Chapter 74: Treatment

Chapter 74: Treatment

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryugii. This has been pulled from his Spacebattle publishment. Anyway on with the show...errr read.

Treatment

The plan was a fairly simple one, at least in concept. The executionthat was a bit harder, but still not complex. I was glad to have Onyx's help with this mess, truly, because it made at least that part simpler.

We were going to hide the civilians underground. Suryasta and Vulturnus had gone on ahead, slaying any Grimm they came across and clearing the area around the civilians. I'd swing by, scan them thoroughly to see if they were infected or not, and then contact them with Levant and try to direct them to the nearest safe haven. Beneath the ground, Onyx was hard at work forming large pockets to house the people below the ground which I'd further protect with barriers. The fact that they were buried should be enough to limit the number of Grimm that could attack the barriers at any given time and I'd be in contact with Onyx to notify him of any attempts below ground, which he'd deal with. Any Grimm that tried to dig down to them would be my problem, but they should be a fairly small number and easy to stop. Levantor one of her duplicates, if necessarywould insure they had air and that it remained disease free. Finally, Ozpin would note the locations and send them on to our reinforcements, who would help dig them up after the area was deemed clean.

Assuming we didn't all die, of course.

Sure, it wasn't a perfect idea, especially with something like Crom Cruach possibly running around down therebut they were at least as safe below the ground as they were anywhere else in the city. With Conquest spreading, the Grimm rampaging, and everything elseand hell, it's not like being above ground made them safe from Crom Cruach, either. No, given what we had, that was the safest place to put them; if nothing else, it was the place that had the lowest number of ways for them to die at any given time.

And no, the Mountain Glenn comparisons were not lost on any of us. It said a lot that it was still the best we could come up with.

We got to work quickly, Onyx digging as I directed from above. I moved quickly from rooftop to rooftop, keeping Ozpin on my scroll as I travelled. The older man was hard at work on the other side of the screen, organizing things with methodical efficiency as he got everything ready over there, but honestly, it was just a little comforting to be able to see another face at a time like this. Worst case scenario, I wouldn't be alone when I diedthat was more than most Hunters got.

And thankfully, everything seemed to go well, at least at first. I don't think any of us were under the illusion that that was gonna last, especially once the other taken began to move, but at least for the moment, we had time to move. In a situation where every moment counted, I welcomed the opportunityespecially when I came across some of the infected. They were easy to tell apart, even in the early stages. Dark spots formed on their skin and grew quickly to cover limbs, chests, everything but their face. Then, a mask would slowly grow into place, as well as other, less superficial changes. How the infected behaved in those early stages seemed to vary from panic and aggression to what was almost serenity and acceptance, as well as yet stranger behaviorsprobably a result of whatever Conquest did to people's brains. Or maybe it was just a people thing, I don't know.

Either way, I paused to watch them from a distance once I confirmed that there were no uninfected nearby and quietly observed the disease progress on both a micro and macro scale. I wanted to act, but I held back for the moment instead, waiting so that I could learn more about my enemy. Onyx was still working on the initial site and Vulturnus and Suryasta could handle the situation nearby without me, so this gave me a chance to simply Observe.

I couldn't say I liked what I saw, especially as I alternated between my many forms of sight. It was informative, especially since I'd only seen the mostly finished results of the disease, butinformative wasn't the same as encouraging. The implications, especially as I glimpsed their Auras

But was I right about what I saw? I honestly wasn't sure if my guess was even vaguely correct; I was far from an expert in this matter, I could be mistaken. There could still beno, there had to be a way, even if it was hard to see. Maybe I could even

I suppose there was only one way to find out. I couldn't very well stand her and do nothing, besides.

Waiting for another moment to pick a target, I Lunged towards one of the civilians still in the earlier stages of the disease, grabbing him and drawing him up to a rooftop in short order. His eyeshuman eyes, stillwidened and he tried to say something to me. Was he startled to see me? Thankful and hoping for aid? Terrified? Or did he just have no idea what was going on?

Whatever it was, he couldn't say. The diseases spread had already reached his throat and whatever words he'd tried to give voice became nothing more than choking gaspsone of the reasons I'd chosen him. With the infection so close to his brain already, he didn't have much of a chance unless something was done, and I was the only person who had a real chance of doing anything. Even if

"Shh," I said quietly, holding him in one of the White Tiger's hands and placing another on his chest, where the infection seemed to be at its thickest. "I'm going to try and help you, Jeremy. I want to help you."

