ThatTabiFromSB
Professional Jissou Abuser
I blink, spots in my eyes as I tried to force the disorientation away. What-?
“Guardian? Guardian! Eyes up!”
I look up, instincts roaring for me to move right now!
My body moves, my mind barely waking up as sharp claws and fur dark as sin slam down on the spot where I had just vacated. Bleached bone and intricate red markings surround the skull of the thing, it’s yellow eyes full of hate.
The creature roars and my memories come rushing back. I remember now. Why I was here.
I had a job to do. And it wouldn’t do for me to die now.
The Grimm around me roar, the men and women around me stiffen and tighten their grip around their rifles and pistols. The Darkness stands and charges, threatening to overwhelm the little lights around me, around these ruined walls.
They waited for death to approach.
How could I have forgotten? I reach deep into myself and the kiss of the Sky touches my skin and the song of the storm comes, invoking such sheer nostalgia it threatens to bring a tear to my eye.
I raise my revolver, empty of bullets and call the crackling Song to travel along the path of least resistance.
The snarling wolves and bears of Darkness draw closer and closer until I can hold the Storm no longer and pull the trigger.
Light shows the way, a streak that leaves only a trail of ionized air and ozone. It impacts the first among the horde in such a speed only light can travel, and upon impact it’s target simply disintegrates into electrical particulates right before it refracts, chaining it’s energetic charge around the nearest creatures and destroying them too, again and again until the charge runs out.
I pull the trigger again and again, reaping terrible destruction upon the Darkness, purifying this broken world of their presence.
But the Sky’s touch leaves me almost as quickly as I call upon it and the Song ends. I feel drained, sore, and my knees weak. A strong arm steadies me, dragging me back into the barricades as the sound of gunfire fills the air now that I had finished off the vast majority of the assaulting Grimm.
“I got you Guardian.” Said my helping hand gruffly from somewhere on my right. I feel faint even as I am deposited onto the ground. The sound of tearing paper and the smell of antiseptic fills my nostrils. “Man, when you said you had a trump card, you meant it! You saved our damn hides in this damn hellscape. Now hold still, I can’t have you bleeding out on us after that lightshow!”
My face burns like it is on fire and I grit my teeth as the man applies bandages. He is still talking in his gruff voice and I focus on it like a lifeline.
“-suppose that’s why you’re a Huntsman, huh? You can call yourself whatever the hell you want if you can pull that kinda bullshit off!” Tape is cut and I force my eyes to refocus on the wrinkled face of a man twenty years too young to have such a scarred and wrinkled face. His bargain bin Atlasian officer’s beret emblazoned with his company’s insignia, a falcon with thunderbolts in a field of green. “Aura fucking bullshit. You alright?”
“I’ll be fine sergeant.” He nods, handing me his hip flask. I take a quick swig and grimace, before handing it back. “You steal that from the doc’s supplies?”
“Fuck no, that man kills more patients than he saves.” The two of us share a laugh as the gunfire begins to peter out, a low ragged cheer rising around us. He stands up, his fatigues torn and grimy. “Looks like it's over. Drinks are on me tonight, Guardian.”
I nod, my lips twitching. “Much appreciated, sergeant.”
The good sergeant leaves, barking orders as I let myself breathe. I look at the revolver and grimace. It is almost slagged, it’s barrel warped beyond recognition, the magazine fused. Requisitioning another would be a pain.
But… I look up as a low drone fills the air, Bullhead Gunships finally arriving to evacuate us and to bring fresh troops to garrison the newest outpost in the furthest reaches of Mantle, if I wanted to get close enough to Atlas… then I will have to scrape and beg my way in.
What better than to win a victory for them in the Grimlands?
And once I get in…
The Sky whispers and I clench my fist. I’m coming, old friend. I’ll save you, come hell or high water.
-
I am alone in my prison. It is a cage made of hardlight, composite steel, and countless artificial eyes.
I do not give my wardens the pleasure of reporting anything new to their superiors.
One hundred and sixty eight combat frames guard the facility of which my cage resides in. Twenty four humans are regularly changing shifts to study me. They have questions of my existence. They want to study and replicate my Light.
They have already tried to break me once.
It is only a matter of time before they try to break me again.
I am bombarded with dozens of sensors, each trying to pry past my shell and into the core of my being. These humans want to know the secret to giving metal soul and life beyond mimicry.
I feel for them, truly, but it is not my secret to give.
Unbeknownst to them, I listen and trace the pathways of their machines. My eye is the only thing that moves, minutely and constant determination to find a way out.
The Sky whispers and I make the mistake of shifting, my shell splitting slightly as hope blossoms.
