Cyra was having difficulties. Her first attempts to untangle herself not only had ended in failure, but was also giving her a headache. All the blood rushing to her head made her fingers nearly useless, and since the shields extended a couple inches past her fingertips, trying to use most objects involved a scooping motion. Unwrapping a shoelace from around a branch, while hanging upside down from said branch? Not happening.
She was contemplating how to possibly shoot the branch off, while avoiding her own foot in the process, when the crackle and snapping of branches reached her ears and made her freeze. Something, or someone was approaching.
Dirt. Rocks. Trees. More trees. Nothing metallic that might be Sun Down, no glimmers that might be gems, and certainly no other people. Eos ran faster, huffing as her rather poor stamina began to drain. It had only been a few minutes since she hit the ground, but already things were looking rather bleak.
Rounding a large oak, changing directions as whim dictated, she thought she spotted a patch of color in the distance, near another copse of trees. It definitely wasn't the gold of Sun Down, but with any luck it would be something of use. Perhaps the school had left caches of goods, medicine or food, for if students got lost, or simply to aid them during the initiation. Summoning the last of her current wind, she ducked into a sprint, hoping this move, at least, would be a good one.
As she approached through the underbrush, it became clear that what awaited her was not food, or medicine, but a person. Even better, she thought, slowing to a jog. As far as she could tell, no Grimm were closing in at present, and any young people in the area at the time should be fellow students. "Hullo up there!" she called up, hands cupped around her mouth. "Need a hand, stranger?"
For a long moment, Cyra stayed silent. It was partially because of the embarrassment of being discovered hanging upside down in a tree, and partially embarrassment of what the newcomer was wearing. There was very little left to the imagination, and Cyra quickly turned her gaze away. Of all the times to be discovered. Finally, she spoke up.
"Yes please.""Sure thing!" Eos called back up, reaching the foot of the tree and leaning against it, panting, to catch her breath. This tree wouldn't be the biggest thing she'd have ever had to climb. Back home in Kiln, she used to scale the watchtowers ringing the co-op a few times a day, fetching water for the guards or taking her own turn at watch. Still, she usually wouldn't be carrying more than a backpack with a water bladder. If she had to carry this stranger down from the tree, that would pose a far greater level of difficulty. Still, from what Eos could see, they didn't appear injured, and were communicative, which suggested the brunt of her task would just be getting up there and getting her free. At least, she assumed the figure in the tree was female. It was hard to see a figure that high from the ground, and they hadn't had enough of a conversation yet to be able to ask about gender or, really, much of anything.
Breath restored, Eos drew upon her aura as she grasped the trunk. There seemed to be enough friction in the bark, and sufficient handholds, if she were careful as she proceeded. Careful to maintain three points of contact at all times, as her mother used to lecture her endlessly back in the day, she began to inch her way up to the higher expanse of the tree. It seemed big enough that her body weight was not shaking it significantly, but an amount of swaying was present. "Hang on! I'm coming!" she called brightly, though her muscles were screaming.
As she got higher, she was able to grab onto a branch and pull herself up, and she studied the situation. "So, uh....how'd this happen?" Eos asked, picking at a splinter of wood in her palm. Her companion's situation was, while clearly perilous, not immediately life-threatening, so they had a moment to evaluate the problem and come up with a solution, as she saw it. While she couldn't see their face, she figured they were probably scared. No sense being too aggressive with my movements and panicking them, maybe accidentally triggering a fall, she thought.
Cyra eyed the girl as she made her way up through the branches, then looked away as her feet came to eye level.
"Um, my shoelace got caught around a branch as I was coming down. I must not have tied them very well." She bit her lip, thankful that the other girl hadn't noticed the flush in her cheeks.
"Didn't think it would be something that could do this."Silence followed, broken only by the creaking of branches from the girl shifting her weight as she fiddled with the branch above.
"So, um, I'm Cyra, by the way. I guess this means we'r-whaaaa!" A jerk interupted her, and she yelped as gravity reasserted itself, sending her crashing through the branches below her, until she landed on the ground with a solid thump. Cyra groaned as she opened her eyes, staring up at the girl peering down at her in concern.
