The Jaune Archive: To Survive and Prosper (OUTDATED)

by The Rade Blunner

The original version of the first installment of the Jaune Archive prior to being reworked. Please read Jaune: Hero of Beacon for the newer and updated version. The original summary can be found in Chapter 1 in this version.

10. The Phantom Grimace

Sorry the update took so long to release, there were a lot of speedbumps I have to cross on the way of getting this finished, not to mention, I had to deal with whales, hives and fanatics.

Here it is, the final chapter of the pre-festival arc. Hopefully, a 33,000+ chapter based on Grimm Eclipse is worth the wait.

---

Editorial Note:

The following entry was written three weeks after Team JNPR's first mission. Team JNPR and RWBY were both making preparations for the imminent Vytal Festival, when all of a sudden, both Team JNPR and RWBY was called by Headmaster Ozpin for a special assignment.

---

Chapter 10

The Phantom Grimace

---

"No one in their right mind wants to be oppressed, but everyone loves to think that they are."

-Dennis Hartmann, Former Mantle Oligarch

Some people say that they stopped believing in Gods after losing their faith when miserable things still happened to them despite praying hard enough that thought they'd be immune to Their antics, probably because of egocentric bullshit like 'Gods only exist if good things happen to me or if bad things happen to people I don't like,' or something like that as if They owe you everything. While I can't exactly judge them for thinking that way, I'd say that this only proves that they exist, they just have a very sick sense of humor that's all.

Now, I'm no pious churchgoer even though I have been believing in omnipotent people watching somewhere from the depths of space since I was a child mostly thanks to my religious upbringing and all, but this is the only logical explanation on why I always find myself in the craziest nonsense when I've been doing my best not to get myself killed. I suspect that They're not letting me die because They knew won't be able to suck some entertainment out of me when one of their favorite playthings is six feet under. So yeah, I do believe the Gods exist—people just expected wrong things from Them.

I can't really blame Them, I kinda deserve all of this, well, except being treated and called as a hero, but then again They're aware that I didn't ask for this and still gave me my reputation anyway because They know it'll screw me over. That's not mentioning the fact that I still playing this stupid game, so of course that they would keep spicing things up.

After the deranged, pants-shitting mess that was my first mission, the news began to report that Torchwick was incarcerated; an attempted breach was prevented from reaching the city, and an entire White Fang base was raided by the military. Then someone spat out some rumors that I was the one behind all of it. It wouldn't be so bad had not the Great & Powerful Ozpin decided to screw me over once again and confirm that my team and I was indeed responsible for all of those things, making my popularity go from ridiculous to ludicrous.

Word started spreading like a wildfire around the kingdom that it would have burnt down the entirety of Northern Sanus if it was an actual fire. I'm now hailed as a modern national hero, being the partner of the Invisible Girl of Mistral made it more or less worse that I wouldn't be surprised if they make us the couple of the year even though we haven't even officially dated yet.

Swarms of journalists and fangirls were all over me when showing myself to the public that I took a page from Pyrrha's book by wearing disguises and assumed aliases every time I have to go to the city so I could prevent the godsdamn paparazzi from getting anything out of me. [1] I always hated those professional stalkers, journalists were always detective-wannabe pricks who make easy money by spouting their slanderous bullshit regardless of the context of what they're covering, but the paparazzi are an exceptional breed of journalist. My private life is called 'private' for a reason, you fucking degenerates. I mean, who the hell cares about the color of some famous person's underwear?

A wise man once told me that there were no people on this planet that were more annoying than the media, and he couldn't have been more right about that.

I'm serious, my fame is getting out of control. I lost count on how many autographs I have to sign and how many girls fainted because I simply touched their hands. I had no choice but to accept this. The only thing I could do was be humble about it and try accrediting Ren and Nora for their roles. Sadly, they'll be only known as the duo who just happened to be teammates with Mr. Podunk and Ms. Mistral.

The worst part was despite all this, I haven't got laid yet. Where's my father's seductive charm when you need it?

I found out that White Fang recruitment dropped after that incident, thanks to fleeting morale, military raids on their bases, and the fact that they were scared shitless of me. Hopefully, the remnants would be taken down quickly so I don't have to cross paths with them anymore, I've had enough of those race-baiting militia dickheads.

My family called me and they told me that I was all over the news recently. They were pretty much proud that I am making the next steps as I carry the Arc family torch that I was too scared to let go and extinguish. Noire and Blanche said that they were even working on a tribute song about me for their concert this festival. Not really something I asked for, but they assured me that they are not including my embarrassing childhood moments at the song, because as much as they like to joke about me as much as my other sisters, they wouldn't want that to ruin my dignity and image.

Anyway, I was having such a nice day, with my only concern was helping prepare for the Vytal Festival which was coming within less than a week. Culture clubs have opened for freshmen who are interested in certain hobbies and for additional festival activities. None of the clubs interested me so I obviously didn't join any of them. I have nothing to do but to train for the tournament while helping with the decorations once again. Indeed, even if we're done with community service, there were still some work for us to do. Some things just never change.

It wasn't much of a sweat, all we did was make props out of paper or cardboard, place decorations and arrange tables. I honestly wouldn't mind doing this until the preparations were complete, and I would have certainly chosen this over the mission if I had any idea that it was going to be another one that happened to be more trouble than it's worth.

It all started when Team JNPR and RWBY were taking our lunch breaks after a morning of training and organizing, [2] when suddenly, The Great & Powerful Ozpin announced in the P.A. that he wants all the eight of us in his office. We had no idea why he specifically called us so we finished our lunch and then headed to his office at the Beacon Tower.

"Ah, good. You're all finally here." Ozpin turned away from the office's window as he faced all of us coming from the entrance, Miss Goodwitch was beside his desk, still carrying her tablet per the norm.

"Is there something you need from us, Professor Ozpin?" Ruby asked. Under that curious expression, I could also feel that she's very excited to get involved in another daring adventure that would ruin the perfectly adequate peace we were having.

I was hoping that Ozpin better have a good reason for why he is calling for both of our teams because otherwise, he was better off only sending Team RWBY or get someone else to help them.

Ozpin sat at his desk. "I do, Ruby, and I very seldom call students to my office for a special assignment. Consider yourselves to be the fortunate few who had the privilege of being in one."

He can word it whatever he likes but there was no changing the fact that it was bad news for me. Not half a minute in and I was already shuddering with what Ozpin's been trying to allocate me with. I've been glancing at the office's door, thinking about bailing and launching myself out of the kingdom and to be never seen or heard from again.

Everyone looked at each other, befuddled in disbelief that Ozpin just abruptly sent us here for an unexpected task. Ruby meanwhile, squealed excitedly. "A special assignment?!"

"This is a bit sudden. Why choose us for this particular task, Professor?" Pyrrha questioned.

"I'm glad you asked, Miss Nikos. Both of your teams have proven to be quite remarkable, not only among the freshmen but to the entirety of the school as well, surpassing even some of the most prodigious of your upperclassmen, that I noticed some of them being envious of you."

"It's what we do best, professor," Weiss proudly boasted.

"And we couldn't have done it without our fearless leader!" Nora chirped, making some of them look at me with satisfied expressions as Yang bumped my shoulder.

I grinned back at them in modest satisfaction when in actuality I was doing my best to hide my embarrassment and the slight grimace on my face. Attention like this was what I was trying to avoid as my increasing fame was becoming more turbulent by the second.

Stepping forward, I asked a question so we could get this over with and so I could sway everyone's attention away from my reputation. "What do you have for us, professor?"

"Before I brief you with this special task. I would like to inform you that this is at utmost importance and I am trusting both of your teams with it." Ozpin stated bluntly. "If you managed to handle it well, you will be exempted from this semester's exams as you have already proven to be suited for another year at Beacon that a written examination won't be necessary from you."

"Oh yeah! Now we're talkin'! This will be a piece of cake." Yang pumped. One of these days, she is going to be the first to get herself killed or at the very least seriously wounded, I could feel it. Thank The Brothers she has a semblance that makes her a nightmare every time she's hit (and also gives her the ability to utter real swear words too.) Meanwhile, I still have to wait for Nora to get electrified or find a way to cast electric dust on her without being caught so she could use hers, even if it's quite clear that she idolizes me, I still don't want to her piss her off and break my bones.

"Sounds like I don't have to tutor you three then," Weiss commented. "Whatever this is, I'm up for it."

"You can count on us, Professor!" Ruby chirped.

"Good to hear, Team RWBY." Ozpin nodded to them before turning at me. "What about you, Jaune? What do you and your team have to say about this?"

All eyes moved toward me as they waited for my answer. While finishing a seemingly simple mission so I could automatically pass this semester's exam and finish this year without much of a hassle sounds like a win-win—something tells me that I should go to the trouble of studying for the exams instead. But I can't afford to refuse the offer in front of my own team and Team RWBY, it would leave a bad impression. So I guess I'll have to accept this, I just hope whatever I'm about to go through is worth it to pass this semester. On the bright side, I don't have to cram for nonsensical dust sciences that make algebra and geometry look like a kindergarten class and I get to rub it on everyone's faces. I could always rely on my team to carry me out of unwanted situations.

"We're up for it," I said confidently in a faux-asserting tone. "Whatever we need to do, I'm sure we could handle it. We didn't get here for nothing." I glanced at my teammates and saw Pyrrha and Ren giving expressions of approval while Nora was squealing excitedly.

"That's the spirit," Ozpin beamed. "Now, do you acknowledge that the information I'm about to provide you is confidential and that whatever is said in this room, stays in this room?"

We all silently nodded in agreement. Meanwhile, I was increasingly getting nervous when he made it clear that this won't be an ordinary walk in the park. Was it really a good idea to accept this so I don't have to study?

"Splendid," he said before turning to Miss Goodwitch. "Glynda, if you will."

Miss Goodwitch tapped a few prompts on her tablet that folded the tower's window blinds, making the office almost completely dark until a blue light source came from a holographic screen on a wall, which all of our attention turned to.

Ozpin got up from his chair and stood next to the hologram as it displays an area map of the Emerald Forest with some landmarks crossed. "A few days ago, the security network at the Emerald Forests had mysteriously shut down."

Though, considering that it failed to stop a Nevermore and a Deathstalker from entering, I doubt it would have made much of a difference.

"I sent Professor Port along a few senior teams to investigate what was causing the disturbance. While they were able to successfully repair the security control centers back to working condition, they also made an interesting discovery." The hologram then displayed a photo of crates with a symbol of a hexagon with three bond lines at its angles and a stylized 'M' inside of it. The clearer image of the logo was displayed in a separate image. "This insignia was the logo of Merlot Industries; a once proud research company before it collapsed after the fall of Mountain Glenn."

"I heard of that company before." Weiss uttered, "I remember my father going on meetings with them."

"Aren't they the ones who conducted experiments that were so unethical they made your family's company look tame in comparison?" Blake snidely asked.

Weiss narrowed her eyes at her. "Hey, I was young and naïve then! I didn't know much about them but I do recall my father being infuriated by them."

"Now settle down, we'll discuss the company's ethics at another time. But right now, this is important and I need you to stay focused," Ozpin intervened, calming down the monochrome duo. "Apparently, the devices that were used to disable the control centers and lured the Grimm bore this symbol, along with the crates, as you can see here. Now, it begs to ask, why are these objects carrying the logo of a now-defunct company? One would say that they were taken from their headquarters in Mountain Glenn. So I have requested General Ironwood to send some men there to investigate. Alas, this is what they found."

The holoscreen started playing a video footage of an Atlesian Soldier somewhere under the tunnels of Mountain Glenn. It was a little hard to watch as the camera was constantly shaking and that there were static everywhere. "This is Sergeant Wilhelm of Epsilon-7. We're witnessing a type of Grimm that we've never seen before. We need backup as soon as—Oh Gods, help me!"

It was then followed by screaming with the camera turning to give us a very brief look at the creature that attacked them. The camera shook, falling to the ground while it was tilted with small blood splattered on its lens. The redshirt's screaming continued as the Grimm growled. Once the growling stopped, the hind legs of the mysterious Grimm trudged through the camera as it lies there.

Ruby and Pyrrha covered their mouths at the footage while the others looked no less shocked. Miss Goodwitch halted the footage and rewinded it before pausing to a blurry frame of the Grimm that attacked them. It was blurry enough that we couldn't make up on what the Grimm was and what it exactly looked like. Its shape resembled that of an Alpha Beowolf and we would have left to that conclusion if we didn't notice something green glowing on its back. If this was an Alpha Beowolf, it was no ordinary one, and this was very worrying since Alpha Grimm are already on terrifying on their own right. The fact that it managed to wipe out a squad of technologically advanced trained soldiers made it more terrifying.

"What is that?!" Blake questioned with her eyes widened.

"I don't know…" Ruby leaned in and squinted her eyes. "It looks like an Alpha Beowolf—except there are green things on it."

"While it's very likely to be a Beowolf, we are not fully sure. It could possibly be mutated as no normal Grimm bears green skeletons on its biology," Ozpin responded. "Two-thirds of the forces sent were later wiped out by an explosion from a bomb that was planted on the premises. Unless if it's one of the soldiers, this tells us there was someone that is orchestrating all of this. We went to the conclusion that the person responsible for this was also behind the mysterious Grimm and the security breach at Emerald Forest. Someone has been tampering with Merlot Industries resources and whoever this is must be stopped before they could cause further chaos."

Perfect, another kingdom-wide case, I muttered to myself. How the hell do I keep getting myself into these? "What do you think we'll have to do then?" I asked.

"Both of your teams will be deployed on Forever Falls. Grimm Activity has increased above the norm, and there have been sightings of anomalous Grimm on the area. We presume these to be the same mutated Grimm on Mountain Glenn. Your mission is to scout the area, eliminate any opposition and find anything that could be used to track down the perpetrator behind this."

"We won't let you down, sir." Ruby nodded followed by her teammates.

"You will be conducting this mission on your own. However, Doctor Oobleck will assist you via the school's communication network. He will watch over you as you carry out your task." Ozpin finished his mug of coffee and remotely unfolded the blinds, putting the light back at the office. "Good luck, students, and may the Gods watch over you." Ozpin turned off the screen and returned to his chair.

I'm sure They'll be watching, just don't expect Them to make things easier for us.

"A Bullhead will be waiting for you within ten minutes, use this time to prepare and arm yourselves. Stay safe and fight well. This is a moment you have all been training for." Miss Goodwitch said as she went in front of the eight of us.

Without another word, we exited the tower and went to our respective dorms and lockers to gear up for the special assignment given to us.

"And I thought today will be relaxing." I heard Weiss murmur, sharing my thoughts exactly.

I guess I'll just have to do what I usually do then. Stay behind everyone, let them do most of the fighting, don't do anything stupid and I'll be fine. It's pretty much why I was even breathing today.

=o=

1. A common tactic used by politicians and celebrities to avoid public recognition. Success usually varies depending on how well the user handles the disguise and how recognizable the person is. I can confirm that I also use this method myself when traveling alone without bodyguards.

2. During the week before the festival, all regular lessons were temporarily put to a halt so students may spend time preparing for the festival, whether it be training, organizing, maintaining their equipment or preparing activities with their respective clubs.

---

Ah, the woods of Forever Falls, the magical place where I had been chased by rapier wasps and an Ursa Major, and also the place where I had to experience romance with the White Fang at first sight.

We were dropped off somewhere north of the forest after another nauseating flight that made one of the paper bags I brought come in handy. We split away from Team RWBY as we went around the area, searching for anything out of the ordinary while killing the Grimm along the way while Doctor Oobleck acted as Mission Control. They were right when they said that there were more Grimm in the forest than usual, and there's something that has been causing the sudden increase, and it was our mission to find out why.

With my rural upbringing, I should have little trouble trekking through the grassy greenlands—eer—redlands of Forever Falls, but the increased number of Grimm attacks prevented this from becoming an ordinary stroll. However, it wasn't really that bad since most of the packs were Creeps, which are one of the weaker Grimm. They're still pretty infuriating to handle on large packs, Creeps are known for digging to the ground and making holes everywhere. I have to constantly check my foot to see if they might come out of it, at least Beowolves and Scavers know how to stand still even for a few seconds and make my life easier.

We kept searching for anything anomalous in the forest, while Nora whistled the tune of 'The Valish Grenadiers', which slightly lightened the mood but wasn't enough to make the Grimm any less aggressive.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really hoped that something interesting happens, because walking around, killing the same pack of Grimm over and over gets annoyingly tedious real fast.

I pulled my sword from the Creep I slew from the last the Grimm horde we dispatched when Ren found a pavement leading to somewhere, it was tempting enough not to follow. After noticing the pattern, it was unlikely that these things lead to nothing.

"Let's follow this path. Maybe it could take us to wherever our culprit is hiding." I said to my teammates who agreed without a question.

"You guys find something?" Ruby's voice asked on our scroll's channel.

"Just a path that could lead us to our target. You?" I replied.

"Nothing yet. We're still trying to look for the train tracks from Mountain Glenn, it might give us any leads."

"Well, whatever you're doing. I wish you luck."

"You too," she said before suddenly singing after a big pause. "I've been working on the railroad. All the live long day~ Wait, is this thing still on?"

I chuckled and put the scroll back in my pocket. It sounds like Nora isn't the only one singing a tune during a mission.

We found ourselves going uphill as we followed the path, we started noticing ruined stone columns appearing as we passed through them, indicating us that this was more or less the right path.

"We're heading somewhere, that's for sure," Ren commented. It should be, otherwise, it would be silly if they just paved way for something that leads to nowhere.

Once we finally went to the top, we saw that it stopped at the cliff, however, the road continued below the edge while there was a tall and large tree standing on a black square pedestal in the middle of it. We dropped ourselves down and decided to spend a quick break and take time to appreciate the large tree as we rest below the shade. A person with a dirty mind would say that whoever planted that tree is compensating for something.

"Wow..." Pyrrha stared at the tree, awestricken by its enormous size. "That tree is magnificent."

"It's so pretty!" Nora said before she took out her scroll. "Do we have time to take a picture?"

I looked around and took time to admire the red forest. The scenery is actually pretty nice to look at. It would actually be a nice place for a picnic if it weren't for the Grimm lurking almost everywhere. Speaking of which, I saw another Beowolf pack approaching us.

"Pyrrha!" I turned to my team and issued the order.

She nodded as she tossed her javelin around the Beowolves while using her semblance to swing them around midair. Nora took care in hammering the others while Ren and I stayed back and shoot.

Creeps started popping from the ground, ruining what was otherwise a beautiful scenery with their burrows. I swung my sword towards them, slicing them off one by one as I blasted the others. Ren spun around the area, dispatching the other creeps by both shooting and stabbing at them.

Pyrrha was blocking a strike from an Alpha Beowolf's claw before swiftly rolling to its back. She grabbed the claw and stabbed the Alpha's torso until it fell dead and vanished away.

The area was cleared for a few minutes before Pyrhha spotted more Grimm hurtling toward us. "More Creeps!"

Could these things just give up? I irritably thought I turned around and pointed my gun at them. To my surprise and horror, I saw that these Creeps were larger in every aspect and they glowed green while having spikes of the same color on their back. "Wait a minute. Those aren't ordinary Creeps."

