2 Chapter 2: Dreams

She was standing in the middle of a dense jungle of green vines. Her friends were there with her, and other people, too. She knew that it was not all perfect, of course. She knew that it was not all safe. But it was known. This was comforting. The jungle was all there was, and the people were content with what they knew. She was content.

But then, a mighty Wind whisked her away. She was now outside the jungle, standing in the middle of a flat, orange, barren plain. Everything was bright now - it was so very bright, and unfamiliar! - and she knew it was because now there was no jungle to block the sun. She saw the jungle from far away, and her friends and the people were living under its shade. But, the jungle was more than what it seemed. It was alive, and it was one being. And though it looked like a vast jungle of vines, she could hear it growling and knew now that it was really, somehow, an enormous beast. And it wanted to keep the people from seeing the sun...but why?

Now she was afraid, both of the bright sun and of the beast. Then she saw that the beast was in a battle with a great shadow in the form of a dark cloud, and the shadow terrified her. The shadow destroyed parts of the jungle that was the beast, but the beast grew them back. She saw that the shadow wanted to devour the people, and that it would eventually destroy the beast. The shadow began to blot out the sky, and she felt despair as she never thought she could.

Then, she heard the beast roar. It was not a death cry, but it was angry and frightened. She saw a glimpse of what had made the beast roar. It wasn't the shadow. It was...blue?

Before she saw what it was, the shadow made a horrible, chilling, triumphant sound as it made one final advance against the beast and engulfed it it entirely with everyone in it, and she wanted desperately to call out to her friends, but her voice was blocked and she knew it was hopeless, and the shadow came crashing down towards her to devour her -

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- and Weiss Schnee awoke from her dream with a panicked cry.

It took her a few seconds to gather her scattered thoughts, and a few more to steady her breathing. She wasn't in a jungle, she reminded herself, and there was no beast and no dark cloud. She was fine. But, then...where was she? Weiss looked around as she sat in her makeshift sleeping bag. That's right...she was on an airship, making her way to -

Weiss's heart leaped when she remembered that she was fleeing to Mistral. She was free from her father! And soon, she would reunite with her older sister, and then they would fly to Vale and find her teammates, and -

"Hey, kid," Weiss heard the voice of the aircraft's pilot through a walkie-talkie clipped to the bench she had been sleeping on. "Everything alright down there?"

Weiss jumped slightly at the noise, then relaxed; the pilot must have heard her shout after she woke up from her dream.

Her dream...

Her dream that she remembered. This was very unsettling, for a number of reasons. Weiss almost never had dreams, and even when she did, she certainly never remembered any of them. And yet, she had just had a dream so vivid that she had thought it was the very reality she lived in, and she could recall every detail. In fact, it had -

"Kid?" Weiss heard the walkie sound, drawing her back from her thoughts.

"Uh, yeah," she answered back. "Just a dream. I'm fine."

Though this was technically true - Weiss was physically well and unharmed - she couldn't deny that she was feeling rather disturbed at the moment. In any case, the pilot seemed convinced enough.

"...Alright, just making sure," the voice popped through again, and then the walkie was silent. Weiss sighed, trying to convince herself not to worry about it. After all, she had run away from her morally bankrupt father only days ago, leaving her old life completely behind. This was probably just her mind coping with the sudden changes she was undergoing. And in any case, it was only a dream; it wasn't real.

Now fully returned to the real world, Weiss made to stretch luxuriously - and her nightwear refused to comply. Perturbed, she pulled at the cloth on her abdomen and found, to her initial surprise, that it was damp with perspiration. Weiss sighed again.

"Hell of a dream."

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Lake Matsu was enormous.

That was the conclusion Weiss had reached as she gazed out the right hand window in the cargo bay of the Atlesian airship. They had been flying over the vast, blue sheet for upwards of three hours, and the shore still was not in sight. With little else to do, she decided to talk with the pilot, the only other person on board. The cabin door slid to the side at the press of a button, and in walked Weiss.

"Well, look who's up and about," remarked the pilot, somehow awake and chipper despite ten hours of flying. Weiss smiled. In her time on the plane, the amicable, sassy, and extremely pragmatic man had already grown on her - and she didn't even know his name. (He had elected not to give it, so that the law enforcement couldn't "squeeze it out of you and then nab me", as he had put it.)