"Ow." Now you decide to catch me, she grumbled in her mind.
Though they weren't too far apart, the wind was catching the top of the tree, and Eos couldn't hear more than a few snatches of what was being called down to her. As the other girl plummeted to the ground, Eos gave a loud cry of alarm, wings flaring outward, nearly falling off the tree herself in her panic. "H-hey! You okay?" she shouted, a heartbeat after the other landed and opened her eyes again. She wasn't well-trained with medical matters, anything more than a splint would be beyond her. But if one of them was unable to go on with the test, wouldn't they both fail and be rejected? Eos wasn't going to let that happen.
Clambering back down the trunk of the tree, a far quicker matter than her (ultimately futile) climb up had been, Eos approached her new, fallen partner. "They say you shouldn't touch someone who's just been seriously hurt. Something about arteries? I'm not sure, I wasn't with the medical apprenticeship corps. Do you think it's bad? Can you walk if I support you?" It occurred to her that the snapping branches, loud bangs and shouting that they had been doing were a perfect recipe for attracting Grimm.
Shaking her head, Cyra pushed herself to her feet.
"I-I'm okay. It wasn't that much of a fall, and once I'm on the ground I'm fine." She reached out to grab a nearby branch, then twisted about until a series of pops rippled from her back. The only real damage she could make out as a small tear in the shoulder of her hoodie where a branch had caught her, but the shirt underneath was unharmed. She'd have to keep a little more distance between herself and her new partner, but otherwise they seemed to be off to a great start.
"See? Everything's fine. Don't need to worry about me."Eos gave a sigh of relief as she watched her new partner stretch out and proclaim herself to be fine. It seemed the two of them weren't quite out of the running yet. That is, unless something else went wrong unexpectedly. Despite having heard little about Beacon Academy's initiation ceremony, she had a feeling it was only going to get more chaotic from here on out.
"That's the spirit!" she responded, shooting her teammate a double thumbs-up gesture. "Now that you're free, maybe you could help me with the problem I ran into on my way down." Gesturing to the empty pouch strapped to her left thigh, Eos explained, "I was trying to draw my weapon, Sun Down, as I approached my landing point, but...it, ah, fell. Not where I did, sadly." She gave a honking laugh, throwing her hands up as if to say "what can you do?"
Cyra nodded.
Well, at least I'm not the only one not having a good day. "Um, do you have any idea where it landed? Or what direction?" She glanced at the girl's thigh pouch, then quickly looked away. Based on its size, trying to find her weapon in a forest this size was looking like an impossible task. Then there was still the Dust shard they had to find, which could literally be anywhere. How were they expected to do this?
"Grimm shouldn't be a problem, I'm kind of good with dealing with them, if there aren't too many..."Eos scratched a wing, discomfited. "Well, uh...it should be within like...two klicks of here? There is...one option, but it's not exactly good." Fishing in the lower pouch on her left thigh, she pulled out a metallic brick roughly the length of her thumb, with three matte black buttons in a row down the top surface. Holding it out so the other girl could take a look, Eos thought about how stupid she would sound as she explained the addition she had made to her weapon.
"I installed a locator on Sun Down about a year ago, back when my main problem was other journeyers nicking my stuff as a prank. I press this, and the alarm goes off. Loudly. So we'd find it, but anything else out there would be finding us." Her face reddening, she fiddled with the remote brick, trying not to look her companion in the eyes.
"That wouldn't necessarily be so bad, right? I mean, maybe we'd just get found by other people?" she offered in a chirp, then sighed, knowing she wasn't even convincing herself. "I was hoping I wouldn't need it, and I would just find Sun Down soon if I kept running. Instead I found you. But that's okay!" Eos added quickly, with a nervous laugh. "I doubt I would have found it even if I hadn't met you."
Scratching her palms nervously, Cyra bit her lip.
"Well, it's a big forest, and your weapon doesn't look very big. We could look for it, but... I think that might take a while." She glanced around.
"I don't know where to even start." She looked up at the sky, squinting through the leafy branches.
