Remnant: Angel of Death

Chapter 8: Yet another fruitful hunt.

Winter Schnee looked downwards to see the city of Mantle just beneath the floating city of Atlas. In her department while being gently embraced by the cold breeze, she felt at peace.

She was the vivid image of her mother, Willow Schnee and the older version of her little sister, Weiss Schnee. If their brother, Whitley Schnee, were a woman then he would probably resemble Winter.

If both sisters had the same age, it would be really hard to recognize them. From the long and beautiful white hair to the cyan eyes and the pale skin; the main differences between the sisters were Weiss' scar and less...developed body. Winter was taller and sported large breasts, thin waist and wide hips and long slender legs. Another thing that helped to differentiate between the sisters was their way to look at people, both of them had stern looks but Weiss' was way less severe than Winter's that was rumored to kill an ursa with a simple glare.

That night, as usual, she wore a cyan nightdress that covered from her shoulders to her ankles.

Winter stood there in her balcony merely watching how alive was Mantle in comparison to its former self. A year ago, there were little to no lights and even less people willing to walk outside of their relatively safe homes for fear of getting killed in the way to the bar or the night shift but now many people went out at night and enjoyed a cleaner, safest, and more powerful city. Thinking about it, just two men were able to form a militia to fight Grimm and then give them enough training to being considerate an army, well, it kind of was and its name was simple and communicated what they did.

Defenders of Mantle.

As the General's right hand, she had been informed personally by him about his interest on recruiting or at least hiring the men that trained them but no one was able to even give a name or a picture and any audiovisual record had been deleted or destroyed. They collected their payment and left to the Gods know where.

Besides curiosity, Winter felt interested on them. It was nothing but a warrior's desire to meet someone equal or superior and decide through a fight who was better; she could try to ignore it since it was a childish impulse.

Even for someone who had grown up in Atlas, the cold climate was too much to endure after a couple of minutes.

She closed the glass doors and covered it with its correspondent curtains. For someone who possessed a high rank in the military which translated to a good salary, and was strict and quite fashionable; her apartment was simple.

One bedroom with a bed for one person and the usual stuff that such a room needed; a kitchen and living room that merged just separated by an isle that functioned as a dinning table; two bathrooms, one was in the bedroom; a guest room that was a bit smaller and a balcony accessible only through her bedroom. The size could be considered between decent and big.

Winter sighed already knowing that going to sleep was not going to be possible, fortunately she had vacations until the next month and could go to bed late at night. Many would envy her vacations mostly due to the period of time, the only drawback about it was that the General could call her at any moment and request her presence instantly and she knew by experience that important calls tended to happen in the most importunate moment.

Was she taking a bath? A call. Was she sleeping? A call. Was she cooking? A call.

She went to the kitchen and turned the stove on and placed a tea pot filled with water onto it. All she had to do was wait for it to boil, that night she wanted to drink white tea.

Her Scroll in the kitchen announced a call. The melody made by violins and pianos told him who was the one calling her, her sister. She closed the cabinet and turned off the stove before answering the call.

"Sister."

Winter looked away a couple of time and rose an eyebrow.

"No, I am not acquaintance of a man named Jonathan," she listened to her sister and began to play with a lock of her hair. "If he could talk to you in the backstage then he knew father or has a lot of money, you know how father is always trying to get influential people to support the company."

She turned the stove back on and looked for her tea.

"He sounds like a stalker, you should be more careful."


Nothern Coastline, Kingdom of Vale.

Azrael touched the damaged tree with his bare hand before putting the glove back on. Three large diagonal marks on the bark, there was no doubt about its origin; those were made by claws.

"Achoo!"

He shook his head and looked at the sky, someone was talking about him. Who dared to badmouth him?!

"Have found anything yet?"

The hunter looked at Blake's icon on the right corner of the HUD of his helmet.

"No, I have not."

The information about the beast he had to hunt was vague which was already dangerous. Usually huntsmen never thought about asking for details while hunting down a Grimm, they merely ventured into the unknown using the general information they learned back in the academy but that was a huge mistake. If you are going to spend a good part of your life killing monsters, it was better for you to know as much as you could about the things you are hunting.

