"Alright your gun is all restored, I got rid of as much rust as possible. Replaced the wood furniture, just wanna ask what are these?" Professor Mulberry dumps a pile of stretched out sun bleached esmarches onto the table next to Akula's gun. The 2 of them had gathered after Akula decided to finally get his gun restored to a condition that did not look like it was physically rotting before one's eyes. "Ah yese are esmarch, live saving stuff!" He exclaimed picking one of them up, by god they were worn out, they were a pale pink and had started to even crack.
"But why put them over the stock?" Akula puts it down a and shrugs moving his shoulders up. "Dunno, my dad said it was a field technique he did when in Chechnya. Quick access to stuff that can save your life and more comfortable cheek rest." Mulberry scratches his head in confusion at what he just stated looking down at the gun and back up at him.
"What...? What's a Chechnya? Plus I could just make you a better stock. If anything I could rebuild your whole gun for you."
"Ah don't worry about it."
A loud symphonic tune started to play from Akula's pocket. It was his scroll going off, someone was calling him.
"Sorry gotta take this." He tells to professor Mulberry before turning around and opening the device. The call came from Texas, this meant it probably was important.
"Hey Texas kinda in the middle of getting my factory new kalash here..." He said in a hushed tone putting up one of his hands against his mouth to give some sort of privacy semblance. "Well...the big man in the tower wants us all gathered. Together. Something about a new mission." Akula gives a awkward glance to professor Mulberry still standing there equally awkwardly stating at him. "Alright alright I'll be there. Sorry man gotta go." He slides his scroll back into his pocket and grabs his gun from the table.
It was a few days the group had been in remnant and things were going well. All of them were happy to not be fighting for survival like they were back in tarkov not to mention no tasks or quests from traders just for loot to sell for food and water. They would all glady become basically military combat instructors for some teenagers than be actual battle line soldiers. Surprisingly Texas never got in trouble for showing that video of a arena match gone wrong involving a certain killa and the lesson he conducted was even worse because he used the example of photos depicting various wounds all in their fully uncensored graphic glory.
Even though Texas told him that the whole thing about the Glynda looking after the students during initiation was a lie and these young adults know the risks of getting into such a occupation...they were still not prepared for such a thing. Nobody was, he was in Russian army before EMERCOM and couldn't handle the hordes of desperate Russians fleeing tarkov and the hell that followed after that. Rifle still in one hand he marched all the way to the big tower which the headmaster's office sat on top of. Going up the elevator he could see that everyone else of the group was already there, Ozpin himself on his desk as per usual, "ay what the fuck is this you don't trust me cause I'm scav? That's why you got me here alone?" He steps out and holds his arms open at everyone waiting for a response, even Moron was slumped over a chair sleeping.
"More like we texted you but you didn't see the message." Floridaman says holding up his scroll with their messages containing texts telling him to meet at Ozpin's tower. "Ah...fuck..." He walks up to join with the rest of his group. Ozpin was delighted to see that everyone had assembled together once more giving a small gentle smile on his face. "Now, I have gathered you all today to give you some additional work. You all will be compensated for your time and effort sufficiently." Glancing down at Moron who was still sleeping Texas slaps him awake on the shoulder. "Ah what the fuck!- oh..." Everyone sighs as Moron puts himself together into a slightly more presentable body posture.
"You all are trained soldiers right?" Ozpin asks, hands clasped together with his fingers interlocked in between the gaps of each other.
"Yes...?" Floridaman drags out.
"Then I will leave it to you that you know how to fight."
"So your sending us out on combat missions?" Texas gets straight to the point, everyone knew what he was trying to get to since they all had seen it before. The traders, the kind that were not so blunt like therapist would draw out some confirmations then wrap them into what they were getting at.
"We want details. None of us are going out like this to die blindly." Akula speaks up then looks to everyone else seeing did he fuck up or not, he was still not as comfortable as the mercenaries were with each other yet being the product of a jagged alliance. "Well...I'll leave it to him to explain." Ozpin presses a button on his keyboard and a hard light screen appears, "hello gentlemen, its been awhile." It was the stereotypical fat police chief from the night they came to remnant giving a grin right at them.
"Jesus Christ what do you want. We're not your prisoners anymore. Ozpin what could he possibly want?" Texas just wanted this to end already, there was nothing wrong about the police chief when they were in the presence of each other just that they found him annoying for some reason. Probably was whenever they saw him he had at least a outline of frosting or chocolate from the doughnuts he ate. His appearance also mimicked the fat cop man from back home, Kollontay or the other normal criminal kingpin Kaban. Bald, prominent bulging belly like a brexit geezer and heavily armed sporting riot armour and 2 double barrel revolvers.
