A/N: Yo! Fiercesomest here with chapter one of our continuing saga- if you've just joined us, this is the third installment in our Grimm Rats series. (The order being Grimm Rats, Road to Recovery, and now Search and Destroy. The one-shots all fit in someplace as well.)
We actually started writing this one before we started Catnip. The plan was to save it till it was all finished and then start posting, but the season ended and, well, here we are. Anyway, the characters and relationships follow directly from Recovery and Tweiss as Nice. If you're checking this out because you like our monochrome, be advised! This isn't following the Catnip timeline at all!
If you haven't read any of the others and you decide to overlook the lack of shipping and want to just get on with reading this one, that's totally fine! There will be a few references to past events, though, so you know.
Other details: this fic follows our usual style- I write for Ruby and Weiss, while Defenestrator writes for Yang and Blake. We divvy up whatever other characters come along, and then we patch it all together into chapters. Given that we started writing before the end of Volume 2, this adventure starts before the Vytal Festival, which means everyone is alive and well for now.
Please note the T rating, the story being set in the same series as Road to Recovery, and the 'for now'.
Shoot us a message if you have any questions (though probably most stuff will get answered as we go along), otherwise read on, fearless reader!
- Fiercesomest
Winter.
For ordinary citizens of Vale, this was the season for snow and sleet and warm cups of hot chocolate treasured close to low-burning Dust-fueled fireplaces.
For the students of Beacon Academy, however, the hard frosts and icicles clinging to the cliffsides outside the school meant training in the cold. The winds across the cliff top bit like Grimm-hard and deep- but today Ruby Rose didn't care.
A lone airship rose into the wide blue of Vale's winter sky, bound for James Point, just beyond the mountains that encircled the city's eastern and southern borders, and she was on it.
The dark-haired girl plastered her face to one of the small portholes that dotted the craft's dented up body, watching the cluster of spires and arches drop away.
"So long, Beacon," she waved to the school and dropped onto the narrow bench lining the wall of the ship, grinning ear to ear, "and hello, first official solo Team RWBY away mission. This is going to be so great, you guys!"
The roar of the twin Dust-driven engines dominated the airship's limited cargo space. Ruby's red cape fluttered in the draft snaking through the dozen less-than-airtight seams of the beat-up transport ship.
"Please," Weiss tossed her white side-tail over her shoulder, brushing loose strands out of her face. She perched on the edge of a crate of ammunition, tugging her pristine jacket's collar closer and pretending to ignore the way the temperature dropped as the ship gained altitude, "it's not like we're actually going to be on our own. This is an entire village we're talking about. I highly doubt the local authorities would hand that much responsibility over to a bunch of second year students."
"Yeah well, I also doubt the local authorities are going to be much help when we go up against those Grimm bat things," Yang waved the hand that wasn't currently being pinned by Blake leaning into her side. The cat Faunus had lost all notions of personal space, keeping ever closer to her space-heater of a partner the colder the weather became.
"They're called Liliac," Blake clarified, eyes narrowing as she studied the notes she had taken on her scroll during their mission briefing.
"Sounds more like a flower than a Grimm if you ask me," Yang cut in with a grin.
Blake's eyes rolled, "One of the more recently discovered species of Grimm... Known to consume blood... Latest reports indicate they may have sonar based capabilities of some sort..."
"So, they'll be able to hear my fist heading for their face from like a mile away?"
"Something like that..." Blake snapped her scroll shut, repositioning herself a bit more comfortably between Yang and one of the larger crates filled with canned goods to help replenish the town's supplies. "There really isn't much known about them yet, hence why they're asking us to send reports on what we find."
"Provided there's anything left to study after a certain trigger-happy someone gets within a hundred yards," Weiss glared at Ruby, who cradled Crescent Rose to her face.
"Hey, I get three hundred yards on a bad day. In the rain," the sniper protested. The scythe-rifle had seen her through a lot of battles: Grimm, White Fang baddies, even giant steel-shod robots. Her weekend ritual of dissembling, cleaning, polishing out scratches on, and oiling the joints of her lethal weapon served as a reminder that this small, cute girl was a serious fighter.
A serious fighter currently too excited to be brought down by the Schnee heiress's prickly mood. After all, this was a solo mission. Teams almost never got solo missions before senior year! Even if it was supposed to be short, and even if they were going to miss the start of the Vytal Festival, they would be getting to really help people. Ruby jumped up from the metal bench and dodged a bundle of tarps roped between stacks of crates to the low doorway leading to the cockpit. The rivets in the wall shook and Ruby had to brace herself in the doorframe till the turbulence had passed. "Are we there yet?" she called cheerfully over the engines.
"Yeah, hop out," the pilot shouted back, teeth showing in a grin around the stick of red licorice hanging from his mouth. Ruby figured the man, whose name was Chuck, was at least old enough to be her dad, if not grandfather, but the wiry build and salt and pepper five o'clock shadow made it hard to tell. Chuck got on the radio, "You ladies' landing strategies are good for water, right? And a thousand foot drop?"
