Vic had to admit, the food selection of the place was impressive.

Despite the non-existence of the countries of origin on Remnant's shores, food items such as burgers, pasta and Pizza could be found amidst the selection for items for the students' sustenance, not to mention other ethnic cuisines probably meant to represent similar dishes made in the other Three Kingdoms that the man had just found out about. Other than those, there were varied veggies that resembled the exact types they had at home, including that one Asian type of cabbage, plus Brussel Sprouts, weirdly enough. They were even called Brussel Sprouts.

The Romanian soldier examined the one on his fork, murmuring, "How the fuck do you call them after a city that doesn't goddamn exist on this planet...?" before eating it. It tasted just about as bad as he remembered from back home, but at least the takoyaki he had next to them helped wash them down, not to mention the strange Pepsi knockoff on the menu. He looked to the girls, listening to them chat as he took a sip.

"... So we might be headed out to the Port to see the arriving students, since the Vytal Festival is fairly close by," Ruby chuckled as she and her team ate their food. She looked over to Vic as she took a bite out of what seemed to be a hamburger and asked him with her mouth fool, "You wawa wom wih ush?" causing the Romanian to blink. Sure, he spoke English pretty well, but the mouth being full with food? He pointed at his mouth and Ruby smiled awkwardly, then chewed quickly and swallowed, letting out a breath before turning to Vic again and asking, "You wanna tag along with us to the Port?"

"I don't think I've got anything planned for today, seeing as I, my sis and a friend were taken off the roster, so, alright," He replied calmly, then sipped from his soda and took another bite of the takoyaki. The four nodded, smiles on their faces, then turned back to eating. Meanwhile, he chewed his own food, swallowed, then radioed, "Sarge, be advised. Team RWBY requested I provide security as they go into town..."

"Get me something nice from down there, Corporal. Take care," Diana sounded almost like she was enjoying the idea. He sighed, squelching the thought and continuing to eat without a word exchanged between him and the girls. He felt a little awkward, to be honest, not saying anything to them, but he figured he might as well have enjoyed the meal in a relative peace, if not quiet.

Well, peace that was to be broken. He felt a hand land on his shoulder and looked up, to see a woman with a beret, sunglasses, gradient hair that went from brown to a bright orange hue at the tips of her bangs, quite the looks and a very weird outfit. A sweater, what looked to be a corset, a massive, heavy-looking hard-cased purse, black jeans, shoes and all. She pulled her glasses to the bridge of her nose and let out a "Hm..." as she scrutinized him. "Hm, hm, hm, hm hmmm..." She said again, then smirked, "You the guy who drove Cardin and his posse off?"

"... Huh?" The man blinked.

The girl tilted her head toward their table, wearing a 'know-it-all' kind of grin Surprisingly, though, it wasn't an irritating one, rather just a calm, friendly banter-ready smile. Vic traced the direction she'd pointed it with his finger, then looked toward the table. Three figures were sat there:A tall man of Asian descent, bulky and armed with a rather hilariously large sword on the left, a spindly, shorter guy with milky white eyes, dark skin and red hair, armed with blade gauntlets on the right and a very shy-looking, but familiar bunny girl in the middle, her ears droopy.

The girl quipped, "You saved Velvet over there in the middle from a bunch of first-year dumbasses who don't know better than to pick on the meek and mighty Faunus students of Beacon," as she sat down in the unoccupied seat in front of him. She then extended a hand toward him and said, "I'm Coco. Coco Adel. Heard we got new security staff in Beacon, but I didn't expect a guy quite like you in here."

Vic hummed, then gripped and shook her hand, noting the firmness of her own. He answered to her, "Corporal Victor Toma. And, well, the Headmaster needed the best, but me and my buddies are all he could find," with a slight smile. All of the girls laughed genuinely, if a little quietly, at the self-deprecating humor of the common soldier. He looked Coco in the eye and asked, "So, why are you here then, miss Adel? Do fancy folk like you usually like to talk to the footsoldiers on Remnant?"

