12
chapter 12
"- this button is for thermal, this one for night vision, this is proximity alert, and this-" Ruby was talking for almost an hour now. Seeing as they were getting ready to probably break some laws she decided to roll out her combat gear. It involved flashbangs, smoke grenades, combat knives, a large camo cloak and an overstuffed opaque helmet.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll figure it out on the way. Let's go already." Yang tried to get her sister to focus so they could finally start moving. It was early morning and it would be better if they could be home for dinner. "Ah! Dammit!" Yang clutched the visor of her helmet.
"Did you pull your hair again?" Ruby droned out. She kept in mind Yang's amount of hair when designing it but getting it all inside was a pain for everyone involved.
"No, just turn on the night vision.. Shit, my eyes." Yang removed the headgear to rub her eyes a bit.
"Swear jar!" Ruby immediately chimed in.
"Sure, I'll throw something in when we get back." Yang put the helmet back on and picked up a large black box. "What's inside?"
Ruby grinned from ear to ear. "If there will be a lot of grimm you might see!"
-BBW-
"Looks like they are here, sir." Alec Gross commented as he looked at the opposing cliffside through the binoculars. Formerly a warrant officer of Atlasian military he was now the commander of SDC Vale security. "Now that we know they are indeed doing their job we should head back, this place is not safe." He said to the man in a spotless white suit.
Vlad Eis, head of the logistics, rolled his eyes on his bodyguards concerns. There was a team of ten people holding the perimeter. Unless a murder of nevermores decided to divebomb them, they were completely safe. "I wish to watch the proceedings. If they prove themselves capable we can perhaps offer them a job later on. What do you see?" They were apparently on the opposite side of a U-shaped cliffside with a grimm filled forest below them.
"There are two of them, both wearing helmets and black cloaks. Currently they are most likely unpacking their gear. I can see a rocket launcher. They spotted us. Wave back if you feel like it. Hmm, one is shooing us away? Oh brothers, they brought a mortar! We need to get away, sir! Now!" Two of his subordinates ran up to them and acted as lookouts while he led his charge away.
-BBW-
"Good, they are leaving." Ruby let out a sign of relief. It would be bad if some of the shrapnels hit them.
"Hmp, their loss, I would stay for the fireworks." Her sister commented, unconcerned. "Are you just going to bombard the forest below? You know that the grimm will just run off in different directions."
"Nah, I'm packing something special!" Ruby pulled out a large shell that looked like an upside down pine tree. "I will cage them inside the forest and-"
"- I'll go in and have some fun while you keep an eye out for the ones trying to escape. Nice plan sis." Yang definitely approved. She wouldn't mind if Ruby killed them all from afar but that was such a boring approach.
After a few more seconds of fiddling Ruby stepped away and pressed the remote trigger. A loud bang was heard over the forest. Seconds later a series of fiery explosions formed a ring of fire encompassing most of it.
"You fired incendiaries, didn't you?"
"It will be harder for grimm to escape that way."
"Well, I'll be on my way." With a two finger salute Yang broke into a short run and leapt off the cliff. Ruby pulled out her rifle and started firing at any grimm outside the burning encirclement.
-BBW-
Yang was having a blast. On the way here she managed to connect her helmet with her scroll and her favorite party songs were currently screaming into her ears. Flashing light from proximity alerts added to the disco atmosphere. Too bad they were all red… Light on the right flashed. Yang ducked and after a moment her hand shot upwards, blowing up a chest of an ursa mid-lunge. A dim light flashed on the edges of her vision. From behind! She made a backflip, dodging an ursa major's jaws and just lightly scratching on its spikes. When she was above, she activated the air dust inside the gauntlet and with one punch the grimm was blasted into foot sized chunks. A king taijitu rushed at her and coiled around her. ahaHAHA
I, who shall awaken. The giant grimm snake burst into flames and evaporated into black clouds shortly after. Under the helmet Yang had a feral grin as she glared down at the monster rushing at her.
