*Panting* Finally done with the next chapter. I don't own anything, it belongs to Rooster Teeth.
Now this chapter's got it all: scandals, teases at Blaise's eyes, a haircut, feels, vague gore, death, and a cliffhanger.
Do you dare to read?
Well if you answered 'yes' strap in because this moves along a little bit fast.
Enjoy.
"Wow, this place is huge," Zaria said in astonishment as team BLZE and Joseph walked through the city hall to meet with the mayor, who seemed to look a lot like Professor Port as Zaria noted at their first meeting with him on the beach.
"It seems to be a mixture of Gothic and Modern architecture," Joseph told the group after he passed another pillar.
"This place seems rather large for just a coastal city though," Lapis said to the group.
"I think the word you're looking for here is money, Lapis," Blaise told the berserker just before they reached the mayor's office. Blaise then opened the door to the office and saw the mayor looking though his ocean view window.
There was an awkward silence as the students waited for the mayor to notice them. Just before they were about to say something the mayor saw their reflection and jumped for a moment before turning around.
"Ahh yes, team BLZE," the mayor said as he sat down in his chair, "You've probably already noticed why we've called you here to our island, but you should probably know the full details." He then stood up and walked in front of the large desk then started to pace around the room. "Around two months ago several of our townspeople reported sightings of strange grimm that seemed to possess semblance-like abilities. We didn't believe them at first because most of the reports were called in by the local teenagers, but then we received more detailed reports. Several of the adult townsfolk and town guards filed reports of stronger beowolves that lit their claws on fire, and bloodhounds with electric bites. We then sent several of our local hunters out into the central woods near the mountain to try and confirm these reports and we have not heard from them since. The grimm were silent for a while until about three days ago when they started to attack the town. Being hunterless and outgunned we sent your headmaster Ozpin an urgent request for assistance, then you came. Any questions?" Finally stopping, the mayor looked over to the group of students to see all of them asleep except for Blaise, who had a neutral face, and Joseph, who had a look of utter terror on his face.
"I have a question," Blaise said causing the sleeping members of his party wake up, "Has there been any unusual activity in the mountain research facility as of late?"
"No, the research facility has been shut down for ages," the mayor said speaking quickly, "The only people who go in there are some punk teenagers who do drugs or are looking to scare each other."
"If I had to guess, I'd say that the research facility is our best bet. So after we are ready in the morning, we will be heading to that facility," Blaise said then turned around and started to walk out of the office. Just before he exited the room Blaise stumbled a little bit catching himself on an arm chair. "Damn leg, I must've twisted it after I landed here." He then stood up straight and continued his walk slightly limping on his left foot with his team following behind.
"Something doesn't feel right," Eva said as the team walked into the lobby of the hotel they were staying at.
"I know what you mean," Lapis said to the archer as he walked over to the elevator and pressed the up button. "The mayor seemed to rush the meeting."
"You're not off," Blaise said, "He did rush the meeting because he needed to make a call."
"Now what do you mean?" Zaria asked her leader.
"I mean this," he said then opened his scroll, "Just before we left I planted a bug in the room. You know when I stumbled? That was a lie." After he scrolled through several files he reached the one video clip we was looking for.
The video was of the mayor talking on his scroll to someone from a shorter angle. "You know what I'm talking about here Sedric," the mayor said to the person on the other line, "The students from Beacon have arrived and are planning to go into the research facility." He then paused for a moment to listen to what the other person had to say. "What do you mean, "Who are they?' They are a team of students sent here from Beacon Academy. The team is team BLZE, and the leader took out a whole pack of your enhanced beowolves in minutes…" The video then died and Blaise cursed himself for getting the low memory space recording devices.
"So we have a dirty mayor?" Joseph asked.
"Yeah," Blaise said then the elevator doors opened, "Now everybody. Go to the room and act natural, we're obviously being watched. I'm going to sneak out. Nobody follow me, got it."
"Where are you going to go?" they asked him as he pulled off his axe and coat then handed the items to the others who then exited the elevator.
"I am going to go and see if I can get some supplies we desperately need," he told them as he holstered his railgun pistols on his belt and turned around to not face his team. He pressed the lobby button and just before the doors closed he pulled off his sunglasses and tossed them through the door to be caught by Zaria. "Keep an eye on those for me ok."
