Balthazar, Fei Xian Zi

Balthazar looked on with a degree of confusion at what was unfolding before him. The sizeable beast was roaring and squealing and whatever else it happened to be doing in pain. He looked down through red lenses at his sword and his sword looked back up at him. It was just as confused as its wielder.... The ice blast shouldn't have caused the creature that much distress, should it? No, certainly not. It was big enough-- and presumably strong enough-- that it could break through the ice without excessive effort. And it was also presumably used to low temperatures down here underground unless they happened to find a heat vent. Had it landed on something?

The Ice dust in his Sicarius' blade faded and was summarily replaced with Energy dust. A dark red light suffused the length and then some of the blade in what would seem to be a structure not unlike a light saber, though it wasn't nearly as intense as all that. The Energy dust of Balthazar's sword was used as a direct extension to his blade, elongating it for additional maneuvering room in battle. Apart from the blasts fired from the weapon, it acted more or less as such: A longer sword.

Looking behind himself, seeking to give orders to Fei, it required a double take for the armored combatant to realize that the girl was no longer behind him. ...Or anywhere near him for that matter. 'Well, she can certainly haul arse when she wants to....' That was fine, however. He worked best alone.

Flicking his gaze back toward the Grimm, Balthazar took a closer look at the frozen water above and around the Burrowham. In addition to the long, thin, red structures, there seemed to be an unnatural shimmering that looked not unlike the creatures he had already annihilated in these waters. The question was, were these shimmering things the Sangueteeth? Or were they an unknown quantity? The message had said something about 'at least two' unknown monsters beside the listed four. Were those the camoflauged fish? Or were those the red things in the ice? Perhaps it was both, but then where did the leeches come in?

While he was thinking about all the various possibilities, Ba'al's right arm flicked two swift slashes at the air before him launching crimson arcs of energy, each roughly eight inches long and half an inch wide, in an 'X' pattern. They would score nasty cuts on the mole if they struck-- somewhere around its head--, but it was little more than a grab for attention. To lure it back to their waking point as planned.

Immediately thereafter, he launched himself backward through the water and landed within sight of the original hall. Looking left, he held up an armored hand to Fei. He would be the bait while she lay in wait to attack when it came close.

Down in that miserable pit with these stone halls, she was plenty loud enough for him to hear. Especially considering that, for some reason, the roaring coming from the huge Grimm down there seemed to have stopped.... Which made very little sense. Unless the thing was much weaker in fortitude than their description would lead him to believe, even 'Very squishy' aside, it shouldn't be dead. And, for some reason, Balthazar just couldn't let it go. It was eating at him; and for much more reason than being deprived of a fight down here.

The concentrated energy coming from his sword faded and was subsequently replaced with actual fire. With a sharp horizontal swing, Ba'al cast a small burst of light down the tunnel and confirmed that the beast was indeed dead. Harrumphing to himself, the armored fighter disengaged both his sword and his aura. Leaving his sword once again a regular blade, his armor in place but unpowered, and his personal energy reserves almost untouched.

Trucking through the stomach high water with surprising speed, Balthazar was engulfed in a sea of darkness as he approached the cavern. Without an aura to take hold of, even the red glow coming from the eyes of the suit had faded. Once he reached the incline that marked the entrace to the cavern, Ba'al lept up out of the water. Landing, he jumped again, unimpeded, and whirled forward through the air twice, shaking most of the water off of his armor.

Dark as it was, he could just barely make Fei out over to the side. "Feckin' thing died where it sat. I barely touched it." He said with a perturbed tone a moment after she said something about light. Holding his sword straight overhead-- just to be sure-- he deployed the blade and its fire dust once again. He first looked to her, then to the spear, then to her again, then to the ba-... the pile of clothes behind her. 'Used the bags, eh?' If her little stunt in acquiring the lantern in the first place hadn't been evidence enough, this was another demonstration of her ingenuity. She may have not had a magically packed sword literally capable of using any element known to dust, but she was clearly still useful when it came to the braining.

