Episode Beanie: Chapter 3: Plan

Chapter 3 of Beanie's story.

            Beanie and Auburn watched as more and more White Fang soldiers poured out surrounding the rest of their friends and classmates.  They were managing to hold their own, but for each one they took down two more seemed to take their place.

“Our orders were not to engage” Auburn said as she fired another bolt towards the attacking soldiers.

“Technically,” Beanie said as he did a quick blow of his whistle to knock some heavy snow out of the trees and onto the unsuspecting White Fang soldiers, “they engaged us first, we’re just defending ourselves.”

“We still don’t know where the hostages are.  Unless we plan on just giving up and going with them I don’t think we’ll find…..”  Suddenly, there was a sheepishly shrill and scared voice coming from the students saying,

            “We surrender!” Everybody threw down their weapons as soon as they heard this and turned back to give Viridian a weird look for having such a weird voice in that situation.  But the White Fang soldiers didn’t care.  They simply started getting closer, their guns still trained on the students.  But before they managed to completely surround them, Beanie quickly caused a ton of snow to fall out of the trees and cover himself, Auburn and a few other students.  The White Fang soldiers didn’t notice this and kept their guns trained on those they could see.  Then, a young man who looked not that much older than Beanie with red hair, bull horns, and a Grimm mask covering his eyes appeared and looked over those standing before him.

            “What should we do with these kids Lord Taurus?” one of the White Fang soldiers asked.

            “Ironwood’s so desperate he’s willing to have children fight his own wars” Adam said with a scoff.  “Pathetic.  This just means we now have even greater leverage over him once we make our demands.  Bring them back with the rest of the prisoners.  And do a thorough sweep of the area.  I doubt Ironwood would have only sent a few children.”

            “Yes sir” the grunt said.  With that, every White Fang soldier began running around handcuffing all the students who had surrendered and scouring the area around them attempting to find anyone else.  After they didn’t find anybody, they fell back together and started marching off into the distance.  Beanie then removed the snow that was covering him and his classmates once they were in the clear.  He slowly stood up and shivered.

            “I keep telling my dad just move to Vacuo.  I don’t care if it’s a desert, it’s warm year-round!”

            “I think the sandstorms and higher Grimm population might make you reconsider” Auburn said dusting some of the snow off her clothes.  “How should we do this?  Everybody’s captured except for us, and if they are out looking for the rest of our friends.  It’s more than likely they’ll find the landing site where we were supposed to rendezvous after completing the mission.”

            “How’s your reception out here?  Maybe we could get a message back to Argus and let them know what’s going on.”

            “It isn’t great.  This far out in the wilderness I’d be surprised if there was even a relay tower within two hundred miles of where we are now.  Maybe that farm we tried to find out here has a landline, but I don’t think we can hide from these guys forever.”

            “You have a point.  Plus, even if we do get a message out, they’ll either be ambushed as well or they’ll hurt our friends the moment they see them approach.”

            “So how should we play this?”

            “Let’s follow them.  If we can get coordinates for their current base, then that gives us something we can relay back home.  Plus, it makes sure that we can keep them honest with their prisoners.”           

            “How do you figure?”

            “Their leader mentioned hostages.  If they have everybody who was captured on the Argus Express train captured already, it stands to reason our friends will be thrown in the same cage as them.  So we find our friends, we find our missing passengers on the train, then we build off that.”

            “Sounds like a plan” Auburn said pulling out her crossbow.  “Lead the way.”

 

 

 

            After tailing the White Fang for several miles through the snow, Beanie and his classmates happened upon a small camp filled to the brim with White Fang soldiers doing different routines.  Some were huddled around a fire, others were cleaning weapons, but the ones that caught Beanie’s eyes were the ones ushering Viridian into a makeshift prison cell made of sticks and rope.  There were several guards posted around the makeshift prison, and there were several more hastily built cages with even more people guarding them.

            “So,” Beanie said scratching his head, “How confident are you that you could take on a whole army by yourself?”

            “About as confident in that as I am in you not creating poison gas in class” Auburn said with a sigh.

            “Gee, thanks.” Beanie then pulled out a pair of binoculars and started examining the camp.  Everything was super secure, there wasn’t any possible way they could safely sneak in and get everybody out without raising some eyebrows.  He then noticed a small well just sitting behind some of the prisons on the outskirts of the camp.

            “Is that what I think it is?” Beanie pondered zooming in on the well.

            “What do you see?” Auburn asked as she prepared some different Dust bolts.