"Green spikes! It's those mutated Grimm we were told about." Ren reloaded both of his pistols and aimed at them.

"Ho-hoo sounds fun." Nora gave a slasher smile and gripped her hammer. "Let's kill them then!"

Being Grimm that we never have seen before, they were rather unpredictable unlike most of the mindless Grimm we fought, along with the mutations that could make them do something who knows what regular Grimm can't do. "Be careful, we don't know what these could do!" I warned them.

Pyrrha changed Milo to its rifle form and fired at one of them. With only two shots, the mutated Grimm exploded into green substance. Ren only took fewer bullets than usual to dispatch one and it exploded just like the ones Pyrrha killed.

"They die quicker than regular Creeps, but they blow up once they're dying." The coin dropped as I figured out what to do with these mutants. "Everyone, switch to range and keep your distance!"

We fired our weapons at the mutated Grimm, all of them erupting into green sludges almost effortlessly. A few more of them came out of their burrows as we rolled ourselves away from them before they exploded. I took out the last one with a single blast from my laser pistol. After that, the area was finally clear, with a few green liquid spluttered around the concrete pathway.

"I've seen plenty of Grimm on my life with varying shapes and sizes, but I've never seen anything like that," Ren remarked, which we could all say the same. We may be able to study different types of Grimm, regardless if they are common or rare, little or large, but these Grimm are different, as a result, we almost know nothing about them, it was fortunate that we managed to find out that Mutant Creeps explode by will or upon death, otherwise someone would have been seriously hurt if not dead.

I took some time to celebrate that we might be the first group to encounter these type of Grimm and live, which was relieving, if haunting, but otherwise I don't know how to feel about that.

"I know they look like Creeps but what kind of speshimen was that?" Nora asked, mispronouncing the word 'specimen'.

"I think it's pronounced 'spi-see-men', Nora," I replied except I think I was wrong about that because I put too much emphasis on the second syllable.

"'Spe-seh-men', actually." Ren corrected.

"Potato-Tomato, what exactly are those things?" Nora inquired.

"We don't exactly know for sure, let's just say their mutated Grimm like the ones we saw at the video during the briefing," I answered. "We need to notify Doctor Oobleck about this."

I took out my scroll and immediately heard the doctor's voice. "Team JNPR! Are you alright?! Grimm activity was detected around your area and your aura levels were on alert status."

"Yeah, we handled them, doc. We even came across some mutated Creeps which could be the ones from Mountain Glenn. We were lucky enough to have them dispatched almost unscathed."

"You did? Could you describe them for me then?"

"They're like the regular ones, only that they're bigger and they glow green. They die quicker but they make up for that by exploding when they die; they'll also blow up if they're too close to you." I explained.

"This is indeed concerning... those mutated Grimm that the poor soldiers found on Mountain Glenn were no fluke. This will require further study. It's fascinating... but very, very troubling. Excellent work, Team JNPR. Keep following those tracks, your encounter with them proves that you are going in the right direction. Be quickly now, the longer we pursue who is behind all of this, the more mutated Grimm that will spawn."

I shuddered at that last statement; I was hoping I'd never meet these green exploding assholes again, but unfortunately, this was only the beginning. By the way, I have yet to meet that mutated Beowolf-looking Grimm back at the briefing that managed to kill a whole squad of soldiers. If these are mutated Creeps, I cannot imagine what other mutated Grimm would be like, aside from the glowing and green spikes.

"You guys found the Grimm with the green thingies?" Ruby said at the other side of the channel.

"Yep. When you find them, whatever you do, don't get too close to them. Those things blow up when they die or when you get too close."

"That's a bummer, I wanted to punch whatever those things are head on." Yang made an aside.

"We'll remember that," Ruby responded. "We found the tunnels to Mountain Glenn; we're going in, wish us luck."

"Ditto," I muttered before putting my scroll down and turning back to my team. "Looks like this is the way, guys, if this it's not, then who knows where these things are coming from."

"We should be careful, I'm sure there will be plenty more mutated Grimm we'll come across," Pyrrha added.

"Just remember what to do if you see it glow green," Ren stated.

"Don't worry, guys, we'll be poppin' those things before they could ever lay a claw on us." Nora bragged.

I sure hope so, I thought. "Right let's get back on track," I lead them into following the path uphill, with all our guns ready in case more mutated Grimm come. I feel like this is going to be a long journey.

---

We spent another few minutes treading the path uphill and there was a structure that was getting increasingly visible the more we got close to it. We later found an ancient stone building—a temple, if you will.

I made a subtle groan as I'm starting to get flashbacks of the initiation. At that point, I wouldn't be surprised if we found chess pieces inside that building and got chased by a Deathstalker or a Nevermore again. That got me into thinking; if Creeps can get mutated, does that mean Deathstalkers and Nevermores could too? I hoped not and said to myself that I have to stop that maniac before he'll be able to make it possible.

"This must be the place," I said, momentarily gazing at its admittedly impressive architecture before pulling out my scroll to update the Doc. "Doctor Oobleck, we have arrived at the P.O.I. [1]"

"Excellent. You know what to do now. I'm sure we are one step away into solving this mystery. Remember to remain cautious; we don't know what our mysterious adversary has in store for us, so expect the worst. Good luck, team."

"We shall take over this stronghold and I will declare myself the queen of this castle!" Nora said before cheerfully bouncing towards it as she sings her song.

"Alright, is everyone ready?" I glanced at my teammates as I checked my ammo, in case more mutated Creeps come.

"Ready," Pyrrha readied her rifle while Ren nodded with both of his machine pistols raised.

Pyrrha and I faced the front of the large temple doors while Ren and Nora pushed them open. I stood behind Pyrrha while pointing my pistol as she crouched and aimed her rifle toward the door with her shield raised. Once the doors were opened, it was clear of any hostiles but there were some transparent cages of different Grimm—mostly Creeps and Scavers.

On the bright side, it didn't take that much trouble getting here; imagine the door being locked that we have searched the entire area, smashing pots like madmen to find a key, that would have been tediously annoying.

"Dr. Oobleck, this is no ordinary temple," Pyrrha said on her scroll as we carefully walked through the temple's hall while glancing at the trapped Grimm. One of them almost startled me when it tackled its cage right beside me that I almost would have shot the cage out of shock and accidentally free it. Hell, I noticed that most of them are staring at me, likely because I had the most negativity among the four.

"Look those wittle cweeps trying to break out of their cages." Nora gestures to one of them. "Isn't it adorable?"

Please don't point at them, Nora. They hate it when you do that, I nervously thought.

"Someone's been busy collecting Grimm," Ren said.

"Which reminds me, I would have got one if you'd let me!" Nora yelled at him. "Now I'll never get my own Ursa and name it Jormungand!"

"For the last time, Nora. Grimm cannot be domesticated." [2] he replied with slight irritation while maintaining his usual composure.

I never understood why some people want to tame Grimm and keep them as pets. I'm already having trouble with real animals, so why should I even bother handling Grimm that doesn't involve shooting or running away from them or both.

"You're just worried that you think I'm going to replace with you something. Don't worry, you'll always be my one and only Ren, but just let me have a pet for once! I promise you'll still be my number one!" she pleaded, in which Ren just rolled his eyes and kept on moving.

"It appears that this temple looks like it's being used as a temporary storage facility—for Grimm of all things!" Doctor Oobleck said through the scroll's channel. "This is quite the discovery. Keep searching, students. I'm positive that we are getting close to one of our objectives. Keep me notified if you find something particularly noteworthy."

I noticed there were a few supply crates scattered around the area, I quickly dashed toward them and took everything I could use. Most of them were useless junk, but there were some worth taking such as dust and tools that were used to capture Grimm, both of which could be sold at a valuable price while coming in handy for a rainy day.

One of the random things I found was a black bishop chess piece that resembled one of the 'artifacts' we took during the initiation. I groaned for a bit. I was only joking when I thought that we might find chess pieces on the temple. Now I'm worried that a Nevermore is going to come over.

While chess pieces obviously don't automatically mean that it's tied to Ozpin, I couldn't help but ask just to be sure.

"Uh, doc? This doesn't belong to the headmaster now is it?" I queried, showing the piece on the scroll's video feed.

The doctor answered with faint amusement. "Oh, fear not, Jaune, it's just a mere chess piece; nothing more, nothing less. Your days of searching those types of 'artifacts' are over. I'm not going to make you collect chess pieces throughout the mission, don't you worry."

"If you say so, Doc." I put my scroll down. I don't know why I even brought it up, it's not like I wanted to go hunt for more stupid so-called 'artifacts' for a useless bonus.

I went around looking for more items to scavenge. Unfortunately, I got too caught up in looting the place that I did not notice a loose Grimm nearby; I thought the growling was just my stomach since I had a feeling that I didn't eat enough. It wasn't until I heard it roar loud enough that I turned around and saw it charging toward me that my reflexes got me to dive away from there just in time as I almost panicked. I got a good look and saw that the Beowolf was larger and mutated, resembling an Alpha, but like the mutated Creeps, they were glowing green and had green spikes on its back.

I screamed while making sure I made it sound more like a distress call instead of a pathetic shriek. Please tell me that you go down quicker like your smaller cousins, I silently begged as I took out my pistol and blasted it without thinking.

While there were some noticeable damages, it only got it to anger it and pounced right at me. I dodged to my left and collapsed my shield as it swung its claws to clobber me. I was able to deflect it but it was strong enough that it managed to push me back, which was something even Alpha Beos and Ursa Majors couldn't do even with their full strengths. The mutant Beo was no pushover and was proven to be stronger and quicker than its normal brethren, not to mention, their claws appear to be sharper.

"Guys!" I yelled for help as I did my best to avoid the Mutant Beo's attacks. I decided to run away from it while pointing my gun at it, looking like I'm still trying to fight it when I'm actually trying to make a retreat.

"Angry mutt! Angry mutt!" Nora shouted as she and the other two came out with ANOTHER mutated Beowolf, with Ren and Pyrrha trying to shoot it down while they were at it.

"This one's worse than an Alpha Beo!" Pyrrha stated.

Two of them? Great. My problems just multiplied by two, just what I didn't need, I cursed to myself before turning back to the mutated Beo I previously fought.

While these abominations were tougher than any other Alpha-Grimm we had to face that I considered ditching this temple, they were still shown to be just as vulnerable as I could see them getting damaged after my teammates use their weapons against them. This meant we could still kill them if we hit them a lot enough, thankfully.

"Ren, Nora, you take care of that one, Pyrrha and I will handle this one!" I ordered.

"What are we supposed to do, then?" Ren inquired before backflipping away from the other mutant Beo's claw.

"Don't let it hit you, their attacks are much stronger than the regular ones that you die in a hit or two," I instructed, dodging one of its attacks before I went close to it to bash its face. I slashed it a few times before it roared loudly that it was about to pounce me. It was distracted by Pyrrha's gunshots on its back, making it turn. I have her additional fire support by shooting on its back until it was stunned from the gunshots from both its front and back.

Pyrrha leaped toward it, kicked it as she made a backflip before throwing her javelin towards its head then pulled it back to her as she changed to its xiphos form. The two of us charged in and slashed the mutant Beowolf back and forth until it was finally finished off. Unlike the Mutated Creeps, this one doesn't explode, it just vanishes like any other Grimm, except that the same green substances drop away from its corpse, I'd say that's a good thing, these things are already enough trouble as they are.

Meanwhile, the other mutant Beo was trying to get near Nora who was pushing it back by firing grenades at it, not aware of a tranquil Ren rushing towards its back before proceeding to stab it and slash its hind legs. It cried out in agony as it shoves away Ren, throwing him to a wall and Nora wasn't happy about that. It then proceeded to smash the ground, summoning a line of crystals coming to Nora for her to leap off and changing her to hammer as she smashed the mutant Beowolf's head with it. She went to Ren and helped him up, the mutant Beo charged toward them only for Ren to hold one of Nora's hands and use his semblance to mask them both, making it lose sight of the two's negative energy. Ren proceeded to grab Nora's arm and threw her at the mutant Beo, she swung her hammer and smacked it at impact, sending it crashing to the other. Nora got out unharmed and finished it off with another thump.

"Holy moly, I just I killed a Grimm that's big and glowy!" Nora remarked with a mix of surprise and joy.

"Did you guys notice it bring spikes after it smashed the ground?" Ren turned to us and asked while panting for air. "That's not something a Grimm could normally do. Who and what's causing all these mutations?"

"No idea, but I'm very sure that anyone who would modify a Grimm to be stronger must have some pretty loose screws," I told them before bringing out my scroll to contact Oobleck of the latest discovery. "Doctor Oobleck? We may have found the mutated spi-see-men—"

"Spe-seh-men," Ren corrected. At this point, he might as well be our walking pronunciation guide.

I'm going to get that a lot until I managed to pronounce that correctly, am I not? "Whatever. We're here to confirm that the creature that attacked the soldiers on Mountain Glenn are really Mutant Beowolves."

"Mutated Beowolves, hm?" The doc pondered. "What can you tell me that makes these Mutated Beowolves deviate from the normal ones?"

"These things don't explode like Creeps. They're like Alpha Beowolves—only worse and they have this ability where they bring in green crystals after smashing the ground."

"I see. It appears that our fugitive seems to be making different experiments on each kind of Grimm. I'll inform Team RWBY of this. Keep searching—there must be some sort of lab somewhere if we are truly this close to uncovering the mystery."

"Roger." I nodded before putting the scroll back in my pocket.

We went around the temple looking for a lab or some sort of testing ground. So far, we managed to find nothing save for more storages of caged Grimm and some items which I took, of course, but we were able to find an exit somewhere at the back of the temple.

"Maybe we should head out there," Pyrrha suggested, pointing at the exit. "Might lead us to somewhere."

"I guess we already searched every nook and cranny of this place," I said. "Alright let's go."

We headed out and followed the path from the exit. Shortly we found what seems to be a port, albeit abandoned judging by the rusty textures of the containers if you look at them closely enough, along with a stationary crane. There was also a ship parked there that doesn't appear dilapidated but it possesses the logo of Merlot Industries despite the company being no more. Not only that, but few of the containers carry the insignia as well.

We stayed behind a rock that was overlooking the port on a slope. We can't risk going in there without being sure yet.

"A shipping port in Forever Fall?" Pyrrha asked in a puzzled tone. "Who else knows about this?"

"I see the ship with the same symbol as the cargo containers." Ren pointed out. "Someone was indeed using Merlot Industries' assets despite the company now being defunct."

"Doctor Oobleck…" I said at the scroll's channel after sending him some visual references, "Are you seeing this?"

"Is that a port?" He paused for a bit, undoubtedly taking time to study the photo I sent to him. "Judging by the condition of that ship, it doesn't appear to be abandoned from something belonging to a company that hasn't operated for a decade—meaning that somebody has been using it recently."

"Whoever this baddie is, just say the word and I'll give Torchwick a fellow cripple in prison!" Nora said to me.

"Remember whoever is behind all of this managed to break into Emerald Forest's security network and successfully mutated Grimm that killed several well-armed and well-trained soldiers, so you'll have to take some extra precautions." Doctor Oobleck advised. "Furthermore, Team RWBY is done investigating the subway tunnels and are now heading your way and will arrive within half an hour. I want you to stay put and watch over the port in the meantime. You might need some extra manpower for this task. Call me if you see something suspicious or if the ship is about to depart."

Staring at a cargo. Oh boy, here we go again. If I'm right about a pattern here, I could see what's going to come and that better not be the case. Luckily I'll have the joint forces of RWBY-JNPR should things go wrong, we might be even able to win without me doing anything.

=o=

1. Point of Interest.

2. Grimm can be collected for the purpose of research, or in some cases, such as Professor Port's classes, use them as live test subjects during training.

---

Around thirty minutes or so, we waited while watching over the docks. Nora was getting impatient with her trigger-finger twitching; Ren was keeping watch of the docks for anything anomalous; and Pyrrha was blowing off steam and meditating so she could have enough aura to protect her while being able so she could use semblance more. Meanwhile, I was checking my inventory, examining what I've looted as I decided which to use and which to sell. I could feel my skin shudder as I sense that something perilous is afoot.

Team RWBY arrived, aside from looking ragged and somewhat sweaty, for the most part, they looked fine for people that have to explore a train tunnel and had likely encountered their fair share of mutated Grimm.

"We're here. What's this all about?" Ruby was the first to ask as the four of them approached us.

"There's cargo belonging to Merlot Industries. We suspect that whoever we are going after is using the defunct company's assets and they are likely to be very close." Pyrrha got up and answered, cocking the handle of her rifle.

"Notice that the ship bears the same logo." Ren pointed out. "If someone has been using the ship, then it must be the same person responsible for the security breach and the mutated Grimm."

Yang smirked. "Alright, let's go pay that guy a visit. Whoever that chump is, they're going to pay for making the mutant Beo that sliced up my hair."

"Your hair looks the same." Nora of all people pointed out. Her hair was unkempt indeed, but it was always that way. Then again, this was Yang we are talking about.

"It's still a golden rule not to touch my totally gorgeous and perfect hair!" Her eyes briefly turned red before immediately cheering up and chucking. "Geddit?! Golden! Cause my…" Everyone turned to glare at her, even Ren who was focused on watching the docks. "I think you catch my drift."

"As much as I want this person to pay for the abominations they created, I'd prefer to have them arrested. They'll have to answer for what they've caused." Weiss chimed in.

"Can I still punch them in the face?" Yang asked, followed by Nora.

"Or break their legs? "

"Just make sure they'll still be able to talk," she sighed. "I'm curious at what made someone would have the audacity to strengthen a Grimm when they're already enough of a threat."

Because they're freaking insane, that's what. "That's one of the things we're trying to find out," I said.

The doctor once again spoke through everyone's scrolls. "Alright, everyone. Now that you're all there, I'm going to need you to get a closer look to see what kind of cargo they're carrying. But be careful not to be spotted. Who knows what kind of security they have."

"Doesn't look hard," Yang remarked. "At least after having to deal with exploding Creeps and things what I would like to call Double-Alpha Beowolves."

Checking the view again, I found getting the impression that the port was too suspiciously empty. If it does provide something significant on this mission, then it was too convenient to find it unoccupied. "Why do I get the feeling that it only looks that way so they could catch us off-guard?"

"So this is the port," Blake gazed at it. "Didn't know the Forever Falls had one."

Ruby used her sniper's scope to survey the area. "Looks abandoned."

"Probably because it is," Ren replied. "It looked like it hasn't been used since the company shut down."

Weiss scanned at the crates. Some containers were green and had the emblem of the Kingdom of Vale, others were Orange and had the Merlot Industries logo, but what got her attention was the blue crates with a very familiar logo. "Wait a minute, are those SDC crates?"

"Old SDC crates, I think," Blake replied. "They're about as rusty as the other crates on the pier, and I'm very certain that the SDC likes to pride itself with pristine containers."

Weiss glared at her, looking irritated by that statement, but ended up more or less concurring with her. "Well, you're not wrong."

"What's the plan?" Pyrrha turned to me and asked.

