Hey guys!... *Dodges a brick being thrown*... HEY!
Ok... I know that everyone is like "Where is RWBY!"... they will get here soon... maybe in the next chapter...
Mainly character development in this chapter...
Naughtbeast
Chapter 2:
Black… that's all that Demon saw… pure black. He had no sense of how long it had been since his escape… nor where he even was. Slowly a white light appeared in the centre of his vision. He tried to move to it but nothing happened. It then began to dance back and forth in his vision, until it stopped again and he began hearing voices. As he slowly regained consciousness he opened his eyes, revealing a blurred face before him. It took a while to come into focus but he eventually rested eyes upon a grunt. Well, that was normal… he probably was knocked out… WAIT!... the uniform had the IMC colours! Quick as a flash he reached down to his thigh and whipped out his pistol, aiming it straight at the grunt.
"Hey wait!... don't shoot!"
"Give me one reason!"
"Well for one I saved your ass from being turned into molten sludge by you 'so-called' friends."
As the thoughts began to process he remembered the situation, having to run from Ralia after being turned on by General Icarus.
"Yea… sorry… amnesia… where is Kira by the way?"
"She woke up a while ago, I think she's guarding your Titan… it shut down after warping"
With a bit of effort, he righted himself off the floor and looked around. He was sitting a few metres from the dropship as it was sitting idle on the grass ground a few metres away. He was in the middle of a clearing, in a forest… of red. Every single leaf that the trees bloomed was red and they slowly drifted down in the light breeze. Kira was kneeling over in front of his titan, Kraber AP resting in her hands, as the titan was laying on its back, chaingun sitting off to its side. He jumped up and did a quick self-check, he wasn't hurt badly, his armour was still in one piece and his weapons seemed to be fine. As he looked on his motion tracker he saw the four IFF tags on his screen, his, Kira's, the IMC grunts and Sid's. He quickly switched the IMC grunts to friendly but before he looked away he noticed something strange. On the very corner of his motion tracker a tiny red blip popped up for less than a second and then vanished. He leant over, picked up Jackhammer, chambered a round and began walking towards where he last saw it. The IMC grunt was a bit phased by being completely ignored before getting up and jogging after him.
"Where are you going?"
Not even bothering to answer he held up a single finger to silence her before raising the LMG and activating his cloak. As he did, a strange wolf-like creature lumbered out of the bushes, snarling directly at the IMC grunt. It was a dark black all over except for red eyes and white accents on its claws and a weird mask-like face. Her face turned pale and she quickly reached for her Hammond pistol at her side. Before she could even fire a shot, Demon fired a single shot from his LMG, point-blank at the wolf-thing and it dropped dead on the ground… the gas-jacketed rounds causing it to wish it had a head. Kira nearly fell over as her head whipped around to see what had happened. She looked slightly less worried as she saw they were both ok but she jogged over to see what had happened anyway. As she watched, the wolf-things body slowly began disintegrating where it lay.
"What the hell is that thing?"
Demon was still scanning the tree-line but replied without turning his head…
"This planet appears to have hostile wildlife; they might not have set up an animal control tower yet. Stay vigilant, there might be more"
As if on cue a large cry of howls was heard off in the distance, disturbing the surrounding birds and causing them to fly off.
"Keep them off me, I might be able to re-activate Sid"
He jammed his LMG into the hands of the IMC grunt and sprinted over to the mech, opening the nuclear core on the back of the machine, and getting to work re-setting the coils. Kira and the grunt were aiming into the forest and firing at the slightest movement, occasionally eliciting a wolfish whimper. Tampering with a nuclear generator was risky business but he didn't even have a protective suit so he had to wing it. He reached in and began re-arranging the nuclear rods within the core, luckily they were covered in a lead coating, and made sure everything was in place. He looked up as the OS set in and saw Kira and the IMC grunt hastily fire at an advancing line of the strange wolf-things, the bodies piling up in a wide arc around them. Kira was hastily firing her Kraber, a sick pop occurring with every trigger pull as the wolf-thing's heads exploded. The IMC grunt, however, looked like she had no idea what she was doing. She was standing straight up and firing the LMG in full-auto, not really aiming at all, only getting kills because of luck and the extreme power of the gas-jacketed bullets. He looked back to see the 'head' of the titan slowly begin rotating and the optical sets initiating.
"Core output at 13% of maximum efficiency, please activate secondary and tertiary core to initiate full start-up"
"No time for that Sid… get up and fire on anything that isn't one of us"
"Initiating combat systems… powering up targeting enhancers… damage core online…"
"Good… now get to it"
The titan slowly sat up, picked up the chaingun and began walking towards the wolf-things and the two grunts. As the targeting finally booted up he let loose with the colossal cannon and the things were cut down left and right without much effort. Kira and the grunt let up and walked back to Demon as the titan fired back at the predators. The IMC grunt gave his LMG back and he re-loaded it with a fresh clip and Kira also stocked up on ammo that was in the dropship. When they had finished they walked back inside to see that no more of the wolf-things were in the area as they were all thoroughly ripped to shreds, complements of the Titan.
"Where the hell are we?" asked Demon, turning to the IMC grunt that was now cleaning a pistol in the dropship.
"I don't know, I just set it to random jump co-ordinates so that we could get out of there as fast as possible… the only problem is the systems are fried and I can't get a lock on where we are… and we can't make a warp jump again…"
"Well, that's just great… stuck on a planet with evil black monsters with no hope of a rescue crew" chimed Kira as her face visibly drooped at the news.
