10

Chapter Nine

Velvet reflected on her team as she ran through the underbrush of a forest, powerful legs kicking out beneath her to propel her around trees and bushes and the occasional swarm of black and white Grimm bugs that twisted around like tiny bunny-girl-eating tornadoes.

One of the first and most important lessons they learned at Beacon was that teamwork made everything better. Velvet was all for that. Teamwork was awesome.

So why, she wondered to herself as the chainsaw buzz of far, far too many Grimm sounded out behind her, was she out here alone?

It had started simply enough. Mr. Xiao Long had found a civilian who was willing to drive them to the edge of the forest in the back of his utility vehicle. The ride was a bit bumpy but it was better than walking. After an hour of scouting into the woods and killing off a few Beowolves and working together to take down an Ursa, they ran into the first of the strange Grimm.

It looked like a bee. But the bees Velvet was used to were tiny cute things that buzzed harmlessly around and minded their own business. This one was the size of a watermelon and tried to eat Fox.

Coco then had the wonderful idea of splitting apart to look for more.

It wasn't a wonderful idea. It was a stupid idea.

She didn't dare look over her shoulder, not for so much as a second, because she knew the moment she wasn't paying attention they would catch her and do horrible, horrible things to her body.

Yatsu and Fox might have liked to think that she was an innocent little girl, but she'd read some very interesting Mystrillian comics and wasn't about to let some Grimm bugs have their way with her.

Panting, Velvet suddenly found herself breaking through the canopy of the forest and coming to a sudden halt, feet scampering for purchase as she found herself in a little clearing with a rocky outcrop at the end that gave way to a sudden fall. Far below, the churning water of a river meeting the ocean filled with air with a deep rumble that almost masked the noise of the oncoming Grimm.

She swallowed, spun around, then stopped again as the Grimm in the woods slowly moved to surround her.

It wasn't just Grimm bees, she realized. Some of the Grimm were hideously long creatures with far, far too many feet and flat bodies that wrapped themselves around the nearest trees then locked eyes with her. Others were spider-like, creatures as tall as she was with eight scuttling, bone-tipped legs that moved into the shadows of the woods and hissed with what sounded far too much like eagerness .

She had never wished for plain, boring human eyesight as much as she did right then. If she had human eyes, maybe she could have avoided seeing the myriad of Grimm insects scuttling around to pen her in.

She was out of hard light dust, her Aura was probably running on fumes, and she felt the creeping ache of tired muscles across her entire body.

She was going to die.

The thought made her laugh, just a single bark of a giggle that escaped her chest even as tears started to fill her eyes.

If she was going to go down, then she'd do it with a fight. And she'd accomplish her mission too. Slowly, she pulled up her camera and started taking pictures as quickly as she could reel it back. Maybe the others in team CFVY would find her gear. At least with the pictures they'd have a good idea what had gotten her in the end.

Soon, the Grimm started to lose patience and started to move closer.

She tossed her precious camera aside, letting it tumble onto the grass where she hoped the muddier ground would keep it from breaking. She ran a hand over Anesidora's box. It wouldn't be as useful without the camera in it, but she still had some tricks up her sleeves.

Then the Grimm started backing off.

Velvet looked around her, only noticing the figure in white when she was already a few meters closer. The girl walked towards Velvet, then paused and bent down to pick something out of the grass. She recognized her camera.

"You dropped this," the girl said as she inspected the camera. Her voice was almost monotone, but soft and youthful. "It looks expensive, and well maintained. You probably don't want to lose it."

Velvet stared at the camera, then at the girl--not that she could see much more than her nose and mouth with the hood she was wearing--then to the forest.

"T-the Grimm," she said, gesturing at the woods.

"I took care of them."

Velvet blinked, then took in the slim woman next to her. She had never heard of anyone being able to scare the Grimm away with their mere presence, but the evidence was not currently eating her alive so she wasn't going to argue. Reaching out, she took back Anesidora and brought it to her chest. "Thanks," she said before her eyes dipped down and she found herself fiddling with the camera.

"No problem," the woman said.

Velvet tugged a piece of grass loose from the casing, then, to her instant mortification, the camera clicked.

The flash went off.

The woman blinked.

