Chapter 9, The Partnership
They drove on for several awkward minutes before Cerulean spoke up.
"So, uh," She cleared her throat. "How's… how are you holding up? It looks like you managed to piss Murex off pretty good."
"Oh I'm doing alright. The hole he punched in my lung is patching up nicely, now that I've had a moment to sit, so that's good. How about you?"
"He put a hole in your lung. And you just what? Got up and kept going? I know you Huntsman are tough customers, but that sounds awful. Do you need a doctor, a hospital?"
"Nah, I should be ok." Hakke gave his wound an experimental smack with his knuckles. It hurt, but not that bad. "Yeah, I'm doing alright. Besides, wouldn't a hospital be a prime place these Syndicate guys are going to keep tabs on for us?"
"No, your right, they would. I'm not thinking straight. I'm pretty sure the week I've had is starting to catch up with me all at once."
Silence again.
"I feel you there. You mind telling me why the Syndicate had you in that crate?" Hakke asked.
A sigh. "I can't talk about it."
"And why is that?"
"Look, don't get me wrong, I appreciate what you did for me back there. They were planning to kill me. But I can't get someone else wrapped up in this."
Hakke considered what she said. "Unfortunately," he finally replied, "I'm pretty sure I am already wrapped up in this mess. I doubt that they're going to forgive or forget what went down tonight. Besides. I've got a gut feeling that the Syndicate has or hired the mercs I'm after."
"So you're a bounty hunter. That's why you were there tonight."
"No. I was following up on what I thought was a lead." He shifted in his seat. "You think there are any snacks in this car, or anything like that?"
"I don't know. Maybe. That's not uncommon."
"Right." Hakke said. Cerulean had hijacked this particular car off of the street. Not the most righteous action a law officer could take, but at the same time that wasn't something that Hakke could exactly hold over the Detective's head. The amount of enemy hardware he had personally hijacked over the years was substantial.
He just hoped that this Valean car lasted longer than the average Fallen Pike joyride.
Or at least didn't end in a ditch. Or on fire.
He opened the glove compartment, quickly sorting through the contents and finding nothing of value or consequence, outside of some sort of white paper napkins with a hideous cartoon mascot printed on one corner. Whatever this 'Burger Baron' was, he wanted no part of it. He turned and looked in the backseat and was once again disappointed. Whoever had this car was some sort of clean freak, as he saw nothing of use there either.
Although he could understand why, the car was higher quality. Full leather seating, wood highlights, hard light display for climate controls and entertainment. All luxuries that Hakke personally saw no need for, but he could admit it gave the vehicle some extra class.
He did find a rather high quality leather-bound folder tucked into the console of the car, one that seemed to double as a clipboard. He opened it and flipped through the pages quickly. Nothing good here either, as all the documents were itineraries, schedule mock ups, and other assorted bureaucratic paperwork. The letterhead on the documents seemed to indicate that everything was for the internal workings of one Beacon Academy, the Huntsman training school. Guess whoever owned this car worked there.
"Stop rummaging through the car. None of that is yours." Cerulean snapped.
"Yeah, I'm not finding anything anyways. It's just a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense. Didn't know that Beacon needed this much paperwork."
That caught the Detective's attention. "This car belongs to someone from Beacon Academy?"
"Looks like it." He flipped to the last page, an early draft of correspondence from one faculty member to another, something about potentially acquiring several 'Atlesian Knight-130s' for training purposes. Whatever that was. There was a place for a signature at the bottom that had not been filled, although underneath it did list the name as 'Glynda Goodwitch.'
Hakke gave a quiet amused snort. He was not ever going to get used to Remnant naming conventions.
"Shouldn't be a problem." he said, tucking the folder back where he found it.
"Its Beacon. Basically all the staff are professional Huntsmen! Things are bad enough without getting the best Huntsmen in Vale after us."
"It'll be fine. It looks like the owner of this car is admin. It was just a bunch of rec forms for training equipment and stuff." He peered around at the luxurious interior of the vehicle. "Make that upper admin."
"Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Any staff from the Academy is a problem! Do you have any idea what-"
"Oh, by the Light, I can not take this any longer." Callie exclaimed, materializing between the two in a flash of light. "Hakke, stop talking, you're making things worse. Detective Cerulean, I would recommend taking some deep breaths and trying to calm down."
