Chapter 12: A-Hunting They Went

"God, walking sucks.", Yang complained, trudging through the sopping wetlands of Aegrus along with the other seven of the party, the mud sucking at her steps and some of it seeping into her boots. As much as she would have loved to finish off the venture into this exotic region of Pandora at full speed on a technical, the mud and water rendered that wish a pipe dream, forcing the eight vault hunters to travel to the coordinates Rhys gave them on foot. The trek, while nowhere near life threatening to eight well equipped vault hunters, still proved arduous. Aegran wildlife and its native inhabitants were both significantly tougher than those of other regions of Pandora. The witch doctors in particular infuriated Yang. Their arcane command over elements such as fire, electricity, and bats, of all things, made them especially difficult to handle. Of course, all the mystical powers in the galaxy could only keep the eight vault hunters at bay for so long before they succumbed to the maelstrom of destruction that the eight vault hunters comprised.

The party carefully scaled down the river that they followed after seeing that it dropped into a waterfall and saw what looked like a lodge in the distance. At the sight of the lodge, Yang brightened, hoping that she didn't have to slog through the mud for much longer, or hear Weiss complaining about slogging through the mud. It wasn't Yang's fault that she insisted on wearing a dress to Pandora, or "combat skirt", as she called it.

"Eugh, I'm not even sure if a corrosive shot could get all this dirt off." Weiss grumbled, attempting to wipe off the grime and muck on her white jacket in vain, which included the blood and bile of at least three different species of Aegran creatures. It was times like this that she wished she hadn't adopted such a close ranged fighting style.

"Weiss, it's fine. Everyone gets dirty down here." Ruby said, trying to calm Weiss, before catching sight of a gaggle of natives, or "savages", as they were commonly called, gathered around a decorated warrior statue. Their chanting fell silent as one of the savages took notice of the eight vault hunters, leading them to charge forward, with more coming out from unseen encampments, all yelling out battle cries in their foreign indecipherable language.

Almost instantly in response, all eight vault hunters drew their weapons, preparing for battle. They first split off into their two teams and ran up the incline behind them to gain the high ground. As soon as they did, Jaune noticed something worse than a band of savages; witch doctors. A gathering of them stood on the hill, casually walking forward to join up with the group of savages, staves glowing with both empowering and debilitating powers.

"Witch doctors, behind the crowd!", Jaune called out, trying to slow the advance of the savages with his Jakobs rifle.

"I got them!", Ruby answered, moving farther back behind her team and taking aim. Four shots rang out, and four witch doctors fell, unable to react to react to Ruby's shots in time, crippled by the bullets lodged in their kneecaps. The remaining handful, now aware of Ruby's presence, conjured tornadoes of energy around themselves, which acted as shields from the pinpoint accurate wrath of Crescent Rose before continuing their advance.

"Never mind, I don't got them!" Ruby announced, now moving her scope over the horde of regular savages and taking potshots at their legs, which did not fall under the protection of their strangely effective wooden shields or their masks.

"That's fine, if they're in tornado form they can't power up the other guy-AHH!." Jaune answered, a thrown axe just barely missing his ear. "We can't stay up here, there's no cover!", he added, throwing out a grenade before running off the exposed hilltop they stood on.

"Then we'll just have to get up close." Yang suggested, grinning in anticipation as she mounted her dual shotguns onto her wrists.

"Up close is my middle name!" Nora exclaimed, extending the handle of Magnhild

The two berserkers then leapt into the horde with a battle cry, their entrance heralded by a shockwave from Nora's hammer, violently knocking the nearest savages out of the crowd and launching them like ragdolls. Blake and Weiss, having taken note of how Yang's plan of "punch first, ask questions while punching" usually panned out, entered the fray as well, their presence marked by a fading holographic decoy and the glow of Myrtenaster's blade digistructing while the savages converged on Nora and Yang.

Meanwhile Ruby stayed back in her sniping spot, watching over the fight through Crescent Rose's meticulously calibrated scope, taking a shot at any of the savages that tried to get the jump on Nora and Yang every now and then, but unable to do much else. Not even her speed would allow her to avoid the fusillade of projectiles that the savages threw or fired if she wanted to use the scythe part of her beloved rifle. Unfortunately, a witch doctor, using his small stature to his advantage, blended in with the savages in the crowd. Only when strange yellow energy coursed through the savages did Ruby notice the witch doctor, promptly shooting another of her hand loaded rounds, but not at the witch doctor himself. Instead, the bullet landed in the ground behind him, causing him to turn around in alarm, suspecting an ambush from his flank. In the brief moments that the witch doctor turned around, Ruby lined up her shot, leaving a clean hole in the back of his head, and what she assumed was a much messier splatter of brain on the inside of his mask as he fell over, the glow in his staff fading. No longer content with sitting back and letting her friends take all the hits, Ruby activated her ECHO. "I'm going in close, get… more distracting!", she commanded, unfolding Crescent Rose's blade and dashing forward, leaving Jaune, who stayed back due to his lack of melee weapons, to grumble and cautiously move closer to the brawl. Not even five steps later and a stray savage leapt at him, axe in hand. In panic, Jaune fired wildly, either missing or hitting the savage's shield, leaving him unharmed as he closed in on Jaune and raised his axe into the air for a devastating blow. Without thinking, Jaune raised his rifle to block the savage's arm from completing the swing, creating a deadlock between him and the savage, which he broke by stomping on his foot and kneeing him in the gut. Before the savage could recover, Jaune took his rifle and bashed it against the side of the savage's head, but just as he was preparing to strike the final blow, a bronze colored blade appeared seemingly out of nowhere, sticking out of the savage's chest as he fell to the ground, motionless and bleeding. With the savage out of his field of view, Jaune saw Pyrrha, still in fighting stance after yanking the bayonet of her rifle out of the savage.