They all stared at me as they waited for the word of their resident hero. I made a brief glance at the dock before speaking, "Alright, Blake and Ren will go in first and scout the area to see if it's fully clear. Ruby and Pyrrha will stay here and provide sniper support, seeing as you're both marksmen. Everyone else including me will position ourselves before the entrance to the port until Ren and Blake say it's clear then we go in and find everything we need. Did you guys get all that?"

They all nodded and proceeded to cock their respective weapons. I was a little anxious that some unwanted repercussions might happen and that this might not work out right, but I was confident that it'll get the job done while keeping me out of harm's way. I gave them a smile as I ordered them to move out.

Ren and Blake entered the while everyone save for Ruby and Pyrrha followed and went behind cover near the dock's entrance, all weapons—pistols, hammers, rapiers, and gauntlets—ready, while occasionally peeking out.

Blake reported the status of the area a couple of minutes later, "The place is clear. We checked the ship too, it seems that no one's on board. We haven't checked the containers yet, but so far, there's no sight of anything hostile."

"We found nothing on our sights either." Ruby added, "I guess you could say it's safe. We'll keep a lookout just in case."

"Alright then," I responded before glancing back to my other teammates, "Move out and check the cargo."

And so went in and spread out, opening every cargo to find something that could be the key to solving this mystery. Some containers contained cages, empty or otherwise. Others contain barrels of what appears to contain the serum that was probably used to mutate Grimm; we took some samples of it to bring back to Beacon for study. Most other containers just contain mundane things such as crates full of tools and parts, medical equipment, some minerals and a few crates of dusts—which were particularly stored in the SDC crates. I could make a fortune selling these as well as getting a significant supply of dust for us to use, so I took all that I could carry.

A few more containers opened, aside from the aforementioned barrels of green liquid, we haven't been able to find anything until Nora found something that caught her attention.

"Hey, look, machines!"

We went to Nora to check her discovery. It was a crate filled with red android-like thingies all inactive and sitting in a tucked position. I kept my laser pistol pointed at them in case these things turn on and start attacking us.

"I don't think I have ever seen this model of a machine before," Ren examined them.

"Could it be an invention of the person behind this?" Blake asked.

"Very likely. By the looks of it, these robots appear to be brand new and they must have been delivered here recently."

"If that's the case, then this person we're after, must have ties to Merlot Industries or at least had worked there before it collapsed, seeing as how they were capable of mutating Grimm and possessing these robots." Weiss chimed in.

The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to question who we're after. We're either after a lone evil genius or a group of people planning something not good. If it's the latter, one could guess that they were ex-employees of the company or maybe the company never actually shut-down. "I don't know, guys, but I think we're maybe after more than one person here. I couldn't grasp that one person could do all of this."

"You might be right," Blake replied. "We're very likely witnessing a scheme of an unethical organization that was able to gain access to resources for an unknown yet undoubtedly vile purpose."

"Well, that, or one person was really determined enough to do all of this," Weiss remarked.

"Either way, the question is—where is all of this coming from?" Ren pondered.

"We'll be sure to find out. If we could get into the ship's system, we could trace the route back to where it came from." Blake proposed.

"I have experiences with tech, I'll be sure to examine once we're done checking every cargo," he assured.

"Speaking of which, we need to get back to securing this place," I said. "Someone will have to guard the robots though."

Blake nodded and went back to survey the docks while everyone else stayed to examine the robots for another minute. Yang suddenly stepped in and went in front of the dormant robots and waved at them. "Ohayou, Mr. Roboto! Can you and your pals please wake up so you can make this mission less boring for me?"

Weiss glared at her. "Are you really trying to provoke them just so you could satisfy your need for adrenaline?"

"Hey, I'm just trying to lighten the mood," Yang responded. "Besides, I doubt these tin cans could stand a chance against me."

"Should I break them before they awaken? These things very likely possess heretical A.I." Nora asked.

"Just watch over them in the meantime. There might be something worth salvaging inside them. You can destroy these unholy abominations later," Ren answered before leaving. Further reminding me that these two were part of some sort of weird technocratic cult that I would choose to worry about another time so I could focus on my current task that was at hand.

"Whatever, I'll have my EMPs ready." Nora rotated her launcher's chamber. Good to know she brought those just in case, I've been worried about fighting robots at one point. I knew Nora's fear of robots would end up becoming useful at some point.

Everyone returned to their respective activities. I went back to whatever I was doing—taking all of the dust I could get. Unfortunately, I wasn't being considerate nor conspicuous when doing it around the others, so Weiss found me looting from an SDC container.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked suspiciously.

I looked back at her and answered somewhat nervously. "Uh, scavenging for supplies."

"Are you? Because it looks to me that you are stealing—from my family's company no less!"

Great, here comes Lady Nags-a-lot. This is what I get for not being careful when collecting dust in front of the dust princess. "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure your family lost this by the time this port was abandoned. The SDC must have already replaced this cargo a long time ago." I calmly defended.

"It does not change the fact that they're still Schnee Dust Company assets, and by stealing them, you are stealing from the company, and by extension—ME!"

She was becoming increasingly infuriating to deal with that I dropped the nice guy charade. I admit, I actually found her aggravation of me to be quite refreshing after receiving a whole lot of blind praise these past months, but I've endured her attitude since the day one that I pretty much had it with her stuck-up, spoiled-rotten attitude. I'm still wondering how her teammates were able to put up with her crap for an entire semester.

"We're in a fairly capitalist society, princess. Someone bought this cargo a long time ago, and once someone buys it, it's no longer yours, simple as that. I thought you already know this, seeing as you're the company's heiress. Now I see why the headmaster never chose you as leader of your team." I sardonically replied, going back to taking all the dust I could get my hands on.

Yang passed through and patted her short teammate's head. "Ooh, he got ya' there Ice Queen. He has his moments but who knew Vomit-Boy could be such a smart-alec?"

You have no idea. Aside from rare moments such as this where I don't have the patience to hide it, I'll keep it that way so everyone could still keep seeing me as a nice dorky guy they thought of me as.

"He does this sometimes, you'll get used to it," Nora said to Weiss as she passed through her

"And you're okay with this?!" Weiss exclaimed at her before turning back and stomped toward me. "Desperately taking someone's bike to get somewhere quickly was one thing but this is just outright thievery!"

For Brothers' sake, she's still being adamant about this. It makes me almost glad that Pyrrha was never partnered with her during the initiation, with her wishes of 'popular girls being at each other's backs' getting thrown off the window.

"Weiss, you practically live in dust, this should be nothing to you. This doesn't belong to the SDC anymore. Finders, keepers. Now, please go bother someone else." I finished gathering the dusts and went inside the next container.

I sliced the crates open and took everything I could carry while being careful enough not to trigger any of them. Unsurprisingly enough, Weiss followed me, still being as stubborn as ever.

"I'm not stopping!"

I sighed in annoyance. "Seriously?"

"I demand you to hand me over the dusts you've taken, and take back what you said there, or else I would never forgive you for this!"

I rolled my eyes. At that point, I decided that this was not worth the trouble I would be facing. "If I follow your first request, then would you shut up?"

"Just give them to me and maybe I'll be a little forgiving!"

"As little as your bust size?"

Her face turned red in anger as she growled. "Now you're just being insufferable! Since when were you like this? I was content with you being a goof with a thick skull."

"Trust me, I'm still there. There are just a lot of things you don't know about me, Weiss-Queen," I answered. "Now can I at least keep a third of the dust I took or are going to keep being stingy? I promise I'll even give you my crappy apology if I have to."

"You're not getting a single—!"

"AHHHHHHH!" Nora suddenly screamed, interrupting our heated moment.

We both tried to rush out of the container, only for an android to block the exit and suddenly shut the doors, trapping us both inside. We suddenly found ourselves collapsing to the ground as the container began to be lifted. I tried to aim at the door to shoot it open with a laser blast but Weiss grabbed my pistol down before I was able to do so.

"Don't! Trying to fire an inside of an SDC container with your laser would only make it ricochet back to us and kill us both! You can't cut this container down without special equipment!" Weiss chided, her voice echoing inside the container, which the same thing happened to me.

"Was it really necessary to make your containers extra tough?!"

"Yes! So it could prevent thefts!" [1]

"Great, now it's preventing us to not get ourselves stolen!" I yelled now that we were trapped in there.

The ground and walls rumbled as we felt the container drop. I could hear gunshots, destruction and screaming outside, telling me there was a fight going. We got up and took out our scrolls to contact our teammates into getting us out.

"Ruby! Are you there?" Weiss called.

"Pyrrha! Ren! Nora! I'm in a container that's in the ship—I think!" I reported them to my scroll.

Sadly, all we got was static. We did hear some transmissions from Doctor Oobleck from the others but they were all undecipherable; I was sure that they couldn't hear us either. We kept trying to contact to no avail until we were forced to accept that our network was disrupted.

"They've somehow jammed our communications!" Weiss exclaimed.

"Oh no, no, no, no, no!" I went to the side of the container and began banging the insides containers and screamed as loud as I could for help. "Guys! Help! We're trapped in here! Can you hear me?!"

"This can't be happening. This cannot be happening!" Weiss panicked back and forth and joined me in banging the container for distress.

But because of how loud the excitement was outside and they seemed to be too occupied into fighting those robots, I don't think they heard us nor were they aware that we were trapped in a container.

To make this nightmare worse, we could feel the ship set sail as the sounds of fighting became more distant the farther we got. We were officially screwed.

Needless to say, neither of us was very happy about that. "No! No! No! NO!" I began panicking as I kicked the wall of the container.

"I can't believe I'm getting involuntarily smuggled—with you of all people!" Weiss squawked.

I held the wall and panted heavily. I noticed that I was already sweating and that I need to calm down and conserve my oxygen if I'm going to stay here for who knows how long.

"So…" I turned back to her so that she was folding her arms and was scowling at me. I was winced at her for a moment before attempting to smile and extenuate the situation n…rather pathetically. "Maybe you can have the dusts now."

She winked at me before growling and punching my gut, something which my aura decided not to protect me from. I saw it coming and I still made no effort to dodge it, probably because I felt too guilty for being partly responsible for putting both of us in this mess that I allowed her to have it.

I fell to the ground and groaned in pain. "I deserve that…"

"This is all your fault! If you just decided not to be greedy or just listen for once, neither of us would be even trapped in here!"

"And we wouldn't be if you just left me alone," I got up and retorted, suppressing the urge to slap an annoying heiress of a multibillion-lien company on the face, something I really wanted to do for a long time but I suppose the situation I was in was already heated enough—literally because it was pretty hot inside the box, with only little ventilation to barely provide enough air inside. "But does it really matter whose fault it is? We're both stuck in here. I'd say save your breath because you'll need it. Let's hope this would be a short trip."

Her narrowed eyes stared at me for a few seconds before she groaned and went to the other side of the container and faced the wall. I decided to lean back at the side and sit down. I stared at her back before looking up to the vent above me.

The worst part about this was I could sense my motion sickness acting out again. I did my best to hold it back so I could avoid making a puddle inside this claustrophobic hellhole and be stuck with it for minutes if not hours. This was not what I had in mind when I said I wanted to go sailing the other day.

If only I took a hint and not went overboard on my looting. I swear I would have instead challenged those machines for a battle of supremacy if it meant avoiding this.

I'm on a boat… and I hate it. Where the hell is this ship heading to, anyway?

=o=

1. And to keep slave laborers—particularly faunus—loaded inside, admittedly. Back then, we would occasionally transport faunus prisoners and some laborers by putting them inside the containers. Thanks to faunus getting access to equal rights and the company reforming, this practice has been banned and discontinued.

---

I've been staring at my scroll's clock and it's been forty minutes since we've been trapped here and being stowed to Gods know where. We've been trying to contact the others, but all we got was static due to the signal being almost nonexistent. Occasionally, if we're very lucky, we would sometimes receive a brief transmission and even hear them albeit they were inaudible due to them being obscured by the loud and rampant static.

The container has been dark, damp and hot, with the only light source coming from a small vent as light glares from the outside. I had a hard time breathing; if it wasn't for the vent, we would have suffocated by now. I'm instantly reminded of the time Cardin and his goons locked me up on my own locker last semester, so this wasn't the first time I've been trapped inside a steel cage with limited ventilation. Hopefully, this would be the last—and not for the fatally wrong reason.

Weiss was still on the other corner, sitting and looking down. We've been silent to each other ever since this ship started to sail. The only time we made contact was an occasional stare until one of us decided to look away.

I wiped away my sweat, breathing heavily out of dehydration. I was becoming desperate enough that I considered biting off one of the ice dusts for water—but even I know that ice dusts don't work that way. Come to think of it, I could cast an ice dust and suck the water from it, but I decided not to risk it. [1]

Suddenly, Weiss stood and went toward me. She offered me a half-empty water canteen that has her family's emblem on it. While I can feel that she's still pissed at me, she doesn't seem to be in a mood for more bickering, "Here. It's not much but it'll last you longer."

I was in a state of shock, denial, and disbelief, but I was happy that she decided to put aside her vexation of me and do this. "That's awfully generous of you. Thanks." I took the canteen, drank it and found myself refreshed.

"Don't mention it. I only did what I thought was the right thing to do, even if it's for an unbearable dunce like you," she said, sitting down next to me as I handed back her canteen.

I smiled at her smugly. "I see that being with someone like Ruby has helped you endure dumb idiots like me."

She gave me a dirty look. "And I'm starting to suspect that you're not actually an idiot at all. You're probably just a wise-mouthed jerk who likes to pretend that he's one."

Well, crap. I pretty much lost all my patience with her at that point that I began to blurt out and blew a part of my cover. Shouldn't have been much of a smartass. I still wasn't in the mood of playing nice and dumb, so I might as well keep being myself then, "Could be. Your mileage may vary, after all. Are you implying that I'm smarter than I look?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I know you made yourself a leader and a decent tactician, but that doesn't stop you for being a dimwit—even if you just happen to be some caustic buffoon all along."

"Aren't I already ridiculous?"

She growled, "You said it yourself then," she remarked before pausing for a moment and then speaking in a cordial tone in contrast to the cold nature of hers that I was used to. "You know, I haven't properly thanked you yet."

"For what?"

"For getting Neptune to dance with me during that night. I was surprised he suddenly asked me out after he shot me down. He said I have you to thank since you were the one that talked him to get the courage to partake in a dance with me."

"Oh, that was nothing. He just needed a little encouragement, that's all." I don't think I deserved that much of a praise. I've only done what any decent human being would have done at the time, and even then, I believe her other friends would have done a better job than I did. [2]

"Don't be too modest. I wouldn't have danced with anybody that night if it wasn't for you," she said, pausing for a moment before noticeably blushing. "You know, you could've danced with me if you wanted to."

I chuckled in disbelief, finding the concept of Weiss accepting an idiot like me to be ridiculous. I have never done anything that truly makes me worthy of her. While Neptune can be somewhat over his head sometimes, at least he has good looks to make up for it. "Somehow, I doubt it."

"I think you're doubting yourself too much. I mean, how bad can it be?"

It won't be that bad, I think, but it'll be worse than what she's thinking. "Would you still be okay with me if I kept asking you out for a couple of times that some people would think I was being a creep and refuse to get over it?"

She gave me a confused stare. "Please, Jaune. What are you rambling about? That just sounds incredibly ludicrous."

"Because it is," I stated. Thankfully I wasn't that much of an idiot and at least I know how to take a hint. "By the way, how are you and Neptune doing so far?"

"We're getting along. You could say we're dating, but we haven't made much progress."

Better than nothing, I suppose. I'm just going to leave it at that. I only helped Neptune out that night because I only felt bad for Weiss, but now she's his responsibility, and he should be aware of that. So whatever happens to this relationship is none of my concern. "I'm just glad you two have settled."

"Thank you, I really appreciate it," she smiled at me warmly "I still haven't forgiven you for abandoning me with the records the other day though."

"Yeah, sorry. I had some questions and I wanted some answers from Penny. Otherwise, I would have stayed and helped you out." Which in hindsight, I wish I did, because the decision to follow Penny eventually roped me into the White Fang's bank robbery. If I just stayed with Weiss and examined boring records, I would have accompanied her to Torchwick's highway rampage with the Paladin or I probably would have gone straight back to my dorm. Either way, I didn't have to steal a bike and go the wrong way, eventually making my ignominious reputation worse.

"At least you stopped a White Fang robbery because of it," she replied.

"My thoughts exactly." I puffed, concealing my frustration with that turn of events, that was the same misfortune that brought both of us here. I turned back to her, "Tell you what, when we get out of this, maybe I could invite you for cake and tea when we get home to make up for our rocky relationship."

"Are you being serious?" she asked. I shrugged and left the answer ambiguous, which earned me a slight glare from her. "Whatever. I'll consider it then. You're not a bad guy, Jaune, you're just really strange. I think it would be a good idea to know you better; that way, maybe I'll understand why people even like you so much."

I flashed her a smile, "I look forward to it, then."

Weiss stayed silently on my side for a few more minutes, only this time, she wasn't aloof ice queen she was, which was comforting since I kind of missed her amiable demeanor she displayed during the night after our first day of class and I kinda like seeing her being nice.

We suddenly felt the ship go to a halt as we heard the engine stopped. This alerted both of us as we both stood and readied our weapons. We both kept still and quiet to listen for any sudden movements since we can't be sure if whoever is going to open this container is hostile or a friendly unarmed civilian but seeing as we're essentially being kidnapped, the former was to be expected.

Those robots made a mistake of letting us keep our weapons, surrounded by loads of dust on the floor.

We later heard stomping approaching the cargo. Listening to it carefully, we confirmed that the sound was metallic, telling us that it is one of those robots. If they aren't going to try to disarm us and take us prisoner, they will be sure to kill us.

"They're coming, get ready," Weiss said as she went to her combat stance.

Pointing my pistol at the exit, preparing for one of the robots to open up and show up, I looked at the dust crates and felt the coin drop. "Grab a few dusts, I have an idea."

She turned to me and looked skeptical but quickly complied. "I'm trusting you with this."

We took some dust crystals and carefully placed them near the door. Now, I know that I'm not the brightest guy when it comes to dust use, but even I know that we should only use a small amount because one too much would get us killed while having too few won't make much of an impact. Once we're done we rush back to the other side.

"Stay behind me, wait until I say go," I instructed. She nodded and went behind my back with her weapon drawn as she waited for my signal.

I raised my shield with my right hand—keeping my sword sheathed in it, and pointed my gun at the door. The footsteps were becoming more audible before we heard the container's door about to be open. I readied my trigger finger as I focused at the door and the dusts placed on the floor near it.

"Ready?" I asked Weiss, I did not turn to see what her answer was, but I was sure that she's ready. The door finally opened as the robot showed itself with its eyes glowing red. [3] "Now!"

We wasted no time to fire our respective weapons toward the small litter of dust crystals near the entrance. As I planned, it created an explosion, slightly pushing back the container and the both of us while I block incoming projectiles on my shield—and to some extent—the impact of the explosion. While I fell above Weiss, she doesn't appear injured, and neither was I thanks to our auras, she does look a bit irritated but it was the least of her problems at the moment.

