Jaune Arc: Weapon Whisperer

Chapter Fourteen: Vacation in the Lion's Den Part II

Years Earlier

It was a mass slaughter as Acier looked down upon the carnage that occurred before him. He was much younger, only twenty-five. His hair was a shaggy mess of gold while his blue eyes searched the battlefield for any sign of his friends.

With nothing found, Acier unslung his sword from his back with a weary look upon his face. This massive war had taken its toll upon him, both physically and mentally, but he pushed himself through it all. He had to, otherwise everyone would suffer much worse than he ever did.

Acier looked at his sword and smiled. Sally had put everything she had into making this weapon for him, and he wouldn't let her down by dying here today. After all, he had to come back to her.

With a sprint, Acier rushed into the battle cutting apart as many of the enemy soldiers as he could! The thrill of battle entered Acier as he cut down each enemy that he came across. Regardless of the rush he was feeling, Acier still wanted to find his friend.

Someone shouted from behind him, and Acier ducked just as the head of an axe arced over his head. Reversing his sword so that it the blade was behind him, Acier stabbed backwards with enough force to break the Aura of the man behind him. He heard a loud grunt as the man started collapsing which let Acier know to pull his blade out.

A quick flick of his wrist flung the blood off and Acier continued moving forwards. The battle still raged around him, but Acier kept scanning the field until his eyes zoned in on a man with a green lizard tail.

The man was chopping down all those around him with a bright silver tomahawk in his right hand. His left held a spiked cestus that was dripping blood. On the tip of his tail was a spiked ball attached by leather strips. It swung behind him and nailed anyone who was idiotic enough to go behind him.

"Desmond!" Acier shouted as he waded through the bodies on the ground, and the enemies and allies on the field.

The Faunus turned to looked at Acier with a grin. "Come, the fight's just getting good!" Acier rushed over to Desmond just as the Faunus drove his tomahawk into a woman's skull.

"Where've you been? I've been having to cover for all the kills that you've been missing!" Desmond shouted.

"If you haven't noticed, there's a bit of a battle happening right now! Maybe next time I could just try asking the enemy to let me go through, or you know, just let them stab me a lot of times. That just might work." Acier said as he pushed some of his Aura into his legs and hopped over Desmond before smashing an armored man in the face.

Acier fell with the armored man to the ground and used the momentum of the fall to drive his sword in the man's throat. He then stood up and backed up to Desmond. "Back to back!" Acier ordered.

Soon enough, enemy soldiers began attacking the duo. While many tried to bring them down, the team kept on killing each of their enemies. Much of the reason for the piles of bodies that the two of them were making was due to their amount of skill.

This war had managed to kill so many skilled fighters, those that survived became stronger for it, while new soldiers that came into the war were basically fodder for the more skilled fighters. Acier and Desmond were two such fighters, they had been in this battle since the beginning, and they would be here to the end.

Acier noticed three fighters rushing at him. With a quick scan of them, Acier's eyes zoomed on one of the fighters who had a limp in his leg. He was also hold a broadsword with two hands that seemed very shaky. The weak link.

Acier pressed a button on his shield and it shrunk into a sheath. Then he took it off his arm and threw it at the limping fighter while hitting the button at the last second. This caused the sheath to start growing into a shield as it went between the weak link's arms and spread them apart which caused him to lose his grip on his sword.

With a sprint, Acier rushed at the man and gave a quick slash to his chest which dropped him. Acier caught his shield under the toe of his book and quickly kicked it towards the face of the second opponent, hitting her right in the mouth.

With that opponent distracted, he got in low and stabbed upwards through her jaw and into her brain. The last opponent tried to get a strike in with his halberd, but Acier twisted around and positioned the woman's corpse at the weapon. The halberd sunk deeply into the corpse and Acier used that as his chance to grab the shaft of the halberd to prevent it from moving.

It only took a moment to slice into the man's throat.

With that achieved, Acier picked up his shield and looked towards his teammate, Desmond. The Faunus was quite distracted with fighting a seven-foot-tall man with a massive sword almost as big as he was.

Acier felt his heart beating faster as Desmond's arms started shaking after blocking each blow of the massive sword. Rushing to his friend, he was about to try and get a stab into the giant.

Everything turned to ice when the giant parried Desmond's tomahawk away and in one fluid movement, stabbed his sword through Desmond's chest and raised him into the air.

