Author's Notes: Chapter edited and corrected by Scott Fellman.
Ruby Pov .
"Rubes!" I turned at Mom's scream.
"Mom!" I exclaimed with a smile. She looked around and saw that I was completely alone and immediately pouted.
"Have Izumi and the rest left already?" Mom asked sadly, I laughed lightly and nodded.
"You came late, Mom, it's your fault," I said simply, she sighed dramatically.
"Unfortunately, you're right, and I'm sorry about that. What do you say we start that internship?" Mom asked with a smile. I started smiling widely and nodding vigorously.
"You bet! What are we doing?! Will we be patrolling looking for criminals?! Or will we clear some doors to keep innocent citizens safe?! Anything, yes!!! " I said excitedly. Mom smiled widely.
"Excellent! I love your enthusiasm, Ruby, but first things first," Mom approached with a knowing smile, and I practically pressed myself against her face, trying to suppress my excitement. "A briefing!"
"What?! Nooo !!" I groaned in pain as I backed away, Mom burst out laughing. We were both attracting stares, but I really couldn't care less.
"Now, now, Ruby, this isn't going to be long, but we need to get you up to speed so you know what to look for when we go on our top-secret mission!" Mom said, winking at me. I could feel my eyes sparkle.
"So what are we waiting for? Let's go to that briefing! " I said excitedly. Mom chuckled.
"You're not going to be dressed like that, are you?" Mom asked playfully as she pointed at my clothes. I was wearing my UA uniform. "We're about to go on a mission. You'll need your hunter outfit." She said simply, my eyes shining once again. I quickly turned around, looking for something in the nearest bathroom.
"I'm coming!" I exclaimed before dispersing into petals and reappearing in front of the bathroom along with my suitcase. I entered without hesitation and undressed without any problem, ignoring the other women coming in and out of the bathroom. In no time, I was fully dressed in my Huntress outfit, Crescent Rose on my hip and my UA uniform hastily stuffed inside the briefcase.
I left the bathroom and immediately headed to Mom who was texting on her phone with a smile.
"I'm ready for combat!" I announced to Mom, she looked up and looked at me with a big smile.
"Perfect! Just in time for-" a portal opened next to us and Aunt Raven stepped out of it "-for our trip" Mom said, though she was more focused on Aunt Raven.
"Aunt Raven!" I exclaimed happily as I launched myself at her. Aunt Raven sighed tiredly, but caught me easily.
"Hey Kiddo, you saw me a couple of days ago." She said dryly, but with a small smile on her face. I knew she missed me! "Unfortunately, we don't have time to catch up. I have a long, busy day." Aunt Raven said. I just pouted as I pulled away. Aunt Raven stepped aside, and Vernal came out of the portal. "Vernal, you know the plan. I'll come get you when Summer's mission is over, or in a week, whichever comes first."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I was looking forward to this vacation." Vernal said with a cocky smile, Aunt Raven rolled her eyes.
"Hey, Vernal, sorry for the inconvenience as always, I sent you the address of my house, you can use it while you stay, there is food and some money, if you need more ask Raven." Mom said with a smile while giving Vernal a thumbs up.
"A pleasure, Summer. Being used as a reference point for Raven's Kindred Link is always a vacation, so—" Vernal shrugged with a smile, "—take as long as you want."
"Don't even dream about it, I'll keep emailing you work, just keep an eye out," Raven said dryly, causing Vernal to groan in protest. I laughed lightly. "Alright, let's go, Qrow is waiting," Aunt Raven said as she drew her sword and created another portal. My eyes lit up with excitement. Uncle Qrow! I didn't even wait and just threw myself through the portal.
"Uncle Qrow!!!" I shouted as he appeared, Uncle Qrow had a flask of alcohol in his hand and a guilty smile on his face, but I didn't care, I just threw myself at him.
"Ruby, how have you been?" Uncle Qrow asked with a smile as he ruffled my hair.
"I'm sorry, Ruby, but we don't have time for this. We really have an urgent mission," Mom said with an apologetic smile. I pouted, another meeting thwarted. Still, I broke away. I was a Huntress-in-training now; I could conduct myself professionally!
"Summer." Uncle Qrow greeted with a smile.
"Qrow, are you all set ?" Mom asked with a smile. Uncle Qrow pointed with his thumb behind him, and now that he was coming right away, there was a bullhead, an aerial vehicle. In fact, now that I looked around, I was seeing that we were in a remote area. There were only trees and rocks around us.
