pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
(Pine PoV)
We boarded the airship bright and early. We all packed light. The biggest bag amongst us was Yuma's backpack and it wasn't large. The ship hummed along in the early morning light rays. I sat next to my partner. I could tell she was worried about her little crush. I was too. I didn't really have the hots for the guy but I still liked Professor Strife. He was nice to me. And he was easy to relate to and share a laugh with. Probably because he was closer to our age than any of the other teachers. When my team got in trouble at Junior's I could tell that he looked out for us. He didn't have to take all of our punishments on himself but he did anyway. He could have let the Headmistress handle it but instead he took responsibility.
So now the rest of my team who all were attracted to the guy were sitting around fretting about his mission and not much else. Not even the excitement of our own first mission could detract from their worry. Like a prophet he'd foreseen this. That he'd be called up and he'd have to answer it. But just because he'd seen it coming didn't mean he could do anything to stop it. What was he supposed to do? Let the Hydra march up on Vale? How many people could die then? Adaptive regenerators could get big and Hydras were the best example. What should he have done? Plus he had an ear to the ground where our sister team's, CMAD's, mission was concerned. He had some sort of system in place to watch out for serial killers with aura trying to make their way in the city. What other responsibilities did he take on himself? It probably didn't stop there. That's just where my knowledge ended.
He probably kept a check on pretty much every important pot in the entire kitchen. By which I meant the whole world. That was a hell of range to take under your wing. The whole fucking planet? I was a teleporter and it never crossed my mind to try and cover so much ground.
The plane shook and Yuma almost dropped her backpack which she was clutching to her chest with a little gasp. It made her look small and adorable. Like a little school girl. Which I suppose that she was. She was easily the shortest of us but she probably had the biggest heart. And she'd had this thousand yard stare ever since Professor Strife took flight to rescue Vale.
"You guys…" I trailed into the silence. "He'll be fine. He's literally the best. We should worry about our own mission. He's probably done and safe at Beacon right now. He said it wouldn't take him long," I finished.
"You're right," Peach agreed. "He's a big guy. He can handle it." Left unsaid was that if he couldn't handle it there would be nobody who could and nobody who could bail him out. He probably had one or maybe two good shots at that monster before it adapted to him and became too strong for anybody anywhere to overcome. If he couldn't handle it, then he would die. He outright said that the plan pretty much fell on him to kill it and not even to try to drive it away.
My partner sighed. She reached down and stroked Red XIII's side and gave him a few hard pats. "I have some photos of the prints the Grimm left behind. I didn't recognize them. You all might." She pulled out her scroll and started swiping and tapping away. I pulled out my own handheld and watched the message come into our team group chat. Photos in the dirt and mud and grass of something clawed.
"It doesn't look like an Ursa," Yuma mumbled. She turned her scroll sideways to get a better view. "Or a big cat either."
"Definitely not a Sabertooth Puma or a Nemean. It's more reptilian. A Tarasque, maybe?" Peach coupled.
"Too few toes," I disagreed. "Tarrasques have four. This one has three."
"Terror Wing? Wyvern?" Peach pressed.
"I've never seen either of those," Rosé said. "I don't know what kind of print they leave behind. But hopefully it doesn't fly and we can track it with Red. Hopefully we'll wrap this up in one or two days and be back at Beacon come Monday." She wanted to see Strife. He should already be safe and sound at Beacon. Either that or he was stone cold dead and a giant, possibly unstoppable Hydra would be on it's way to Vale. He really couldn't afford to make a mistake or let it slip past him. They might resort to ballistic missiles but if those didn't work… well, kingdoms had risen and fallen in the past.
"What do we do if it can fly?" Yuma asked.
"I tracked a Manticore while I was training under Cloud. It's possible to hunt them still. It's just harder. It's about finding the lair or lairs. If it's smart then it will have a den or two or more that it strikes out from," Rosé answered right back.
"Is it smart? Is it old? Do we know?" Peach wondered. The real pressing questions. If it was smart or old or worse, both, it could be trouble. I'd hunted old monsters with my father in Menagerie. Sea monsters like Serpents or Killer Trout but nothing enormous like Leviathans or Krakens. I also went into the jungles and tracked Myrmekes and Leoparduars. I'd never taken on a whole hill of the bugs, though.
