Chapter 17: Sidetracked

"Weiss, come on. The grinder isn't going anywhere. We can use it some other time.", Ruby whined, childishly tugging the white haired girl's arm as she threw another set of gear into the machine.

"Not until it gives me something useful.", Weiss declared, frowning at the machine's lack of cooperation as its bottom tray opened to reveal yet another shoddy bandit made submachinegun.

"I was going to suggest poker night, but.." Yang trailed off, seeing Weiss's rocky relationship with lady luck.

"Rrrrgh!", she seethed. "Fine, just let me… calm down…. And… there.", Weiss said, shaking her head to dispel any more ill will directed at the accursed contraption. "What did you have in mind?", she asked.

"Uhh, since the trail has kinda gone cold I was thinking we could take a break and do side jobs", Ruby suggested, pulling out her ECHO, which had notes for all the side jobs available. "We could help Jaune and his friends with hunting rare creatures in Aegrus."

"Next", Yang groaned, far from eager to trudge through the mud again.

"We can… meet with Oobleck at Newer Haven and help him with one of his expeditions."

"Maybe…", Yang noted.

"There's a job from… Torgue?..", Ruby read from her ECHO "Weird, I don't remember where I picked this up. There's a message attached too.", she commented, pressing a button on her ECHO to play the message.

...and immediately recoiled as the ECHO device screamed out the message as loud as it possibly could before Ruby's hand shot towards the volume dial to bring it down to a bearable level.

"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING LISTENER! IS IT MORNING WHERE YOU'RE LISTENING TO THIS?! ACTUALLY DON'T ANSWER THAT QUESTION IT'S NOT IMPORTANT FOR SH***. I BET YOU'RE LISTENING AND WONDERING: "WHY THE F*** IS THIS MIRACULOUSLY MUSCULAR MUSTACHIOED SPECIMEN OF MASCULINITY YELLING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS AND TRANSMITTING IT TO PANDORA?!" GOOOOOD QUESTION! I AM MISTER TORGUE HIGH FIVE FLEXINGTON, AND I HAVE A JOOOOOOOOOOB MOTHERF*****! WELL, I DON'T HAVE A JOB, I GOT FIRED! PROBLEM IS, MY COMPANY IS IN THE S****** WITHOUT ME, WHICH, HUUUUUGE SHOCK, KIND OF HAPPENS WHEN THEY FIRE THEIR FOUNDER AND HEAD DESIGNER OF ALL THEIR F****** WEAPONS! SO IT'S UP TO ME TO BAIL THEIR DUMB ASSES OUT OF THE MESS THEY GOT THEMSELVES INTO, AND WHAT BETTER WAY TO DO IT THAN BY HIRING THE BADASSES OF PANDORA AM I RIGHT?! I COULD HAVE GONE TO LITERALLY ANY OTHER PLANET AND ITS GAGGLE OF MERCENARIES, BUT I CHOSE YOU, PANDORA! AND NOT BECAUSE THIS IS STRAIGHT UP ILLEGAL, NOPE, NOT BECAUSE OF THAT, BUT BECAUSE I HAD A GREAT TIME WITH MY TOURNAMENT AT THE BADASS CRATER OF BADASSITUDE!

"Is he just gonna keep yelling or does he actually have a job?", Blake deadpanned, growing tired of the incessant yelling.

"BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME, THIS BROADCAST IS ABOUT YOU, FACELESS LISTENER! YOU'VE LISTENED UP TO THIS POINT BECAUSE YOU WANT TO KICK ASS AND GET PAID, WHICH IS SOMETHING I FIND HIGHLY RESPECTABLE! SO I AM ASKING YOU TO HELP THE TORGUE CORPORATION GET BACK ON ITS FEET AND CONTINUE ITS RIGHTEOUS DUTY OF MAKING EXPLOSIONS! HOW? GETTING SOME GROUND IS A GREAT START! HEAD ON DOWN TO THE BADASS CRATER OF BADASSITUDE AND CLEAR OUT THE CRAP SO I CAN MAKE IT A FUNCTIONING TORGUE FACILITY AGAIN! SOUND GOOD? OF COURSE IT DOES, I WILL PAY YOU! TOODLES!", the broadcast ended, after which Ruby looked towards her three companions. "That sounds fun doesn't it?", Ruby suggested.

"Crass as they may be, being owed a favor by a corporation is… oooh. I like it.", Weiss declared, rubbing her hands together with a greedy grin on her face. "I'm in."

"It's not a bad idea, but what about the vault? We could be picking up more clues about it and this sounds like it'll take a while", Blake argued.

"Well the guy sounded like he was high up, I'm sure he'll pay us plenty and we can have an easier time with the vault afterward.", Ruby countered. "If a robot designed for looking for vaults hasn't found it I don't think anyone else will beat us to it.", she elaborated.