The world turned to red for Acier as he screamed in rage and charged the giant. With a toss of his shield, Acier threw it right at the giant. He didn't expect for the man to catch the side of it with his hand, but it didn't matter, Acier distracted him enough to slide low onto the bloodstained grass and slice at the giant's achilles tendon.

A roar came from the massive man as he fell to his knee. Acier took this as his chance and stabbed his sword into the giant's brainstem. With a tug, Acier pulled his sword out and the giant toppled face first into the ground.

The blond rushed to Desmond's side and felt his heart stop when he noticed that Desmond wasn't breathing. Everything turned fuzzy for Acier when this happened. After the battle, the only thing that Acier remembered was the screams and blood that followed quickly after.

The group made their way down the hill and towards the encampment. While Acier seemed completely relaxed and at ease, the four huntsmen and huntresses in training were all nervously glancing around the area for any large amounts of Grimm. Ten feet outside the perimeter of the encampment were patches of tall grass that ran around the encampment in a circle and stopped at the hill that the group was on.

While there may have once been more tall grass that would've been closer to the camp, the area surrounding it showed signs of having been set on fire to destroy the grass and prevent Grimm from being able to sneak up closer to the camp.

As the group stepped foot into the burned perimeter, a mound of the ground popped up. The teens were all on guard with everyone aiming their weapons at the mound until a turret made itself know from the mound. "Alright you Grimm shits, time to make you cheddar!" The turret cried out. The minute the first turret popped up, twenty more that had all been buried like the first made their presence known and all took aim at the group.

"Time to kill Grimm, battle brothers!" Another turret cried out from the rest, the other turrets said similar lines as they all showed massive signs of bloodlust.

"Guess this is how these guys survived out here." Jaune whispered to his team.

"W-wait, it's only people, battle brothers!" The first turret announced in disappointment. The other turrets whined in disappointment before they all slunk back into the ground where the patches of dirt covered them once more.

"That's a nice greeting." Crocea sarcastically stated.

"I hate dealing with turrets, so uncivilized." Milὸ complained.

"TURRETS ARE FRIENDS! CAUSE MUCH DESTRUCTION AND MAYHEM! JUST LIKE LITTLE GIRL!" Magnhild exclaimed excitedly.

"Only to you. Those turrets seemed pretty tame compared to what I've seen." Crocea's voice then took on a deeper and more fearful tone, "On a hill, all those turrets screaming rata-tat-tat, over and over." Jaune didn't understand what would cause his sword to go into war flashbacks, then again, he didn't really want to know.

"Hey, is this what you call a greeting?" Acier shouted to the men and women who were still by their tents. Most just shrugged and went back to whatever tasks that they were performing earlier. One of the group, a man whose face was a patchwork of scars and claw marks, walked over to the five.

The man was easily over six feet and if the scars didn't tip the group off to his status as a professional, the large cords of muscles that made up his arms and chest did. Didn't help that he was only wearing a small chestplate that barely covered anything more than his abs, not very protective, Jaune thought to himself.

At his hip was a large scimitar that may have once been painted red, now most of the paint was faded due to wear. Jaune heard nothing from the weapon except very loud snoring.

"Acier, still kicking I see." The man remarked as he looked over the older man's shoulder, "And you brought a lot of kids. You do realize that this is a deadzone, correct?"

"I know what I'm doing, Cross. And besides, these kids can take care of themselves. I decided that the best thing to do when training new huntsmen and huntresses would be to bring them out into a real warzone. Teaches them more than the pitiful forest near Beacon." Acier responded.

Cross grinned at this, "You really are crazy enough to live with us!" Cross held his hand out to Acier who shook it. "Though I don't know about the kids. How long are they staying here, cause we don't do babysitting."

"We're here for a week. Kids gotta get back to school sometime or later." Acier said with a grin.

"Cross certainly got a few new scars since the last time I saw him." Crocea remarked. Jaune's eyebrow lifted at the news.

"How many scars did he have before?" Jaune asked in a hushed tone.

"Well, he didn't look like something tore him apart and stitched him back together, that's for certain. Guess the Grimm have been tough recently."

Milὸ quickly interrupted when he heard this, "Wait, that's how bad Cross has been injured? What the hell is even living in this place?!"

