Chapter 37
Team STRQ was one the best teams to have ever graduated from Beacon Academy. Their deeds and accomplishments could be classified as the stuff of legends in the Huntsmen community. Each member was a well-accomplished warrior even prior to Raven Branwen's desertion and Summer Rose's death.
And now, Remnant was facing a new threat that were not the Grimm but were many times deadlie so the team that was once disbanded must come together again to fight this Darkness.
All they had to do was set aside their differences and look past the reasons that separated the once great team in the first place.
Easier said than done due to a multitude of reasons. The leader, Summer Rose had only recently returned to Remnant yet had no memories of her old team. Taiyang Xiao Long still felt a certain longing for the Guardian but it was unfortunately unrequited. Raven Branwen's ideals were too different from the rest, alienating her from the team. Qrow was an old cynic that preferred to drown his problems with alcohol.
Despite being the most suitable team for this mission, they were a collection of the most dysfunctional people that it spoke how desperate Remnant was for their help.
"Let me get this straight, you want me to go with my old team, half of whom tried to kill me earlier, to infiltrate Vex territory and shut down the transfer gates," Summer summarized, arching a brow at Professor Ozpin, "And then after that, kill as much Vex as we can."
"That is correct," the silver haired headmaster said before taking a sip from his mug.
"Sounds simple enough," the Guardian shrugged. It wasn't like it was the first time that she did a mission with people that tried to kill her in the past due to the many Crucible matches with other Guardians and strike missions. In the case of her teammates in Fireteam Nero, they have managed to successfully kill her and yet they were the best of friends.
"The only problem lies with how to take you and Team STRQ to your destination," Glynda Goodwitch added, adjusting her glasses while sparing the leader of the now reinstated Team STRQ a glare. The combat instructor had not fully absolved the Guardian of that Festival of the Lost fiasco, "We may have knowledge of where the gates are but we lacked the means to safely transport you there for even our drones are shot down before they could get close."
"It's no problem actually," Summer spoke up, interrupting the woman's briefing, "We could just use my spaceship to take us there."
"Space…ship?" Qrow voiced unsurely, looking very nervous for some reason, "Didn't you crash land here or something?"
"I didn't actually," she corrected, "I'm pretty sure you guys would've noticed a meteor falling in the biggest continent on Remnant if I did crash landed."
"Still doesn't fill me with confidence with your plan," the scythe-master retorted.
"It also has a fully functioning stealth drive that not even the Vex could see through," Drei added from his perch above Summer's shoulder, "It's how we were able to traverse around Remnant without being detected."
That got everyone's attention.
"I recall the main reason you raided that military outpost was because you needed parts to repair your ship but I do not seem to remember a stealth drive being on the list of stolen property," Glynda noted.
Aside from airship engine parts, an experimental shield generator and artillery were among the report of stolen items. Normally, Glynda and Ozpin wouldn't have authorization to see that report but General Ironwood was able to pull some strings for them.
"That's because the stealth drive is an item from Earth, not Remnant," the Ghost explained, "Even then, it's one of a kind."
"How did you get your hands on such fancy equipment?" Taiyang inquired as he crossed his arms over his well-toned chest.
"The stealth drive was originally my mentor's but he loaned it to me for an important mission and I haven't really gotten around in returning it yet," Summer sheepishly rubbed the back of her head.
"And how did your…'mentor' get this stealth drive in the first place?"
"He stole it from a super-advanced AI."
…
…
"Is your ship made out of stolen parts?"
"Hmm," Summer looked up in thought before coming to an answer, "Not…entirely. But to be fair, some of those parts were stolen to begin with and I just stole them back."
"This mentor of yours doesn't sound like a good influence," Tai deadpanned, inwardly feeling a shiver whenever he thought about what Summer's mentor was like.
"Oh, you have no idea," Drei muttered exasperatedly as he slowly shook his head/body.
"Well, I still don't trust you behind the wheel," Qrow stated before taking another swig from his flask, "I'm not sure if you remember this but you were a pretty shitty driver back then. You could barely drive a tricycle straight much less an airship so I'm sorry for being a little concerned for my health."
There were reasons why Taiyang Xiao and his at the time lover, Summer Rose decided to settle down in Patch. One of them being to keep the latter from ever being in close proximity with a car.
Originally, Summer came from technological stunted village but that excuse could only go so far with how terrible the Summer that they knew was in driving. Everytime she got behind the wheel, not only would she wreck whatever vehicle she was in but also cause a chaotic amount of damage to the surroundings. It was as if she was cursed to destroy everything in sight while driving.