Somebody is having fun. Ruby was watching as gouts of fire started appearing in the forest below. She saw a beowolf trying to escape. Unfortunately its fur caught fire when leaping through the ring of flames and made it a very easy target. After one pull of the trigger it was gone.
-BBW-
"Do you understand now why I wanted to watch the proceedings?" Eis droned while watching the video feed of the purge from a bullhead parked some distance away. He turned to his secretary. "Call the building teams and tell them to get ready to work. I think we will be able to start tomorrow." He threw a large stack of lien at Gross. "Go give them this as a bonus. We would need to cut the trees anyway, this saved us about a week."
"Is this really necessary, sir?" Gross asked to clarify. SDC may be rolling in money but there were definitely better ways to spend it then to throw it at some no name guns for hire.
"It's better this way. If they know we pay plenty they are less likely to accept missions that would put them against our interests. Brothers know we avoided a lot of trouble that way." Eis brushed him off.
Somebody's here. Ruby had spread her petals around her in case some stray grimm decided to sneak up on her. Bipedal. Leisure pace, walking to me. Seeing as over half of the target area burned down, Ruby reasoned that Yang would be able to deal with the rest without her help. She turned in the direction of the approaching being and turned on the thermal vision. Right now it was just a speck of bright light slowly making its way towards her position. In a gust of wind her body fell apart into petals and rushed to it.
Gross' gut was telling him to be very careful. As a bodyguard he needed to be able to identify whether the place was safe for his charge or not and know his instincts were telling him that one wrong move would lead to a lot of pain. Thankfully, nobody was shooting at him. Yet. If the two mercs brought heavy explosives for an extermination mission, they had to be either crazy maniacs or some sort of black ops. Neither option seemed appealing for one would get him shot for fun and the other out of paranoia. Brothers knew he almost shat himself when he ran into Atlesian black ops as a cadet. Gods bless specialist Ebi, at the time newest member of the Ace ops for defusing the situation and leading him back to his barracks.
"That's close enough." A metallic voice echoed around him. He couldn't see the person speaking nor guess their location by voice. "What do you want?" A silhouette appeared in the shadow of a large rock. The person stepped into the light so the slightly scared man could take a better look at them. He couldn't believe that the merc who stayed on sniper duty was so short! They didn't even reach his shoulders! He quickly pushed back his surprise because the large rifle pointed roughly at his knees wouldn't care whether its wielder was barely five feet.
Slowly he put his hand up in a piece gesture. "The Boss said to give you a bonus." Carefully, he reached into a breast pocket and pulled out a stack of lien tied together by a rubber band. "You saved him some time with deforestation." He threw the stack at the sniper and watched as it sank into their body. After standing there for a couple of seconds, they nodded, stepped back into the shadows and literally fell apart and disappeared.
-BBW-
[8 months later]
"This is a terrible idea!" A black silhouette hissed into her ear. Blake Belladona and Ilia Amitola were currently closing in on what was one of the largest slavery camps in Vale. Blake's idea was to sneak in, knock out a few guards, get the predominantly faunus slaves out and leave without anyone noticing. Adam told her it was too risky and that they didn't have enough people right now. Tukson told her that she would either get killed or captured. Regardless, here she was now, and she even had a back up, although it took some time to convince her and even then she was still skeptical.
"But it's the right thing to do! We finally found their location, we can't let them get away!" Blake was getting really tired of all the complaining. If she didn't want to come, she could have stayed at the base.
"Of course it is! But do you even have a plan what to do after we sneak in? There are two of us and dozens of them! I know you are good but-"
At that moment a high pitched scream of a flying missile was heard over the slaver camp and its surroundings.A second later all of the lights inside went dark and the only sources of light were a dim moon behind the clouds and a large ball of fire rising where moments ago was the camp's generator.
