Chapter 12: Strategam
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"They will try to kill you. Kill them back." - Variks, The Loyal
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"Surveyor!!" Both Ruby and Yang yell with Ruby using her semblance to run to the downed Servitor, who had already bounced off of a tree.
"What in the world is that!?" Weiss loudly exclaims, "What even was that?" Blake asks confused, which would go unanswered.
"What the heck was that for?!" Yang asks Nora with her pupils notably red as she looks over Surveyor showing how mad she was at the perpetrator.
"Hey! He was the one who spooked me! I thought it was a Grimm!" The Grenade Launcher wielding lady said trying to justify her actions.
"I'm sure that everyone would think it was a Grimm after a roar like that." Pyrrha said trying to diffuse the situation.
"Right Jaune...Jaune?" While Pyrrha was looking to Jaune for support the boy in question was amazed looking at the machine.
"What is that thing?"
"Agh! Come on buddy! I fixed you before I can fix you again..." Ruby said her goggles over her eyes while digging through Surveyor's exposed side.
"It's...A Robot?" Blake asked.
"Yep, but he isn't just any Robot mind you!"
"Don't you mean "it?"" Weiss with knowledge of the Atlesian Knights couldn't help but ask as she looks at the spherical machine.
"He! Is a value member of me and Ruby's family, who was literally unceremoniously shot from the sky!" Yang yelled
"Well Sorry! It's not my fault that he suddenly looked like a Grimm." Nora crossed her arms looking away, as if pouting.
"We could all literally see him! How do you mistake that for a Grimm!?" Yang had to ask not understanding Nora's thought process.
"He had a mouth in the middle of its body!"
"It's an eye!"
"He had a fleshy inside!"
"What flesh?! He has a metal body!"
"He had tentacles!"
"Ok, now I know that you're messing with me!"
"Quiet!!" Ruby suddenly yells to the two arguing Yang and Nora, all the while moving some stuff around inside Surveyor before closing the hatch suddenly.
"There, all done." Lifting up her goggles and slapping some dust off of her hands she looks to her teammates and sister. "The blast just knocked a power supplier out of its socket so he should be back online here in a-"
With a metallic groan all Eliksni Servitors give out Surveyor started to float off of the ground, shaking himself to be rid of dust and dirt.
"...Minute wow you wake up fast buddy."
Ruby said to her best friend, the Servitor looked ahead and saw Ruby in its lone eye.
Surveyor floated forward to the red headed girl, "Hug" the Servitor said before nuzzling her long time family member, Ruby returned the affections by hugging him. "I'm glad your ok..."
"You had us worried sick Survey! Where were you?" Yang said approaching her sibling and adopted sibling respectively.
Surveyor tried to speak, talking to both of his family members in his own way expecting Ruby to hear and relay to Yang.
"I...can't understand what you're saying..." Ruby explains sadly with Yang sighing expecting this result.
"What do you mean? Seems pretty clear cut to me." Nora suddenly says.
Both groups of students are looking at her both confused and surprised. "Huh?"
"Who are you?" Surveyor asks looking at Nora.
"Me? Names Nora my circle-y friend! What's yours?"
"Surveyor."
"What kinda name is Surveyor?"
"You...you can understand him?" Ruby asked not believing her and in shock.
"Well Duh! What? You guys can't?" Looking around everyone shook their head in the negative. "Ren? You heard him right?" She asked her partner next to her.
"If I did, I would've agreed with you when you asked."
"Huh...I guess I am the only one who can hear him."
"But how?!" Ruby quickly jumps in front of Nora scanning her with the goggles, looking up and down, and side to side.
"The only way you could hear him is if you were able to tap into his audio frequency perfectly and convert it into radio waves for you to hear! It took me months of nonstop work until I was able to find and listen in!"
Walking around the girl the only thing mechanical that Ruby could see was Nora's weapon Magnhild in its Grenade Launcher form.
"I...I don't understand, there's nothing you have that can or should listen in on a select frequency."
"Fre-quency? What's that?" Nora said looking to Ren. "It's Frequency, the stuff that allow radios to play."
"Oh! Is that why I can hear him?"
"You can hear frequencies?" Weiss asked in disbelief. "Well I can hear radios from the other room, does that count?"
"How is any of that even possible?!" Blake said more confused then anybody else. "I don't know, but it started when I was a kid and I could hear radios and TVs playing from all over our home."
"My only guess was it started when she was struck by lightning."
"Hey, at least Lightning doesn't strike twice." Jaune says.
"She was struck three times." "Oh..."
"That was a Crazy Thursday let me tell you! Cause' that's when I got my semblance! Oh! And a constant ringing in my ears!"
"I hope you got that check out." Says a worried Pyrrha.
"Couldn't afford it, plus the doctors in the settlements outside the kingdoms weren't exactly great." Ren explained.