It wouldn't be so bad if she chose to steer clear from vehicles but she would keep insisting that she'll eventually learn how to drive correctly in spite of concrete evidence that said otherwise.
"That coming from the guy who already went through two liver transplants," the blonde man snarked back while Summer pouted indignantly.
More often than not, it was Qrow who had to be in the same car whenever Summer drove and he was actually a better driver while drunk than she was when sober.
"Liver failure I can deal with," the scythe-master retorted, "Being trapped in an enclosed space with Summer driving? Not so much."
"I'll have you know, jackass, that I'm a fully capable pilot," the White Rose growled, looking equal parts adorable and intimidating, "But if you don't want to be on the same ship as me, then feel free to walk there."
"Oh by the Light, you're actually considering it!" she exclaimed when she saw the contemplative look on the black haired man's face.
"Qrow, if you don't want to come, then that's fine," Tai said, surprising his partner and former lover before a devious smirk took place on his face, "But you'll have to tell Summer about the birds and the bees."
"But doesn't she already know about sex? She was pregnant with Ruby after all," Qrow replied, arching a brow in confusion.
"What does birds and bees have anything to do with sex and pregnancy!?" Summer asked in frustration as she threw her hands up, "And why won't anyone tell me what they are!?"
For an agonizingly long moment, Glynda Goodwitch and Qrow Branwen stared slackjawed at the Guardian in disbelief while Professor Ozpin merely took another sip from his mug. Qrow turned pale white as the realization of his leader's obliviousness to sex began to dawn on him while the smirk on the old yellow dragon's face widened.
"Does that answer your question?" Taiy rhetorically asked the dusty old crow, ignoring Summer's tirade about not being told about sex.
"…So when do we leave again?"
There wasn't enough alcohol in the world that could convince him to give anyone the sex talk unless they happened to be his own son and he certainly didn't see that happening anytime soon.
00000
The NS22 Cloud Errant didn't seem that impressive compared to other jumpships but here in a world where space travel only existed in the realms of fiction, it was a masterpiece in spite of the rough patchwork that Summer had done to repair the outer hull.
The rest of Team STRQ (with the exception of Raven Branwen who had yet to join them) gazed upon the spaceship in apparent awe that Qrow had yet to take out his flask of booze.
"Alright, here's the Cloud Errant. She certainly has seen better days but she'll still get the job done," Summer said, gesturing towards the ship with a hint of pride, "Yeah, she sure has brought me out of my fair share of troubles."
"It's almost as much as the time the Cloud Errant brought us into troubles," Drei sardonically added as he hovered towards the ship.
"Hey, I handled myself pretty well those times," the Guardian retorted with a pout, looking like a slightly older version of her daughter.
"And how many times did your recklessness get you killed?"
"A lot," she mumbled, looking downcast. She had long stopped keeping track of the times that she died. It was no doubt that her Ghost knew the exact number of deaths and their specific causes but it would be tactless for him to blurt it out at every opportunity.
"Wait, you died how many times!?" Taiyang exclaimed in alarm.
"I lost count," Summer shrugged like it wasn't such a big deal. It really wasn't such a big deal among Guardians how many times they have died as long as it wasn't their last. Heck, Guardians made sport of killing each other in Crucible matches. They even chuck each other off the Tower for shits and giggles. The White Rose herself was guilty for throwing a good number of Guardians off a balcony.
It wasn't uncommon for veteran Huntsmen to see death as an everyday occurrence since they have definitely seen a lot of that by now but not to the extent of Guardians since death was more of an inconvenience to the latter than something permanent under the right conditions.
Even though Summer and her fellow Guardians were used to brushing off their own deaths like unfortunate injury, Qrow and Taiyang couldn't help but feel a bit unnerved with their newly reinstated leader's indifferent attitude towards her own demise.
The two men shared a look between themselves as Summer approached her spaceship. It took them a brief moment to notice that someone was presently working on the ship, giving it one final tune-up.
"How's she hanging, Neo," Summer cupped her hands around her mouth called out to the technician working on the Cloud Errant.
Neopolitan, now dressed in blue overalls, red goggles and thick black gloves and boots, rolled out from under the ship and gave the Guardian a thumbs-up.
"Wait isn't that the girl one of Torchwick's henchmen?" Qrow pointed out, having recognized the ice cream themed girl due to his own investigations of the criminal underground.