Cerulean stared wide eyed at the hovering Ghost, long enough to nearly clip one of the few cars that were out at this late hour. She corrected with a quick jerk of the wheel, swerving around the slower vehicle which honked angrily.
"What is that? Why is it talking?" Cerulean asked in a minor panic.
"My name is Callie, we met back at the Syndicate base."
"She's my Ghost. Partner. Same difference." Hakke said. "Pull over if you need a moment, because you really need to be the one to drive. I don't know the city, and I am very bad with traffic laws. Also, Callie? Jumping in right now is probably not the best call."
"Well, Hakke. You were the one who introduced me to the Detective when we broke her out of that cell. Now that you two aren't in immediate danger from the mafia I figured I would use this opportunity to its fullest." Callie tittered. "And Detective, please excuse my partner, I'm fairly certain he's only capable of acting like a normal person when his life's on the line."
"Thanks, Callie."
"Oh hush, you know I'm right."
"Right. Cool. Good to know. You have some sort of back-talking AI drone. Why didn't I see that coming? Why wouldn't things get even more insane?" Cerulean ranted, half laughing.
"It isn't particularly insane, actually! I am merely a very advanced AI that Hakke won via luck and lottery." Callie replied, turning again to the Warlock. "It's technically true."
"I mean," Hakke began. It took him a bit to sift through her logic with that comment, and came to the conclusion that with enough mental gymnastics, she was right. It was like winning a lottery that Callie found his centuries old, desiccated corpse half buried at the entrance to an evac shelter on Mars. "It's a strange way to phrase it."
"Okay. Okay. You know what? Let's not do this right now. Five minutes ago I was coming to grips with the fact I was about to die, and things are only promising to get worse the longer you two are talking. So, I know a place that should be empty, especially at three in the morning. We'll go there and have this conversation then. I just need some time to wrap my head around what's been going on." Cerulean vented.
Hakke and Callie glanced at each other before nodding in agreement. One of the less talked about perks of being a Guardian was the complete disregard for personal wellbeing. Hakke had been in so many life or death situations at this point that they barely phased him any more. It didn't help that more often than not he actually ended up dying during said situations.
He was also aware that that mindset was a luxury that just about anything else couldn't afford to have.
It was a very verbose way to say he was used to this crap, and she probably wasn't.
"Sound's good to me."
"Of course, we'll talk more then."
With that Callie vanished, and silence took over the cab.
The car ride remained completely silent from that point on, a change Hakke took a familiar comfort in. It felt relatively normal, an almost perfect match to his post mission routine back in Sol. He was in the habit of checking his weapons manually for damage and defect, and drafting up designs or experiments to carry out at the Tower. Of course, he spent those moments in the cramped hold of his battered Arcadia class jumpship as it hauled across the system at near-relativistic speeds, instead of riding passenger in a stolen civilian car. The feeling was what was important though. Comforting. A touch of home amongst the madness of this unknown world. He smiled to himself as he thought back.
He had once managed to fry his NLS drive mid flight between Venus and Earth while attempting to overclock it; the resulting explosion stranding Callie and him in the gulf of space between the two worlds for weeks. Truthfully, he was lucky that the drive failure hadn't turned his ship into a spray of shrapnel travelling at 70% the speed of light, and even luckier that his haphazard patch job had resuscitated the drive just enough for them to crawl their way home. Callie had been adamant that he learned his lesson for nearly killing them both, and he had.
The time to modify NLS drives is when they aren't running.
A few minutes later and Hakke had the blocky pistol stolen from the Syndicate base half disassembled in his lap. A car ride wasn't the ideal place to be disassembling an unknown gun, but he needed something to occupy his mind for the next however long it took to reach their destination. Cerulean hadn't been joking about needing time to think. She had a look etched on her face, one he recognized from his time defending the City's refugee camps during the Red War.
He returned his attention to the half deconstructed pistol in his lap. The Foundry mark belonged to a company called Grendel Munitions, a suitably grungy name for a suitably grungy gun. The thing did its job, and shot fast enough to overcome its lackluster accuracy. It was basic, and probably cheap, thus making it the perfect introductory course to Remnant firearm technology.
Most of what he learned was that despite its overreliance on Dust, a gun from Remnant was fundamentally still a gun. The only thing that made the weapon unique was the caseless ammunition, and even that wasn't anything Hakke hadn't already seen. Pulling the trigger dropped a hammer which ignited what he guessed was Fire Dust or Gun Dust or Whatever Dust, which then launched the projectile. Also Dust, by the look of it. This knocked back a slide that both carried a new bullet into the chamber, and mitigated what little recoil there was into an easier to control direction. Frankly, he was a little disappointed. He'd hoped for something more interesting than that.