It seemed to have done the trick. The first thing I saw after getting up was seeing pieces of the robots scattered on the ground. I collapsed my shield and placed it back at my belt before picking up my sword from the ground. We ran out, embracing the fresh air with my breath as I vow never to take oxygen for granted ever again.

We saw that we were at a platform on a ship, which was docked ashore in an unknown location. The place can be described as a deserted island with some traces of an industry. I assumed that the structures here belonged to Merlot Industries. The island wasn't a tropical paradise—the color scheme was dull, there were no palm trees and the weather was lackluster. Not really a place you'd like to go on vacation.

There were four more robots on the ships. They were almost humanoid and carried double-bladed polearms as their weapons. While Weiss handled the other side of killer robots, I charged toward the other two, rolling from one of their swings before I fired my laspistol on its back. The other robot attempted to swing its weapon vertically towards me, but I managed to block it with my sword, while doing so, I blasted its chest with my laser pistol before slicing its head off. Once I was done with the first tin can, the other turned around. I shot its head and then shot its torso twice. The robot fell headless with a chest full of holes like Helvetican cheese.

Apparently, energy weaponry is effective not only to organics but to machines as well. I really love this gun; taking it from some White Fang rando was the best decision I've ever made.

I turned to Weiss, who was surrounded by dismantled robot parts after pulling her rapier from a metal body. We looked around our surroundings and saw that there were no more robots on the ship approaching, so it was safe to say that it was clear for now.

"Where are we?" she asked after glancing around the area for any clue of our location.

"I don't know, but we're about to find out," I answered.

Weiss pulled out her scroll to check her communications, we were still only getting static. "Unbelievable. Still nothing."

"I see a radio tower just up ahead," I said, pointing toward it on the island. "Maybe we could use it to transmit to Beacon's signal. Let's be careful, I don't like the look of this place."

"Well, let's go with that then! I don't have any better ideas at the moment." Weiss responded. "Since we're in a desperate situation—I'm letting you take some of the dust. We're going to need everything at our disposal."

I grinned at her for accepting me to take dusts, it really had to take getting kidnapped for her to finally allow me to do that. "Now you're talking." But sadly, if I'm to be realistic by this, most of the dust I took would have been used on the way of escaping this island, so it was still for nothing, I would have rather not touched them if I knew that it would lead me to this.

"Don't get too comfortable with my generosity, Arc," Weiss warned. "I still find your 'scavenging' to be objectionable."

"Whatever, Schnee. Let's focus on getting out of this." I replied. She rolled her eyes at my remark but she complied and chose to continue our verbal sparring for later.

Before getting off-board, we roamed around the ship to check if it's clear. We went to the bridge, armed to the teeth and ready to engage with anyone, only to find out that it was empty. We discovered that no one was piloting the ship and it was being controlled remotely.

There were a few file drawers nearby so I went to check to see if there was something I should know, however, I found nothing that intrigued me aside from a sticky note that is written as 'Lusus Naturae', [4] I assumed there was something important with that and not just some random writing so I took it just in case.

It was then we decided that there's nothing for us here and set foot on the island's shore, we proceeded to head toward the visible tower not far from where we were at.

=o=

1. It's actually possible to manipulate a dust crystal into using a bare minimum of its element, with some precision and steadiness required, but due to Jaune's limited knowledge on dust use, he was not aware of that.

2. I doubt it since Neptune wasn't exactly the greatest communicator with the opposite sex outside of flirting, especially if Yang was the one that attempted to persuade him; who would have likely threatened him, making Neptune's decision to change his mind to be forced and ingenuine.

3. Jaune is misremembering details here, the red androids' eyes lights are actually blue. To be fair, the hostile nature of the machines makes it easy to mistake them with more alarming colors. The gunner androids do have red lights, however.

4. Translates to 'Freak of Nature' in Old Imperial.

---

It wasn't even five minutes into the island yet, but it was already made clear that I was right about it being a dreary, solitary dryland with some buildings that indicated that there was an establishment here. Also since it was around five in the afternoon, the sky was getting darker, which ended up making the island's atmosphere a whole lot worse. Notably, this made both of us be extra vigilant, as the people who established a base here may possibly be the ones responsible for all the chaos that led to us here.

However, so far on our way to the communications tower, we haven't found anyone yet. The first place we stumbled upon after exiting the shore was a warehouse. The place looks abandoned, with nothing but tumbleweeds passing by. There were symbols of the Merlot Industries logo placed almost everywhere, confirming that this place used to belong to them and that our target(s) may have ties to the company prior, otherwise there was nothing else that could explain why they have access to this company's resources and use it against us.

I was tempted to go raid the warehouse stashes for supplies, but Weiss kept giving me suspicious looks that I decided not to do it to prevent more annoying time-wasting arguments from Beacon's resident Ice Queen. While there wasn't a single soul to be found as of yet, this place wasn't free from Grimm. Shortly after we visited the warehouse a few Creeps and Scavers and a couple of Boarbatusks popped out. I wasn't surprised—in fact, I was wondering when they will show up considering that our target was experimenting with them. Not to mention any abandoned establishment far away from the kingdoms is guaranteed to have Grimm at one point or another.

Despite only being the two of us with little cohesion, we didn't have much trouble dealing them since we trained hard enough for the past months that we were sure to handle an entire pack alone. While Huntsmen work better on teams, they are still expected to have the ability to take care of themselves individually and take on a number of Grimm without back up.

This was why I thought I was screwed if I didn't have a magical regal-looking, dust-spamming, ice skating, fencer of an heiress with me. Aside from that, I stabbed one of the Boarbatusks on its ass before I could confirm its kill, I've only managed to kill a handful of the other weaker Grimm, which is nothing impressive, as it's just Huntsman standard. Weiss meanwhile managed to slay several of them at the same time, thanks to her Glyphs and large damage impact of the dusts she uses.

It's a good thing we brought a lot of dust. After we were done with the Grimm, she is allowing me to scavenge as long as we are taking necessary supplies such as dusts and ammo, she'll be fine with it, which I was actually pretty happy to hear about.

Moving on, we went straight to the communications tower after we were done checking the warehouse. Thankfully, there weren't any further obstacles when we were going up the tower, unfortunately, we discovered yet another obstacle that hinders us from escaping this island.

"Oh, great." Weiss muttered after attempting to access the tower's terminal, "It's password protected."

I thought we were both doomed as there barely have an alternative and neither two of us have any experience in hacking, that was before I felt the coin drop and remembered the piece of paper I picked up back at the ship. "Hold on,"

Weiss stepped aside as I took over the terminal and typed in 'Lusus Naturae,' and it worked, much to my joy and surprise. While my looting tendency arguably put both of us to this mess, it also going to help us get out too.

I've wasted no more time connecting the tower's signal to our scroll's channel, the only thing we had to do was wait a few minutes for it to reach Beacon's signal, hopefully, quick enough before the opposing force discovers us. If I was desperate and have gone crazy enough, I would have go as far as to add holy machine oils and then sing hymns to its machine spirit just so it could reach our transmission sooner.

"Bada bing, bada boom. Now we wait." I faced towards Weiss and turned away from the screen which says 'Transmitting Signal' with a progress bar under it.

"Finally some progress," she said with audible relief despite her lack of enthusiasm, her face was still as flat as her breasts [1], which was still preferable than her nagging at me as if she was the less patient version of my mom.

The process took a little while. Both of us went on the lookout in the meantime, but all we got was ambient silence, even when I briefly scouted the area with some caution, there weren't any Grimm nor robots, so I guessed it was a good time to relax for a bit that we ended up sitting it out, but this only made me more worried as it felt too peaceful and empty that it was suspicious. Something surely was lurking around the area waiting to strike. A place like this can't be fully peaceful.

After five minutes passed, I checked the screen and saw the progress bar was half-finished, meaning all we had to do was wait for five more minutes. I gritted my teeth and trembled for as I continued to wait while my Huntsman senses keep telling that something sinister is afoot which was why I was holding my pistol for the whole duration.

"So, how's Pyrrha?" Weiss sudden question startled me for a bit while I was on the lookout for something potentially dangerous, but I was able to settle down and respond.

"Why ask that all of a sudden?"

"I'm just curious how she's holding up in your team."

I was still hesitant to give her an answer. Even if we're starting to get along, I'm still not sure to trust her that much. For all I know, she might be just looking for a topic to gossip about. "There must be a reason for your curiosity."

She rolled her eyes, "Just answer the question. Do you really want to make this harder for the both of us?"

I groaned and decided to spit it out. It was a harmless question and I didn't want to vex her again, it was best for her to keep her composure and I didn't need any more of her whining especially if I'm going to be stuck with her for a while.

"She's doing fine. She's comfortable enough and she's glad she's with us. She wouldn't have it any other way." I answered. It was straight to the point and it didn't provide any specific information while it satisfied Weiss' curiosity, so it was rather a win-win.

"There, that's all I wanted to hear. Simple is it?" she dryly said.

"Yeah. Aside from that, she's obsessed with making everything tidy." I added. I kid you not, aside from giving her performance anxiety, Pyrrha's winning streak kind of turned her into a neat-freak and a borderline perfectionist. Thankfully she's only like that with her own stuff, otherwise, I would have gotten insane.

She stares at me for a bit, "That sounds… incredibly like her," she remarked.

"But she's mostly fine, you'll just have to keep the dorm neat and you'll have nothing to worry about." I said before taking my turn to ask the questions, "What about you? How are you holding up in your team?"

"They're… pretty okay."

"How's so?"

"They can be very troublesome sometimes, but they're my teammates, and we have to look out for each other even if they do like to test my patience. Over time, I began to appreciate for what they are despite our problems together."

Sounds like me and my sisters, no wonder I was able to handle everyone's antics. It's a good thing they have someone like me to balance things out. "I see."

"You know you people aren't actually bad. It just takes getting used being in a rather crazy circle of friends."

"Glad you're getting along with us then." I remarked, "You know, you're actually pretty likable when you're being nice. Why can't you act more like it? Did Vale's warm weather increased your temper or something?"

"It's because all of you like to get in my nerves. If you people would only make yourselves more bearable I would have been nicer." she defensively replied and crossed her arms, "And please tell me Jaune. Are you really like this? Because I really don't get you, it's like you're a different person from whom I met the first day."

Godsdammit, this better not be the last day where I'll be recognized as a friendly dork who happens to be one of the most popular students in the academy. It was going well ever since my attempt to pretend to be some wimp who was somehow qualified for Beacon failed miserably. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh, and now you're playing dumb. This is exactly what I'm trying to point out!"

I sighed. Unless she miraculously forgets all of this, I really done screwed up. I sincerely hope that she's assuming that I was just in a bad mood and not find out that my public personality was all just a façade because I was careless enough to lose control of myself and acted too out of character. "Look. It's not as simple as it sounds. Why don't you just go with the notion that people are not one-dimensional?"

Weiss just groaned and continues to stare at me with her piercing glares of those ice-cold blue eyes. I just stared at her back because I had nothing else on my mind that isn't 'explain that my behavior when someone was around was bullshit and have it end up becoming Beacon's number one gossip and ruin my rep.'

Despite that, it's a good thing we had this conversation, it at least made time go quicker that it should almost be done by now so I could get out of the staring contest that followed.

While we're at it, I suddenly noticed something odd on the landscape on her back. I squinted my eyes and scrutinized at the object and immediately recognized it as another one of those hostile robots. I did not hesitate to aim my pistol and shoot it down in front of her face, startling Weiss into turning back and saw the wave of robots approaching us.

"Couldn't you have warned me?!" she pulled out her rapier and went to her combat stance as she rotated her dust chamber.

"We'll argue later!" I said, aiming at one of those robots then firing at its chest, filling it with blast holes.

As much as I hate it every time something's trying to kill me and ruins the peace, this pretty much saved me from getting Weiss from fully cracking the code, at that point they were less threatening than something that would ruin my reputation that I despise yet still ensure to avoid a fate worse than death.

"How much longer?!" Weiss asked, casting an ice dust on two of those walking tin cans that were a foot of each other, causing them to be frozen and break in the process.

Blasting another robot's head clean off, I ran to the terminal and checked the screen, "Almost there, just hold on for a couple of minutes!"

The two of us held the ground and continued to clear the area of the robots whilst preventing them from ruining the transmission. Thanks to the laser pistol and amount of dusts we were carrying, we had little trouble of getting rid of them since these robots were apparently vulnerable to energy weapons and the right use of dusts. The only thing I had to worry about was managing our ammunition and supplies.

One of the last of the robots tried sweeping the floor, only for me to jump from it and I thrust the Crocea Mors to its head, impaling its face. Weiss meanwhile finished hers by crushing it with her glyphs, squashing them into pulverized pieces of flattened scraps. By this point, the signal was successfully transmitted and the are was clear making it safe for us to contact Beacon.

I wasted no more time to reconnect ourselves back to Doctor Oobleck's channel and notify him of our status and location.

"Hello? Come in. Mr. Arc? Miss Schnee? Is that you?" the doc asked, the transmission was initially full of static but it quickly became clearer.

"It's really us, Doctor," I responded. "Look, we don't have much time to explain all I could say we were shipped into an unknown island and there's plenty of Grimm and those robot things here. Luckily we managed to find a communications tower and used it to receive your signal. I request rescue as soon as possible."

"Well, it's good to hear from you again, it would be a huge blow for us if we lose both of you. Worry not, we'll do our very best to track your location as quickly and efficiently as possible," he said, which was very reassuring. Suddenly a mysterious transmission was suddenly heard from the channel and it wasn't from anyone we're familiar with. "Hold, on I'm receiving feedback from an unknown frequency! Who is this? Identify yourself!"

An unfamiliar voice responded on the frequency. "Ah, that's better. Sorry, but the reception is always so bad all the way out here. I hope you're enjoying your stay on the island. You're the first visitors I've had in, well, you are the first."

"That…voice." Doctor Oobleck muttered, apparently being familiar with the mysterious caller.

"Doctor Oobleck, who is this?" Weiss inquired concernedly on her scroll. I was no less puzzled or disturbed.

"Oh, where are my manners? Allow me to introduce myself. My name's Dr. Merlot. You don't know me, but I most certainly know who you are. Nevertheless, I'm thrilled you're here. You might be exactly what I need for a very important... experiment."

"Wait…" While I already had a hint of who he was the moment he said his name, I still glanced at the company's sign at the nearest building which has his name on it just to be sure. "Dr. Merlot? As in this Merlot Industries Merlot?!"

"Of course I am the Dr. Merlot. What else am I going to name my own company that I spent years building up with?" he replied. I don't know, something more corporate-sounding name that involves enrichment, I guess?

"I thought you died with your company!" Weiss said to him.

He chuckled sinisterly. "Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated," he remarked, it appears that even formerly-renowned scientists aren't above using clichéd phrases stolen from bad action novels. Go figure. "And it was a mere speed bump on the superhighway of scientific progress. You couldn't possibly imagine the ramifications of my latest research. For such terrific students as yourselves, this should be an easy test, right?"

"So we meet again, Doctor Merlot." Another voice coming from the doctor's (well, our doctor's) comm said, only except it wasn't Doctor Oobleck who spoke but Ozpin himself.

"Ozpin? Or shall I call you Oz like old times, chum?" the evil doctor responded. Weiss and I were shocked, but I wasn't that much surprised considering how Ozpin knows everyone and everyone knows Ozpin at this point. Besides, these shady old men being familiar with each other doesn't sound far-fetched.

"You should have perished in the Mountain Glenn disaster, a tragedy you played no small part in. The world was a much safer place without you."

It looks like I know who to blame for what Mountain Glenn is now, and it made me more desperate to get out of here because if he really is behind the fall of Mountain Glenn then it meant he could do the same to this island and I didn't want to get caught by it.

"You're calling me the reckless one? Sending your students out on an excursion like this?" Merlot retorted. I'd say he's spot on if he wasn't making the Great & Powerful Ozpin look sane more likable by creating mutated Grimm and adding more problems in a world that are already dominated by monsters for whatever senile reason, not to mention, being responsible for Mountain Glenn's destruction if Ozpin is to be believed.

"They're more than a match for your mindless robots," Ozpin argued, it's nice for him to speak for us but I'll be the judge of that. "What you're doing here is wrong, Merlot."

"Trying to make the world a better place is wrong? Say what you will about me, it won't change the fact that you're powerless to stop me."

I fail to see how making a more horrifying version of the leading problem of this would make it a better place. Thousands of these Grimm die every day yet they still keep on growing and outnumbering us and you expect us to think that this will somehow improve the planet's condition?

"You'll botch this somehow. You always do." Ozpin replied.

"Well, let's agree to disagree. I tell you Oz, it has been truly a pleasure catching up, but unfortunately, it's time for me to run. Farewell, old chum."

I was so befuddled that I was prompted to ask Ozpin of the situation, but Weiss beat me to it. "What's going on professor?!"

I could hear him sigh from his side of the channel. "Mr. Arc, Miss Schnee. While we're able to get your transmission, I'm afraid we still haven't got your location. Merlot is using some sort of firewall that it would take some time for us and pinpoint his island and send you out of there. Stay put. In the meantime, search the premises for information about Merlot's current scheme so the authorities would be able to review them before he destroys them. Rescue and backup should arrive shortly after we're able to breach Merlot's firewall."

Explore the islands and check the facility which undoubtedly contains mutated Grimm and advance security measures? I would rather torture myself with school lectures and study for the finals by now. "Please hurry," I told them while keeping a stiff upper lip and trying not to sound like I was pleading.

"We're doing everything we can, Jaune. Just hold on. You will make it through this," Ozpin responded before ending the call.

Weiss and I turned to each other. "You heard him. No point trying to stay on this spot. There's no doubt that they'll just keep sending waves of robots until they know that we're dead. Might as well uncover more of this case." I said.

"I trust that you know what you're doing. Pyrrha can't consider you to be an effective leader for nothing." she said, "So lead the way."

I really can't promise that though, but I have no intention of dying here so she could count on me on that one. She proceeded to accompany me out of the tower and into the facility.

Pursuing an evil scientist in an isolated island, the only thing missing is an active volcano. I feel like I'm in a bad spy flick right now; I wouldn't be surprised if Merlot also happens to have an evil pet cat he strokes on his lap while he twirls his mustache. This was supposed to be nothing more than a scouting mission. Nothing is ever simple, is it?

=o=

1. Hey!

---

The deeper we went, the more disturbing the island was appearing as the sky was growing darker. On the path to Merlot's lab, we found pipes harvesting something from the island's surface as well as puddles which is very likely the same substance that was carried by the mutated Grimm.

Weiss and I overlooked the area on a slope. "Ugh, look at this place. What is Merlot doing here?" I asked.

"A refinery, by the looks of it. It appears they're gathering the substance that was used to create the mutated Grimm back at Forever Fall."

"So you're telling me that this island contains the stuff that mutated the Grimm. Have you by any chance, heard or studied about this stuff before?"

"No I don't think I have. But I suspect that it's one of the rare substances found on certain specific areas on Remnant, this island being one of them."

