Chapter 1: Grand Theft Sleep
"It's finished!" a mad voice cackled from the Beacon smelting pits. "They won't stand a chance against this one! Mwahahaha!"
Fire and smoke obscured the originator of the words and twisted their shadow into a horrifying mockery of the human form. The form continued to cackle as the sun began to rise behind the walls.
Ren's eyes slowly blinked open. He looked around himself, then closed his eyes again. Thirty seconds later he reopened his eyes and looked around again.
'Can it be?' he thought to himself. "Is Nora actually asleep at the same time I wake up?"
He rolled over in his bed, smiling contently at the opportunity to get five minutes of blissful sleep without his partner's incessant rambling. Even though his eyes were shut tighter than Jaune's chastity belt and he couldn't hear anything, something didn't feel right. Nervously, he peeked out of one eye. Nothing.
Cautious and carefully, he opened his eyes wide and quickly scanned the room. In front of him was Jaune's bed, messy as always. At the foot of his bed was a sleeping bag. Across the room, Pyrrha's bed was neat and tidy, like she had barely even slept in it for weeks. The window was there, the door was over there, the Nora was…
"NORA!?" he exclaimed, desperately rolling away from the terrorizer of sleep.
"Hey Ren! Guess what!" Nora said excitedly as she grabbed his arm to prevent him from getting away.
"Chicken butt?" He asked, hoping to spare his arms a soak in a herbal bath again. As stealthily as he could, he tried to use his other hand to roll his blanket into a ball for use as a distraction, but Nora's grip tightened, making him cry out in pain and drop his makeshift weapon onto the floor.
"Nope! Even better than that." Nora smiled and used her free hand to draw out Magnhild from her belt. "I upgraded my big gal! Now she's twice as forceful, got three times the blast radius, contains some other stuff I found on the ground, and has these!"
Ren was scared as he watched Nora press a button on her hammer, but his expression turned to bewilderment as two sturdy attachments folded out from the handle. While he could not attest to the increased destructive power that Nora boasted, he could say with bemused pride to his grandchildren that he had seen the first cupholders on a huntress' weapon, ever.
"All I gotta do is give her a new and improved name, then go try her out on some unsuspecting criminals!"
Nora loosened her grip on Ren as she thought. He scrambled off the bed and tumbled over to the closet as quickly as he could. With practiced swiftness, he changed out of his pajamas into his everyday clothes. He attempted to quietly and swiftly move out of the room, to escape his partner's madness.
"Mikillmagnhild!" Nora exclaimed just as Ren had reached the door. He looked over to see her rushing over through the door, right through him.
"Nonononoooo!" Ren screamed as he was grabbed by Nora and pulled along on her wild ride of a rampage across Remnant.
"You ready, sir?"
"I was born ready. Run me through the op one more time." detective Ferus Stone said into the two-way earlink communicator.
He already knew the plan by heart, he had done it four times already, though not with the leader of this syndicate. He had met with Xiong network operatives and White Fang thieves, both working conspicuously under the thumb of an infamous criminal. The final part of the sting was always the most tense and stressful for an operative.
"At 0900 hours, you will be meeting with notorious gangster and crime lord Roman Torchwick to exchange the tracking Lien for the illicit dust product. After ensuring the validity of the product, you are to rendezvous at 1000 hours with the extraction team. Anything else you need?"
"Not a thing, mate. Let's go work some magic."
Ferus stood up from the fountain he was sitting at when he spotted Roman's distinctive orange hair poking out from under his bowler cap. Ferus smiled at and walked perpendicularly to Torchwick, the signal Ferus' contacts had told him to use to call over the crime lord for a business transaction. As he passed the statue at the entrance to the Vale Museum of Art, he felt an arm entwine itself with his. A glance downward revealed a woman, sharply dressed in pink and white, leading him into the shadow of the building.
Torchwick walked into the corner with Ferus and his henchwoman, making small signals into the air as he went. Ferus had memorized the hand signals used by the criminals to easily note the locations of all of Torchwick's lackeys spread amongst the crowd.
'Damn, twenty of them. This must be a good trade for them.' Ferus thought to himself.
"So, Mr." Torchwick waved his cigar around at Ferus, "Periwin, was it? I hear you are in need of some high density dust crystals, and are willing to pay quite the pretty penny for them. I'm going to assume by the fact that you showed up that you are actually interested in my goods, right?"
"Yeah, mate. You need to see the proof?" Ferus gestured with the briefcase at his wrist.
"I wouldn't be a good businessman if I didn't. Open the case towards yourself, then turn it around. Neo, confirm his money."
Ferus did as he was told, opening the case and turning it, letting Torchwick's girl ruffle around inside. When she was satisfied with the case she turned and nodded to her boss, who smiled in return. He shuffled a briefcase he had hidden in the shadows into his hands.
"Now then, I'm sure you didn't come all the way here just to give me a present." Torchwick turned the case and opened it, revealing four glowing dust crystals. Once Ferus had gotten a good look at them, Torchwick closed the case and set it on the ground.
"Now you. Close your case and set it next to mine."
Ferus set the case down when suddenly his earlink began blasting with sound. Three blocks over, near where his backup team was holding position, a massive explosion rang out. Every face in the square turned to see what could be causing the destruction. Ferus was rather confused by what he saw.
A young woman with the same hair color as Torchwick barreled through the air, clutching a black haired boy tightly with her one free arm. Her other arm seemed to be guiding a massive hammer apparatus, which appeared to be flying via a pair of tiny wings folded out from the handle. Her landing echoed across the square and formed a massive crater around her.
Ferus barely got a chance to gape at her before she turned to him and shouted...something barely intelligible. Before he had a chance to react, she began to dash toward his location. Halfway to him, she jumped into the air with the aid of her bizarre weapon, crashing between Ferus and Torchwick. A cloud of dust and gravel flew up to cover the area. Some sounds came out of the dust and a few silhouettes looked like they were interacting, but nothing was sticking out to the detective.
With a shout and an explosion, the girl, her boyfriend, and her hammer flew off three blocks away. With the dust cleared, Ferus saw that Torchwick, his henchwoman, and both of the cases had disappeared.
"Dammit!" Ferus activated his earlink. "Anybody on the line? Hello?"
Through some static and coughing, Ferus' partner answered him. "We're ok, Ferus. What happened?"
"It was a setup, Yin. Torchwick got tipped off somehow and has an unknown woman that helped him distract me during the trade. I think she was the same one that attacked you."
"Orange hair? Really freaking loud?"
"That's her. Good news is that Torchwick swiped the tracking Lien along with his product. We should be able to follow him back to his base."
"You got i-huh? Just a sec, Ferus. Uh-huh. But...uh-huh." Yin sighed into his link. "Bad news, sir. We have to return to base to report the damages, and the chief says he wants you to do something for him right now."
"What could the chief need me for? I'm-or at least, I was-undercover."
"He said something about the sun and a trident freak? I'm not really sure sir. Don't worry though, as long as Torchwick has the Lien, we'll be able to find him."
"Look at all these Lien cards, Ren! Thank goodness we made it in time to stop those criminals from doing their criminal things!"
Ren sat to the side, clutching his stomach to keep himself from keeling over into death via bile expulsion. He just groaned as nearly any sound he heard felt like it would make him hurl until he threw up last week's pancakes.
"And they were doing stuff with these things!" Nora held the other case she had swiped from the criminals. "I wonder what's in it? I bet it's something really dangerous and illegal. I bet I could improve Mikillmagnhild with whatever's in here!"
"Wait, Nora, don't!" Ren managed to find his stomach again just in time to be too late to stop Nora from opening the box.
A/N Hello!