You could have an encyclopedic knowledge about every Grimm but ignorance about the circumstances could get you killed. For example, if a villager told you that the Grimm was a wolf-person, the most logical and probable answer that comes to mind is a Beowolf but while you are hunting the beast down you realize that there is an entire pack plus other more dangerous Grimm. Azrael was walking into the unknown and he did not like it too much but the sensation of danger made up for that. Contrary to most huntsmen who relayed on their aura, he relayed on his skill, knowledge and gear; he had several tools with him that might either finish the enemy or give him a chance to run away.

"So what's with you and the girl?"

Of course that Neo was going to attract attention, that cute ice cream.

"She is an associate of mine."

"Right."

The hunter noticed the sarcasm in her voice. "Anything you want to say?"

The amount of trees and vegetation was not helping him to find the beast, he normally did not like using too much technology while hunting but a Grimm was always a potential danger that had to be dealt with as soon as possible; following that logic, he asked Rachel to use the drone monitoring the White Fang's camp to investigate the area and look for the Grimm. There had not been success even after two hours of searching but Azrael was able to sleep in the wild in order to get the job done; night meant more Grimm which was equal to danger and money, the more he killed the bigger the pay.

"Just wanting to know if all your associates lived with you."

"Jealous, kitty?" he replied with a slightly mocking tone. "My house has room for you, just tell me when you want to move in."

Without her in front of him, there was no way to know if she was blushing.

"I don't know if I could live with both of you,"she answered playing along. "Not with the danger of you peeking while I'm in the shower."

"Two things: It was an accident and I would never do such a thing...on purpose."

Unbelievable, he had apologized several times; judging by her voice, she was not mad at all.

"It took you a few seconds to look away."

Oh so that was the game she wanted to play, huh?

"I shall apologize again for I was hypnotized by your beauty at such an extent that I feared that even my heartbeat could ruin the image."

Silence. Did he cross the line?

"Alright, you win,"she admitted defeat with annoyance. "That sounded like something a character from a romantic book would say."

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

"I see. Should I not say such things?"

"No, no, it's fine. Just be careful, some women could get the wrong idea."

"I understand."

After that, there was just silence occasionally broke by Blake who asked how was he doing and reacted to his monologue. With all the time he spent alone and hunting Grimm, it had became a habit to talk alone exposing the information about the environment and his own conclusions to no one but himself; it was also a good way to remember things.

"No human remnants , no tracks, no fur left behind. This individual was intelligent enough to avoid leaving things behind. "

"So the Grimm has ran away?"

"I do not think so but I need to resort to other tactics to find it."

"Such as..."

"Finding its den, bringing someone as bait as example."

"That sounds a bit extreme."

Azrael felt as if he had heard that specific combination of words before. Thinking about it was not going to help him with the hunt in any way, he stopped behind a tree and took a moment to remember his past experiences maybe doing the same thing twice might work out pretty well.

"At your 9."

Following Rachel's warning, he quickly turned to his left and took aim. With his finger on the trigger, he kept scanning the area after not spotting anything; it was not impossible for electronic devices to have errors from time to time but the artificial intelligence operating the camouflaged drone usually could distinguish between a mistake and a real threat. He had nothing on his iron sights yet Rachel kept telling him that something was there. He was ready to unload the 30-rounds magazine in automatic fire at the beast.

"What is going on?" asked Blake clearly confused."Did you find it?"

It was good that she still had her usual cold and calmed tone of voice, when people raised their voice -and more when their voices were so close to his ear-, his concentration flawed, ever so slightly but flawed nonetheless.

"I have no idea but it seems that it found me instead."

"Thermal image detects an unusual cold point, it moved moments ago,"informed Rachel showing concern. "There is no aura, nor any trace of other types of energy."

"I see. Keep eyes on the creature, I need to know its location at all times."

The hunter kept aiming his carbine with one hand while the other one lowered the thermal goggles. Now being able to see the heat radiating off the things around him, he could detect the strange cold point Rachel was talking about. A bluish green shadow, irregular, not consistent with the size of the rocks or trees, it was suspicious enough but he could confirm that it was not an inanimate object as soon as it moved. Whatever it was, it was smart; knowing that Azrael was looking at its direction, it had began to move really slow trusting on its invisibility to the naked human eye.

"Is there any records about a Grimm able to be invisible?"

"As far as I know, there is not such a Grimm at least not in Vale. Do you need help?"

Azrael could have answer positively and count with Blake's or more White Fang's soldiers help and although they had higher survival odds, he was not going to risk anyone's life. It was his job to deal with the beast.

"Negative. As a precaution, get the defenses of your camp ready. It is invisible."