"Looks like somebody had the same idea." Blake cheered up a bit. If the criminals were dealing with an open attack, it would be much easier to rescue the people inside. Ilia could only numbly nod before both of them started running.
Currently they were on the roof of what they thought were the slave pens. From there they could see the rest of the camp quite clearly. The main entrance gates were blown off, one wing was splintered on the ground and the other was nowhere to be seen. From the roof they could see bodies sprawled on the ground. Some of them were still moving and moaning in pain from the beating they received. Small distance away a person in a black helmet and a black cloak was steadily making progress to what they could asume was the main building. Seeing that their unexpected ally clearly didn't need their help they decided to focus on their own objective. The lone guard left at the barrack entrance was quickly knocked out by a strike to the back of the head. The victims were kept in cells behind the steel bars by the groups of ten. Some of them were completely broken but those who still had hope couldn't keep the tears back when a figure wearing a familiar mask stepped in and started breaking the locks one after another. In the meantime Ilia got hold of the two trucks that were parked off to the side. The majority of vehicles were parked near the front gate but those were reduced to mere burning wrecks. They left rather awkwardly. Blake had barely any experience with driving and her partner couldn't reach the pedals. As they were leaving Blake was thankful that they didn't get blown up by a rocket, although she wondered what happened to them.
They were having a pleasant evening. Nobody was trying to escape or to steal from them. They were getting ready to simply sit down with drinks and snacks when some moron blew up the generator. Surprisingly, no immediate attack followed so they left the camp to its core guards while they went to hunt down the shooter. Then everything went to shit. They heard gunfire and explosions from the camp when the first man of their team got hit by a large stun round. A moment later another one fell. They quickly spread out and hid behind the trees. Then the forest changed. It felt like carrying a backpack full of rocks. Their movement grew sluggish and they could barely bring out their individual auras. Whenever they tried it was pushed back and only the two of them were able to keep it somehow functional. Then it all ended when a floating head full of teeth materialized out of the darkness around them and caught their leader in its jaws. His aura shattered within seconds, then the beast smashed him into the ground, knocking him out. Their chain of command broke down as they started a chaoticall attempt of escaping the unseen attacker. A little figure off to the side watched on with disappointment before giving chase. The next they all of them would be woken up by a Valein special investigation team, tied down in the middle of the destroyed camp they were hired to protect.
-BBW-
"What do you two have to say for yourself?" Adam Taurus said in an even tone. He didn't know how to feel right now. On one hand they freed dozens of their people and got them out to safety. On the other hand it was probably the most reckless plan they could ever think of. In front of him stood fidgeting Blake and Ilia, who just wanted all of this to end.
"Ehm… job well done?" Blake spoke up uncertainty. Ilia had a visible urge to facepalm.
Adam kept staring them down for several long seconds before signing. "Fine, good job, but don't you ever run off again like this. White Fang is meant to stand by each other. Now, you said that somebody else was involved? Were they faunus?" Who knows, maybe they would get new competent recruits out of this.
"I don't know… the one I saw had a headgear that covered everything and a black cape. I didn't see any features poking out but they might have hidden them underneath." Ilia dutifully reported.
"I might know something." Perry, a platypus faunus who ended up being in charge of the bureaucracy, chimed in as he walked up to Adam with an open scroll in hand. "I just got the message from the mercs, that the hit against slavers was done and they expect the payment."
Adam scoffed at the new information. "So just aimless guns for hire." Mercs had their uses but their loyalty usually went to the deepest pocket. More often than not it was a human pocket.
"I wouldn't say that. These guys have rocked up some reputation over the last few months." After a nod from his commander Perry continued. "They are called Scorchers. Two member team of mercenaries who deal almost exclusively with grimm exterminations. The bastard had to be pretty pissed if they went against our enemies instead of their usual hunts."
"Scorchers? Do they call themselves that?" Ilia asked.