She shrugged, then spoke while watching him eat, "I wanted to personally thank you, both for my self and for Vel, for telling those idiots off. We'll deal with'em physically next time, provided you and your security buddies are cool with it," before leaning forward. Vic snorted and gave a nod of approval. He leaned forward and whispered, "I really don't care for bullies much, so... Just keep it out of eyeshot of the teachers."

Coco grinned, "Just my kinda cop," then gave him a thumbs up, "Alright. Enjoy your lunch, big man," before turning to team RWBY and stating, "You girls keep him safe and sound, you hear?" only to get nods from them. She stepped off with a wave toward the team table, with Vic eyeing her with a little confusion. He shrugged and turned back to eating, only to see the entire team staring at him funny.

He shrugged, confused and with his mouth full, "Wuh...?"

... It wasn't long before the Romanian soldier had walked out into the wider world that was Vale with the people he was meant to keep safe. Yang, boisterous and happy, was storytelling, "... So we fight this huge Grimm bird, a Nevermore! We do one heck of a team attack where we bring it down, (I did it), pin it in place, which was Weiss, then we launch Ruby with Blake's help at it! Ruby then just grabs it by the neck and runs up a cliff face and slices its head off!"

"Jesus Christ," Vic snorted, "You girls sound like grade-A Superheroes."

"Oh, that's not even the best a Huntsman can do," Weiss told him, "We have seen legends in the past, like the Grimm Reaper herself, tear through Grimm with such ease, it may as well have been trivial. We and our comrades in team JNPR, another First-Year team, struggled against the Nevermore and a Deathstalker as two separate teams. She could potentially take such creatures on alone and win."

While Vic went a little wide-eyed at the idea of Shadow Monsters being fought by literal superheroes, Ruby smiled and said, "Didn't know you know the story of the Grimm Reaper, Weiss."

"It is fairly common knowledge," Blake quipped, "Books written about her and all must have at least slipped into the Schnees' libraries, so she probably read it."

"Indeed. It is a fairly popular bedtime story," Weiss joked partially, arms crossed as they walked down Vale's streets. She looked over to Vic and noticed his wide eyes, asking, "Corporal Toma? Are you well?" as she watched him processing the information that he and his team were basically suckered in as guards without any of the powers the gang had. He nodded, a little awkward.

"... Is it natural for you all to be able to do that kind of feats? Y'know, beheading a giant evil demon bird, or is there something in the water specifically in Beacon's area that makes you all Supersoldiers?" He asked rather warily, only to note confusion in the girls' eyes, as if he'd asked something that was common knowledge already. He didn't know what to think, to be honest.

Ruby hummed, then seemed to deduce something. She asked Vic, "Hey... Do you have Aura?"

"What?"

All four women doubled over at that, staring at the confused man like he'd just spoken ill of the dead. Yang asked him, "How the heck don't you know what Aura is...?" only to note it further exacerbated his concerned, confused expression. She told him with furrowed brows, "It's exactly the stuff that lets us perform superhuman feats. Basically an enhancement summoned from our own souls."

"Like a magic of some kind," Vic hummed. Great, he was in that kind of story.

Weiss nodded, "Of a sort, indeed. It is more-so a manifestation of living beings' souls, meant to protect us from the evils of this world, or so the old Fairy Tales went. We seem to have evolved this capability parallel to our ability to fight the creatures of Grimm... However..." She blinked, realizing, "This means neither you, nor your platoon have Aura, Corporal..."

"We don't," He shook his head. He wondered if this Aura was that good, but he had no means to safely test it, or so he thought. He wondered, "Can it be activated somehow? I mean, since it's related to souls, people and animals alike probably have it, right?"

Yang chuckled, "Yep. Our puppydog, Zwei, has had his activated by dad," before her brain seemed to switch topics and she turned a little awkward, playing with her hair, "I can help you if you want... Aura little secret," and she decided to try her luck with a pun. The exacerbated groans of annoyance from her teammates told her that the joke had landed as poorly as it usually did on them, though Victor... He snorted and covered his mouth, concealing a grin.

"Horrible," He quipped, his voice sounding a little amused, "But, hey, I'll take the Aura offer. Gotta brief the Sergeant and the others about it later, though," before smiling at Yang. The blonde's heart felt like it skipped like... Four beats. She wasn't sure if it was a heart attack, not until her face started burning and cheeks glowed red. She patted herself on the face, gave a quick half-mumbled excuse and started leading the group over toward the Port again.

