R&D rhymes with S&D [Hunt|pv Avery]

There wasn’t much to say about this forest. It was probably prettier in spring or summer, even more in fall, but in winter, it felt somewhat barren. Most of the trees lost their leaves and left behind a skeletal shape. Still, sometimes the snow would cover them or the ice would coat them and make things look pretty serene, pristine. So the forest still had its charm in every season, but Jet didn’t really like winter that much. At least lights were more on the higher spectrum than the lower one with all the white, but it was still somewhat annoying to Jet considering snow was very reflective. And god it was cold! Especially this day.

There was some light snow falling from the covered sky as he was walking through the forest to the rendezvous point with Avery. He had texted her with the location mentioned in the hunt he had signed up for, asking to investigate a certain threat zone of the forest close to the clearing. Apparently, multiple sightings of very powerful Grimms were reported in the area and reconnaissance was requested. The threat level still wasn’t that high, so the sightings probably didn’t have that much credibility even though it warranted a request to investigate it. The request was a Search and Destroy type, not a pure reconnaissance one, which was why Jet took it since he expected and desired a fight. This one promised either a fight of epic proportions or a slaughter fest with some lowly creeps or something. All in all, both were a good opportunity to test his weapon and Avery to try out her’s.

Checking the text he had sent, he made sure he had mentioned everything that was needed to be said.
“Hey Av! I just signed up for a search and destroy to test my weapon upgrade, thought you might want to join and see just how effective the changes to your weapon have been. I’m also curious to be honest. Show up if you’re interested and free! I sent you the infos for the request by mail, including location and everything that is known about what we’re looking for. Supposedly it’s big so shouldn’t be too hard to find. I’ll be there in around three hours, at 2 pm. See ya!”

Nodding to himself, he leaned on one of the trees and looked around. With the covered sky, his sight wasn’t too bad. Some of the trees still looked discolored and somewhat blurry, but he was seeing just fine for a fight. Considering the reports, Jet assumed it was probably either a Deathstalker or a King Taijitu that had been spotted. The sightings only talked about big Grimms and no one could really confirm there being more than one, just that it was big and looked powerful. So yeah with those information, Jet felt it safe to assume it was probably one of the two big non-aerial ones. Watching the time, he saw that it was only 1:30 pm. “Well, I guess I should try and find a way to warm myself a bit, I have some waiting ahead of me.”

So he upgraded his weapon too, huh? Avery flipped her phone close and leaned back against her chair, pondering over the message she just received. In all actuality, she was in no mood to go out especially with the gloomy weather outside; it was practically screaming of a nap! However, her curiosity was eating her. She had yet to see the guy's weapon and she did kind of owe him a favour for lending a hand with her upgrade. But more than that... 'search and destroy'. Now that's the type of fun she'd be up for. Pushing laziness aside, Avy hopped off her chair and went straight to the bathroom to prepare.

It didn't take long before she was speeding along the pathway of the woods in her black motorbike dressed in nothing but a sleeveless turtleneck, shorts, and knee-high boots - her typical hunting attire that allowed much freedom of movement and unlikelihood of catching her own clothing on fire. Spotting shades guy from a distance, she skidded into a halt next to him and looked at her watch. 1:30pm. Huh. He was early. So not only was he good at gadgets, he's someone who desired to improve evidenced by his weapon upgrade and he's punctual too. Avery was starting to find it hard to hate him, which ironically made her annoyed even more.

"Just so you know, I agreed to come because I'm bored, not that I owe you anything," Avery stated as she removed her helmet to let golden strands of hair cascade down her waist. "Also, I wield a gun and a bloody flamethrower so if you get in my way, that's on you."

Pressing the button of her keys, the bike sped as far away from battlefield as possible. Meanwhile, the girl adjusted the gun holsters on her waist and thigh to secure them in place. When she was sure the guy wasn't looking, Avery silently casted a glance at him, letting her gaze wander around his entirety as she searched for his weapon of choice. She was hoping it wasn't a close-range one. Avery already had a handful of accidental friendly fire with those due to her lack of awareness of her allies' positioning. It was the reason she refused to be in a team. Despite her words, harming someone in the middle of a hunt was something she disliked.

The large deathstalker went about its day, following its daily routine. lately there had been more hunters and civilians to play with, and so going this way had proven to be quite the jackpot for the hungry scorpion. However, today was different and thrown off balance. a slightly smaller, clingy deathstalker rode atop its bigger companion's back, as said bigger deathstalker had previously lost hope that it would leave any time soon. The bigger creature sometimes wore the mini version of itself, and sometimes it just tagged along with nothing better to do. It certainly was inconvenient, but it did not stop the Grimm from Continuing the walk, and eventually stumbling upon its next meal. As the hunters came into view, The deathstalker screeched, followed closely by the smaller monster, who screeched in the same whilst climbing off of the other beast's back. With pincers up, both deathstalkers were now ready for battle.

