Chapter Text
Weiss felt her knees buckle and pointedly turned away from the… body. She… didn’t need that right now. “A-and someone who… p-preferably can handle gore…”
“I got it.”
“I can handle that.” Both Yang and Blake spoke at the same time, but Weiss didn’t have the energy to deal with any of that at the moment and just cast a line of gravity glyphs across the ground.
Yang stomped forward before Blake got the chance and the ship finally righted itself.
—
Zorua fell out of Ruby’s bag when her friend hit… something on the side of the airship. Zorua wasn’t always the biggest fan of flight, but with Ruby she had always felt… safe… But now…
“Fletch.”
Zorua nodded to Fletchling, who had been freed from his ball when Ruby took her tumble… She was unconscious, by the looks of it, so… How did they heal people? She needed to be awake!
“Zor!”
“Fletch. Fletchling.”
“Rua!” That’s it! Zorua clambered across Ruby’s chest, taking much longer than she would have liked due to all of the tumbling of the aircraft, and finally managed to reach one of the pouches she was certain Ruby kept her potions.
With Fletchling’s help, Zorua managed to undo the clip and stick a paw inside. She grabbed the first thing she saw.
“Fletch!”
Zorua slowly carried the… She was pretty sure it was a potion… Well, hopefully. She carried the potion up to Ruby’s face and propped it up on her collarbone.
“Zorua.”
Fletchling followed the direction, hopping up and grabbing the back of it with his beak. Zorua moved around in front of the now stabilized potion and pressed her face up against the spray trigger. It took a few times, but Zorua had never been so relieved to hear the sound of a spray bottle (She normally hated those things…).
A thin mist came out of the bottle and spritzed against Ruby’s face. At first, Zorua thought it didn’t do anything, but then…
—
Ruby gasped heavily, suddenly back awake with the taste of something quite similar to hand sanitizer in her mouth. She hacked up what she could, but when she looked around she was… Did she hit her head? The bullhead had veered to the side suddenly and she fell…
So she did! So then why didn’t her head hurt? After a moment, she noticed a weight on her chest and looked down to find both of her Pokémon there, propping a Full Restore up on her chest.
“W-wha… Guys? Did that… No, that’s not how Full Restores work, buddy. Thanks for the help, anyway!” Ruby pat Zorua on the head, smiling softly. Fletchling didn’t seem happy with the lack of attention, though, butting her head into the crook of Ruby’s neck.
“Ow, ow-” The craft suddenly lurched to the side, doing a full 90 degree turn before going back upright. Right… they were… still in a battle.
Slowly, she stood, taking stock of the cabin. Blake and Penny were both in their seats, Weiss was standing on a gravity glyph, and Yang-
“Hold on!” Was in the cockpit. Speaking of… Ruby used her semblance and dashed up, cradling Zorua and Fletchling in her arms and using her other to grasp onto Penny’s shoulder. When they lurched suddenly to the side, she barely moved. In fact, Penny herself was almost completely still…
“Okay, we’re gonna need to kill those Grimm! I’m not getting through here without it!”
“On it! Ruby, are you okay to fight?” Ruby nodded, and Weiss cast a gravity glyph on the floor of the bullhead. “Good! You’re on right, Blake’s on left!”
Ruby ran over to the right door, and soon it opened, allowing her to see what they were up against. By the looks of it, a flock of Nevermore… great. And, of course, they were giant Nevermore. How the hell were they attracted to here? Well… only one option now!
She shifted Crescent Rose into its rifle form, taking aim and firing at one of them. Her rounds didn’t do much more than agitate the bird she had managed to hit, who swooped forward and attempted to body slam the bullhead, them just barely managing to get out of the way.
“Fine then. Weiss! Give me a glyph!”
“Got it!” Weiss flicked her finger to the side, bringing a spinning blue glyph up right in front of Crescent Rose’s barrel. When she fired this time, the bullets exploded in ice on impact, which allowed her to down one of the Nevermore before.
