#t: brawl in the branwens (Branwen AU) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blckandbruises-a · 6 years ago

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tagging for mention: @nowthorn, @basedmercury

previously on battlestar galactica

The fight had spiraled out of control in a matter of minutes, as it always did when Cobalt travelled alone. In company, he had positive emotional buffers to dampen the parts of him that the Grimm navigated towards. The black ichor on his soul attracted them like moths to the flame, but in such number that the flame should’ve sputtered out three miles after he’d escaped the Atlesian Air Defense base.

Instead, two days of hard running later, Cobalt was still swinging away.

A right hook that Yang would be proud of caught a Beowulf in the jaw, the creature erupting into smoke and ashes as Dexter’s claws plunged into it’s hide. He lunged forward with a roar of battle on his lips, a bestial challenge as Sinister and Dexter both sang in the sunlight. Claws found another Beowulf hide, the creature yowling as it’s company moved to assist. But there was nothing for them but a feral blender of knives, the edges slashing and gouging away at each one that came close. For creatures that left no corpse, it was absolute carnage.

It was a dangerous game.

Cobalt felt the Beast rise in him and emerge in a roar, stunning the Grimm into falling back. He swallowed his fury, struggling to rein in the monstrosity under his skin. Combat as thick as this made his survival instincts run wild. A knee sunk into the snow, Cobalt panting heavily. He wasn’t injured or wounded, but he was exhausted. Getting tired made it easier for the Beast to take control, and the last thing Cobalt wanted to do was black out in the snow.

Cobalt breathed deeply, the icy wind of Mantle searing his lungs. He started to move again, eyes searching up at the line of mountains. His destination was there, just beyond the next ridge. There was a crater there, unnatural and enormous, filled in with years of snow and ice but still a noticeable scar in the mountainside. Cobalt drew closer, seeing the first communication spires, covered in ice and dilapidated from a lack of care over the years, sticking out of the snow like forgotten spears. He could make out the pieces of some of the buildings that were in this secret lab, but nothing compared to seeing the giant, open floors of the laboratory, like yawning mouths of Ursa, in the back of the crater.

When Cobalt had escaped, he’d torn through the place on a rampage. He left no survivors. He showed no mercy. At the moment, such thoughts were alien to him, but now it disturbed him that he felt absolutely no guilt. They’d done worse to him. Giving the primary reactor a meltdown seemed like just rewards for mutating him.

The wind stung at his cheeks, and Cobalt drew his cloak closer. He checked his scroll. The words ‘no signal’ stared back at him, the same way they had since he’d left the base. No Pop. No Ruby. No Yang. He was out here, alone, with no backup. Cobalt looked up at the gap in the mountain, and stepped over the bones of a lab tech into the grave. His grave, if he wasn’t careful.

While his signal didn’t work, at least the flashlight on his scroll did. Descending into the dark, Cobalt followed the familiar alabaster walls of the lab. He could see the painted lines on the floor-green for medical work, blue for genetic, red for live testing-fading with time and splintering off down different hallways. But even without them, he knew his way into the dark. He looked up a mile in, as he descended a set of stairs. He could hear things in the dark, skittering around and scratching at his senses. Cobalt looked and saw something small with red eyes vanish into a corridor. Grimm. No wonder they were here. Cobalt’s misery had been enough to draw them here, and so had the desperate hour of the doctors who had experimented on him. He drew his flashlight around, sweeping it towards...

A light.

Cobalt froze. There should be no power here. Especially not in there. This room, this last room, was his birthing suite. He could make out the cylindrical cell he’d been kept in for years, scratched and scarred to hell, before he took another step, the sound of his boot ringing across the floor.

“Cobalt...?”

The voice was weak, but unmistakable. Cobalt stepped forward a little faster, and looked into the room. In the cell, clutching a gash on her stomach, a girl stared back with a head of red hair and unmistakable, and weakening, silver eyes. Cobalt froze. “Rubes?”

“C-Cobalt,” she coughed, blood dripping from her lips, “the...the rats...”

What ‘rats’ made themselves apparent quickly. Cobalt turned, as thousands and thousands of red eyes stared back. They were on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. They surged together as one, Cobalt placing his scroll away. But instead of charging him, they swarmed over each other, forming a gigantic sphere of Grimm Rats. Their eyes flashed, and they all looked to Cobalt as one unit. Tails knotted together, they formed a titantic figure, looming in the dark-

“The Rat King. Fuck, I wasn’t the only unkillable bastard to come out of this pit.” Cobalt turned around. Ruby was leaning harder on the door and growing paler and paler. “Hang on tight, kiddo!” Cobalt shouted, “I’ll get you out!”

