Rachel:
Rachel woke with a start, looking around she saw that she and the rest of team RPNT were in a jail cell of some sort, instinctively she reached for her weapon
"Don't even bother, your weapons are in the hold"
Rachel looked around and saw a girl wearing green and black armor, running along the armor were several bandoliers of grenades and ammo, running from a large ammunition drum on her back to her weapons, a machine gun and grenade launcher both painted dark green, the most eye-catching part about her was her fiery red hair though
"W-who are you?"
The girl clicked her weapons into their holsters at her sides before walking up to the cell
"Name's Sophia, that's Raina, and this is the last resort. You and your friends here are going to be staying in that cell until Ozpin hands over the ransom, capiche?"
Rachel looked at the girl who was apparently named Raina, she wore a short white dress and a theatrical fox mask, the girl wasn't looking at her, just sitting in the back looking at the wall
"Don't mind that, Raina's pretty shy, don't talk much"
Rachel nodded, Just then her attention was drawn by Pirin screaming, the noise hurt her sensitive ears, and she thought she also heard a small growl coming from Raina. Rachel turned to Pirin in confusion
"You alright?"
Pirin looked shaken, his eyes darting between Rachel's face and his left arm
"Yeah, I'm just not used to waking up without my prosthetic, really sorry"
Rachel nodded absentmindedly
"It's fine"
Rachel's attention was drawn away by a P.A. system
"This is Hearts speaking, It's noon guys, Please cycle shifts. Repeat, this is Hearts, please cycle shifts"
Sofia nodded before turning to Raina
"See you at dinner"
The girls walked away as three boys walked into the room, all three wore heavy dark blue armor, one had a shotgun strapped to his back and short-cut brown hair, the next one had a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder, his hair shaved into a mohawk, and the last one had messy hair and a minigun hanging at his waist. The first boy sat down on one of the crates in front of the cage, he looked to team RPNT
"Hi, any of you feel like chatting? It can get really boring around here"
Rachel raised an eyebrow
"You're holding us for ransom, and now you want us to just chat with you?"
"Look, I'm sorry, but you landed in our territory, winter's coming soon, and we need enough money to pay for food, so please, just stay in line, and we can all be happy"
Rachel couldn't decide where she stood, these people were saying they were just trying to survive, what reason would they have to hurt her if she stayed in line. Rachel smiled before sticking her hand through the bars
"Okay, peace"
The boy smiled, Reaching to shake her hand
"My name is Alpius, how 'bout yours?"
Pirin:
It had been three days after the crash, Nova was currently playing a game of 'World of Remnant' with the triplets. Rachel had said to just stay on their good sides, and from a logical perspective it was the soundest option, but there was still something off-putting about just sitting and playing board games with the captors
"...either way, I use 'White Fang Attack' to discard your 'Hexade Weapon Development' card, then I'm gonna use 'Resourceful Raider' to put the card into my hand, and then I play it, all my infantry units get +1 to combat"
Pirin looked at the board, Nova was playing Vacuo and had just used a very clever combination of abilities to weaken Atlas, being played by Celsius, the boy with the mohawk, while strengthening her own forces. It was a clever move, Pirin was also impressed that the game had followed history so well, even taking note of the fact that Hexade had only started supplying the atlesian military roughly halfway through the war. Next was Celsius's turn
"Alright, that's how we're doing it? Well then, I play 'Guardian-17', all of your forces in Blackwater are killed, and then I place 10 atlesian soldiers there, as well as the 'Snowbird' token..."
The P.A. system blasted to life
"Alright boys, girls, time to move on to your next shifts, please move in an orderly manner"
Alpius, Celsius, and Belenius groaned
"Well, see you later, Nova, we'll see if we can get Hearts to give us a triple-shift of guard duty so we can play a full game"
"Cool"
Pirin groaned, causing everyone to look at him, afraid he may be having another panic attack due to his missing arm, Rachel spoke first
"Is everything okay?"
"For the most part, something about this whole situation is just strange to me"
Just then two figures walked in, Sophia and Shockwave, Shockwave wore heavy black armor, akin to what might be seen on a bomb squad member, he carried a machine pistol at his side, and his right arm was encased in heavy armor, judging by the servos that could be heard whenever the arm moved, it seemed to be able to augment the user's strength, most likely the origin of his name. As the two sat down a question came to mind
"Who's Hearts?"
Sofia looked up at him
"What do you mean?"