"I had him!" Jaune claimed in excitement. He had no idea he could do that, but those little lessons from Pyrrha were probably the reason why.

Pyrrha's only response was a knowing smirk before she moved to return to the horde that Yang and Nora were occupying, beckoning Jaune to follow.

At the same time, Ren snuck off once again, looking for any sort of long ranged threat that could hit Nora, Yang, Weiss, or Blake as they either cut down or crushed the horde of regular savages. It was then that he saw the witch doctors Ruby crippled at the start of the fight, still limping towards the battlefield, which Ren quickly stopped with a spray of his machine pistols. Afterwards, however, Ren caught sight of the savages' trump card. A warrior stood behind the now dead witch doctors, his mask much more decorated, his sword much more menacing, and three "O"s scrawled onto his shield. With the death of the witch doctors, the decorated savage let out a yell and began to advance forward. Ren, not willing to test his luck, decided to fall back and ECHO his teammates. "We have an elite savage coming in; he looks way tougher than the rest. Let Ruby's team know so we can group up to take it down.", he ordered to Jaune and Pyrrha.

"Alright Ren, I'll relay that plan to them, you try to keep it from getting too close until we're done with the regular guys." Jaune answered.

"Sure. Why not?" Ren deadpanned, turning to the elite savage and readying his pistols.

A few minutes of hacking and slashing later, and the crowd of savages had mostly dispersed, its members either dead, playing dead, or fleeing in terror and soon to be dead, courtesy of Ruby's marksmanship so they may not call for help. With the "small fries", as Yang called them, dealt with, they moved forward to where Ren was distracting the elite savage. As soon as they saw both of them, Ren was launched back to them by a blow from the savage, landing in a mess that would have concerned everyone if not for the shaky thumbs up he gave, signaling that it was nothing he couldn't walk off.

"Ren!" Nora exclaimed, before turning to the savage, her normally unsettling smile replaced with teeth bared in fury as she rocket toward the savage, only for him to block Nora's hammer and knock her back.

"It's really tough." Ren managed to groan, still catching his breath from getting knocked around by the savage for however long it took his teammates to get through the regular savages.

"Then we'll hit it harder." Yang declared, firing her shotguns as the rest of the two teams followed suit, firing their weapons at the savage, only to have most of their shots meet their end at his shield.

"Okay, maybe we need a plan." Ruby suggested, rushing off to the side and calling Weiss to come over with her. Yang and Blake, having been implicitly told not to follow, shrugged as Yang ran up to the savage, trying to catch its attention. Then, having succeeded, she tried to fight it one on one, but it was far too powerful, each strike of his sword felt like two strikes from any of the other savages. It was only a matter of time before Yang's shield broke, just as planned. Holding her hand out as the default signal for "I want to swing on your gun scythe thing", Yang received Gambol Shroud, still linked to Blake by the ribbon as she ran around the savage, the ribbon still in hand while picking up speed before finally leaping up, releasing the ribbon, and flying towards the savage, her roid shield and shotgun powered punch landing square in the savage's chest, sending him flying towards Ruby and Weiss.

Soon after, a blur of black and red seemed to fly at the savage. The distinct sound of Crescent Rose firing was heard before the blur zipped past the savage and he fell to the ground, a clean cut separating his torso and his legs as if his body had fallen apart on its own accord.

After picking through the battlefield for loot, the eight vault hunters regrouped in one of the campsites closer to the lodge, sitting on the log seats and recovering from the brawl.

"Well, that's enough excitement for me for a long time." Jaune stated, having almost died or been grievously wounded more times than he bothered to count within the last twenty four hours.

"Phew, I guess you could say they tried to swamp us back there, didn't they?" Yang joked, causing some to roll their eyes or others (specifically Weiss) to actually groan.

"Hey! Would you keep it down out there! We're trying to plot!", a feminine voice complained from all their ECHO devices.

"Gah! Who are you, and why do you have our ECHO frequencies?!", Weiss questioned harshly.

