"Are you sure this is their last known position?" Qrow Branwen asked as he, Professor Ozpin, General Ironwood, Winter Schnee, and several Atlesian soldiers surveyed the campsite set up by teams RWBY and JNPR.
Three hours had passed since the transponders for both teams went off, and then near-immediately gone silent. Qrow had departed to pick them up, and had soon radioed that Teams RWBY and JNPR were nowhere to be found.
In fact, everything at their campsite was intact, and there was no sign of a struggle to be found. Ozpin, Winter, and General Ironwood had immediately rounded up a platoon of Atlesian soldiers and deployed to the teams' last known position.
While Winter volunteered to search through the footage taken by the monitoring cameras, Ironwood, Qrow, and Ozpin began to supervise the soldiers' surveillance of the area.
And so far, there was no sign of the eight students whatsoever.
"This isn't good." Ironwood mumbled. "There's no blood, no signs of battle, and no sign of the Grimm. It tells me that whoever or whatever did this knew what they were doing and were fast about doing it."
"Maybe." Ozpin replied. "However, we still have the camera footage to go through. Perhaps it might shed some light on the situation at hand."
"I'll tell you one thing." Qrow said. "I don't like this, not one bit."
There was silence for a few moments, and then Winter called them over, saying she had found something. As the four of them watched the camera feed, they could see all eight students were around a campfire, until something startled them.
As they approached the edge of the camera's view, Weiss Schnee could be seen marking the ground, and then they vanished from sight. Ironwood directed his men to search for the marking, and it was soon found near an archway made from trees.
"Hmm…" Qrow murmured, as he approached the formation. "You smell that?"
"I certainly do." Ozpin said. "It's the ocean. I can hear seabirds, the roar of the waves…do you, James?"
"I do." Ironwood nodded. "Except we're nowhere near the ocean whatsoever. There's no way this can be happening naturally."
"Except it is certainly not natural to experience such sensations here." Ozpin continued. "I'd be willing to reckon that Teams RWBY and JNPR discovered this...anomaly, much like we have, and passed through it."
"So we follow in their footsteps." Winter said. "Cross through ourselves and see what happens."
"That's a bad move." Qrow interjected. "We don't know what's on the other side. For once, we need to be careful. For all we know, there's something worse than the Grimm waiting for us."
Ironwood reluctantly nodded to the veteran Huntsman, and attuned his Scroll to the comm channel that corresponded to the Atlesian military research and development section, followed by calls to Arthur Watts, Dr. Polendina, then followed by an order for reinforcements to the site from the Atlesian carrier overhead. As he hung up and put his Scroll away, Winter approached cautiously.
"I assume now that we have a plan?"
"Possibly." Ironwood replied. "However, Qrow did bring up a good point, Winter. We need to make sure that if we do proceed through, we don't end up in a situation worse than our own."
"For now, Ozpin, I suggest we keep this quiet and confidential. The Councils aren't ready to learn about this, not until we are sure of what we are dealing with."
"I agree." Ozpin nodded. "Fow now, we must also pray that whatever struggles Teams RWBY and JNPR are facing, they shall overcome."
As Ruby and the other students dashed through the trees, the roar of gunfire coming from the beach behind them, Blake led the way, her Faunus senses alerting her to any hidden obstacles.
"This is insane!" Weiss stammered as she continued to run. "For once, I don't know what else to say!"
"Can we not talk about that right now?" Ren replied. "We need to keep moving! There's no time for talking, so just keep running!"
"Not like there's anything else we can do!" Yang retorted. As the trees blurred past, Blake suddenly screeched to a stop, causing the others to halt.
"Blake?" Ruby asked, panting. "What is it?"
Blake didn't respond, slowly placing her hands in the air, as a red dot moved up from the ground and placed itself right on her forehead. Then, seven other laser dots appeared on the foreheads of the other students.
As four objects buzzed into view, Ruby could see that they were small combat androids kept aloft by six small rotor-wings. Each android carried a mounted rifle and an ammunition belt, and it didn't take much to reason that they had been caught by whoever it was that had encountered Cyclone and his team.
As six humans, wearing black and green special-ops attire with long green cloaks, each carrying a ballistic weapon approached, Ruby slowly began to shake nervously.
Then, an accented, rough, and stern voice spoke, booming through the area.
"Well, what do we have here?"
A seventh figure, wearing similar armor as the other six, came into view, the plethora of dog tags around his neck glinting in the faint early morning light. A long rifle with a white frame and a black grip lay on his back, and he carried a long-barreled revolver in his right hand. A tactical mask kept his face obscured.
The other six soldiers saluted or nodded as he passed, and the students realized this was their leader, or a commanding officer. He slowly raised his revolver to a ready position, and spoke again.
"Well, this is certainly an unexpected surprise," he spoke. "Now, I don't know what you're all doing here, or why you're doing it…but I very much would like to know."