And I hope I can, I didn't say as I healed him.

The growth of the dark spots abruptly accelerated, spurs of bone sprouting along his chest and back. He struggled for a moments, tried to kick and screamand then went limp. Above his head, his name faded. Jeremy Brown was wiped away, question marks taking its place.

I closed my eyes and swore quietly under my breath. It was as I'd feared. I'd seen the colors in their Aura, dark patches growing in almost a mirror of their changing flesh. I'd hoped that was all they werethe Aura showing signs that the body had been infected and trying to fight it. But I wasn't so fortunate.

This was a disease of both the body and the soul, sending invading tendrils of sickness throughout their Aura even as it invaded the cells. Looking at it like that, I could understand how it worked, somewhat. The nature of one's Aura was to return on to a predefined stateone's normal body, generally. But like a disease could do to a cell, Conquest was hijacking that process, turning one's own Aura against them. It wasn't the Grimm cells that were mutating these people, at least not wholly. They were being forced to mutate themselves.

Which meantwhat? I had no idea. If I hadn't been able to see it happening before my eyes, I wouldn't have believed such a thing was possible. Changing someone else's Aura like thisno, even beyond that, causing such extreme physical changes should probably be lethal in and off themselves. As the disease progressed, the infected mutated more and more, growing armor plates, spikes, claws, and even larger thingswhere was the matter for such changes even coming from? Logically, they would need to take that mass from the body itself, but for something of this extent

And how did I stop it, I thought. How did I fixthis? Was there a connectionwas he invading the soul through the body? Or was this some kind of two-fold sickness? Where the cells being altered somehow to allow Conquest to touch something he didn't have himself? How was I supposed to stop this? There had to be a way, I justI couldn't tell what was even happening. Conquest was rightI didn't know how this worked. If I did, maybe, but

Then I had no choice but to think things through and try to come to an answer on my own. I thought about what I knew and what I could maybe guess.

Killing the Grimm cells wouldn't be hard, in much the same way that killing cancer cells really wasn't all that hard. There was this whole built up image of diseases, especially the truly famous ones, as if they were this giant monster that healers and doctors were facing with these tiny toothpick swords, but that really wasn't the case. In fact, the problem was pretty much the opposite; the nature of diseases were that they were tiny, tiny things, mixed in amongst the trillions upon trillions of cells that made up a person's body. It's as if someone covered every floor of a building with ants and then added a bucket of slightly different looking ants into the mix and told you to kill the latter without harming the former. But since ants are significantly larger then cells, imagine that your only tools were a broadsword, an ax, a flamethrower, and a tank.

I could kill Conquest's cells, no problem. I could burn them, blast them with radiation, electrocute them, probably even expose them to a vacuum. Given time, I might even be able to nab something sufficiently poisonous that even the Grimm wouldn't like it or something acidic or any number of other things. The problem wasn't killing the diseaseit was not killing everything else. Because while Conquest wouldn't enjoy prolonged exposure to an intense flame or radiation, neither would anyone he was inside of.

Complicating that matter further were two things. To go back to the previous analogy of cells as ants, that works for normal infections. But Conquest was as far above normal diseases as other Grimm were above normal animals. That didn't make him invincible by any means, since it was just a relative increase in durability, but if normal cells were ants, Conquest was a Rhinoceros Beetle. Durable as all hell in comparison, though still just a bugbut whatever was enough to kill it was probably going to kill a bunch of ants, as well.

Secondly, there was the issue of Aura. So long as he was inside someone, he was protected by their Aura. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem since that was true of any diseasebut usually their Aura would also be fighting the invasion, doing its utmost to kill the sickness. That's how my healing could cure illnesses; they could assist that process, empowering someone's Aura enough that it could easily fight off most any illness or defend it while the body's immune system wailed on the disease with impunity. But for an infection like Conquest, their Aura was the problem. He'd turned their own life energy against them somehow and empowering it would just worsen things and accelerate the process. That must be why none of those healers had managed to cure the taken; as far as their Auras were concerned, there wasn't anything wrong. I could see their HP bars but they weren't going down, they were growing. The infected were becoming stronger, faster, healthier in every way beyond the fact that they were turning into monsters. Giving them more HP just

It just helped the process. Somehow, I had to bypass that, get past all the issues to strike past the symptoms and attack the disease itself.

