To clarify, it wasn't Jaune's unit who were about to be screwed.
But the Beowolves.
The impact that had launched Nora, vanished into a haze of smoke and ruin. The collapsed warehouse wall shuddered beneath the crater that she had made. The shockwave still rippled in Jaune's bones, his ears ringing from the sheer violence of it.
And yet, despite the devastation, he smiled.
Not out of cruelty or because he wanted to see Nora hurt. No, Jaune grinned because he knew better. In practice earlier today, he'd seen the way her body soaked up punishment that would flatten anyone else. Nora Valkyrie wasn't the type to fall quietly—she was the type who got louder, brighter, and far more dangerous the harder you hit her.
Her Rune skill, Discharge, was nothing short of terrifying.
Similar, at first glance, to Oscar's ability to redirect his own momentum or Yang's volatile buildup of explosive power, Nora's variant took everything one step further. When struck, crushed or launched through stone and steel—Nora could absorb the force, metabolize it and turn the trauma into raw, furious electricity.
Every broken wall was a battery. Every shockwave was fuel.
And right now, the second Alpha had just given her a feast.
The new Alpha snarled, its rune skill, Claw was still crackling around its arms, tearing through the broken pavement as it launched forward again, a blur of speed despite its massive frame. Its growls shook with challenge, primal fury burning in its glowing eyes as it tore toward the ruined warehouse where Nora had disappeared.
Jaune's focus caught something else—movement on his right.
Ren's pistols barked once, twin streaks of light forcing the first Alpha back in a stumble. Its roar shook glass from the windows above, but Ren didn't linger. In a blink, he blurred into motion, the soles of his boots striking sparks as he sprinted.
Jaune braced himself. This was a situation they had already trained for.
In a second, Ren was already there.
One moment Jaune and Oscar stood firm, holding their ground against the remnants of the swarm, and the next Ren was behind them, arms like iron bars hooking under their torsos. And before Jaune could process it, his stomach lurched.
He was airborne.
"Urk—" Jaune groaned, legs flailing as the teen hauled him effortlessly up across one shoulder, Oscar slung over the other like they were sacks of flour.
It wasn't graceful or dignified. But Ren wasn't aiming for either. His eyes were locked on the battlefield, his jaw tight and every line of his face rigid with determination. However, Jaune could see his face slowly morph into a disturbingly scary grin.
Like he was about to enjoy the spectacle that was about to occur.
And in the next instant, Jaune understood why.
The dust began to clear.
Through the dissipating haze, the world slowed to a crawl in Jaune's perception. His Body stat allowed him to see every detail in clear clarity. The sheer, impossible spectacle unfolding before him.
Electricity.
Massive arcs of it tore free from the ruins where Nora had landed, searing white-blue streaks that split the darkness like cracks in reality itself. Bolts danced across the shattered concrete, crawling up the rebar skeleton of the collapsed warehouse. Metal groaned, walls flickered with luminous veins, and the smell of ozone burned into Jaune's lungs.
And at the center of it all—Nora.
She rose from the crater like something out of myth, her silhouette engulfed in a storm of lightning. Strands of hair floated weightless in the electric field, her armor glowing with outlines traced by arcs that danced across her skin. For a moment, Jaune could only stare—she looked less like a girl and more like a miniature Thunder God given flesh. A war goddess sculpted in lightning.
The very air vibrated with her presence. The steps she took crackled with energy discharging into the ground and leaving molten footprints where her boots touched earth. The dust around her vaporized further into mist, rising like steam from the sheer heat of her presence.
Jaune's own grin widened, heart hammering with exhilaration.
'That's Nora, alright.'
The new Alpha faltered in its charge, just for a heartbeat.
Its predatory momentum wavered as its glowing eyes locked on the radiant storm that Nora had become. The creature growled, its claws twitched and shoulders rose as if it could feel the static crawling across its black fur. Apparently, even monstrous dream creatures could hesitate before that kind of raw, incandescent fury.
But only for a second.
It lunged again.
Faster, harder and straight for the storm, as though to tear it apart before it could fully form.
Ren didn't wait to see the outcome. His grip tightened, his muscles coiled, and he vaulted with impossible strength, carrying Jaune and Oscar with him as he bounded clear of the battlefield. The cracked street blurred beneath them as they landed atop the husk of a delivery truck, rubble sliding from its roof with the impact.
"Brace for impact!" Ren barked once, voice tight with manic amusement.
Jaune twisted on his shoulder, still half-wrapped in Ren's iron hold, eyes straining toward the warehouse.
And then he saw it clearly.
Nora's head was tilted back, her grin wild and her teeth were bared. Lightning pulsed from every pore, her presence was now, no longer a passive shimmer but a raging storm. Her warhammer gleamed white like the core of a sun, electricity crawling up its length, arcs snapping from the head to the ground in jagged cracks.
The earth itself trembled.
Jaune's breath caught in his throat, awe overtaking everything else.
This was the moment.
This was Nora's turn.
The Alpha raced toward her, its claws wreathed in crackling red energy, its growl an earth-shaking roar as it carved a path of destruction through the street. Every step tore stone asunder, every bound shook the world.
But Nora didn't move to dodge.
She welcomed it.
The night illuminated, shadows fleeing, every rooftop, every shard of glass reflecting the storm made flesh.
All the Grimm seemed to pause to look at her. The Rank 0 Beowolves, which were once mid-scramble after Jaune and Oscar, faltered at the sight, their howls caught in their throats, their red eyes shrinking against the blinding light.
For a heartbeat, every lesser Beowolf turned as one. Their eyes burned red in the fractured light, slavering jaws dripping shadow as they twisted toward the incandescent beacon that was Nora.