"Great," I muttered. We were at a disadvantage then. I was fine with this being another indistinct, boring island that just happens to have a corporate establishment, it turned out to be rich in the same liquid that made the world's living nightmares twice as worse, guaranteeing that I will be facing quite a lot of them. I was praying that I would only encounter those one-shot exploding mutant Creeps and not much else, or maybe I should shut up because it's giving my omnipotent tormentors some ideas and make them do the opposite of what I'm begging for.

Looking back at the area, there were puddles of the green liquid on the ground while there were a few Grimm lurking around and some of them were approaching the puddles. "You think those puddles contain the mutagen?"

"Maybe. I'm not sure. For all we know, it might be just regular acid or something else. This is a research facility after all. Let's wait and see." Weiss responded, "You should be aware that Mutant Creeps are less bothersome than they look, especially within this distance."

She got that right. Thank goodness for that because I'll be able to save ammo if I were to shoot fragile, two-legged suicide bombers from afar while it satisfies our curiosity, otherwise if it was a Beowolf or a higher-tier Grimm we would be doing our best to keep them away from those.

One of the Creeps went near the puddle and drank from it. Seconds later, I witness it go through its somewhat disturbing transformation process. The Creep made a raucous cry as its eyes and mouth were filled with a green light. Its skin began slightly tearing, revealing a glowing layer. The other Creeps went in and drank from a puddle, putting them in the same process. No green spikes yet and their skulls were still the same, probably because their mutations were still in early stages. [1]

I was still rather perturbed but I immediately remained calm when I realized that it wasn't that bad and mutant Creeps were elementary compared to its cousins anyway. "I guess we have our answer," I said. It was already a minute after the Creeps started drinking from the puddle. They remained immobile during the transformation, so it was a good opportunity to get rid of them, whether they're fully transformed or not.

I fired my laser pistol at them, almost instantly erupting them into nothing but the same liquid they consumed from. I was careful enough not to hit the pipes, otherwise, they would leak the serum and it might even lure nearby Grimm while giving them free power-up drinks when there are already puddles of them all over the place.

Weiss followed suit and cast a few fireballs from her rapier, helping me clear out the area out of the remaining Creeps that we're unable to retaliate due to being in the middle of their transformation.

Once we were done, we both lowered our weapons. "We should inform Professor Ozpin about this," Weiss said to me. Without any objections, she pulled out her scroll and contacted Ozpin.

"Students, have you found something?"

"There appears to be equipment extracting the green serum that was used to create the mutated Grimm, and it's being pumped elsewhere."

"This is also said to be one of the few places that have this stuff," I added.

"This confirms my suspicions. I knew Merlot was on this island for a reason. Keep searching. I want you to follow the pipeline. With any luck, it will lead us right to Dr. Merlot. Try to slow down this sinister operation if you can. By the way, after a long and arduous process, we are finally able to pinpoint your signal. Your fellow team members are en route to the island and should arrive as soon as possible."

Finally, some relieving news—I never thought I would hear one again. "Will do, just don't take too long," I responded before putting my scroll back to my pocket.

Leaping off from the short edge. We began trailing the pipes to where it was coming from and sabotage anything that would make progress of an evil scientist's twisted plan just so I could complete my mission, letting me pass this year while skipping all of the bullshit studying and sleep peacefully at night knowing that there would be no superpowered Grimm to worry about.

The main facility became visible and we were getting close to it the further we followed the pipeline. On our way, we received a transmission from a friendly voice. "Hellooo! can anyone hear me? Weiss? Jaune?"

"Ruby!" Weiss happily exclaimed at the voice that would normally annoy her, and me to some extent, as if my sisters weren't able to train me into handling hyperactive girls like her. "I can't believe I'm saying this—but it's good to hear from you again!"

"Good to hear you that you're okay, Weiss! Is Jaune taking care of you?"

I felt my cheeks heat up momentarily while Weiss' turned pink and did her best to hide it. She tried to scowl at me to sway any thoughts, but if you ask me, she ended up looking rather adorable when attempting to glare at me while embarrassed, it kind of reminds why I even had a short crush on her when I first looked at her in the eyes—if only her looks match her personality. "Well, he is a tolerable companion—to say the least."

"Umm, what she just said," I replied, enforcing the awkward atmosphere further.

"Are you trying to make Pyrrha jealous, Weiss-cream?" Someone said on the line, anyone who's familiar with my friends can already guess who said this because of the way she speaks, so I don't find it necessary for me to tell you who said that.

If you somehow weren't able to recognize this person by the way they spoke because you may have presumably skipped to this chapter or are just bad at indicating someone through their personality, then let Pyrrha's embarrassed stuttering help you out. "Y-Yang!"

"You stay away from him, Weissy-Dicey!" Nora yelled on her end. "You're not good enough for someone as honorable and caring as Jaune!"

I wouldn't say that I'm above her in terms of morality though. At worse, she's probably in the same league as mine, and even then I still think she's more of a saint compared to I am. At least she's being honest of who she is.

"Does it look like I want to be stuck here with him?" Weiss retorted, yelling at the scroll in front of her.

Ditto, Frosty Flakes. "Don't worry about me, Nora," I told her. That wasn't really good advice, if anything, they should be worried because their leader is in a grave situation. "This is not the first time where I have to fend for myself, remember?" And hopefully, it wouldn't be the last either.

"We know, Jaune. We just couldn't imagine what must be going through right now." Pyrrha responded, and boy, was she right about that one. "The Bullhead we're in to get there just recently launched; we're going as fast as we can so we should be there in just a few minutes!"

"Look, just hurry on there. I am getting increasingly sweaty, tired and dirty and I refuse to die in this state especially on this nightmare of an island!"

"Don't worry, we're coming! Just keep on doing what you're doing. You're doing great from what I've heard." Ruby said.

That put me in a better mood, but I almost forgot that Merlot was still on the same channel as ours. I was beginning to worry that he might be listening. And unfortunately, he was. "Might I remind you that I can hear everything that is being said on this channel?"

Ruby shrieked. "Gah! Who's this?!"

"You must be the baddie who's behind all this!" Yang said. "You better not have harmed our friends!"

He chuckled evilly. "I wish I have already done more than that. Your friends are more stubborn than I anticipated but I should have expected it from the Heiress of the Schnee Dust Company and a nominee of Vale's Junior Huntsman of The Year."

Oh, come on! Not this again. A mad scientist like you who have been stuck on this island and doing questionable experiments for more than a decade should have been the last person to be in touch of dumb phenomenons such as my misunderstood exploits. I didn't bear any ill-feelings toward this guy despite being a delusional prick whose creations could screw up an already doomed world but after he mentioned that I'll be more than glad to give him an idea what it's like having an ancestral sword on your stomach or what a blast of laser on your face feels like.

"I can remember the other professors at Beacon saying the same thing about you, Merlot, though the word they chose was less kind."

I'm almost thinking the same, except it's involving a little more profanity.

"Ever since you got it in your head that experimenting on Grimm was a good idea," Ozpin once again came in to talk to a former colleague of his. "Your obsession has and will continue to be your downfall."

"The Grimm are a superior species, fascinating in their biology, their unbridled, raw aggression and lack of sentience make them the perfect vessel."

Grimm supremacy, are you fucking kidding me?! Even the White Fang have better justifications and this is a group where most of their target demographic wouldn't buy their shit.

"That line of thought illustrates exactly why you could never be trusted, Merlot." For once, I see something eye-to-eye with the Great & Powerful Ozpin. "I still find it amazing that you survived the disaster in Mountain Glenn, Merlot. Was it sheer luck or part of your master plan?"

"Would you believe me if I told you it wasn't my fault?"

"I believe that you wouldn't take accountability for your actions."

"Admittedly, Mountain Glenn is a bit of a sore spot for me. Decades of hard work, countless research projects, not to mention all of the specimen I'd collected over the year… all lost without a trace."

"Let me get this straight... you're upset that you lost your research?" Ozpin presumed.

"The work done at Merlot Industries was critical in the advancement of artificial intelligence and genetics. Without it, Remnant would still be in the dark ages."

And now, you're making something that would send Remnant back to the dark ages. How ironic, but then again, he's making it pretty obvious that he lacks self-awareness.

"You've missed the point. An entire city was laid to waste. Countless lives were lost. My only question is how much of the damage were you personally responsible for?!"

"Well, how else was I supposed to conduct my research? Our supply of test subjects was running thin."

"And when the Grimm came back, the city's population was driven underground where it was safe. No thanks to Merlot Industries."

"Do you believe things happen for a reason, Oz? I mean, two of your little prodigies practically washed ashore here on my island, and it appears that you are sending more of them."

"I'm not sure what you're getting at," Ozpin responded sternly before shifting back his attention to us. "Carry on, Mr. Arc and Miss Schnee. As for the others, make yourselves prepared. Merlot is not the type of individual that goes easy on us. Remember your training and expect heavy resistance."

Good thing I have been expecting the worst since the beginning then.

After trailing the pipes for a few minutes, we were able to find what was presumably the laboratory building where all of his operations are being conducted, much to our joy after everything we've done to get this far.

There was a walkway that took us towards its entrance to the main facility.. We began to move hastily, but we remained prudent, knowing that there was always a threat around every corner. Doctor Merlot liked keeping his establishments secured and he wasn't going to let us inside that easily.

Of course there were security robots waiting for us because on this island, there has to be an obstacle to something as simple as trying to enter a freaking building, otherwise where would be the fun in that? But for anyone who has read my ramblings for long enough, it's already made crystal-clear that I hate certain types of 'fun' and I'm doing my best to avoid them as humanly possible.

I grabbed my pistol and hastily fired at the robots, within less than five shots I've already dispatched at least three of them. Weiss used her glyphs to put the other robots in close proximity then used electric dust to overcharge all of them at once, next thing I know is that some of them simply shut down and fell while the others exploded. I sliced down the ones which were still whole so we could be sure that they're never coming back unless Merlot gets a chance to glue them back to working condition, an opportunity that we're not willing to give.

"If Merlot is going to torment us on this wretched island. He could at least give us a worthy challenge than sending the same pieces of walking scrap-metal he keeps throwing at us."

Please don't give him any ideas, I irritably thought.

When we thought the area was clear and it was safe to press forward, two more robots appeared. These weren't the regular models we fought before, they were painted white and were much larger, enforced by their bulkier appearance. They appear to use Gatling guns rather than the polearms the red androids use.

You just had to say it, didn't you, Ice Queen?

Widening my eyes, I quickly expanded my shield, prompting Weiss to get behind me when we both noticed their guns rotating and firing seconds after.

I blocked the robot's barrage of bullets while moving to the nearest container for cover with Weiss hunkering down behind me. When we got to the container, we waited for them to stop firing. They presumably cannot shoot forever since they would either run out of ammo or their guns would overheat, thankfully the durability of the SDC's containers was used in our favor for once.

Once they stopped firing, I hastily tried to tear them down with my laspistol the same way I tore down the army of robots that tried to kill me previously, but to my dismay—these models apparently have reinforced armor that is able to counter laser fire. While laser pistols are pretty good against both organics and synthetics alike, shields and aura be damned, there are still some things that it cannot penetrate against.

"Dammit," I murmured, reloading my laspistol's clip after using most of it in an attempt to dispatch the Heavy Gunner Androids.

Weiss made her move and tried to use the same trick she did to overload the robots' circuits. It was just as ineffective as it did almost no effect on the robots and they kept moving slowly.

"Well, there's the 'worthy challenge' you wanted. Happy now?!" I yelled under the barrage of gunfire behind the container.

"Oh, I'll consider being careful about what I wish for next time!" She snarled back.

"Good idea, because rich snots like you need to learn how to wish better for things that money can't buy!"

"How about I wish for you to put your leadership skills to good use and make sure this won't be our last conversation!"

"Uhm," I looked on the ground and thought for a solution. While the heavy robots were very durable that even or most effective attacks against the androids don't seem to work—it cost their mobility, being heavies and all, which give me time to think while they move slow enough.

I realized that these models were designed to dispatch enemies that were in range, the best way to deal with these things was to get close to them while they did their best to push us back and keep that from happening. So we just need to find a way to temporarily suspend them from their attacks so we are able to take them head-on in melee which was presumably their weakness—they are supposed to be gunners after all.

Thinking for a way that would get them to stop shooting for long enough for us to get close to them from my knowledge I received from watching Team RWBY coordinate in combat. I eventually got a figurative lightbulb light up above my head. "Your wish is my command then. What are your and Ruby's combo-attack called? White Rose?" I asked her.

She looked pretty annoyed at what I just said, but then again, she always was by default. "It's 'Ice Flower', you dummkopf! Since when have we ever called our attack that?!"

By the Gods, there she goes again. It feels like no matter what I do or say, I'll still end up pushing her buttons. "What? You don't like white roses?"

"Oh, we do love flowers as much as other girls but we know not to name our attacks like that!"

Says the person whose team has a combo attack named after one of their user's favorite tuna brand, [2] but at least they are not combining their names together. "Okay, okay, sorry. Do you remember that Ruby shoots through your glyphs to make a special dust shot?"

She raised a brow in interest. "What are you getting to?"

"If we can't take them down with lasers and dust, then we'll have to use an ice beam that would freeze them long enough for us to get near them and cut them down. These are gunners, they can't take us in a very close range, that's what their red cousins are for."

"That's not actually a bad idea. I recall this working against Torchwick's Paladin. It should work against these robots."

"Then let's not waste any more time."

She rotated her chamber and readied her rapier. "Say the word when you're ready, just don't call it something stupid like what you referred to it earlier or even dare to think about it."

I nodded, I already drew a line from making corny team-attack names anyway. There's just something that just irks me about it.

I noticed that the two robots halted from moving forward and remained stationary, likely because they can't afford to have hostiles get near them even for a few feet. Once their next batch of ammo was out, we rushed out of our cover and faced a few feet away from the gunners.

Weiss summoned a glyph in front of us as I crouched down and aimed my pistol with both of my hands towards one of the two droids behind Weiss's glyph. Last time I checked, lasers and dust work fine together so long as you aren't directly shooting the source, unless you needed improvised explosives as we used back at the ship.

I squeezed the trigger and fired a blast as it went through Weiss' glyph. For a split second, I could notice that the laser was colored light-blue instead of red. The ice beam penetrated the first gunner's right arm before it froze. For good measure, I shot its legs twice while being careful not to shatter them. I proceeded to shoot at the second one, freezing its gun and right hand, then its torso and left leg next.

Holy crap, it worked, I joyfully said to myself. Weiss unsummoned the glyph and stormed towards them. I followed as I unsheath my sword then shaved off the head of the one of the gunner's, making it fly toward the nearby cliff. Weiss meanwhile, dealt with hers by using her glyph to shatter the other robots into pieces. The walkway towards one of the facilities' entrance was then clear.

"Well, that went better than expected," Weiss remarked, staring at the droids pieces on the ground turning to me. "You may not be as imbecilic as I thought you to be. I think I'm starting to see why your team and my teammates respect you as a leader and a Huntsman."

"Thanks…" I muttered. "I try, you know. You're not bad yourself either."

She made a faint blush for a second before shaking it off and going back to the classic Weiss everyone knows and loves. "Now don't get too captivated with my compliment! I still think you're a despicable dunce and you should be treated as such. I haven't forgotten about your recent insolence towards me!"

Of course, I was wondering where her icy-demeanor was hiding during this. She's really insulting me that much, I think it's becoming kinda cute and less damaging the more she badmouths me. I swear, if I ever had a lien every time I heard her call somebody an idiot or something synonymous to it since day one—I would be rivaling her family's company in terms of worth. I figured that this day alone was enough to purchase this whole shithole of an island.

"Are you really going to act like a tsundere at best every time I'm stuck with you?" I huffed. Her being pleasant in one second and verbally abusing me in another was really giving me the impression.

"Oh, you must have the nerve to call me tha…!" she grumbled before looking perplexed and stopping. "What's a 'tsundere'?"

I sneered at her obliviousness. "Why a tsundere is a perfect, proper and ideal lady that is wanted by men and envied by women," I answered sarcastically.

I prepared for her to be offended by that remark and insult me back. But to my surprise, she actually took that as a compliment. "Are you trying to flatter me now, Jaune?" she answered smugly and then spoke in a proud manner. "If that's the case, then maybe I am a 'tsundere', and I will continue to act like it because it is what I am. I'm glad to know that even a blockhead like you could acknowledge that."

I did my best to hold my laughter with all the self-control I could muster. I didn't expect her to actually fall for that. It doesn't even sound like she's snarking back unless she's trying to screw with me. I hope she doesn't get too pissed when she finds out what it actually means. [3] It's like the nicest thing I ever called her especially if you compare it to the other things I labeled her as. The 'dere' part implies that there was still hope for her.

"Right…" I muttered, still in disbelief with her reaction. "Let's just not waste any more time and get in."

She nodded as we both went across the walkway to finally get into Doctor Merlot's lair.

=o=

1. The length of the mutated Grimm's transformation depends on the specimen's size and the complexity of their biology, which explains why most of the Mutated Grimm were Creeps as they are much more easier and quicker to mutate.

2. He was referring to 'Bumblebee Tuna', since Blake and Yang's combo is named 'Bumblebee', despite it having its name because bees contain the colors black and yellow, representing Blake and Yang respectively. Coincidentally, Yang also nicknamed her motorcycle as 'Bumblebee' but she made it clear that she had given it its name long before she was paired with Blake.

3. The term actually meant to describe a person—usually young females—who is considered to be pleasant and caring (dere) beneath a sour exterior (tsun). It is usually used in Mistrali pop culture. When I looked up the actual definition myself, I don't know whether to feel insulted or flattered.

---

When we entered Merlot's facility, we found ourselves in a dark, almost pitch-black room. I turned on my scroll's flashlight and saw that we were in some sort of storage room where barrels of the serum were shelved. If I didn't know any better I would have smashed everything here to lessen Merlot's supply of mutagen, but I was warned that the serum attracts Grimm as if it was negative emotion and that we were advised to lessen Grimm presence first before doing so.

I called over Ozpin for our status update, "Headmaster, we're finally in."

"Good. I want you to locate Dr. Merlot and put him in custody while you wait for rescue and reinforcements which should arrive shortly. Search for a map or anything that would provide us insights into the facility's layout to make the navigation of that building less troubling. Destroy anything that progresses Merlot's experiment if necessary, but be careful, while we are aware of what these things could do, we don't know everything about them. Above all, be wary of his security. Take care," he responded.

We proceeded to skip this room since there wasn't much to do, and we still have some things to do first before blindly destroying every equipment we see.

When we exited the storage room, lights suddenly turned on by themselves, revealing a corridor filled white walls with screens while the floor was black and tiled hexagonally. The screens showing Doctor Merlot's face.

This was the first time we saw what he looked like since his profile icon on the communications channel was blank. Here, he is revealed to have medium-gray hair with a mustache and beard, with eyebrows that were no less thick. What was the most disturbing part about him was his left cybernetic eye which was glowing red. Apart from that, he appears to be wearing a scientist's gown, overall, giving in the appearance of the evil scientist he was.

"Greetings, and welcome to Merlot Industries, where we're building a better tomorrow—today!" Merlot on the screen spoke.

We assumed the screens were playing pre-recorded footage that was played every time someone visits, so we ignored them for now and wandered around the facility until we found something.