Yeah, I thought with a bit of chagrin. It sounds so simple when I thought of it like that; I wonder why we didn't live in a world free of sickness when it was so easy.

Perhaps I shouldn't think of it as a disease at all, then. Maybe I should consider it a status effect of some kind. I mean, diseases were status effects, but they were part of a larger category and while Soulforge Restoration could cure that specific subset of status ailments, the rest it could only touch second hand. I might be able to address the fact that Onyx was missing a leg, for instance, but if so, it would be by giving him a different status effect that countered the firstin this case, Regeneration. He had a wound that wouldn't normally heal as one status effect, I gave him vastly improved healing as another status effect, ideally they should cancel one another out eventually.

"Good questions," He said. "Though an impartial observer might not you seem to have built your entire theory on ifs and guesses."

I watched him carefully for a moment and then smiled.

"Not completely," I said. "See, there is one thing I'm sure of?"

He lifted an eyebrow, the one that hadn't been covered by his growing mask yet.

"Oh?"

"You're a dick," I said. "You like to hurt people?"

"With brilliant observations like that, I fear for my species. I'm sure you'll overcome us any day now."

I ignored that, leaning forward.

"But you haven't call me son once in this conversation," I continued. "Or mentioned my mom and dad."

He met my eyes for a moment, sighed, and then gave a small chuckle.

"Maybe not completely hopeless"

"The whole 'Grimm Hive Mind' thing has been a theory for God only knows how long, but it's not very well supported. Most Grimm are all but mindless, at least at first, and they don't act like a hive mind would. Sure, you can work togethermaybe even all of you can work togetherbut that just means you can cooperate really well, it doesn't mean there's a single mind controlling you all. If there was, if each of you learned every time a single one of you encountered a threatwell, things would be different. Even a Beowolf could be threatening with that much experience behind it. No, it doesn't make sense for you all to be of one mind; individual Grimm learn and grow stronger by surviving battles, but you all don't. But when I saw you"

I looked at him closely again, watched dark cells meet and separate.

"At first, I thought back to that theory," I said at last, wondering if I could use this. "There's so many of you and you're so old, how else could you do this? But then, why do you work that way and not the other Grimm? You don't. You justyou share information like bacteria do, genetic or otherwise. You're not all knowing, you just talk to yourself a lot."

"Poor communication kills," Conquest replied before smiling. "But good communication kills a hell of a lot more."

I felt a flash of triumph at that and nearly smiled. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"That's one of the things that sets you apart," I guessed. "Unlike most Grimm, you can communicate experiences, likelike sharing immunities. Like any Grimm, you survive and learn, but you pass that information on to others like you in some twisted form of bacterial conjugation. And then a lot of you come together tocreate a consciousness? Like pieces of a puzzle, made out of information and memories. Do your form tissues? Or maybe bacterial mats are a better analogy in your case."

"Hmph," Conquest snorted, but he was smiling as he watched me.

"When I remember you're based on bacteria, how you work makes a bit more sense," I pursed my lips. "And the shellsthey aren't actually shells, are they? They're more like spores. But how do you"

I was silent for a moment.

"The bodies you steal," I said at last.

"It's funny, because you don't look smart," Conquest snorted. "That's right. I do my thing, I have my fun, and when it's time I move on to the next stage and grow a shell around these bodies. You should see some of the places I've been, kidthe forests of bone."

I could imagine. Cities that fell to him, populations erased, and all that was left were fields and fields of white, boney shells waiting for the right time to open up again.

"You won't tell me anything useful," I mused, pondering him. "Not without knowing what you've already said and why. I bet you only talked to me in the first place because I knew your first name. ButI think I've learned a lot, regardless. Thank you, Conquestand you as well, Jeremy. With any luck, I'll come back for you later. Bind."

I tied up Jeremy's body and tossed him aside, deciding to leave him on the roof for now.

"You get all that, Ozpin?" I whispered quietly, making my words carry.

"Loud and clear," The headmaster answered somberly. "I recorded it, as well. Good job, Jaune. If you can"

"Jaune," Onyx's voice interrupted, sounding urgent. "What the hell is happening on the east side?"

I turned my head and saw a building collapse.

"Nothing good," I answered back. "I'll check it out, Onyx. Ozpin, can it wait a minute. I have a feeling we found the other Hunters. I thought this was going too well."