In the elevator Blaise quickly kneeled down and pulled his knife out of his boot. He then reached behind his head and grabbed his ponytail. With one swift movement he cut off the excess long hair that fell loosely over the black carpeted floor blending in. He then unzipped his black hoodie to reveal his blue t-shirt. Then he pulled out a pair of earbuds from his pocket, put them on then inserted the jack into his scroll and waited for the elevator to reach the lobby.
As soon as the doors opened Blaise walked out past two men who looked normal, except that they had earpieces, obviously they were following the team, but they didn't even notice the team leader.
After getting out onto the street and feeling confident he wasn't being followed Blaise took out his scroll and earbuds. He opened up his scroll and started to go through his contact list until he found who the contact he was looking for, RoNeo PoliWick.
"Totally inconspicuous you two," Blaise thought to himself as he laughed at the name mashup Neo made as her's and Roman's contact.
-Hello? Anyone there? Roman?-
-What the hell? Who are you? How did you get this number?-
-Roman, this is Blaise Campione. We fought the Amethysts in Junior's Club along with Neo. She took my scroll and added a contact with the name RoNeo PoliWick.-
-Oh, ok then. She needs to make up better code names. So what do you want? Neo's in the other room watching a movie, I could get her if you want to talk to her.-
-Actually I need to talk with you.-
-Ok, shoot.-
-Do you happen to have any underground contacts on Xais Cay? Preferably ones that could supply me with some weapons.-
-What makes you think I have any underground contacts whatsoever? I am a law abiding citizen.-
-Roman, I know who you are. I watch the news. Anyway, do you happen to have any contacts on Xais Cay or not?-
-I know a couple of guys there. East or south?-
-I'm on the eastern side of the island.-
-Ok, good choice. If you go down main street you'll find a lone dust shop that's open 24 hrs called 'Dust of a New Day.' Go in talk with the guy at the counter and say you're part of the Roman Republic. He'll take you into the basement where they store the good stuff and take whatever. Just tell them to send me the bill. Think of it as me saying thanks for ending the Amethysts, because I'm getting a significantly larger paycheck without them around.-
-Gatcha. Thanks Roman, and tell Neo I said, 'Hi.'-
After he finished the last message Blaise closed his scroll and headed towards main street. A couple minutes passed by as Blaise walked up the abandoned road. Then he noticed some light across the street that belonged to a certain dust shop.
After walking into the building Blaise quickly scanned the open room, and he concluded that the only ones in the room were him and the cashier who was half asleep.
"Hello," Blaise said walking towards the counter getting the attention of the dozing teeneager and snapping him awake, "I'm here to find special merchandise, and I'm with the Roman Republic."
"Oh. Oh!" the teenager exclaimed remembering the special situations the boss told him about, "You're here for-" he was then cut off by Blaise shushing him. "Right, anyway, come this way," the teeneager said then walked away from the counter and towards the back with Blaise following behind.
"So do you have weapons here?" Blaise asked him as they reached the dark basement.
"Oh yeah," he said then flicked on the switch, "Here we sell weapons and weapon accessories." At the bottom of the steps was just about everything some crazy idiot would ever need if they were to try to take over a military fortress. There were guns, swords, grenades, motorcycles, kevlar vests, and dust. "What we don't have are tanks or trucks, that would be at our mainland location. Any questions?"
"Do you have any tactical backpacks with a lot of storage?"
"Aisle 3-A."
"So where do you think Blaise is?" Eva asked the people in the room as she peeked out of the corner of the window while activating her semblance to quickly scan the area within a fraction of a second noticing a black van sitting across the street.
"He said he'd be going out to get weapons," Zaria said as she flipped another page of the book she was reading while she was hanging upside down at the foot of one of the beds.
"Yeah, but with the mayor probably setting up surveillance at just about every weapons shop around the island that should be hard," Lapis said relaxing in his chair in the corner, "Hard, not impossible, and if it wasn't Blaise out there it would be impossible."
"What do you think Joseph?" Eva asked the swashbuckler who was sitting on the corner of the bed spacing out.
"Oh, what," Joseph asked the archer snapping back to reality, "Sorry I've just been thinking about some things."
"Joseph, is everything alright?" Eva asked him walking over to the adjacent bed then sitting down next to Zaria who put down her book and readjusted herself to look at Joseph.
"It's just… You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said then looked away from the girls.
"Joseph," Lapis said leaning forward in his chair, "Trust me, nothing you can say would make us question that it wasn't real."
"It's just, I've been trying to piece all of this together except that I've faced off against these kind of grimm before," he said then his face turned dark, "with my team. Before they…"
"Joseph, I know you probably don't want to talk about this but," Eva said then placed her hand on Joseph's shoulder, "what happened to your team?"
