"Well, that was a big waste of time." Yang groaned as the eight students collapsed inside a cave a good distance away from where they started. They had gone up and down the beach looking for help, but had found no one or nothing that could aid them.
"Agreed." Nora added, collapsing next to Ren. "We're totally lost."
"So...do we just stay here, then?" Weiss shrugged nevously. "It's not like we have a good supply of food or water with us. We need to find someone who can help us or some place to go. Otherwise...we won't last very long."
At that moment, eight stomachs growled in unison. There was silence, then a volley o amused chuckles from all around. Eventually, everyone found a somewhat comfortable seat and closed their eyes to rest.
Blake sighed as she watched her fellow students rest from the entrance. She found the notion of resting right now unadvisable, and she silently turned to keeping watch. Then, her ears perked as she heard a noise in the distance, her Faunus senses detecting something from afar. Focusing her eyes on the skyline, she could see four flying objects coming towards them.
They weren't Bullheads, as their long, tapered frames were even smaller than the Remnantian aircraft's smallest civilian model. Blake pulled out her Scroll and activated the camera function, zooming into the distant skyline for a closer look. The noise of the scroll powering up made Ruby poke her eyes open.
"What's up?" Ruby asked drowsily.
"We've got incoming aircraft." Blake replied. "They're not Bullheads, in fact...they're using rotors...they're helicopters...and they're coming in our direction."
Hearing that woke everyone else up instantly, and they each pulled out their own scrolls to see for themselves.
"I thought we stopped using rotor-propelled aircraft after the Bullhead got introduced across Remnant." Pyrrha noted. "So...yet another reason proving that we're nowhere near home."
As the helicopters came closer and closer, Blake perked at the sound of a dull thud, like the mufled launch of a small cannon, and she turned back to the skyline. A large cloud of small objects buzzed away from the coastline further away, and headed right for the incoming aircraft.
"And that's not all." Blake continued. "There's...a swarm of birds going out towards those helicopters. Or insects, it's hard to tell from this distance."
Then, Blake saw small flashes coming from the air around the helicopters, along with faint bursts of of smoke and flame. In an instant, the Cat Faunus realized those weren't birds or bugs that were exploding across the night sky.
Then, Blake saw that one of the four helicopters had broken from the formation and was heading towards them, flames coming from its torn fuselage. As it careened towards the ground, directly towards them, Weiss let out a scream as the students dove for the inside of the cave.
"GET DOWN!" Ren called out, sheltering Nora as the helicopter crashed near the entrance of the cave, on the nearby beach. As the deafening boom and the sound of searing metal impacting against the sand faded away, Ruby peeked out from behind a boulder to see the aftermath.
The helicopter was pinned against a rock wall, its rotors spinning very slowly and weakly, and Ruby could barely make out the text on its tail. She realized it was written in a language very closely resembling Vytalian, only more blocky and bold
US NAVY - D1B5SFG
As Ruby watched the wreckage in shock, what she saw next would make her drop her jaw to the ground.
Four humans, three men and one woman in military gear and carrying an assortment of ballistic weapons, climbed out of the crashed helicopter and took defensive stances. Their armor was mostly brown, blue, or gray, with white accents, but they each had a glowing blue ear clip as well. It reminded Ruby of what a Atlesian Specialist would wear, only far more militarized and likely equipped for stealth missions.
One of the men, wearing a brown sports cap emblazoned with a gray human skull, turned back to the wreckage and looked into the cockpit. Climbing up, he peered into the aircraft's torn fuselage before swearing loudly, and then he called out in rough Vytalian.
"The pilots didn't make it! Alright Cyclone Team, we're on our own. So lock and load whatever we have left. And don't expect friendly support for the moment, our comms are offline."
"Check!" said a dark-skinned man with a jungle hat, who wore gear like a field technician on an engineer. "So what's the play, Cyclone?"
"We find shelter, link up with the other teams, and complete the mission." the leader replied. Shouldering his rifle, the man turned to the cave above the rock wall, the same cave that the eight students were hiding in.
"Team, follow me." he said, and as the four soldiers climbed up and approached their hiding place, Ruby slowly unfolded Crescent Rose and as quietly as she could, loaded a fresh magazine. As the other students with ballistic weapons made ready, Jaune drew his sword to follow suit.
But in that moment, the faint light from the mouth of the cave caught the blade's reflective surface, and attracted the lead soldier's eyes in the process.
"What's wrong?" the woman asked, as she watched the beach, a submachine gun with an angled frame held in her hands.
"I saw something." The soldier said, swinging his rifle to a ready position. Jaune had hidden his sword already, and it seemed like the soldier would move along at first.
Only he then took out a small, orb-shaped object and tossed it forward into the cave. Ruby was about to whisper "Grenade!" to her fellow students, only the object didn't explode. It emitted a small noise, and went silent and still.
Then, the lead soldier spoke up a few moments later.
"I know there's eight of you in there...but it's okay. We're not gonna hurt you. You can come on out."
—
US Army Captain Jason McCoy wasn't sure what to expect would happen as a result of his calling-out. After his Sensor Grenade picked up eight contacts inside the cave, he motioned for his team to stand down while he advanced. Through his time as the leader of Cyclone Team, and during his time before joining the Ghosts, he'd seen a lot of strange things and seen plenty of strange places and environments.
Later, he would admit privately that this was one of the strangest things he'd ever seen as a member of Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, or as it was better known, Ghost Recon.