"Before you ask:" the pilot said. "No, we are not there yet. Still got about...uhh, two, maybe three hours 'til we get to the Capitol, is my guess."

"Two or three hours!" Weiss gasped, excited.

"Yeah, reckon that's about right," said the pilot as he glanced at the radar to confirm his suspicions. He then cracked a mischievous grin. "If we don't take my favorite shortcut."

"Uh-oh," groaned Weiss with a roll of her eyes. "What could that mean."

The pilot chuckled. "Well, you'll see in a moment. Right now, actually."

He motioned outside the cockpit window, towards a vast field of floating islands and boulders. Something about them seemed familiar to Weiss as she stared at the rocks, especially when she took a closer look...

"The gravity-Dust island fields of Eastern Lake Matsu! I remember reading about those in geography class," she recounted with a bit of typical Schnee pride, at which the pilot snapped his fingers and mouthed the word, "Bingo". Then her face fell as she started remembering a bit more about them.

"Aren't these dangerous to fly through, with the risk of collision and all the turbulence the gravity-Dust causes?"

"Not if you're any good at flying, they aren't," responded the pilot. "And I love to brag, but I'm one of the best there is."

"Then, why are they marked as Blood-Maroon zones on all the flight charts?" Weiss inquired, referring to the inter-Kingdom coding system's classification of highest danger flight-zones.

"One word: Grimm. Bastards love to hang around here, try and catch ships that pass by. They'll tear anything less than a warship to shreds, and this here?" the pilot said as he patted the cockpit wall. "Not a warship."

"Well, then why fly through..." The pieces suddenly clicked into place for the former Heiress. "...a no-fly zone that law-abiding aircraft won't go...oh! It's a perfect smuggler's route!"

"Now you're catching on!" laughed the pilot. "Yeah, it's pretty convenient, cause law enforcement 'round here won't come into these rocks on account of the Grimm, and like I said, it's no problem to navigate for a skilled pilot. Makes for a nice little back door in when you're carrying stuff you technically shouldn't be."

"Like the Dust in the cargo bay?"

"Yup. And the Heiress in my cabin."

Weiss frowned.

"Well, technically it's former Heiress..."

"That's right," the pilot said as he snapped his fingers again. "You're running away. Reckon your old man's not gonna like that too much."

"Oh, he stripped me of my title long before I even tried to run away," Weiss remarked acidly. "And just for calling out some stupid, arrogant bitch for her...her - "

"Stupid, arrogant bitchiness?" the pilot offered.

"Well, I was going to say her absolute ignorance and audacity towards the suffering of the people of Vale, but yeah. That works, too."

The pilot laughed heartily, and Weiss had to join in.

"You know what, kid, I like you," said the pilot. "See, I was really having second thoughts about bringing you on board, but this is kinda fun! I oughta start smuggling runaway kids more often. Heh, maybe while I'm at it, I could make a little side business out of - what the hell?"

His smile disappeared when the ship's radio erupted with static and garbled noise, and he fine-tuned a dial to match the incoming frequency. He finally got it right, and a woman's panicked voice broke through the speakers:

" - ayday, Mayday! If anyone can hear this: we're a small passenger flight under attack by creatures of Grimm! Our Huntress is down, repeat: our Huntress is down! We're trying to lose them in the rocks, but there's too many - "

The speaker was interrupted by an explosion, followed by a small cacophony of shouts from the background; Weiss' hand instinctively dropped to her sash to rest on Myrtenaster's hilt. After a long few seconds, the woman's voice again broke through the commotion:

" - anyone is out there, anyone, please send help - coordinates are 1415.24-243.88, heading west - "

The radio went silent as the pilot switched it off, a grim frown now on his face. Shocked, Weiss looked at him expectantly.

"We're going to help them...right?" she asked, suspecting that she wouldn't like the answer.

"Hate to break it to you, kid," the pilot sighed. "But they're toast. If we go over there, we'll only be getting ourselves killed."

"But there's still a chance to save them," Weiss persisted. "I'm a Huntress, I've fought Grimm before!"

"Look, kid," the pilot answered, his still-neutral tone not quite hiding his impatience. "I get it. You wanna protect the innocent and all that, and it sucks that they're all gonna die. But like I said, this thing's not a warship. There's no sense in trying to save already dead people. Besides, it's my ship, and I'll fly it wherever I want."

