ZONE 12 HEADQUARTERS, KINGDOM OF VALE

TALTOS

'Guests first'. That sounded ominous, Ruby's smile notwithstanding. Of course, it seemed rather apt when I saw the buxom blonde standing over a guy in the lower half of some fatigues and a tank top. I quickly looked over my shoulder to make sure Ruby wasn't locking me in with some crazy-strong girl and took a short sigh of relief when she followed me in.

"Give me a sec, I'll be right with you!"

I looked back at the ring where this blonde was dominating this guy, only to see her pick him up like he weighed the same as a pillow and drop him off the side of the ring onto the floor below. She leaned on the ropes until the guy she'd beaten got up, then she grabbed a jacket from one of the corners.

"Good fight, Cole! Maybe next time you'll actually win some money!"

She ducked between the ropes, walking across the gym to us. "So, Rubes, who's the guy? You didn't find a boyfriend, did you? Because you know what I'd have to do then."

If there were any doubts in my mind about these two being sisters - and the fact that one of them was short, red-haired and , while the other was boisterous, buxom, tall and blond gave me plenty - that opening quip put many of them to bed.

"Yang! He's not my boyfriend!" Ruby's face was a mixture of annoyed and embarrassed. They were definitely sisters. If they weren't, they were so close they may as well have been.

"I'm Taltos, the guy who was brought in from the anomaly this morning."

I thought I should handle my own part of this conversation. If I didn't, I ran the risk of getting caught in sibling teasing that I had no business being part of. "You are…?"

She stuck out a hand and I could feel the heat coming off her. It's cliché to say 'is it hot in here, or is it just me', but I can guarantee she was heating up the room. "Yang's my name, Huntressing's my game. Nice to meet you, Taltos."

I shook her hand and squeezed. Nothing like getting a measure for someone's strength than in a handshake. I was swiftly made to realise my screw-up when she squeezed back and nearly broke my hand. "The pleasure's mine, Yang."

A lie; there wasn't much I find pleasurable about being physically outmatched by a girl years younger than I was, but what was I going to say?

"So, what brings you to Remnant, Taltos?" She shrugged on her jacket and buttoned it up over her neck, giving me the chance to properly look her up and down.

Her jacket was over a cream-coloured top, which itself was over a black undershirt, but I couldn't see any pockets or anything on the tops themselves - strange, considering that Weiss and Ruby both had easily-accessible pockets or pouches to store things on their outfits; in fact, I'd say her outfit was the least practical of the four I'd seen at so far.

Ruby's clothes seemed fitting for long periods out in the field, where resupply might not be an option; Weiss' clothes, or what little I could see of them past the coat, seemed to support her being in cold environments more often than not; but Yang's just seemed to prioritise how they looked over how they worked. That said, she only really seemed to be wearing clothes on her top half; the bottom was thigh-height stockings, held in place by what looked like suspenders connecting to something under her top, and a pair of combat boots. The shoes were practical, which was nice, the girls at least rated three for four on 'shoes that would work in a fight'. Not surprising that two of the ones that passed were sisters - I'd imagine they both had some effect on how the other dressed.

"Truthfully, I don't know. I was dragged into a portal in the Zone and now I'm here, on a military base where four twenty-something year-old girls appear to have free reign of the place."

"Yep. That's pretty much how it is. So, this 'Zone' place, what's that like?"

Strange question, but I guessed it might've been some custom here to ask. "Uh… it's complicated. I can't really be more specific than that."

It can't be that hard to explain; it's a place, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's a place, but it's not a place where everything makes sense."

She chuckled and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really? Remnant's got an entire species dedicated to wiping out humans and Faunus. Tell me how that makes sense."

This was a moment where I was thankful I'd played some video games; one of the ones I'd played - an old turn-based game - had that exact thing as a plot point. "Is Remnant alive? Can it think?"

Her smile turned into a disbelieving smirk. "A planet? Thinking? Are you serious?"

"Well, that's one explanation for your anti-human animals. Remnant's alive and it looks at you as an infestation. The creatures you're fighting are like its immune system."

"Yeah, we've heard that one before," She looked at Ruby for help answering. "Mistral, right? That one cult that said we were a 'blight on the planet'?"

"That was the suicide cult, right?"

"Yeah, I think; 'The Blinded' or something." Yang nodded at me. "So, what about your Zone doesn't make sense?"

