Weiss had studied the creatures of Grimm with a painstaking focus making sure to diligently understand each and every one of their capabilities. She had also personally slain more than a few pre-formed Amalgamations within the Dream Realm's Nightmare Zones, along with her squad.
Yet, there was one thing that Weiss had never done. She had never fought an Amalgamation in the waking world.
Nothing—not even the most screwed up videos in the LUCID archive—prepared her for what sloughed free of the waiter's body.
The creature that unfolded from within was a grotesque abomination.
The man's body split with sickening inevitability, his skin pulling away like discarded clothing, revealing the slick, tar-colored mass beneath. His silent scream was swallowed back into the thing's hide even as it rose higher, taller than any human frame should allow. The body appeared vaguely human, with black grimm flesh covering every surface. The amalgamation's head burst out of the man's jaw in a showering splatter of gore, resembling that of a Beowolf's, if one could still call it that, but the muzzle was different. It split vertically down the middle, opening like a flower blooming in deformed parody.
Two sets of teeth glistened inside that pulsing maw—an inner row and an outer row, jagged white against the blackness. When the mouth split, it dripped thick ropes of saliva that seemingly hissed where they struck the tile floor.
From its back and out of its spine, something worse grew. Tendrils—wet, black and boneless things—writhing outward. Some ended in crude, jaw-like mouths, gnashing hungrily, as though each one wanted to taste the world.
Weiss felt her pulse hammer against her ribs. She should have struck earlier, while it was still half-formed, while there had been some chance of ending it before the horror was complete. But the truth caught up with her in that instant: she had faltered. She had never killed a man before.
And to swing her rapier into the chest of what had still looked like a man, even as his body peeled away—she had hesitated.
That hesitation would now cost lives.
She wouldn't make the same mistake again.
Her Rune flared, a pale circle of ice-silver forming beneath her heels, and with a practiced motion she drew a blade from the air itself. Her first rune, Element, burned in her soul, manifesting as a rapier of translucent ice. Cold mist swirled from its length as she lunged, driving the weapon straight toward the creature's malformed skull.
The strike should have been clean and decisive but the mutant Grimm was faster than she had accounted for.
Its tendrils snapped up like striking snakes, three of them entwining the blade mid-thrust. The ice hissed where their flesh touched it, but they held with inhuman strength. The blade stopped inches from its head.
Weiss's breath caught. The thing stared at her—tilting its malformed skull, its vertical maw twitching, almost… confused. As though it were a newborn struggling to comprehend why the world was resisting it.
Then the kitchen doors slammed open.
One of the restaurant security personnel—a man in a fitting black uniform who'd clearly been halfway through his shift—burst inside. "What the hell's going on in—"
He never finished the question.
The mutant's chest split open. It wasn't a wound nor an injury. The torso simply peeled apart like ripe fruit, white ribs splaying outward like teeth in a grinning mouth. From that cavity, something thick and wet shot forward—a tendril shaped like a grotesque black tongue.
It speared the guard through the chest.
The man's scream was cut short as his body was lifted clear off the floor and with a wet pop, slammed back out through the doorframe he emerged from with a crunch of bone. Blood sprayed across the stainless-steel counters.
Weiss gasped. Her throat constricted around bile, but her training forced her to act. She drew her free hand into a circle, conjuring fire with Element.
A geyser of flame roared to life in her palm. She slashed the fire across her entrapped ice sword, fusing the two elements, melting and reforming the edge into something stronger, sharper and hotter.
With a cry, she swung again.
The tendrils holding her weapon burned and burst, splattering the floor with sizzling ichor. The mutant reeled, its vertical jaws flaring open in a soundless scream as Weiss cut a gash across its shoulder.
It dropped low. Too low. Its body moved like no living creature should—almost like it was fluid and boneless, its joints bending wrong. In an instant it was on all fours, claws screeching against tile as it lunged.
Weiss planted her heels and threw up a Glyph. An ice shield materialized before her—solid, gleaming blue-white.
The blow landed like a truck.
The mutant's claw smashed through her shield, shattering it into frozen shards that cut her dress slightly as they flew past. The force lifted her off her feet, hurling her across the kitchen.
