Returning his partner's glance, a feline ear swiveled to listen to his words.
"It'll only take a bit more to break their backs," the human said as he began to twirl his weapon.
Eyes looking forward and scanning the treeline, it was true. Their numbers were thinning, with the more intelligent and older Grimm having retreated.
The younger, fool-hardy Grimm were the only ones that dared to stay.
Behind him, he heard a booming sound as the human continued his attack taking out a single lead Grimm and knocking a few others down with its body.
Looking to his side as the human threw his weapon over his shoulder to have it land next to Kuhaku, he gave his partner another curious look.
"Yellow if you can make a lasting effect. Red if it's one-use only."
Smile hidden underneath his mask, he continued to grow impressed with the other student. It seemed that he understood Kuhaku's Semblance.
Looking at the blade of the lance, he saw there were still four other Glyphs inactivated. Thinking this a good chance to show most of his hand, he touched the faint outlines of the glyphs with their corresponding fingers and canceled them out. As his Lightning Dust Crystals clicked and centered in place on his gauntlets, he touched the palm of his hand against the flat of the weapon. Etching as large a glyph onto the weapon as he could, he then began to charge it with Dust. As his red eyes burned and the engravings on his gauntlet gave off a golden glow, he kept his hand on the weapon. The more time he had, the larger Glyph he could create and more powerful its effect. He would hold his hand on the weapon as long as his partner deemed necessary to give him the desired effect. Punching his free hand straight at the ground, he shot out his chain-spike and ripped it from the ground. With a flourish, he swung at the Grimm with its sharp end to whip at them before retracting the spike again.
While Perry would have loved to let his partner create the largest Glyph possible, he wasn’t exactly ready to go unarmed against the Grimm another time. Keeping his head low as his partner harried the monsters with his weapon, he fended them off to the best of his abilities. Wielding the handle like a miniature staff, he fell back away from the advancing creatures nonetheless. He could deliver sharp blows, snare them with wire, beat them to the ground, bash them aside, but in this form he couldn’t do much to actually kill the creatures. More importantly, while some had left the battle completely there were still a number of older Grimm simply lurking in the tree lines, waiting to make their decision. Unless the two of them could win, and do so decisively, they would likely rejoin the battle. And if they did, Perry was certainly as good as dead.
“Sorry,” he called out as he jerked the handle forward, pulling the wire taut as he did so, causing the lance head to rip free from the ground and his partner’s grasp. Batting a Beowolf aside as his weapon came back together in one piece, he eyed the fading yellow glow with satisfaction. “Get clear!” With that warning, he shifted his stance so the weapon was aimed at the ground, its handle pointed diagonally up to the sky. His shroud of Aura flickered and died before it burst back to life vibrantly around his feet, like the last flash of a dying light. The Grimm leaped forward, claws ready to rend, but Perry was beyond their reach by then. He seemed to float at the apex of his jump, clearing even the treeline as he soared into the sky above the clearing. Rearing back as gravity began to grab hold of him once more, he simply roared as he hurled his weapon.
Like a falling star it flew from his hands, powered by the Dust he’d managed to reload in it during his partner’s appearance. Flying past the closest Grimm, it slammed into the ground at the center of their group, raising a cloud of dust and debris that shrouded the weapon from view. “Now!” He yelled as he fell back towards the ground, fully spent, though he doubt his partner needed the verbal cue.
"Sorry," the human said as he reclaimed control of his weapon, pulling it from Kuhaku's hand.
"That should be enough." Kuhaku thought before he was rudely interrupted by more Grimm.
Throwing fists and swinging at the Grimm to force them away, the human then yelled, "Get clear!"
Not wasting time in wondering what he meant by his words and questioning it, Kuhaku clenched a fist and punched at the nearest tree firing a chained spike at it it. The metal point digging deep into its wood, the chains were pulled taut as the winch hungrily consumed the slack. Pulling Kuhaku's body toward it. Not intending on slamming his rib cage into the tree trunk again, he made sure to absorb the momentum with his legs as his feet made contact with it. Leaving the spike buried, he dug the metal claws of his free hand into the tree's bark and hung there. He watched as his partner then utilized what little remained of his Aura to launch himself into the air with his weapon. As the human began to make his descent, he roared as he then hurled his weapon towards the center of the mass of Grimm. The blade slamming into the ground and kicking up a dense cloud of dirt and dust.
Knowing what to do next, he removed his claws from the bark of the tree he clung to.
"Now!" the falling human yelled at him.
Clenching his fist, he cracked each knuckle.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack all at once, the sound almost sickening.
From within the cloud, the Glyph etched onto the other student's weapon could be seen glowing a bright gold. As it activated, the air cracked loudly as a bolt of lightning ripped outward from the weapon. A flash of light following it. As the channeled power from the lightning surged through the ground, arcing bolts reached out to hit the nearest targets. The tendrils of electricity branching out and chaining together as they slammed into the bodies of the nearby Grimm. Shutting down the weaker Grimm unable to handle the attack while paralyzing the rest.