Velvet stared back, her mind racing as she tried to find an excuse. It was an accident. Something must have broken in the camera, her fingers slipped... but as was so often the case, her mouth raced ahead of her common sense. "It's because you're pretty."

The woman tilted her head to one side. "Thank you?" she said. Velvet felt her eyes scanning her up and down and hoped that the fact that she was covered in mud--and leaves, and branches--wasn't making her look as insane as she sounded. "You're very pretty too."

"Uh," Velvet said.

"I like your ears. They're very cute," the girl said. "One of them is crooked."

Velvet looked up and saw that the girl was right; one ear was flopping forwards, bent almost in half. She hated when her ears did that, it made her look so messy. "It, it happens," she said.

"If I straighten it, will the other bend?"

Velvet had never been a religious person, but she now considered prayer. Maybe if she prayed hard enough some wayward god of awkward situations would be kind and let the ground swallow her up.

Then the girl reached out with a pale hand and ran it along the length of her bent ear, the fingers smoothly sliding across the surface. She felt herself rooted to the spot, eyes wide like a real bunny in the light of a low-flying Bullhead. Her ear twitched as the girl straightened it out, then lowered her hand to pat Velvet on the head. "All better."

It was only then that Velvet realized that she'd been making sounds, and not the kind one made in polite company.

As if on cue her other ear flopped down.

"Oh no," the girl said. Her shoulders slumped and she made a noise that might have been a choked off giggle. "Well, that didn't work out at all."

"Haaaa," Velvet said, the sound stretching out while her brain cooked.

Velvet, whose face had gone right past red and into the white of someone who was one innuendo-filled comment away from fainting, was saved when the sounds of branches breaking and leaves rustling came from the forest and three familiar Hunters stumbled out of the treeline.

"Velvet!" Coco screamed as soon as she locked eyes on her. "Oh, thank Gucci. I thought you might have been hurt." She started walking over, then paused, sunglasses sliding down her nose as she took in the figure next to Velvet. "Ah, Bun Bun, did you make a friend?"

"Ah," Velvet said. "H-hey everyone. I'm happy to see you're all safe." She took a step out of the girl in white's reach. If Coco saw her fixing her ears again then... then she would need to transfer schools and go live in another country or else the teasing would never end.

"Are you well?" Yatsu asked. He scanned her up and down and his shoulders lost some tension when he didn't find any obvious injuries.

"I'm okay! I thought I was done for, but then, uh." She turned to the girl standing next to her. "I'm so, so sorry, but I didn't catch your name."

"I'm Akelarre," the girl said. She bowed her shoulders a little. "A pleasure to meet you all. Are you the group sent to investigate the Grimm around here?"

"That's us," Coco said. She came a little closer, Fox and Yatsu following behind with the bigger boy helping his blind partner over some of the rough terrain. "You're a Huntress, I take it?"

"No. But I heard about the strange Grimm and wanted to see for myself." She turned her head towards the woods and Velvet had the impression she was looking for the monsters in the shadows.

Coco's beret looked a little worse for wear, with a few sticks stuck to it, and she had mud up to her shins. If Velvet snapped a picture of her now, she might be able to use it as blackmail later. "So, you saved our favourite bunny girl?" Coco's smile took on that edge that Velvet, even after knowing the girl for so short a time, knew meant she was going to say something embarrassing. "Did she give you your hero's kiss?"

"She did not," Akelarre said.

"Coco!"

Coco's laughter was a mix of relieved and genuinely happy. "It's good to see you're safe, Bun. Those bug Grimm are downright terrifying, but they kinda left off a couple of minutes ago. Did you get any pictures?"

"I did," Velvet said as she lifted her camera. "Plenty."

"Do you need more?" Akelarre asked. "I could bring some Grimm over."

Coco snorted. "Whoa there, whitey, there's no need to show off."

"It wouldn't be difficult. The only Grimm around here are my Grimm," Akelarre said.

Coco paused mid-step again and the boys stopped behind her. They were maybe half a dozen meters away now. Close enough that Velvet wondered if she should sneak back towards Coco to hide from the sudden tension in the air.

"And what, exactly, do you mean by your Grimm?" Coco asked. Her hands strayed to the purse dangling by her side and Yatsu had one hand reaching up to the sword he carried on a strap across his back. Even Fox tightened his fists.

