Professor Port loaded all of the students onto the airships and dropped off teams in different locations. Port droned on and on about the different locations, dropping off teams every few minutes. He challenged us to slay more grimm than the other teams could. He was rambling on about the dangers, but how we were all trained to handle ourselves and I began to drone out the sound of his voice, losing interest in his words and watching the trees fly by below us.

"That being said, who's up for a challenge?" I barely heard the Professor say. "Aha! A volunteer! Very well then. Miss Neopolitan, get your team ready to jump." I blinked in surprise, trying to process what had been said. I glanced to my teammates to see that Meschever had raised his hand and volunteered our team. I glared at him as we prepared to jump.

"Are you sure that you wanna drop 'em here? It's really not safe. They'll be lucky to survive 10 minutes down there!" the pilot objected. 'Loki will be lucky if he survives 10 minutes with me,' I thought bitterly as Professor Port assured the pilot that he knew what he was doing. We were given orders to jump and each of us leaped from the plane.

I used my umbrella to slow the momentum of my fall before using the curved handle to wrap around a tree and swing slowly down. I glanced up to see how my team would do.

Axelle was the first to catch my attention. She used her swords and twirled them quickly like helicopter propellers, until she drifted down beside me.

"Nice," I complimented.

"Thanks," she replied with a nod before looking up as well as Jake made his way down. He dug his broadsword deep into the trunk of a tree and used it to slow his fall. I nodded in approval and then looked back up, slightly hoping that Meschever would screw up his landing. My eyes scanned the sky and the trees above but there was no sign of him.

"Looking for me, Sweet Thing?" His voice came suddenly from behind me and making me jump. I turned to face him with hate filled words on my tongue. 

A loud crash distracted me from my anger. I turned back to Axelle and Jake and the sound of the crash, seeing a pillar of smoke rising from the trees a good distance away. 

"What happened?" I asked the two,  hoping they had seen whatever it was. 

"The plane," Axelle said in disbelief,  "it just started falling.  It crashed into the trees."

"We have to check for survivors," Jake said with determination in his voice.

"Are you crazy?" Loki  asked in surprise.  "Grimm will be swarming around the devastation of that crash. We don't even know if anyone survived."

"We still have to check," Axelle replied.

"But-" Loki began to protest.

"That's our job," I told him firmly. 

Loki opened his mouth to protest but closed it again. He took a deep breath before reluctantly saying, "fine. Lead the way."

Jake took the lead, heading for the crash. It wasn't long until we came across grimm. Jake signaled for us to be quiet, then signaled for each of us to attack. Luckily we weren't coming across very large grimm. As a team that didn't have much experience together, we weren't very good at coordinated attacks and we kept getting into each other's way. This was more grimm than I had seen in my whole life, and while Loki didn't drop his stupid grin he did at least quit the jokes and start killing things. Somehow we managed to keep moving forward.

"We're almost there," Jake huffed, pulling his sword out of the fading chest of a beowulf. More growls were heard from behind us. They were everywhere, and in greater numbers than any of us had ever seen.

"We'll be stuck fighting here forever if we face every grimm that we come across," Axelle noted.

"She's right," I agreed, slightly out of breath.

"We have to move quickly. The sooner we get in the sooner we can get out," Loki said calmly.  Shuffling a set of playing cards in his hands. I hadn't seen him fight, though I had seen grimm fall dead around him. Though the fact that he was casually messing around with some cards seriously ticked me off.

"Then lets go faster, if you guys have the energy for it," Jake decided. We all nodded, agreeing that faster was better. Axelle and Jake sheathed their weapons and we started running through the trees. As we ran forward, we spotted more beowulves up ahead.

"Only fight if you have to. Keep moving!" Jake instructed as he ducked under the reach of one. Axelle ducked under the reach of two, pulled out her swords and cut them both deep enough to kill before sheathing her swords, never slowing her pace.

A rather large Ursa blocked my path. I jumped up onto the edge of a tree and used it to propel myself high enough to flip over the bearlike grimm. I touched the ground, rolled back to my feet and kept running. Once I was a good distance away I checked to be sure that it didn't follow. This distraction caused me to charge straight into someone else.