"Well, now she's my henchman with Torchwick behind bars," the Guardian said as she handed an ice cream cone to Neopolitan as payment for a job well done. One of the perks for being able to store food in a data storage was that it would always be in pristine condition so it will never melt or spoil.
The illusionist took the frozen confectionary and dug into it almost greedily while the scythe-master merely shrugged his shoulders and took another swig from his flask.
It would have been a surprise that Summer let a criminal like the multi-coloured girl be so close to her ship much less personally work on it but Neo had proven to be a remarkable engineer because she was able to quickly grasp the structure and inner mechanisms of the Cloud Errant after a brief examination.
Summer had stumbled upon the illusionist girl a third time when the girl was curiously looking over the Cloud Errant. The Guardian would have neutralized the girl right then and there but the wonder in her heterochromatic eyes stopped her from doing so. There was nothing malicious behind the girl's intent but simply, the urge to sate a child's curiosity.
After confronting and reassuring the girl that the Guardian wasn't going to kill her, Summer and Drei began a weird sort of one-sided conversation and learned more about the criminal known as Neopolitan. As it turned out, the petite girl was secretly a huge fan of sci-fi and seeing the real thing for herself was a dream come true for her so she couldn't help but admire the ship in spite of being afraid of its owner.
For someone with such an extensive criminal background, she was really childish when it came to anything that had to do with space as seen when she showed the Guardian her collection of sci-fi books and movies. It was so large that it nearly rivaled Summer's own collection of weapons.
Neo's sparkling brown eyes reminded Summer of Ruby whenever her daughter saw a new weapon to admire so the Guardian conceded to the illusionist girl's silent pleas to work under her. Neo was most likely hoping that working for Summer might give her the chance to go to space and meet more aliens (possibly to kill).
Who knew that such a cold-blooded killer had such a dorky side to her?
It was also a very weird conversation since only Summer and Drei did the talking while Neopolitan quietly communicated through hand gestures. Summer would have found this odd but she had honestly seen weirder.
"Alright, Neo, you can go now," Summer told the multi-coloured girl, earning a nod from the girl before she disappeared in a white flash.
"Do I even want to know how you got your own henchman, Summer?" Taiyang deadpanned after Neopolitan left.
"No. No, you don't," Drei answered as he scanned the Cloud Errant to see the condition of the warp drive. As much as they trust Neo to perform maintenance on the jumpship, the warp drive wasn't something that they would let anyone tinker with because of the sensitivity of the device. Even Summer knew not to needlessly mess around with a warp drive, which spoke of how dangerous it could be.
The blonde man was about to say something else when a big red and black distortion took place next to the ship. The distortion vanished and left several crates of highly explosive Dust in its place while another yet small distortion appeared, which Raven Branwen stepped out of.
"The nerve of Ozpin, making me use my semblance for menial labor," the masked woman muttered under her breath before halting in front of her twin brother.
"Brother," she greeted indifferently.
"Raven," Qrow greeted back, pointedly not calling her his sister. They had ceased to be family a long time ago.
"Xiao Long," she turned her head to the blonde man.
Taiyang said nothing, only giving the mother of his first child a stiff nod.
"Idiot," Raven glared at Summer from under her mask as her gauntlet-cladded hand clenched around the hilt of her nodachi.
Having been called worse by Lux Sylphid, the Guardian simply rolled her eyes and tossed her the feathery object that she managed to snatch during their initial meeting/fight. Raven caught it out of the air and placed it back where it belonged on the right side of her skirt.
"Alright, let's go save the world," Summer declared before Team STRQ beamed up into the Cloud Errant.
The plan was simple. The newly reinstated Team STRQ were to go to the main Vex fortress where the Gate Lord resided, kill the Gate Lord regulating the transfer gates and then blow up said transfer gates.
It was a good thing that the Gate Lord's lair was still quite close to Vale since it was in the same continent and just north of Vale. In a twisted sense of irony, Remnant's first counterattack against the Vex was going to happen on the island of Vytal, where the four kingdoms first negotiated and declared peace.
After this war, Remnant will have another reason to celebrate the Vytal Festival, assuming they survive, of course.
00000
Meanwhile, the Hunter Vanguard examined the reports about how the contributions to the war effort was proceeding.
Everything seemed to running smoothly thus far. Lord Saladin's team was able to construct fortifications on their end of the Gateway to keep the House of Devils away while Commander Zavala had already begun the space battle with the Dreadnaught and his fleet against the Vex and the Cabal.