The only reason why he had not pulled the trigger was that most of the fauna of the world was unknown to him. There were normal animals like dogs, boars, sharks, and felines but the creatures of Grimm resembled other creatures such as Gryphons, Manticores, Werewolves, or Dragons; maybe the creature that was hiding from him was a creature not used to humans. Maybe it was a drider that ventured too far from its den or a hellhound that was trying to break through the layers of reality as they used to do.

Both ideas were rapidly discarded, the creature had no arachnid body neither a humanoid torso and its temperature kept being low instead of increasing with each passing second and his electric devices did not showed the slightest interference.

"I need to lure it and get to make it reveal itself."

His brain had already come to a quick solution when something rare happened. The creature moved again but this time, a tentacle came out and wrapped around the trees; it was not a natural creature, no animal that had evolved to survive on land would develop tentacles.

Wait a minute, tentacles, invisibility and the rare ability to control its heat. Was that a giant octopus?

"Rachel, electrify it."

The drone that was flying on top of the trees carefully descended and dropped a small spherical object. Shortly after making contact, it exploded shooting lightning bolts at every direction; the are of effect was really small which was normal since the weapon was made with the intention of neutralizing a single person.

Azrael upped the thermal goggles and as he expected, the creature's camouflage was interrupted by the electrical current messing with its muscles and nerves.

The creature had a humanoid upper body. The top of its skull had bone protuberances that went backwards as if it were a helmet, it had two pairs of red glowing eyes and a mandible that separated into three parts; it had bone-like armor covering its ribs although leaving the space between them for the reddish gills,the arms were slender yet muscular and had hands with webbed fingers and sharp bone-like fingernails; the waist was wide while the hips were not there being replaced by six tentacles as big as tree trunks. Its skin was pitch black which added to the bone armor and red eyes just meant one thing.

"Grimm."

The hunter only had few seconds to detail the creature of darkness before it took down the drone with a stream of ink shot at an absurdly high speed.

"There is no record of such a Grimm in the official bestiary of Remnant neither in other independent works,"informed Rachel showing a lot of concern. As much as she would like to help him, he had ordered her earlier to not interfere too much. Besides, without drones nearby there was nothing she could do to help him immediately.

So there was no information about that thing, he had to work with what he had then.

The creature stared at him and he stared back. Saying that he was not scared would be a mistake, he was really scared but after facing death and horrors from other layers of reality, his fear was now a tool he could use in battle without it getting in the middle. His arteries and veins contracted increasing his blood pressure giving his muscles the oxygen and nutrients required for the extenuating activity he was going to do in the following seconds.

Azrael shot at its face with deadly precision, the 5,56 mm bullet crushed against the Grimm's skull merely pushing its head backwards a little.

"Damn," the hunter said with his normal neutral tone. "Should have brought a sword."

He quickly found himself rolling over his shoulder in rapid succession to avoid a relentless offensive from the beast. He stood up as fast as he could and hid behind a tree just to take a few steps back already knowing that his cover was going to be reduced to splinters.

"Just like that game!" he thought. For him, it was hard not to think about a certain game where the player has to roll several times to avoid monsters. It would be nice if he could revive next to the bonfire of the camp or increase his physical abilities with the soul of his enemies, but the Grimm had no soul that kind of ruined everything.

Azrael was was quickly forced to take several steps back, side stepping, ducking and even jumping backwards just to roll over his shoulder to avoid yet another relentless assault. He had nearly no room to take a shoot and the bullets dealt little damage as the creature bleeding ceased instantly, if he had a sword, jamming it into the creature's abdomen or simply piercing a tentacle would make a great difference. Wait, he had his throwing knives with him.

After rolling over his shoulder once again, the Grimm had to stop a brief moment to recover and attack again which was taken advantage of by the hunter. Using a movement that was practiced hundreds of time, Azrael threw a knife from his vest aiming to the abdominal area after a quick analysis. The fact that the blade was ebony to avoid reflecting light, the speed in which the weapon closed the distance and the awkward positionof the tentacles were the factors that led to the blade to successfully pierce the creature's flesh. Now, all he could do was to hope that the venom of Death Stalker would work on other Grimm.

The creature's made a strange sound similar to a shriek and recoiled at the pain. It was a short moment that Azrael used to take something from the bag on the back of his combat belt.