Well, there was no arguing with that, and so Weiss hung her head in resignation. She knew he was right, at least to an extent, and that she had no choice in the matter anyway. Still, she could not shake the sensation of guilt that had washed upon her. She was a Huntress; protecting those who were unable to protect themselves from the Grimm was what she did, and leaving these people to die just seemed like a dereliction of duty.

The pilot glanced at the radar to recheck the coordinates of the other airship, and the plane shifted slightly as he steered to give it a wider berth.

"Idiots," she heard him mutter to himself. "What the hell is a passenger ship even doing in here? It's like they've got a death wish or something..."

"Unless they aren't a passenger ship," Weiss offered, at which he turned his head slightly. "After all, an airship full of innocent civilians makes for a much more attractive rescue mission than, say, one full of illegal Dust smugglers."

"Heh, well, you got that right," the pilot chuckled mirthlessly. "Either way, they make for good Grimm bait so that we can haul ass outta here."

Weiss refrained from exploding at his comment, remembering that last time she allowed this of herself. So, despite the anger smoldering in her chest, her tone was kept chilly.

"Either way, they are still people," she replied with a harsh staccato. "And should never be degraded to the status of bait."

She saw the pilot's grip tighten on the controls, and realized her mistake too late.

"Well, if you're that concerned about their dignity, then by all means, go right on and jump off my ship to your death," he growled through gritted teeth. "Who knows? Maybe you'll save one or two of them before the Grimm tear you to pieces. But I'm going to make it out of this alive, and I'm gonna stay alive for as long as I can help it! And as for you, you enjoy feeling nice about your good deeds while you can, because at the end of the day, there's nothing to come of it - no fate, no karma, no universal order, no god who rewards you for them in the afterlife! They're all nothing but a damned waste!"

Weiss didn't know what nerve she had touched on with him, nor did she think it wise to inquire further of it. With nothing to say in response to his bitter tirade that had ended as suddenly as it had begun, she said nothing, electing instead to stare out the cabin window as she contemplated the pilot's words.

In the minutes-long absence of conversation, the occasional crackle could be heard over the ships engines - doubtless, Weiss inferred, from the pulsing nodes of gravity-Dust buried into the sides of the floating islands. The aircraft's angle had by now put it almost directly in line with the morning sun, the glare on the windshield forcing Weiss to squint as she looked ahead. Despite her good judgement urging otherwise, she found that she couldn't resist trying to stare directly into the sun...and indeed, it hurt, it was so very bright...and yet, at the same time, inexplicably hypnotizing...like it was trying to tell her something...what was it saying...?

Weiss gasped back into reality as the pain forced her to look away and rub her eyes.

Damn that dream, she cursed inwardly. I'm going to go insane wasting my thoughts over it...

Relief came to her when a large floating rock blocked out the sun and eliminated the glare. She glanced over at the pilot, hoping he had not noticed her staring straight into the sun like only an idiot would do. Thankfully, that seemed to be the case, as he showed no signs of acknowledgment. In fact, his attention was entirely directed to the front-left of the aircraft...at the cadre of massive, wasp-like Lancer Grimm emerging from behind the rock and heading straight for them!

"Gah! Hang on!" the pilot yelled, and the ship took a hard downwards right as he veered out of the way of the flying Grimm. Weiss had had little time to grab onto the seat in front of her and was nearly tossed about the spinning ship like a doll in the dryer. As it was, she barely held on as the pilot took his ship in a downwards corkscrew spin, veering up just in time to avoid crashing into a lower-floating boulder. The ship's course evened out somewhat, but the pilot clearly sensed that the excitement was far from over.

"Kid, I suggest you buckle up," the pilot grunted, any trace of malice from before now flown from his voice. "Unless you think you can do something to keep those bastards -wait...they're not following us...?"

That apparently was so, as the four creatures had not flown downwards to pursue the Atlesian craft, instead circling around the massive island. Initially confused, Weiss soon realized the truth of the situation as the low humming of another airship's engines became increasingly audible.