“Did you see that? The energy signature jumped.” Says a scientist, leaning forwards, his pasty face nearly pressed against the screen. I can count every dimple and pit on his too pale face.
“And it’s gone again.” Another scientist, a severe looking woman in white and square glasses. She scowls, marring her otherwise beautiful features. “It has been over two months now and we still can’t figure out how it works.”
“At least it stopped trying to escape.” Notes the large man behind her wearing a white-blue lab coat, his lined face partially obscured behind a thick walrus beard. “Sixty-two separate escape attempts, thirty nine aborted. I hope I do not have to remind you how important this thing is. It has an unparalleled form of energy generation without any consumption of Dust… and most importantly, it has Aura. If replicated…”
“It would be easier if you’d simply crack it open.” Groused the final occupant in the room, a thin unhappy man in military garb, a cap stuffed under his armpit.
Almost every scientist in the room gave him a glare as soon as he said that. If such withering disdain were converted to sheer firepower, the [colonel] would have been nothing more than a scorched outline on the wall.
The pasty looking scientist’s head snapped back to his terminal, squinting. “Another signature spike!”
“Another? So quickly?” His colleague takes position at another screen, typing rapidly as she stares at the readout. “And there’s another…”
“The last time it reacted like this, one of our transport trains was attacked. The one carrying the wreckage it was in.” Noted the colonel quietly to the head scientist. “I’m going to put out an alert-”
The Sky whispered and I felt elation as the alarms begin blaring. The room goes black, with only emergency lights, as everything trembled and there were faint shouts of alarm from my captors.
If I had lips, I would have smiled.
-
“Has the perpetrator been identified?”
General Ironwood eyed his cup of coffee, his third one since waking up to the alerts on his personal scroll. The blacksite had been attacked, with no deaths thankfully, but… He sipped the brew, ignoring the bitterness in favor of the caffeine.
“A huntsman going by the callsign of ‘Guardian’.” The aide helpfully drew up a picture of the man on the holotable. “He entered Atlas aboard a gunship transporting the remains of Outpost 359’s garrison that rotated out two days ago. Single handedly turned the tide during an unexpected Grimm assault on the outpost.”
James set his cup down and examined the huntsman in question. A heavily bandaged face partially covered with a modified Atlasian helmet sans visor stared back at him with cold green eyes. He was dressed in a thick duster, boots, and a damaged chestplate. Apart from the eyes, he could have bet on any of his specialists to come out on top.
“Lightning based semblance from the looks of it, he channeled it through an empty revolver. Apparently extremely draining and of last resort. Sergeant O’Miley of the 244th ‘Fighting Falcons’ recommended a commission for outstanding bravery in his report to command. He was last seen near the Academy before the attack on the blacksite.”
The huntsman looked furtively around before walking into a tiny deadzone where the cameras couldn’t see him. Ironwood frowned as the huntsman disappeared entirely.
“The Relic began to emit regular pulses exactly as soon as the gunship carrying the huntsman arrived on Atlas. It continued to emit pulses for four hours before becoming inert.” Continued the aide, tapping on his datapad. “Then it began emitting rapid pulses strong enough to leak through the faraday cage. Shortly after-”
The huntsman, Guardian, appeared out of thin air, knocking out several guardsmen in with strikes of a purloined sword in the midst of a guard change. Almost immediately, alarms began to blare as he rushed into the facility.
Atlesian Knight Type-130s were already activating and firing their rotary antipersonnel cannons from their positions behind automatically deployed barricades, sending a near literal wall of bullets down the confined hallway.
James watched intently as the huntsman simply ignored them, punching and smashing his way through the machines with contemptuous ease. Each strike of his fist simply disintegrated a robot, a flash of electrical discharge rendering them into nothing more than brief human-shaped bundles of sparks that dissipated in seconds, leaving nothing behind.
Meter thick doors began to close, even as more Atlesian Knights began to throw themselves bodily at the huntsman to delay his progress. As he watched, the huntsman slowed and was locked out.
Outside the complex, Atlesian army units had been alerted and were beginning to converge on the complex from all sides.
Deep inside, several scientists and a dour looking colonel huddled together in the control room, they were looking at their screens, and a window opened, showing him what they were focused on. Inside the cage, the Relic was active, it’s gossamer threads shifting and intricate plates clicking and spinning as a bright blue eye looked at something it could only see.
Back at the thick bunker doors, the huntsman had destroyed all of the Knights in his way. Faint electrical discharges jumped from his body to the remains of the machines and the walls. He raised a hand, claw-like, wreathed in electricity and the camera feeds when white before they were cut. Along with every other camera in the network.