A golden disk with a blue glowing circle, a grenade of hard-light Dust. After pressing the circle, he threw it at the ground right in front of him and a blue barrier unfolded from the disk successfully blocking the creature's tentacles and giving the hunter more time to take something more from the bag. Just when he found it, he cursed and rolled to the side after spotting the creature jumping to a tree right next to him, his brain had already predicted what was going to happen and acted accordingly which was an accurate reflex.

The Grimm landed with herculean force where Azrael was standing scarce seconds ago. The ground shook under the strength of the beast, rocks jumped into the air and leaves fell off the trees and the hunter lost balance. Instead of trying to stand up, he rolled to the side before getting back to his feet just in case the creature had the brilliant idea of slamming him.

Azrael threw a another disk just in time for the energy barrier to stop the creature on its tracks and then take another grenade out and throw it over the barrier. As soon as it acquired enough height, it split in three; two of them landed on the Grimm's head and shoulder while the another one landed on the ground. The beeping sound and the lack of sight on one side made the Grimm furious.

"What is that?!"

His communication with Blake had cut off a couple of minutes ago, with all the action he had not realized until she shouted completely shocked by the sight.

"No idea."

Azrael retreated and attached the last disk to his chest; with that, his bag was officially empty. He could hear the beeping sound of the sticky grenades and the slithering of the creature; its lack of legs and the fact that it stood at least at the size of a grizzly bear on its hind legs without counting the big tentacles, it could reach him fairly quickly.

The explosions of the sticky grenades was so close that the detonation muffled his hearing and made him lose his balance for a moment but he didn't stop. He braked and turned around in a swift motion at the same time he raised his carbine and opened fire. 5,56 mm bullets traveling at hundreds of meters per second landed against the exposed face of the creature. The click coming out of his firearm announced that the magazine was empty, Azrael took another one from his vest and quickly reloaded his weapon, it only took him few seconds to load a fresh magazine and put the empty one back on the vest, seconds with which the creature understood that it was in danger.

The Grimm shot a stream of ink at Azrael who managed to throw himself to the ground. Already trained to use his firearm in such a position, he took aim and unleashed all of his excitement and fear in the form of small projectiles breaking the barrier of sound. The bullets pierced the abdomen, the only place without armor causing a lot of internal damage and pain in the creature which quickly ran away.

Azrael reloaded again and followed the trail of crimson blood jogging at a moderate speed, enough to follow the creature closely and react to any trap.

He was not too familiarized with the biology of a Grimm but he could only use logic. If they felt pain, they had a nervous system; if they had to breathe it meant that they had lungs and heart and if they had blood, specially red, they needed oxygen to survive. They could be beings of darkness but they were pretty physical.

The hunter had more ideas and theories but it was enough of that, he had to focus on the hunt.

"This creature is amphibian and seemed to have evolved to be a killing machine. As many magical creatures, I fail to fully understand its biology."

Blake who had been silent could share her thoughts.

"I have never seen or heard about a Grimm like that."

"Do not be mistaken, Miss Belladonna, he has to keep silent or he would be heard."

Azrael touched his watch and ceased the communication to focus. Not many Grimm could regenerate but that one seemed capable of doing so or at least was able to deal with bleeding really fast, still better than hunting down a vampire.

He lowered his thermal goggles and scanned the area from his 12 all the way to his 6 and even looked at the trees. A cold silhouette next to the trees, that creature was pretty good at camouflaging he had to admit. This time, he faked his actions and acted as if he had not spot it. Changing his magazine for one far more special, he calculated the distance, angle, position of his body and possible recoil; it sounded as something really complex but was not, after shooting so many times, his brain made such calculations in a matter of seconds or even less, it was not like he was calculating the mass of his bullets, the speed, heat, and wind.

As fast as he could, he rotated his body and shot, the bullets exploded upon contact freezing the creature solid. Two bullets would have not obtained such results, five would have had good results although the creature could have move yet 20 bullets were overkill.

"It must have been terrifying, haven't it?"

Azrael hung the carbine back on his back and pulled out his pistol. His trustworthy Desert Eagle, as black as the skin of the frozen Grimm, was firmly grasped in the hunter's hand.

"Thinking you were the apex predator just to be defeated by a lowly and weak human without aura."

The Grimm moved its eyes or tried to since the only thing that was moving was its heart that was trying to spread the heat through the blood. Its brain tried to understand what the hell was happening. The only thing its brain knew was that the human was getting closer and closer and it was unable to defend itself, the damage was too much and needed time to recover but there was no way in which it could move a muscle fiber.