"Of course, the autopilot is already set with the necessary coordinates for your location, and inside you have all the supplies needed to last two weeks for two people, so you don't have to worry about a thing," Uncle Qrow said simply before a conflicted look crossed his face. "Are you... sure it's a good idea to bring her?" Uncle Qrow asked carefully as he looked in my direction. I grimaced. I wanted to retort that I was ready, more than ready, for this type of mission, but I stayed silent.
"Of course, Qrow, our Ruby became super strong, you have to see her in action one of these days and you'll see! That festival didn't do her any favors so she could show off like she should." Mom said, she sounded completely proud of me, I felt my face, neck and ears heat up considerably.
"I'll trust you, Summer." Uncle Qrow sighed, and Mom smiled broadly at him. "That aside, I was able to do some basic reconnaissance. The island you're going to is filled with satellites, so you should have a signal on your scrolls. We'll keep in touch. In case everything goes south, call for reinforcements immediately." Uncle Qrow said seriously.
I gulped audibly, now I was starting to worry about the kind of mission we were about to undertake.
"We'll be fine between the two of us, but we'll keep in touch. We'll try to text regularly, no more than an hour apart unless I say otherwise. If half a day goes by without a text then…" Mom trailed off , but Uncle Qrow just nodded.
"Are you done? I don't have all day," Aunt Raven interrupted from the side. Both Mom and Uncle Qrow rolled their eyes.
"Always so sentimental, sister." Uncle Qrow said dryly. Mom just laughed.
"Well, see you later. Wait for us to hear from you!" Mom said cheerfully before walking up to Aunt Raven and giving her a kiss on the lips. "See you, Raven." Mom winked at her, then went up to Uncle Qrow for a kiss, but he simply placed a hand in Mom's face and pushed her away.
"I'm not going to kiss you after you kissed my sister. I don't want her saliva in my mouth," Uncle Qrow said with a grimace. Mom chuckled.
"We share a womb, Qrow, grow up." Aunt Raven said mockingly. I giggled, Mom just beckoned me to follow her.
"Let's go before they start arguing. They could be there for hours," Mom said playfully. I nodded as I watched the two of them begin a verbal fight with a smile. Something they always did sooner or later, no matter the reason.
I followed Mom toward the Bullhead, and we quickly climbed in. Mom got into the pilot's seat and, as if it were a normal occurrence, began to manipulate the controls with extreme ease. In no time, the Bullhead lifted off the ground and began flying through the sky. Once we were high enough, Mom got out of the cockpit and approached me.
"Now! Time for the briefing! " Mom said with a smile. I looked at her expectantly. "This has to do with the research we've been conducting for months in conjunction with Japan." My eyes widened slightly.
"It's not like, top secret?" I asked cautiously. Mom snorted derisively.
"Not really, don't worry!" Mom said carelessly. "But anyway, starting from the beginning. For a year now, there have been Grimm sightings in Japan. Something that should normally be impossible. The maximum distance Grimm can spawn from the broken dungeon of Ozma is merely Vale, Vacuo, Atlas, Mistral, and a small portion of North America and Europe. It's impossible for Grimm to spawn in Asia," Mom said seriously.
"So, it means that someone is trafficking Grimm and somehow getting them to Japan without the heroes or hunters noticing, and that's a problem. The Japanese government wanted to keep it as an internal problem, but they noticed a few things,\. They didn't know much about Grimm since they weren't used to them and they found some things that didn't belong in Japan."
Mom pulled out her scroll and quickly manipulated it so that a small hologram appeared. A symbol quickly appeared over the scroll: a hexagon with a sterile M inside.
"Merlot Industries was a research and development corporation headquartered in Mountain Glenn before it was leveled by the Grimm' floodwaters. We believed Merlot, its entire corporation, its research, and its employees never made it out of Mountain Glenn alive."
"But! This symbol started appearing in Japan recently. Therefore, Japan launched this joint mission. We spent months searching Mountain Glen for answers and found no signs of Merlot or any of his scientists. But we did find a lot about his research."
"They started out with artificial intelligence and genetics, but slowly their research shifted toward Grimm and living experimentation with them. And in fact, we believe that was the reason behind the fall of Mountain Glenn. They were attracting so many Grimm, and the town didn't have enough defenses to hold its own, and they ended up being overwhelmed."