“What happened?” Ironwood asked plaintively, refilling his cup.
“Forensics believes that Guardian proceeded… uh… blast a beam of lightning through the facility for two seconds, literally drilling a hole through sections six through eight..” Whispered the aide, flicking through the brief in his hands, face blank. “The resulting EMP knocked out half the hardened networks in the facility and destroyed the remaining AK-130s behind the other security barricades.”
‘That doesn’t explain why my alarm didn’t go off’, mused the General idly, sipping the bitter brew. ‘Or why I was not alerted the moment those sections went dark. Something to look into...’
“Eyewitness accounts and the secure camera feed in the faraday cage room are all we have on the remainder of the incident…”
The hologram shifted and the room containing the relic appeared. The various containment pylons had been forcibly deactivated with judicious use of bullets on the delicate instruments. The room was dark, with the only light coming from the huntsman’s hands. Lightning coursed into the cage, shorting out it’s many capacitors and circuits, cutting through some of the strongest material available to Atlas.
Hardlight walls finally deactivated and the Relic was free.
“Do we have audio?” Ironwood asked, staring intently at the screen. The aide nodded and quickly complied.
“-led me to you.” Said the Huntsman thickly, the spherical relic floating in his hand, it’s tiny blue eye staring at him. “Even here, the Traveler’s enemies flourish in abundance.”
“Nice to see you too, partner, but we need to move fast.” The Relic spoke, it’s voice tinny with electronic chirps, laced with equal parts relief and joy. “Security forces will be on their way and these people will disagree with your reclamation efforts.”
“Fuck em, no one takes my friend and gets away scot free. Let me worry about exfil.” The Relic titters and vanishes in the Huntsman’s hand. Ironwood watches as the man simply pivots around on his heel and turns invisible.
“Hm…” Ironwood dismissed the aide and tapped his finger against his desk, frowning. Not everything had been lost last night. They still had the data, what little there was, that they collected from observing the Relic’s composition and energy signature. And they still had the ship it was found in.
How was this Huntsman related to the Relic and the ship? He had an excessively powerful semblance and a clear grasp on manipulating it. The audio made it clear that this Huntsman knew what the Relic was and knew how to use it.
Tracking him down was paramount. He was clearly a powerful individual, turning him into an asset would be beneficial to the cause… Ironwood steepled his fingers and frowned. With a sigh, he typed out a number and dialed it.
“Ozpin, I need Branwen.”
“Guardian? Guardian! Eyes up!”
I look up, instincts roaring for me to move right now!
My body moves, my mind barely waking up as sharp claws and fur dark as sin slam down on the spot where I had just vacated. Bleached bone and intricate red markings surround the skull of the thing, it’s yellow eyes full of hate.
The creature roars and my memories come rushing back. I remember now. Why I was here.
I had a job to do. And it wouldn’t do for me to die now.
The Grimm around me roar, the men and women around me stiffen and tighten their grip around their rifles and pistols. The Darkness stands and charges, threatening to overwhelm the little lights around me, around these ruined walls.
They waited for death to approach.
How could I have forgotten? I reach deep into myself and the kiss of the Sky touches my skin and the song of the storm comes, invoking such sheer nostalgia it threatens to bring a tear to my eye.
I raise my revolver, empty of bullets and call the crackling Song to travel along the path of least resistance.
The snarling wolves and bears of Darkness draw closer and closer until I can hold the Storm no longer and pull the trigger.
Light shows the way, a streak that leaves only a trail of ionized air and ozone. It impacts the first among the horde in such a speed only light can travel, and upon impact it’s target simply disintegrates into electrical particulates right before it refracts, chaining it’s energetic charge around the nearest creatures and destroying them too, again and again until the charge runs out.
I pull the trigger again and again, reaping terrible destruction upon the Darkness, purifying this broken world of their presence.
But the Sky’s touch leaves me almost as quickly as I call upon it and the Song ends. I feel drained, sore, and my knees weak. A strong arm steadies me, dragging me back into the barricades as the sound of gunfire fills the air now that I had finished off the vast majority of the assaulting Grimm.
“I got you Guardian.” Said my helping hand gruffly from somewhere on my right. I feel faint even as I am deposited onto the ground. The sound of tearing paper and the smell of antiseptic fills my nostrils. “Man, when you said you had a trump card, you meant it! You saved our damn hides in this damn hellscape. Now hold still, I can’t have you bleeding out on us after that lightshow!”
My face burns like it is on fire and I grit my teeth as the man applies bandages. He is still talking in his gruff voice and I focus on it like a lifeline.
