Chapter 1: The Job
1:30am,
Mistral,
The Haunted Mire,
The Sky Queen's bridge.
Rain pounded the bridge's windows, running off of them in thick sheets as great cracks of lightning lit the stormy, night sky. Thunder rumbled over head and the muted thuds of hailstones on metal could be heard as the storm raged outside the small ship known as the Sky Queen.
A Prowler class airship, the Sky Queen wasn't large, maybe fifteen metres long, with three dust powered engines at her rear and three tail fins, one dorsal and the other two ventral. She had two levels to her, a bottom level for storage and a top level for accommodation.
The bridge was the largest room on the ship, save for the cargo bay, and was bordered on three sides by a massive, curved plexiglass window, offering its occupants a clear view of whatever it was that they happened to be flying through.
A worn leather chair sat near the back of the room, surrounded by a U shaped console which in turn was home to a figure eight styled steering wheel. Another two consoles, each with their own worn chair, were located near the front of the bridge in an asymmetric fashion, leaving a gap between them that led to 'the viewing deck', the section of the bridge which could be turned transparent so that the pilot could see more of their environment.
Ally Noir, a young girl in her late teens, with ebony skin, stood by the left console, leaning against it and gazing out into the stormy night. Her long dark hair was wet and curly from her recent shower, hanging over her face and obscuring her button nose and large eyes.
She wore a large, baggy black jumper and matching tracksuit pants, and was holding a big mug of steaming hot coffee, relishing its warm feel and sweet taste as she sipped at it.
The doors to the bridge slid open to admit Ally's partner in crime; Corrin Spectrum, a similarly aged youth with pale skin, bright eyes and short, spiky hair dyed with every colour imaginable.
He was wearing a dark shirt and jeans and there was steam rising off of his pink skin, courtesy of his own shower. In his left hand was a mug of freshly made tea and in his right was a small, glowing data pad.
"Morning," Ally yawned, as Corrin sat down at the left console and put his feet up and his mug down "ready for an early morning hunt?"
"Ugh, is that even a question?" Corrin groaned, rubbing his eyes and taking a deep draught of tea that had more sugar then water in it.
"At least it's a lovely morning for it." Ally joked, sitting down in her own chair and drawing her knees up under her chin.
Corrin laughed and looked out into the night, catching a brief glimpse of twisted roots and stagnant pools of water below, all illuminated by a brief flash of lightning.
"Spooky." He muttered to himself, before speaking up "Man, we should have installed heated floors when we built Sky Queen."
Ally smiled and placed her warm mug of coffee on her bare feet in an attempt to warm them.
"Yeah," she replied "or a working thermostat."
Corrin and Ally had met when they were children, both under eight years old, on the streets of Atlas and had quickly bonded over their mutual terrible circumstances. Corrin had been a young orphan, begging for lien and Ally had been a slave from the wilds, lost and alone.
Ally had taught Corrin how to fight and he in turn had taught her how to find food and shelter on the streets. Soon after meeting they began taking on jobs for local gangs and crime figures, though they had refused the more violent jobs, and saved up enough money to purchase a rusted old airship: The Sky Queen.
They had then spent the next few years restoring the old ship to her former glory, taking on larger, more complex jobs as the costs grew higher and steeper and as their own skills grew as well. And now here they were, over a decade later, two young yet experienced mercenaries travelling around the world in an airship of their own design.
"Anything on the scanners?" Corrin asked, trying to ignore the flashing light on his scroll which indicated that he had unread mail.
"Nope," Ally replied, hitting a few buttons on her console "they've been quiet all night. Or broken."
"I have faith in duct tape." Corrin smiled, as his scroll continued to flash.
The Sky Queen was a large ship for just two people to maintain and as such there was always at least one part of it that wasn't working or was in need of dire repairs. Last week it had been the water boilers and earlier this week it had been the ship's scanners.
This meant that both Corrin and Ally usually ended up spending most of their lien on repairs and as such were more often then not flat broke. They lived job to job and though the stress of constantly worrying about their next meal might have broken most other people, Corrin and Ally were determined to keep their home flying. Especially given the fact that if they didn't keep the Sky Queen flying then they would be back to living on the streets.
If they managed to pull off this current job however, they might just end up with enough lien to finally fix up all of The Sky Queen's broken pieces, and still have enough left over to get some quality supplies to boot, a rare occurrence indeed.
Said job though, was the extermination of a Grimm. Not a Creature of Grimm but an actual Grimm. A beast whom had survived countless decades or perhaps even centuries of conflict and combat with humans. A true monster.
Corrin would be lying if he had said he wasn't scared, he wasn't a Huntsman and neither was Ally. Neither of them had a semblance or even an aura for that matter, they were skilled, but not that skilled.
The Grimm which Ally and Corrin were currently hunting was a centuries old Brood Mother, a giant spider monster, known to the locals simply as Death, for it would stalk into towns at random and drag helpless villagers off to a gruesome fate somewhere in The Haunted Mire.
Why an actual Huntsman or Huntress hadn't ventured out to deal with the Grimm was beyond Corrin, especially seeing as how three of the preyed upon villages had come together to put out a bounty on the beast.
"Why did they have to name it Death?!" Corrin exclaimed, finishing off his tea "They honestly could not have picked a more intimidating name for a giant spider monster. Seriously, I bet that's why no one's come to claim the bounty yet. They're all too scared."
