74 Ch 73: ...With a Rain of Bullets...

"That's TWO!" Jaune exclaimed as he brought his sword coated in his shimmering white Aura down on the black head of a King Taijitu, severing it and slaying the two-headed Grimm. Beacon had received reports of a large den of King Taijitus appearing close to Vale and had dispatched several first-year teams to deal with the pit of vipers. It was an unusual assignment. Glynda had instructed all the teams to stay on the lookout for signs of any reason why the ordinarily solitary serpent-type Grimms had suddenly decided to congregate together.

Usually, Team RWBY, as the number one first-year team, would be in charge of killing the Grimm with one or two other teams as support while the other teams provided cover and kept any other Grimm from interfering while carrying out behavioral observations simultaneously to increase mankind's understanding of Grimm. However, Team JNPR had volunteered to exterminate the den on their own instead. Well, Jaune had volunteered, wanting to prove the progress he had made thanks to the intensive training Pyrrha and Ray had been putting him through the last two weeks, and his team had supported him as they always did. Ray had liked the determined but not reckless look in his eyes and, since he would be providing overwatch and was confident he could protect them in case anything happened, had decided to allow it.

Of course, Jaune wasn't foolhardy enough to just charge in blindly without a plan and try to take on all the Grimm head-on, at least not anymore. A good part of his training with Ray had consisted of strategic planning and quick on the fly thinking. Learning to identify his own strengths and his opponents' weaknesses and use the terrain to take maximum advantage of both while engaged in combat.

"It's going pretty well." Ren commented as he walked through the dissipating cloud of black Grimm smoke to toss a water bottle to his team leader.

"Yeah, Jaune's plan to use Ren semblance to lure these snakes away one at a time into this dense grove of trees where they can't move around easily due to their size makes this super easy." Nora agreed as she hung upside down from a tree above Ren.

"It's nothing much." Jaune said with a sheepish smile as he rubbed the back of his head. "Ray says one of the advantages of having been weak is that I'm good at quickly recognizing the safest and easiest way to solve whatever problem I'm presented with."

"Well, you're not weak any longer." *pa* Pyrrha said as she walked up behind Jaune and slugged him in the shoulder and unlike when she had done it at the team assignment ceremony less than three months ago, Jaune didn't even budge at the forceful friendly punch, let alone fall over.

"Right." Jaune said as he tightened his grip on his sword. "Ok, team. Slow and steady. Ren, go lured over the next Grimm." Ren nodded and jumped up into the trees, quickly vanishing from view as he bounded from branch to branch.

The three chatted idly about their training and school gossip as they waited for Ren to return. They didn't have to wait long before they started to feel the ground trembling beneath them.

*rumble* "Here they come!" Jaune announced as he readied his shield and lowered his stance. He was a little surprised at how soon Ren had returned and idly wondered if the pit was moving and they would need to change their location soon to avoid their battle drawing in the passive snakes. However, almost a minute later, neither Ren nor the Grimm had arrived, but the shaking had gotten noticeably stronger.

*RRUUUUMMMBBBLLLEEE* "Wha-! What's happening!?" Nora exclaimed as she struggled to maintain her balance in the tree.

"I've got a bad feeling about this." Jaune said as he spotted a large cloud of raising dust through the trees heading their way. "Fall back." he ordered as he turned to the right and started running. Nora and Pyrrha abandoned their positions and quickly followed him to a shallow overhang in a nearby hill that was covered by bushes. They had designated the spot as their home base and first fallback point for this hunt before they had started luring Grimm over. A panting Ren soon joined them.

*hah hah* "This is bad." Ren panted. He crouched down next to his teammates, and his washed-out colors returned as he deactivated his semblance, Tranquility, that allowed him to conceal himself from the senses of Grimm.

*hah* "I tried luring just one of the King Taijitus by shooting it while toggling my semblance on and off as I backed away, just like I had done before, but all of them ended up following this time. Even after I completely masked my presence, they just kept heading in the same direction as one huge mass."

Jaune quickly checked the position of the dust cloud marking the approaching nightmare and pulled up a map of the area on his scroll, trying to figure out where it was heading. But before he could, "It's heading towards the city!" Pyrrha realized the answer without having to check.

"We have to warn everyone." Nora shouted. Jaune nodded and tried to open his scroll's messaging app to inform Ray.

"Too late!" Pyrrha shouted, grabbing their distracted leader and jumping away along with Ren and Nora as a white King Taijitu head smashed through the bushes where the four of them had just been hiding.