As the area of effect grew to reach out and touch everything close enough to the impact zone of the lance, Perry was remained relatively safe. Kuhaku however, was not. The attack backfiring on him, a lightning arc struck his metal mask and gauntlets knocking him unconscious. As his vision went dark, his body slumped forward and the weight of his body freed the spike dug into the tree. Causing him to fall a few feet until he smacked into the ground, twitching and seizing.
“Holy,” Perry murmured as he raised his arm to shield his eyes from the release of lightning underneath him. Blast Bicell was basically unseeable as lightning covered and surged out from the weapon. Bolts lanced out from it towards the closes Grimm, dropping them to the ground like flies. And even beyond the visible arcs of electricity, Grimm fell to the ground, seizing as it flowed through the ground to reach them. Landing a good distance away from the source, Perry nonetheless threw himself back even further just to be safe. Stumbling as he tried to land, his legs giving out beneath him, he rolled for a few meters before finally managing to come to a halt. Pushing his face off the grass, he looked up at the damage and sighed in relief.
A few of the larger Grimms, mainly the Ursa, still managed to stand, but they weren’t going to be moving anytime soon, their bodies twitching involuntary from the massive shock that had been pumped through. Others spasmed on the ground, their bodies devastated, while the rest had already begun to decompose, fading away to little more than smoke. A glance at the surrounding treeline revealed them to empty of Grimm, the others having retreated during the blinding light show. “Shit.” Only after surveying the damage their final attack had done did Perry notice the condition of his partner.
Forcing himself up onto his feet, he made his way over towards the other student. Kneeling on the ground next to him, Perry ran a hand through his hair in frustration for not bringing his supplies with him. Though it might not have helped given he wasn’t quite sure how to treat an injury like this in the first place, some medical supplies were better than the none he had on hand right now. Sighing, he pushed aside those negative thoughts and got to work doing whatever he could. Seeing as there wasn’t anything he could do for his partner at the moment, he picked him up with a small grunt and dragged him away from the treeline. Perry’s main concern was taking care of whatever Grimm were simply paralyzed for the moment, and then he’d wait for his partner to regain consciousness. Leaving the other student a few meters from where the effects of the yellow Dust had ended, he walked over towards his weapon.
It was easy, but messy work cleaning up what remained of the Grimm. Granted they couldn’t fight back, but plunging Bicell into their twitching bodies wasn’t exactly glamorous work, given how it was usually accompanied by a fair bit of blood and gore when he wrenched the weapon out. Sighing, he brushed off the ash that lingered on his clothes after the Grimm bits had evaporated and surveyed the clearing. Devoid of any Grimm at all, the only signs of the battle that had taken place here were those of him and his partner’s making. Shaking his head, he walked over to the unconscious student and smacked him gently with his weapon. “Come on. If more Grimm show up, we’re going to be awfully tasty snacks.”
“...Come on. If more Grimm show up, we’re going to be awfully tasty snacks.”
Eyes fluttering open, he felt something smack against him. Something nudging at his body. Blinking a few times, he had star bursts spotting his vision. Coughing underneath his mask, he slowly and carefully pushed his body off of the ground. An odd mixture of sore and numb, he got to his feet. Stumbling slightly, he regained his balance as the white stripes on his ears and tail began to fade away. His red eyes changing back into their icy-blue color. As he stood in silence, he recalled the events leading up to his time being unconscious and stared at his partner. His eyes held no malice or anger, though by all means he should've been angry. After all, it was this human's plan that backfired slightly on Kuhaku and had him hit by his own Semblance. But, to be honest Kuhaku saw it coming. He was expecting almost. It wasn't his partner's fault, he couldn't have known exactly what would happen. Hell, he wasn't even expecting his Semblance to act the way it did having been altered and amplified by the human's weapon.
Looking around, he saw that the large number of Grimm had all but gone. Either having fled or died from their battle. Scoff muffled underneath his mask, he couldn't help but wonder how much he and the human had aided the other students inadvertently. Coming at the cost of he and his partner's health that is. Dusting himself off, he started to walk. Some ways away, he detected human and Faunus scents gathered which he figured where they were supposed to go. There was no point in lingering around, lest more Grimm decided to return and continue their scuffle. Relegating his movements to a leisurely stroll, he desperately needed to recuperate his Aura having expended a moderate amount of his energy. Surely the Beacon faculty had something planned to further test the students, other than just locating the relics and surviving. Not even sparing a glance or a few words of acknowledgment to the human, he continued his walk through the forest. An odd, dull pain pulsing through his body.
A twitchy shudder creeping up his spine as he walked, it was clear he didn't harbor any feelings of camaraderie with the human even after their battle.
[This was a collaborative effort with Zombehs and myself.]
