Debauchery Hunter 16 (Patreon)

Debauchery Hunter
Chapter 16

-VB-

"So cool…"

With her face pressed against the glasses, her excited eyes roamed across the dozen or so weapons on display.

Ruby knew she wanted to disassemble every single one of these super advanced guns to work out how they operated.

But she wasn't a rich schoolgirl.

'None of them are mecha-shift, though,' she thought despondently as she pried herself off of the display glass.

Just like everyone, she came to learn about this new business that claimed to come from another world (which made them an alien!). They built a huge warehouse-like shop just outside the city and began businessing(?).

And they had weapons with designs and mechanisms she's never seen before. On this alone, she believed whatever they said about their origins.

Who knew that you can shoot bullets without dust? She didn't, but it was apparently the norm for most human and humanoid worlds!

So cool.

"You're going to crack the glass if you press down on it that hard."

She froze and turned.

It was a familiar face.

"Wait, aren't you the clerk over at the grocery store?" she asked him with a raised eyebrow. Calling it a grocery store was kind of understating it, and she knew it. Even a brief cursory look showed her a myriad of spices and food products that she had never seen or heard of. It was an exotic store that had the chefs of Vale in an arms(food) race.

"No, I'm the owner," he said before jerking a thumb over at the cashier of the weapons store she was in… and he had the same face. She blinked and then opened her mouth, but stopped when she saw another same faced person moving about in scary and dark full armor and arms. Then she saw more!

"You're quintuplets?!"

"No, we're clones," he hummed. "Also, that gun is horrible."

Her eyes snapped back to the display.

"What exactly are you looking for?"

She wilted. "Ah. I'm just … window shopping."

"Don't worry. You want to be a huntsmen, right? But aren't one yet?"

She nodded.

"Well, I can bring you over to the gun range and see if you like anything. You might not be able to buy anything, but it's a good idea to know what you want to buy. We won't charge you to use the range."

She grinned. "Really?!"

"Really. Follow me."

Four hours later, Ruby left the shop with a grinning smile after testing out nearly two dozen weapons and knew what she wanted to buy.

Alan really helped her out, too. Making sure she got the right grip on the guns and everything. He was really hands on about gun safety, even though she probably knew more about it than he did.

Her baby Crescent Rose was a very dangerous baby, after all!

In fact, she knew and showed enough that he offered her a job!

And if she saved enough money, then she might be able to buy that plasma sword…

Crescent Rose with plasma edge…

Hmm… mama want.

-VB-

So… yes.

We didn’t expect Ruby Rose to come to our doorstep. In hindsight, setting up an exotic weapons shop proved to be an excellent draw.

Hey, we weren’t complaining. She proved to be as cute as a button in reality as she was in the series, and … I may have actually prevented her from going to Beacon.

We snapped the Valean newspaper, “Vale Chronicles,” open with a sharp crack of paper, and read about the city’s most infamous thief working with the White Fang, a local and rather decentralized terrorist organization, to carry off a shop’s worth of dust.

Yeah, so we had Ruby all to ourselves. Well, when she wasn’t going back home after work and studying at school.

We could have, you know, used [Cherish] and made her our first woman on Remnant, but unlike the Academy City we cared very little about, we conducted business here. We didn’t shit where we sleep; that’s just good business.

No, if we wanted her, then we needed to reel her in the traditional way and only a tad bit of [Cherish] so that whatever happens doesn’t seem out of place.

‘Yeah, don’t think we don’t notice you sneaking looks, Ruby,’ we thought with chuckles shared among us when we noticed for the third time today. We saw her attraction towards us, nothing serious or big, and tweaked it a little, increasing her feelings just a bit more.

We very much intended to "romance" her.

“How are you liking the work so far?” we asked her. While we didn’t strictly need employees as we had more than enough clones to cover all jobs, we decided that allotting clones to delegatable low skill jobs was a waste.