Eight children, all around the early teens, were camped out in the cave. Two sets of four children each seemed to be close, making him guess they were two separate units brought together for some reason.
The first group was composed of all girls, with a crimson and black-haired girl with stunning silver eyes, wearing red and black clothes and a skirt, carrying a multi-bladed scythe like a long rifle in the lead position.
Second was a taller, more muscular blonde with brawler's attire and two golden gauntlets, and from the way she glared at him when he looked at the silver-eyed one, they were closely related.
Third was a pale-skinned girl with white hair, done in a ponytail. A rapier with what seemed to be a revolver's cylinder was on her waist. She had a rather elegant air to her, and her jacket-and-minidress combo was colored as stark white as her hair.
Lastly, for the first group, was a girl with cat ears and somehow, a tail to match, and she carried a bladed pistol with some sort of cable and hook attached as well. Her attire was thin, rogue-like, and sleek. Jason raised an eyebrow at the tail, however. Cat ears, he could get, though a a tail was far more unusual, if she was into that sort of thing.
The second group had a thin boy wearing an armored hoodie and t-shirt in the lead position, carrying a sword and shield. Next was a rather small girl, carrying, out of all things, a large warhammer. She stayed close to the third member of their group, a boy with twin bayoneted pistols. Lastly was a girl wearing what seemed to be an ancient Roman legionary or Greek Hoplite's attire and armor. She carried a javelin and shield.
For a few minutes, no one said a word or even breathed. Benjamin Jones, David Zhang, and Kim Hernandez or Fixit, Vasily, and Fury, kept their weapons ready, because at this range, they didn't want to know how effective the children's melee weapons could be.
"Especially the scythe," he thought, "Going against it at this range, only equipped with a M4, a Beretta M9, and a combat knife? Not gonna work out in our favor. We need to handle this quickly, carefully, and quietly. Not to mention that we have a mission to finish. The hostiles that shot us down have to be on their way here."
Jason sighed, lowered his M4, and motioned for the other members of his team to do so. At this, the kids did the same. Though the cat-girl seemed a little wary of the Stoner 96 LMG carried by Fixit.
"Hello. Can you understand me?" Jason ventured. "We just want to talk, figure out what's going on here."
The silver-eyed girl nodded warily, and lowered her scythe to a resting position.
"Okay." Jason said. "You can call me Cyclone. That's Fixit, Vasily, and Fury. Those aren't our real names, by the way. They're callsigns to conceal our identities."
"I'm Ruby Rose." the scythe-girl said. "That's my sister Yang, Blake, Weiss, Jaune, Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren."
"Nice to meet you." Cyclone replied. "Okay, first of all, you're all humans, right?"
"Well, most of us." Yang shrugged. "Blake's a Cat Faunus, though."
"You mean those ears and that tail...are the real deal?" Fixit asked. Blake gave a nod, and he swore under his breath, and Blake could hear him mutter "They're humans...and aliens. Just our luck."
"What planet is this?" Pyrrha asked. "We know this isn't Remnant."
"That's the world you come from?" Fury asked, receiving nods in reply from Ruby and her friends. "Well, we're currently on the main island of the Auroa Archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, Planet Earth. You must've come a really long way."
Weiss was about to protest when Vasily spoke up in a hushed voice.
"Unknown contacts on our two'o-clock. They're armed."
"Friendlies?" Fury asked.
"Negative." Vasily replied, looking through the scope of his Scorpio sniper rifle. "I don't recognize their uniforms or gear. We should presume they're hostile."
As they approached, Vasily could see it was a search party composed of men in green, red, tan, and black, carrying various weapons, including assault rifles and shotguns. One carried a radio rig, another had some kind of assault drone on his back. The others were riflemen or breachers.
"Alright." Cyclone said to Ruby and the others. "We'll have to hear the rest of your story later. We need to move out as fast as we can, and get to somewhere far away from here. Once we do, we can link up with the other teams we came here with."
"Then...it's anyone's guess after that."
"We can't go out there, they'll see us!" Weiss protested.
"You got any better ideas?" Fixit snapped back.
"Lock it down, both of you." Cyclone replied. "Alright, listen up. You all see that treeline up there?"
The eight students turned to see a thicket near their position, concealed from view from the beach. To the students' surprise, the four soldiers loaded their weapons and set up into raed positions. Ruby looked to the unknown contacts, and realized their new friends were planning an ambush.
"On my signal, make a run for that treeline and don't stop for anything. Go as far as you can." Cyclone said once eight pairs of eyes returned to him. "We'll suppress those hostiles as you move, then we'll be right behind you."
"What if we get separated?" Ren asked.
"If we do have to split up...then listen to me very carefully." Cyclone continued. "If we see you, we'll call out the code phase, "Run with the Red Queen". You'll then respond with "Chase the White Rabbit". That way, we know it's you and vice versa."
"Also, there are three other teams that we came here with, and they're all friends of ours. Those team leaders' callsigns are Nomad, Aegis, and Hunter. If you see them or think you see them, use the code phrase I just told you. And if they ask you anything else, say you were sent by Cyclone Lead."
"Do you understand?"
The students nodded. As they stacked up near the mouth of the cave, Cyclone waited till the lead hostile was lined up in his reticle...before calling out.
"Run for it, go now!"
The students didn't need to be told twice. As they bolted, Ruby using her Semblance for extra speed, Cyclone Team attacked. As rapid gunfire cracked through the night, Ruby and her friends ran like they never had before.
For all they knew, their lives counted on it.