Jet smiled as he saw Avery arrive. He was glad she was available to come over. As much as she had a temper, she grew on him and Jet actually enjoyed some of the banters they had. At least, he was ready to consider her a friend even if maybe she wasn’t. She would probably deny it on the spot, even if she actually was considering him a friend. Such was how she seemed, charming in its own way.

With a constant smile, he waved off her comment about her owing him anything and nodded to her warning about not getting in her way. It was a good point. Jet was a melee fighter and she used guns as a primary weapon – ridiculously powerful guns – so the black haired guy had no intention of being on the receiving end of those. “Heh, no worries, I know how powerful those guns are and I'd rather not experience it directly. Though feel free to use that flamethrower close to me, it is pretty cold today.” Jet smiled widely at his not really funny joke. While he was saying that, he watched Avery command her motorcycle to go back to the school with a button. He watched the bike ride away on the trail with interest. “Oh, that’s pretty cool. You have a nice bike by the way. I don’t have that option on mine so I didn’t come here with it; I got dropped by a school Bullhead at the edge of the forest. We should have a race sometime! Could be fun.”

Turning back to his temporary partner, Jet lifted his right sleeve. It looked like he was wearing a scale bracer on his entire forearm. He looked at Avery while showing it off. “Before we find that thing, it would be important that you know a bit how I fight, since you probably don’t want to waste bullets on me. This is Drachenrüken, which can be translated to dragon’s spine.” Jet let the blade whip unfurl to about half the length available, spinning it once lazily on his right and letting the flat of the blades rest on his shoulder. “Not much to say about it, it’s a blade-whip. Last upgrade I did was just changing the blades now that I have access to better metal, still they cut better and all that stuff.”

As he was explaining, Jet heard a sound from further away on the other side of the clearing. Interrupted, Jet faced the clearing, squinting a bit. He could see movements in the distance somewhat and it did look big, the shape was a bit weird and Jet cursed his reduced vision at the moment. He could see a shape but not really what it was.  “Looks like something is coming over… I don’t see it well from this far but it does look big.” Then, the “thing” came out of the forest and Jet’s vision cleared up, one of the strangest thing could be seen. It DID look bigger, because there was TWO Deathstalkers, the smaller one riding on the bigger one. It was sort of cute in a way, had Deathstalkers been cute. “Huh… You don’t see that every day.” As Jet was talking, he absent-mindedly snapped a picture with his scroll, no one would believe him otherwise.

After freezing for a bit at the sight – and the cold – Jet finally snapped awake when the smaller Deathstalker climbed down from the bigger one, looking ready to fight. They were Deathstalker so he couldn’t take them too lightly, but they were pretty much on the small side, even the bigger one, so it was a bit underwhelming considering the assumptions the sightings made. “Well, guess that’s going to be a pretty quick weapon test. Since your firepower is way more than mine, I’ll try to give you an opening for a clear shot on the smaller one, I’m curious to see the damage you can do to it with one shot.”

Without waiting for an answer, Jet dashed to the two Deathstalkers, his weapon again completely coiled around his arm. As he got in range, he shot his arm forward in a whip-like fashion. The heavier blade at the tip of the chain shot forward, unfurling the chain as it goes, toward the bigger Deathstalker’s side, trying to force it to move sideways so to separate the two giant scorpions a bit more. Dodged, blocked or not, once the strike lost most of its momentum and started to fall, Jet followed the move with a quick full spin while still running, making a very wide move with his right arm mid spin. First pulled toward him, building momentum, the blades reacted to the wide arm movement and the chain followed a wide arc around him, coming to crash on the smaller Grimm with a lot of built up force. The tip overshot the target a bit, on purpose, so that it would wrap around the tail of the Grimm.

With a sharp pull to secure the hold, he started running to his target’s left side and slid under the pincer of the Grimm, his chain catching on it. Running behind the scorpion, Jet pulled as hard as he could, trying to use the hold he had to pull the pincer back and prevent the Deathstalker from covering its face with it, creating a nice target for Avery, while at the same time tightening the bladed noose on the tail, the sharp metal biting in it even deeper. One of the advantages of a blade-whip is that the more a trapped opponent struggle, the more it accumulates small very painful wounds. Though even if the tail was free, the blades that were in contact with the pincer would just slide on it like a chainsaw, still damaging it.