"Well…" Joseph said then took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb, "My team was team JSMN (A/N: Jasmine) and I was the leader. After me there was my good friends Selene, Michael, and Natasha. We were friends since our time in combat school and were inseparable.
"We were nearing the end of our first year, so going on missions was a common thing. Ozpin asked us to take a mission in Forever Fall to exterminate a group of grimm. Well we agreed obviously. During the mission we were scouting the area around a herd of longhorns when suddenly nevermore feathers came flying down. I could've sworn she activated her aura to protect her but one feather flew straight through Natasha's aura impaling her through the chest and pinning her to the ground.
(A/N: Now we get to the gory stuff, I don't get into much detail here but we all know what is happening.)
"We tried to get her out of there but then we heard the howls of bloodhounds coming our way. We really tried our hardest but when we saw the hounds enter the clearing Natasha told us to run, so we did. We were only a small way into the woods when we heard screams of pain and then one last cry.
"We kept running until we thought we were safe but what we ran into was a gathering of deathstalkers. We were ready to fight until one of the deathstalkers stabbed the ground and the earth underneath us exploded. Selene and I were thrown to safety, but Michael never hit the ground in one piece. He was caught by a deathstalker's stinger, then apparently the other deathstalkers were hungry.
"Selene and I managed to get away and we just ran. We were just about to make it to the airship that dropped us off, but something was wrong. The pilot who we thought was taking a nap on the job wasn't. When Selene and I got close to the ship we saw through the window that the pilot's neck had been cut open.
"We decided that we shouldn't go into the ship so we started to run towards the nearest town but before we could get past the plane we saw a man wearing a black trench coat and hat in front of us. We didn't even have time to react before the man was standing in front of Selene. He put his hand on her shoulder then his other arm moved and I saw a cutlass blade protruding from her back. He then turned her so her back was facing me and I heard a gunshot sound come from the end of the blade and I felt a sharp pain in my side.
"Looking at my side I saw a hole in my jacket and blood flowing out of a wound. I crouched over in pain then I saw the man slash the blade though Selene's body then he threw her lifeless body to the ground. In a moment of pure desperation I reached behind my back and grabbed both of my pistols from by belt and aimed the guns. As soon as I heard the thump of Selene's body hitting the ground I pulled the triggers and hit my mark. I then continued to fire off my guns until I was sure the man was dead.
"After his body hit the ground and stopped moving I limped over to his body. I then picked up his two cutlasses and stabbed his in the chest with both blades then found the triggers and fired off two rounds in his chest leaving a large crater in his chest. I then took both of his blades and sheathed them on my belt.
"I then walked over to Selene's body, picked it up and carried it ten miles through the forest to the nearest town. I was found by some of the locals and sent to the nearest hospital where they treated my wound. Ozpin showed up and had me explain to him what happened. He apologized for sending us on that mission and stayed at the hospital until I was cleared to leave.
"After I was cleared to leave I went back home to explain to my friends' parents what had happened. Then I spent most of the rest of my summer locked up in my room just staring at that man's cutlasses. Nearing the end of the summer Ozpin paid me a visit and asked me if I was going to return to Beacon. I was originally going to say 'no,' but then I thought that I would train hard to make sure that this kind of thing happened to anyone else. I went back to Beacon and took some crash course summer cram lessons. Now I'm here," he finished practically sobbing as he finished his story and there was a dead silence in the room only to be cut off by a voice next to the window.
"I'm really sorry man," Blaise apologized leaning against the wall wearing his wayfarers and a grey fedora with a black ribbon, "Nobody should have to go through what you did."
"Thanks Blaise," Joseph said then pulled back on his glasses, "Wait, how did you get in here?"
"Oh, I climbed in through the window," Blaise explained, "There were some men in a van with surveillance equipment so I knocked them out and removed their equipment to make it look like a robbery. Did you guys know this building is really really tall, and we're on the 27th floor?"
"So you just climbed the side of this hotel?" Lapis asked.
"Well, I was also carrying four backpacks filled with military equipment," he explained then pointed towards the corner of the room where the backpacks were located.
"So what now?" Eva asked everyone in the room.
"That's very simple," Blaise said, "We storm the castle."
"I really hate this plan," Zaria whispered to Blaise as they both snuck past another tree, "Why are we going at night?"
"Well either we go at night and stop what is going on or we go at night and find an empty research facility," Blaise explained then motioned for her to stop, "There's a small herd of sky trotters ahead. So unless you want to try and ride one, we need to find another path. I hope the others are finding an easier path to the mountain."