"Well, if the Stalkers didn't ambush you in the grass, and the Hatchtraps didn't drag you into their burrows, then you would have to deal with the Skitters and the rare Nevermore. That's just during the daytime." Crocea answered.

"What the hell are all those names you dropped? I've never heard of Grimm called by those names." Milὸ asked. Even the haughty weapon seemed slightly nervous at whatever was out in this landscape.

"Stalkers are the puma creatures that we ran away from. Hatchtraps would be the spiders that burrow, and the Skitters, well, imagine them as the smaller cousin of the Hatchtrap. They scurry at the bottom of the grass and wait in ambush for a person to pass by. Then, they shoot out some webs at your feet and drag you through the grass kicking and screaming until you are brought to their den. Then they wrap you up and hang you from the ceiling and drain out your fluids if they are feeling bored. If not, you're gonna be hanging until you starve to death." Jaune's eyes widened at Crocea's explanation.

They seriously had to deal with Grimm like that? What the hell was this place?

"Oh, and at night the real monsters come out to play. Devourers, and Finger Drinkers are the real terrors out there. Imagine great spiders, the size of houses that tunnel underground during the day and sprout from the ground at night. They are hard to kill, and even if you try to track them during the day, the tunnels they make are so complex that you'd get lost in the darkness."

Crocea sighed before adding, "Finger drinkers, they are these black monkeys that usually cling to trees during the day. They'll come down if they see any traveler resting beneath their tree. Then they'll put their hands on the poor traveler's throat and use suckers attached to them to drain the poor victim of all their blood. You'll find them wandering around their tree at night, hunting."

"What has your idiot grandfather brought us all into?" Milὸ demanded.

Jaune really didn't want to answer that question, since even he had no real idea of what Acier was planning. All he and his team knew was that they were here for training. If this was training, then what was Acier's idea of an actual mission?

"Since it's midday, I think that lunch would be in order. You're all hungry, right?" Cross asked. The group nodded enthusiastically to the question. "That's good, cause if you weren't you'd probably have to wait till night before eating again. Food in this area is scarce because the Grimm keep on getting into fights over territory with the animals. This place is also shit for farming. Soil's just bad."

Cross then led the group towards the center of the encampment where they noticed a hatch in the center. With ease, Cross lifted the heavy-looking steel hatch open which revealed a hole with rungs for a ladder attached to the side of a wall made of cement and reinforced with steel rebar. It wasn't a dark hole, in fact, there were lightbulbs that went down to the bottom.

"Food is at the bottom. I'll see all of you up here in an hour. If Acier wants all of you to learn about what it takes to survive out here, then I'll certainly show you." Cross informed the group. Jaune's eye twitched at how they were expected to go into that bunker just after Crocea talked about those Goliaths that would tunnel underground.

"Uhh, Cross, sir, why are you living underground if there are Devourers in the area?!" Jaune quickly asked. He didn't see the odds of their group surviving if a Devourer decided to tunnel into that bunker.

"At least one of you is knowledgeable about what lives out here." Cross said in appreciation, "But you don't have to worry. This bunker has titanium slabs two feet thick that are all but impenetrable. Sure, we've had a few nights where some Devourer would get it in their head to try and bust into the bunker, but they give up quickly or die trying to break through our walls."

Even with the reassurance from Cross, Jaune was still not convinced. "Mr. Cross, what are Devourers?" Pyrrha asked in confusion.

"Big…Fuckin'…Spiders." Was all Cross would say. He then walked over to one of the tents and sat down on a cot where he unsheathed his scimitar and started to sharpen it with a whetstone.

Pyrrha shivered slightly before calming down once again. Jaune felt the same way as Pyrrha, he didn't like spiders at the best of times, this just magnified that feeling by a ridiculous amount.

The first one to enter the bunker was Acier who did so without any obvious worries. He was followed by Nora, then Ren, and finally Jaune and Pyrrha. As Jaune climbed down each rung of the ladder, he thought that the walls of this bunker didn't seem that protective in the long run.

"You worried, Jaune?" Crocea asked.

"Slightly. I just feel like something is going to go horribly wrong. Is that a normal feeling?" Jaune wondered. Crocea gave a hum of approval at this.

