I didn't feel any pain yet, but my ears were ringing, and my hands were guiding the Myrtenaster wherever luck and automatic response blessed them to.
Well, fortunately my training was indeed extensive, and my clothes were rather comfortable.
I used the Snowflake and the reserves of dust that were suitable for the task to protect us from all the shitload of Grimm that came for us.
In general, things were going well, and I was satisfied with this check - starting with the adrenaline caused by everything that was happening, and continuing with the productiveness of weapons in my arms. That's to be particular. I also seemed to grin like a lunatic without any permission from the brain, and the excitement burned within my blood, even the breathing couldn't be fully controlled...
But Klein will hang us on the spire of the tallest tower and won't be wrong about it. I told you it was unnecessary. We haven't even finished preparatory school as of yet, but of course, you just need to check if that simple life is not for us sickos, and life must provide us with adventures. So, surprise-surprise, you daft fool, I KNEW IT WITHOUT YOUR INPUT, YOU DAMNED WRETCH!
I winced at the loud exclamations of Weiss's inner voice and snapped the cylinder of the revolver rapier onto the gravitational dust.
The nearest Beowulf got dragged to a Snowflake - IT'S A GLYPH - and was made an odd inspirational sushi roll out of it, because I added my own little idea to the good old gravitational Schnee glyph.
I still can't figure out however anyone could resist the temptation of trial run of the new abilities.
My feelings were oddly calm - the battle was not lost, help would definitely arrive for us, we just need to hold out and not lose anyone irretrievably.
So far, everyone is alive, but with the Grimm - and this truth was hammered into every Hunter, and even more so, my Big Sis definitely told me so many times - you could never be adamantly sure of the next minute in battle.
I went out with a local patrol, as a free hunter A. Schwartz, to provide support and test out the new weapons - it was quite possible, and even some specific documents weren't really needed.
I was surprised, but many Hunters from other countries perceived grimm as prey - and that's what they should do for mental health, really. So they kept going in and out of different countries as they had to. They could be crawling places on their eyebrows and nobody would bother, really. The odd phrase, which means being critically drunk, in the language I consider my native, apparently.
Well, on the other hand... No sane person would pretend to be a Huntsman if they aren't one, especially if they won't be asking for some kind of safari. It's a grave miscalculation to think that it's only you who is hunting and not the other side. And it's dangerous like that for almost every patrol outside the Old Mantle Wall.
The "don't pretend to be a Huntsman/Specialist" is not even a platitude, it is something that a toddler will not do, even if you promise a bucket of gum and a wagon of cotton candy.
And anyway, if anything, I honestly wasn't planning on just cracking my incognito and getting busted while using the Semblance, but it didn't work out. The question was either to save or not to save another person, and nobody really asks these kinds of questions in a moment - it somehow just happens.
One of my current situational comrades from this very patrol deftly dodged a giant icicle and ducked under the side of a bullhead.
We continued to hide by its smoking frame, and shoot back at the advancing waves of the grimm assault. Of course, it wasn't safe - it did smoke like hell after all, and this was clearly not good. But everything that could explode properly was expropriated for the needs of the resistance.
As everyone knows, the grimm aren't seeing in the usual sense of the word - the grimm are feeling .
That is why, at one time, the main ruling group of the old Mantle came up with the idea of cultivating mental-type aura specialists who could suppress emotions. And in general, the suppression of emotions was just such a fucking smart idea, yeah, especially when even a fool understands that outwardly it can be suppressed, but internally - only medically, and then what you'll be seeing in a bit would be a veggie parade, yeah.
In my previous world, this would have been something from the impossible dystopia, reserved only for movies and books, that's for sure. In this world, it was historically provoked by the mutation of the grimm under the climate of Solitas and the start of generally spread out hopelessness, which turned these grimm on even more.
A suspiciously unnecessary mutation, by the way, because a Grimm, in theory, does not care about cold and hunger, which in turn raises questions.