Where they were met by the sight of Police chasing a seeming stowaway, a tanned boy with blonde hair and a monkey's tail who was actively mocking them, his shirt open to reveal his abs. Vic blinked, murmured, "That's what's gonna be participating in this 'Vytal Fest' thing...?" only to see him throw a banana peel onto the face of one of the Policemen. He snorted, watching the man dash past them, Police on his tail.

Then his heart stopped as he saw blonde hair amidst a crowd in the distance, arranged in such a familiar way. Images of Russia played in his mind again, heart thumping in his chest as he watched the blonde figure slowly turn toward him, only to vanish amidst the crowd once again. He swallowed, gripping his chest, then breathed in and out. Night was starting to set. They'd need to head back to Beacon in a few. His mind, however, could not get past what he'd just seen.

Was his brain playing tricks on him? There was no way anyone else he knew was gonna be here, right? He pulled out a golden cross from his pocket and looked at it... No way, it couldn't be. He stowed it back into his pocket...

Then, as they walked back, he heard a rumbling from an alleyway and turned to face it, drawing his pistol, much to the surprise of team RWBY and the man he aimed it at. A Faunus male flew out from the alley and skidded to a halt in front of Vic, making the young man note he was clad in a weird uniform. A black hoodie with a white vest on top, black pants and a strange mask. He was knocked out.

"And that's three..." Murmured an eerily familiar voice in an even more familiar accent. The man spoke again as he walked out, "Merde, they never learn..." the two accents, French and what Vic could only assume was a certain fellow Eastern European shithole accent, mixing. The figure ahead, clad in what seemed to be French Foreign Legion Gear, armed with a FAMAS and an M249 Minimi.

From the frown of worry, a grin of joy emerged, Vic staring at the man as he holstered his pistol. He murmured, "Son of a bitch... Paul."

"... Vic...?!" The Franco-Hungarian man gasped. Just who else was on Remnant right now, anyhow?

Vale Industrial Sector

The distant snap of bullets whizzing over the White Fang's heads felt familiar to several of their troopers, many of which held the line amidst containers and scaffolding in their base, an abandoned factory complex that was mostly used for storage nowadays. The Lieutenant in charge of the operation heard the screams of his comrades, followed by two thundering explosions just far enough away to know he had time to flee.

Still, as he did so, several of his soldiers got sniped, two of them with massive holes bored into their chests by whatever the hell the enemy was firing at them. He caught a glimpse of the soldier that had just fired. The female soldier with black hair was wearing what looked to be a slimmed-down version of a military-grade camouflage uniform. She hefted her strange black rifle and aimed at him as she pushed forward, then fired.

Two slugs passed by him. It was a shotgun. He yelped in fear as he scrambled over a series of containers. Beside him, two more of his men took bullets, these ones much smaller, and dropped to the floor, dead. He couldn't even hear where the shots came from, but he saw the enemy team pushing up toward them and overhear them whispering in their strange language.

He busted through the main door and out into the wider industrial park area, rallying a bunch of his boys with a motion of his hand as he ran toward an active assembly plant for one of the Valeian car manufacturers. Bullets zipped past his ear and some struck even his comrades. Another man fell with a bullet clean through his skull, while a girl beside him folded over and collapsed, two rounds in her gut.

He saw the four-person team push through the doorway, even under the suppressing fire of his troops, then meld with the shadows of the place. They struck like a well-oiled machine, a blade sharpened specifically for war. The leading member of the team, that being the one with the slug-throwing shotgun, not its CO, pushed forward past pipe and tube and shot at them.

Slugs punctured cover and tore arms out of sockets. More rounds tore through the WF position as the shotgunner fired a volley from her semi-automatic weapon, stopped to reload, then pushed out again, seemingly switching to buckshot. She radioed something to her comrades, then slammed the butt of her rifle into the jaw of one of his men and executed him the moment he fell to the floor.