We collided hard and fell to the ground. I groaned and pulled myself into a sitting position to see who I had run over. He was about a foot or so bigger than me and had black hair. His jet black cat ears were revealed  and the second I looked into his lilac eyes I was roughly dragged to the past.

It had been years since I had seen those eyes. It was a while after Nicholas Sleepslicer had taken me under his wing, and I was still so young.   We had finished an execution mission. A man and a woman. Their faces weren't clear in my memory. I had reached a point where I had accepted killing my targets, as much as I didn't like it.  I had killed the man myself. He was part of a particularly nasty gang, and his wife was also named a target. I was leaving their bedroom while Sly took care of clean up. Making sure that nothing was left that could trace back to us. I was walking down the hallway when I heard someone crying softly. 

I slowly opened the door to a bedroom, clearly a young boys. I couldn't remember now what it had looked like, but inside was a white door leading to a closet. The crying was coming from inside it. When I pulled open the door  I found a small boy, about two years younger than myself. He was hugging his knees. His black cat ears twitched and laid back. He sniffled and stared up at me with wide terrified lilac eyes. I saw myself in those eyes, the night that I had lost my own parents.

"It's okay," I heard myself saying. "Everything will be okay." I had knelt down and took his hand. I barely remember trying to justify letting the boy live in my head. The targets were his parents, and he was just a small boy, what could he know? My small frame and icecream colors must have convinced him that I was harmless. He didn't even hesitate to cling to me. I scooped him up and carried him. I picked up a red and white baseball cap that I pulled over his eyes so he wouldn't catch a glimpse of his parents as I carried him out of the house before Sly could see. I couldn't carry him much farther than the end of the yard.

"You have to go on your own from here," I told him, setting him on the ground and saying that he needed to go to the police station. He had cried harder when I let him go, saying that he was afraid. I knelt down to his eye level, promising him that he would be okay. 

"Did you know that this hat is a magic hat?" I had told him, adjusting the hat on his head. "If you wear this, it will keep you safe." I have no clue what convinced him to believe me, but the glow in his eyes told him that he did.  He surprised me by giving me a hug and thanking me before taking off down the street as fast as his little legs would carry him.  I couldn't help but feel incredibly protective of the boy who I'd just met, and incredibly guilty that for what I had just done. 

I was yanked back to the present by the sound of laughter. Loki was clutching his stomach and double over as he laughed.

"Ha ha ha! You just took him out! You're so TINY! But you were going to fast! You actually ran someone over! That was the funnies thing that I had ever seen!"  He wiped away a tear from his green eye. 

"Not that funny dude," the boy groaned. I rose to my feet and offered him a hand. He scooped up a red and white baseball cap from the ground where it had fallen and tucked it onto his head to cover his ears.  His eyes widened a bit when they landed on me and my outstretched hand. He took it hesitantly and I pulled him to his feet.

"Thanks. Do I know you?" He asked, looking me over. 

"No," I said, dropping his hand and avoiding his gaze. 

"You guys coming?" Axelle asked, jogging back to us. I had nothing to say and Loki was still laughing too hard. 

"What's the hold up?" Jake asked, as he came up behind Axelle. A grin appeared on his face as he recognized the boy standing next to me. 

"Hey Ethan! What are you doing here?!" Jake asked eagerly. 

"I saw the plane go down and I was heading to it," the boy beside me shrugged. 

"You two know each other?" Axelle asked, looking to our temporary team mate. 

"Yeah, Ethan and I are teammates," Jake replied. 

"Small world," Loki sighed, over his laughing fit. 

"Where's your temp team?" Axelle asked Ethan. 

"We got separated in the jump. I'm guessing that their on their way to the same place," Ethan replied looking back to me. 

"Either way, we should get going. This guy coming with us?" Loki asked, taking the cards out of his pocket and shuffling them again. 

Axelle shrugged and said, "I don't see why not."

Ethan turned to me an asked, "Do you mind?" Unable to answer, I just shook my head no. I didn't mind if he came, as long as he didn't remember me. Guilt was currently crushing me like a rock. What was I supposed to tell him if he did remember? Last I checked simply saying 'hey, sorry I killed your parents' wasn't good enough for anybody. 

Jake grinned at his teammate and the rest of us and said, "Alright, lets keep going."