"What the hell is that thing!" Jaune shouted as, through the settling dust, he got his first look at the monstrosity. Twelve gaping maws large enough to swallow a man whole, half of them white and the other half black, swayed several stories in the air threateningly. Beneath its shiny scales, veiny bumps spidered up each neck from the mass of twisted coils at its base where all the bodies joined together. On top of its heads, the formerly flat faceplates of the King Taijitus had become raised and spiky, crowning its twelve heads with ferocious majesty.

*HISSSS* the six serpents turned hydra Grimm hissed at the stunned huntsmen and huntresses in training before lunging at them again, its maws open wide to reveal the unending darkness within.

######

*BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* The sounds of Team JNPR's battle with the monstrosity echoed through the mountain forest and drew the attention of the other teams. Including Team CRDL.

"What was that?" Cardin wondered as he rested his boot on the disappearing corpse of an Ursa he and his team had just taken down.

"Maybe Jaune's finally gotten himself killed." Russel joked.

*Ha Ha Ha* "Why don't we go and watch the show?" Sky laughed.

"Uhh, gu- guys!" Dove stuttered as he pointed behind them with a shaky finger. The rest of his team turns to see the giant mutated Grimm slither around the side of a mountain and into view. From this distance, they could just make out a couple of humanoid figures scampering around its twisting body, each one looking no bigger than the glistening fangs lining its snapping jaws.

"We have to help them!" Cardin shouted as he hefted his hammer. [Finally, I'll get to repay my debt to that pipsqueak and regain my pride as a huntsman.]

"Are you crazy!" "If you want to rush to your death, be my guest but leave us out of it!" "Ray and the other teachers will take care of it. It's best if we just stay out of their way." Russel, Sky, and Dove shouted at their leader over their shoulders as they high-tailed it in the opposite direction of the serpentine nightmare as fast as their legs could carry them.

"You cowards!" Cardin shouted after them, but after a brief glance back, bit his lip and followed. Ashamed of his team and himself. [Is this really the kind of huntsman, the kind of man I want to be? One that flees from the strong and can only bully the weak.]

######

*Hya* Pyrrha cried as she twisted in mid-air and thrust her sword into the roof of the dripping maw chomping down upon her. However, contrary to her expectations, the Grimm didn't rear back in pain and self-preservation. Instead, it continued to close its mouth around her even as her blade pierced its brain. Pyrrha hastily changed Milo into its javelin form and wedged it against the bottom of the mouth, bracing herself to ride the falling head all the way down. But the expected decent never came.

As if her blade hadn't just pierced its brain, the former King Taijitu's head remained held high. Instead, realizing it could not devour its prey with this annoying stick in its mouth, it dislocated its jaw and opened wide to allow another of its heads to lunge into its mouth and strike the pest.

*HA* Pyrrha saw the head coming and threw her shield at the oncoming serpent with all her strength. Pyrrha was on the verge of breaking through into the Aura Weaponization level, and as her shield, glowing red with her Aura, hit the snake's head, it sliced through its left eye, blinding it and sending it reeling to the side, hissing in pain. However, before she could recall her shield, another head attacked her from the opposite direction.

With her spear embedded in the roof of her head's mouth being her only reliable footing, Pyrrha grasped its shaft firmly with both hands and swung herself up, kicking at the Grimm. The head twisted at the last second, and instead of kicking it away, Pyrrha found herself doing the splits, her body horizontal as she desperately supported herself with her hands clenched around her spear inside one mouth and pushed against the top and bottom fangs of another with her booted feet.

"Pyrrha!" Jaune shouted in alarm as he skidded across the ground having just barely blocked another boulder-shattering strike.

Thankfully Team CRDL wasn't the only team that realized Team JNPR needed help.

"Starting things off with a YANG!" a fiery yellow blur shouted as it unleashed a pair of punches cloaked in Chinese dragon heads made of brilliant yellow Aura that were as powerful as its puns were terrible on the two snakeheads entrapping Pyrrha, blasting them into meat paste.

"Thanks, Yang." Pyrrha shouted at her savior as she landed, and Akouo flew back and landed with a snap onto her arm. Except for the splattered Grimm remains stuck to her armor and face that were quickly fading into black smoke she was unharmed despite the harrowing situation she had just escaped. At the same time, the pressure on the rest of her teammates significantly reduced as a rain of bullets and icicles enhanced by Aura thundered down upon it. Forcing the beast to reel back in surprise.

Before it could regain its balance, "Dilo KIICCCKKKK!!!!!" A streak of white light impacted with one of its heads, sending it stumbling back.