The modified transport trucks, now dubbed as Rams, were being outfitted with Cabal-based weaponry like the Heavy Slug Throwers that the Cabal's Colossus heavy infantry units wielded. Say what you want about the Cabal but they certainly knew how to deal as much damage as possible in the span of seconds and right now, they needed that instead of precision to deal with vast amount of Grimm and Vex that they would no doubt face.
Cayde repressed a shudder when he recalled that Lord Shaxx insisted on driving one of the Rams into battle. It was quite fortunate that he was going to be on his sparrow instead of being in the same vehicle as the Crucible Handler since the old Titan had a tendency to be very enthusiastic in both his driving and fighting.
Honestly, the man had seen one too many Crucible matches.
But there was one particular report that caught Cayde-6's eye. The Exo Hunter quickly constructed a brief message before sending it to the Guardians in his team, including Lord Shaxx.
The Gateway's now fully operational. Load up and prepare for deployment.
00000
AN:
Not much action here since I'm reserving that for the next chapters.
It has been a while since I've done this but what the hell, here's the continuation of the list of things Summer Rose is no longer allowed to do.
Omake:
61. When fire doesn't seem to be effective the first time, the next course of action isnt to use more fire.
62. I know this is abusing the missives but I know you stole my sparrow and when I find you, I'll make you wear a sign that says you stole - Nevermind, nevermind! It's right here! Sorry about that, kiddo.- Cayde-6
Vanguard Cayde-6 – Do not use the missives unless absolutely necessary and be sure to check first before throwing (mostly) unfounded accusations.
63. Guardians may be capable of turning their necks around like an owl but please refrain from doing so in the presence of non-Guardians unless it is during the Festival of the Lost.
64. Do not refer to the wolves found in Felwinter's Peak as the Iron Lords' mascot or at the very least, not in Lord Saladin Forge's presence.
65. The correct way to deal with a cockroach infestation is not the liberal use of firearms or Light abilities. Do remember to call an exterminator next time.
Guardian Lux Sylphid – That goes for you too. We expected something like this from Guardian Summer Rose but not you.
66. Yes, we all know that the issue concerning your height is a sore topic but what you did to those Guardians during the Crucible matches may be considered a little drastic. You're fortunate that Lord Shaxx was willing to let these transgressions slide.
To all Guardians – Please do not provoke Guardian Summer Rose about her height. She can be quite vindictive when she wants to. You have been warned
67. We commend you for installing a censor mod in Guardian Lux Sylphid's helmet. She really needs to watch her language.
Guardian Lux Sylphid – Until you learn to watch your language in front of children, you are hereby forbidden from removing that censor mod.
68. We all know that Cayde-6 of the Vanguard is your mentor but please stop setting up elaborate traps for him to fall in. We thought you learned your lesson by now ever since Commander Zavala accidently fell in one of them.
69. We'll tell you when you're older. Please stop asking.
70. Please do not throw passing Guardians at your fireteammate, Lux Sylphid in an attempt to slow her down.
71. That also applies to using them as impromptu shields against Guardian Lux Sylphid's Nova Bolts.
72. We are aware that you were too preoccupied at the time to personally defend the refugees but it does not justify giving a sidearm to a ten year old boy to defend himself with.
73. No! The fact that it was loaded and the safety was off does not make it better and as impressive as it was for the boy to have shot and killed three dregs, it was still a terribly irresponsible thing to do!
74. Would you kindly explain why you have barred the entire third floor from everyone else?
75. What do you mean that the floor turned into lava!? That is simply impossible!
To all Guardians – We are currently investigating this anomaly as to ascertain the exact cause and how to reverse it. In the meantime, please refrain from making contact with the floor on the third level if you must venture through there unless you want to experience a gruesome death by incineration.
76. Our sincerest apologies for not believing you, Guardian.
77. I appreciate you crafting a replacement horn for my helmet as thanks for forging Bolt-caster but I would have to respectfully decline due to my own personal reasons. – Lord Shaxx, Crucible Handler
78. Even though mundane poisons have no effect Guardians, it still doesn't mean you should eat them.
79. We're not sure what you saw in that time conflux in the Black Garden that has you so bothered but it's best to focus on this timeline than to try correcting the other timelines. That path possibly leads to where you might never find your way back from.
80. Cloning technology is illegal for several good reasons and the universe could only take so much of you at any given time.