"I mean, if you don't want to do that, it's fine..."Giving a shrug, Eos tossed the remote in the air, before catching it one handed and slapping it down on the back of her other wrist. "Heads!" she barked gaily, before thumbing down the top button. For a period of about fifteen seconds, nothing broke the near-stillness of the forest's ambient noise.
All at once, a cacophany of horn honking sounds arose faintly in the distance, as if a great host of clowns had arisen to wage war with the Grimm threat. "There's my Sun Down! Race ya!" Eos exclaimed, hurling herself into yet another run. Whenever they managed to get out of this place, she was going to be laying into a bag of burgers with gusto.
If she pushed herself, Eos thought she might be able to make it to Sun Down before anything bigger than her got there first. She definitely wasn't used to running on terrain with so many roots and slippery leaves, but compared to running up an all-but vertical mountain passage or across shifting desert sands, this was cake. The absence of stifling heat definitely didn't hurt, either. Snapping into a piece of jerky from her pocket for a quick burst of energy, and feeling the flashes of sunlight through the trees' canopies replenishing her stores of solar energy, she felt her usual sense of optimism returning. Things were definitely looking up.
As she passed out of one expanse of trees and into a small clearing, following the sound of Sun Down's alarm, she spotted the flash of gold, about 25 meters before her, that could only mean one thing. Turning her head back towards where she assumed her partner was running behind her, she started to speak before realizing the other girl wasn't there.
What was there, however, was the hunched, umbrous form of a Grimm, porcine and heavily tusked, snorting jets of hot breath. In her haste to reach Sun Down, and with the loud alarm blaring before her, she had completely overlooked the boarbatusk's approach, and the ordinarily unsubtle creature had come upon her unaware.
Drawing upon her semblance, she hurled a sphere of blinding light towards the malevolent creature's face, then, executing a sharp about-face, bolted for Sun Down, without looking to see if her projectile had had any effect on the Grimm's pursuit of her. Where was her partner in all this, she thought frantically, did it get to her first?
Cyra did not like running. At all. Her thick clothing, while very good at keeping her carapace concealed from sight, and to a lesser extent touch, also meant that any sort of strenuous activity made her very hot and sweaty, very quickly. So when her partner (who still had not introduced herself, it occurred to her) took off running, Cyra groaned and tried to follow as best she could. It didn't take long to lose sight of her, but Cyra tried not to worry too much. The loud blaring of the alarm ahead gave her a clear destination.
However, things were not good when she arrived. Apparently her partner had encountered a Boarbatusk along her way, and was now playing a rather frantic game of keep-away with it. The Grimm had seemed to figure out that she had been separated from her weapon, and every time her partner made a move towards it, it would attempt to run her down, forcing her to dance away. During one of these engagements, the girl's foot caught on a rock, sending her tumbling to the ground, and the Boarbatusk instantly seized its opportunity, throwing itself into a spin and barreling towards her.
Cyra made a series of finger movements with her right hand, and a pair of red lights lit up on the shield's surface. Then she raised the shield and fired.
A sound like an avalanche split the air, as a barrage of bullets and flame erupted from the shield's front edge, slamming into the spinning Boarbatusk's side. Each bullet detonated on impact, causing the surprised Grimm to go careening off course and plow through a nearby boulder. Cyra ceased firing and moved forward, panting hard.
"Go," she shouted, keeping her eyes focused on the squealing Grimm as it righted itself.
Pushing up off the ground and spitting out a mouthful of dirt and decaying leaves, Eos managed to cross over to Sun Down, pulling it out of a small crater in the ground where it had driven into the loosely-packed earth on impact. As she cradled it in her arms, palm pressing firmly into her emblem etched on one of the flat sides in frosted silver, the alarm quieted. "My dearest Sun Down," she cooed into the metal box, "I thought I'd lost you. I'm never letting you go again!"
No time for a mushy reunion; there were Grimm to eliminate, and she wasn't about to let her partner do all the work. Another boarbatusk had broken through the treeline ahead and to the right of her, likely drawn by the sound of its fellow's suffering at the hands of her companion's mighty artillery. "Dibs!" she called over her shoulder, but it seemed doubtful the other girl heard her over the din of battle. Her aura welling up within her, she activated Sun Down's melee form with a turn of her palm across her embossed emblem.