Suddenly, the source of the noise, a garden-variety Mistralian transport craft, burst out from the other side of the island, with a respectable swarm of Lancers in hot pursuit. The ship was in dire straits: smoke billowed out of its primary propulsion engine; its wings were tattered, with even a few missing entirely; its gondola bay had been nearly ripped off, and was trailing bits of flying debris; and its hull bore numerous chinks and holes, almost certainly from the Lancers' deadly, elastic stingers. Weiss reluctantly admitted to herself that the pilot's estimations had been on-point: that ship and its crew were goners.

"Well, time to go," said the pilot as he activated the ship's rechargeable boosters, and Weiss again had to grab hold of the seat in front of her as the ship rocketed away from the scene. She looked out the window again to see the Lancers latch onto their quarry from several different angles, smashing into the propeller and causing a fatal crack down the middle of the hull. Evidently realizing that the ship was finished, the Lancers retracted their stingers and flew off, leaving it to careen down towards the lake until it collided nose-first onto a huge island in a blazing shower of splintered wood and twisted metal. Weiss heard the impact and forced down the sensation of sickening guilt, for she could clearly see that the wasp-like Lancers' next target was them. By then, the boosters had died down, and the Grimm were beginning to gain on the airship.

"I assuming that this ship doesn't have weapons?" Weiss asked the pilot.

"Not so much as a pea-shooter. Hey - where're you going?" he asked, for Weiss had by then headed for the cargo hold.

"I'm doing what a Huntress does," she responded. "You don't mind if I borrow some of that Dust in the hold, do you?"

"Whatever you need to keep us breathing, kid!" the pilot called back, but the Huntress had already disappeared through the door.

Weiss grabbed the walkie-talkie off the bench and clipped it to her sash, then ran to the cargo containers stacked towards the back of the hold. Taking hold of one, she hoisted it to the floor and opened it, revealing the multi-colored array of Dust vials; she took a handful and loaded them into Myrtenaster's revolver chamber. The pilot's voice popped through the walkie:

"If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, get ready, 'cause I'm about to open the cargo hold!"

Weiss, who was indeed thinking what the pilot thought she was thinking, summoned a black gravity Glyph beneath her feet to anchor herself to the ship, and brought her walkie to her mouth:

"Ready!"

The cargo door grunted and whirred as it opened like some great, hinged maw, giving Weiss a full view of the dozen or so pursuing Lancers - and plenty of temptingly clear shots.

"Alright, kid - I'm gonna try and shake these fuckers off, but I need you to push 'em back first. Can you do that?"

"Most certainly," Weiss answered with a grin.

What a Huntress does, she thought, and the words filled her with a new exhilaration as the thundering wind blew her lopsided ponytail to her front. The Lancers closed in, and Weiss took a stance, summoning several of her basic white Glyphs in a row. She waited until the moment the monsters shot out their stingers to channel the wind Dust from Myrtenaster through her Glyphs, deflecting the deadly barbs with a powerful blast of compressed air and pushing the flock back to a less-uncomfortably close distance from the airship. Now able to maneuver without risk of running into a stinger, the pilot began a breakneck series of wild aerial acrobatics, trying to lead the Grimm into head-on collisions with the massive rocks. The naturally agile Lancers, however, were too familiar with the area to be shaken off so easily, and the flock remained tightly locked onto their target.

"Dammit, I can't shake 'em!" Weiss heard the pilot say. "Looks like it's time for some potshots, kid. I'll line 'em up for you."

"Got it."

Weiss rotated Myrtenaster's chamber to utilize the fire Dust she had loaded, and once again summoned an array of Glyphs that now glowed a hot orange. As the pilot leveled out the airship, the Lancers became far less difficult targets, as they changed tactics from dodging rocks to closing the distance between them and their quarry. With a battle cry, the Huntress began systematically discharging the pent-up energy within each Glyph in blazing gouts, launching them towards the Lancers. To her frustration, Lancers proved to be surprisingly good at dodging projectiles, and only two out of a dozen hit their mark. Now it was Weiss' turn to swear:

"Dammit! Can you find a tunnel?"

"Ha! It's like you know how much I love showing off."