"Well… I may be able to help…" Demon said as he pulled up the miniature screen on his left gauntlet. He hoped that Curan had actually warped the pod or they might as well give up. As the map loaded his heart was filled with relief as about 300 metres away he saw the green beacon of the pod.
"Follow me" he ordered as he began marching towards the location beacon. About a minute later they arrived at what appeared to be a giant box. It was roughly 20 feet tall and 25 feet wide and 40 feet long. Two doors were visible on the outside face, one small – obviously for people, and the other was absolutely colossal – something a titan could fit through. The markings indicated a storage pod with the Militia logo plastered onto the door. Demon walked up and tried to open the pod with a pin-code but failed.
"Sid… a little help here"
The titan leant down, grabbed the door at its sides, the colossal fingers tearing through the thin metal, and ripped it off its hinges.
"Very subtle… I meant hack it… but that works as well. You two…. Stay here."
He walked into the pitch-black of the storage area, the faint blue light of his helmet causing giant shadows to leap around the pod. Without even looking he reached out and flipped the switch to activate the generator. The lights inside the pod bathed the contents in dim white light, illuminating the giants that stood in his midst. Next to him stood 3 Titans lined up against the side wall… all made by him and all custom fitted to any mission he might need them on. An Ogre, Atlas and Stryder stood waiting for a master to pilot them to battle. The Ogre was his crowd-control mech, fitted out with enough explosives to level a small city. It carried a cluster quad-missile launcher and had 12 heat-seeking missile pods on its back. Flames were painted all over the sides of it to add to the effect. The Atlas was more for storage than combat. Its core was a down-graded version of the main combat core and all the AI tracking systems were replaced so that it couldn't even fight without a pilot. Racks for guns and supplies were hanging off all over it, and the only sign it was a death-dealing menace was its size and the arc-cannon sitting nestled in its grip. The Stryder was his personal creation as well. It was his answer to the complaint that "they only have guns!". A massive, titanium scythe was held in a guard stance across its lithe body, its killing potential enhanced by magnetic coils around the blade that amplified the energy transferred by tenfold. It was painted completely black and even had an experimental titan-cloak module.
Next to them was a massive weapon rack, his personal store. Every possible upgrade, attachment or type of weapon sat ready to be used. There was enough ammunition and explosives to wage a small war. A large rack of 12 spectres sat next to the weapons, eyes blank with inactivity. A strange spherical object was covered with a matt black tarp next to the weapons rack, an experimental device he hoped he would never have to use. And of course, his pride and joy sat in the far back corner of the pod. Covered by a blue tarp was his motorcycle, a severely upgraded base model of an Earth bike. It was powered by a nuclear generator (overkill much), allowing it to reach speeds of 200mph, and had a hydraulic braking system so it could stop on a dime even at full speed. And of course, it was painted in the colours of the Demon, black and red. (Just imagine a badass version of Bumblebee with a 200% speed increase) As he walked in, he slumped down on a couch he had set up in the middle of the room, and opened the laptop that was set next to it.
He booted it up and opened the tracking program, the only problem was… it had no idea where they were. Great… just great. Instead of trying again and getting the same result he scanned for communication frequencies and found there was a large source coming from the North of where they were. It looked large enough to be a city… that would where they would be looking next. He took a minute to scour over the frequencies to try and discern the information being transmitted. What he found shocked him… he quickly uploaded the interface to the screen on his left arm, shut it down, went over to the weapons rack and pulled off a carbine with a HCOG sight. He also activated a nearby spectre and loaded it up with essential supplies… such as a disassembled amped Kraber. Walking outside, he chucked the weapon to the IMC grunt who dropped her pistol to catch the weapon…
"HEY!"
Ignoring her, he walked over to Sid and climbed up onto his back. He opened the core door and switched on the other two cores.
"Power at 47% and climbing… maximum efficiency will be achieved in 3.45 minutes time"
"Sid, transfer your AI to this spectre and initiate tech cloak of the pod"
"Aye sir, the pod has been cloaked from all inter-planetary and local surveillance systems, transfer beginning now"
Nodding at the news, Demon turned back to the two women…
"Ok… do you want the good news? Or the bad news?"
"Get the bad news over with…" Kira replied, a stern look on her face.
"Ok, well… in short… we are royally smack bam in the middle of literally nowhere… the star maps correlate to NO known sector of human controlled space… or anywhere we have actually seen"
Both their eyes widened at the sudden news…
"The good, and also strange news, is that I picked up communication transmissions that were being sent in English"
They both looked flabbergasted. It was a while before either could reply, but this time, it was the IMC grunt replied.
"That shouldn't be possible… how could something like that happen… it has to be a fake…"
"Well… we're going to have to find out, we head north until we hit supposed civilisation" he said as he began walking, the spectre following him with a robotic march.
"You do realise if they support either the IMC or the Militia we are going to be shot on sight"
"Well, you see… I looked over some of the transmissions… and the only reference to anything remotely related to the Titan wars is that of their main military base being located in a city called Atlas."
They both raised a single questioning eyebrow at this and then began following the pilot. Seeing this he smiled and looked back down at the data file. Where were they going to again?... ahh yes… that's right.
"Off we go… TO VALE!"
