MCCA’s fourth year was the defining year for the team, as it is with many academy teams, though it wasn’t until almost the end of the year. Most of the year passed as the previous years, MCCA studied hard, trained her, and each member grew in their roles. Malina dedicated much of her free time to studying aura, dust, and practicing the meditation that the professor had shown her; Carmine harnessed her semblance to its fullest and destroyed anything in her path; Candida become an ace shot and a master of distraction, Aurelia become nothing more than a whisper in the wind on the battlefield.
The time eventually came for each team to leave on their final missions before the final examinations began, with each team taking part in a high priority mission. For MCCA’s part, they were specifically requested by the headmistress of Haven Academy for a mission on Anima, apparently she had heard of their consistent track record. When the team arrived and met with Eliana, they learned why they had been chosen and exactly what the mission was. The White Fang, not yet an outwardly violent terrorist organization, had been accruing members and power within a mine in the mountains that they had bought out.
MCCA, being an outside force, could come in to investigate and fight them without the risk of retaliation to their families. The plan was simple, as simple as infiltrating an organization’s HQ and taking down threats within can be. Aurelia, using her semblance to manipulate the light around her, would disguise herself as a White Fang member, a scar across her mask to indicate who she was to her team, while Candida would act as a recruit while using her semblance to remotely bend light to make restraints appear on Malina and Carmine’s hands to make them appear to be captives as well as making their weapons and Malina’s tail appear to be invisible. Once inside, Malina and Carmine would be lead to a holding area and stage a breakout while Candida and Aurelia would meet with higher ups to see if they could glean any information about the group.
The plan, like most plans, did not go according to plan.
Once inside, Malina and Carmine were ordered to the holding area, escorted by Aurelia, while Candida was brought to an examination area to be assessed for the group. Once the two humans had been locked behind a steel door, Aurelia was sent off to a meeting of one of the higher ups. Deciding that leaving their teammates to their own devices surrounded by enemies would be a mistake, Carmine and Malina began the plan to break out. Malina took several minutes to meditate, anything that would protect her further, anything that could help.
Malina’s semblance blew the door off its hinges, crushing one member against the wall behind it. With no time to feel the consequences of their actions, the pair split up, Malina would go to Aurelia while Carmine would go to Candida. They didn’t get three steps away from each other before an alarm began to sound.
The next fifteen minutes of Malina’s life was an endless battle of fending off seemingly limitless white fang members as she made her way through the maze of hallways. She never wanted to kill anyone, she wasn’t that kind of person, she used her paralyzing and knock-out venoms and light grazes to incapacitate her enemies but there was only so much venom to use. When she ran out, she resorted to cutting them her tail, slashing their ankles and knees to get them to fall, but she was terrified and was only getting worse by the minute.
She was alone, alone and surrounded by enemies, she didn’t know where her teammates, her friends, were. Every passing second, the front crumbled and the terrified little girl underneath came out, every second invasive thoughts accusing her of being a coward swam in her head. Her attacks were becoming less trained, less practiced, they were becoming frantic and desperate.
And then she turned a corner, the flow of white fang finally taking a break, and bumped into one more enemy. There wasn’t any time for thought, no time to consider what could be, all Malina had time to see was a white fang member holding Aurelia’s knife and somewhere in that scared, lonely mindset she felt she knew what had happened to her teammate. Her tail shot through the chest of the white fang member, penetrating the aura and piercing their body.
The illusion faded away like melting ice, bits and pieces melting away to reveal the shocked, scared blue eyes surrounded by black sclera and framed by voluminous golden hair.
There was nothing in Malina’s head as she watched her teammate sliped from the tip of her tail and fell to the ground, gasping for air from punctured lungs as her life slipped from the hole in her chest. No regret, no fear, no anger, no pity, no sadness, nothing at all. Her mind was completely blank, unable to process what had happened, what she had done. She simply stared down at her teammate with wide, unblinking eyes. She stood there until Aurelia passed, staring.
She didn’t close her eyes out of respect, she didn’t place her arms onto her chest, she simply reached down and picked up her dagger and placed it in the satchel that Candida had hidden.
The rest of the mission, to Malina, was a blur. Her doing everything in her power to escape from the mine, finding Carmine and Candida at the entrance, fending off other white fang members, seeing Candida’s face when she saw Malina, her cold eyes looking just like Aurelia’s, Malina throwing up, being carried by Carmine as they fled.
It took two days to make their way through the wilderness back to a town where they could send for an airship to pick them up. Malina was silent for most of the rest of the rest of mission, managing a few attempts of comfort for Candida. Carmine did most of the talking to Eliana and explained what she knew, allowing Malina to stay silent at the back,
It wasn’t until Malina arrived back at Beacon and saw their dorm, one bed now permanently empty, that everything caught up to her and she completely broke down into an inconsolable mess. She stayed in her bed for the rest of the entire week, refusing to talk to Carmine, Candida, or anyone Beacon sent for her. She did eventually end up slowly opening up to her teammates and others though she refused to talk about her part of the mission in detail.
Unfortunately for the former Team MCCA, this lack of communication from their leader coupled with the loss of one of their members cost them greatly on the final exam. They failed the final team exam by several points even though they all passed their individual exams, Malina nearly failing hers.
They were, in the end, allowed to pass after a decision from higher up the chain though Malina assumes it was simply pity.