With that, the airship returned to its gut-turning routine of dives, spins, and sudden twists and turns. By then, Weiss had realized just how thankful she was for gravity Dust, and for not yet having had breakfast. Soon enough, the pilot spotted an island with a sizable opening running down the middle, and gunned straight for it. Six of the remaining Lancers followed them through the hole, the others making their way around. Having once more summoned her array of fire-infused Glyphs, Weiss took aim and launched the flaming bolts toward her foes. The Lancers now had much less room to dodge, and were all reduced to ash and black mist in short order.

"Nice work!" the pilot exclaimed as they exited the tunnel. "Now all that's left is to - "

His sentence was cut off as the airship was suddenly rocked, accompanied by the shriek of tearing metal. Even with her Glyph holding her in place, Weiss was nearly knocked off her feet. She looked up and saw a barbed stinger protruding through the cargo bay's ceiling, and knew from the way the airship was being pulled about that more had latched on. She realized that the four Lancers that had flown around the tunnel had somehow caught up with them, and decided then that these Grimm in particular were not to be underestimated. Terrified that the pilot might have been killed or knocked unconscious, she was hugely relieved when she heard him shouting again:

"Gah! Bastards hooked us! Hang on, kid - we're about to experience a bit of turbulence here!"

Weiss could hear the discordant chewing of the Lancers on the airship's hull. She transferred her gravity Glyph from the floor to the ceiling, pulling herself upwards to stand on it as if on the floor, and thrust Myrtenaster through the hull where she knew the Lancer was clinging. She felt the blade puncture satisfyingly through chitinous plating and into soft innards, and saw the Grimm's misty, black remains trailing the airship through the bay door. Meanwhile, the pilot had taken his ship towards a dangerously narrow crevice in a nearby island. At the last second, he turned the airship on its side; Weiss could hear a worrisome scraping sound as they just barely made it through the gap, but then noticed that the chewing sounds had stopped. She heard the pilot whoop through her walkie:

"YES! We made it! Take that, suckers!"

Still on the ceiling, Weiss sighed with relief. Then she heard the pilot swear as he spoke into the walkie again:

"Ah, shit! Son-of-a-bitch busted a fuel line. We'll have enough to make it to the shore, but after that...well, looks like it's gonna be a long-ass walk to Mistral. Hope you brought something other than high heels, cause I don't have any extra size-6 shoes in my glove compartment...you reading me, kid?"

But Weiss had tuned him out, instead having picked up and focused on a disturbing and increasingly loud buzzing noise.

"Look out!" she yelled into her walkie, giving the pilot just enough time to swerve away from the monstrously proportioned Lancer coming in hard from below them. As Weiss recovered her balance from the barrel roll, she saw the giant Grimm gaining on the ship and blanched.

"It's a Queen Lancer!" she shouted into the walkie, figuring that the Lancers must have gotten close enough in their pursuit to call for for backup through their hive-mind network.

"DAMMIT! I'm headed for the shore - let's hope it doesn't follow too far past the rocks."

Weiss felt the pull of inertia as the pilot put everything into the engines, and both airship and Grimm were soon out of the island field and over open waters.

"It's not letting up!" Weiss shouted, and her eyes widened as she looked back at the Dust crates in the hold. "I'm gonna launch the Dust crates at it! Hope you don't mind."

"Do it!"

Summoning more gravity Glyphs around the hold, Weiss managed to pull the containers from their magnetic locks and hurl them towards the Queen. The crates detonated on the creature in a multi-colored explosion that sent shock waves across Lake Matsu.

"Yes!" Weiss hissed through her teeth. No sooner had the word escaped her mouth than the Queen emerged from the smoke somewhat worse for wear, but still alive and very angry. She felt her innards sink downward with dread...or was it upward? Still crouching on the ceiling, she didn't bother distinguishing.

"Shit," Weiss hissed again, then shouted into the walkie, "It's still alive!"

"You're serious!? Alright, try to slow it down, whatever you gotta do, and I'll gun it to - "

Just then, the Queen began bombarding the airship with dozens of flying barbs fired from numerous pores on the underside of its abdomen. Weiss summoned a Glyph in front of her, deflecting the barbs coming her way, but she knew that the rest of the airship had gotten riddled. She felt the ship lurch and heard a disheartening sputtering. The pilot's swearing confirmed her suspicions:

"ENGINE FAILURE!? Fucking come ON! Well, kid...unless you can pull some crazy miracle from up your ass...it was nice knowing you."