"No, but really, how far?"
"Hop, skip and a jump," he nodded to the range of mountains rising up across the sound. Their destination lay just beyond those peaks, in the lower hills that preceding the endless forest beyond.
Ruby leaned down to see the mountains through the stripe of windshield, "Wow. Are we going to fly between them? Can I steer?"
Weiss huffed, picking her way across to the door. She caught a fistful of the girl's cloak and dragged her back into the cargo bay before she could finish pestering the pilot for a turn to drive. "Ruby, I do not want to die in a plane crash."
"But he was going to let me steer," Ruby whined, plopping down among the crates next to Yang when she was released.
Weiss took Ruby's former spot by the window, rolling her eyes.
Yang ruffled her little sister's hair. "You can't even drive a car yet, sis." She was halfway to offering driving lessons when the plane shook violently, knocking a couple of stacked crates to the floor. The four huntresses-in-training glanced at each other.
"Turbulence?" Blake offered.
The plane shook again, jostling the ships cargo, human and inanimate alike, as the lights flickered wildly.
"That's some turbulence... Hey Chuck!" with one last violent shake, the lights cut out completely, "Everything all right up there?" Yang's question rang out with deafening clarity - the background droning of the roaring engines was notably absent.
The light from the small windows turned Weiss's hair and white sleeves silver as she tried to see why the engines had gone quiet. A rush of black obscured the window for a split second, and she jerked back, hand going to the sword at her hip.
Then the plane dropped out from under them. Ruby clutched at Yang and the rope net securing the stack of boxes beneath them in the semi-dark. Too bad there weren't nets on everything.
"Loose crates- watch out!" the young team leader called, letting go of the netting in a vain attempt to ward off the tools and other debris hurtling towards her.
"Hit the deck!" Feeling a shadow clone already dissipating behind her signaling Blake's escape, Yang tackled her little sister to the cabin floor, hunkering down with her between the secured crates as any cargo unfortunate enough to be unbound flew overhead.
Blake was already at Weiss's side, peering through the window to see what had startled her teammate, but the tiny porthole's limited view showed her nothing but the rapidly retreating sky.
"Nevermores-" the rattle and whine of the engines flaring back to life drowned out the heiress's words. She grabbed the edge of the bench and hung on for dear life as the ship dove towards the sound.
Ruby braced between the crates, in major danger of leaving the floor. There was an awful scrrrrrape along the outside of the airship's armored body, and gravity kicked back in, making up for lost time by smashing Yang down on top of Ruby while the ship regained altitude.
When they leveled off, the cargo bay lights flickered and the radio intercom crackled to life, "Nothing like dumping a couple Grimm in the drink on a Monday morning, eh, girls?"
Weiss picked herself up off the floor without releasing her deathgrip on the narrow bench as the bay door churned itself open. Icy wind whipped through the space, snatching a sheet of loose burlap and sucking it out into the open sky. Ruby's cloak flew up in her face. She flailed an arm to get it under control, still halfway under Yang as she strained to see past the edge of the steel door.
A massive black tangle of wings floundered in the open water of the sound. A pair of Nevermores, eyes burning crimson and sable feathers drenched as they thrashed, trying in vain to get airborne. Their familiar screeches were lost to the wind and the ship's Dust engines.
"Whoa," Ruby breathed, silver eyes full of awe.
Weiss was pale as a ghost, back on the floor, clinging to of the stout, steel bench supports with both arms. She spat to get her own hair out of her mouth, "Okay, we can close the door now!"
"Did he seriously just cut the power to nose dive directly into a murder of Nevermores?" Blake shot an incredulous look at the door to the cockpit, internally torn between being impressed and terrified.
"Well whatever he did, some kind of warning would have been nice." Yang pushed herself up off of Ruby, shouting the second half of her sentence at the very same cockpit door. After a quick visual check of her little sister revealed no real injury, the brawler's gaze followed Ruby's out to the ocean. One of the Nevermores was using the other as a stepping stone to get airborne again. "Oh no you don't - Blake!" she stretched a hand out, "Throw me a line!"
"On it." Blake unsheathed Gambol Shroud, fully aware that Yang was probably about to do something incredibly reckless, but lacking the time to waste trying to talk her out of it. She tossed her sword-turned-pistol over to her partner, wrapping the other end of its ribbon securely around her arm and bracing behind one of the locked-down crates just as the brawler took a running leap out of the bay door and dropped out of sight.
The line went taught, twitching in time to the sounds of a steady volley of explosive shots, progressively knocking the Nevermore right back down into its already half-submerged comrade. Over the mixed roar of plane engine and wind, Blake swore she heard a spirited cheer, followed by something about overgrown turkeys.
Ruby spun Crescent Rose open, bracing herself near the door and firing off a volley of shots. By then it was too far to tell if they'd hit or not. "Hey Weiss, we could try iceflower."
"Absolutely not," Weiss yelled over the noise, "there's no way we're wasting Dust and ammo when they're obviously out of range."