Where to start? The anomalies, the mutants, the Brain Scorcher, the military; there was a lot that didn't make any sense at all. "How much time have we got, and is there somewhere comfortable to sit? I don't want to stand around for a few hours talking about how crazy the Zone can be."

She shot a glance to Ruby; it would seem that she was in charge more than I thought.

"We're here until our replacements show up, so I guess we've got time. But, I really want to see how Taltos' gear works. After I've seen that, we can talk about the weird things. Sound okay to you?"

"His gear was all the stuff I saw being brought into the armory, right? Yeah, that looked a little strange as well. Room for one more?"

Ruby snorted. "I'm not going to stop you. It'd be like saying you couldn't go to a museum or something, and I'm not that mean. You're fine watching him?"

"Yeah, but why? You're not coming with us?"

"I'll meet you guys there! Bye!" Ruby's voice seemed strangely further away than it should've been, but turning to where she stood showed nothing but a small rain of rose petals.

"Yang… what the hell just happened?"

She looked at me like I'd just asked her why the sky was blue, but then the fact that I wasn't from Remnant seemed to hit her.

"You don't know what a Semblance is, do you? Sorry, 'dropping out of the sky' is part of Hunter training; we tend to know these things." She stooped and picked up one of the petals from the ground, showing it to me.

"See these? Ruby's Semblance is Speed. She can move really fast. The only way you can tell she's using it is because of these petals; if she's leaving petals behind, she's using her Semblance. If she's not, then she's moving at normal speed. Made hide'n'seek really easy when we were kids." She sighed and let the petal drop from her fingers, a frown crossing her lips for a moment.

"Tough times back then?"

"You could say that. Let's head for the armory."

I nodded and waved for her to lead the way. As far as I was aware, I was still under guard, not to be left alone under any circumstances.

We had barely left the gym when Yang spoke up again.

"You know, just because Ruby's not here doesn't mean you can't tell me what the Zone's like."

"Figured I'd save on repeating myself and just tell you all when I need to."

"Oh yeah? I didn't know you'd need to tell us."

"Some 'Professor Goodwitch' signed off on a plan to follow me back to the Zone to find out if the portals I came through are coming from there. From what I can tell, it's your team that's coming back with me and, much as I'd love to throw you all in blind - get the authentic Zone experience - you're all just good-looking enough that I'd feel bad if I wound up hurting any of you by not giving you fair warning."

She raised a hand to her chest in mock injury. "Just good-looking enough? I'm hurt."

"Hey, you're not bad-looking; I've just seen hotter."

She laughed at that. "I doubt it."

"You'd be surprised. So, do you still want to hear about the Zone, or can you wait?"

Yang pulled a device out of… I'm not sure where, and looked at something on the screen.

"Eh, it'd be a long quiet walk to the armory if you didn't tell me a little about it. Maybe how it came to be or something, if you're so concerned about repeating yourself."

"Great. Ask me the difficult questions."

She shot me a cocky smile. "That tricky, huh?"

I shook my head. "It's the one thing I don't know much more about than your average history book. 'Finding out how the Zone happened' and 'not getting killed by everything in the Zone' don't exactly meet anywhere."

"Uh-huh. So, what do you know?"

I chuckled. This seemed like the only time that question had been asked today where some deeper meaning wasn't hidden behind it. "That's the question of the day, isn't it? Want me to start from 'where did the Zone come from' or 'how did the Zone form'?"

"Which one do you know better? We're still a way from the armory."

I rubbed my chin in thought. I'd heard a lot of stories about how 'the Zone' came to be, but I had more concrete knowledge about what the Zone was before, well, it became the Zone.

"Alright, let's start with 'how did it form'. You've got nuclear power here, right?"

She shot me a quizzical look, which made me question exactly how advanced things were in Remnant.

"I'll take that as a no. Nuclear power is the reacting of radioactive materials in a container to create heat, which boils water that turns into steam that turns turbines. When things go wrong in these containers - which are called reactors - they explode, unless they are controlled with rods, which interrupt the reactions and prevent the material from destabilizing. Does that make sense?"

"Is it important?"

"You could say it is. April 26, 1986. The V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station's Reactor Number 4 was undergoing a systems test. They attempted to shut down the reactor for the test, only for a sudden spike in output to happen. They then tried to use the emergency shutdown, lowering all the control rods - all made of graphite - into the reactor. That made things worse. There were explosions in the reactor, then the graphite was exposed to air. It caught fire and blew up as well, shooting tons of fallout into the sky. Fallout is radioactive dust and ash from a nuclear explosion, in case you didn't know."

