章 1914: 144
Chapter 144Notes:
Hey remember that joke back in chapter 132 about Cinder not letting Jaune fall off a cliff?
:>
Chapter Text
"THEY'RE GONE! THEY'RE GONE AND I COULDN'T SAVE THEM! WHY WEREN'T ANY OF YOU HERE!? YOU COULD HAVE HELPED US! YOU SHOULD HAVE HELPED US!"
Cinder's rage was terrifying to behold, the way that the world burned hot and flared in flames around her, light pouring from her eyes and fire gushing from the corners of her mouth as though she truly was a dragon. She glared through a curtain of tears, trembling and shaking as she pinned Ironwood, Winter, and Glynda alike with an accusing stare. At the edge of the strange pocket in space that made up the inside of the vault, Neo stood in equal rage with the corpse of a somewhat familiar woman at her feet- stabbed clean through the heart with the broken blade of Hush.
Blue flames poured from Neo's heterochromatic eyes, and around her swirled the chill winds of winter as ice covered the grass and steam hissed where Fall and Winter clashed in the middle. Emerald and Mercury were off to the side, sitting by the Staff of Creation and staring off into the middle distance- shell shocked and silent as they simply gazed at nothing.
Team JNPR was nowhere to be found. The assassins were all dead- a series of corpses arrayed around the area with their blood spilling into the grass and covering the flowers. Charred, frozen, impaled, shot through, slit throats. Not a single one was still alive at this point.
"I- we… there's no excuse," Glynda murmured, bowing her head in regret as she realized just what must have happened in the mere minutes it took for them to arrive at the Vault. "I'm sorry, Cinder. By the time the three of us realized that they were going after the Staff instead of the Lamp… there was another person with them. Someone hacked into the base defenses, took over the doors. We don't know how it happened or where they accessed the grid from, but… I'm so, so sorry. We should have been here sooner. Did- was it…"
"They fell… we didn't even know there was an edge, this place is bigger than it looks but it just goes into the fog," Cinder sighed, losing her rage in an instant as she slumped and hung her head, remembering the fight that had happened mere minutes prior. "They… Team JNPR… we were so preoccupied with keeping them away from the relic that we didn't notice they had more allies. That… Jaune went first. Pyrrha and Ren almost saved him, but…"
She shook her head and grimaced. "It wasn't enough. They had- I don't even know how to describe it. Deployable grimm? They looked like smoke bombs or something- black balls that they threw on the ground and then a bunch of grimm spawned out of nowhere. Things got messy and the illusionist confused everyone, Jaune stumbled into the fog and was fighting off grimm and… he got pushed off. And… they couldn't find their way back up. I tried to save them. We all tried but… they're gone. I don't know where they went. So we… Neo and I…"
It had been… chaos.
The whole rush of an attack that had taken less than half an hour total- the majority of which was spent running around the lower levels of Atlas' military complex with a dying old woman in her arms, Jaune pumping Fria full of Aura so she wouldn't die after being unhooked from all of her machines.
They'd managed to find a secluded area, but… something had happened and there was a confusing scuffle and Jaune had taken Fria and ran but then he'd been knocked around and Fria had been murdered in between points of awareness- Cinder had been attacked by a group of fucking ninja that bore a Spider insignia, which meant that the entire gang had definitely joined with Salem at some point- and then… gods. She hadn't had enough time to be gentle. She'd lashed out with all her strength, shattering Auras and throwing people about as she managed to protect Jaune from a killing blow- saving the man she thought of as the little brother she'd never had- before pushing the newly made Winter Maiden back and making her run . Or so she thought.
The real goal had been reaching the relic vault. How they knew where it was, Cinder had no idea. Just that they had control over the entire base's internal defenses and that she'd had to melt through dozens of doors to keep up while Jaune followed behind and used Crocea Mors' Railgun shots to blow the molten metal out of his way.
Of course they'd wanted the relic- with the Staff of Creation, they could make anything they damn well pleased, and the creation of anything at any point , anywhere meant that the entirety of Atlas would fall , destroying Mantle and killing everyone with it if they weren't lucky enough to already be airborne in a ship or somewhere safe.