"You do have a point, but if someone gets a head start on the vault I reserve the right to say 'I told you so'", Blake conceded, earning a shrug from Ruby.

"Well it's a good thing I was for this at the start, looks like we're all in, right?", Yang commented.

"Yup, now where's the fast travel station around here?", Ruby muttered to herself.

…..

Meanwhile in Aegrus, Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren had listened to the exact same broadcast while in the middle of taking down an especially large pink borok which was on the list of rare creatures to hunt, its pained roars punctuated with a sharp downward thrust of Pyrrha's spear into its skull.

"WE CAN HELP MISTER TORGUE! WE HAVE TO GO WE HAVE TO GO WE HAVE TO GO WE HAVE TO GO!", Nora yelled, getting on her knees and putting her hands together in front of Ren as if to beg. "Pleeeease?"

"We may not be done with the hunt…", Ren trailed off, taking a moment to look at Nora, who had the same begging face on, and then at Jaune and Pyrrha, who both shrugged as if to say "works for me", before continuing "sure, we can take this job."

"Alright!", Nora cheered, before beginning to babble about how much she loves Torgue gear as the four walked back to the lodge to take the attached fast travel station to the coordinates given by the broadcast.

….

"Eugh, I can smell the sulfur and gunpowder all the way from here", Weiss commented, her nose wrinkling at the odor as she appeared at the "Badass Crater of Badassitude"'s fast travel station. "Whatever is going on in there it must be a madhouse."

"To be fair, the whole planet is a madhouse", Blake countered. "Not exactly an ideal tourist destination."

"Well at least there's no regulations on mercenary work.", Yang said, trying to look on the bright side.

"There's no regulations at all.", Blake elaborated.

"There's probably worse", Ruby said. "Besides, I think we're either getting another broadcast from that Torgue guy or-"

"OH HEY! IT'S ME AGAIN! IF YOU'RE LISTENING TO THIS YOU'RE IN RANGE OF THE BROADCAST TOWER AT THE CRATER, WHICH MEANS YOU'VE ACCEPTED MY JOB OFFER! GET ON OVER TO A PLACE CALLED THE BEATDOWN AND WE CAN GET TO BUSINESS!" Mister Torgue yelled, again at the top of his lungs, as a new coordinate was marked on everyone's ECHO device.

Soon after Torgue's announcement, another flash of light appeared from the fast travel station and faded to reveal Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren.

"Oh hey! I didn't know you four were coming too!", Ruby exclaimed, her hands up to greet the four.

"I guess that means we get to work together again.", Jaune shrugged. "Have you worked with this Torgue guy before?"

"No, but Yang has a ton of Torgue stuff, so nice coincidence for her, I guess", Ruby replied, turning to see Yang and Nora chattering about their shared love of explosions and the corporation that was all about explosions while Weiss and Pyrrha walked off to look for a Catch-A-Ride station.

Soon after Torgue came on to the ECHO again, saying "OH, I THINK I SHOULD MENTION THAT THIS WHOLE AREA IS BANDIT INFESTED AS SH**, SINCE YOU ACCEPTED MY JOB OFFER THAT'S PROBABLY NO BIG DEAL, BUT I'M COVERING MY BASES BECAUSE GETTING SUED F****NG SUCKS! BELIEVE ME I WOULD KNOW!

"How 'bandit infested did he mean-' AAH!", Weiss tried to ask, before ducking under a thrown grenade and watching it explode as she turned to Yang in the driver's seat of the technical. "Get ready to start dodging."

"Alright, hold onto your hats!", Yang exclaimed, before realizing that neither her, nor her passengers brought anything that could even begin to function as a hat. "Er, you know what I mean.", she muttered, before swerving out of the way of another grenade.

"I'M A GAZELLE, OINK!", one of the psychos on the road yelled before his face met the bumper of Yang's car as she was dodging the grenade.

…

"Do they always have to bunch up right outside where I park?", Yang complained, seeing the gaggle of bandits dotted around the derelict inner city area that comprised the beatdown.

"You can park further away, can't you?", Blake asked, confused at Yang's complaint.

"Not my point. Well, good a time as any to try this new thing out", the brawler mused, pulling out the Unkempt Harold and firing a test shot at an oblivious bandit. The bullets fired fanned out into its trademark line, heavily wounding the targeted bandit, but leaving the remaining seven bullets to fly off into the distance.

"Oh, right", Yang realized, forgetting the gun's special feature and drawing the attention of the other bandits, earning perplexed stares from the other three vault hunters. "Don't look at me! Were we seriously going to try to sneak past them?", Yang asked defensively.

"It's no big deal, let me just line these guys up and…", three sharp cracks cut Ruby off, as the three bruisers she happened to have in her sights collapsed on to the ground before a blur of bronze and crimson dropped down before quickly rushing to the side behind a wall to wave at her.