"The report indicated that it was moving with intelligence behind it. Doing as much as it thought it could get away with given the village's security. It's the sort of behavior Cloud warned me to be on the lookout for when deciding if something is smart. He says the Grimm which are really wise will know how to do as much as they can without being slain. Just enough to kill people while flying under the radar."
"Too bad. It's got our attention now," Peach slammed her fist into her open palm.
"Right, so it's not super old even if it is smart. Otherwise it would know that more hunters could be brought in. So we know some things about it. It's reptilian of some sort and it's clever but probably young," I said.
"I've never been to Junon," Peach mumbled. "I hadn't heard of it before."
"Me neither but… you know…" Yuma agreed. She was from Anima. She probably didn't even know all of the villages in that corner of the world let alone the ones over here in Sanus. Peach was the same but for Solitas.
I hadn't either in my travels back and forth between Menagerie and Vale. It was mostly just Vale, really. Places around Menagerie, sure. But not so much here in Sanus.
"I've been. It's a military town with an old Count, Hiedeger."
"You know him?" I asked Rosé.
"I met him once when I was a little girl. But I met a lot of officials and noblemen when I was a little girl," Rosé denied. "So not really. I mean… I could probably squeeze him for a favor if we need it but we were given a budget by the school for room and board."
"How much?" Peach asked.
"Twelve hundred Lien," Rosé answered.
"Sounds like more than enough," I nodded.
"Cloud says making money as a hunter is too easy," Rosé muttered.
"He's probably right. I mean… ever since Black Out Day it's been harder to get help where it needs to be. Being powerful means that whatever you say goes," Peach pointed out. "After a while you probably don't even need the stuff anymore. I mean, five hundred thousand here talks about as loud as three quarters of a million over there. You know what I mean?" Peach tagged.
"Money talks but probably not super loud compared to your life. Makes me wonder what the Councilor offered Cloud," Yuma agreed. "He probably doesn't need money."
"No, Cloud's loaded," Rosé affirmed. "Among the noblemen it's more about favors. Everybody has too much money for them to be bought easily. So everyone trades favors and makes deals."
"Hard to imagine getting to that point. My dad's a hunter and he never was super rich," I detracted.
"But he probably never worried about money because if he ever needed some cash he could just do some work and get it," Peach pointed out. "You feel? Work isn't hard to find and it always pays well. Even as a huntress in training I made more than my fair sure as guide."
"What'd you do with your cash?" Yuma asked.
"Oh, I'd take a train into Atlas and go clubbing in the big city."
"Drugs?" Yuma wondered.
"Only weed and alcohol."
"Weed is illegal," Yuma pointed out.
"Are you gonna arrest me? My own partner?" Peach sounded bewildered. "You did drag us into that brawl in Junior's over some harder stuff."
"Well! Drugs are bad!" Yuma declared.
"Not all of them. And with weed it's mostly just 'the man' telling you what to do. Nobody really gets hurt by weed. No one has ever overdosed on it. You can't."
"Doesn't it make you dumb?" Yuma pressed.
"Only while you're using it. I mean, okay, if you're, like, prone to psychosis you shouldn't use it. And it can trigger psychosis if you're already susceptible to it and you have the genetic factors it can flip symptoms on like a switch. But so can alcohol," Peach shrugged.
"Cloud uses," Rosé chimed in.
"Which one? Weed or alcohol?" Peach asked.
"Both. I never tried weed and he never offered it to me."
"What's it like?" I wondered.
"It's a little like when someone with aura touches you and you just get a stream of happy chemicals flooding your brain. It's a high. Like you've been laughing a whole lot. That kind of rush of chemicals. It makes you feel happy. It makes you feel like smiling and relaxing and melting into a couch," Peach answered.
"That doesn't sound so bad…" Yuma mumbled.
"Oh sure. I do it and it's all 'drugs are bad,' Cloud does it and it's 'not so bad,'" Peach laughed at Yuma when she blushed.
"Well! Okay?" Yuma exclaimed. "I didn't know. I just thought it made you dumb or whatever. I grew up in a small town. I didn't go clubbing in the big city. I haven't tried drugs."
"Do you wanna?" Peach asked with a smirk.
"Not anything hard for sure," Yuma decided. "But maybe softer stuff at some point. Maybe if it was with you guys. Or somebody else I trust."