The Rat King screamed with a thousand sharp fangs and moved forward. Like a gorilla, rats formed long arms and short legs, a giant maw opening in the formation. Cobalt met it with a battle cry, Sinister and Dexter unsheathing their knives. He drove them into the Rat King and instead felt hundreds of fangs gnaw at his arms. He yelled in pain, pulling the claws to the side. Grimm rats flew in every direction, sputtering into ashes, but more came from the dark. The Rat King was unperturbed, two claws gripping Cobalt and forcing him to the floor. Both of them squeezed his forearms, and teeth chipped away at his weapons. Cobalt struggled and fought, but howled in pain as he felt both gauntlets shatter under the sheer force.

His bones would be next.

He leaned back, looking up at Ruby. She was looking paler, red pooling on her blouse as she fell to her knees. “Coby...please,” she coughed, more blood on the glass, “run.” But Cobalt didn’t run. No, he’d never run from a fight, not when his sister needed him. He looked up at the thousand eyes of the Rat King, and dug deep into himself. Cobalt opened his mouth as the Rat King screamed, and a bellow that shook the earth left his jaws.

Cobalt unleashed the Beast.

What happened next came in a flurry. The pieces of proud Sinister and noble Dexter fell away from two enormous arms in black fur as the horned creature surged upwards. A claw dug into the Rat King’s neck and tore. Jaws closed and gnashed as he assaulted the Rat King from below. He felt the manufactured claws of rats dig into his back, but Cobalt, in his berserk fury, only slashed faster and bit harder. He tore the Rat King apart, one cluster of rats at a time, until nothing was left but the screaming remains. They splintered and ran, as the horned behemoth whipped his tail into the earth. He couldn’t feel the blood on his back, or taste the drool in his mouth.

With the battle one, Cobalt tried to rein in the monster. But suddenly, he was out of control. He was a witness as the horned monster turned, smelling blood and despair. He looked with red eyes into the cylindrical cell. Ruby’s eyes widened as the monster moved forward. The door swung open, on it’s own, as if offering her to him. The blood was in his nose, in his head. Cobalt could do nothing. He pulled and pulled desperately, screaming in his own mind, as the Beast lunged forward, jaws closing-

-around nothing. The illusion of his dying sister, that the Beast was so eager to sink his fangs into, vanished. The door shut behind him, and the Beast turned, bellowing a challenge. The bellow turned into a scream of pain as electricity erupted into the cage. He lashed and howled, slamming fists and slashing claws at the glass in vain. He stumbled as the shocks continued, slumping to the floor. The Beast twitched, and though it and Cobalt suffered together, Cobalt took control once more. The creature melted away, exposing the man below. He shook, convulsing with each charge, and opened his eyes.

A girl stood before him, green hair cut into a fringe, red eyes looking back at him. A boy flanked her, glad in grey, both staring in shock at what they had seen. The girl moved slender fingers from her forehead. “That thing is-”

“Ruby’s brother, yes.” Cobalt felt the Beast grumble at the sound of the smooth voice. He tried to push himself up, but his body gave out. His breath was turning labored. He struggled to keep his eyes open. A knock came from the glass, and Cobalt opened his eyes one last time, glaring spitefully up at Watts. “Hard to believe, with how the Grimm behaved. But now, we’ve got him again.”

“So,” the boy said, tilting his head at the shuddering figure, “what do we do with him now?”

Cobalt shuddered one last time as the door opened. “Help him to the slab,” he heard Watts command, vision fading as the girl and the boy stepped forward into the cell, “we have so much work to catch up on...”

#t: prose #t: brawl in the branwens (Branwen AU)#THIS TURNED OUT LONGER THAN INTENDED #MY BAD

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blckandbruises-a · 6 years ago

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tagging for mention: @nowgrim, @fataltune (Qrow)

Cobalt almost spat his coffee, the bitter taste hanging on his tongue. Blue eyes flashed red as he glared at the man on the other side of the screen. “You two are where?”

Qrow Branwen raised a finger on the other end of the call, blue-tinted visage in the scroll hushing his son. That only seemed to make Cobalt’s blood boil more. “Yell louder, why don’t ya. You’ll get thrown out and give away our position.”