"Wouldn't following the road be better?" she asked him.
"During your training did you by any chance skip the stealth part?" Blaise asked her then he turned around and ran to another nearby tree.
"Ok so, I maybe didn't do so well in that section of my training," Zaria explained, "At least I actually remember my training."
"Having amnesia doesn't mean I forget everything," Blaise told her, "I know how to fight, and how to sneak. I just don't have any memories." He then pulled a pair of night vision binoculars from his backpack and looked towards the mountain slope. "We're not far off now. Do you remember the plan?"
"We sneak in and locate the source of the strange grimm. The others then open combat with anyone or anything they find and try to find the person in charge. After we take care of the grimm enhancement items with the items in our backpack we then will help with the assault. There, you happy?"
"I'm just surprised you listened," Blaise explained then he climbed the tree they were hiding behind. "We're going to go through the trees. There seems to be a thick tree line heading to the mountain so if we can follow it we'll be just fine." He then started to walk across the branch gaining his balance.
"Wait what do we do if we get split up?" she asked him as she jumped on the branch behind Blaise.
"Well if we do our scrolls would probably be useless in the building so… to tell you the truth I haven't thought this far," Blaise said then jumped onto the next tree's branch, "After we enter the building split up then when you empty your backpack just head towards the others. I'll go through the building to find the leader and stop him. Afterwards I'll meet with you guys. How does that sound?"
"Sounds like more of a plan than you had before," Zaria said then jumped onto another tree that Blaise had jumped onto a moment before. "So what are you going to do when you find the boss?"
"That's obvious," Blaise said then jumped off the final tree next to the open window. Peering inside Blaise noticed 15 bloodhounds resting inside of the main room.
"Are those-?"
"Grimm, more specifically, bloodhounds. Don't bleed because they can smell a drop of blood from a mile away," he explained to the ninja. Then he slid his fingers along the bottom of the window. "And of course razor blades are at the bottom designed to cut someone's fingers alerting the bloodhounds and them dying."
"So what do we do now?" she asked Blaise who was pondering their options.
"I don't know, maybe," he said then unsheathed his wrist blades and shoved the end under the window sill and force levered the window open silently causing a couple of the sleeping bloodhounds' ears to twitch, "Ok, I'll go in though here. You find another entrance and continue with the mission. You have exactly 1 hour after I enter the building to get out," she then pulled out her scroll and set an alarm for an hour, "Ok, just remember: you have to be out of the building when the alarm goes off, not just exiting the building, you have to be out of the building and a great distance away, and make sure that the others know."
"Ok, I'll let them know. What if you're still in the building after the hour is up?" she asked him as he climbed into the room silently.
"I'll do what I do best. Be amazing," he said then closed the window silently without waking up the bloodhounds. After silently passing the bloodhounds Blaise walked down the hallway and found stairs leading downstairs.
At the end of the downstairs corridor there was a large open space and Blaise discovered that it held a large science lab filled with the typical equipment and then some more advanced equipment Blaise didn't know the names for. Quickly he pulled off his backpack and pulled out the time bombs that have been ticking since he entered the building to reveal he only had 50 minutes left. After he stuck all of the bombs to the important looking equipment he stopped to look at the machine for a second.
"Hello," a voice greeted him from behind. Turning around Blaise saw that the voice came from a man roughly the same height as Blaise who was wearing a black trench coat, wearing a bowler hat, and seemed to look like a ghost. "This is a hologram in case you were wondering. This is also a recording so there is no point in talking with me," the hologram said then walked over to the main piece of machinery, "This is a very delicate piece of machinery that was hauled here from my family's home after we discovered it. It is capable of taking regular grimm and giving them semblance like abilities. We also discovered that we could make faunus have more grimm like features for example: make them stronger, faster, and make them be able to generate bone armor. Sadly, only 10% of our test subjects survived." He then walked over to a table and sat on the top of it. "Anyway, you're probably asking yourself, 'why is he doing this?' and the answer is simple. My family is building an army to destroy the humans, and I am only here doing my part." He stood up and walked over right in front of Blaise. "Leader of team BLZE. My name is Sedric Campione. Come get me!"
Show of hands. Who saw that coming?...
Ok, so most of you.
I inferred that it was his brother a little.
Anyway, in the next chapter we get even more surprises, and hopefully we end the first mission arc so we can get back to Beacon.
Stay classy, I'm going to bed now.