Weiss saw the Lancer gaining with a vengeance, and in that moment realized they weren't finished yet: she did indeed have a new miracle at her disposal. Not bothering to answer, she dropped down to the floor via gravity Glyph and took a knee with her sword planted in the floor, a different Glyph now forming before her. She saw the Arma Gigas begin to emerge from the blue-white Glyph and thought back to the long months she had spent perfecting this technique during her time trapped in her own home. She thought back to the sting of her father's slap; to the stern yet caring tutelage of her elder sister; to her dear friends, their fates now unknown to her, but whom she would give every ounce of her resolve to see again. Recalled from her thoughts by the clang of metallic boots, she looked up from her concentration to see the fully-formed suit of armor standing before her. The Arma Gigas saluted its master, and Weiss felt her inner strength brim to overflowing.

Today is yet the day of my finest hour, resounded the single thought within her mind like great cathedral bells. Today is the day this warrior runs wild! THIS is the day that I have waited for!

No verbal command was needed, and no words left the Huntress' mouth; the Arma Gigas simply followed Weiss' glare, waiting for the right moment to strike. The instant it came, it took a two-step running start and leapt from the airship towards the Queen Lancer, its massive sword raised high. In a panicked attempt to stop the onslaught, the Lancer prematurely launched its stinger toward the summoned warrior, missing it terribly. The barb flew past Weiss, who hardly noticed, and went clean through the back of the cargo hold; as it did, the Arma Gigas reached the Lancer. The creature could do nothing as it was neatly cloven in two by the tremendous downwards strike; the two halves remained in the air for all of a second before disintegrating. Weiss let her faithful servant fall just long enough for it to give a final salute before dismissing it and letting the exhilaration drain out of her.

No sooner than she did so than did she notice that something was very wrong. The airship was clearly veering out of control, and so Weiss called into her walkie:

"Hey, what's going on? Come in - what's happening?"

It was then that she saw red droplets fly from the hole in the wall made by the Lancer's stinger. Not daring to look back at the pilot's cooling body, Weiss desperately summoned black Glyph after Glyph in an attempt to keep the ship in the air long enough to land on the shore. To her surprise and relief, she saw Lake Matsu give way to forested land only a hundred or so feet below. She waited until the last possible second before the crash land to jump and summon a white platform Glyph to land on, thinking to summon several more and land gracefully on her feet. Unfortunately, it was right then that her Aura finally gave out, and Weiss found herself crashing through tree branches. The last thing she remembered before her world went dark was landing painfully on her back.

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Even after Weiss came to, everything was a bit of a blur, and she found that she was not really sure what was happening...or what had happened. She couldn't move very much, that was certain, and everything hurt; she was pretty sure one of her eyes was swelling shut. After an hours-long thirty minutes of laying there on her back, Weiss managed to lift her head...and saw a brownish-green blur that was unmistakably a human. Though her eyes still struggled to focus, her hearing was very much intact, and so she felt a jolt of fear when she heard the man (for it was a man's voice) call out in a rather lusty tone:

"Hey, boss! Look what purdy piece o' work we found lyin' over 'ere!"

Another man, similarly colored, could now be seen, and Weiss was not at all happy that both of them were clearly taking in the view. Their heads snapped to attention when a third figure, this one more like a red-and-black blob, strode up between them. Weiss figured that this must be the leader of whoever these filthy hooligans were, judging how the other two blobs stepped back from him (or her; it was hard to tell) and shifted nervously.

"So, uh...what we gonna do, boss?" the other hooligan asked with more than a hint of anticipation. "I mean, with the girly?"

"Nothing involving you two," the red figure spoke in a woman's voice, and the disappointment radiating from the other two was palpable. Weiss found some relief in that, but that was soon dispelled by what she heard next.

"No," the red woman mused. "She's much too valuable for that. You clearly don't have any idea who she is, do you?"

"Uh...no?"

"Then I'll make it simple for you: we just hit the jackpot here."

Weiss had by then managed to turn her head to the side to see, to her delight, Myrtenaster laying in the grass nearby. Instinctively, she reached for it, and only realized her mistake when she saw the woman's boot speeding towards her face. The last thing she remembered before returning to her dreamless sleep was the woman's eyes, her vision having cleared up somewhat: they were red. Why was that so familiar...?