A long handle jutted out from the narrow edge of the paddle-like metal box, which she grasped firmly in both hands. Glimmering feather-like spikes sprouted from the edges of the paddle, lightly serrated and polished to a blinding sheen. "Come and get some, porky!" she called out, dashing forward with the toothiest of grins. Finally, a conflict she was actually prepared for today.
The shadow creature gave a grotesque roar in answer, charging towards her. Good monster, she thought, feinting to the side as it surged past, before stopping in confusion. She was behind it in moments, swinging her bladed weapon's viciously sharp edged points down across the beast's throat. Amplifying her force with her aura, which burned hot and bright in her blood like an out-of-control fever, she threw herself backwards in a jump, blasting a beam of searing light from her weapon's tip, Sun Down acting as a conduit as the amassed power rolled through her body.
The Grimm, injured, fell back with a roar of pain, eyes screwed shut from the scorching light. An opening like that was just what she'd been waiting for. Scooping a red-tinted grenade from her upper left thigh pouch, she pulled the pin with her teeth and, turning Sun Down slightly in her hand, hefted the explosive in the air, and swung with all her might. The projectile shot towards the boarbatusk, bouncing dully off its face and rolling on the ground before it.
"...Oh...it didn't do anyth-" Eos managed to say, disappointedly, before an incendiary blast tore the beast apart like tissue paper. "Yes!" she shouted, jumping in the air and waving Sun Down about like a lacrosse stick. "One of my dust grenades actually worked! I need to write to mom and tell her about this, buddy!"
As the smoke from the blast cleared, her teammate's form came into view. She too appeared triumphant over her foe, the barrels of her firearms glowing orange from the numerous rounds she had gotten off. Wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, Eos called to her, "Looks like we've got this one in the bag! Next stop, the sh- shit look out!"
Today was apparently the day for boarbatusk ambushes. This one was huge, easily twice the size of the one she had just executed, and, she was willing to wager, twice as mean. It was headed for her teammate at a gallop, slavering from its porcine maw.
Her partner's shout caused Cyra to turn around. The initial Boarbatusk hadn't been a great deal of trouble, a combination of explosive and armor-piercing rounds from both shields sending it stumbling down before it could take a proper run. Eventually it had fallen back, exposing its more vulnerable underside, and was finished.
With this creature, however, there was no time. Even as Cyra turned to face it, the Boarbatusk lunged into a spinning charge, barreling down on the small girl at full speed. A flash of light exploded between them, an attempt from her nameless partner to prevent the attack, but it failed to stop the rampaging Grimm. Cyra made no attempt to evade. Instead, she raised Khthon vertically in front of her, its side and bottom edges expanding into a full-sized shield, and braced. Breathing slowly and evenly, she felt again the massiveness of the ground beneath her feet. A sound like stone clashing against metal rang through the open clearing as the Boarbatusk slammed into its target, and proceeded to bounce off, the Huntress not moving even an inch. She made a series of finger movements with her other hand, and the small triangle at Lithos’s front edge extended and separated into a pair of tines, a sharp whine filling the air as she raised the shield.
If her previous attacks had sounded like an avalanche, this one was more akin to a thunderclap. An ear-splitting detonation, a flash of light, and the Boarbatusk seemed to just disappear. A few feet away a trench carved itself out of the ground, throwing up clods of dirt. A sizable chunk of a tree exploded, sending the towering giant toppling over, followed by two more trees behind it.
Cyra rose and took a few steps forward, peering into the shadowed forest. Several feet away, the Boarbatusk lay crumpled against the base of a fallen tree, large cracks radiating out from its face armor, both tusks shattered. She shifted Khthon into its Assault mode, and fired again, and again the Grimm disappeared, exploding in a shower of dirt and splinters. Satisfied, she shifted both shields back into Suppression mode, then reached up, tugging her hood off and her bandanna down. Chin length black hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, and she blew a heavy breath as she turned back to the shocked Eos.
“Could we not run again, please?”
