Ch 20: The Emerald Forest (3)

[The way those Beowolves are following it, with more joining every minute. It's almost like they are soldiers rallying around their… Oh.] A look of surprise crossed Ray's face as the memories that had been fluttering at the edge of his consciousness finally clicked.

[The Grimm Lords.] Padoru_Saber's Lords of Darkness. Though Padoru_Saber had never gotten very far in his fan-fics RWBY: Lords of Darkness, that followed the life of Swain the eldest Grimm Lord, or RWBY: Twins of Rose, which followed the life of Swain's rival Jin Rose, it did give Ray a place to start to estimate the threat this approaching suspected Grimm Lord might represent.

[Looks like I'll need to contact the others after this and make some adjustments to the plan. If Salem has added the strength of the Grimm Lords behind her schemes, we will need to play smarter and have more firepower in place to ensure our success. Maybe I should ask Ozpin to let me teach a class on Aura manipulation? Leading a weekly training course might also be a good idea too. If we can raise the overall power of the Huntsmen, even if it's just Team RWBY and Team JNPR, we should be able to minimize the threat the Grimm Lords represent. I didn't want to get them involved and spare them from as much hardship as possible, but it appears that is no longer an option.]

As Ray sunk deeper into thought and continued to observe the approaching Grimm, he failed to notice that one of the pairs he had been tracking had arrived.

"Think this is it?" Yang asks Blake as they crest a hill and spot the stone temple below them. Blake shoots Yang an incredulous look and heads down the slope. Yang quickly follows her, and they enter the circle of stone pedestals together.

"Chess pieces?" Blake asks as she inspects a black king chess piece. She can't help but wonder what they might symbolize.

"Some of them are missing." Yang points out, seeing several empty pedestals, "Looks like we weren't the first ones here."

"Well, I guess we should pick one." Blake says as she pushes her musings on the deeper meaning behind the chess pieces to the back of her mind for future consideration in favor of the present situation.

"Hmmmm…" Yang picks up a white knight piece and raises it into the air to show it to Blake, "How about a cute little pony?"

"Sure." Yang's enthusiasm causes Blake to smile as she rolls her eyes.

Blake and Yang walk towards each other and meet next to the taller pedestal in the center.

"That wasn't too hard!"

"Well, it's not like this place is very difficult to find." Blake replies. The two new partners share a smile before Blake turns her attention to the pedestal beside them.

"What relic do you think was here?" Blake wonders out loud.

"Oh, who knows." Yang shrugs, "Well, shall we head back."

Before Blake can answer, a feminine scream rends the air, a very feminine scream, a very, very feminine scream.

"Some girl's in trouble!" Yang shouts, looking off in the direction of the scream, "Blake, did you hear that?" Blake doesn't answer her. Her attention fixed on something in the sky.

"The whole forest heard that, Yang." Ray answers as he jumps down out of his tree to land beside Blake. She doesn't even seem to notice his arrival as her mouth slowly opens in shock, her eyes still skyward. "And it's not exactly the girl who is in trouble."

"Ray!?" Yang smiles, "I thought you would have already gone back and claimed your first place."

"And miss out on all the fun? Anyway, that scream was Jaune. Simply put, Pyrrha is now trying to save him after he did something very stupid." Ray explains to Yang.

A voice screaming, "HEADS UUUUUUUP!" is heard above the trio's heads.

"Almost as stupid as our darling little sister." Ray smiles wryly and looks straight up.

[Dang it. Thanks to that Grimm, I missed seeing how Ruby and Weiss got onto that Nevermore's back. ...I wonder if she or Weiss will tell me if I ask.]

Yang follows Blake and her brother's gaze and looks up to see Ruby falling out of the clear blue sky towards them. Almost as soon as Yang sees her sister, she loses sight of her again. Jaune had come flying out of nowhere and collided with Ruby in mid-air, sending them both crashing into the top of a tree.

"Oohhh… What was that? Ruby groans as she lays on a branch high in the tree with stars and puppy Beowolves dancing around her head.

"Eh-hem!" Ruby shakes her head clear and turns to look in the direction of the sound to see Jaune hanging upside down from a branch above her.

"Did your sister just fall from the sky?" Blake asks.

"Yep*." Ray answers, lightly popping the 'p'.

"I…" Yang tries to answer as well but is interrupted by the sound of something large crashing through the trees towards them. With a "YEEEE-HAAAAW!", an Ursa breaks through the tree line into the clearing, claws flailing. It staggers a few steps forward before a blast of pink energy from behind knocks it to the ground. As it falls, a bubbly girl rolls off it from where she had been riding on its back.

"Awwww. It's broken." Nora laments.