"I've heard her on the P.A., but I've never actually seen her, is she crippled or something?"
Sofia chuckled
"Far from it kiddo, Hearts does the cooking, she's not as good of a fighter as me, or Shockwave, or Raina, the triplets, Dusk, Laska, or Sin, Hearts is good at handling food and organizing our shifts and keeping food on the table, so in return we keep the place standing"
Pirin nodded, going over the names Sofia had listed, Dusk and Laska were siblings, Dusk was a charismatic dark haired wolf faunus with both ears and a tail, he kept a pair of small long butcher's knives hanging at his waist, they looked frighteningly sharp, Laska was also a faunus much shyer than her brother though, however she had been marred severely, three long claw marks along the right side of her face, her right ear had been torn off, she probably also had a tail at some point, however if she did it was now long gone, she wore a black tank top and a pair of long black gloves that reached up to the halfway points of her upper arms. Pirin had no idea what sort of incident had damaged the girl so badly, however her brother, who seemed to be older by no more than a year, was quite protective of her.
Next was Sin, she was a short girl with light blue eyes hair pulled into two ponytails, she wore a grey hoodie, as well as black and neon blue striped leggings, her ensemble was very 'punk rocker'-esque, at her side she carried a small pistol that seemed to use dust.
The triplets of course were Alpius, Celsius, and Belenius, the three were quite rowdy, and judging by their equipment they were best in close quarters combat.
Sophia was unquestionably the heavy weapons expert of the group, the snarky redhead dual-wielded a machine gun and grenade launcher, both seemed to be fed a constant stream of ammunition from the drum on her back, along with the two bandoliers carrying ammo to her weapons she also had a collection of fragmentation grenades and several bullets along her belt, overall the girl was a terrifying sight to behold, her fighting style most likely involved moving forwards slowly but surely, all that loose ammunition seemed like quite a liability though.
And lastly was Raina, the girl in white constantly hid behind her mask, never talking in front of them, although whoever was accompanying her on guard duty always said she was just shy around people she didn't trust, the girl had no weapons, although from Tira's recount of right after the crash, she was a swift martial artist, capable of moving faster than the eye could register and still landing precise hits.
Pirin continued mulling over the strengths and weaknesses of each last resort member until dinner rolled around.
Tira:
For dinner today was corn, Dusk and Laska had brought them their plates during their guard duty, eating while they kept an eye on team RPNT, Dusk's tail swayed back and forth slowly, meanwhile his sister, Laska, just ate facing away from the cage. Tira decided to just talk a bit, seeing as Rachel had said to stay in line
"So, how're you two doing?"
Dusk looked up
"Well, no offence, but eating dinner with everyone else is pretty fun, it's somewhat boring to just sit here in silence"
"Well is there anything you'd like to talk about?"
"What're your hobbies?"
"Combat, reading, games are pretty fun"
"You want to play cards?"
Tira felt like just going with it, Nova had been playing World of Remnant with the triplets, a game of cards sounded fun.
"Sure"
Nova:
"...I play 'Giant Nevermore'"
Nova winced as Belenius slammed the card onto the board, he was playing Vale, she was playing Vacuo, she had been attacking with 15 militia units, and it had taken several turns to create that attacking force, as Belenius rolled the dice her eyes practically popped out of their sockets. Nova feigned a look of hurt as she dramatically posed
"Farewell, my valiant heroes, you shall be avenged. Oh and it's your turn Celsius"
The triplets chuckled at the display followed by an anticlimactic note, Celsius then proceeded to place three imperial guards along the border between Mistral and Atlas, before placing two cards down
"Alright, first I'm playing bountiful harvest, three gold Lien tokens please, thanks. Next I'm playing "Mining Accident", Alpius, you lose one dust and one Lien token. Now then I'm sending these three imperial guards to attack mantle"
Just then everyone's attention was drawn to the P.A. system
"Hello, everyone, could I please ask that Rachel is brought to my office immediately? Thank you"
The triplets all stood up, Nova turned to look at Rachel, who stood up and raised her hands in surrender, Alpius pressed a button outside the cell, causing the bars to rise up, while Celsius and Belenius walked in, Celsius planted a pair of handcuffs on Rachel's hands. As the three left with Rachel Alpius turned around
"Don't worry, she'll be fine"
Author:
And… cliffhanger! Still sorry about the difficulty updating. It's been difficult to find time, but yeah, next time we see why Hearts wants to see Rachel, we also will be having a large fight scene next chapter.