"But it would be fun. And we might hit."
"We're in a plane. Traveling at more than a hundred miles per hour."
Ruby's cape wrapped itself around her face, interrupting any attempt at a retort. The plane angled up a bit, gaining altitude, and she stumbled, catching herself on a crate next to the doorway. Her heart hammered in her chest and she laughed. Nevermores in the water. Yang hanging out of a plane. Weiss clinging to a bench, scolding her probably for almost falling out of said plane but Ruby couldn't quite hear. (The awesome-factor of those Dust-engines and their overwhelming noise rose several notches in Ruby's book.)
Their mission was off to a great start.
The intercom crackled through the howling wind, Chuck's voice all but inaudible. Ruby climbed over boxes to get to Blake, cupping a hand to her mouth, "Hey, pull Yang back in so we can shut the door."
"On it," Blake gritted her teeth and pulled hard, gaining only a few inches at a time, and losing just as many whenever she paused to shift her grip. It was much, much harder to reel her partner back in with wind resistance involved. Fortunately, Yang's hands appeared at the end of the bay doors, and the brawler wasted no time in hoisting herself back inside, winking at Ruby as she trotted over to Blake with Gambol Shroud in tow. Blake squinted as she resheathed her weapon. "How did you-"
"I climbed back up the ribbon," Yang threw an arm around her scowling partner's shoulders and grinned, "Thanks for the safety line!"
"The next time you try to pull a stunt like that, I'm throwing you a parachute instead."
The cargo bay door chugged closed and the fluttering tarps and ropes went mostly still.
"Tie down those loose crates, will you?" Chuck's voice came over the intercom, "Also, for the record, I didn't think you'd actually jump out of the plane."
Ruby could hear his smirk. She plunked herself down on the bench next to Weiss, who had straightened out her hair and white bolero and now sat with her arms crossed, scowling and muttering about Yang being an idiot thrill seeker. A friendly nudge to the shoulder broke the look. Weiss rolled her eyes at her partner and jerked the collar of her cloak to get it turned so the hood wasn't skewed over the dark-haired girl's left shoulder. Ruby accepted the fussing with a big, stupid grin. Crescent Rose remained partially extended, leaning against the wall beside her.
The open water of the sound gave way to a strip of bleached and sand-scoured trees and tangled rocks before the land rose up in broken cliffs and snow capped peaks. Ruby remained glued to the porthole for the first quarter hour of the flight through the mountains. She'd never seen them, except from afar, and the pristine blankets of snow topping the jagged stone was breathtaking.
Grimm steered clear; either the Nevermores from before had learned their lesson or had never gotten back out of the frigid water of the sound. Ruby wondered aloud whether Grimm could feel the cold while the rest of her team (minus Yang) shivered. By the time the plane slowed, Ruby and Blake were practically in the fiery blonde's lap while Weiss stayed on the bench by the window and lectured about how they needed to toughen up. After all winters were much colder in Atlas, and of course her teeth weren't chattering, it was just the vibrations from the plane.
"T-minus three minutes to landing, kiddos," Chuck announced over the intercom.
Ruby extracted herself from Blake and Yang and was at the porthole in a flurry of rose petals. "Look! Sheep!"
The animals looked like cotton balls from this height, clinging to the lower slopes ringing a modest valley. Near one edge clung a cluster of cottages shingled in colors so like the stone of the mountain Ruby might have missed them if it hadn't been for the thin wisps of smoke rising the chimneys. Neat squares of farm and grazing land patterned the rest of the valley, most of it in shades of brown, patched white with snow.
A tiny rectangle of asphalt laid out at the edge of one of the few level fields served as James Point's landing pad.
"Looks like they swept the rocks clear this time," Chuck laughed around his licorice as the entire team crammed into the cockpit doorway to watch him work the dozen levers and switches that controlled the airship. Touchdown was feather-light. He cut the engines.
"We're here!" Ruby cheered, flinging her arms in the air and almost smacking Yang and Weiss in the face. She clenched one fist and scanned the mountainside visible through the windshield. "Get ready, Grimm bats- Team RWBY is here to do some serious extermination."
"And observation," Weiss pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger, shaking her head as Ruby ducked back into the darkened cargo hold. "Honestly."
A/N: Nothing like a few explosions to get a mission off to a good start, yeah? YEAH!
So, Fiercesomest pretty much covered all the important technical stuff, so I'll jump in with the mushy stuff. Thank you to all of our readers, and followers, and to all the reviewers who have left kind words in our inbox for all of our other stories - we LOVE you guys, and you are all fantastic and awesome and amazing and I'm throwing internet hugs at all of you! The big squishy kind!
And for all the shippers out there, bee prepared for a lack of monochrome/checkmate in this one... oh! On that note, Catnip's posting won't change at all because of this, so no worries there! Search and Destroy will update each Tuesday, and Catnip will still update on Saturdays as usual.
Here's to hoping you guys have fun with this one!
HUGS,
Defenestrator