The car plant's outer areas stirred with activity, though there were no workers. Machines, security elements and robotic arms continued work under a distant supervisor. The White Fang troops didn't care, they had to get through. Their enemy, though, seemed to. The pursuit halted, with the Lieutenant grinning as he warned, threatened and shot his way through the plant's outermost area with his boys.

The moment they made it to the other side and through the door and out of the industrial park, rifles coughed and his entire escort was gunned down beside him. He grunted in pain as the butt of a rifle hit him in the gut, nearly causing him to throw up his lunch, before two of the women swept his legs out from under him and pinned him to the floor, knees on his back and pistols pressed against his head. One of them, a smaller one with green hair, barked, "Stay down, Suka...!"

"Alright, alright, alright!" He yelled out, afraid, "What the hell do you all want!?"

"Information on your operations," The Team Leader replied as she walked out in front of him and knelt. Blonde hair, blue eyes, beautiful and equipped in military-grade gear with a gas mask added to the mix. She lifted his chin up with the tip of her knife as she spoke in clear-cut Basic, though with an accent, "Your cells. Who they work with, what kind of equipment we should expect and your purpose in this city, specifically. You speak, we let you go."

"Taurus's gonna fucking kill me if I talk..." He shot back, "You're gonna have to be more persuasive than that."

The blonde looked up to those who kept him pinned and gave them a gentle wave. They pressed harder against his back with their knees, causing the man to groan in pain. She then told him, "He will kill you quickly. We know how to make it hurt, tavarisch. So, speak and you walk away with all your fingers... Don't and we'll see what my friends decide to do to you first."

... On the car trip home, the blonde leader sighed deeply, murmuring, "I hate being the Bad Cop..."

"You did pretty well, I'd say," Quipped the shorter girl up front. She looked over to their driver, the black-haired Spetsnaz, and inquired, "Don't you agree, Vera?" only to get a thumbs up from her. Beside the blonde, a redhead lay, fast asleep, her rifle pointed down at the floor. The green-haired short girl sighed and said, "She's really been getting tired way too easily..."

"She's just been enjoying the fruits of our labor," The Driver quipped, "Though I do admit, I'm glad she only does it when we're around."

"I don't think Ayesha's willing to risk anything, let's be honest," The green-haired one shot back. She looked over to their Team Lead and called out, "Vesna," as she saw the girl staring at a necklace. Narrowing her lips, the green-haired girl took her friend's hands and closed them around the golden pendant, telling her, "It's okay, Vesna. He'll be around soon."

"... I don't know whether to hope you're right, or wrong," She replied, a sad look on her face, "Especially after..."

"If you still think he'd be mad at you for dying, Ves," The driver started, "No offense, sestra, but that's stupid..." and she cast a quick glance back at the blonde, only to add, "If he's anything like you described, he's probably beating himself up over this clusterfuck as much as you are," in a semi-sympathetic voice. Vesna Novikova looked at her sister/Cousin, Vera Novikova, with a bit of surprise.

Lita Tarasova, the green-haired shortie, nodded knowingly, "I'm with Vera. It'll be fine. If he's here, we meet him and you two dumbasses get talking," then looked to Vesna with a slight glare, "I'll make sure of it..." and garnered a few laughs out of Vera and a newly-awoken Ayesha Dudiyn, the team's redhead Chechen atheist. Vesna smiled sadly at her friends, then looked at the pendant again. She genuinely hoped her friends were right, honestly, but she couldn't bring herself to believe it until it happened. Just a little thing she had had since her death. And even before, with the war in Ukraine...

She yelped a little, her mind racing back to events in the past she'd rather forget, whne she felt a hand land on her shoulder. She quickly turned and internally and externally breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Ayesha's blue eyes staring at her with sympathy. The Chechen girl apologized, "Sorry, Ves... Didn't mean to scare you," before straightening up and stretching. She added, "It'll be fine. You'll see. We got a lot of work, at least."

"Wonder if mister Mosby ordered that food like I asked him to," Vesna thought aloud this time, which garnered a few more laughs for the simple change of subject. The blonde laughed awkwardly, too, as they approached their home in the more well-off district of Vale. Nikos Towers, weirdly owned by the family of some local super-athlete from another kingdom. Fancy place.