Like, did people mutate them themselves, was an example of a question I had. No kidding, I remember my past, of course, mostly incomplete, but since I am in something similar to anime - and the presence of faunus confirms this to some extent, then it is quite possible that the logic of the people here is slightly anime as well.
But it seems to me that everything is much more complicated, and I simply don't know something vital.
In general, thanks to those researches in Mantle, and then in Atlas, even after its separation from the land, the practice of training those who had acquired those very mental manifestations continued to persist, monasteries were preserved, and the support of some especially useful groups did not vanish.
Some could cover their brain in some way up there in their heads. Someone could put up a circle with some kind of cloud around them, it is unclear what it was exactly, but it looked like smoke from a blast furnace at the moment of activity. There were also just people with an On-Off Emotion switch, which could not be very useful as a manifestation for a combat huntsman, but it was quite suitable for saboteurs and those social-type fighters.
Our local madman, in the good sense of the word, thanks to his very timely secretive Semblance, explosively overlaid the entire plane around us, with the exception of a small, and I really hope, correctly calculated radius around us, the only joyful ones around.
After all, everyone is alive so far, ain't that joyful, right, so no biggie.
A Grimm griffin shooting icicles the size of my leg out of its mouth? Check number one.
He just wouldn't stop spewing icicles, and most importantly, he couldn't fucking shut up - the roar was probably audible to the worms of the dog on the outskirts of Vale, really.
The freakish creature made my head ache - or was it a concussion earned during the landing by aptly diving like a swallow?
There was a medic with us, yeah, but she had things to do - stabilize the wounded, and not people like me, who just had the blood back off from their brains, and have to slow down so as not to vomit on their shoes.
A Nevermore mutated to the climate of Solitas, sparkling with gray-blue patches on its white body parts, whose wings also ensure the preservation of periodic stray fire focused on our positions? Check number two!
And that's why my "slow down to not vomit" thing is a game of fucking whack-a-mole, where our little team is in the role of a mole, and my Semblance is in the role of protection, usually not provided for moles by the actual game.
When our group noticed the notorious Semblance, one of the guys quickly prayed to their blessed ancestors in a thanks and urgently called for my sister's division, because there were no other owners of combat snowflakes except the Schnee in this reality, and they did not want to get involved if I ended up dead and, well, at the same time they would like to promptly get help from the best of the best in Atlas.
All in all, they acted tactically correct - the surname Schnee had magical properties, as it caused indigestion in some, and explosions of enthusiasm in other particular individuals or groups of these individuals, yeah.
And others reacted - and among them this psycho saboteur, whose name I have not yet learned - with obscenities on the topic of rich morons, who, I quote, "have a pain in the ass and wanna feel the Spirit of Hunt, but the paws are too short."
And yes, bitch, there are also ursas with borbatusks and beowolves, where would we be without them! Surely less entertained!
How did I end up in this situation?!
After all, everything started quite... allright, I guess.
And that's where I should've started worrying.
***
Bullhead - quite likely with my angry sister on board - has not yet appeared over our heads, but I was already mentally preparing to either skedaddle or confess all my faults.
We set off an explosion, and it almost blew us out with a shock wave, but our bomber-entertainer's hands were not up his arse which was beneficial. He laid the dust for detonation with utmost competence, which allowed the back rows of the grimm who ran up to us to literally evaporate, and the front rows' attack crumpled and ran into our fire.
I was on my last legs due to the attacks of Nevermore and Griffon, but the explosion finally stopped the latter's roar for at least a few dozen seconds. When this happened, I even breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the grinning Huntsman, who organized it all. His proximity to me made it possible to make out the emotions on his face. Those emotions seemed to be extremely mixed, to be honest.
"So. What are you doing here, Schnee?" He asked quietly, taking hold of my elbow.
The rest of the patrol capable of fighting decided to deal with the remaining grimm, and no longer paid attention to us - one was thrown up in the air by his partner, and he, shifting his sniper rifle into the huge axe, cut Nevermore on the wing at the junction, thereby grounding it.
Our medic also went on a rampage. Which is why there was nobody else next to us, except for the guy out of it. Our medic hovered over him for the last ten minutes of the fighting, protecting and taking care of him.
