Escape from Remnant

Chapter 14: Resounding Horror

"Alright, before you ask I have no clue if the last guy survived but knowing the guy who sent me the video...he probably did not" was all the words Texas had to comfort the students. The lesson was long over now and team rwby was back in their dorm room resting up trying to get over what they had seen from their last lesson. At least dinner was comforting enough being some honey glazed black sauce fried pork chops with some mashed potatoes, Vale long beans and rice. But the thoughts still stood within their mind, on one hand the lesson was extremely informative about just how lacking they were in even basic medicine. None of the rwby members carried anything like a IFAK or AFAK let alone loose items like pain killers, splints, CMSs.

Then there was the video, even though they never even saw the cameraman O'Brien's face they still felt horrible for him. Firstly he was in a literal gladiatorial arena being forced to fight, then him and the other contestants were hunted down like wild animals, despite the last stand against the clean up crew the man in the black helmet with 3 stripes going down vertically was something else to reckon with. His mangled leg, desperate attempt to fix it, resorting to digging in his own flesh to rip out large fragments of shrapnel, even pumping himself full of drugs to not feel a thing and continue on.

None of the girls could pull something like that off let alone they even wanted to get into such a situation like that in the first place.

"So are we going to talk about those 2?" Unlike her usual demeanour Blake spoke up leaning at the post of her makeshift bunk bed.

There was something off and very wrong about their new teachers, Texas more so than Moron but the 2 of them, they were similar to the hardened mercenaries of the schnee dust company which left a bad taste in her mouth given her run ins with the SDC.

"I can assure you he is no military man!" Weiss proudly exclaimed to her team still remembering what Texas told her during her initiation.

"One must wonder how did Ozpin even find such people...there's 4 of them right?" Blake asked

"Yea, wonder what happened to the other 2..." Ruby responded

"Probably they are doing the other class, some of my friends are scheduled for tomorrow's class." Yang remembers talking to her friends about the class seeing that the group was split taking different sessions yet were in the same. "Hmmm that could make sense, asked if they're traumatised after the lesson...hey are we actually going to use the knowledge they gave us?"

Ruby climbs up onto her bunk, the top one above Weiss' respective bunk. She produces a green hardback notebook from her stash of study materials under her pillow. Scrawled inside on the pages were about half of the lesson's content amongst random doodles of her, her team, JNPR and the teachers. The notes were only half though because she lost track halfway through from the sheer dryness of these lesson content.

"Yup! I have half of it on my notebook right here!"

"Right anyone else have the other half...?" Blake looks around giving everyone a gaze waiting for someone to respond but nobody did. "Hey we can always ask JNPR! I saw Pyrrha writing something down." Ruby said trying to find a solution to their conundrum. "Whatever, I'm going out to get some tea!" Weiss moves to leave the room but Ruby shouts to her causing her to stop mid way through the door. "Can you get me some coffee too...?" She asked politely to which Weiss considered then nodded shutting the door behind her.

"Now where do I find some tea and coffee..." Was what she wondered as she marched down the stairs putting a coat on over her outfit. It was windy outside, despite winter ending as the month January came by from the previous year. All she had to do now is either go to a store and get the tea and coffee there or go to the cafeteria where she could get the drinks for free...if the place was even open to begin with. Weiss reflected on the day, was she truly not fit to be leader? She thought about what professor port said to her, about how she was lacking in altitude, how she had gotten everything handed to her on a silver platter and then the combat 2 class about how just unprepared she was to fight. That video disgusted her, the mercenaries disgusted her but may he they are right in the end...

She reached the cafeteria, looks closed but empty. The ingredients required to make several drinks were laid out on the table with cups in a compartments bellow. But there was someone else, in the darkness someone was at the coffee machine, she couldn't make out who it was even if she tried her hardest to squint. He was just out of the moonlight's range but a small glow came from his hand, probably some sort of cigarette or cigar. She tries to get closer without alerting him to avoid a awkward situation but clearly her sneaking skills were not good.

"I can hear you you know?" The man said in a strange accent not even looking back at her, oh god it was one of her teachers from combat class 2. The one named Moron or Idiot right? Something along those lines. His voice sent shivers down her spine, this was reenforced by him hitting the machine at the side hardly. "Final fuckingly! It works! The damn piece of shit gives me my hot chocolate!" He exclaimed in joy holding up a large metal bottle presumably full of hot chocolate.

"Oh don't be afraid white, come get whatever you want. I don't think your supposed to be here but eh who cares I don't give a shit."

She cautiously stepped forward and began to pour herself some tea. Moron takes a few whiffs of his cigarette, the smoke nearly being unbearable for Weiss. It was like she was back down in the industrial zone of Mantle all over again, the a tube of smog that cigarette was. "Can you like not...? I don't think you can smoke in here plus smoking is bad for you." She states staring at Moron calmly taking a long drag.

"Maybe it is...but who cares. When you've seen the things I have seen you need that nicotine."

"But you can get lung cancer, higher risk of heart attacks, anxiety-"

"Why worry about something that will kill you in 30 years when you could worry about something that will kill you in 1...maybe 10 seconds if your lucky?"

"Huh?"

"Ты никогда не поймешь...если бы я сказал тебе, ты бы подумал, что я сумасшедший."

Wait, that language, that was the same one in the video. The language that the announcer was shouting as those men were killing each other and being killed.

"You...you...what?"

"Its the language where I come from, that's how I have my accent as well. Look, when your a soldier at war you'll see some hellish things. Pray to god you don't see them."

"Like...see what?" Weiss enquired, these men went on and on about the horrors of war, things they hoped they the students would not need to see but outside of that video which while horrific they would not be put in such a situation given their aura, semblances and unique weaponry which thru wound have mastered by the time they were fully certified graduates...what were these things exactly.

"Oh ho ho. Let's see, there was that one time when I saw 5 men get gassed with chlorine gas as a execution method. The other time when I had to loot several mangled bodies because I ran out of ammo. Oh yeah who could forget watching a guy bleed out because he stepped too near to a claymore! Your a kid, one day your naivety will be broken by this cruel dark world."

That was the last thing he said before he threw his cigarette on the ground crushing it under the sole of his boot to put out the flame and walked off with his bottle full of hot chocolate in hand. There was something terribly wrong with these mercenaries, its like they have come straight form a war but last she checked there has been no major war in remnant since the great war. SDC mercenaries usually did nothing but steal land from people, get into fights with the local huntsmen maybe and beat down on rebelling faunus in the mines. The Mistral Trading Company's mercenaries did similar things too so there was only 2 options left. They were former criminals who have gotten into many fights, they were lying, or were a variation of rogue. Rogue huntsmen, soldier, police officers, anything that involved fighting and combat.

Something was off and she felt like she was going to regret it later on. But there was no way to prove who they were exactly without creating too much attention...oh well time to get focused and get what she came here for originally.