"I would be afraid if you weren't. You must realize that bad things could happen at any moment, but it's okay to relax before then. If you don't, you're going to become a paranoid wreck that hardly does anything with their life." Crocea answered.

"Makes me feel so much better." Jaune replied sarcastically as he finally made it to the bottom of the ladder.

"It's what I'm here for, laddie." Crocea happily stated. Jaune groaned as he looked around the bunker that they were in. It was one large metal room with three rooms splitting off it. Each room was clearly labeled with black lettering bunks, supplies, and weapons. In the room that they were in now, there was a table with an assortment of cooking supplies and a steaming pot that had a man tending to it.

The table had no obvious signs of there being a stove on it, until Jaune noticed that the man's hand was glowing like superheated metal. "Is that guy's Semblance hot hands?" Jaune asked quietly to Crocea.

"Well, more like hot arms. He can superheat his arms to a ridiculous degree, but the only downside would be that he can't wear anything with sleeves. Usually burns them off by accident." Crocea replied.

"Hey, hot stuff, is the food ready?" Acier asked. This caught the attention of the man who looked up at Acier with coal black eyes that seemed like they were glowing with heat. He had slicked back gray hair and was wearing only a leather apron, like those used by blacksmiths, for a shirt.

"And I thought that I'd given you up for dead. You still kicking, old man?" The gray-haired man asked. He stirred the contents of the pot once more before pulling a wooden spoon out.

"Ha ha, guess you developed a sense of humor in your old age after all." Acier said with a roll of his eyes.

"Is that so? It seemed to me that a corpse who is pretending to still be alive entered this bunker with a bunch of children. Do I need to call the authorities and alert them about a possible predator?" The man retorted. "Or maybe I should just get an exorcist?"

"That almost might've hurt this corpse's heart if it still had one. I didn't think that senility would be the first thing that hit you in old age, but I guess beggars can't be choosers." The two older men looked at one another, and to Team JNPR, it seemed like they were about to get into a brawl, but then, the two of them started laughing.

"Is this normal?" Pyrrha asked quietly. Jaune looked down to Crocea with a questioning look.

"Pretty much. Vonk is one of the oldest in this group, last time I was here. Acier and Vonk would constantly make fun of all the younger members of this camp." Crocea chuckled at the memories, "He is completely insane though, and has a huge case of arachnophobia, so whatever you do, don't bring up talk of spiders around him."

"Why? Will he start trying to hide?" Jaune asked.

"No, he'll just go into a rage and try to burn down anything that he perceives as triggering his phobia. Other than that, nice guy, and one of the few people here that doesn't use a weapon. Fists are all he needs." Crocea explained.

With that knowledge, Jaune quickly relayed to Pyrrha and the others, "It's normal. Apparently, he's an old friend of Grandpa's."

With that said, Nora quickly made her way over to where the pot was cooking and began drooling in hunger. "Is the food ready?" She quickly asked.

Vonk pulled out a bowl and quickly scooped out some stew for Nora. He put a spoon into the bowl and handed it to the hyper girl. Quickly, she began scooping the stew into her mouth and swallowed it.

"That was terrible! What type of ingredients do you put into this to make it that awful? It's like food from a dumpster, not that food from a dumpster always tastes bad, but still!" Nora immediately complained.

"Nora, don't be rude!" Ren chastised. Nora quickly turned to Ren.

"But it really is bad. I don't even know why it should taste this bad!" She replied. Behind her, Vonk just shrugged his shoulders as he made a few more bowls for the group.

"Understand, pinky, most things out here that are edible are pretty shit to eat. This isn't a place where you can complain about food since there's so little of it. What you do is suck it up or you starve. And trust me, starvation and dehydration are the things that usually kill you out here." Vonk sighed at this, "Should've stayed in Vacuo. That desert is more hospitable than these plains."

"We know a few guys from Vacuo. They didn't talk much about the place." Nora piped up.

"Not much to say about the place. It's a shithole that only the strong survive in. Ace knows a lot about it, he was one of the bigger troublemakers roaming there years ago." Vonk grinned as his said this, "So many barfights were caused by this guy. Usually over women."

"I think that talking about my being chivalrous is not the greatest topic to bring up." Acier mumbled.