This wasn’t a move he’d try on the bigger one. Only because the Deathstalker was on the small side did he try this since he was literally trying to overpower it momentarily so Avery would have a clear shot. Even if all of that failed, the Grimm’s attention should be focused on him and not on the gunslinger.

Stuff:

Status:

Avery was not paying attention to what he was saying as she's too concentrated on locating his weapon until he mentioned something about a motorcycle. Now that sparked her interest and she looked up at him with a grin. "Heh. I'll take you up on that offer, kid. Did you catch a glimpse of the front of my bike? You should've, because the rear is all you're ever gonna see," she stated with enthusiasm. Anything that involved thrill and action always triggered her excitement.

Thereafter, when he was explaining his weapon, Avery nodded slightly. She wasn't completely tuning him out but she wasn't also fully focused. Interesting as his weapon was, he's still a melee fighter. Well, unlike before, her weapon now had a melee option as well, so maybe she could avoid accidentally shooting him? Maybe.

A rustling amidst their conversation caught Avery's attention and she turned to the sound. The gunslinger had enough hunt experience by now to differentiate grimm movements, particularly Deathstalkers. Not only did their size prove to be a huge disadvantage for sneak attacks, the characteristics clatters of their legs were usually a dead giveaway. One Deathstalker huh. This should be a piece of ca--

"Wha--?! Are you seeing this? Are you seeing this thing?!" Avery couldn't contain a laugh at the sight of a mini scorpion atop another. She whipped out her phone, grabbing the guy and taking a quick multi-shot selfie with the two of them and the Deathstalkers on the background. Since the little things weren't so much of a threat and the guy was already charging with his whip blade, Avy took the liberty to post the pictures on SNS, tagging Scarlett of course, and adding a few hashtags like #legit #nofilter #grimmhavefeelingstoo.

__________

Now then, to focus on battle. As much as they were adorable, they had to die. Facing the two scorpions, Avery dashed forward and took out her guns, immediately raining bullets on the bigger Deathstalker's eyes. It didn't matter if it shielded with its pincers; the guns were powerful enough to pierce through its exoskeleton. When Avery was near, she released her hold of the gun and they shifted into their flamethrower gauntlets, planning to use its recoil to push herself up atop the scorpion.

However, from the corner of her eyes she saw the guy restraining the other scorpion's claw leaving it open to her attack. In a split second, she changed the direction of her gauntlet. Her right arm aimed for a hook punch motion to the side of the bigger Deathstalker before releasing a fury of blue flames to the left side of its face. The jet propulsion of her gauntlet coupled with her natural light weight, propelled Avery towards the direction of the smaller Deathstalker.

She twisted her body and pulled back her left hand. Click. The barrel of her left gauntlet switched so the fire was now released to the back of the gauntlet. With the press of the trigger, she used her momentum from before and the weapon recoil to deliver a massive punch to the smaller scorpion's other pincer.

Battle Log:

It was definitely weird to stroll up to a pair of humans and instead of running or even attacking, they get excited and take out their devices. One pointed it at both the deathstalkers and herself and hit a button. Not sure what that did, but the two hunters seemed quite pleased with themselves. it really caught the bigger deathstalker off guard, so much so that it did not notice when the fighting started immediately afterward. Luckily for the scorpion beast, its adherent companion did. As the Male hunter threw its strange weapon toward his threats, The smaller creature of grimm grabbed the chain with a fierce pincer grip With the plan to throw him in the way of the oncoming bullet storm from the female hunter. This was quite the wake up call, and got the bigger Deathstalker fired up. It scurried forward to stab the thrown man with its massive yellow pincer, while the little one let go of his weapon and went for the gunslinger, snapping at her with sharpened pincers.

As Jet was flung in the air, there was only one thing on his mind : “That bastard ruined my moment!”
While annoyed, Jet wasn’t too afraid of the soon coming onslaught that he had been thrown in front of since he had quite a few options to change his flight path, one of which was as simple as using his semblance to pull himself forward with his metal bracer holding his weapon. Still, no need to spend aura on that. With a flick of his wrist the moment the chain was released, Jet embedded the blade chain in the frozen earth deep enough to hold on. Quickly reeling in the excess chain, he did a sharp pull and had himself change direction. It also had the added benefit of avoiding the stinger of the bigger Deathstalker that decided to attack him. Jet ignored the smaller one that was running toward Avery. It might seem more intelligent and fast then expected, but not especially strong or resistant. One or two good hit from Avy and it was history. Jet on his side turned toward the big one.