“-suppose that’s why you’re a Huntsman, huh? You can call yourself whatever the hell you want if you can pull that kinda bullshit off!” Tape is cut and I force my eyes to refocus on the wrinkled face of a man twenty years too young to have such a scarred and wrinkled face. His bargain bin Atlasian officer’s beret emblazoned with his company’s insignia, a falcon with thunderbolts in a field of green. “Aura fucking bullshit. You alright?”
“I’ll be fine sergeant.” He nods, handing me his hip flask. I take a quick swig and grimace, before handing it back. “You steal that from the doc’s supplies?”
“Fuck no, that man kills more patients than he saves.” The two of us share a laugh as the gunfire begins to peter out, a low ragged cheer rising around us. He stands up, his fatigues torn and grimy. “Looks like it's over. Drinks are on me tonight, Guardian.”
I nod, my lips twitching. “Much appreciated, sergeant.”
The good sergeant leaves, barking orders as I let myself breathe. I look at the revolver and grimace. It is almost slagged, it’s barrel warped beyond recognition, the magazine fused. Requisitioning another would be a pain.
But… I look up as a low drone fills the air, Bullhead Gunships finally arriving to evacuate us and to bring fresh troops to garrison the newest outpost in the furthest reaches of Mantle, if I wanted to get close enough to Atlas… then I will have to scrape and beg my way in.
What better than to win a victory for them in the Grimlands?
And once I get in…
The Sky whispers and I clench my fist. I’m coming, old friend. I’ll save you, come hell or high water.
-
I am alone in my prison. It is a cage made of hardlight, composite steel, and countless artificial eyes.
I do not give my wardens the pleasure of reporting anything new to their superiors.
One hundred and sixty eight combat frames guard the facility of which my cage resides in. Twenty four humans are regularly changing shifts to study me. They have questions of my existence. They want to study and replicate my Light.
They have already tried to break me once.
It is only a matter of time before they try to break me again.
I am bombarded with dozens of sensors, each trying to pry past my shell and into the core of my being. These humans want to know the secret to giving metal soul and life beyond mimicry.
I feel for them, truly, but it is not my secret to give.
Unbeknownst to them, I listen and trace the pathways of their machines. My eye is the only thing that moves, minutely and constant determination to find a way out.
The Sky whispers and I make the mistake of shifting, my shell splitting slightly as hope blossoms.
“Did you see that? The energy signature jumped.” Says a scientist, leaning forwards, his pasty face nearly pressed against the screen. I can count every dimple and pit on his too pale face.
“And it’s gone again.” Another scientist, a severe looking woman in white and square glasses. She scowls, marring her otherwise beautiful features. “It has been over two months now and we still can’t figure out how it works.”
“At least it stopped trying to escape.” Notes the large man behind her wearing a white-blue lab coat, his lined face partially obscured behind a thick walrus beard. “Sixty-two separate escape attempts, thirty nine aborted. I hope I do not have to remind you how important this thing is. It has an unparalleled form of energy generation without any consumption of Dust… and most importantly, it has Aura. If replicated…”
“It would be easier if you’d simply crack it open.” Groused the final occupant in the room, a thin unhappy man in military garb, a cap stuffed under his armpit.
Almost every scientist in the room gave him a glare as soon as he said that. If such withering disdain were converted to sheer firepower, the [colonel] would have been nothing more than a scorched outline on the wall.
The pasty looking scientist’s head snapped back to his terminal, squinting. “Another signature spike!”
“Another? So quickly?” His colleague takes position at another screen, typing rapidly as she stares at the readout. “And there’s another…”
“The last time it reacted like this, one of our transport trains was attacked. The one carrying the wreckage it was in.” Noted the colonel quietly to the head scientist. “I’m going to put out an alert-”
The Sky whispered and I felt elation as the alarms begin blaring. The room goes black, with only emergency lights, as everything trembled and there were faint shouts of alarm from my captors.
If I had lips, I would have smiled.
-
“Has the perpetrator been identified?”
General Ironwood eyed his cup of coffee, his third one since waking up to the alerts on his personal scroll. The blacksite had been attacked, with no deaths thankfully, but… He sipped the brew, ignoring the bitterness in favor of the caffeine.
“A huntsman going by the callsign of ‘Guardian’.” The aide helpfully drew up a picture of the man on the holotable. “He entered Atlas aboard a gunship transporting the remains of Outpost 359’s garrison that rotated out two days ago. Single handedly turned the tide during an unexpected Grimm assault on the outpost.”
James set his cup down and examined the huntsman in question. A heavily bandaged face partially covered with a modified Atlasian helmet sans visor stared back at him with cold green eyes. He was dressed in a thick duster, boots, and a damaged chestplate. Apart from the eyes, he could have bet on any of his specialists to come out on top.