“Okay, this time I’m serious, hold on!” A rain of black feathers darted toward the airship from all directions, Yang miraculously managing to evade the swarm for long enough for Ruby to fire a shot. It hit one of the Nevermore in the wing, freezing that wing solid and sending it hurtling toward the ocean below.
“Is there some sort of radio on this thing?”
“Fried!”
“Also, how the hell are you this good at flying? You got your license and haven’t used it once!”
“I have no idea!” Ruby groaned, going back to firing into the group. She counted six Nevermore at the start, had downed two, so why was she counting only three?
Her question was swiftly answered when the bullhead suddenly lurched downward and she heard a deafening squawk. Then the roof buckled inward. Ruby turned to the inside of the cabin just in time to see a beak poking through the roof, followed by two sets of talons.
“Okay! Everyone, get ready to jump if need be!” Yang hollered, and Ruby could feel the fear in her voice.
“How far are we from land?”
This time, Penny responded. “I believe we are… 10.3 minutes away from land, at our current speed!” Ruby heard something explode, followed by the ship veering off to the side until Yang managed to correct it. “30.1 minutes.”
“Oh… Penny, you can fly, right?” Ruby stared forward. They… they couldn’t… Her scroll still wasn’t getting a connection.
“Correct. However, my thrusters are only cleared for twice my body weight, which would include, at most, you and Weiss.” Penny’s voice was uncharacteristically flat.
“I… Okay. Any way we can speed this up?”
“Theoretically, you could use your semblance to envelop the entire craft and the Nevermore currently latched onto it!” Penny suggested.
“W-What? How? I can’t carry that much?”
“Actually, I’m fairly certain your semblance breaks you down into your individual parts, allowing you to negate the mass portion of inertia! It does not matter how much weight there is, besides taking up more Aura!”
“Whatever it is, just do it!” Weiss said, her voice strained, “I can only hold these glyphs for so long!”
“I- fine. I’ll try.” And not a moment too soon, Ruby watched Weiss’ Aura shatter, the angle of the airship causing Ruby, Weiss, and Blake to all fall to the left. Blake narrowly managed to stay on the airship with the use of her semblance, but Weiss and Ruby were only saved by a hand from Penny firing out like a rocket to grab them.
“Just try to extend your semblance past yourself! I will hold you!” Penny said, somehow acting like they weren’t all about to die. Ruby nodded slowly, taking a deep breath as Penny pulled her close to her chest.
With a cry of exertion, Ruby activated her semblance as best she could. She focused on extending it further and further, ignoring the pang she felt from her Aura. She only managed to hold it for a second, but in that time they launched forward. When the haze of her semblance cleared, she felt somewhat… queasy. And tired… and she was pretty sure her Aura broke, followed by darkness.
—
Ralts suddenly felt herself freed from the ball, sliding across the floor of some form of airship and just managing to save herself with the use of psychic. Weiss was stumbling and standing from the floor, while Ruby was unconscious in Penny’s arms.
“Ralts?” She looked up to find talons larger than her entire body digging through the hull of whatever ship they were on, and when she looked outside all she saw was ocean and rose petals scattering through the wind.
“Zor!” She looked back to Ruby, where Zorua and Fletchling were trying desperately to wake her up, but to no avail. She… she had to do something for them, right?
“Ralts.” She padded over, clambering up the seat and onto Ruby’s leg. She could sense Ruby’s feelings, she was still alive. She had to stay that way, too.
“Oh my god… we have scroll service! I’m sending an urgent SOS now, but it will be a few minutes before they can reach us!” Weiss said, relief evident in her voice. Of course Grimm would attack.
“Zor…” Zorua pouted, snuggling into the crook of Ruby’s neck as her ears wilted…
“Ralts!”
“Rua!” Zorua rebutted, seemingly firm in her belief that Ruby was hurt. Ralts… she just knew it wasn’t the case, though!
“Screee!” Ralts covered her ears as she heard the bird atop their aircraft screech, followed by the entire ship lurching upwards and then the roof of it flying off.
“Okay, abandon ship everyone, I repeat, get the fuck off this thing!” Yang screamed, jumping out of the cockpit. Penny followed suit, Ruby being in her arms. Because of their positions, Ralts and Zorua came quickly too.