"Number one, that was one of my associates that I was talking about. And number two, you're all pretty bad at encrypting your frequencies, if you couldn't tell already.", a male voice that the eight recognized as Rhys supplied. "They're in the lodge, go ahead and fleet and treat or whatever you do when you meet someone."

"The proper term is "meet and greet"" the monotone of Loader Bot replied.

"Yeah, that. Go say hi." Rhys suggested.

"Okay, here goes nothing." Ruby murmured to herself, knocking on the door of the lodge accompanied by her team as well as Jaune's.

"Again? Unless you're you've got a real good reason I'm not-" a woman in a professional looking shirt and jacket, complete with a black hat ranted before stopping herself and looking at Ruby and her friends, then picking up her ECHO device.

"These the ones you were going on about?", the woman asked.

"They are, Fiona. Tell em what you know, the more the merrier.", Rhys replied through the ECHO.

"Okay then…", the woman, apparently named Fiona trailed off before stashing away her ECHO device. "Welcome to the uh… 'Aegrus Sophisticates' Lodge'", she greeted before making room for the eight to enter. "Rhys already briefed me on why you're here, so you don't need to tell me anything yet. For now, just rest up. You all look, and smell, pretty bad right now.", she instructed, holding her nose to illustrate the point.

"Is this actually yours? Just idle curiosity." Blake questioned, gesturing at the walls of the lodge.

"Not really, but its owner is out and they left the door open, so their fault." Fiona replied.

"Hey Fi, the new guys here?", another voice called out, seemingly from above.

"Yeah they're here, come on down and say hi, Sasha." Fiona replied as a shorter woman with dreadlocks walked down from the previously unseen attic.

"So you're the vault hunters Rhys was talking about?", Sasha asked, looking at Ruby and Weiss. "I expected someone… taller."

"Excuse me?!" Weiss exclaimed, not particularly in the mood for any conversation, let alone mocking, playful or otherwise.

"Relax, I'm just joking around." Sasha added.

"Uhhh, one question. We just killed some guy with three "O"s on his shield, does that mean anything?" Ruby asked nervously, unsure if she was asking a bad question,

"Wait. Three "O"s? Did he have a really nasty looking sword and mask?", Fiona questioned, now much more interested.

"Yeah, he dropped this too.", Ruby added, pulling out a heavy Jakobs shotgun with its metal parts painted a dark blue.

"Outta my way, sis! Is that… that's a Twister! Ohhhh, Jakobs was testing this down here, their notes on it never even left the facility they built it in! I can't imagine how it ended up all the way here with these folks." Sasha jabbered excitedly. "Can I have it?"

"Mmm, do you have something in exchange? We're not exactly a charity." Weiss responded, still unsure of how she thought of the duo, who were apparently sisters.

"Can we at least shoot it before we decide?" Ruby asked.

"Why not.", Fiona decided.

Wordlessly, Ruby turned to walk out the door, loading the shotgun, and firing it. Blue tinted bolts flew out of the gun before they drew towards each other and formed themselves into a tornado that ripped through the area in front of the lodge.

"That's so cool…." Ruby trailed off in amazement. "But I already have Crescent Rose, and uh… who wants this?" Ruby asked, holding up the gun.

No one among her party raised their hand, not even Jaune. The only raised hand was Sasha, who was practically bursting with excitement at her status as the only taker.

"Okay then, here you go!" Ruby said, handing over the shotgun to Sasha.

"Ohhh thank you so much! I'll come up with something to pay you back, I promise!" Sasha cheered and then proclaimed, eyes poring over the gun like it was a work of art, which in Sasha's (and Ruby's) case, it really was.

"Awww. Adorable.", Fiona commented before clearing her throat. "Anyway, just chill out for tonight, we'll brief you tomorrow whenever you're up." Fiona declared, walking off to an unseen part of the lodge, presumably to sleep.

"Does this place have a shower or something of the like?" Weiss asked desperately, perturbed by the particularly heavy amount of grime and muck on her earned by trekking through Aegrus.

"Yeah, but only one." Fiona replied, still unable to be seen from the insides of the lodge.

Weiss wasted no time searching for it, launching herself around with her glyphs before finding it, rushing in, and slamming the door shut. As the water ran, her sigh of relief was only barely masked by the sound of the water.

"She's not from here, is she?", Sasha asked in response to Weiss's zeal in finding the shower.

"Nope.", Ruby answered.

"I figured as much.", Sasha added with a shrug.

A while later, when everyone had a turn in the shower, even after the hot water ran out, they came to the issue of sleeping arrangements.

"There are only five beds here, and nothing against you guys, but sis and I would rather have our own beds." Sasha informed the eight.

"Uh, okay. We'll figure something out." Ruby assured, pondering over the three basic beds and one couch, trying to figure out the least awkward way for everyone to get a place to sleep…

END OF CHAPTER 12

So about the Lodge having beds, I based it on the idea that that the lodge was originally for the vault hunters+Hammerlock, so 5 beds total. Also yeesh writing a fight for eight characters is hard, I dont even know if I did it right.