Ch 25: Fighting as a Team (2)

Back with Jaune and his group, the Death Stalker yanks its stinger out of the bridge, causing it to break and lose the cliffside's support.

"We gotta move!" Jaune shouts, urging them all forward as the bridge begins to teeter on its one remaining support pillar.

As they charge towards the awaiting Grimm, it swipes at them with its right pincher. Pyrrha slides on her knees and gets under the swipe blocking it with her shield, Akouo, and knocking it upward before unleashing a fierce slash at its faceplate with sword-Milo.

The Death Stalker raises its other pincer and thrusts it at her, but Jaune rushes in and uses his shield to block the blow.

Pyrrha shoves the right claw away and jumps over Jaune to strike the left pincer back, leaving the Grimm wide open as Ren charges forward, guns blazing, to exploit the gape.

Dodging around its stinger, he latches onto its tail as the Grimm pulls it back and holds on tight as the overgrown nightmare scorpion yanks him up into the air with it. Stabilizing himself, Ren unleashes burst after burst from StormFlower on semi-auto into the base of the stinger where it meets the tail.

While Jaune and Pyrrha spar with a pincer each, keeping them back. Nora fires a grenade into the Death Stalker's exposed face knocking Pyrrha and Jaune away.

Using the distance created, and while its claws are still coming back, Pyrrha throws javelin-Milo. It slips through the grasping pincers of the Death Stalker and pierces one of its ten eyes.

Enraged, the Death Stalker swings its tail around wildly. Ren cannot maintain his grip and is thrown through the air to slam into one of the columns of the ruins they had passed earlier. Cracking it and falling unconscious to the ground, his condition unknown.

"REN!" As Nora cries out in worry for her childhood friend, Jaune spots the Death Stalker's stinger hanging loosely by a shred of flesh.

"Pyrrha!" Jaune shouts, drawing her attention to it.

"Done!" Pyrrha hurls Akouo at it like a discus, slicing through the last strand of flesh and dropping the stinger point first into the Death Stalker's skull, as she curves Akouo back to her with her Semblance.

"Nora, nail it!"

"Heads up!" At Jaune's order, Nora jumps up onto a crouching Pyrrha's shield. Timing their jumps perfectly, Nora is launched high into the air. Reaching the apex of her jump, Nora fires off a grenade, accelerating herself downward as she flips end over end, building momentum until she finally slams her hammer full force into the stinger. Burying it deep into its skull and knocking its head into the unstable bridge.

That blow was the last straw. The bridge's remains began to collapse as Jaune and Pyrrha were launched over the Grimm by the force of Nora hammering the Death Stalker into it. With another booming grenade, Nora follows them to safety as the Death Stalker loses its balance and falls off the cliff. Jaune lands flat on his back on the altar, while Pyrrha is able to stick a crouched-landing pose, and Nora's landing is softened by her bubble butt. Ren stumbles over to them as the trio land, panting and groaning before face planting into the ground beside them, wholly spent and sore but otherwise mostly unharmed.

As they turn back to watch the other fight still going on, they see Yang land a shell right in one of the circling Nevermore's eyes. Angered and blinded on its left side, the Nevermore swoops in and tries to swallow Yang whole.

An attempt Yang is all too happy to go along with, for the most part. She jumps straight into the Grimm's mouth and, with one hand holding its beak open, stands in its open maw, sending round after round down its throat.

"I! Hope! You're! Hung-! Gry!" She shouts, punctuating each syllable with another shot. Looking back, Yang sees they are approaching the towering cliff and backflips out of its mouth. Leaving the rattled and semi-conscious Grimm to crash full force into the side of the cliff.

Yang had briefly considered weaponizing her Aura while she had been in the Grimm's mouth to piledrive an Aura stake through the roof of its mouth and kill it that way. However, Ruby had already told them her plan, and it was much flashier, so Yang had only fired unenhanced blasts down its gullet.

As it struggled to remember how to flap its wings and return to the sky, Weiss shoots past Yang to freeze the tip of its tail to the roof of the ruined keep, pinning it down, regardless of its struggles.

As Weiss uses one of her force glyphs to jump back to where the other three girls are preparing between two intact pillars, Yang jumps up onto the top of one of the broken supports and catches Gambol Shroud that Blake threw from the other pillar. Pulling the ribbon taut between them, Blake and Yang slide down to brace their feet against the sides of their posts. Ruby shoots herself up to stand on Crescent Rose's blade on top of the ribbon as Weiss uses a force glyph to pull her down close to her, stretching the ribbon like the rubber band in a slingshot, ready to launch Ruby at the struggling crow Grimm.

"Of course, you would come up with this idea." Weiss can't help teasing Ruby as she pulls her into position.

"Think you can make the shot?" Ruby asks.

Weiss confidently humphs, "Can I!".

Ruby turns to confirm, slightly worried by the lack of a positive response, "...Can y-".

"Of course I can!" Weiss interrupts, annoyed that her red hooded partner hadn't caught on to her witty sarcasm.

Ruby turns back to look at her target, her face glowing with confidence, and cocks Crescent Rose once. With that as the signal, Weiss reverses her force glyph's direction and launches Ruby at the Nevermore.

With rose petals trailing after her, Ruby fires off several rounds behind her to maintain her momentum until she catches her scythe around the avian Grimms neck and pulls it with her into the cliff. As she lands on the face of the cliff, Weiss uses all her remaining Aura to lay a path of force glyphs leading straight up the cliff face before collapsing to the ground from Aura exhaustion. Yang rushes over and catches her before she hits the ground. Weiss lies there panting in Yang's arms as Blake arrives beside them. The three turn their faces to watch as Ruby delivers the giant avian Grimm to the reaper.

Ruby ran straight up the cliff face with a battle cry driving her onwards and Weiss's force glyphs pulling her towards the cliff. Crescent Rose cuts deeper and deeper into its neck as the Nevermore created a small avalanche behind them from being dragged upwards behind the fierce little red.

Unleashing a three-shot burst as she flipped over the top of the cliff, Ruby finally decapitates the giant Nevermore that had almost killed her and lands with Crescent Rose across her shoulders on top of the cliff.

As her friends below looked up at her, standing heroically on top of the cliff, red cape giving off rose petals at it fluttered in the wind, and a giant Grimm slowly falling down the cliff below her, they couldn't help but be awed by the majestic sight.

"Wow…" Jaune gave voice to what they all were thinking.

"Well…" Yang's joking voice broke the spell that held them all still, "That was a thing."