"Pyrrha!", Ruby exclaimed. "Where's the other three?", she asked before catching a sniper in her peripheral vision and firing off a quick shot for suppressing fire while Yang, Blake, and Weiss carried on fighting the mass of irate hooligans, the fight peppered with grunts and cries of nonsense such as "THAT'S MY WAFFLE!", "NOT KNITTING!", or "WAIT IN THE CAR, BRIAN!".

"They're here. Oh by the way, duck!", Pyrrha yelled with her ECHO activated, prompting the vault hunters of team RWBY to seek cover, which cleared way for a handful of grenades to bounce over and blast a chunk of the bandits to smithereens while the sniper Ruby was suppressing fell off his vantage point and received a spray of machine pistol fire for his troubles and one last straggler fell to the distinct thunk thunk thunk of a Jakobs rifle. Once the coast cleared, Ren dropped down from the sniper's perch, Nora came running from behind a building in the distance and Jaune revealed himself from behind a closer building.

"That's one way to make an entrance.", Blake commented.

"You didn't think we'd let you guys have our fill did ya?", Nora asked, her too-wide smile on again.

"This job ought to be easier if we go together, shouldn't it?" Ren asked.

"Uhh, yeah, you're right. I was just thinking we'd get sent to different places or whatever.", Ruby explained, looking at her ECHO for the marked coordinates. "Pyro Pete's Bar?"

"Yep, same thing on mine.", Jaune chimed in. "Let's hope the pay is good."

….

The eight vault hunters entered the bar, taking in the distinct stench of sweat, alcohol, gunpowder, and rotted wood before Mister Torgue screamed into their ECHOs again.

"I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU IN ADVANCE, BUT I FORGOT TO TELL YOU I'M NOT ACTUALLY AT THE CRATER, I AM CURRENTLY IN ONE OF MY UNREGISTERED SUMMER HOUSES GRILLING UP SOME SICK ASS STEAKS, IDEALLY WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF INTERPLANETARY AUTHORITIES! JUST LOOK ON THE BOUNTY BOARD TO YOUR LEFT AND THE JOB DESCRIPTION IS ON THERE! ALSO SOME OF THE GUYS AROUND HERE SHOULD HAVE SOME TORGUE TOKENS TO MAKE THE VENDING MACHINES WORK, THAT WILL PROBABLY BE IMPORTANT LATER! BYE!"

"Well he's nothing if not enthusiastic", Blake deadpanned, pulling a crumpled sheet of paper from the bounty board with a childlike scrawl that said "TAK BAK FORGE, CLEER OUT BANDITS, DICK AROUND IN THE BAR, EXPLOSIONS!"

"Well what's it say, Blakey?", Yang asks, looking over her shoulder.

"Something about a forge, and to screw around in the bar.", Blake answered, a frown forming at what she assumed (but genuinely hoped was not) to be Mister Torgue's handwriting.

"WHOOPS! RIGHT, THE FORGE! I SHOULD MARK THAT ON YOUR ECHO!", Mister Torgue realized, "GUITAR SOLO! MEEEDLELY SQUBABLYLBOWWW! THERE WE GO, NOW LEMME GET BACK TO THESE AMAZING- AW SH** MY STEAKS BURNED! WELL YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY, SEVENTH TIME'S THE CHARM!", Mister Torgue exclaimed, before he turned off his ECHO.

"Sooo… what?", Jaune asked, confused at the eccentric yelling.

"Our real job is at the Forge, but apparently part of our job is to go to the bar.", Pyrrha replied, equally confused.

"I don't know what you slowpokes are waiting for, we're getting paid to go to a bar!", Nora yelled, kicking the double doors open, only to see a variety of bandits, psychos, and stranded Torgue employees staring back at her, all apparently itching to mash their various melee weapons into something and shoot their various guns.

Weiss, looking at the crowd, and Nora's eager expression, sighed and put the fingers of one hand to her temples.

"Just once I'd like to go a day without wading through bodily fluids.", she muttered to herself, checking Myrtenaster's chambers and scoping out the bar for good places to form a glyph.

Blake said nothing, not that her decoy could say anything as it faded away, the real Blake appearing clinging to the ceiling and watching over Nora.

"Oh good! I was getting bored", Yang boasted. "ENTERTAIN ME!", she yelled, rushing up next to Nora.

"You lead, I watch your back?", Jaune asked Pyrrha, watching as her shield unfolded and she held her rifle to use as a sword.

"Sounds like a plan", she agreed, assuming a defensive stance and joining Yang and Nora.

Ruby, hanging back at the top of the stairwell, unfolded the blade on Crescent Rose.

Get in bar fights and get paid for it? What's not to like?

END OF CHAPTER 17:

A/N: Bonus points for anyone who gets what the psychos are referencing with their yelling (all but one is referencing one thing)