"At least monsters kill for a reason; eating, hatred, territory, fear, anger, many of them are animals, living beings fulfilling the cycle of nature."

At this point, Azrael put his pistol against the neck of the creature with a sadistic idea on mind.

"But you, Creatures of Grimm, are nothing but beasts. Killing for the sake of it, you truly are monsters."

He took distance and aimed. Without a word, he pulled the trigger.

The first bullet hit against the mid section causing a potent explosion that not just shattered the ice but completely obliterated the abdomen, the second shot separated what was left of the torso from the lower body and the third destroyed the head.


Beacon Academy, city of Vale.

The sound of heels echoed throughout the partially empty halls of the institution. Professors, janitors, technicians, plumbers and more personnel greeted the woman whose accelerated pace showed that she was in a hurry but not enough to forget her manners and not greeting back.

The woman in question was a blonde and green-eyed and wore a white top, a black waist-high pencil skirt, black stockings and heels; for some reason she wore a short black cape stylized to end in flames and arrows. For a woman who was passing through the middle age, she looked quite young. This woman was Glynda Goodwitch, one of the many professors working in Beacon.

She made sure that her bun would not get loose and make her hair a mess, her oval glasses were aligned and her riding crop was firmly grasped by her hand. She had checked on her appearance on her way to the elevator, there was no time to lose and she had to be presentable in front of the headmaster.

With the academy opening in two weeks, everyone had their hands busy; the ones with more experience like Professor Port or Glynda herself had already finished their schedules and decided the topics they were going to teach for the rest of the year and other activities. The technicians had been specially busy installing a new security system; in the news, the entire city learned about the deaths of many "high-class" criminals whose bodies were found in different places and people talked about a spirit that hunted those who committed criminal acts. Although the criminal rate of the area lowered considerably in that week, the headmaster of Beacon was careful enough to pay for security.

The elevator had already took her to her destination, the headmaster's office in the top of the tower. The floor with moving gigantic gears and the ceiling with the same thing would be an awe-inspiring moment but Glynda was already used to it. There, drinking hot cocoa as usual, the headmaster greeted her from the other side of his desk.

The headmaster was a middle-aged man of tousled silver hair and brown eyes usually wearing suits with green as dominant color. He slightly nodded telling her to come closer.

"Glad to see you managed to have time to attend to this meeting, Glynda," he said with a friendly tone. "Qrow is on his way but we can begin right now."

Glynda took a seat and crossed her legs just as a dignified lady should. "What is it, Ozpin? You rarely make sudden meetings."

Ozpin took a sip of cocoa before talking again with his usual calm. "Are you aware of the rumors about the vengeful spirit that brings justice to the citizens of Vale?"

"I am."

"A few days ago someone hacked the Cross Continental Transmit System and into the data base of the police department."

"The supposed spirit."

"That's right, Glynda. Someone hacked into the database of the academy and looked for information about Team STRQ."

Glynda remained silent gauging the threat that such an intrusion supposed. Ozpin selected teams with outstanding results to deal with missions that were not in official records, fortunately the basement was not listed in the blueprints nor in the database of the academy.

"Do you think that Qrow or Tai are in danger?"

"No, however did this didn't look for their locations but seemed to be interested on Summer Rose. I don't know why would someone investigate a dead woman, regardless of the intentions this person must be stopped, if he or she digs deep enough then our most important secret would come to light."

Ozpin stood up and driven by habit turned around to see the city from the heights. Many unpleasant scenes came to his head, the city had to be protected at all costs. He thought about what to do for a minute or two, using the legal way would take too much, ordering Qrow to investigate would also take too much since he was not omnipresent,Taiyang already had a family to take care of and couldn't get him involve anymore, Raven was out of the picture. The other teams he could rely on had already retired and even when they still were loyal to him, it would be unfair from Ozpin to get them out of their retire or separate them from their families just because he was worried. There was only a way to do it as soon as possible.

"Call Theodore, Qrow will go to Mistral."

Glynda took a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt and cleaned her glasses. She could think of a reason why Ozpin would send Qrow to Mistral. The kingdom was known much more than for its culture, for its criminal underworld; many powerful people throughout Remnant had contacts of the criminal underworld and Ozpin was not an exception, to have all the information and doing what he needed some shady contacts and actions were required.

"I will, Professor."

Ozpin took another sip of cocoa, a crow appeared on the sky and headed towards the tower.