They felt her.
Her lifeforce was akin to a sun in the eternal night, radiant and impossible to ignore. Every instinct that drove them, screamed hunger, obsession and the endless craving for the living. And though the presence of two Alphas had tempered their movements, sharpening them beyond the mindless frenzy of lesser Grimm, at their core, they were still beasts.
They craved her. Wanted her. Needed her flesh!
The dozen surged forward, claws raking and howls splitting the night. The swarm blackened the ruined street like a tide of tar and teeth rushing toward the storm's heart.
Slow motion swallowed the world for Jaune. He could see every detail, every spark, every ripple of air warping from the heat. His pulse roared in his ears, but not with fear—with anticipation.
Because Nora Valkyrie was no longer just fighting.
She was about to commence a slaughter.
And the Alpha, the dream creature that had dared launch her into the rubble, was about to learn what it meant to give fuel to a storm.
That storm did not wait.
Nora Valkyrie vanished in a blast of force that turned the very air inside the warehouse to a cannon's roar. One instant, she stood wreathed in arcs of lightning, the next, she was gone, a corona of energy exploding outward in her wake.
The rubble beneath her boots disintegrated, chunks of concrete atomized into dust and glass that glittered in the aftershock. The warehouse's skeleton of rebar screamed as if alive. Molten sparks cascaded like tiny meteors amidst the night sky, as the building's ruin collapsed further into itself.
And then came the thunder.
The shockwave spread like a tidal wave, a low, bone-shaking boom that pulverized the asphalt of the street, rattled windows half a block away, and left Jaune's teeth aching in his skull. His ears rang, his vision blurred, yet his eyes tracked her—always her—as she cut across the battlefield faster than thought.
The first Alpha, scarred from its clash with Ren and Nora earlier, hesitated. Its claws flexed against the ground, its growl caught halfway between defiance and unease. It backed away with a leap, muscles taut with something alien to its kind. Not rage or hunger but wariness.
Perhaps it recognized something in her. Perhaps it simply understood instinctively what the others could not.
It didn't matter.
Because Nora was already there.
She appeared in front of the second Alpha in an instant, her form blurred by speed that left afterimages of lightning burning across Jaune's retinas. One moment she was distant, like brewing storm on the horizon—then she was at the beast's chest, hammer already mid-arc.
She spun.
Her whole body rotated in a devastating vertical motion, momentum coiling through her frame, feeding into the warhammer that had become an extension of herself. Electricity crackled and screamed, her silhouette etched in white fire as she brought the weapon down in a singular, apocalyptic strike.
The Alpha tried.
It raised its arms, claws braced against the impossible blow. A curiously human gesture, one Jaune recognized all too well. He had seen it in countless duels against Beowolves—those flashes of mimicry, the way Grimm imitated humanity as though the echo of their prey lingered in their creation.
But this echo was useless.
The hammer fell.
The sound was neither a crack nor a boom. It was a detonation. A sonic cataclysm that seemingly tore apart the world in every direction.
The Alpha's block shattered instantly. Its arms buckled and claws snapped like brittle glass beneath an impossible weight. For the briefest instant, Jaune could almost believe he saw its body ripple—like water struck by a falling meteor.
Then the electricity surged and the beast liquefied.
It wasn't just broken or torn apart—it was unmade. Its form dissolved under the simultaneous assault of concussive force and raw current, arcs splitting its body into fragments before the storm consumed them.
And the shockwave… gods, the shockwave.
It annihilated the street and every other beowolf in the area, disintegrating them into ash just as it had, their wayward alpha.
Asphalt split like kindling, the ground peeled open in fractures that spewed dust and flame. Cars were hurled end over end, metal crumpling midair like paper. The very truck Ren had leapt atop with Jaune and Oscar, and now bracing behind, flipped sideways, crashing into the ruins of a nearby building in a groaning avalanche of brick and steel.
The concussive blast rolled outward in a dome of destruction, flattening everything in its radius. Broken windows shattered further into clouds of diamond dust. Power lines whipped loose like dying serpents as poles toppled across the block.
And then, silence.
Choking dust billowed in the aftermath, swallowing the street in a thick, blinding haze. The ringing in Jaune's ears was deafening, his heartbeat the only drum that tethered him to the present. He coughed, blinking grit from his eyes, clutching the overturned wreckage of the truck for balance.
Beside him, Oscar was pale, wide-eyed, his lips parted in shock. Ren crouched low, one arm braced across the wreckage, eyes locked forward, expression still adorned with an unsettling grin.
Cautiously, they peeked from behind the truck.
Through the thinning fog, the battlefield was revealed.
A crater.
It wasn't simply a dent in the ground, but a molten wound carved into the earth itself. Asphalt bubbled like tar around its edges, glowing with heat. Rebar curled and wept, concrete hissed where arcs of electricity still danced across its fractured surface. The smell of ozone, ash, and scorched metal clung thick in the air.
And at its center—
Nora.
Her chest rose and fell in exhilarated breaths, every inhale pulling the storm deeper into her lungs. Lightning still clung to her form, coiling across her arms, crawling into her hammer, sizzling against the earth at her feet. Her grin was wild, unrestrained, almost feral with joy.
Her eyes glittered through the haze, twin stars burning in the night.
She wasn't just simply standing in that crater.
She owned it.
For a heartbeat, Jaune forgot to breathe. His mind flickered back to a memory—Glynda Goodwitch during orientation, her voice cool and sharp as she had explained the nature of Rank 1 Awakened.
"They are not ordinary combatants," she had said. "Rank 1s are also known as..."
She had paused, letting her words hang heavy in the room before delivering the name history had given them.
"Building Breakers."