Cobalt bit back a stern reply. His messy dark hair hung around him, a large coat covering his outfit. The sleeves were folded back to let Sinister and Dexter breathe, the gauntlets freshly tuned just for this little adventure. But it was an adventure in trying to keep up with his family, apparently, which just made him all the more furious. Still, he took a deep breath, settling deeper on his ride side into the booth of the café. Distant announcers called for the departing flights to Atlas, a word that still made his stomach tight.

Atlas. Where it had all gone so wrong. The beast inside growled furiously somewhere near his heart, and he could feel it writhing angrily as if stirred. Of course he was tense. Every memory of Atlas was painful, and those were the ones that came to him in quiet moments when he closed his eyes and was drawn back to the slab, machines overhead...

His coffee was getting cold. He took it in hand and took a sip, trying to ignore the burn. Airport coffee was the worst. “You didn’t wait? You didn’t even bother telling me?”

“Call it fatherly impulse,” Qrow said looked back at him through the screen, hunched over his scroll in a bar. Cobalt could hear the distant sounds of the trains outside, of commuters going hither and yon, and, most painfully, a familiar pair of voices chirping in excitement. For a moment, as they both heard them, their faces softened in that same way. It was like looking into an aged, more haunted reflection of himself. “I didn’t want to drag you back there.”

“I’ll be okay,” Cobalt said, but Qrow’s brow only furrowed. His father was always good at picking out lies. Cobalt was forced to look away, compounding the guilt. “It’s not your baggage to carry, Pop. It’s mine. I’m not gonna burden you, Rubes, or Yang with it. Alright?”

Qrow sighed, a hiss through the signal. “That’s not how that works, kiddo,” He said, Cobalt looking back to his scroll at last, “Ruby won’t let you hold that weight yourself. Neither would Yang. And sure as Hell me. We’re family. Family looks out for each other.”

“There’s a but coming, isn’t there?”

Qrow frowned. “But, it’s more than just us on this mission. The sooner ‘it’ is safe, the better. We couldn’t delay, or make a detour. And I know where you’d want to go. It’s the last place you should. You leveled that lab, anyway, right? What could you possibly get there?”

Cobalt froze up. Suddenly, he was back on the slab, the light shining down, the machines pumping something evil into him. The result snarled protectively in his stomach. What business was it of Qrows? He was too much trouble, was that it?? “Closure, maybe,” Cobalt finally said, lowering his head as his messy bangs hid the red bleeding into the blue of his eyes, “or a way to get better.”

His father didn’t speak for the longest time. Cobalt could tell Qrow was weighing what words to say. “Then wait until we finish this. Okay? We’ll come get you once this is over.”

Cobalt snorted, raising his eyes again. Fury boiled in his blue hues. “What did Professor Ozpin call it? The never-ending battle?”

Qrow snorted, a smile creeping onto his weathered face. It wasn’t sly or cheeky-just a genuine, sad smile. “Doesn’t mean I’m leavin’ you outta the fight. Someone’s gotta keep an eye on the homefront.”

“Uncle Tai can do that. So can Aunt Raven, or just about anyone else. Don’t pretend this isn’t about you not wanting me to tear myself apart over what they did to be in that lab.”

The smile faded. “It’s what I’d do. And you didn’t fall far from the tree, kid.”

“No,” Cobalt said, his throat tight, “neither of us did.” They were quiet for a long time. And then, Cobalt looked to his father. “Can I see her?” Qrow lifted the camera, the screen rising to show the top of his head, and in the distance, a familiar flash of red. Ruby and Yang were busy conducting tug-of-war with a bag of some kind, Weiss sitting with them, along with their friends. For a moment, the most agonizing pride and happiness came into his chest. “It’s not fair.”

Qrow pulled the camera back to his face. “Cobalt, we’ve already discussed this-”

“Not that.” Cobalt choked a little on his words. His eyes burned, but with another sort of red this time. A smile broke his face wide in half-just like his father’s. “When did she get so big, Pop? Now she’s off saving the world. Remind you of anyone?”

Qrow laughed a little, but it felt held back. “Yeah. She’s a dead ringer for Summer, alright.”

“Yeah. But she’s not the only parent she took after.”

