And now we get to the actual mission. Get ready for Darce's new weapons and Gray's semi-new semblance. Hope you enjoy!
Ch. 34: I'm scared of my girlfriend
Puck:
Well, that's not a foreboding chapter title at all. Wait, are we talking about Darce's girlfriend, or Gray's? 'Cause, if it's Darce's, all we have to worry about is maybe dismemberment. If it's Gray's…
Lord have mercy on us all.
Oh, well. I guess we'll figure out, won't we? Not like I have anything to cut off most of the time.
Darce:
'What was that?' I asked Puck, hearing him mutter something.
'Nothing. You should probably pay attention to Oobleck.'
'Fine, whatever.'
I quickly focused back on to Oobleck's speech, only to find he was already wrapping up.
"From this point forward, you need to do exactly as I say! Do you understand?" He asked.
We all nodded, then he noticed Ruby's bag.
"Ruby! I thought I told you to leave all of your bags back at school!"
She flinched a bit, but quickly covered for herself.
"But you hadn't told us to listen to you yet...so I didn't."
There was a pause as Weiss rolled her eyes, Gray facepalmed, and the rest slumped their shoulders. Oobleck took a moment to think.
"She's not wrong." The doctor justified to himself, holding his chin in contemplation, "Very well, Ruby. Leave your bag here, we can pick it up upon our return."
"But I, well, uh…"
"Young lady, what in the world could you possibly have in that bag that could be so important to bring it with-" He started, but stopped when the bag grew a corgi head.
Zwei looked around in blissful ignorance of the shocked stares he was receiving, only knowing that all these people were paying attention to him.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me." Gray muttered under his breath, facepalming again.
Ruby slowly turned her head and whispered out of the side of her mouth.
"Get back in the bag…" She said as discreetly as possible with everyone watching.
Zwei just let out a happy bark. Oobleck gave Ruby a deadpan look.
"We're here to investigate an abandoned urban jungle teeming with death and hostility, and you brought...a dog?"
"I...uh-" Ruby stuttered.
"Genius!" Oobleck cried out and seemed to walk away.
Ruby gave us a confused shrug before our huntsman-mentor zipped by Ruby, snatching Zwei and causing his owner to land flat on her ass. Mr. "Didn't-earn-my-PhD-in-fun" began to spin the small dog in the air.
"Canines are historically known for their perceptive nose and heightened sense of sound, making them excellent companions for a hunt such as ours!" He shouted excitedly.
Zwei's response was to bark happily again.
"Yeah, I'm definitely staying away from coffee." I whispered over to Blake and Gray, who both nodded in agreement.
The others were silent for a moment before Ruby spoke up.
"I'm a genius." She said smugly.
Gray, Yang, and Weiss facepalmed at our pint-sized scythe wielder.
"I swear, I'm gonna get brain damage if you keep making me facepalm." Gray muttered again.
"So, what are your orders, doctor?" Blake asked.
Oobleck stopped spinning around with Zwei and looked over to her.
"Ah, yes, straight to the chase! I like it!" He dropped Zwei ad got a serious expression, "As you've been informed, the southeast area has been marked as a recent hotspot for grimm activity. Now, there are several possible explanations for this behavior, one of which being... grimm." Oobleck was looking behind us.
I knew what it was, but why spoil the surprise?
"Well, no sh-" Gray started a sarcastic remark, but Oobleck ignored him.
"A creature of Grimm approximately one hundred yards from us at this very moment."
"What?!" Yang and Gray said in stereo.
I was the only one not to draw my weapon immediately.
'Soon.' I told myself.
"Stop!" the huntsman commanded.
Blake make a noise of confusion, but everyone lowered their weapons.
"There are a number of reasons why grimm will congregate in this particular area, the most likely of which will be their attraction to negativity: sadness, envy, loneliness, hatred. All qualities that are likely held by our hidden group harboring ill intent."
"Alright...so what?" Gray asked.
I nudged him with my elbow and whispered an explanation.
"If we follow the grimm, it'll eventually lead us to the bad guys."
Gray made a long "oohh" sound before Ruby questioned Oobleck.
"What do we do?"