Since they seemed a bit less single-minded than he thought, he was going to change tactic. Jet reeled his weapon so that only a meter and a half was hanging. If they liked to grab on his weapon, he would go for a closer approach. Jet started building some momentum with his weapon, making it spin alternatively to his left and right. With his weapon spinning quickly, making it not only hard to catch again but risky since it would damage anything that tries to grab it or go through it to get to the wielder, the black haired man dashed to the Grimm and side stepped it just before getting in range of the pincers. There was no point in attacking the front of it where the armor was the thicker and where those pincers could also block. The Deathstalker was a pretty big type of Grimm, relatively fast too for its size, but there was still a limit at how fast a scorpion could spin around when something ran straight beside it while ready to avoid anything the Deathstalked might try to stop him from reaching it's relatively vulnerable side, not forgeting the fact his spinning blades made for a very effective protection against direct attack.

Once Jet was at the Grimm’s side, he spun on himself and kicked his chain, hitting the flat of the blades. This had the effect of making the blade pivot point change to the foot and change the momentum side-way. With a jump and spinning in the air once, Jet kicked in the direction of the Grimm with the foot that had caught the blade-chain, sending the tip sailing straight for one of the unprotected parts of the scorpion’s side, just under the white shell between two of the legs. Hit or not, Jet didn’t stop there, quickly doing a jump toward the back of the Grimm while releasing some more of his chain and making a whip like motion. The wave in the chain would hit the top of the leg and the tip would wrap around one of them. The moment he landed, Jet pulled his weapon back, hoping to cut one of the leg should the blades have coiled around one of them, and reeled it to the same length as before, making it spin again while retreating slightly toward the edge of the clearing and the trees, as well as away from Avery so that it turned its back toward her.

Stuff:

Status:

In that split second of a moment after she pressed the trigger, Avery felt her heart skip a beat at the sight of the guy hurling towards the direction of her bullets. These weren't like arrows or darts that could be seen by the naked eye, and for a moment she feared he'd add to the list of victims of her friendly fires. Fortunately he was skilled enough to manoeuvre himself away to safety. This caused her initial bullets to stay true to its path and connect with the bigger scorpion's eyes.

Avery now found herself the target of the smaller Deathstalker scurrying towards her with its pincers. How cute. Not only was the girl wielding a ranged weapon, she was also at a gunslinger's distance. She swiped a finger on top of the barrel to deactivate its limiter before raising it and firing a single bullet to the head of the attacking scorpion.

Now then, moving on. Avery walked to the bigger Deathstalker and stopped at a good distance. Whether Jet succeeded on his attacks or not, or whether the bloody scorpion threw him towards her again, Avy would dodge it before opening fire on the grimm's body.

Battle Log:

Jet’s seemed to have been right, the Deathstalker wasn’t able to turn to face him fast enough, probably helped by the fact it took a full face of Avery’s bullets, the ones he was thrown in front of before he pulled himself away. The pierce attack went through the soft black flesh of the scorpion’s side. The follow up slash cut clean through the first leg before the chain wrapped itself around the other legs. The last pull squeezed and sawed through the remaining legs, making the Deathstalker fall on its side, slowly dying from its injuries.

Reeling his weapon in, Jet turned to see how Avery was doing. He wasn’t really surprised to find the Grimm already a slowly dissolving carcass. “Well, that went well. I like my new blades on my weapon, they cut nicely and they weren’t even nicked by any of that. Though, please try to forget the picture of me being flung around like a rag doll, that wasn’t my brightest moment.”

Turning toward the forest, Jet started walking. “Well that was fun! Tell me when you’re ready to lose and we’ll have that race! See ya!”

[Jet exits]

The Deathstalkers were nothing but toddlers so it didn't come as a surprise to the blonde gunslinger that the scorpions received the full blow of her bullets. She gazed nonchalantly as the other dude in sunglasses was able to wrap up his own grimm as well with the use of his weird blade whip thing. Not bad. Though due to how short the hunt was, she internally wanted to see more of his fighting style. It was the first time she'd met someone using such a weapon so of course it's normal to feel curious.

Nevertheless, she responded to his statement with a casual shrug. Sparing a glance at her watch, she noted it was almost time for lunch so she had to head back. As she turned around to leave, she heard the guy's parting message and she paused, her eyebrow twitching and she turned to shoot a glare at the offender.

"I beg your pardon? she muttered, though the guy was already too far. She scoffed. "The nerve. Just so you know, my bike will leave your lame scrap metal in the dust! Psh."

And with that she turned around and left.

[exit]

3000 exp and 875 (+88 more for av) rewarded each