            “If I remember right, this region while very remote, has more than a few farms scattered here and there beyond the one on our map.  And most of them are all connected by a network of sewars that lead to a nearby river.  So, if we manage to sneak into the camp and free everybody, we can move them into the sewars.  From there we can find a way to the river, we can get some Ice Dust boats made to help get people away from the White Fang.  And if we can’t get there, it stands to reason we can find a friendly farm, and there should be a relay tower that can help us get some help from Argus.”

            “There’s a ton of people that are captured” Auburn said scratching her head.  “How do you propose we get all these people down into a sewer system without anybody trying to stop us?”

            “You sneak around the camp and get a rope line down into the sewers.  I’ll create a diversion.”

            “Are you sure?  Combat isn’t exactly your strong point.”

            “Perhaps, but I don’t need to fight all of them.  I just need to distract them for long enough.”

 

 

 

            Beanie pulled out his whistle, surveyed the camp on last time, and started waiting in the trees for Auburn’s signal.  He kept twiddling his whistle ready and waiting.  Despite only waiting a few moments, his patience was already starting to wane.  But finally, he saw an arrow bolt flash up in the sky near the entrance to the well, so Beanie took a deep breath, and blew his whistle as loud as he could.  And as soon as he did so, the snow around him rose up like a giant wave.  It grew and grew and began to start washing over the camp.  It didn’t do too much as it was snow and kept crumbling apart when it hit something, but it did cause a lot of White Fang members to be caught up in it and swept away.  But it wasn’t enough.  As soon as the wave faded, the soldiers who didn’t get carried away started rushing towards where the wave originated and ultimately where Beanie was standing.  Several soldiers with guns opened fire, and Beanie dealt with this by raising up a pile of snow to slow down the bullets.  Some of the bullets got through the snow, but they were slowed down enough to not do too much damage to his aura.  With that, Beanie rushed into the camp and started using martial arts to take down the soldiers.  He wasn’t extremely skilled in this area, but it was enough to fight back against grunts who hadn’t received the same level of training he had received at Sanctum.  Soldiers kept falling left and right, but then Beanie saw Adam slowly approaching him, simply smiling and holding his red sword.  Beanie saw him, and simply prepared to defend himself.  Adam didn’t say anything, he just charged forward and attempted to land a powerful hit on Beanie.  But as Adam brought his blade down, Beanie pulled up a small bit of snow and used it to guide Adam’s sword into the ground.  As soon as the sword hit the ground, Beanie landed three quick strikes on Adam’s chest, causing him to fall back a short distance.  But it wasn’t very effective, as Adam quickly gathered himself and prepared to attack again.  Instead of bringing the sword down this time, Adam tried to stab Beanie directly, forcing him to slide to the side and try to land a hit on Adam’s shoulder.  But his punch simply bounced off without even phasing Adam.  Adam took this opening to swing his sword and force Beanie to try and block with his aura.  He managed to block the attack causing him to slide back through the snow.  His aura managed to absorb most of it, but given his snow tsunami stunt and general use of his Semblance beforehand, his aura was starting to weaken.  But just before it seemed like Adam was about to put this to rest, a crossbow bolt flew right past Beanie’s head, and forced Adam to block the bolt with his sword.

            “We’re clear!” Auburn yelled to Beanie.  Not wasting even a moment, Beanie threw a bit more snow back at Adam and the other White Fang soldiers to keep them off balance, then ran over and followed Auburn as she descended into the well.  Beanie jumped inside, landed in the water, and ignored the sheer cold that hit his feet and created several walls of water both in the well he just jumped down as well as the paths surrounding he and his friends.  The sewer system split off in several directions, so to throw the White Fang off their scent, Beanie created walls of water in front of each possible passage, then pulled out small Ice Dust pellets, tossed them at the walls and froze them sealing off the paths.  Everybody else was already on the other side of the walls, but the White Fang wouldn’t know which one to check.  Beanie then sighed in relief, then realized the gross water squishing between his feet.

            “Maybe shoes aren’t a bad idea” he groaned.

            “I’ve been saying that for years” a new voice popped up.  Beanie looked over and saw his father standing there with a big grin on his face.  Beanie ran over and gave him a big hug.

            “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

            “Thanks for coming to save me.”

            “I mean, I essentially already work for Ironwood, I didn’t have much of a choice.”

            “If that isn’t the story of my life….”

            “We need to get moving” Auburn said pulling out her Scroll and turning on her flashlight.  “That ice isn’t going to hold them back for long.  And they probably have short-range radios so they can all converge on one location if they find us.”

            “Sounds good” Beanie said trudging through the slop.  “Here’s hoping we don’t have anything else we have to deal with.”  Having said that, everybody continued to make their way through the sewers.  But just a bit further back in a crevasse near the entrance of the well, something skeletal started to stir, and groan.

Author's Note

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