"No. They have a propensity for heavy explosives, incendiaries and pretty much leave any site a burning wasteland, thus earning the nickname. Apparently they didn't want to put out an actual name so they just adopted this one."
Adam skimmed through the report before handing it back. "Send them half. They had to stop them and deliver the leaders to us. They only did the first."
-BBW-
[come 2 my lab asap] was the message Yang received minutes after coming home from walking Zwei. After saying a quick 'hello' to her father she was off once again. Ruby's 'lab' was located in the forest near the coast. Whenever one of them would go there, they would take a really scenic route and double check their surroundings in case there was somebody after them. Ruby did it out of paranoia for her 'babies' and Yang did it because she really didn't want to explain why and how Ruby got so much dangerous and illegal stuff. From the outside it looked like a small cottage and aside from being connected to the main water supply it barely felt like a part of civilization. On the inside on the other hand. The first room was a storage of sorts. Things Ruby considered finished or the newly bought materials she was yet to process. The newly built black bike with a sidecar, a rocket launcher and a gatling gun were waiting directly next to the door as they were sisters' go-to choice of equipment. A monstrous sniper rifle was laying near but Ruby was hesitant to take it on a mission and only took it out to make a few testing shots.
When Yang entered the 'lab' proper, Ruby was forking on a strange looking body suit. It was gray in color, had strange large pustule-like things attached to several places and a spiderweb of red and blue lines covered it. Yay, Ruby is going to strap a high tech abomination on me… It wouldn't be the first time but she would go with it anyway. Who knows, maybe it would be something successful like the minigun or bike mounted smokescreen.
"Oh, you are here! Strip down and get this on. The size should fit but I need to calibrate aura-dust interfaces." Ruby gave her a rapid fire of instructions with an excited smile.
It was strangely comfortable, although the chest area was a little tight. "Okay, lay down on the table and bring out your aura but don't do anything!" Ruby started quickly connecting cables to the strange pustules and then ran off to type something on the computer. "Hmm, looks good so far. Try to draw on the dust in the suit. Slowly, okay?"
Yang didn't know what dust her sister was talking about but after a moment to concentrate she started doing what she was told. The spiderweb lit up and there was a slight hum from the strange capsules.
"Keep it up! I'll be done soon!"
Three hours later
"That's the place Rubes! Put some strength into it!" Yang called out to her sister who was giving her a backrub as an apology for having her lie down motionless on an uncomfortable table. All those cramps… I hope that thing will be worth it
-BBW-
General Ironwood opened the secured channel to his fellow headmaster and defender of Remnant. "Oz?"
"I'm here." Was heard from the other side.
"I just read the report, it's confirmed. It's one of Merlot's facilities. I'm getting the ships ready to wipe it out." There might be some fascinating scientific discoveries but it was just not worth it considering all the abominations lurking both around and within.
"Denied. I don't know what's inside and I don't want a chemical fallout to cover all of Vale. Besides, I may have some leeway with the council but I doubt they will let me invite your fleet without asking for information."
"Then what do you propose? I can't send my people in blind and you don't have any available."
"Yes, sadly Glynda has to help me with Beacon and Qrow is with Amber. Don't worry, I will have the data for the assault soon enough."
"Don't tell me you are sending the children there." He knew that sometimes Ozpin could… overestimate his students. Gretchen Rainhart's death being the prime example.
"No, I have something different in mind."
-BBW-
Hah! This is work for a real huntress! Ruby thought as she read a new grimm hunt on the mercenary board. It was some distance away but they could just camp out over the weekend. Apparently a large grimm nest was located under a hill and the nearby villages came under attack. Now there was a bounty to deal with it. Although…
Why would they pay a billion lien for a grimm hunt?
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Info dump
As far as the money system goes, 1 lien = 0.01 usd. There was some guy, who made like a 2 thousand word essay along with calculations so credit goes to him. (He stated that Lien is a crypto with a value roughly 0.0079usd for lien)