"Well help, recently we've had a large problem here at the VPD. There has been a sharp uptake of dust robberies in the city jacking up dust prices across the board. We are stretched thin, lots of huntsmen are busy dealing with increased Grimm activity in the periphery villages. I asked old oz here for help...yea you can piece the picture together."
"Now remember this is optional and you will be compensated for this by the state." Ozpin chimes in reminding the group about what's at play.
"Yes indeed, we just thought you were the most experienced given you are instructors at beacon but we could always just get year 3 teams but you know what they say...the less experienced the more they die..."
Despite all the talking there was effectively no mention about the mission itself. It was like one of those long texts they would get from the traders the length of a primary school essay. Sometimes they wished that people cut straight to the point then gave the story afterwards about how and when. This resulted in
"I don't want just the lore I want the mission detail's itself."
Texas becoming frustrated and blurting the phrase out in a seemingly impatient tone.
"Right right...assuming you take the mission you will be raiding a bar run by a man named Junior Xiong. Why? We have information that he is in bed with the criminal known as Roman Torchwick, the ginger hair man from the night we met remember? Turns out pimping your men for robberies all over the city is not a good idea."
"So you want us to arrest him?" Moron asks.
"Yes, arrest Junior and as many as possible of the Xiong family but if you need to lethal force is permitted. Any available police officers I can spare will be allocated for this operation."
"What is the Xiong family though?" Akula needed to know who they would be fighting. He has made that mistake before thinking he would be fighting other regular scavs when in reality it was another group of scav raiders...that did not go well as expected.
"Your kidding right?" The Chief's face turns into bewilderment. "They are one of the most infamous crime syndicates in vale. Their henchmen are pushovers but they may have more powerful members and aides."
Something didn't feel right to the group, arresting someone from a powerful crime syndicate? This had to be something big then. "I take this as something very important right?"
"Indeed, you will be taking down the Xiong family, a plague upon the city of vale!"
"So then what's the pay like?" Floridaman already liked how it was sounding, to be honest he missed a mission where he got to shoot up a place and leave, of course he had to arrest the big man but everyone else? They could just eat some lead for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
"Right...10,000 lien for each one of you..."
"Holy shit I say we just take this right now!" Floridaman immediately shouts letting what little woes about the task he had left go. "So...? Everyone agrees?" Texas turns to face everyone intent on getting all of their consent before agreeing to the mission. Nobody contested instead giving variations of yes to him. He turns back towards Ozpin and the police chief, a smile on his face.
"Alright we agree. Give us the details on when this shit goes down."
"Excellent! Ozpin, I hope this works out."
"You know me Chief Nash, you can trust that this is the right decision you are making."
With that, the screen's projector shuts off disappearing back into nothingness. The group of 4 men start to walk off thinking it was all over and they could just go back to their normal routines but Ozpin had just one last thing to converse about with them. From under the table he grabs 4 huntsmen certification cards and tosses them onto the table gaining the attention of the men without any words.
Texas looks at Ozpin then onto the cards on the table, he grabs one with his name on it. On all the cards where their faces would be was the default floating ball over a half oval. In fact there was nearly no information about them other than their codenames because they never gave anything else about themselves other than their codenames, signatures and fingerprints to anybody. The men might as well be a mirage of mystery. There wwe however some other information such as the date when the card was issued, the unique huntsmen identification code, issuing authority, location of issue, bar code and their restrictions.
On all the cards their restrictions was class P. Did this mean they were the lowest level of authority a huntsmen could have? Usually alphabetical levels only went down to F or E but P seemed as far from the usual as kingdom come is to earth. "So Ozpin...what the fuck does class P mean?" Texas asks turning his card and pointing to class P engrained in his card at the restrictions section.
"Well here all kingdoms on remnant agreed to have a universal system of what huntsmen can and cannot do. This is the A to G system but for P, you are restricted to mission's with local authorities like police, forest service, security or military. Basically you are government auxiliaries."
The word government auxiliaries sounded off, it didn't sit well with the group but since taking missions was optional it didn't really matter plus it wasn't like they were clawing to get missions done. "Alright guess that's over then, better go visit mulberry for gear..." Everyone begins to leave and Ozpin just stares at them even as they enter the lift and as it descends. The whole thing was just straight creepy, something was up with this man but they weren't intent on finding out.