, three strikes. I could actually see the instant the bandit realised he might have underestimated me and activated what had to be his Semblance – a solid glowing forcefield that covered him head to toe.
All three of my attacks landed – one at the throat, two carving up under the ribs – and all three felt like I hit a metal statue instead of a person. Apparently his Semblance was something like a magic armor that was even tougher than the Wards Samuel could put up. Troublesome, but not unbeatable. Even without any special properties besides its length, I could feel as Monohoshi-Zao bit into the bandit slightly.
And either because the Bandit was surprised I'd managed to hurt him even that much or because he was expecting me to slow down after hitting him, the counterattack was slow. I barely needed to twist out of the way to dodge it completely.
My attack carried me past the Bandit so I quickly turned back to face him in time to see him reaching up to the small cut on his neck. "Damn, only the boss has ever managed a cut like that." he said as he looked at the blood staining his fingertips. "Almost makes me want to introduce you two and see if she'll take you into the tribe."
"It'd be a waste of my time, Belford." A cool female voice spoke out behind me. "She doesn't seem like the joining type."
I immediately used Haste to jump to the side, expecting an attack following up the words. But nothing happened. Instead I saw a woman wearing a red and black outfit leaning nonchalantly on the wall of a building, watching me carefully from underneath a full helmet shaped like a Grimm's head.
She was one of the few people on Remnant that I recognized on sight. Raven Branwen, mother of one of RWBY's main cast, bandit leader, and depending on where in the timeline we ended up one of the four maidens - women granted incredible magical power when the previous owner died.
"Boss, what are you doing here?" My opponent – Belford, apparently – questioned in a vaguely whining tone. "You agreed to letting me run the show this time."
"That was before you kicked off a Grimm Tide." Raven said blandly and prevented me from speaking up. I didn't know exactly what that was, but it also wasn't too hard to guess based on the name. "We're pulling out. Anyone that wants to live is getting sent back to Mistral."
"Damn, I put a lot of planning into this too. But I guess them's the breaks, ya?"
"Hold on a sec." I interrupted. "Do you think I'm just going to let you walk away after you've admitted you've doomed the entire town?"
Raven shrugged as she drew her sword. A curved, single edged blade resembling a katana that currently glowed red with the infused Fire Dust in the metal but could be swapped out for other blades as needed. An almost lazy slash through the air formed a swirling red portal to appear.
"I don't think you can stop us." Raven replied. "Besides, we didn't doom this town. A Tide can't form from nothing. This town was always going to be destroyed, Belford just moved the date up a little bit. You can complain about it all you want but that's the truth. Now get moving, Belford, Cassander."
The second bandit, who I had mostly forgotten about, wasted no time sprinting towards the portal. More out of reflex than conscious thought a sword formed behind me and instantly shot out at the fleeing bandit, only to be almost instantly cut down when Raven moved to intercept the weapon, allowing the bandit to disappear into the portal.
Belford glanced between the two of us and simply shrugged before moving to do the same.
I just felt my insides burn with rage at the casual dismissal the two had over destroying a town and, as far as they knew, leaving everyone left behind to be killed by the Grimm.
"If you think I'm letting you just leave–" I started before I was interrupted by Raven swinging her sword again. This time a wave of fire spread from the blade that threatened to consume me, or so it first appeared. I could sense a decent amount of magic enhancing the flames beyond the Dust blade just generating them. Which meant I couldn't just charge through them without thinking. Not when the blaze could keep moving down the street towards the townspeople behind me.
I dodged even further back but by the time the flames died down, Belford was nowhere to be seen and Raven had her back to me, calmly walking towards her portal.
"Hold it!"
Raven ignored me and kept walking. "I wouldn't waste your energy, little girl. In moments this town will be swallowed by the Grimm. You can fight me, or you can focus on escaping with the people behind you."
I hesitated, caught in between the desire to take Raven down and protect the townspeople. And it cost me.
By the time I realised I needed to make a decision immediately, Raven was already about to walk through her portal. "Damn you."
"The weak die, the strong survive. It was nothing personal." She said as she stepped through the swirling red hole in reality before that vanished behind her leaving me with a lot of pent up anger and no one to take it out on.
But if there really was something as dangerous sounding as a Grimm Tide heading for us, I didn't have time to waste complaining that the bandits responsible for this whole mess had run off. I needed to focus on making sure the rest of us got out alive.
With that in mind I turned and sprinted back to where the Azure Horizon was parked and was at least pleased to see Leona had gotten it and the other vehicles in the area moving towards the East gate like I had told her to. Thanks to that, there was very little else for me to do besides urge the few people we ran into on the way to the wall to evacuate and snipe a few flying Grimm that had managed to slip past the remaining defenders until we met up with Dann's group at the gate and began fleeing the town for real.