"Here at Merlot Industries, we take pride in innovation. Together, with your help... and a little of your special spark, we will build a better tomorrow!"

"For you, Merlot, there won't be any tomorrow to 'restore'." Ozpin sternly responded to the messages from our scroll's speakers.

We later would find ourselves in the atrium, according to the label on the wall. There were a few boxes scattered around inside the facility, most of them were empty though, however, some of them contained a few dust shards and some sellable items that could fill my pockets with lien after taking them to the pawnshop.

After walking throughout the hall for a couple of minutes, we can't help but notice the facility being empty containing almost nothing but the same screens on every wall. All we could do was keep moving forward.

"This place looks abandoned, where is everyone?" Weiss asked. I guess that it was only Merlot, his metal slaves and some Grimm is everything we're up against. Not a single soul appears to be working for him, probably because he didn't need them and no one was insane enough to be under his wing. I wouldn't be surprised if he did purge his employees.

"Making yourselves at home, I see?" Merlot said on a screen, except this one clearly wasn't pre-recorded and he was looking directly at us, startling me for a second. "I want my guests to feel welcome, but unfortunately, my security team rarely feels the same. Still, there's a good reason why they behave that particular way to you."

There was a security camera placed near the screen. I wasted no time and replied by firing at the security camera, detaching it from the wall then shattering to the floor.

"Please remain from vandalizing the security cameras so we will be able to properly monitor our visitors and employees for the sake of their security and safety."

"Sorry, I get pretty shy in front of the camera!" I shot the screen as well. For the sake of our security and safety, my ass.

Turning away from the broken screen that now has a hole in it, a turret came out from the ceiling. I quickly expanded my shield and blocked the gunfire as Weiss ducked behind and cast ice shards toward the turret until it was frozen. It then fell unto ground before shattering in pieces.

More of the red robots appeared. We fell back as I threw some ice dusts on the floor, creating a puddle of ice. A few of the robots slipped and fell to the ground as I finished them off by stabbing them as they slid, Weiss dealt with the others by stunning them with electric dusts then pushing them away to a wall where they shatter, one of the screens even falling to one of them for an added insult.

We noticed a nearby elevator (or 'lift' as they're called by Valish natives) opened and we noticed after dispatching the androids. We quickly rushed to it and activated it before more security androids arrived to make our day harder.

The elevator's doors closed and it descended to the lower levels. The elevator was so shaky and fast that you could easily mistake that it was crashing. It was a miracle that neither of us lost balance and fell, not even Weiss who was wearing heels. Thankfully, it was very brief but I wonder how many lawsuits this company used to receive from visitors and employees for their uncomfortable elevators. [1]

When it finally opened, we were greeted with a sight of a large room filled with tanks containing and harvesting the serum from the island's soil.

"Here before you are Stage 2 processing tanks," Merlot announced on the laboratory's P.A.

The room was leaking of Scavers and some Creeps that appeared to have dug out from the earth, a few of them were even mutated. They were trying to scratch the tanks of the serum that they were so attracted to, but their attention turned to us once we arrived.

It was pretty tempting to destroy the tanks, but until I was sure that the Grimm would stop leaking, it wouldn't be practical, it would only just give them free mutations. This wouldn't be so bad if all of them were just Creeps since we would only just stand back and let the fireworks happen, but there were also Scavers around the area, and we weren't sure what a large mutated Grimm rat exactly does, so it would be better to study them with one of the two Mutated Scavers present there. The military was going blow up this island once we're out of here anyway, besides I don't want to become an even worse Grimm magnet by having the serum spilled on my clothes, my shoes have already stepped on enough of them.

The regular Creeps dug near to us, Weiss and I did the pleasure of slashing and stabbing them to oblivion. The mutated ones followed—Weiss and I sprung back and used our respective range attacks, creating green explosions between us.

The Scavers charged towards us, I fired my laser pistol at those overgrown rodents because I am not taking the chance of them poisoning me. They were still one of the weakest common Grimm so it wasn't much trouble getting rid of them, what worried me was the Mutated Scavers since this was our first encounter with them. They were only two and they don't seem to be more threatening than a Mutated Creep but we still don't know what mutations they were given aside from their new appearance and slightly increased size.

"Ugh, why do these rats have to mutate when I already loathe their normal forms?" Weiss grimaced, repulsed at the sight of her least favorite Grimm specimen and the animal it was based on.

"Probably because regular Scavs' weren't bad enough for him. Whatever these things would bring, it obviously won't be good." I said, readying my gun. "Get ready. We wouldn't know until we see what happens after I damage them."

I fired at one of them. Much like the regular Scavers, they are just as fragile, going down in one or two hits. But it turned out, it actually wasn't a good move because killing a single Mutated Scaver caused it to collapse and multiply to a swarm of miniature glowing rodents that were now racing toward me.

"Oh, rats!" I panicked. I hastily holstered my gun and grabbed Weiss' hand before making a run from them.

"Hey! What are you doing?!" Weiss asked, blushing at me abruptly holding her hand as we were both chased by the swarm.

"Saving our butts from being poisoned! Don't worry, this isn't going to mean anything; we're not in some crappy rom-com!" I quipped in hopes of coping with this madness.

Once we were far enough, yet the swarm was quickly catching up to us, Weiss made a proposal. "Let me go, I have an idea." I looked at her for a moment complying, hoping that she knows what she is doing. "You might want to hold on."

Weiss then summoned a glyph for us each to launch us to the air before the swarm of Scavers managed to reach us. Weiss summoned another couple of glyphs to keep us elevated in midair, I kept myself balanced, holding onto the glyph below me as Weiss casted a fireball to the ground, burning the swarm and the three-feet radius around it, even igniting the other Mutated Scaver which eventually burned down along the swarm that spawned from it.

She then casted ice dust to extinguish the fire below us, making it safe to put us down. "Gods, I hate those things."

I pushed myself up and saw that the area was clear of Grimm… for now. One of the screens flickered on with another announcement from Merlot. "Thank you for getting rid of those pests. I would have sent my androids to dispatch them, but this saves me trouble. This way please." He said, opening another elevator.

"Is it just me, or is he a little too welcoming?" Weiss asked suspiciously.

I can sense that there was something sinister that he has stored for us, but we had nowhere else to go so there was nothing else we could do but move forward and prepare for the worst. "Oh, he is definitely not sending us to a trap," I sarcastically remarked.

"It's either that or facing an endless horde of robots upstairs," she said as we both headed to the elevators.

"Might want to warn the others about the mutant Scavers." I took out my scroll. There would have been huge trouble if it wasn't for Weiss fire dusts, and I have to make sure the others were prepared to handle them, otherwise, it might take them longer to get here. "Professor, you might want to tell the others to watch out for Mutant Scavers. They multiply to a swarm of small rodents once you kill one. Tell them to have some fire dusts ready."

"Duly noted. Thank you for the warning, Mr. Arc. The mutated Grimm are a rather new adversary for us that every piece of information. Continue your expedition and notify us if you found a new threat. Your team should be arriving any minute now." Ozpin responded. The others better get here shortly, I thought. Because this mission was getting worse by the minute.

I braced myself for another bumpy elevator ride and boy was I right. I swear, if it didn't last for less than five seconds I would be puking on the floor and Weiss would nag me as long as we're stuck with each other. I know that Merlot hasn't gotten any visitors until we came along, but couldn't he fix this crap in his spare time?

The door opened to a hallway to the next section. We were greeted by more screens of Merlot. "Here we have the Engineering Wing—the so-called 'brains' of the operation if you're not counting my own intellect," he said before laughing at himself.

I don't think anyone is counting on that, you've pretty much lost your mind at this point.

"Don't be so timid. There aren't any traps here… yet." he continued before the screen transitioned back to showing just his company's logo.

"Thanks for the heads-up," I said dryly.

"Showing gratitude to the man that's trying to kill us now, huh?" Weiss snidely replied.

"Old geezer needed some compliments after being alone on this dumpster-fire for so long. Your parents told you to respect the elderly, didn't he?"

"How thoughtful of you. And yes, in fact, I've shown more respect toward the elderly than what my father expected from me."

"Good to know you sympathize with your fellow white-hairs."

"I take it you don't do the same, judging on that remark."

"Oh, I didn't mean any offense in that, it's just that you act like a grumpy old lady sometimes."

"That only shows how I'm too mature for the likes of you."

"Right then, grandma," I replied, making her roll her eyes out of annoyance.

We pressed forth, they'll be time for bantering later, and I wasn't going to make this trip longer by stalling, although it did assure me the others are going to arrive any moment now.

The engineering wing was full of computer terminals and workbenches. Aside from that, there wasn't much to make out for it other than I took some parts that may find to be useful—particularly dust and weapon upgrades.

It didn't take long for us to find a row of computers with a terminal in the middle of it. We concluded that this where they store their data and information.

"That's a lot of computers," I remarked, I felt like I was in a room of a space station that needed several supercomputers and a lot of processors and bandwidth to get their operations working. [2]

"We appear to be in some sort of data processing center," Weiss uttered. "We should be able to gain access to every info we need for this mission."

She headed to the terminal and booted it on, only to be greeted with a screen asking for a password to gain access to it. "Ugh, of course, it's encrypted."

Remembering the password I used on the communications tower, it could work on here but it was also just as likely that it might now work because not every computer in the facility uses the same password, but the one I got apparently was an admin code so it was worth a try.

"Let me see if this could work," I said. Weiss moved aside before I typed in 'Lusus Naturae'. I was prepared to receive a text saying that it was the wrong password however it managed to work again. "Would you look at that?"

Weiss breathes out. "Thank The Brothers for your compulsive scavenging then and whoever wrote that convenient note."

I know, right? It feels like I'm at Their mercy at the moment.

Browsing through the terminal's contents, I navigated through an index containing records of the company and the facility itself. I've managed to find a document containing a map that not only covers the very laboratory we were at but the rest of the island as well. It has everything we needed to navigate the area and it could help the others when they arrived. I quickly sent it to our CCT server, the computer estimates the upload to be completed after five minutes. Well, it does contain legends, blueprints and additional information about the island rather than just showing you the layout, so the file itself was bigger than expected.

While waiting for the computer to upload the map, in the meantime, I decided to check out other things on the computer for anything else that could be some help to us.

What got my attention was a folder named 'Projects,' I checked it to see if there was anything that could tell me about his current experiments on the mutating Grimm and what the evil plan he has used for them. Entering the folder, I saw several more folders containing projects that were either labeled as 'Cancelled', 'Failed' and 'On Hold', but what stood out that wasn't labeled as any of those was the most recent folder on the very top called 'Project: Grimm Eclipse'. Okay, could he have thought for a better name? It sounded like a title for a mediocre video game.

It was without a doubt that it concerns the Grimm mutations, so I was about to enter the folder the moment I realized what it was. But before I was able to go further, Merlot was able to catch up with what we're doing.

"Ugh, I should have expected this. The moment I found out that you somehow managed to gain access to my network, I feared that you might be able to leak information critical to my experiment." Merlot grumbled, "Since you children are so curious about my works, allow me to introduce one of my finest creations."

Weiss and I readied our weapons for our next adversary. Loud metallic stomps were heard from the nearby Manufacturing Wing. We quickly turned toward it and saw a silhouette leaped toward us. It revealed itself to be a silver, twelve-foot robot clad in armor that appeared to be thicker than the ones carried by the android gunners, it was wielding a war-hammer in its right hand and a tower shield in the other.

This is going to be one tough nut to crack, I thought.

"Behold, the 'Dust-Immune Prototype Securidroid & Hostile-Intercepting Terminator' or simply called 'The Terminator' in short. Now, I would have changed the name because it was apparently trademarked, but that's not relevant now, is it? As the name suggests, this machine is immune to all sorts of dust attacks, so forget about ever trying your clever abilities, Miss Schnee." [3]

"This is not good..." Weiss winced. I was about as terrified as her, this robot already appeared threatening enough and it was made worse when we heard that it was resistant to any form of dusts. I know I don't over-rely on dust in the first place, but it was still useful in making fights easier. I just needed to find a way to bring this down and I didn't expect it to be a walk in the park, seeing how this was one of Merlot's finer creations.

"I've managed to create the design before that fool Polendina could copy it. The Kingdoms would have done everything they could get to their hands on it if I had released it to the public, but I thought it was better off to get rid of pests who attempt to ruin my vision. I've always wanted to use it against Huntsmen, now it's my chance!" Merlot finished, now prompting the Terminator to swing it's hammer to the floor.

Weiss and I leaped back as the floor shook from the thud. I tried to fire a few laser blasts on it but it was able to deflect them with its shield. Weiss bolted towards its torso and spun around as she tried to damage it, only to make a scratch out of it at best. The Terminator darted back and tried to swing the hammer at her vertically as she was still in midair, but Weiss quickly managed to quickly elevate herself to the ceiling and push herself back at the ground again.

The Terminator raised its hammer to swing it, Weiss summoned a large glyph and attempted to block it and maybe even knock it back, only for it to be broken by the hammer. Weiss made a slight painful grunt and dashed back to avoid the hammer. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"

It looked like we need to find a weak spot or this robot isn't going anywhere because it has more protection than a sacred cow with overzealous worshippers. If Professor Peach was able to see this stupid thing, she is going to roll on the floor so hard, it would break her goggles.

The Terminator began swinging its large hammer around vertically, I barely managed to duck it while Weiss used a glyph to jump from it, she summoned another glyph to launched herself towards it, only for her to stop when it starts facing its shield at her, causing her to land it on her feet and flip back to the ground.

With the Terminator facing Weiss, it was now open on the other side. I aimed at its head and fired a shot. While it did make some damage, it appears that it has head protection as well. The shot managed to anger it which made it shove its shield towards me before it tried to hammer Weiss with its weapon, I had to roll back and keep a distance just to be safe.

While it was tougher than any robot we face, it was so noticeably slow that Weiss managed to dash near below it as she dodged the strike from the hammer. It appears as if she doesn't want to believe that it was fully dust-resistant, so after scraping its leg a few times, she tries to plant an ice puddle below it to see if it might slip. It didn't work, a single stomp from the robot's foot was enough to shatter and break the solid puddle on the floor. Well, that's a way to demonstrate its anti-dust features. He really did think of everything, I'll give that evil old coot credit for actually managing to counter dust and I really hate it.

The robot kicked Weiss back, throwing her to the wall of computers, slightly damaging it and causing the upload (which was almost complete) to stop for a second before continuing. That was close, it almost gave me a heart attack and it would have been problematic for us to lose that map. I'm pretty sure Merlot doesn't want to destroy his own data unless he has a backup somewhere.

Weiss appeared to be fine, unfortunately, the damage absorbed a lot of her aura that she wouldn't be able to use her semblance as much. This robot's anti-dust features were really getting the best of her. She'll be okay, she'll just have to suppress her penchant of abusing glyphs during combat.

What's taking the others so long? If there was a situation where we need both of our team's combined strengths, now was a perfect time. Since they should arrive within a few minutes, I was thinking that we stall this thing for long enough until they came for our rescue, but Merlot was pretty determined to destroy us with this 'fuck you dust users machine' and we'd be dead or out of aura by then, so I wasn't going to risk it.

"Stupid anti-dust, I fought a foe like this before, this is not supposed to as hard as it is!" Weiss bellowed, moving at my distance which was several feet away from the Terminator's range at the moment. "Any ideas?"

I looked at the Terminator to study its design but it was also when it began to charge at us with its shield on the front and we had to quickly dodge to the side away from each other.

Now that it was on the other side of the room and was facing backward, I had a brief moment to discover that—like a knight's plate armor, it wasn't doesn't fully cover the wearer's body, some parts of its arms and especially its thighs were the most noticeable, with the latter being the least protected. Reinforced armor plating aside, it's pretty obvious that it's vulnerable to normal attacks.

"We hit it where it hurts!" I declared, giving my sword a twirl. "The robot has some gaps in its armor, we just need to get near them!"

The Terminator then began to leap with its hammers raised. Weiss and I hastily spread out to get away from its attack radius. The second it smashed the ground, we both leaped to avoid the shockwave caused by the impact, Weiss mounts the hammer and runs up to the Terminators right arm and slices its open elbow pit then slashed through the next, meanwhile, I ran towards below it and slashed the back of its thigh. Sparks were coming out, telling us that we were able to damage it.

It then slammed its tower shield on the ground, causing me to fall at my bottom. I quickly crawled back to keep a distance away from one of its upcoming attacks. Weiss jumped to a wall and grabbed it as she summoned a glyph that launched her toward The Terminator's neck in an attempt to slice it. However, it swung its hammer and managed to hit her to the ground, with her aura almost shattering.

"Weiss!" I was so alarmed by her getting hit, I didn't realize that the Terminator shoved its shield and knocked me back for a few feet until it was too late.

Weiss was struggling to push herself from ground, having only a few of her aura left that one more successful strike would mean the end of her, but I still have plenty of mine left so I was able to recover and ran toward her as the Terminator was about to deliver another blow in an attempt to finally kill her.

I hurriedly expanded my shield and ran to Weiss' front; I infused my own shield with as much of my own aura as I could as I blocked off the robot's hammer. I was slightly pushed by its strength, but I did my best to stubbornly push back to give Weiss enough time to recover and get her rich heiress butt out of there. I groaned as my arms continued to wrestle the Terminator's weapon, struggling even with the aid of my own aura. I knew I shouldn't have half-assed my own workout and lifted more weights.

Weiss saw me pushing back the robot to save her from getting crushed. Instead of moving away as I expected her to, she abruptly took my laser pistol from my holster after getting up—much to my shock and bewilderment. I was about to ask her what the hell was she doing, that is until I saw her aim towards its unarmored gaps in what would be its thighs and fired a couple of blasts, making the robot flinch back and pull away its hammer.

It was now my chance to strike back. Taking a few breaths, I folded my shield and put it at my belt and stormed toward the Terminator and leaped to its upper body. I held its shoulder with my left hand as I thrust my sword to its neck repeatedly. The Terminator tried to shake me off and swing its hammer repeatedly, but I was out of its range and held on tight.

To finally top it off, I finally sliced off the neck and jumped away as it fell on its back, making a loud thud across the room with its metal body.

I panted as I went to the computer's monitor and saw that the upload was complete. That's another android down and another objective completed. Good freaking riddance. This mission was getting dangerously ridiculous that if this keeps up and we're still stuck with our supplies exhausting, it would be the end of us.

Weiss walked toward, she was holding her side and was somewhat stumbling. She tossed me my gun as I caught by its warm barrel that was currently cooling down. "Not a fan of firearms myself, but I'd say this one is pretty neat. Atlesian tech, is it not?"

"Thanks, I'm proud of it too. Not gonna lie, you guys make the best stuff." I gave it a few twirls before holstering it. Got to thinking, I used my gun too many times in this mission that I was running short of laser ammo. Better prepare myself into selling my loot so I could have money to buy more then.

I took my scroll and notified Ozpin. After dealing with this specialized elite robot, it was best to get out of this as soon as possible, I have lost count on how many robots I killed since arriving on this island. "Professor Ozpin, I got you your map."