"Sure it isn't. What was that woman that you were always getting drunk over? Selena? Sarah? Sa-"

"It was Sally." Acier quickly answered. Jaune's ears perked up at this. He knew who that woman was, that was the name of his grandmother, someone that his Grandpa rarely if ever brought up in a conversation. The only reason Jaune knew anything about Grandma Sally was due to his dad answering some questions about her when he had asked.

All his dad would saw was that Grandma Sally died in a Grimm attack when he was younger, almost the age of eight. Besides that, nothing really.

"I remember Sally, she was pretty nice. Even fixed me up once." Rips chirped out from Jaune's belt. Jaune slightly jumped due to how quiet the tomahawk had been this entire time.

"Yeah, she was." Crocea quietly agreed.

"What happened to her? Did she do alright after the war? I mean, she was good at fixing up weapons, I mean, look at you for instance. She must've gotten a job as a blacksmith, or something along those lines." Rips pondered.

"She died a long time ago. Grimm got her, and that was the last we saw of her. I would rather not talk about it." Crocea finished. Jaune listened to all of this in silence as he got himself a bowl of the terrible stew that Vonk had made.

It was something more that he knew about his Grandma now. Even Crocea was upset about it. Maybe he would try to ask Acier one day, but right now didn't seem like a good idea. It would still bother him with not knowing.

Vonk brought Jaune out of his thoughts with a question, "What are all of you planning to do once you finish eating lunch? If you are all here for training, this bunker isn't the best place to learn. It would be out there," Vonk pointed upwards, "And this isn't the safest place for kids." Vonk added.

"Cross plans to take us out for an excursion after we finish eating. These kids will get to see what fighting Grimm is really like after today, especially with them encountering the Stalker pack when we first got here." Acier replied.

"Then I wish you all good luck, you'll need it if you are planning to stay here for any length of time. Also, don't go outside the camp perimeter at night, there are a few trees around here that we suspect have Finger Suckers living in them." When Vonk said his advice, he walked out of the room and into the one labeled Bunks.

This left the small group alone to themselves.

"What are Finger Suckers?" Nora asked.

"Just wondering, do you like monkeys?" Acier replied.

Okay, that was a long time coming. Sorry about the wait, School has been taking up my time along with writer's block, this also contributed to the chapter being a bit shorter than I'm used to. Other than that, I have my update schedule ready for what I'm going to do next, just so people don't get antsy. If we are lucky, within the next week, I'll update GToR first, and then follow it by the week after with AYWMS.

Yeah, my time's just been getting taken which is really pressing on me ability to write and stay on one specific project. I hope to do better for you guys, so we'll see what happens.

Also, I hope that one of you can guess the Grimm in this chapter that is very closely related to a certain folklore horror monster. To give you a hint, think west-eastern. Just let that little thought go through all of your heads.

Now, omake…

Ruby and Team JNPR dashed towards the landing pads that still had a few Bulkheads remaining on them. All around them, the small group could see students being attacked by other students and infected by them. It was complete chaos.

Thankfully, the small group hadn't been noticed yet and were able to make their way to the Bulkheads quite easily. The real issue was when they entered a Bulkhead and made their way to the flight controls.

"Does anyone know how to fly this?" Jaune asked. The other teens shook their heads and a feeling of fear crept into all of them. "I guess I'll see what I can do." Jaune said with a false sense of bravado as he took a seat in the pilot chair and started pressing buttons.

"C'mon Jaune, we need to take off!" Ruby said with urgency. That was when all of them heard a buzzing coming from the pocket of Ruby's skirt. She quickly pulled out her Scroll and opened it. "H-Hello, who is it?" Ruby asked.

"Ruby," The voice of Yang answered in a calm and meticulous tone that was completely unlike her, "I just had a chat with Weiss and Blake. They found it quite agreeable, and now we want to talk to you. Just wait where you are so that we can find you." Ruby quickly shut off her scroll and looked at everyone with fearful eyes.

"She got them…" Ruby trailed off before going into a corner of the Bulkhead and sitting down in silence. She seemed broken at this knowledge, but Jaune tried to ignore it in favor of getting the Bulkhead started.

With a flick of the switch, the bulkhead roared to life. "Let's get out of here!" Jaune announced to the group as he pulled up on the controls which lifted the Bulkhead into the air and shut the doors on it.

They needed to get to someplace safe.

Hope you enjoyed that. I'll try to do better for you all next time. Anyways, stay frosty my friends.