But, unlike Zorua, Ralts’ position wasn’t particularly effective in… staying, so she was ripped away from the faunus and the human by the sheer force of the fall. But as she fell, she noticed a strange disc that fell out of Weiss’ bag. It was a light pink, and for some reason it… called to her.
She dove downward, ignoring the rapidly approaching water below them, and grasped the disc in her little hands. She held it close to her chest and then suddenly felt… different. Not too much, but she soon realized what it was. She knew something, now.
Immediately, she threw her arms outward. Psychic energy rippled in a sphere away from her, and once it reached one of the falling trainers they abruptly stopped in the air. First, it was just Weiss. Ralts’ head felt… fine, with Weiss.
Then Yang, and she got a mild headache. Then Blake, which doubled the headache. And then Penny and Ruby… Immediately, her mind felt like it was splitting open. It was… too much… And then there was the fact that she was still falling!
“Fletch!” She looked to the side to find Fletchling diving down next to her, cocking his head to the side. Ralts got the idea, streamlining her own body as best she could to fall ahead of the humans. Once she did, she sprang her psychic field up again, trying with all her might to keep them in the air.
The next moment, Fletchling’s talons dug into her arms, not enough to hurt too much, though, and flapped his wings, holding her up desperately. So now no one was falling… except the fact that she could only hold them for a moment.
She needed to. If they hit the water… Well, Weiss and Ruby didn’t have their Aura, if Ralts felt correctly. And there was no telling if the others had landing strategies that worked over the water.
—
Weiss watched as Ralts and Fletchling came into view below them, only a few hundred feet between them and the water, and then she suddenly… stopped falling. So did Penny, Ruby, Blake, and Yang! They were suspended in the air. It took a moment for Weiss to realize that it was Ralts doing this. Ralts was holding them all up!
But… there was no way she could hold all of them. Maybe if Penny… but Ralts didn’ t know that. So she was still trying to hold all of them. And Penny had already decided to wrap her body around Ruby as tightly as she could, so that wouldn’t be helping…
She watched as Ralts strained, then they all started falling again. A moment later, they halted again, then fell again. This repeated a few more times until they were only… About 100 feet above the water. Ralts’ face scrunched up and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Ralt-” Weiss cut herself off as a brilliant blue light erupted from Ralts’ body.
She watched in awe as it spread over her body, then lit up the already day time sky. Then, just a moment later, Ralts looked… bigger. She definitely wasn’t Ralts, anymore. Instead, she had a sort of skirt and two orange discs attached to her head… Ralts… evolved?
The next time she tried to hold them up, her face remained mostly impassive. She evolved… to keep them in the air. Weiss almost cried in relief. They weren’t going to die! Probably… She was pretty sure the Nevermore was still somewhere nearby. But they weren’t going to die from falling.
But when she looked back to Fletchling and whatever Ralts was now, it quickly became just Fletchling.
“Ralts!” Weiss cried, watching her starter fall toward the sea. Fletchling, who had dropped her, balked and immediately pointed his beak straight down. As he dove, Weiss watched in horror as Ralts(?) fell closer and closer to the sea, now crying out and losing focus on whatever she had done to keep everyone in the air.
But Fletchling kept a straight path downward, even as Ralts fell further and further. Fletchling didn’t waver at all, even when brilliant orange light erupted from his body. There was no way, right?
She couldn’t tell exactly what happened, as when the light faded Fletchling was still bathed in flames, charging downward faster and faster. He just kept on speeding up until finally he caught up to Ralts, grasping her by the arms again and halting their fall.
Not a moment too soon, too, as Ralts used her psychic abilities again to halt everyone’s descent, all the trainers stopping just feet from the ocean beneath them. Weiss sighed in relief, her body deflating. She looked back to Fletchinder, who was now significantly larger, with golden feathers under his wings and a much more angular face.
“Hahah! That was awesome!” Yang cheered, throwing her hands up as they all were released from Ralts’ hold, splashing into the waves. “Terrible, but awesome!”