We were only a few miles out from the walls when I saw what it meant to face a 'Grimm Tide' through the Horizon's cameras.
A solid carpet of black shapes emerged from the surrounding mountains and forests that blotted out every other color that slowly made its way over the horizon until it washed over what remained of Thornbell.
Some of the townspeople watching from over my shoulder cried out in despair at the sight of their home getting swallowed up. I could only think of how paradoxically lucky we had been to not only have been preparing to evacuate the civilians while being unable to locate the bandit camp's new location. Because if I had gone out to deal with the bandits while this Tide hit the town unprepared…
Well, I didn't want to think about how many fewer people would be alive to run from them.
Reaper 1.7
The very small silver lining to our current situation is that for the most part we had outrun the Grimm Tide.
Between the convoy of vehicles and the Horizon, our group was fast enough that only creatures capable of flying or ones with ridiculous stamina had a chance of catching up to us. Of course there were a few Nevermore sighted further back following us thanks to the veritable beacon of negative emotions most of us were no doubt broadcasting, but considering except for me and Leona had lost their homes, most of their possessions, and considering we didn't have time to evacuate everyone – friends and family…I wasn't about to blame anyone for being unable to just bottle those up and plaster on a smile like nothing was wrong.
Besides, the handful of Grimm drawn to the convoy were manageable as long as we stayed ahead of the main group behind us.
Something that was going to become harder as the trucks began to run out of the Dust needed to fuel them and our speed dropped to a crawl.
Supplies in general were going to become an issue soon, since in the last scramble to get people evacuated a lot of things had been left behind for one reason or another. Food and fuel were the biggest issues. We simply didn't have enough of either and had no real way of getting more.
I heard the sound of the Horizon's top hatch opening behind me and someone climb up from below.
"There you are, lass. Been looking all over for ya." Dann said as he sat down next to me.
I gave him a look. "If you needed me you could have just called my scroll." I pointed out.
He just waved me off. "Bah, sure I could. But then I wouldn't have an excuse to wander around and check up on people."
That made sense I guess. There was only so far you could push people on an empty stomach so we had stopped for a quick mean, but Dann wouldn't have said he was looking for me if he was just checking up on everyone. Which probably meant something else was up.
"Well you found me. What can I help you with?"
The older Huntsman breathed out a sigh. "I don't really know if you can help, but it's something we've been telling the others on the downlow. Spirits are already down in the dirt, no need to stomp on them if we can help it." He now had my full attention. "We've got a Goliath following us."
I frowned at that.
There were hundreds of different types of Grimm and I was by no means an expert on any of them, but there were a few types that I did remember for one reason or another. Beowolves, because they were the 'basic cannonfodder' type werewolf Grimm. Ursas, because they were basically just bear Grimm. And a few others like that – normal animals changed into nightmare monsters.
From what I remembered, Goliaths were elephant Grimm. Large, tough, and more concerningly smart since they tended to live long enough to actually learn to not just charge headfirst into the first target they found. But I also thought they only traveled in groups. So either I was wrong or this one was different.
"You're sure?"
Dann nodded. "Saw the scroll pic myself. One of the boys hung back to see what beasties were chasing us and sent it ahead. Followed us perfectly even when our route could've split, even when it shouldn't've been able to see us over the hills. Wanna know how?"
I thought about it for a second before coming to an answer I really didn't like. "It's following the Nevermore."
Dann nodded.
It was a trick scavenger animals used in the wild to find food. Only now it was a very large creature of darkness using smaller creatures of darkness to hunt down and kill a bunch of refugees for no other reason than destruction.
"I think we got the worst of both worlds." Dann commented. "A Goliath old enough to figure out where we went, but young enough to not realise going off on its own can get it killed. 'Course we don't really have a good way to bring it down, but it doesn't know that."
"So what are we going to do about it?"
"Do about it? Probably not much." Dann said, running a hand through his hair. "Unless we get a whole lot luckier than we've been lately we'll just have to try drawing it off at some point."
I gave him a look. "Didn't you just say you didn't have a good way to bring it down?"
"Aye, but at this rate it either gets some of us or all of us. And I'm not about to let that happen if I have a choice. Most of us Huntsmen feel the same."
Meaning most of them were planning on sacrificing themselves to try and get the civilians away even if it wasn't guaranteed they'd be able to reach safety. I felt another bout of rage towards Raven that she not only instigated this whole disaster, but was free to run away while objectively better people were preparing to pay the price for it.
I sighed. This was going to put such a target on my back if the wrong people found out about it.
"Okay then." I said, standing up and patting myself down. "How far out is the Goliath?"
-o-
Not far as it turned out.
Once I managed to talk not only Dann, but also half the adults riding in the Horizon, down that I wasn't going to sacrifice myself or something along those lines – I managed to wring out some more details.