"Yes, I know. I have now begun scrutinizing it. Excellent job, students." Ozpin answered, "I also heard that Merlot sent an elite anti-dust android. You haven't already encountered it, haven't you?"

"We did. It wasn't easy, but let's just say that Weiss is free to use most of her spells again." I looked at Weiss, who just rolled her eyes at that quip but doesn't seem to be offended. Understandable, there were worse things to worry about.

"How? Just how?" Merlot's voice bellowed on the scroll channel. "I worked years on that machine to protect my work from puny Huntsmen such as yourself. To see it defeated by a couple of school children and now my information getting leaked. How are you so determined to get this far? I have underestimated you rascals, you turn out to be more trouble than you're worth."

Yeah, well, I'm not enjoying this either. Maybe you shouldn't have trapped us in that crate and sent us here, we wouldn't have been determined to screw up your facility in an effort to leave.

"We have the location of your island and evidence of your experiments. Your safe haven will be bombarded once my students have reached safety. You've already lost, Merlot. Let my students go and surrender yourself, maybe you'll find yourself at the mercy of the authorities." Ozpin responded to him. Listening closely I could hear him take a sip from his mug—like he always does.

"Absolutely not! I refuse to let myself get captured after watching years of hard work simply get wasted by children! If this ought to be my downfall, then I am taking your two precious prodigies with me! Bring me your worst, I will be waiting."

Of course, being absolutely insane that he still chooses not to give up, abandoning all reason and logic when he is inevitably screwed. I really can't wait to finally meet this guy face to face for all the trouble he put me through. He has been giving me the motivation to capture him when all I wanted was to finish the job so I could take the reward, leave and prepare my vacation plans when the school year is over.

"Still as stubborn as always. This path has led to your undoing before, it will lead you to it again." Ozpin sighed before shifting his attention to us. "Mr. Arc, Miss Schnee. Your teammates are now deployed on the island and are heading to your position. Judging by your aura levels, I advise that you take a short break as you wait for them to arrive. You're doing quite well, keep it up. You're guaranteed to pass this year."

I took a huge breath and sat at the wall of computers, with Weiss following beside me. If the next room is going to be as exciting as this, then we need to be in better condition and let our auras regenerate first. We just need to keep a lookout for another wave of Securidroids unless Merlot is saving them for later instead of using them to attack us while one of us has wavered.

=o=

1. Surprisingly, none. The laboratory's elevators were said to be stable when the company was still active. The lack of maintenance over the years may probably be the reason why the elevator performed that way.

2. Jaune was, of course, referring to fictional space stations from sci-fi media. As of this writing, space travel is still impossible as there is still yet a solution to maintain the powers of dust after they leave the planet's atmosphere.

3. While anti-dust technology wasn't exactly new at the time—in fact, it has been around years prior—it was rare, expensive and barely reliable. Over the years, it would become increasingly common, albeit slowly due to nobody being able to salvage Merlot's anti-dust tech and reverse-engineer them, thus putting its research in a breakthrough. If things have gone differently, Merlot's invention would have pioneered anti-dust tech and it would have been mastered years earlier.

---

Few minutes since we defeated the anti-dust droid, we have been staring at the wall, and occasionally the ceiling, rarely making eye contact with each other. I decided to break the silence and complement her into helping me kill the robot—the same time when she decided to also open her mouth.

"Hey, you did pretty great back—"

"You know, I really should thank—"

We both flushed and looked away at each other, still contemplating on the fact that we are getting cozy to each other because it all started when we argued over dust ownership.

After a moment of awkward silence, I turned my head back to her. "You were saying?"

"I want to thank you for defending me when I faltered. I barely had enough aura left to protect me from another strike," she said to me rather warmly, contrasting her usually cold demeanor since she was in a good mood.

"I didn't expect that you'd actually show some gratitude." I smugly replied.

She pouted at me over the remark. "Of course I would. Imagine almost dying and not thanking your lifesaver at least once. I admit, I know I'm not exactly the most pleasant person around but at least I'm not that ungrateful.

I still don't think I deserved to be thanked for doing something that we are supposed to do as a Huntsman. I mean, we'll be saving each other a lot. "Aren't our lives always in danger ever since we chose to become Huntsmen?"

"Brothers above, you really are an idiot. Put yourself in a near-death experience and maybe you'll understand."

Been there way too many times, I'm afraid. "Well, I have a reputation to uphold. It's not like I'm actually being selfless or anything." I said rather insincerely despite the volume of truth, that way she wouldn't believe it.

"Keep telling yourself that," she sneered.

Trust me, I definitely will. "So, what do you want me to say? Tall, blond and scraggly at your service?"

"That's still better than your shallow attempts on denying the fact that you just saved me, even if it sounds stupidly cheesy."

I made a faint chuckle. "You know, Weiss, with that smart mouth of yours, you'd fit right into my family."

"I don't know what you're exactly implying with that, but I can't imagine myself sharing your last name," she playfully remarked. That I could agree with. While she sorta has the attitude, I couldn't imagine her being in the same family as mine either. "Can you tell me about them though? I'm rather curious, I've heard about them before, I even read about some of your ancestors."

"Well, everyone knows my father, Caiaphas, a Huntsman that was so renowned for his skills that the Atlesian council made him a Commissar; my mother was some country girl that turned into some religious symbol and became some sort of paladin. Together, they did their best to make the world a safer place to live in and wipe off stains in the world's map, then they decided to marry, have eight kids and tone-down their work so they could keep raising and looking after us. Not to mention, both of them are where all of our sarcasm came from, we like to think that their quipping is what actually got them married in the first place." I chuckled, "Anyway, they left some pretty big shoes for me to fill."

"I can relate to that, upholding a family's legacy is never easy," she sympathetically remarked, "What about your siblings? I have a couple of siblings myself, but I can't imagine living with seven of them while they all apparently inherit their parents' sarcasm".

"I guess you know who to blame for all the quips I threw at you," I sneered. "To put it simply, my eldest sister is a sapphic egghead who does all of our homework, the others are a seamstress who once murdered a Beringel over fabric; [1] a tree-hugging hippie; a gun-obsessed bounty hunter; a grunge fan who bullies me but is also my best friend and lastly; twins that are pop-stars that also has my parents' training. I'm the youngest and the only son. Do the math."

"Sounds like a wild household, and I thought the three of us were complicated."

I took my turn to ask. "What can you tell me about yours then?"

"To start, there's Winter, my elder sister who I have looked up to since I was little. She is brave, strong and wise. She would have made a better heiress than I did."

I was rather surprised by Weiss displaying humility when I have known her to be a usually pompous, cold and arrogant brat, but now I find myself becoming sympathetic to her.

Her tone noticeably becomes more downtrodden. "But she refused the position—even if it did suit her, preferring to work for the military instead, much to my father's disappointment. Now I'm trying my best to be something like her, but thankfully she's willing to help me, even mentoring me a few times," she said, cheering up. It's nice to see that Weiss has a role-model of her own, seeing people siblings guide their younger siblings always puts a smile on my face. "Then there's my brother, Whitley. In all honesty, I can't really talk much about him since we aren't really close. I don't believe that he's even fond of me. Nonetheless, he's still my brother, and whatever he is up to, it was my duty to look after him, and sometimes he may even help me out in return."

"That's siblings for you; sometimes they help you, sometimes they don't," I said.

"That's true."

We sat there for another couple of minutes when suddenly, a distinct voice belonging to a hammer-wielding teammate of mine was heard across the room, making both of us stand. They were finally here.

"Ugh, those elevators make me want to barf!"

"I wonder what Jaune must have felt when riding those."

Yang, I can hear you, but yeah, those elevators suck; can't really blame Nora.

"Weiss! Jaune! Are you there?" A high pitched voice called, undoubtedly Ruby's.

"Might want to tone it down, the androids and Grimm might be able to sense us." Another voice said, which sounded like Blake.

"The area seems clear to me," Ren replied.

"The professor said that they were last seen on this wing, they should be around here," Pyrrha stated.

Shortly after, the six of them stepped into the data-processing room and found us. "Weiss! Jaune!" Ruby promptly dashed in with her semblance and within a flash, she was now hugging both of us.

"Not too hard! I'm still trying to recover." Weiss told her.

"Oh, sorry!" Ruby apologized as she let go of us and stepped back. "I'm glad to know that both of my besties are still okay!"

Pyrrha walked up to me and smiled. "Glad to see that you're okay, Jaune. I knew he wouldn't be able to break you that easily."

"The journey here took some sweat, but I wasn't going to let him get to me that easily." I boasted, putting my hero face on.

"Of course, you wouldn't. You're not going to let that evil scientist get what he wants, now would you?" Nora inquired.

"Yeah, foiling bad guy's plan is all in a day's work for me," I said, slightly giving an impression of some sort of superhero.

"That's our leader!" she chirped up.

"Good to see you two alive and well, Ice-queen and Bike-Stealer," Yang said.

I faintly narrowed my eyes at her. "I thought we agreed that you'd stop calling me that, Pie-face."

"Hey, I'm sorry, but your indiscriminate yoinking is what got you here. Not that I'm complaining, you two are still alive and you're able to lead us to find Doctor Badguy's lair." she defended.

"Excuse me, I do not steal indiscriminately! I only take from our enemies and stuff that no one owns anymore!" I agitatedly corrected.

"Sure, whatever."

I'm getting called out by someone who has a record of several offenses and a lot of misdemeanors that she got the worst punishment last month. What has my life become?

Pyrrha held my shoulder. "Jaune, maybe you should start being more careful with your looting. I was really worried about what might have happened when you were abducted."

"Trust me, I think I've already learned my lesson." I hesitantly nodded.

"I hope it's worth the wait, Fearless Leader! I'm really sorry that we weren't able to save you before, we knew we could have done something." Nora shamefully apologized.

"Hey, it's okay, Nora, don't worry about it. What matters now is that you're here and I can't be any more happy than that," I reassured as I gave her the encouraging words like the good leader they thought me as. "Now, we can finish this mission together."

"So, I heard that you two fought a large anti-dust robot," Yang said, "Are there any more of them?"

"I think he only has one model for it… hopefully," Weiss answered.

"That sucks. I would have loved to fight it, should have waited for me," she disappointedly muttered.

Weiss shook her head over this. "Trust me, if we expected something like that, I would have left it to you. Those things almost killed me you know!"

"…And it should have!" Merlot bursted. A screen suddenly flashed open on the room, revealing a live camera of his portrait.

"Would you mind? The grownups are talking," I sneered at him.

"Hey! I thought I was the one who's supposed to make the wisecracks here." Yang remarked.

You're not the only smart-mouthed blonde here, Yang. "Mind if we share the role then?"

Merlot then started speaking, "How precocious. I just want to let you know that my ambitions aren't the only thing that is going to be destroyed this day! Now that your whole team is here, you can all die toge—!" His feed abruptly ended after Pyrrha fired a single round to the screen.

"Good job, Pyrrha," I said as she gave me a nodding smile.

Ozpin began speaking through our scrolls. "Students, I'm glad to see that you've finally reunited, but let's not waste any time now. According to the map that was sent to me, it appears that the facility contains a self-destruct sequence that Merlot would be able to trigger as a last-resort option."

Self-Destruct?! Please, tell me you're joking, Ozpin!

"You can use the map yourself in this channel. Merlot's workplace is up ahead. I suggest you advance immediately." he said before ending his call.

"I think I got all the aura I need. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine." Weiss said.

"Alright, everybody, let's move out! Let's give this evil doctor the taste of his own medicine!" Ruby said.

"Please don't tell me you're planning on mutating him." I quipped.

"Don't worry, the mutagens will probably just kill him," Weiss assured. "And yes, I'm aware of the metaphor."

We then all proceeded to the Manufacturing Wing. I had my sword prepared for the worst of Merlot since this is basically the final stage of the mission. We didn't know what type of mutant Grimm we had to face next.

"Team, be warned that there's also an android assembly and a confinement of Grimm on the way there! Do not forget that we need Merlot alive so that he can be questioned for his crimes. A Bullhead will be waiting for you at the landing pad near his workshop. Remember that prudence is of the essence!"

Just what I was afraid of.

As we went further into the manufacturing wing, we began to wonder where all the robots and Grimm were when Merlot was preparing to destroy us. We arrived on a three-way junction, with the left path leading to the android assembly being guarded by an army of robots, with expendable red androids on the front and four heavy gunners on the back; The other path leading to the biological lab which was blocked by Mutated Grimm—mostly consisting of Mutated Creeps with a couple of Mutated Beos and for the first time—a single Mutant Ursa.

Oh, crap, this is going to be one hell of a party. This place is going to be a mess once we're done, I told myself.

"Oh-ho! This is going to be a whole lot of fun!" Yang said, readying her weapons, along with everybody. Team RWBY was facing the Grimm while Team JNPR was focusing on the robots on the other side. I took a deep breath and thought for a way to defeat both of them without any casualties from our side.

"You still have the EMPs, don't you, Ren?" Nora asked.

"Of course," he said,

"Thank The Brother Gods for that," I puffed, I wouldn't know what to do without them. "Give 'em some blue screens."

Ren threw the EMP grenades and disabled the red androids, the gunners were stunned for a few seconds or so but it appears as if their circuits are also protected so they were able to recover quickly from the EMPs. Nora charged and smashed away all the overloaded androids, some of them being thrown to the heavies as they attempted to fire their weapons at us.

Ren, Pyrrha and I helped clear the path from the red androids. The gunners began to fire their weapons at us, prompting me and Pyrrha to raise our shields and for Ren and Nora to take cover behind us.

"Nora, smoke!" I ordered.

"That won't work! The androids are equipped with sensors that allow them to target us even behind smoke," Ren told me, and Nora was pretty aware of this too, judging that she didn't comply immediately like she always would.

With that, I had to look for another way. I realized that while they were resistant to EMPs, they were not fully immune to it. It would at least buy us some time. And also there's this other thing. Gulp. Here goes nothing. "Ren, throw more EMPs at it; Pyrrha, cover me; and Nora…" I faced her, and she was more than eager and prepared for my orders than ever. "Get me closer, I want to hit them with my sword."

Nora smirked and gave me a two-finger salute. I know this sounds something too crazy for something for me to do but I refused to waste ammo and I needed to get close to them because it was best option I had at the time.

Ren threw a handful of EMP grenades to the gunners that were still firing their weapons. The grenades ignited, briefly stunning them, giving me a window of fewer than three seconds to get close to them. I collapsed my shield and put it back on my belt before Nora grabbed my left-hand and flung me toward the heavies. I raised my sword before grabbing one of them in the chest and thrusting my weapon through its head, making it fall back into the floor.

The other robots recovered from the EMPs and faced towards me. I expanded my shield and used it to shove away one of its guns and sliced off its arm. They were so preoccupied with me that the next thing they knew, Nora jumped in and completely crushed another one of them with a single strike of a hammer. Pyrrha's spear was thrown into one of the heavies' neck—the one which I sliced the arm off from. She then leaped in and grabbed it and pulled it out as she bounced off its chest. Ren remained at the back, providing cover with clips of armor-piercing bullets.

Meanwhile, on Team RWBY's side of things while they were fighting the mutated Grimm. Ruby was zooming around one of the Mutant Beos while trying to slice it down with her scythe; Weiss was gathering Mutant Creeps and contained them with glyphs suppressing their explosion as they blow each other to smithereens; Yang was giving jabs to the Mutant Ursa's stomach before dodging right from its claw; Blake was handling the other Mutant Beo, which smashed the floor, bringing green crystals to one of her shadow clones as she stabbed its back a few times and then got out, one Mutant Creep tried to sneak behind her but she was able to notice and used her weapon's whip to hurled it to the last Heavy android standing before exploding along with it.

Now that the robots were no longer a problem, we were able to give our sister team a helping hand. Pyrrha fired her rifle at Ruby's Mutant Beo, distracting it away from Ruby as she's able to cut it down in half. Pyrrha then shot the remaining Mutant Creeps who were a distance away from Team RWBY and tried to storm at us. I put away my shield and held hands with Ren, masking my emotions with his semblance as I help Blake slay the other Mutant Beowolf by slashing it with my sword as Ren shoots it with his gun on his free hand while the Beo was not able to sense the two of us. Nora shot some grenades at the Mutant Ursa before Yang climbed on it back and pinned it down just before Nora stepped in and smashed its head into nothing.

"Woo! Alright, who's next?!" Yang stood away from the Mutant's Ursa's corpse. It's a good thing I have adrenaline junkies like her and Nora to leave the more suicidal stuff to. I'm glad I don't have to engage another angry bear.

"Is everyone alright?" I asked, checking everyone's status.

"We're all good!" Ruby gleefully reported, giving a thumbs up. She looks pretty cheerful for someone who just fought a more advanced version of an Alpha Grimm.

"We should keep moving. Ren, Nora, go to the robot assembly and make sure there are no more robots being manufactured. You guys still have EMPs and there shouldn't be too many robots waiting since we wrecked most of them here."

"Roger that! You can always leave the mecry killings of the corrupted machine spirits to us!" Nora said. Ren silently nods as they both make their way into the other path.

I faced towards the others and continued. "The rest of us will have to go to the Biolabs, it should be where all his experiments are. The map says that Merlot's workshop and the airship landing is through there. The sooner we catch Merlot, the better. So, let's get moving."

The girls agreed and accompanied me to the Biolabs. We entered with our weapons drawn, in case another hostile showed up. It was just as bad as I expected, only that the room was brighter than what I pictured it thanks to the lights and the white walls. It contained a room full of glass tanks filled with the serum with unconscious Grimm floating inside—it was something straight out of a horror film, a zombie film, to be exact except it has jars of Grimm instead of humans or faunus.

Aside from the Grimm contained in test tubes, there were also some computers that are calculating the Grimm's stats and biology, and a few workbenches containing some chemist's lab, some dust, and vials of mutagen.

I grabbed one of the tablets hanging on the bench to check what's inscribed in it. The title confirmed that this was Project: Grimm Eclipse. The tablet contained stats comparison of the Grimm before and after mutation, as well as a list of specimens and their augmentations. It is said that only Creeps, Scavers, Beowolves, and recently Ursas are the only specimen deemed to be successfully compatible with the mutagen as the tests with other specimen either failed or were still in early stages of development, explaining why those were the only mutated Grimm we were able to encounter.

Though, what caught me the most that really disturbed me was that there was an update saying that he managed to get a hold of a Large-Class Grimm and its test was near-complete.

And I was still in the dark with Merlot's motivation. What does he exactly plan to do with this? Destroy a kingdom that he loathes so much?

"I don't like this place, can we go now?" Ruby suggested, gripping both handles of her Crescent Rose.

"Looks like there's nothing else of use for us here, apart from files we could give to the Professor. We just have to find Merlot and we'll be out of here." Pyrrha stated.

I took out my scroll and reviewed the map. "Merlot's workplace is right around the corner. If he's not hiding there, then I don't know where."

Suddenly one of the blast doors opened. Curious, we all walked toward it. It leads to a huge open space with several screens on the walls with some of the serum spilled on the floor, and there was a large door on the side. We all went through the door for a closer look.