And is that a jet shield? I thought these were some gun nozzles, not a fucking flight method!
O-Inari-kami-sama, where the hell am I.
I turned my eyes from the bearer of such a dangerous weapon to my interlocutor.
The man was no less fucked by this whole tiny battle than I was. But at the same time he was clearly worried about the girl who got herself into something like this - as he may or may not have thought, for some stupid reason.
I would've definitely thought so. And I clearly was that dumb girl in his eyes.
"Do you have any debts?" I blurted out. "I'll pay them off for you if you help me avoid Winter. She doesn't know I'm here. You can say that you were mistaken, and it was just a similar Semblance. You don't have cameras or any recording equipment, this is not some spec.ops deployment."
"You..." he frowned - I saw the struggle of greed and decency on his face, and to some extent I felt ashamed.
Something in between won out, and the man squeezed my elbow harder.
"Schnee is not my command officer, and I usually live in Argus. The crazy one with the shield is my youngest, and she's the one in charge of this patrol. What a familial visit, well... But your... Your sister probably already knows that you're not at home. Miss Schnee, I don't really understand..."
I shook my head and grunted something resembling a "no", feeling a bit doomed, because I really wasn't ready for deep conversations. But it seems that everything is getting to some sort of talk - this guy is too responsible to just let me go.
I'm just afraid that bullhead and my sister are on the way, and I'm still here, and not wherever!
"No, I'm covered from that side. If these guys won't tell on me, then I'll get home safely. I can promise that I won't do this anymore, I just had to check something. It was very important for my future!" I folded my hands in prayer, holding the Myrtenaster between my palms, blade down. "Please, uh-uh... Sorry, what's your name?"
He snorted and finally let go of my elbow.
"Lenny Koller's the name. You... It's hard to believe, and tell me if I'm wrong, Miss Weiss, but have you never been on a Grimm Hunt before today? I could be mistaken, but it sounded like you're trying to figure out if you even want to be among the Huntsmen in the future. It's kind of like... peculiar."
"Why pecu?..."
I didn't have time to finish the sentence, because the griffon rose into the air again and, together with the resumption of its impossibly annoying long-lasting roar, threw the girl with the shield away from him, right in our direction.
The other two guys used their wing-chopping toss method again, so griffon didn't lose all the opponents. But the Huntress lost control of the flight, which caused me to lay a path of glyphs for her. That path brought her unconscious body right by our feet. And this, in turn, caused me to get even more exhausted.
The man next to me looked at his sister, then at me. After that he nodded slightly and took hold of the hilt on his belt.
The hilt seemed to belong to a huge sword, but somehow I didn't notice the sword itself. Only a strangely wide dagger blade that fit compactly on the Hunter's belt.
The Dust enclosed in the pommel of his handle lit up with the color of gravity dust, and the dust in the crosspiece, when fueled by the Aura of the owner, turned out to be the hard-light one.
I knew for sure that it was artificially created in one of the Atlas laboratories directly connected with the Schnee Corporation. Basically, such a dust type was usually used for electronics, not for combat - only a very rare composition of processed dust of this type could be used for battles, and it was not cheap.
The sword handle turned into a pretty big zweihander, and it made my jaw drop. Who cares 'bout my new armbands, which, of course, I tried out on Beowulfs, Ursas and borbatusks, and the weapons were quite good as an auxiliary tool.
But this masterpiece?
Is it just me, or have I fallen in love with a sword?
I would ask Mirtenaster forgiveness for infidelity, but my rapier is a weapon of a different sort, designed to help with Semblance, not to slay and overcome.
I'll do even without a collapsible mechanism, because what's better than a good two-handed weapon with gravitational dust to enhance the impact?
How did I not think of that at all? All those thoughts of axes and all that stuff.
It is actually Grandpa Nicholas's weapon, and I should've thought about it almost as soon as I came up with this whole masquerade with Aisling Schwartz and trying to somehow prepare myself for probing the Atlesian underworld side.