Hidden eyebrow raised, Ba'al lowered the blade and touched its flames to the large ball of wadding on the end of the spear. The torch ignited in a large poof, and Ba'al's sword switched from fire to lightning. "Dunno what killed it, and that's more concernin' than ****in' anythin'." He expanded on his words from before the lighting and the torching and the yeah. At the same time, the dust in his blade was building another charge of electricity.

Marching over toward the edge of the water again, he waited as his sword continued to build. "Hop up." He tapped his shoulder with his free hand, the metallic clank echoing a bizarre tone that anyone with the referential knowledge would realize most certainly did not come from steel. "We'll hoof it at least as far as the corpse. Just keep the ****in' fire away from the ice." His demeanor had changed a bit. Barely noticeable. The manner in which the creature died was still puzzling him.

Ba'al would stand still long enough for her to clamber up his body and secure seat up on his shoulders, the larger half of Sicarius providing decent enough foot holds at his waist to make things easier. Once she was up there and... well, as comfortable as sitting on an ornate pile of metal as possible, Ba'al whipped his right arm outward. Cast a tremendous forty second charge of electric dust clear down range to the water at the end of the initial forty-some foot straightaway, any remaining waterborne beasties from the cavern to the Burrowhusk would be electrocuted, same as before.

Once the crackling charge in the water dissipated, Balthazar deactivated his sword yet again and began marching down the hall once again. Hopefully nothing would be feeling particularly froggish after that jolt. For Fei's sake.

As he trucked down through the hall, Balthazar kept his right arm raised above the water. His eyes were ever scanning the surface of the water for disturbances inconsistent with his own movements. Sealed up as he was in his armor suit, there was little concern of attack from the creatures below the surface even assuming some had survived his reelectrification of the water. His primary concern was anything leaping out of the water. Such would have been an as yet unobserved behavior from these waterborne beasts, but the expectation of the unexpected was a basic tennant of combat and survival.

His steady march reached the intersection. "That's the problem. What ****in' ridiculous capabilities do these pricks have that they can kill something that large on their own? The beast could have just as easily dropped on a spike of stone or ice and pierced somethin' vital, but unless I lift the bitch up-" Wait, lift the Burrowham? Ba'al hadn't exhibited that kind of power... "-there's no way ta tell." He finished just after they reached the other side of the intersection and continued straight down the center of the tunnel.

"As for the red ****es, they could have easily been three feet long. The shinin' pricks were harder to gauge, but the either of them could be Sangueteeth. ****in' thing suggested one o'them pricks could bleed you stupid in a minute flat. Twenty o'them on the arse of that moley ****e could have done it, but it probably wouldn't'a screamed so much as just passed the **** out." Such were the processes his mind enacted twenty-four-seven verbalised as his even and plain tone carried his accent.

"The good news is," he said as he rounded the corner at the end of the straightaway, "I froze up most of 'em and electrocuted the rest." His sword was wagged slightly through the air as he mentioned the shocking attack. "Bad news is, that fat ****e down there ain't quite fat enough to block the flow and stop others from comin' right on through."

They were approaching the dead Burrowham about now. Once they climbed up onto its back, he would disengage his armor and recreate the ice raft. For a moment, he wondered how much juice his ice crystal had left. He had replaced it a couple of weeks ago and barely used it since. Then again, this was quite possibly the single largest amount of dust he'd ever used in one situation. Let alone in the past... what? Half hour, by now? If this was how life in this blasted school was going to be, he might just be better served forgoing that fifth option, reworking the hilt of his blade, and using four slightly larger crystals at a time.

"S'possible. Can't exactly go ****in' about with trial and error though, can we?" Ba'al said as he moved around both the corpse of Burrowham and the ice that surrounded it. "At this point, best we have is preventive annihilation. Probably need to catch one alive to get proper data. And that just isn't my bloody damned department." His sarcastic flair flared back up for a moment there as he let the girl clamber up onto the beast.

Following her, he crouched low on the ass of the giant mole and recinded his armor. The incessant clicks and clanks filling the silence for several moments as the cybernetic plates folded back up across his shoulder, reforming the scabbard to the blade. Said blade opened once again and the ice dust he had been vaguely worried about resumed its presense in his sword as strong as ever. Such was the benefit of using an actual crystal rather than the powdered alternative. The scarred young man had learned that trick from Sicarius' predecessor some years ago. The powered armor it was based on had run on several energy crystals located throughout the thing. The sheer strength that old codger's suit could exert was god-like....