"Well what would you call a Brood Mother who comes creeping into your safe place at night before stealing you away to some grisly death." Ally asked, as a sudden blip on her screen went unnoticed by both of the mercenaries.
"I'd call her mother." Corrin replied, running a hand through his multi coloured hair.
Ally burst out laughing and so did Corrin, and it took them a few minutes to compose themselves again, after which Corrin told his scroll to 'shut up'.
"Is the message still there?" Ally asked, growing serious for a moment as she eyed the flashing light on Corrin's scroll.
"Yeah," Corrin confirmed, holding the scroll up "doesn't matter what I do, it's always there. I can't get rid of it."
Said message was a job offer from a woman known as Cinder Fall. She was bad news if half the things that Ally and Corrin had heard about her were true. The two teens had spent a good chunk of their child hood working for criminals and crime lords and now that they were free from all of that they had little wish to return to it.
But this Cinder Fall woman didn't strike either of them as the kind of person who took no for an answer. Add to that the fact that no matter what they did her job offer just kept reappearing in their inbox and it was easy to see that it was more of a job order then a job offer.
In fact, Cinder's offer was the main reason as to why Ally and Corrin had flown over to Mistral, they thought that if they could stall Cinder for long enough by busying themselves with other jobs, she might forget about them and move on. But after three weeks she still didn't seem to be letting up, and it was looking more and more likely that they would have to take the job.
"Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be simple." Ally suggested, finishing off her coffee and looking more alert for it.
"Simple?" Corrin laughed "Since when have our jobs ever been simple? Our jobs stopped being simple after you smacked-"
His story came to an abrupt end as he and Ally finally noticed the blip on Ally's screen. Corrin leapt out of his chair and headed over to Ally's console, hopping across the cold, metal floor and yelping in discomfort.
Ally meanwhile had swung her chair around to face the console and was busy pressing buttons and turning dials, isolating whatever it was that was causing the blip and telling the console to analyse it.
"All the signals check out," she muttered to herself, before announcing "we got us a Grimm! It should be directly below us, see if you can spot it."
"On it!" Corrin replied.
He ran over to the pilot's seat and hit a button on the console, and the entire front section of the bridge shimmered and turned transparent. Corrin ran over to the Viewing Deck and gestured to catch Ally's attention.
"Can I get some light down there?" He asked, peering down onto the shadow wreathed land below.
Ally pulled a lever somewhere on her console and the spotlight mounted on The Sky Queen's nose, which was now visible from the bridge, sputtered to life. A beam of brilliant white light sliced through the darkness, chasing away the shadows and revealing a section of The Haunted Mire.
Corrin spotted twisted roots and gnarled trees, choked with vines and wreathed in a thick, white mist. Pools of stagnant water dotted the landscape and the soil had been pulverised into, mud courtesy of the pouring rain.
"I can't see her," he called out, muttering as the floodlight flickered for a few seconds before coming strong again "are you sure you have the co-ordinands right?"
"One second." Ally said, fiddling with dials and levers before calling out "Okay, bringing the light around now."
The floodlight creaked and began to swing to the left, cutting a swath through the darkness and illuminating a different section of the mire. This time it was of a tangle of thorny bushes surrounding an old, dead tree with claw like branches and a log, shiny from the rain which lay on the ground and led off into the darkness.
This section of the mire was right on the boundary of what appeared to be a forest of dead or dying trees, spaced out over a sea of craggy boulders, muddy ground and groping vines.
Corrin peered closer and then gasped in shock as the log suddenly withdrew from the circle of light and shot off into the forest, along with a shadow dark as pitch and nearly half as large as The Sky Queen.
"Uhhhh..." Corrin said, staring at the spot where he assumed Death had been "I think I found it... And I'm suddenly having second thoughts about this whole thing."
"Are you also having second thoughts about our third engine which is gonna fall off the ship in about two days time?" Ally asked, heading over to the pilot's seat and taking the ship off auto.
The autopilot really wasn't anything fancy, in fact it was only good for flying the ship in slow, straight lines so that it's occupants could get some rest during long journeys.
"Oh, right," Corrin replied, blinking and stepping back from the Viewing Deck as Ally pulled a lever next to the pilot's seat and engaged the ship's brake "well now I'm having third thoughts."
"And those third thoughts are?" Ally smiled, as Corrin returned to his console.
"That we should go catch ourselves a Death!" Corrin exclaimed, putting on some comically false bravado "See? They should have named it The Bane of Slippers or something, it would have been much less terrifying."
Ally and Corrin burst out laughing again.
"Come on," Ally said, sitting down in the pilot's seat "let's find a place to set this old girl down."
"Roger that," Corrin replied, dropping down into his chair and hitting some buttons on his console "there's a spot a few dozen metres back the way we came, it's the flattest place around for miles. Which is pretty suspicious if you ask me."
"Everything is suspicious to you." Ally said, as she pulled the steering wheel to the side and swung The Sky Queen around.
She piloted the airship back to the location that Corrin had pointed out and lowered her landing gear, gently lowering her to the ground and switching off her engines as Corrin turned the flood light off.
"Come on then!" Corrin chirped, suddenly bright and alert only because he believed it was better then the alternative "Let's go hunt a Grimm!"
"Sounds like fun," Ally smiled, sharing his sudden enthusiasm "let's hit it!"