"And I want to know now."
The students stepped back as one, and the soldiers raised their rifles in response. The lead soldier stepped forward again, and this time, he reached up towards his facemask, and lifted it off.
The students could see a man with brown eyes and black hair, and a noticeable, sutured scar on his nose. His face had a stubble beard, his eyes were alert, and the air of a feral, wild beast surrounded him. And by the look in his eyes, this was a person that shouldn't be messed with.
"Now...I'll ask again." he said, clicking off the safety on his revolver. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
"We're not telling you anything." Jaune spoke, shielding Pyrrha from view.
The man gave a hollow laugh in response as the soldiers moved to surround them.
"You've got guts, kid." he smirked. "That's brave. But for you and your friends' sake, I wouldn't talk like that to me, if I were you."
"We're not scared of you!" Yang retorted, unfolding and readying Ember Celica. The leader eyed it for a moment, before shaking his head as he turned around. The students could see four other soldiers dressed similar to him, only with a few cosmetic differences, standing nearby.
"Don't say I didn't give you a chance." he said darkly, motioning with his revolver. "You six, take 'em back to base, whether they like it or not!"
"Yes, sir!" The soldiers replied, loading and raising their weapons, advancing on the eight students. As they drew their own weapons in fear, there was a faint click, and a small thrown cylinder landed in the middle of the area.
Then, all hell broke loose as the flashbang detonated, gunfire erupted, and the students turned to run. Blake's ears immediately folded down, her eyes closed, and she groaned audibly, her Faunus senses being disrupted by the Flashbang's detonation. It wasn't long before she fell down, crying in pain.
Weiss helped her up and began to guide her disabled teammate safely back towards the others, Blake covering her eyes and ears with both her hands.
However, it wasn't long before they saw Cyclone, Fixit, Vasily, and Fury, beckoning them over, while four other men standing nearby provided cover fire.
As the students redirected themselves, one of their rescuers, who wore a blue cap with a white spartan helmet, caught the hostile leader's eye. They locked gazes for a moment before they both turned away.
"Are you okay, Blake?" Yang asked as the eight students were shepherded towards an area occupied with a few vehicles, four SUVs and a modified Humvee with a mounted minigun.
"'I'm okay...I think." Blake replied, uncovering her ears as her Aura began healing her damaged ears and eyes. "Thanks for saving us, Cyclone."
"No problem, but we need to get moving, ASAP." Cyclone replied as the eight students were shepherded towards the vehicles. "Those bastards are going to find this position sooner or later, and we don't want to be around here when that happens."
"Agreed." the soldier in the blue cap nodded. "You eight, m mount up."
As the eight students were split up among the cars, it wasn't long before they were heading out of the forest, towards a mountain in the distance.
"So…what happens now?" Ruby asked as she and Yang watched the trees go past. "Is there anywhere that's safe?"
"Matter of fact, there is." Cyclone replied, then he turned to the man with the blue cap. "I re established contact with Hunter Team and Aegis Team. They managed to find a local safe haven the locals call Erewhon."
"Good work, Cyclone." the man replied. "By the way…"
He turned to the Ruby and Yang, and nodded.
"My callsign's Nomad, I'm the leader of Kingslayer Team, and field CO for the operation that brought us here. You all must have a lot of questions, so I'll do my best to answer them as we go."
As they drove, Ruby and Yang, along with the other students once their Scrolls were linked to the encrypted network their rescuers used, pondered the information they had just learned.
Nomad, Midas, Holt, Weaver, Cyclone, Fixit, Vasily, and Fury were soldiers from a country called the "United States of America'', and were members of an elite unit called Ghost Recon. Apparently, these Ghosts, as they preferred to be called, had deployed to Auroa to investigate a series of disturbances culminating in a US Navy cargo ship being sunk off the coast.
The company that inhabited the archipelago, Skell Tech, produced the equivalent of androids called "drones", which could be used for a variety of purposes. However, after a political candidate in the US was murdered by a lethal attack drone on live TV, the archipelago was sealed off and all communications went dark.
Nomad wasn't sure of some of the circumstances behind the events behind the attack, but he did know the man with the revolver was more than involved with Sentinel Corp, the PMC that had taken over the archipelago.
To Ruby, it seemed like a situation even a team of Veteran Huntsmen or Huntresses would be scared by, but according to Nomad…
...this was the environment the Ghosts thrived in, and they had succeeded in countless missions that were just as dangerous as this one. Nomad's examples were called Operation Kingslayer, and Operation Shattered Mountain.
Yang had asked if the connection between Kingslayer Team and the operation was intentional, and Nomad had chuckled before replying; it was how his team chose their official designation.
Now, as they drove up a mountainside road to their destination, Ruby slowly succumbed to exhaustion, and fell into a light sleep on her sister's shoulder.