"Coco," Yatsu said. "Perhaps we merely misunderstood. Where there is understanding, sympathy grows, and where there is sympathy the tree of friendship may thrive."

Akelarre nodded, her mouth twisting up at the corners even as she reached both hands into her hood. "If understanding is what you wish for," she said as she pulled her hood off. "Then I'll gladly tell you what I know."

"Grimm!" Velvet gasped and took a step back.

"I am, sorta," Akelarre said.

"Shit!" Coco yelled even as she opened her purse up and let her gatling gun unfold into its full form. "Velvet, get over here. Now," she barked, any of her usual playfulness buried under a tone of voice that Velvet had never heard before. She scampered over to Coco's side, then squeaked when her team leader shoved her back and towards the two boys. "Look girl, I don't wanna hurt you, but you're looking like a baby-eating Grimm right now and that's got my hackles up."

"Killing babies is..." Akelarre hesitated for a few long seconds. "Bad," she finally said. "I just want to play with my bugs." Reaching into her cloak and ignoring the way she made everyone tense, Akelarre pulled out something black and covered in white plates.

The tiny Grimm spider waved at team CFVY.

The creature only had time to blink once before Coco opened fire.

A torrent of hot dust rounds zipped across the clearing and battered into the creature's body, splashing off her Aura for a half second before tearing through and ripping gouges out of her flesh.

Velvet squeaked as the girl, as Akelarre's body flopped backwards onto the ground with a wet splat. "Coco, what the hell?"

"She was a Grimm!" Coco shot back.

"Perhaps that was a little hasty," Yatsu said. "She had not taken any actions against us. And she had Aura!"

"She sounded a little weird but pretty damned human to me," Fox said. "Are you sure she was a Grimm? I would have expected a Grimm to sound, you know, evil-er."

"Her eyes were all red and she had veins all over," Coco said. She gestured off towards where Akelarre's corpse was starting to fume and dissipate with the same sort of black dust as all other Grimm when they died. "Plus she had a pet Grimm. I'm not apologizing."

Velvet was more than ready to chastise Coco some more when she heard a faint rustle in the forest, only it didn't come from one place but all across the woods surrounding them. "Guys," she said. "I think we might be in trouble."

Black forms started to move out of the woods with the slow, lethargic motions of predators that had found injured prey. They had every right to. The Grimm kept pouring out of the forest in numbers that had Velvet shaking in her boots.

"I think, perhaps, they are not amused with the way we killed their leader," Yatsu said. He spun his sword around once and brought it up in a guarding stance.

Coco moved to his side, gatling gun held low as she took in the growing hoard of Grimm while Fox and Velvet spread out just a little to take on any that tried to flank them. It was a formation that had served them well in the Emerald Forest near Beacon, though it had never been tested against so many Grimm.

"We could jump," Coco said, gesturing with a nod to the cliff side. As though in answer, a swarm of Lancers buzzed as they rose from around the cliff, narrow red eyes locking onto the team. "...or not."

Velvet had a hand hovering over her weapon. Summoning a copy of Coco's gun was probably going to be her best bet to mow down as many of the Grimm as she could before they reached their team. Then she remembered that she was out of Dust and brought her hands up in a boxer's stance.

The Grimm all shifted their attention in the same direction, a thousand insectile eyes focusing on the spot where Akelarre had died and where the black dust that had been rising away a few moments ago was now condensing back down into a lump of Grimm-stuff so black that it made Velvet's eyes itch to look at it.

"That doesn't look good," Coco said.

The black ball exploded.

The air around team CFVY hissed as it blew past, then reversed and pulled in towards the centre of what was becoming a spinning tornado of black, expanding darkness.

With a suddenness that left Velvet reeling the explosion stopped with a cracking noise that she felt in the pit of her stomach, as though the world was a pane of glass and someone had just smashed it to bits with a sledgehammer.

Velvet blinked at the spot where Akelarre had stood, the spot where Akelarre was standing again, her hood pooled around her shoulders and her vein-lined eyes wide with surprise.

Then her red irises narrowed into slits and she let out a breath of air that Velvet could hear quite clearly over the unnatural stillness of the clearing. "That," the Grimm woman said, her attention focusing on Coco who was looking less-than-confident, "was rude."