Outside, the cityscape of Vale flashed by underneath in a sea of soft yellow and orange lights. Cerulean had driven up onto the central highway system, which dipped through and sometimes above the city. Hardlight bannisters lined the edges and divided the lanes, illuminating the road in a light blue. Overhead the occasional star could be seen gleaming, fighting with the lights of the city to be noticed.
The highway crossed over a large river that bisected the city, large enough for an assortment of boats to travel in both directions. Most of them were docked along the sides, but a handful were already beginning to wake up. Lights flickered on one by one along their lengths as sailors began their routines.
Hakke reassembled his pistol, and tucked it into his coat for Callie to transmat. Cerulean took an exit off of the highway, driving through several kilometers of quaint cityscape before pulling off down a sideroad leading back towards the river. After a few more turns she parked the vehicle. A wooden sign at the start of a trailhead told him where they were, a public park called Ocelot's River Sanctuary. It was a nice patch of green trees and well manicured grass, all on an overlook that held a pleasant view of the river and surrounding city.
Hakke could guess why she had driven out here. It was early morning, so early that calling it morning was only right in the technical sense. As such the public park was completely abandoned, as were the main streets they had left to get here. The only people who would be out and about would be the most workaholic delivery people and restaurant owners, all preparing for the first wave of commuters. But the majority of their number would still be a ways off. For the moment, it was just the two of them, no civilians or Syndicate thugs to overhear them talk. A smart move.
During his day-long hike into the city, he and Callie had gone over what his backstory should actually be for when a situation like this finally arrived. It had to explain away his lack of basic knowledge, as despite Callie's best efforts with her crash course, there was simply too much material to cover. Despite their apparent similarities, the actual culture of Vale and by extension the Four Kingdoms was fundamentally different from the Last City.
In the Kingdoms for example, self expression was lauded and created a cultural baseline that connected all the Kingdoms. Art and color were held as deeply respected features of their societies. Seeing as these people could literally wear their souls on their sleeve and relied on said souls for protection, it made sense that expressing their core being would be vital to their day to day. The suppression of said artistic flair had been one of the contributing factors to their last real war. There were other factors of course, but it had been a considerable reason things had turned violent. The people of the Last City were equally expressive, and in many of the same ways as well, it was just the reasoning behind it was totally different. In the Last City, art and expression were coping mechanisms and distractions from what lay outside their walls, constantly probing for a moment of weakness. It was the average citizen's way of declaring to the alien hordes and eldritch gods that would stop at nothing to sweep humanity off the precipice of extinction that they weren't going anywhere.
For the Four Kingdoms, art and style was the truthful expression of their very being. For the Last City, it was an act of defiance in the face of overwhelming odds.
These two viewpoints ended up making drastically different people.
As the Warlock and the Detective exited their stolen vehicle, Hakke went over the cliff notes of his cover. His ship crashed 115 kilometers, or 72 of the local miles, outside of Vale, where things had proceeded to go further south. So far so good, the only part that was an actual lie was the ship part. If someone decided to pry even deeper into his cover, that was where the problems would start up in a big way.
For that, he would be as vague as humanly possible. And he would remain as vague as humanly possible for as long as humanly possible. This was especially important as the only viable option they had come up with was that he came from some small, inconsequential village in the middle of nowhere, and that was why he knew barely anything about anything. It wouldn't explain how he knew how to fight as well as he did, or any of the technical knowledge he had, or the tech, or Callie, but it was better than admitting he was some form of undead immortal space wizard from another planet. Even if that was technically true.
The truth would probably get him institutionalized.
Cerulean muttered a quiet, "This is it." before exiting the car and beginning to walk down one of the trailheads. Even here, in a random park, Remnant showed its foreign nature. The path was lit by a series of small toadlights, casting just enough light to prevent anyone from wandering off the clearly labeled trail and to ensure that you couldn't trip. Not that that was much of a problem to begin with, as the trail was supremely well maintained and made of a densely packed white gravel.
After a minute or two of walking the trail opened up into a clearing, a hillcrest that sloped downwards towards a small band of trees and eventually the river. All around and directly across the buildings of the city rose into the sky in a faintly glowing sea of peaks and spires. Outside of the ambient light coming from streetlights and the distant stars, the park was completely dark. Cerulean stopped and turned. Callie appeared over Hakke's shoulder.