"Just say 'Cloud.' It's faster," I fired.
I hit because she blushed again. The plane came to a hovering halt and we disembarked with our bags. Junon had big metal walls and a heavy gate out front. There were guards on patrol on the ramparts of the town itself but there were stretches of farmland in the surrounding hills and a forest in the distance.
The pilot took off but he'd be back every day at two o'clock to pick us up if we needed it. No communication was the literal worst. Otherwise Cloud could have just shot us a message saying he was fine and safe by now. Instead we had to wait until we saw him again back in Vale.
"Well, let's do it to it," Rosé decided.
"What first?" Peach asked.
"Lodgings. We need our own base of operations. Then the warden's office. Then we'll head out into the hills while we still have daylight and see if we can find the first lair," Rosé listed.
"Sounds like a plan," I agreed.
We walked up to the wall and the metal gate opened before us when a man above us twisted a lever. We walked inside on a cobblestone road. There were wooden and brick houses to either side of us. We stepped inside and the gate closed behind us.
"So, where do we find an inn?" Yuma wondered.
"Yoo hoo, sir?" Peach waved up at the guard who opened the gate and his compatriot. He looked down at us over the wall. "Could you give us directions to the inn?"
"Gainsborough and third street. Straight three intersections two lefts and a right. Big sign. Black bear motel," he called down at her.
She blew him a kiss. And he caught it. She giggled into her hand when she turned back to us. "Men. Am I right?"
"Not all men," Rosé muttered.
"I literally would have never thought of that," Yuma confessed sheepishly. "And you did it so bold, too! And it just worked out!"
"It's just a matter of time when it comes to me and any guy. Sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower. But I get 'em eventually," Peach laughed.
"Not every gu-" Rosé started again, grumbling, but Peach cut her off.
"No. Every guy. You'll see. I'll get a kiss off the Prof yet."
"If he survived," Yuma whispered.
"You know what? Yuma?" Peach started exasperatedly. "Well? Do you?" She demanded.
"N-no…" Yuma stuttered.
"That's what I thought," Peach finished.
"You didn't even say anything!" Yuma protested.
"Do I need to?" Peach pressed.
"Hydras are dangerous. And they wouldn't go out of their way and send a Councilor over just any old Hydra," Yuma defended herself.
"We know!" Rosé almost shouted. "Gods. But I'm trying not to even think about that right now."
"O-o-oh. Well-well… sorry."
"It's alright," Rosé granted.
"Will you at least let us operate under the assumption that he wasn't torn to pieces by a fire-spitting, acid-breathing, reptilian nightmare on four legs?" Peach demanded.
"Thank you, Peach," Rosé sighed. "It's the job though. Cloud is super well aware of that. He also agreed to go after it. That was his choice."
"I mean…" I cut in. "Did he have a choice? Really? What were his options? Do nothing and let it approach the city or go fight it?"
"Well… maybe not," Rosé granted that to me, too. "But he saw it coming and he knew the risks. He knew that it was going to happen eventually and he signed up for that. He could have ran away. Gone to another continent or whatever. But he decided to stay in Vale and deal with whatever gets thrown his way. That was his decision."
"So for the love of the gods, Yuma. Don't say shit like that," Peach chimed in.
"Sorry… sorry…"
"Let's focus on our mission. We should be worried about that," I once more reminded them. "There's some reptilian big-bad that's tearing these people up and it's on us to stop it. Cloud will literally be fine. He's going to be fine and he's going to land back at Beacon and probably help CMAD with their mission since he was already on that serial killer's trail."
"Just another trophy in his office," Peach agreed.
We made our way through the village to the inn. Rosé walked up to the counter with Red beside her. "Hi, we'd like two rooms please with two beds in each and whatever fee I have to pay for the dog to stay with me," she told the clerk.
"Of course… you four must be the hunters."
"Yep," Peach cut in. "Why? Heard anything we should know."
"Oh, no. I just heard that word was sent to Vale for a team. You all seem on the young side but they probably wouldn't have sent you if you couldn't manage for us. Ten people have died from whatever it is. It's sad. Here are your room keys. And if that's everything…?"
"It is. Thank you," Rosé finished. "Come on girls. It's time to hit up the warden. I don't suppose you could actually give us directions?" She asked the clerk.
"Certainly…"
pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
-WG