"We wait." He answered, "We track. If this specimen leads us to its pack, that pack may subsequently lead us to our prey."
"How long do we wait?" Yang asked, mirroring Gray's impatience.
"It's uncertain. Hours, days, weeks. Why, lone Grimm have been known to stay isolated from the pack for months," There was only a slight pause when he realized five more grimm had showed up, "And there's the whole pack."
"What?!" Weiss exclaimed.
"And now they've seen us." He added.
"What?!" The heiress repeated.
"AND NOW THEY'VE SEEN US!" Oobleck said again, shouting in Weiss' ear.
"I take it tracking them is out of the question?" Our fearless leader asked.
"An accurate assumption, yes."
"Great, can I punch things now?" Gray deadpanned.
Oobleck took a very Ozpin-esque pause, then said:
"Show me what you're capable of."
Gray:
And then I proceeded to do what I do best: satisfy my inner serial killer by punching anthropomorphic representations of the evils of society to death. It was great fun, until Oobleck started questioning us about why we wanted to be Hunters. When he finally got to me, I decided to deflect the question with snark.
"What about you, Gray?" He asked.
I put on as serious a face as I could and answered in a calm, even bored, tone.
"Signed up on a dare." I shrugged, "Darce bet me I couldn't get into Beacon in the same year as him, and let's just say I'm fifty lien richer because of it. I had nothing better to do, so I stayed."
Our green-haired teacher furrowed his eyebrows in annoyance, but moved on without comment.
"While we're on the topic, why do you want to be a huntsman, Darce?" He asked as Darce decapitated a Beowolf.
"A wise man once said 'Be the change you want to see in the world,' and I firmly believe in those words. One day I saw a little girl beating the living crap out of a group of poorly dressed thugs with ridiculously large scythe, so, logically, I thought to myself 'Hey, she could use some help.' Before I knew it, I was in an interrogation room with Ozpin asking me if I wanted to make a difference. The rest is history." Darce replied, a wide smirk on his lips and a distant look in his eyes.
"Cresent Rose is NOT ridiculously large!" Ruby shouted, then hugged her weapon close to her body and began to pet the side, cooing softly, "Don't worry, sweetheart, he doesn't know what he's talking about." She whispered.
Yang, Darce, and I all chuckled at this. Blake rolled her eyes, Weiss face palmed, and Oobleck just looked confused. I elbowed Weiss and whispered to her.
"Careful, looks like you've got competition." I said, gesturing to Ruby's scythe.
The heiress gave me an unamused glare.
"Competition for what?" She demanded.
"Oh, nothing~. Nevermind, just go back to denial." I sing-songed.
Weiss gave a long sigh.
"You've been hanging out with Yang too much." She noted before going back to killing grimm.
"Hey, where's Blake?" Darce asked.
I looked around, but she wasn't there.
"Probably off to clear out more monsters somewhere else." I shrugged.
He didn't seem convinced, but went back to work anyway. It was then I noticed that Darce had a whole new set of swords.
"Hey, when'd you get new gear?" I asked.
"Hm? Oh, Ruby made them as a kind of 'get well soon' gift when she learned I lost Nihil. Meet the new and very improved 'Nihil' and his new friend 'Nulla'." He said, lifting them up for me to see.
They looked nothing like his old katana, they were straighter and a bit shorter. Oh, and it was covered in several sharp points. There was a crescent shaped blade covering the front of the grip, a dagger sprouted from the bottom of the hilt, and the tip of the normal blade was curved forward into a hook.
"She made you a pair of tiger hook swords?" I asked rhetorically, slightly confused.
"Yeah, but that's not even the cool part! Check this!"
He linked the two hooks together and swung them around like a something between an axe and a flail. Then, after he'd killed a few grimm that way, the two swords seemed to twist around each other and suddenly became a really bulky looking sniper rifle.
"And for my last trick!" Darce said as he shot a Beowolf in the head from several meters away.
The bullet not only made its head pop like a balloon, it also killed two others that were behind it.
"This one is called 'Gemino 3'!This thing shoots rounds the size of my p-"
"Keep it PG, Darce." Puck interrupted from the floor.