"Your name is Hakke, right?" She began, and Hakke nodded in confirmation. "Well then, Hakke, have you ever just had one of those weeks where it seems that nothing, at all and in any way, is going the way it should? Like you're trapped in a nightmare that just won't end, and everything you thought you knew and could rely on turned out to be wrong? Because, I've been having one of those weeks. And more and more it feels like this is only the start. I wasn't lying when I said I appreciate what you did, but you showing up when you did feels far too convenient for my liking. I hope I'm just being paranoid, but like I said. It's been a rough week."
"It hasn't been exactly swell on our end either." the Warlock said. "So let's start from the beginning."
"What do you mean?"
He paused. "My name is Hakke, -"
"His first name is Just, and I find that hilarious." Callie added.
"And the flying drone is Callie. She is a Ghost, and that is what you call," he gestured vaguely at his Ghost, "that. Think of the two of us as a duo. And you are…"
The officer shifted from one foot to the other. "Detective Serena Cerulean of the Vale Police Department. Well, now that we have proper introductions down, what are you suggesting happens next."
"I'll tell you my side of the story, ask you a few questions, and then you're welcome to do the same. Then we either go our separate ways, or we figure out what to do next."
"Okay." Cerulean nodded. "Let's hear it."
Now for the risky part. If this gambit paid off, he could actually gain an ally for once.
"I'm in Vale looking for the people who took something from me. About a week ago my ship went down in the woods outside the city. There was a team of three mercenaries waiting for me, they attacked, stole something important, and left me for dead. Now, I'm trying to figure out who and where they are."
"What did they take?" the Detective interrupted.
"An artifact, or a weapon. I'm not sure. My job was to either destroy or hide it somewhere no one could find it. I'm not positive on what it does, but I do know it's dangerous. Anyways, once I got to Vale, I ran into some Syndicate thugs. Their leader was that tank top wearing guy back at that base." He put his hands into his pockets. "You don't happen to know of anything that can make a person's Aura stronger, by any chance?"
"I've heard of a Semblance or two that could do that."
"Nothing injectable though?" Hakke pressed.
"No. Nothing like that."
"Well, Tank Top had something like that. A little syringe of something that glowed green. Whatever it was, it supercharged his Aura. Turned his Aura and eyes that same green. They ended up running and I followed them right to the base where you were being kept. Originally, I wanted to try to find a sample of whatever he took, and when that was no longer a possibility, I got the name of what he took instead. He called it Boost, if you've heard of that."
Cerulean thought for a moment. "I haven't. You think that this 'Boost' is related to this artifact they took?"
"We're fairly certain." Callie interjected. "Although we would still need to get a sample in order to properly confirm that."
"Either way, that's the bullet point version of my story. Finding you was completely by accident. Now, I can be a bit of an idiot, but I'm no moron. It didn't take a lot of brainpower to figure out you were probably on their kill list. And that's just not something I could leave be."
Once again, silence reigned over the small gathering. The Detective seemed to be mulling over the details of his story, and for the moment all they could do was wait. Hakke focused inwards on the Light, sending experimental mental probes at the Barrier. Callie twisted in the air, her green camo patterned fins spinning along her vertical axis as they waited.
"I guess I can at least confirm," Cerulean started, "that you're not my enemy. If you were, you would have just shot me while I was bound up in that chair. Fine. There's been a wave of missing person cases this last week. A few of those aren't uncommon, but there's been way too many. I was taken off my previous assignment to look into this instead, and it quickly turned into a Creep's Den. Next thing I knew I got stabbed in the back and placed on the Syndicate's hit list. It just doesn't add up, though."
"Why not?" Callie asked.
"I never found anything important, or at least, nothing that would have warranted my death. I wasn't on the case long enough to find anything big."
"Well, there had to be something." Hakke pushed. "You don't just get on a kill list by accident."
Cerulean pinched her brow. "I'm well aware of that. I just don't know what detail is the important one! I - hold on. You said a team of three mercenaries. Right?"
"Two men and a -"
"A faunus woman."
Hakke raised an eyebrow. "Slicked back hair and a pinstripe suit, the other had a mustache?"
Something was clicking in Cerulean's head. The Warlock could almost hear the gears whirring.
"When I got handed off to the Syndicate, they were the ones who brought me to that base. That's the same group that attacked you."