Time slowed as Weiss flew backward, pain not yet fully catching up to her. For a single suspended instant, she had a clear view of the carnage she was leaving behind.
The Amalgamation's tendrils writhed, dripping thick liquid on the ground. The kitchen staff—chefs, busboys, dishwashers—were scrambling toward the rear exit, their faces twisted in pale, silent terror. Pots clattered to the ground, knives spun across tile, and still they ran.
The mutant turned toward them. Its split jaw unfurled wider, a grotesque grin. Tendrils lashed outward, mouths snapping hungrily at the retreating humans.
Weiss's heart clenched. She tried to shout "No!" but the air was already driven from her lungs as her back slammed into the swinging doors.
Her last glimpse, before the world inverted and she was hurled into the dining hall, was of those tendrils closing the distance.
She summoned a small platform of ice beneath her feet to stabilize herself. Pain throbbed through her ribs, her lungs burning as she fought to breathe.
Weiss staggered upright, clutching her side where the impact had bruised her ribs. She could hear the screams from the patrons in the hall and within the kitchen now, muffled but sharp, punctuated by the wet, tearing sounds that would haunt her dreams.
She gritted her teeth. She couldn't hesitate again. Hesitation had already cost one man his life. And if she faltered again, everyone in this restaurant might follow.
Weiss's eyes snapped across the dining hall, her gaze raking over the chaos.
The massive tendril that had impaled the guard earlier now stretched across the grand entrance like a monstrous banner, its length fused with pulsing flesh. Veins glowed faintly red beneath its slick surface as it writhed and thickened, sealing the only visible exit.
And it was still connected.
Her gaze shot back to the kitchen—back to the abomination from which that grotesque tongue tentacle had sprouted.
Her stomach knotted. Severing it was the only option.
Her head turned, and for the briefest instant her eyes locked with Jaune Arc's.
The boy stood across the hall, pale with shock, his... sister clutching at his sleeve like a lifeline. His eyes were wide, but not empty—there was a sharpness there, a tension that Weiss recognized in soldiers. He was seeing, processing and bracing.
She didn't have time for explanations. Just one message.
"It's Rank 1!" she shouted, voice cracking through the din.
She didn't know if he understood the weight of those words, but she prayed he did. A Rank 1 Grimm loose in the waking world was something that practically no unawakened could fight. He had to focus on the trapped civilians here. Keep them alive. That was his battle.
She would have take the other.
Weiss's body blurred as she dashed, Aura sharpening every motion. To normal eyes, she vanished, reappearing a streak of white and blue across the dining room. To Jaune, whose eyes seemed strangely clear, she was just fast—inhumanly so.
Her heels hit the floor with thunderclaps as she vaulted back through the swinging doors.
The ice rapier in her grip shimmered. With a sharp cry, she layered a second element over it—Air, sharpened into a cutting edge so thin it looked almost invisible, like glass. Then she flared Fire beneath her heels, igniting a burst that hurled her forward.
The blade sang as it struck.
The massive tendril—the grotesque tongue still stretching from the Amalgamation's chest—split cleanly. The severed end writhed and dissolved into tar, vanishing like smoke as the rest recoiled through the kitchen.
Weiss landed hard, sliding across slick tile, the flaming edge of her weapon hissing against the floor.
The wall behind her still pulsed with flesh, forming a grotesque cage around the dining hall. She clenched her jaw. That wasn't her fight right now. She had to entrust it to Jaune and whatever courage he could summon.
Her battle was here.
The Amalgamation loomed in the kitchen, utterly unfazed by the loss of its tendril. Its vertical jaws worked methodically, chewing through the upper torso of a chef it had caught. Flesh tore wetly between its teeth. Blood streamed down its chin in thick ropes.
Two more staffers spasmed midair, speared through the head by tendrils sprouting from its back. Their bodies hung limp, twitching and slowly and dissolving as the tendrils carried them to the rear of the kitchen. Already, the back exit was being smothered by a new wall of meat, slick black matter sealing into place.
A cage.
The beast was trapping its food.