Qrow smiled, just a little. He opened his mouth to say something, but a voice cut instead. “Cobalt Branwen?” Cobalt turned, looking up to meet a sea of white. A clean-cut, dark-haired man stood in a clean, immaculate white suit, the symbol of Atlas’ Specialist Corps on his black tie. A battle harness was over the suit, various weapons sticking out of it. He was flanked by the newer generation Atlesian Knights, some of the patrons recoiling from them. No wonder, after how they saw what they did in Vale.

Cobalt scowled. “I’ll call you back.”

“Hey,” Qrow barked over the line, “don’t make a scene, alright? No need to, y’know, go Beast Mode.”

Cobalt whirled, giving his father an incredulous look. “I am not calling it that.”

“Why not?” Qrow shrugged, grinning through the screen, “It works. You could even put a hashtag in front of it.”

“Dad.”

The Specialist cleared his throat. “Mr. Branwen.”

“Tell ‘em I’m busy,” Qrow said, chuckling. A glass clinked out of frame, before he pulled it to his lips. “Remember: no Beast Mode.”

“Dad!” But Qrow had already hung up, the screen timing out to his background. A picture of Ruby, Yang, and Cobalt looked back at him. Better days, when Yang had just been accepted into Beacon. When the world was as young and innocent as they were, at least to their eyes.

“Mr. Branwen,” the Specialist repeated more sternly, stepping forward.

Cobalt slowly looked to him, turning off his scroll and pocketing it. He was pretty much cornered in this booth. Maybe this was why Dad stuck to barstools instead. “Just hung up, remember? But if you want me to pass a note along, I’ll try to remember it.” He picked up his coffee, taking a sip. Ugh, it’d gotten lukewarm. Somehow it tasted even worse.

He heard the Specialist bristle. Good. “Cobalt Branwen, my name is Lance Corporal Wilhelm Braun of the Atlas Specialist Corps, Asset Retrieval Division. By order of General Ironwood-”

“Wait, what?” Cobalt said, looking shocked at the Specialist, “Dude, I am so sorry to hear that.”

The Lance Corporal blinked big brown eyes. He must’ve been new, or not properly filled in about Cobalt’s disposition. “Excuse me?”

“Your parents must’ve hated you. Who the hell names their kid Lance Corporal?”

Wilhelm balked. Cobalt saw his spine stiffen and shoulders tense, and heard gloved hands ball into fists. It drove his predatory smirk wider. “I-It’s not my name, it’s a rank! Now, by order of-”

“-General Ironwood and the Council,” Cobalt parroted, speaking in perfect synch with the Specialist (but in a much more deadpan tone, “you are hereby placed under arrest to be returned to Atlas to face charges of vandalism and murder’. Yeah, yeah, Will, I’ve heard this bit before. So, what, I get charged for my work now that I’m not a Specialist?”

“Vandalism and a bad attitude will not be tolerated-” Wilhelm paused. “Wait, you were a member of the Special Ops?”

Cobalt blinked big blue eyes. He snorted into Dexter, trying to cover his laugh with a hand. “Did you even read the file on me?”

The Lance Corporal’s blush went to the tip of his ears. Customers had already started to file out behind him and the machines. The well-collected Specialist was ruffled now, looking to the side. “I...may have skimmed it. It doesn’t matter!” He said, looking back to Cobalt as he furrowed his brow. “Knights! Seize him!”

A knight reached out a robotic hand, electric handcuffs open for his wrist. Cobalt reached out his right hand to meet it, turned his palm to face it. There was a flash and eruption of blue energy as his palm repulsor fired once, the beam taking the Knight’s head clean off. Turning as the knight fell backwards, neck smoking and sizzling from where it’s head used to be, Cobalt grabbed the warm coffee and tossed it at the Lance Corporal. Wilhelm yelped and recoiled, his suit stained with the dark ichor, giving Cobalt enough time to slip past him and start towards the door.

“Freeze!”

A knight grabbed the back of his coat as Wilhelm barked, stumbling as he tried to recover from the shock of the soaking defense. Cobalt turned into the machine’s grip, Sinister and Dexter’s claws deployed. Sinking six long blades into the robot’s middle, Cobalt tugged hard and grunted. The Knight fell into two pieces, it’s hand vainly gripping at the coat and tugging it from Cobalt as it fell. The final machine lunged forward, and Cobalt met it in a flurry of strikes. One slash went through it’s head, another through it’s outstretched hand, shoving it into it’s own chest. In a frenzy of cuts and slices, the Knight fell, maimed and ruined. Cobalt turned to face Wilhelm.