She turned and looked at me after bagging the latest customer’s purchases. “I-I guess I’m doing okay?” she replied uncertainly with a quivering lips. “I’m just trying to get used to using this cashier machine.”

“It’s called a point-of-sale system,” we replied. “Also you gave him a hundred lien more.”

Her face paled a little. “A-Ah. I’llgogetit!”

We caught her before she could leave, which was only possible because we’ve forbidden any use of Semblance in our trade outpost. Semblances came in all shapes, forms, and intensities. It made for a very interesting time brainstorming and developing generalized defenses against potential hazards capable of being caused by the huntsmen and their semblances.

“It’s only a hundred liens. We're just telling you to don't make a simple mistake like that," we hummed before giving a head pat, which she received with only a little bit of pouty indignity. "Say, do you want to grab lunch with me?"

And there was her attraction again. We pumped its intensity, and watched it smoulder inside of her like a kindling.

"YesIwouldverymuchliketha-!"

"Breathe, girl. It's only a date."

She choked on air as her cheeks blushed. "Y-you're asking me out on a d-d-date?"

"Yes."

"But we only knew each other for-! Aren't we coworkers right now? I mean boss and employee?!"

"We never needed those rules so we don't have them. Do you not want to?"

"No, I do!"

Ah. There she goes blushing again. We really liked her honesty.

Speaking of which, this would be my first proper date since Golden Morning. Huh.

-VB-

Back on Earth Malachite and our little kingdom in the Alps, we came face to face with an irritating situation.

See, we expected the Germans to attack us after mobilizing.

We completely forgot about mercenaries.

Our hidden watch posts saw them sneak into our controlled valleys in the dead of the night from the north. Alarmed, twelve of us ran out of the nearest fortified towers with silenced assault rifles and blackout gears to hide us in the dark. We tracked them down to a small dip between two ridges in the valley walls.

They had weapons, armors, and a lot of arrows.

"Halt."

They froze and turned to face one of us with their swords drawn. They only saw twelve of us.

"You come into my kingdom in the dead of the night armed to the teeth," we boomed. "State your intentions!"

"There's only twelve of them. Kill them all!" the tallest and most armored man who had to be the leader shouted. "Don't let them live to report back on our presence."

Oh, so was that it?

Wordlessly, we hefted up our rifles and fired.

Bullets shredded their armors - cloth, leather, and chain mail - and punched through their bodies. Some screamed and fell while others died immediately as bullets shattered their skulls and brains.

We opened portals and twelve more clones waiting to join the fight did just that, but appeared on top of two ridges on either side of the mercenaries.

We didn't even bother with more bullets.

Pulling out grenades, each of us on the ridges pulled off the pins and tossed them into the panicking and screaming mercenaries. Explosions ripped people apart, and shrapnels shredded those who hadn't been touched by the explosions and previous gunfire.

Without uttering a single word, we moved in. All still living mercenaries got dragged away from the skirmish site. All bodies, dead and alive, were searched.

We all felt C39 touch paper in the inner breast pocket of one of the better armed and armored mercenaries. C39 pulled it out and turned on the weapon flashlights to read it.

It was the mercenary contract, signed between Tancred the Tall and

Henry V the Duke of Bavaria.

He probably thought he did something smart sending mercenaries to cause havoc by giving them free reign to do whatever it was they wanted, as stated in the contract, but all it did was piss us off.

We would have Henry V humiliated and begging us for mercy by the end of the month!

Back in our fortresses scattered throughout Melago valley and Zerzer Tal valley, clones working on non-essential tasks rose up as one, portaled to the armory, geared up, and portaled to the skirmish site where the first twenty-four waited.

As for the mercenaries…

C16 turned to the captured mercenaries with the assault rifle tip raised up and silencer on. The mercenaries saw us moving with lethal intent and began to clamour for mercy.

Mercenaries allowed free reign on enemy territory only meant one thing: looting.

C16 fired.