And yes, who exactly did I run into?!
Why am I always having the wrong luck, or the opposite, which is much more likely right now, and I'm getting more and more drawn into some kind of bull?
Who is this Lenny?
And what did that nod of his mean before he jumped up with a two-handed sword at the ready right onto the Griffon, just to immideately decapitate the Grimm? Could he have done it right away?!
So why was he?..
Though no, what am I, while the fodder - compared to the griffon, of course - has not been scattered in the wind, it would hardly be possible to calculate the trajectory as carefully, to swing and not fall under the jaws of some other grimm. And I noticed that the Huntsman concentrated quite a lot of Aura energy in his weapon before rushing towards this huge creature.
The acrobatic partners had already grounded the Griffon, just like the Nevermore before, but they couldn't get the fucker further down.
These fans of throwing each other at flying Grimm laughed with relief and high-fived each other, to the disintegrating remains of Grimm Griffon and Lenny rolling his eyes.
Since it became quiet - no one was shooting, nothing exploded and this fucking asshole stopped roaring, I heard a sound, still very far away, but alarming.
Bullhead with reinforcements.
"Okay, friends," Lenny took the two remaining conscious patrolmen by the nape and looked at me. "Me and miss... Schwartz are the only free birds here, right? And Miss Schwartz will give you your weekly salary... Won't she?"
"She will, she will," I nodded like a puppet and clasped my hands in prayer again. "This is my first Hunt, guys, please don't give me away! Tell them you've made a mistake, all in all. Please do."
"You saved our pilot's life," the guy with the axe thought about it and chuckled. "If you hadn't been here, he wouldn't have survived. Would've just fallen out, and from such a height and after being hit by that icicle, I doubt he would have been able to live. If you want to pay, do so, of course, the lien are always welcome, but I agree to cover your backside, little Schnee."
"I was the one who initially told them about your Schnee Semblance," continued another Specialist, "and I also agree to cover for you. I'll say I was wrong. This, of course, is not to say that it is legal much, but... The first Hunt, you say? What Winter is thinking..."
"It's not her fault! She doesn't even live with me!"
His dismissive tone made me irritated in a mere second, but Lenny diffused the situation.
The Huntsman, having stopped hugging his fellows - why did he do it at all, I ask?! - sped up, ran up to me, for some reason covered my mouth with his palm mid-sentence, and then threw me over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. He then gave his colleagues a thumbs up and pointed at his sister.
"Take care of Violet. Have her send your account numbers to my scroll, I'll give it to miss... Schwartz, right? And now let's go!"
And he ran - with all the speed available to Huntsmen - and yes, I understand that the dude was a tad bit under two meters tall and assumed that I was unlikely to be able to keep up with him on my own, but he could have warned. What a bitch!
What the hell is going on here?! How did we end up in this situation?!
Fucked if I know!
"When... Kheh... If you stop, then... Kheh..."
He shook me again, while jumping over some snow-covered ravine, finally stopped and pulled me off his shoulders .
"Ugh, of course you're light, but I ran fast," he put his palms on his knees and cracked his back. "Well, what, ugh, say what you wanted!"
"I gotta call so someone meets us."
I grunted and took out my scroll from the inner pocket of an armored vest. It was hidden under a hooded cloak that hid the hair color, the very characteristic of Schnee.
"You didn't think I was that unprepared, did you? Who'd have expected that my Semblance literally pops out on its own when a person's life is at stake?"
"Okay," the man shrugged and tried to listen to something. "We're already far away. I still have to make plans on how to return. I do have my own methods, but..."
"Come on, I don't wanna owe you for that as well," I said firmly, squinting up into his dark gray eyes. "I had a plan, and it's not yet completely fallen into the abyss, allright?"
And I chose my girlfriend in the contact list.
If I had known that it would be fraught with getting to know her mother, yes, the one whom I've never met as of yet, then I would rather owe a barely familiar Huntsman for knowing some kind of smuggling routes to the Atlas.
Well, what can I say... The Hunt successful, I guess?