For the first time in a very long time, Hakke had good things to say about Lady Luck. In a normal situation, those three wouldn't have been active for a while after a fight like he had given them. But they had Aura to heal their minor wounds, which allowed them to get to their employer's dirty work that much faster. After a fight like he had given them, they would have lain low to ensure they wouldn't get recognized or followed. But they had watched Hakke die. And since Guardians simply didn't exist on Remnant, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that they thought he was on their trail.
Still, best to be certain.
"Callie, can you show Cerulean a picture of the mercs who attacked us?"
She beeped. "Certainly. The images should be on your Scroll now, Hakke."
The familiar tickle of a transmat going off inside a pocket in his coat alerted him to the reappearance of the device. He pulled it out and opened the image file, before handing it to the Detective.
"Are these them?"
There were two pictures, one of both Doc and Slick shooting at something off camera from their cover behind a broken tree. The other showed Sage emerging from the bushes that Hakke had knocked her into during their fight. Cerulean took her time going over both images, zooming in on each mercenary in turn.
"Yes. That's them." She said, handing the Scroll back. He would need to have Callie work over the internals of the Scroll, get it up to Last City standard of cybersecurity, since it seemed like he would be keeping it for himself.
"Do you think they would have an idea why you got taken?" Hakke asked.
"They might. And even if they don't, I'm sure they could point me in the right direction."
"Well, since we're both looking for the same people, how about we pool our resources then? Go after these bastards together." He held out his hand. After a moment, Cerulean shook it.
"I can agree to that."
"Alright." Hakke said. "Now I have a line in the water with Junior, if you know who that is. But it will probably be a few days before anything of worth comes up from that."
"Definitely don't go back there. That's one of the informants that the Syndicate will exploit trying to find our whereabouts."
"Well that sucks."
"That it does." Cerulean said as she began to walk back up the path towards the parking lots. "Go ahead and call in the car we took as stolen once we get far enough away from the park. At the very least we can get it back to its owner that way."
"Sure, I can do that." Hakke began to follow, and Callie once again vanished into the Backpack. "Any reason you don't want to? I mean, you're the cop."
"That would not be a good idea. Trust me."
"Right. So where are we heading?"
"Away from here to begin. Then I'm going to borrow that Scroll of yours to check in on something. After that, I know someone who owes me a favor. I should be able to get us a place to lie low and get our bearings."
"Sounds like a plan."
A few minutes of walking got them far enough away from Ocelot's River Sanctuary for Cerulean to deem it safe to call in the car. Hakke dialed, and relayed the information to the officer over the line and hung up. The cop had started to ask questions about his identity, and that was a can of worms he didn't need opening right now. He handed the Scroll over to the Detective, and she rang up whoever she needed to.
And immediately, it seemed something went wrong.
"No, no, no, come on. Come on. Pick up!" She hissed through clenched teeth.
"What's happening?"
"She should be picking up. I have to get home. It's not far, come on!" She broke into a run down the empty streets. Hakke glanced up at the shattered moon, trying to gauge how late it was. He figured it couldn't be any later than 3AM.
He started after the Detective. He had been right.
This was going to be a long night.
In cronological order once again: My replies to your reviews, as Tradition demands.
Orbitaldr0p - It wasn't you, I completely borked posting chapter 8. Seriously, thanks for leaving that review though, it alerted me and let me fix it way faster than I otherwise would have.
7sky - Neither can he. Glad to hear your enjoying it.
Rocket999 - This is the price I pay for maining Warlock. I miss out and forget about all the cool crap the other classes get. May the day Bungie nerfs the Yeet Titan never come.
Al the Obsessive - Thank ya, glad you're enjoying the excessive homebrewing I've been up to. I really like the world of RWBY, it's been my main draw. The official story though is a mess. I would like to eventually start incorporating some of the larger elements from the show proper, but that's still gonna be a ways off.
DarkMegatronXX47 - The Salem Scout Rifle has a nice ring to it. Now I just gotta figure out the stats.
TheBaz - Main reason that Hakke uses Solar abilities is that it's my personal favorite batch of Light subclasses. That and it gives him more mobility options over the other subclasses (minus blink). It's likely that he'll branch out eventually however, you just can't have a fic with a Warlock without nova bombing something after all. That's illegal.
Mattysteel - Probably not all the way up to Young Wolf/God Killing levels, but I have some ideas on how he can level the playing field both with the Light and without it.