Weiss's throat tightened. Anger burst out as a scream. She launched herself forward, blade blazing.
The Amalgamation turned with a fluid motion, almost casual. Its clawed hand rose like a shield. Metal shrieked against bone and hide as Weiss's flaming rapier skidded across its palm. It blocked the blow without pause, its maw still chewing the neck of the chef dangling from its jaws.
The man's legs kicked once, twice, then stilled.
Weiss roared in fury, her rune force crackling around her. She poured more of herself into the blade, steam rising as fire and ice fought along its edge.
The Amalgamation pushed back.
Its strength sent shockwaves through her arm, rattling bone, numbing fingers. She disengaged, twirling back with a practiced step, then stabbed her free hand toward the ground.
The element of Earth sparked beneath her heels. Jagged stone erupted from the tile, lancing upward in a pillar toward the beast's chest.
The Amalgamation leapt sideways with unnatural agility. Its claws raked sparks off steel counters as it landed, the pillar crashing harmlessly against the ceiling.
Too fast.
Weiss pivoted, layering Water into her ice blade, encasing it in a sheen of liquid frost. She spun in a tight circle, releasing the stored force of her Fire burst in a whiplash arc. The blade trailed flame and frost, hissing in the air.
The Amalgamation crouched low and lunged. Its maw split wider, inner and outer teeth snapping. Saliva rained from above as it came down at her.
Weiss met it with a shield. Air condensed into a disc of compressed wind before her chest. The beast slammed into it, claws raking furrows into the invisible barrier. Weiss gritted her teeth, the strain of keeping it together was diminishing her Aura reserves.
She pushed back with a shout, and let the shield explode outward.
The burst of compressed air blasted the creature back into a row of stoves. Metal caved with the impact, flames bursting from ruptured gas lines. The kitchen roared with fire and smoke.
Weiss pressed her advantage. She channeled Water and Ice together, freezing the burst gas before it could detonate fully. The flame guttered, steam rising in suffocating clouds.
She lunged again, rapier stabbing toward the beast's chest cavity—the ribbed "mouth" that had fired the tongue-like tendril.
This time she connected.
The blade pierced between its ribs, sinking into the grotesque organ within. Black ichor spilled out in a flood, sizzling against her blade and forearm. The stench was unbearable—burnt tar mixed with iron.
The creature shrieked, its split jaws opening in a terrible sound that rattled every pot and pan. Its tendrils whipped outward in frenzy.
One caught her in the side, slamming her against the wall. Pain erupted across her ribs. Another tendril lashed her leg, dragging her toward its vertical maw.
Weiss dug her rapier into the floor, summoning Earth. Stone spikes erupted upward, impaling the tendril dragging her. It screeched and released her. She rolled free, gasping for air.
Her eyes narrowed. She couldn't beat it in a cramped kitchen. Too much risk to the remaining staff who were cowering in the corners. There was too little room to maneuver.
She needed to move the fight.
Weiss sprinted, darting up the side of a counter, leaping high. She slashed down with Air-enhanced speed, severing two tendrils that reached for her. The Amalgamation tracked her, its body coiling.
Weiss gritted her teeth and unleashed Fire beneath her heels, blasting herself upward. She stabbed her rapier into the ceiling itself, channeling Earth through the blade. Cracks webbed outward. Tile and plaster rained down.
The Amalgamation followed, leaping with terrifying grace, claws embedding into the wall as it hauled itself upward.
Weiss snarled, ripping her rapier free. The ceiling groaned—and then gave way.
She burst into the floor above in a storm of rubble and flame. Dust filled her lungs as she landed hard, rolling across shattered tile and into overturned tables. Patrons from the upper dining area screamed and scattered as she staggered upright.
A shadow rose from the hole behind her.
The Amalgamation hauled itself through the breach, saliva and ichor dripping from its split maw, its tendrils writhing in triumph.
The fight had climbed to the floor above.
Weiss lifted her rapier, the blade steaming with fire and frost, her ribs aching but her eyes burning with cold resolve.
She would not let this abomination claim another life.
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AN: Power stones appreciated.
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