The Goliath was only a few miles away from us and would be visible soon if nothing was done. I had a suspicion that I could spot it sooner if I had the Azure Horizon simply fly higher, but that had the risk of attracting the Nevermore and possibly damaging the ship. It wasn't likely, but no one wanted to risk missing one in the dark. Not when it was currently the main transport for most of the children and elderly.
It wasn't necessary though, not when I could just create a platform in the air out of magic.
Sure, it revealed I had something more going on to everyone that couldn't be explained away as a Semblance, not when I had implied that's what my Tracing was and standing in mid-air had nothing to do with that, but compared with what I was about to do…well, it was hardly going to add too many questions after this.
One magic circle rotated lazily below me while I finished drawing out the other. By this point I had plenty of practice so once I was done all I had to do was wait for the giant Grimm to lumber into sight.
And giant was an understatement.
Even from so far away I could tell the thing was massive, easily standing over the nearby trees. Meaning this Grimm was somewhere over eighty feet tall. I could understand why the Huntsmen with us weren't confident about killing something like that. They would have to rely on close quarters combat to hurt the thing at all since bullets would essentially be needle pricks, which naturally meant being too slow or even momentarily unlucky would result in being crushed by its feet or armored trunk.
Of course I wasn't planning on stabbing it either.
"Nova Blast!" I intoned as the spell circle for my bombardment spell activated.
Maybe the Goliath realised something was amiss, maybe it thought it had nothing to fear from the bright yellow death beam. Whatever the case, it was no longer an issue as my spell vaporised its head and a good portion of its body.
That was one problem dealt with – maybe two even, I thought vindictively as I watched the lingering Nevermore scatter in several directions and cheers broke out in the refugee convoy below me. Something that made me look down at the ground with mild dread.
Now I just had to tackle the next one.
-o-
It was official, Leona was a saint.
I had expected to need to field a bunch of questions about what I just did and how when I rejoined everyone. But in the time it had taken me to run out of ways to distract myself and lower myself back down to ground level, Leona had already fielded a lot of them with some stern variations of 'it's not your business' and reminding them that we were all out in the wilderness fleeing from the Grimm with better things to do standing around questioning me.
The reminder of what was after us got everyone moving quickly enough. Because while yes, the townspeople had just watched me kill a massive Grimm with one attack…they also saw me standing around preparing that attack for over ten minutes. They were smart enough to realise what I had just done wouldn't save them against a horde when Leona confirmed I couldn't fire that particular attack much faster than the first time.
…both she and I carefully didn't remind them that I was capable of carpet bombing entire areas with my more standard attacks.
"Now I just have to hide in here until we reach Vale." I mused as I watched the scenery pass by from the cockpit of the Horizon.
"You would be climbing the walls out of boredom within hours, Mistress." Leona commented as she joined me. Which, fair. If I was actually flying I could sit behind the controls for hours without complaint, but since the autopilot was more than capable of handling the slow speed we were traveling at there was nothing for me to do. I would absolutely go crazy from boredom very quickly.
"Let me at least pretend."
She gave me an indulgent smile and said nothing. Smartass.
"Okay, how are things looking? Are we going to make it to the city?"
"Now that the Grimm aren't chasing us the drivers decided to move forward using a 'low power mode'. According to them it will make us slower but should allow every vehicle to reach the main city without needing to find more Dust. Unfortunately that means we're likely to run out of food a day before we make it, but that's something we can either supplement with more hunting or just accept." Leona reported calmly.
"And how are the refugees?" I asked with a sense of dread. "It's been a bit, are they demanding answers or worse – signs of hero worship anywhere?"
Leona sighed. "Would being recognized for saving them really be such a bad thing? But to answer your question, they are talking about it but I don't think most of the civilians understand how significant killing a creature of that size by yourself is from the other things Huntsmen are capable of. The Huntsmen themselves are respecting your wishes but I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to confront you before we reach the city."
That made sense I suppose.
A farmer or storekeeper wouldn't really need to know what it took to kill certain types of Grimm because they theoretically should never be in that situation. What I did was impressive to them, yes. But they didn't really get it.
As for the recognition…
After the Varden I could confidently say I didn't want to be held up as a hero by anyone. The expectations, both by others and myself, had sucked and ended up ruining a lot of potential friendships before they really got going. I now fully understood why Kisuke and Yoruichi had preferred to hide out in their candy shop even after they cleared their names.
It was much better to let others get the recognition so they could live their lives how they wanted.
Hopefully I'd be able to foist most of that on Sean and Dann while I either got a small reward I could put towards getting the devices I wanted built, or something that would make traveling between kingdoms a bit easier. Just a small, well-deserved reward without a lot of fanfare. Was that too much to ask for?