And then there had been a fight in the vault. Team CMNE and JNPR versus six Spider assassins that they knew- Laurel and Celeste from the remaining half of Team CALC, and Veronica Violet, Erin Ire, Roux Lesang, and Mauve Corona of Team VERM- plus a whole bunch of assassins that they didn't .
The fact that their weapons had been bloodied meant that the villains had carved a bloody path through the base even with the doors on their side.
And so they fought.
And Celeste, who'd been screaming and raging the entire time, had tried to kill Cinder for stealing what was rightfully Charlotte and Anastasia's, before Cinder had killed her stepsisters in battle and taken the mantle of Fall Maiden for herself.
Cinder's recollection got hazy there- Mercury and Emerald had been holding their own, Neo was flashing around the battlefield throwing in debilitating strikes and confusing their foes, Team JNPR had been working together with utterly flawless teamwork and coordination and doing their best to defend the relic with Nora and Ren taking point while Pyrrha and Jaune covered their defense point with their shields… and then the grimm egg things had come out, and then it had gone from a twelve on eight to a thirty on eight and even with Nora's ridiculously charged up strength and Team JNPR's overall overpowered bullshit and Team CMNE's own utterly obscene strength… they'd been overwhelmed.
One of the assassins had hit Nora with their Semblance, shattering Nora's aura and leaving her unable to charge up. Mercury had been thrown around and was unable to make any good headway. Emerald's stamina had begun to give out. Cinder had already been tired from flash melting a whole shitload of blast doors and the earlier fight and had started flagging against the Winter Maiden and taken more hits than she would have liked.
Team JNPR had tried their best, but Jaune had been outmatched and while he managed to boost Pyrrha's Aura to the point that she almost won the entire fight herself, Laurel's Duplication Semblance had thrown everything into a chaotic mess to the point that Pyrrha's Aura had gotten shattered as well and she'd nearly been stabbed clean through before Neo figured out the one assassin's caveat that they couldn't use Aura while they were shattering someone else's.
And then-
The grimm had been killed and dissipated into smoke. Jaune had gotten thrown off and Pyrrha had thrown herself off into the fog after, with Ren using Stormflower's grapples to try and assist with Nora trying to haul them up manually.
Celeste blew them all off with a shockwave of chill wind while Cinder had been recovering from a hard hit.
And then…
Cinder blasted the battlefield with her rage, Celeste had been forced on the backfoot through sheer, unyielding rage, and…
Neo stabbed the bitch from behind, snapping Hush in the process and leaving the Winter Maiden to bleed out on the floor as Neo stared Celeste in the eyes and took on the mantle of Winter Maiden.
How appropriate. Cinder, the Fall Maiden who'd once been named Cinder Fall. Neopolitan, the Winter Maiden who was named after ice cream.
It almost rhymed.
It'd be funny if it didn't come with the deaths of an entire team of friends- people that had almost become family in the almost year that they'd spent traveling together.
"I'm sorry," Winter finally spoke up after a moment, grimacing at the bodies strewn about and chewing her lip as she tried to maintain her professional composure. "We'll… we'll figure out what happened. Find out whoever was hacking our systems. We'll… It might be best if you return to Vale now- as soon as possible. With Neo as the Winter Maiden, staying far away from the vault here would ensure the safety of the city. General, what do you think?"
"... I- yes. You're right. This is- … This is a tragedy. For all of us. But I'm sorry- you five need to return to Vale, or at least somewhere safe. Take some time to- to grieve first. But… yes. We'll handle cleanup here," Ironwood nodded, frowning awkwardly and taking a deep breath as the somber mood caught up with all of them. The smell of death and charred flesh and both Winter and Fall filled the air, Team CMNE slowly coming out of the vault one by one as they collected the bits and pieces that they could- mostly just the remnants of Hush, a broken off aesthetic piece from Talaria, and one of Thief's Respite's broken off chains… and the shattered, frozen remains of Midnight.
"I'm sorry…" Cinder whispered, staring at the vault door as it closed and laying her hand upon it, as though she was watching a tomb being sealed. "Whatever comes next… we'll avenge you. Team JNPR… we failed you. We couldn't save you… I'm sorry. I'm sorry… I'm so, so sorry…"
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