When I connected the dots, I knew that this was a trap. I rushed back to the previous room when the door abruptly shut with everyone but me inside.

"Jaune!" Pyrrha yelled out my name and began to slam at the door. I even noticed some black outlines surround the door, suggesting that Pyrrha tried opening it with her magnetism but it was too strong that it remained closed tightly.

"Pyrrha!" I said, also slamming at the door. Worried at what might happen to her and the others now that they were trapped in there.

One of the screens behind flashed open and Merlot made another announcement. "Welcome to the testing grounds, students. Since you are so curious about my research on the Grimm, then you will be thrilled to know that I have synthesized the perfect combination of the serum. So why don't you go and get acquainted with my latest experiment? It may still be in a testing phase but I know you love challenges and this one could use the exercise."

The screen cut to one of the cameras in the testing ground where the girls were trapped at. Merlot dropped a large Mutated Grimm in the middle of the chamber. The worst part was, it was a DEATHSTALKER.

A Deathstalker… it had to be a freaking Deathstalker, doesn't it? As if regular Deathstalkers weren't horrifying enough.

"Don't be shy, students. You could learn a lot from this enhanced specimen. They don't teach a thing like this in Beacon." Merlot said before cutting his feed into simply showing his logo.

Thank Brothers for their standards then. I realize that even their more brutal tests aren't as bad as this. With that, I am never going to take their tests for granted ever again.

Well, that made me almost glad that I bailed out when I had the chance, but I still needed to get my friends and partner out of there. As much as I just want to rush to the exit and get in the airship early, it would only warrant unwanted questions about that decision and deny me of the reward. Besides, all I had to do was find and capture Merlot and find a way to open the test chamber's door so that the others could escape; that doesn't sound hard on paper, but given how stubborn this guy was, I expected it to be anything but easy.

I found out that I don't have a lot of options, so I had to go to Merlot's workplace myself. The map also indicated that it was also near the exit where the landing pad will be waiting, so I'll be able to escape quickly in any case. Apparently, it was designed that way so that the most important personnel was able to leave the facility within a short period of time in case of disasters.

I went to the door of Merlot's personal workplace to find out it was locked. There was some sort of handprint scanner that could be used to unlock the door, but I don't have anything to bypass it. Luckily, the lock allows you to conveniently use the master password instead, in case the scanner was unusable due to malfunctions.

I typed in the same password I used to gain access to the island's communications and the laboratory's files—and much to my joy, it worked.

I readied my pistol as the door opened, I saw him facing me in his back. He was watching Team RWBY and Pyrrha fighting the Mutant Deathstalker on multiple different screens, each providing different camera angles on the testing grounds.

He heard his door slid open and turned back to see me step in with my pistol pointed at him. He quickly grabbed his own pistol on his desk with his right hand (which turned out to be robotic) and turned to me as he began hovering his index on a red button and while his robot hand aims his pistol at his own head.

"Hold it right there, Arc! Another move and I will either pull the trigger or initiate the lab's self-destruct that would be activated within less than a minute which won't be enough for you to get everyone evacuated. I'll even do both if I have to! Regardless, I'm not allowing you to take me alive."

Normally, I wouldn't care much if he killed himself; it's not like I wanted him alive. But Ozpin made it clear that he prefers Merlot to be captured and breathing. He still had a lot to answer for. "You wouldn't. You sure you don't want to see the result of your latest experiment first?"

He smiled sinisterly. "You know, I kind of like you, Arc. You and your family have some sort of determination that has always intrigued me. I was wondering where you were since I thought you'd be in the test chambers with your teammates. I've been curious about the moment you gain access to my communications network. How are you able to bypass the network's security? I don't go around telling everybody my password."

"Maybe it's because one of your employees left a piece of paper containing your super-secret master password on your ship?"

"How inconvenient, one of my former employees might have hacked to get my password. I had the suspicion they would try to access my files after the company's decline."

Yeah, well, I should also thank you for not programming your robots into finding and destroying papers that could be vital to those who are hunting you down.

"Look, just give it up. If you want to make the world a better place like what you'd claim, you're going to answer for threatening Remnant with your experiments. You already know that I'm not going anywhere without you in my custody." I continued to aim my gun at him.

"You're berating me for threatening the world? Tell me, how many people did you kill to get your status, both directly and indirectly? How many widows and orphans have you made because someone's family member in the White Fang wasn't able to get home?"

I think about it sometimes, and they would occasionally even haunt me, but I have probably killed plenty enough that I have got to the point where I really couldn't care less about it anymore so long as nobody is trying to threaten me. The people I killed would have eventually died because of their pathetic life choices anyway. "Why does that matter? Even if I did kill some people, it was only so that fewer innocents would die. Can you even say the same with what you're doing?"

Merlot chuckled. "Perhaps not, but as a matter of fact, my original plan for this research was far more altruistic, little did you know."

"Huh?" I uttered, widening my eyes in bewilderment.

"It should be no surprise that I have a deep fascination with Grimm, but it wasn't my initial intention to strengthen them into becoming more terrifying monsters everyone already perceives them as. The original purpose of this research was to find a possible solution to the Grimm's hostile nature. The substance that I'm currently using was said to be scientifically possible to remedy the Grimm's perpetual hunger for souls, and perhaps uplift them into something more."

"I take it that it didn't go so well?"

"The substance was dangerous by default as it accelerates a specimen's development to the point that they are able to reach beyond their established evolution, thus, giving them forms that were never before seen. But with a little science, it can be modified into only enhancing the Grimm's intelligence and even remove its blind thirst for negative emotions once and for all. Thus, pacifying them that they're no longer a threat."

He took a breath and continued, "We once thought that the project was a success since all tests and experiments that took years have passed and were proven to be successful. It was a revolutionary discovery that could have solved the biggest problem in Remnant since the beginning of time. After the completion of the project, we gained the approval of The United Councils Committee to begin taming the Grimm with the modified serum, starting on Mountain Glenn. It worked, The Grimm did not attack a single living being after being stuck with the serum, not even the animals. The road that linked Vale and Mountain Glenn became one of the safest routes in all of Remnant that they were reopened to the public. The Committee was very impressed by my work, news around the globe began to circulate about my innovation, and the company was growing bigger than ever that my name has become something to be reckoned with. The Committee considered giving me an award. The project was a scientific breakthrough that was changing the world…or so we thought."

Call me pessimistic, but although pacifying the Grimm was a great, if an overly-ambitious idea, that I could finally roam around the woods without much worry—it was doomed to fail from the start. I don't know about you, but nature is very persistent when it comes to change

"And then what happened?" I asked, being compelled by this information that I almost drew my gun down.

"We were then supposed to carry out another operation to pacify Grimm on another region, it was when I got urgent reports that the test subjects we spent ages experimenting on were not only reverting back to its savage aggressive state but were becoming stronger too, and so was the Grimm that we injected on. We realized that the serum was far from perfect and the effects were only temporal, and it was far too late to pull the plug. The Grimm went back to their feral state and attacked settlements around Mountain Glenn the least everyone expected it. The military and Huntsmen were having difficulties handling them due to the serum making them more powerful and everyone kept helplessly asking me what to do. The military pinned the blame on me and tried to have me in custody, but I refuse to have any of it. I went into hiding in a safe place where no one would find me. Days later, I would find Mountain Glenn to be obliterated into oblivion, Vale being on temporal lockdown, and me being presumed as dead."

That sucks. Must have been pretty tough being held responsible for an entire disaster. I feel kind of sorry for this guy but I have to focus on the task at hand and I still remember what he intends to do with his creations and that he told me all of this while still pointing a freaking gun at his own head.

"When I heard about this, I expected everyone to pay their respects for everything I did to give the world a brighter future despite my shortcomings, but instead I found everyone spitting on my name and blamed the whole incident on me. They shut down my whole company and took everything away from me. They called me a madman, a failure and a fool who thought he changed the nature of Grimm. I could never show my face to the public ever again and I allowed them to believe that was dead. I've chosen to embrace the image they gave me and carried on my project with a different goal. I always liked the Grimm, there is potential inside them that they cannot unlock for themselves that makes them more than just mindless beasts, so I believe it is my calling to help them receive it. If they chose to see me that way, then so be it."

Well, that was a rather interesting tale of someone's fall from grace and descent to madness that explains some things but it sure did leave some questions. "Why all this? Couldn't you have apologized and prove them wrong by doing better?"

"That is what I am exactly trying to do, except that I have nothing to apologize for. Humans and Faunus are both weak and pathetic excuses of species. There are good reasons why they cannot dominate their own world despite their so-called intelligence. They are destined to live in fear, because they are full of it, whereas the Grimm knows nothing about fear and I'm only trying to put them in a place they deserve."

I carefully stepped into the room closer. "You really lost it. What about making the world a better place? Are you letting yourself be remembered as a monster forever?"

"I am making the world a better place. Salem was right about the world being better off ruled by chaos."

That one left me puzzled. I would have passed it off as another name that was simply mentioned, but I had a feeling that there was more to that name. It felt like it wasn't the first time I heard of it. "Salem? Who's Salem?"

"I see that neither Oz nor your own father told you, maybe you could ask them." He sneered. "Assuming you'll be able to leave this place alive."

There were a lot of things going on and more questions just popped up in my head while I do my best to repress this thought and focus on finding a way to capture him without getting himself or everyone killed.

I looked at one of the screens behind Merlot and found Yang getting thrown into a wall. Merlot kept standing there, smirking, not entirely aware of what's going to happen, I could even see her hair glowing on the screen.

"Your efforts to rid the world of Grimm as Huntsmen will be a pointless failure. Grimm will continue to slowly but surely consume every space of Remnant, with or without my gifts to them. If there is anyone who should give up, it would be—" His taunting was interrupted when a cylinder shaped object was tossed inside the room, and it turned out to be an EMP grenade. "Is that—?"

Once it detonated, his robotic right arm began to malfunction and he dropped his pistol. I took this opportunity to jolt myself toward him and have him pinned on the ground to keep him away from pressing the button. Merlot tried to resist and pushed me away. I whipped my pistol on his forehead, knocking him unconscious that his cybernetic arm stopped shaking.

"It appears that would be still you then." I quipped, rising from the floor. Looks like he wasn't enough of a genius to outsmart us dumb kids. Better luck next time, Doc.

I stepped away from his unconscious body and saw Ren appear in the doorway with both of his weapons drawn. "You alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I thought his brains would have splat on my face. Anyway, good job. Wouldn't know what to do without you."

"My pleasure." Ren nodded before going to Merlot's body and having his hands cuffed.

I went to the screens and watched the girls struggle with the Mutant Deathstalker while an enraged Yang pushes it back. "Guys, we got him!" I told them on the scroll's channel.

"Wonderful news, Jaune, but we still have a Mutant Deathstalker in our hands," Pyrrha responded.

"Hang on tight. I'll have the door unlocked for you." I put my scroll down and looked around and noticed that someone was missing. "Hey, where's Nora?"

"She's waiting for you to open the test chamber's door so she could help. And by the way, she's been electrified."

"So does that mean…" I looked at the screens and saw one of the cameras showing Nora waiting outside the testing ground's door as she was visibly engulfed with electric bolts.

"Let me in, Fearless Leader! Imma 'bout to give this giant bug some good ole' squashing!"

I smirked and then I went to the controls and pressed the button that opened the door when I found it. "Knock em' dead, Sparky."

She smiled devilishly at the camera before swiftly flashing inside to the room and then hit the Mutant Deathstalker hard enough that it was sent crashing into the other side of the room, giving the wall a huge crater.

It got up rather angrily, but before it was able to do anything else than screech, it was then hit by a flurry of powerful punches thanks to her semblance being active. Yang then went over the Mutant Deathstalker's body and grabbed its stinger then violently pulled it with almost all of her strength that it was torn off from its body with green liquid squeezing out like blood.

The Mutant Deathstalker could now barely stand, with its legs failing that its body fell to the floor. Yang bolted away from it when Nora finished it off by bouncing into the air and using one last strike to slam it into nothing but green liquid and a crater on the ground.

Not really a good day to be an enhanced scorpion Grimm, now, was it? Merlot should be thankful that he did not witness another one of his precious babies meet their demise, I bet he would have even dropped tears from the cybernetic eye of his.

With the last hostile dead and the target captured, it was safe to say the mission was complete. The only thing left to do was get off there, and I was getting sick of being in the facility for much longer.

"Good work, everyone. We've done everything we need to do. Let's go home." I announced it to everyone after taking a deep breath. Afterward, I contacted Ozpin to tell him that we've finished our mission, "Professor, the deed is finally done."

"Excellent work, students. I knew that you were able to handle this. You truly are worthy of being Huntsmen. Now make your way or the landing pad not far from your location. The Bullhead will take you back to Beacon. I'm very proud of you."

"Right ahead of you." I put my scroll down and helped Ren carry an unconscious Merlot out to the landing pad nearby.

It didn't take long for the Bullhead to arrive, it's because it was waiting somewhere about the island when they dropped off the rest of our teams. Ren and I got into the Bullhead and we put Merlot on a stretcher. The girls then caught up and hopped on in. The Bullhead then departed, taking us away from the island.

I finally sighed and sat down, still not believing that I was able to see the end of this mess. I'm finally able to relax now that I don't have to worry about this anymore.

"That was... awesome!" Ruby suddenly chirped up, surprising those who are trying to unwind after a long, arduous mission. "We get to fight Grimm that nobody has seen before and we don't have to study to pass the semester anymore!"

"Heck, yeah, sis! Nothing says 'best day ever' like fighting killer robots, evil scientists, and super-Grimm!" Yang pumped with her sister.

"At least you two had fun," Weiss wiped the dirt off her dress, probably grumbling about my journey with her, which I couldn't blame her for.

I'd say the reward was worth it, but this is something I would rather not go through again. Studying might have been less trouble than what I have just recently experienced.

"So, this is the infamous Doctor Merlot. I never thought I would meet him in the flesh like this." Blake examined him on the stretcher in the middle of the Bullhead.

"What does he need the robot arm for? Looks to me that he just wasted a perfectly good arm." Yang said.

"Either he lost it at one point or he willingly replaced it in favor of cybernetics," Ren explained.

Cybernetic implants are cool and all, but if I learned something today then I found out that they're not always better than normal arms as a single EMP can screw them up. Now, I could be wrong but even if you use cybernetics to restore an amputated body part, I'm pretty will still feel like there's something missing on your body. I don't think I'm going to saw off my own arm anytime soon, I'm content being a pure meatbag.

A holographic screen emerged on the Bullhead's interiors, it shows Ozpin commending us for our efforts on the mission. "Students, I am glad you are able to make it with minimum casualties. It speaks volumes about what you are capable of. Don't worry about the island, the Atlesian Military will take care of the rest. Rest assured that you have completed your mission and that you have earned the extra credit that we promised you with."

That's good to hear. I would have hated being denied my reward just because I missed something. Now I'll be able to spend my days on the final exam taking a comfy, relaxing vacation away from Huntsmen responsibilities.

Ozpin continued, "That was certainly challenging, maybe not as challenging as dealing with Glynda's drunken rants during Teacher's Day, but very challenging nonetheless."

After everything I went through, I could not imagine what that would be like if it's as bad as he claimed it to be, especially since Ozpin himself sounds perturbed by it. Everyone is already scared of a sober Miss Goodwitch, thank the Brothers that teachers are mostly forbidden to drink.

Pyrrha looked perplexed at Ozpin's remark. "I beg your pardon, Professor?"

"Oh, nothing. Carry on celebrating your success. You need it after everything you have to go through this arduous mission. I'll see when you return." The holo-screen then withdrew, and we went back to unwind ourselves from the adrenaline-rush of confronting Merlot and his pets on green steroids.

Weiss suddenly approached and reminded me of an offer I made earlier, "So, are you still up for cake and tea?"

To be honest, I wasn't being serious when I said that and neither was I expecting her to accept it, but it works for me so I might as well take it. "Can't see why not."

We may not really be the best of friends, but we still try to give each other a chance and we may get along when we want to. Working together back at the island proved that. Our friends just need to get used to seeing us doing anything that isn't annoying or ignoring each other.

"Did a handsome knight in shining armor melted that cold heart of yours, Ice Queen?" Yang teased as she grins at us, with Ruby being just as amused while Blake doesn't know what to think of it.

Weiss rolled her eyes and turned to them. "Oh, don't you dare go there."

I giggled for a bit before looking at my teammates. Ren was just as disinterested as he always was and was too busy lying on his seat; Nora was glaring at me as she doesn't seem to like me and Weiss going along, and Pyrrha looked like she was trying to keep a straight face beneath her slightly reddening cheeks.

"Easy, now. It's all just friendly stuff. Just relax." I said to Nora to quell any negative thoughts and prevent her from starting unwanted fights on the Bullhead.

"It better be," Nora growled before turning to Pyrrha. "Right, Pyrrha?"

"Uh, yeah! Right..." she attempts to respond as she stammers.

I shrugged off everyone's antics and lied down as I waited for this ship to take me back to school. There were a lot of things I had to clear from my mind that it just forgot to make me feel nauseated during the flight. I just had to make a trip to Forever Fall to investigate some strange stuff and then find myself shipped into an island filled with super-powered Grimm and killer robots that were led by an insane scientist with a fixation on evolving the Grimm evolution. Whoever is in charge of keeping watch on Merlot after this better do a great job of making sure he doesn't try anything clever again.

One thing that continued to bother me about that journey was Merlot mentioning someone by the name of 'Salem' who once stated that Remnant was better off living in chaos, and Ozpin and Dad seemingly know about her and that I should ask him if I want to know more. I'll ask about it sometime, but not today. It might rub Ozpin the wrong way and I've already been through enough trouble that I just want some R&R. Maybe I should ask Dad instead, I obviously trust him far more than Ozpin. I'll bring it up once I'm ready.

This started out as a simple mission, just scout out and investigate sightings of mutated Grimm and how Merlot industries is related to it, and it ended as a demented escapade that resulted in me capturing a mad scientist who was presumed dead. All I could do was be grateful that we've managed to win in the end.

Thank goodness it's all over. I can't believe I spent five hours on this crap.

=o=

1. For context, a caravan containing supplies she bought due to a shortage of fabric was blocked by a Beringel that was terrorizing the trade route to Acadia. There were multiple attempts to dispatch the Beringel but they all failed, leading Viola to successfully take down the Beringel herself after becoming too impatient. She declined the reward and simply took the supplies. She would later find her business has an increase in customers within the following day. It should be noted that Viola Arc did not attend any Huntsman academy, along half the Arc children.

---

Good grief, adapting a spin-off video game and then translating it to the standards of this story took more work than I anticipated, but I managed to do it.

The second out of three arcs of this story is finally complete. Next five chapters will about the Vytal Festival.

Also, don't forget to check out the Extras if you haven't yet, I had more ideas that popped up to it while writing this chapter. I was supposed to finish the second extra a while ago but I end up putting my most of my focus on the main story. I still plan to update it, so stay tuned.

Don't forget that feedback of any sort is appreciated!

Note: As of 8/17/2019, the footnote regarding this fic's version of Commissars have been moved to chapter 5 since that chapter has been updated to include the reveal of Jaune's father formerly being a Commissar.