"What? I was going to say pointer finger! Geez, Puck, get your head out of the gutter." The cat faunus said indignantly.
Darce then turned around and fired a few shots at incoming monsters, and I noticed another strange thing about his weapon.
"There's no recoil or noise." I commented.
He turned back to me and smirked.
"Yeah, I upgraded from a railgun to a coilgun!"
There was a moment of silence as he realized those words meant nothing to me. He sighed and tried again.
"Railguns use dust and magnets to work. Coilguns just use magnets. No dust means no bang. No bang means no kick. I don't even need a silencer anymore."
"Oh….cool."
"Yes, Gray. It's very cool. Ruby did a really good job on it."
"Don't mention it!" Our leader called from her corner of battle.
With the grimm all dead now, we looked around but Blake was still missing. Darce was visibly starting to panick.
"I'm gonna go look for her." He said before dashing off in a random direction.
Just then, she found her way back to the group. Blake looked a little zoned out, but was uninjured as far as I could tell.
"Hey, where'd you run off to?" Yang asked her partner.
Blake glared at her and moved to distance herself from Yang.
"What's it to you?" Blake replied harshly.
Everyone was understandably confused by her sudden hostility, and Ruby tried to move in and mollify her.
"Blake, are you okay? What's wrong?"
"Oh, don't give me that. Like you care, anyway." The faunus girl hissed.
Okay, there was definitely something wrong. Why couldn't we just have one fucking day without this bullshit!
"What's eating her?" I asked Darce.
He was, after all, her boyfriend, surely he'd know...yeah, right.
"Hell if I know." He replied predictably, then tried his own luck at calming Blake down, "Blake, come on, talk to us."
She glared at him too, but it softened after a moment.
'Looks like the pussy whipping goes both ways.' I thought to myself.
Blake finally looked away and shrugged.
"Nothing. I'm just not comfortable with all these…" She made a gesture at the rest of our team.
"What? You've been hanging out with them practically day and night for months-" He cut himself off and seemed to zone out for a moment, "Blake, did you see anyone while you were separated from us?"
"I…" Blake was a bit taken aback by this sudden question, she furrowed her eyebrows as if trying to remember, "I...I think so….I...can't remember…" She put a hand to her head as if she had a headache.
"Darce, what are you getting at?" I asked.
"She's uncomfortable around humans and being evasive when questioned. Those are her worst traits amplified. Who do we know that can do that?"
The answer struck me and my eyes widened.
"Lily."
"Lily." Blake repeated as she clutched her head tighter, "She...said her name was...Lily…"
She looked like a cornered animal when she opened her eyes and looked at us. She was scared, so she did another one of her bad traits: she ran.
"Catch her! Lily got to her! Gray, you need to fix her like you did me!" Darce shouted.
All of team RWBY sprung into action.
"Get away from me, you filthy humans!" Blake screamed at us as we chased her through the wasteland.
After five minutes of what was essentially a scooby-doo chase with shadow clones and superspeed, we finally caught her. I put a hand on her forehead and summoned the weird energy. When the light stopped flooding out off Blake's eyes, she fell into a limp unconsciousness.
"I still have no idea how I do that." I commented as we carried her back to Oobleck.
"I'll explain it to you later." Darce whispered.
"Not only this, but now we have to worry about Lily!" I continued.
"What happened to her." Our green haired teacher demanded when he saw Blake.
"She hasn't been sleeping well lately, a Beowolf got past her and knocked her unconscious." My brother lied easily.
It was starting to scare me how quickly Darce could lie now, and how well he pulled it off. He used to hate directly lying, but now he acted as if it came naturally. I didn't like what being in this world was doing to him, I hated the fact that it was necessary even more. Though, I suppose it's only natural, like Charles Darwin said.
Welcome to Remnant, a world of bloody evolution.
Bloody evolution, indeed. So, lots of info and MORE DRAMA dumped into this chapter. Tiger hook swords are a real thing, look them up.
Anyway, don't forget to follow, fav, and review. If you have any thoughts or suggestions feel free to send a PM my way. Come back next week to see Mab and Lily stalking our heroes!