"Ok! I think I've had enough of this! If you want to fail initiation that's fine by me! But I am not getting dragged down by some stupid machine." In a huff Weiss starts walking away towards Beacon Academy.
"But Weiss!"
"Nope!"
"Well he's not stupid! He's the smartest machine in the world!" Ruby yells back defending Surveyor, but her voice goes unheard as Weiss ignores the comment.
"Well, Weiss is right, we don't wanna fail initiation because we're not there." Yang follows Weiss, Blake right behind her.
"But-!"
"We don't wanna fall behind now do we?" Blake says.
"Then Let's get a move on! Come on Renny! We don't wanna be late!" Almost all of the group were moving ahead while Ruby, Surveyor, and Jaune with his Partner staying behind.
"Aw man..." a deflated Ruby said, Surveyor observing closely, wondering why Ruby looked sad.
"We should probably get a move on as well, we don't want a Grimm sneaking up on us do we?" The Mistral Champion asked.
"Y-yeah! Come one Ruby, you should tell me about your buddy there, he looks really cool!"
"...Sure, I can do that." Although Ruby was sad she didn't have the time to show off her friend Surveyor to the whole group and let them see how amazing he was.
They were right, and if Jaune wanted to hear about Surveyor, who was she to disappoint him.
"Come on Surveyor we're moving out!"
For a moment it seemed that the Servitor found something of interest in the forest trees but when called he gave out a call.
(Metallic Groan) "Sure."
The four continue on to their journey towards Beacon Academy with Ruby telling them the story of how she first met her best friend.
But the Servitor as curious as can be looked around the trees and saw that what it was looking for was gone.
Continuing on no one could see that thing using the leaves to hide itself jump from tree to tree observing and watching because it found exactly what it was looking.
An invisible House Dusk Marauder found it's target, and will stalk it like he was ordered too.
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"..."
"..."
"..."
"...They sure are taking their time getting here."
"Now now, they've just fought two Alpha Grimm together and won, I'm sure a nice long walk back wouldn't hurt."
"Yes, but we have a set schedule to keep and rules to follow." Glynda looking at Ozpin she found he was simply watching the edge of the cliff, drinking from his coffee cup.
"Rules that you are ignoring."
"Come now, we don't need to watch them 24/7, they are hunters in training, I'm sure whatever is thrown at them they'll be able to handle it."
"And if they didn't?"
"Then I'd stepped down as Headmaster."
"Hmph." Glynda Goodwitch looked back at the cliff, checking the time on her scroll for a quick second. Ten minutes, and afterwards I'll consider them absent."
"...Hmm...They'll be here in nine."
"That's quite optimistic."
"...Eight, Seven, Six."
Confused and getting the implication, she looked over, and as Ozpin counted down when he finally reached zero, a blonde hair boy was flung up over landing on his stomach.
For a second Glynda was speechless, then another boy was launched up as well, a black haired boy in green clothing. Even with the now identified Jaune rolling around in pain.
Lie Ren who was thrown up as well suddenly landed on top of the first boy, causing more pain for the Arc. While the rest of the group all were rising from the cliff.
"You were saying?" Ozpin smugly says turning around to head into Beacon. Pinching the bridge of her nose, Glynda follows behind. "I stand corrected."
What the two Headmasters failed to see during that moment was Ruby overlooking the Cliff and a rising Eliksni Servitor rising from it.
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Meanwhile, across the world another force is at play, twisting and turning against space itself waiting for the right moment to make its move.
"Stupid, Stupid, stupid...Argh!!" A orange haired fox Faunus man said as he walks through the forests of Menagerie.
"The things I do for love, you forget your anniversary one time! And now you're out here finding a stupidly rare flower that only grows in the deepest parts of this stupid forest!"
The man yelled to the sky, hoping to find the flower that would allow him to be forgiven by his girlfriend.
With a sigh the Faunus man continues on, with him already being in the forest for the past three hours with no luck to finding said flower he was close to giving up.
With it getting darker and darker he had no hope to finding said rare item and was going to turn back to Kuo Kuana until he heard crackling.
"Huh?"
The noises he heard with his advance hearing it reminded him of a thunderstorm, an electrical thunderstorm before it slowly died down.
The noises were to his left, quite a distance away. He wanted to investigate but to his core he was...scared. It was like his very being was saying to just run away and don't look back.
With every step he took, seconds turned to minutes and in that small bit of time, he heard it.
"Mmrrphh"
Turning around quickly what he saw, well she wasn't really sure what he was seeing.
It was triangular like and in the middle it had so many red eyes.
It was entirely made of metal, it's eyes glass and it just stared. It's beeps were very deep in all honesty, it looked menacing.
Then it's chassis opened, and it screeched a horrible ear splitting sound.
"Aaaggghhh!!"
And all the fox Faunus saw was a beam of light, before falling down dead next to the flower he was looking for, a Flower native to the Black Garden.
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