As he sat building the dust charge of his weapon, Ba'al too kept an eye out for anything unsavory in the nearby water. While Fei watched the front and sides, he kept vigil on the back. After a full minute, the sword was swung outward in a wide arc, casting the dust out in an elongated stream rather than a singular, orblike blast. The resultant impact to the water created a much longer, more boat-like structure that he subsequently began reinforcing-- and roughing up the surface of-- with uncharged shots of ice. "Done. Let's get the **** out of this ****ehole." He called back over his shoulder before hopping out onto the center of the ice structure.

Standing back to full height, he moved toward the front of the raft so Fei's weight would be counteracted evenly enough. Once she was aboard, Ba'al began pressing his left hand into the ceiling of the cave, getting them started moving onward once again. He wasn't entirely sure how she'd manage to maintain both the torch and the oar in her spear simultaneously, but they would figure something out. Even if they had to push along the walls and ceiling just as he had done to get them going.

Their trip at that point had become primarily silent. Apart from irrelevant chatter focused around getting to know one another which, of course, wasn't something Ba'al was interested in enacting despite the fact that he was actually getting along with his partner, they had seemed to run dry of topical points of discussion. That was perfectly fine with the red-head, however. As he aided their movement with infrequent pushes along the ceiling or walls and periodically touched his sword to various parts of their raft, he was left to his thoughts.

Balthazar's thoughts were often the only decent conversation he had. After all, who better to keep up than your own mind? This time, his thoughts led him on a winding journey of ideas, each one connected to the last in some way. He bounced from topic to topic, thought to thought. What exactly was the goal down here? What moron thought subterranean caves were a good idea for initiation? Who decided the partners and where to toss each of them? Weren't the teams supposed to be determined by random chance encounter? They-- the partners at the very least-- certainly weren't chance if they were specifically dumped into those caverns. Who decided to stick Fei in this particular hole with him? Why? Why did she wear that half-assed mask over her eyes? Was she blind? Partially blind? Did that thing help her see? Was she scarred? Ba'al was plenty scarred. Why would you hide your scars? 'Why do I care?' 'You don't, you're just thinking.' 'Right.' 'You're hungry.' 'Am I? I suppose so, but I go without food longer than this on a daily basis.' 'Not with this level of exertion you don't.' 'What about my exercises every ****in' morning?' 'Routine.' 'True. I should break routine.' 'Maybe you should, but then you'll be hungry more often.' 'I'll adapt. I always adapt.'

The path in his mind grew ever more twisting and irreverent even as the path before the pair did the same. One particular twist snapped Ba'al from his minor mental reverie. Reaching a hand up to the ceiling, he forced their travel down to a crawl as they approached another fork in the tunnels. "Hold up, lass." He called back to Fei who had been making an impressive juggling job of that spear. Ba'al's sword closed as they floated toward the T-section. Looking as far down each as he could without hurling fire down them, Ba'al was about to shrug and call for straight once more when he thought he heard something.

"Yeh hear that?" He asked quietly. For a moment, he almost wished he was a Faunus with those bloody ears. He quickly shook that notion from his mind and considered a technological alternative. That, however, wouldn't help at the moment, and he dedicated his thoughts toward the listening of the noises. It didn't sound like a beast scratching about or grunting to itself and/or its brethren. "That sound like some prick talkin', to you?" He asked, slightly louder, his empty hand pointing down the left hall.

Walking back down the raft a bit, his other arm lashed at the wall before the turn once again. An upward arrow consisting of two swift cuts, indicating that they had gone up the left course rather than headed straight. The decision was made. Moving to the front, he'd then reach for the walls and begin turning the iceboat to the left before it meandered it's way straight without bidding. Once their turn was completed, he'd lash his sword into the other side of that corner in a right facing arrow before deploying his ice dust once again. The four grating, scraping cuts into the rock would echo down the tunnels in each direction. Whether it would sound like people or monsters to what was possibly another set of initiates, he couldn't say but, they were almost guaranteed to hear it either way.