He could feel the Lance Corporal’s fear. His eyes were wide, pupils shrunk in delicious terror. Fear. Despair. Shock. So good. So very good to the Beast. It smelled blood in the water, and wanted a taste. Cobalt bit back a sigh, trying to remember who he was. The Grimm in him felt those negative emotions, drawn to them like a moth to the moon. But Cobalt could resist it.

For now.

Cobalt turned back to the door, only to freeze at once to take it all in. Lines of Knights and Specialists met him, making a wall between him and the rest of the airport. Cobalt stepped to the door, as humans and robots raised their blades and rifles. “Cobalt Branwen!” A voice snapped amid the crowd, “By Order of General Ironwood and the Council-”

“He already said that!” Cobalt snapped, looking back to the Lance Corporal. Seemingly, Wilhelm had recovered, enough to take in the large force outside.

“I-I don’t understand. I thought it was just me and a few Knights.”

Cobalt looked to the Lance Corporal, so eager to prove himself, to the massive force outside. For just one man, this was gross overkill. But for Cobalt, for what he was inside, it was a proportional response. But Wilhelm hadn’t been told that much. “Because you were the lure, Lance Corporal,” Cobalt said, blue eyes becoming a more solid red as he looked to the scared man once more, “You, scared and in over your head, with all those negative emotions-you were bait. It’s how the Special Corps operates.”

Wilhelm looked to Cobalt, eyes shrinking again. “But I-”

“Freeze!” The voice snapped over the speakers, “Lance Corporal, stand down! We will open fire!”

“But I’m on your side!” Wilhelm said, shocked and terrified. So much terror, so much despair.

The Beast in his stomach growled, and it came out of Cobalt’s lips. It echoed off of the empty airport, silencing everything with it’s inhuman delight. Cobalt’s body began to shake, skin growling pale, veins growing black.

No Beast Mode. No Beast Mode.

“Fire at will!”

Okay. Beast Mode.

It happened all at once. Cobalt leaped at Wilhelm, skin turning to deep black fur, white horns growing out of his lengthening mane. His face elongated into a muzzle, white fangs flashing as his fingers turned to claws. His clothes grew with him, legs growing digitigrade as a long, tufted tail grew from his back. He was on Wilhelm in an instant as the rifles opened fire. His body soaked up every blast as the Beast shielded Wilhelm from the initial onslaught. But the terror, the fear-it was so much. It was so close. His mouth opened, a sigh leaving him with steam on his breath. He needed it, need to taste more-

A blast shook his side, and Cobalt turned to face the tide. The Beast rose to meet them, a roar on his lips as he charged forward. He shoved his head downwards into one soldier, goring their middle with a horn. The screams went up as Cobalt cut through machines and men alike, a flurry of fur and claw. Repulsors were forgotten in favor of tearing through everything between him and the exit.

For a moment, Cobalt lost himself in his berserk fury. But his senses came back slowly, as he slammed a line of robots into a wall. Four paws hit the pavement as he loped down one long tunnel. There were too many negative emotions here. He tried to clear his head, the Beast racing into the shadows, out of sight of cameras and soldiers. The monster slipped away, and began to shrink in the shadows. Cobalt dived into a pile of luggage as he shrunk to his human form, the Beast boiling away into ashes. The huntsman tried to catch his breath, feeling sick to his stomach at his delight, even as the monster roared inside him.

Cobalt looked up as soldiers and machines swept by the luggage bay. In the distance, he could make out a military transport, sparsely guarded. They’d deployed everything to find him. He watched as the soldiers began to spread out, searching for him. One came near, armor hiding his features. He was just about Cobalt’s size.

Perfect.

With both of them out of sight, Cobalt tugged the soldier into the pile, wrapping an arm around his neck. His other hand slid under the helmet, pushing it off as he covered the man’s mouth. He kicked and shook, but then slowly stopped, unconscious. Cobalt looked around, and started to take apart the man’s armor. He tried not to think about the fear and anxiety surrounding him now, like a woman’s perfume or the tempting flavor of drink. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach, the need to pounce, to strike, to kill. He placed the armor on over his clothes, and pulled hard on one thought, one single objective: Ruby.

He had to get to Ruby.

And he had to be better than this when he did.

#t: prose #t: brawl in the branwens (Branwen AU)

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