"But besides that, we didn't find anything useful that would help us determine who the prime suspect was, but we also didn't find Merlot's body among the bodies that were found. So we're basically chasing a ghost."
"Grimm kept appearing in Japan, and since there was nothing we could find out about Mountain Glenn, we were sent to Japan to deal with the Grimm that kept appearing and to try to find out where the Grimm were infiltrating from. For weeks, our investigation turned up absolutely nothing."
"Until recently. And that's when you guys were attacked by the villains in USJ and the green Grimm." Mom said, looking at me seriously.
This all seemed like some kind of conspiracy; this was a very important mission. I didn't think it would be; I thought it would be something boring and basic, but no, this was much more important. So I kept my mind from wandering. I continued listening intently to Mom as she spoke. She had brought me on this mission; she trusted me, so I wouldn't let her down.
"The monster your boyfriend Izumi fought, which was finally defeated by All Might. It was strange. From what was discovered, it was artificially created, they were people who were heavily modified, it had the DNA of several people who appeared to be missing or deceased. And most importantly, it had multiple unnatural quirks."
My eyes opened wide and alarm bells started going off in my head.
"That's set off a lot of alarm bells within the Japanese government, and they're now deliberating whether an old villain who was thought to be dead is involved once again, a truly powerful villain. The presence of the green Grimms at the attack shows that it's quite possible that he's recruited Merlot and is sponsoring his experiments for his own purposes."
"We had to search this villain's old hideouts scattered all over Japan. Luckily, our searches were somewhat fruitful, and we found some crates and containers with Merlot's symbol on them, along with some special coordinates. At first glance, it didn't seem to lead anywhere. Like, all the scans and satellite images indicated there was nothing but water in that place."
"But there was actually an island hiding in plain sight there. And that's exactly where we're headed. An unknown island, a possible lair for a villain who has mutated Grimms at his disposal. Our mission is, ideally, to catch Merlot, or kill him as a next best thing. But realistically, just find out everything we can and clear the island so a second contingent can come clean everything up later."
"Any questions?" Mom asked, looking at me. I gulped audibly. The weight of my first real mission, and a mission as important as this one, was too much, but I couldn't stop smiling with excitement.
"Is this Merlot expected to go into combat? Is he strong?!" The green Grimm that attacked us were just beowulfs and ursas, do you expect there to be others? I noticed they were stronger than normal ones, is there any other difference? Will we go separately or will we always be together? What is our plan of action?! Do I have to let you know every time something catches my attention? "What are we looking for besides Merlot?! " I asked quickly while almost bouncing with excitement.
Mom blinked several times before bursting into laughter.
"I'm surprised, Ruby. I thought you'd just want to go straight ahead." Mom laughed, and I just pouted. She just smiled at me.
"Let's see, let's see. From what we know, Merlot is a non-combatant, so no, it's very likely that if he's on the island, as unlikely as it may be, he's probably hiding behind some defenses. There are mutant Grimm of all kinds, so be prepared for any kind of Grimms and never let your guard down. Yes, they're stronger, but they also have some tricks up their sleeves that are very different from their normal versions. I repeat, don't let your guard down."
"We'll never separate unless it's an emergency and I explicitly say so, so stay close to me at all times. Our plan of action, for now, is to improvise. We don't know what we'll find on the island, we don't even know the terrain, so we can't plan too much."
"And as for information, let me know if you see anything out of the ordinary, immediately if possible. Again, we don't know what we'll find there, we don't know the full extent of Merlot's experiments, so any information we find might be helpful. And as for what we're looking for, really, just about anything we can find that looks valuable."
"We'll be carrying a few built-in cameras so we can record everything in our path without having to stop to photograph or record everything that catches our attention. If you find something worth documenting, just stop for a few seconds and point it at it with the camera I'll give you once we land."
"And I guess that's it. If you have any more questions, or if I remember anything along the way, I'll let you know." Mom said reassuringly. "This may be a really serious mission, but there aren't expected to be any Grimms higher than B-rank. Maybe some A-rank if we're unlucky, but it's nothing we can't handle, so as long as we're alert and on our guard, this should be a piece of cake." Mom said, giving me a thumbs-up. I smiled widely at her.
"You can trust me!" I said with a smile, Mom smiled back.
This would be wonderful! I hope everyone else is having as much fun as I am!