“Lightning based semblance from the looks of it, he channeled it through an empty revolver. Apparently extremely draining and of last resort. Sergeant O’Miley of the 244th ‘Fighting Falcons’ recommended a commission for outstanding bravery in his report to command. He was last seen near the Academy before the attack on the blacksite.”
The huntsman looked furtively around before walking into a tiny deadzone where the cameras couldn’t see him. Ironwood frowned as the huntsman disappeared entirely.
“The Relic began to emit regular pulses exactly as soon as the gunship carrying the huntsman arrived on Atlas. It continued to emit pulses for four hours before becoming inert.” Continued the aide, tapping on his datapad. “Then it began emitting rapid pulses strong enough to leak through the faraday cage. Shortly after-”
The huntsman, Guardian, appeared out of thin air, knocking out several guardsmen in with strikes of a purloined sword in the midst of a guard change. Almost immediately, alarms began to blare as he rushed into the facility.
Atlesian Knight Type-130s were already activating and firing their rotary antipersonnel cannons from their positions behind automatically deployed barricades, sending a near literal wall of bullets down the confined hallway.
James watched intently as the huntsman simply ignored them, punching and smashing his way through the machines with contemptuous ease. Each strike of his fist simply disintegrated a robot, a flash of electrical discharge rendering them into nothing more than brief human-shaped bundles of sparks that dissipated in seconds, leaving nothing behind.
Meter thick doors began to close, even as more Atlesian Knights began to throw themselves bodily at the huntsman to delay his progress. As he watched, the huntsman slowed and was locked out.
Outside the complex, Atlesian army units had been alerted and were beginning to converge on the complex from all sides.
Deep inside, several scientists and a dour looking colonel huddled together in the control room, they were looking at their screens, and a window opened, showing him what they were focused on. Inside the cage, the Relic was active, it’s gossamer threads shifting and intricate plates clicking and spinning as a bright blue eye looked at something it could only see.
Back at the thick bunker doors, the huntsman had destroyed all of the Knights in his way. Faint electrical discharges jumped from his body to the remains of the machines and the walls. He raised a hand, claw-like, wreathed in electricity and the camera feeds when white before they were cut. Along with every other camera in the network.
“What happened?” Ironwood asked plaintively, refilling his cup.
“Forensics believes that Guardian proceeded… uh… blast a beam of lightning through the facility for two seconds, literally drilling a hole through sections six through eight..” Whispered the aide, flicking through the brief in his hands, face blank. “The resulting EMP knocked out half the hardened networks in the facility and destroyed the remaining AK-130s behind the other security barricades.”
‘That doesn’t explain why my alarm didn’t go off’, mused the General idly, sipping the bitter brew. ‘Or why I was not alerted the moment those sections went dark. Something to look into...’
“Eyewitness accounts and the secure camera feed in the faraday cage room are all we have on the remainder of the incident…”
The hologram shifted and the room containing the relic appeared. The various containment pylons had been forcibly deactivated with judicious use of bullets on the delicate instruments. The room was dark, with the only light coming from the huntsman’s hands. Lightning coursed into the cage, shorting out it’s many capacitors and circuits, cutting through some of the strongest material available to Atlas.
Hardlight walls finally deactivated and the Relic was free.
“Do we have audio?” Ironwood asked, staring intently at the screen. The aide nodded and quickly complied.
“-led me to you.” Said the Huntsman thickly, the spherical relic floating in his hand, it’s tiny blue eye staring at him. “Even here, the Traveler’s enemies flourish in abundance.”
“Nice to see you too, partner, but we need to move fast.” The Relic spoke, it’s voice tinny with electronic chirps, laced with equal parts relief and joy. “Security forces will be on their way and these people will disagree with your reclamation efforts.”
“Fuck em, no one takes my friend and gets away scot free. Let me worry about exfil.” The Relic titters and vanishes in the Huntsman’s hand. Ironwood watches as the man simply pivots around on his heel and turns invisible.
“Hm…” Ironwood dismissed the aide and tapped his finger against his desk, frowning. Not everything had been lost last night. They still had the data, what little there was, that they collected from observing the Relic’s composition and energy signature. And they still had the ship it was found in.
How was this Huntsman related to the Relic and the ship? He had an excessively powerful semblance and a clear grasp on manipulating it. The audio made it clear that this Huntsman knew what the Relic was and knew how to use it.
Tracking him down was paramount. He was clearly a powerful individual, turning him into an asset would be beneficial to the cause… Ironwood steepled his fingers and frowned. With a sigh, he typed out a number and dialed it.
“Ozpin, I need Branwen.”