Nora zips back over to stand on the Ursa's neck as it lies there as if dead.

"Eeeeew…" Nora says as she inspects her work.

At this time, a panting Ren catches up with Nora. He leans against the more dead than alive Grimm and lowers his head to try and catch his breath.

"Nora! Please… Don't ever do that again." Ren pleads. But when he looks back up, his partner has disappeared from the back of the Ursa. Ren looks around frantically to find where she has run off to now. Finally, he spots her next to a stone pedestal with a white rook on it.

"Ooooooohh…" Nora stares at the piece for a moment before grabbing it. "I'm queen of the castle! I'm queen of the castle!" She sings as she dances around with the piece.

"NORA!" Ren shouts, sounding annoyed at her.

Nora stops dancing with the white rook on top of her head, "Hehehe," Nora giggles as she snaps off a salute at Ren, "Coming, Ren!" She calls back and drops the piece from her head into her hand with a head tilt before skipping over to him.

"Did that girl just ride in on an Ursa?" Blake asks.

"Yep*!" Ray answers, popping the 'p' slightly louder this time.

"I…" Yang tries to answer again but is interrupted by the sound of something large crashing through a different section of trees towards them.

Pyrrha comes racing out of the trees as an ancient Death Stalker, a Grimm with the characteristics of a giant scorpion large enough to look a grown man dead in the eye while he is standing, chases after her, uprooting any trees that get in its way. The Grimm was so old that, while it wasn't much bigger than a normal Death Stalker, its carapace was covered in moss.

The Death Stalker tries to grab Pyrrha with one of its pincers. Pyrrha dodges the grab by jumping through the open pincer just before it snaps shut and then rolls forward to avoid a bash from its other claw. All the while, she runs from it with all her might.

As she regains her footing, stumbling a few steps, she spots Jaune up in the tree.

"Jaune!" Pyrrha calls out.

"Pyrrha!" Jaune calls back.

Ruby stands up on the branch and looks at the monster down below. "Whoa," she exclaims, and with a short running start, leaps from the branch.

"Ruby!" Jaune whines, still hanging upside down.

"Ruby?" Yang is surprised by her sister landing beside her.

"Yang! Ray!" Ruby throws up her arms to give her siblings a hug.

"Nora!" But Nora suddenly pops up between them and shouts her own name interrupting their reunion.

And the Death Stalker is still chasing Pyrrha. "Did she just run all the way here with a Death Stalker on her tail? Blake asks.

"Yep*!!" Ray answers, loudly popping the 'p'.

"Grrrrr!" Yang's hair suddenly bursts into flames, and her eyes turn red, "I can't take it anymore!" She screams, "Can everyone just chill out for two seconds before something crazy happens again?!"

Yang stands there huffing as her eyes return to lilac with Nora standing next to her, fidgeting and bobbing up and down happily as Ren stumbles over to them, still out of breath. Meanwhile, Ruby and Blake turn their eyes up towards the sky, and Ray pretends to look down at a watch on his left wrist that he doesn't have and counts out two seconds on his right hand before tapping Yang on the shoulder.

"Yang, look up." Ray tells her, pointing up to where Blake and Ruby are looking. Blake, Ren, Nora, who is making binoculars with her hands, Yang, Ray, and Ruby all look up to see a giant Nevermore, a Grimm with the characteristics of a condor, circling above them. If they look carefully, they can also see a small white speck hanging from one of its talons.

"How could you leave me!?" Weiss cries as she hangs by one hand from a talon that is bigger than her whole body. Somehow Ruby and Weiss had found their way onto the back of the Nevermore when they became lost in the forest. Ruby hoped that by getting a birds-eye view, they would be able to easily find the temple. They did, but then they had the slight problem of getting down.

"I said 'jump'!" Ruby hears Weiss's cry and shouts back. Indeed, Ruby had decided that the best way down was just to jump and had done just that, hence her falling out of the sky earlier.

"She's gonna fall." Blake commented like it didn't concern her.

"She'll be fine." Ruby protested.

"She's falling." Ren stated, equally as apathetic to Weiss's plight as Blake.

Ray sighs next to them.

Jaune has finally gotten himself unstuck from the tree when he spots the falling Weiss. A delighted grin splits his face as he thinks this is his chance to be a hero and save the damsel in distress. And, with a big leap, he catches Weiss in mid-air in a princess carry.

"Just… dropping in?" Jaune smiles at Weiss.

Weiss is speechless at both his lame pickup line and his stupidity. At that moment, Jaune realizes he is falling now too and has no better idea on how to land than Weiss did.

"Oh, God. Nooooooo!" Jaune screams.