Bugs exploded out of Akelarre's cloak. Thousands, millions of tiny black and white specks that filled the air with a cloud of squirming, buzzing, clicking insects so thick that she couldn't see the tiniest hint of movement behind it.

Coco spun around, screaming as she fired into the swarm.

Velvet joined her in screaming only to regret it as a swarm shot towards her and plastered her body in tiny, scratchy bugs.

She cringed back, expecting to be bitten and stung while the bigger Grimm jumped on them to finish them off.

With the same suddenness as it all began, the swarm stopped.

Velvet cracked one eye open, then the other.

Team CFVY were covered in tiny Grimm insects, Lancers no bigger than a coin and black and white moths with skull-patterned wings. Even plain ordinary bugs were crawling along their bodies, mingling with their Grimm counterparts. The bigger Grimm were looking at them with the hungry eyes of predators, while above, Lancers flew in tight formations.

In the middle of it all stood Akelarre, one hand pushing Coco's gun to the side. Coco stared at the Grimm woman and Akelarre stared right back. With strength that belied her size she tore Coco's gatling gun out of her hands and flung it to one side, then shoved Coco back.

Her team leader stumbled then fell onto her rear, wide eyes peeking past the rim of her shades to look up at Akelarre as she stood above her. "You attacked me," she said.

"We-"

"Shut. Up."

Akelarre's lips hadn't moved. It wasn't her that had spoken but the buzz and thrill of a million bugs, a noise like nails on a chalkboard that sent cold shivers down Velvet's back and yet still completely understandable all the same.

"You hurt me. You killed me," Akelarre said, her voice mimicked by every Grimm in the clearing in an echo that called out to the primal parts of Velvet's mind and told her to run. "I didn't want to hurt you. And I won't. I'm better than that. Better than you. You killed Mister Spider."

Velvet had no idea who Mister Spider was but she was ready to apologize all the same.

Then a wall of bugs slid in between Akelarre and Yatsu and her sparkling red eyes turned to him and locked him in place. She reached a hand towards Yatsu and a centipede stood out from the pile of bugs between them, head bobbing in the air like a cobra ready to strike. "Centipedes like to eat their prey alive. They can enter the oral cavity of a victim and eat them from the inside."

Akelarre made a small gesture and a group of black and white ants as long as Velvet's hand crawled up the centipede's head. "The bullet ant has the most excruciatingly painful bite in the world. A single bite can drive an adult man to suicide to avoid the pain. But the bites are not lethal, so they swarm their victims and bite again and again until they are left alone."

Another gesture and a wall of hideously bulbous flies hovered between them. "The botfly lays eggs in their still living victims that grow inside them, feeding on the necrotic flesh around the point of entry. A few days after being injected the eggs hatch and burst out of the victim's skin." Akelarre stopped and eyed Yatsu up and down. "Wanting to protect your friend is admirable. But perhaps it would be best if you just stood there for a moment. I won't hurt her. I will hurt you if you interfere."

The growing clump of Grimm insects climbing atop each other to form a writhing wall between Akelarre and Yatsu and the rest of them suddenly seemed a lot more horrible.

Slowly, as if not to spook Coco, she reached down and took Velvet's beret from off of Coco's head.

"Next time, I would appreciate it if you were a little more mature," Akelarre said. "I have learned what I wanted to. I am leaving. I expect you to leave too. Am I understood?"

Coco nodded.

"Good." Akelarre patted her team leader on the head, then placed the beret on her own head. "Goodbye Velvet. It was a pleasure meeting you," Akelarre said. She gave Velvet a wave, spun on one heel, and walked away.

The Grimm bugs swarmed again. Velvet squeezed her eyes shut.

And when she opened her eyes again, the Grimm, and their leader, were all gone.

***

RIP Mister Spider.

Big thank you to ChaoticSky and the filthy degenerates on the Raven's Nest Discord for the idea bouncing and encouragement, and CrazySith87 and eschwartz for doing word things! You're all completely insane (see note below), but I like you anyway.

NOTE: I would like to point out for everyone's edification that eschwartz is a completely rational and sane person and is in no way crazy, mad, insane, borked, or otherwise on the same level as the other members of the Raven's Nest Discord. We all hope to be as enlightened and stable as him when we finally grow up