"The bits of graphite and everything else that was on fire blew over to Reactor 3, setting the roof on fire. Now, Reactor 3 hadn't failed, so priority was keeping that online. The guy who was running the night shift on Reactor 3 wanted it shut down, but he couldn't make the call without approval from the chief engineer. As a result, the people there were given gas masks and anti-radiation pills and told to keep working."

"While a reactor was on fire next to them? That's crazy."

"Yep. Welcome to the Soviet Union, where your well-being is nothing compared to the state. Which, unfortunately, was the way things went for the firefighters and the residents of the town of Pripyat. The firefighters were dispatched with nothing to protect them from radiation, while the people of Pripyat weren't evacuated until a day after the explosion. By that stage, people were vomiting, complaining of headaches, coughing; basically low-level radiation sickness. They were told that an 'accident' had taken place at the plant, but that they would only be gone for a few days."

"I guess they weren't gone for that long?"

"Longer. When I got brought here, the Zone had been around for twenty-four years. It wasn't always as big as it was when I was there, but it was pretty big. Its first iteration was ten kilometers. Days later, it was expanded to thirty kilometers. Twenty years later, it grew another five kilometers after an explosion vaporized everyone in the original thirty kilometers."

Yang looked at me in disbelief. Evidently, even if she wasn't familiar with nuclear power, she was familiar with the concept of things being vaporised.

"Ridiculous, isn't it? It gets better. Teams that went in to find out what happened - before they knew everyone got vaporized - found that all of the animal life in the Zone was more or less unaffected by this blast. It wiped out people alone. To add to it, these explosions became more regular. Every few months kind of event, but not as powerful as the first one. People could survive those ones. When I got there, these blasts - called 'Emissions' - had expanded the Zone to sixty kilometers and happened about twice a week. All centered on the old NPP."

Yang nodded slowly. I wouldn't have been surprised if the information was a little tricky to remember. "Seems like a pretty bad place. Why go back?"

Ah, an easy question. A personal one, but it's not a history question. "That's a long story. In a word: it's home. It's where I can find friends and safety, but at the same time the thrill of the unknown is literally never further than a day's walk from you. You can't find that kind of… that kind of environment anywhere else."

Yang chuckled at my answer. It wasn't a derisive chuckle, so she evidently understood the sentiment. "You'd fit right in as a Huntsman here. That's basically life on Remnant."

I wasn't sure what she meant by that; she might've been remarking on the way of life, but it's just as likely she could've been trying to get me to admit the Zone was no place to live. "Thanks for trying to sell me on this place, but I'm happy with my sixty kilometers of Hell."

She smiled. "Wasn't saying you weren't."

Something on her clothes beeped and she pulled out a device like what Blake had in Comms. The general look and shape of them - rectangular, grey, kind of like a phone - reminded me of the PDAs that everyone had in the Zone. God knows where they came from, but whichever tech company they belonged to must be making a fortune selling them to Sidorovich.

She shook her head wearily as she read the message on the screen. "We should stop talking and move a little faster. Ruby's getting antsy about your things."

"Why's she 'antsy' about my gear? I thought it was obsolete here."

She looked at me with a confused expression. "Ruby didn't tell you? She's a fan of weapons; a huge fan of them. You've seen Crescent Rose, her scythe?"

"Yes… where is this going?" The weapon was still fresh in my mind, not least because it was almost half again as big as Ruby was yet she could wave it around like it was made of plastic.

"She made that herself. It's also a sniper rifle. Guaranteed to punch through four inches of steel, or that's what she claims. I've seen it in action, and it delivers on that."

I swallowed. The tanks in the Garbage - old T-64s and BTRs from the cleanup of Chernobyl I - had armour that was about half as thick as that. And all that firepower was in the hands of a girl younger than I was, with super speed. What the hell could they be fighting that needed that kind of killing capability?

"If it's any consolation, she won't use it on people. She's pretty hung-up about the idea of killing people as it is. Using 'her baby' would just make it worse."

I laughed nervously. I didn't care what Yang said about her sister, I wasn't going to think I was safe until I'd heard it from Ruby that she didn't like killing people. "So who should I be scared of?"

"You'll learn. It'd be rude to tell you."

We walked into the armory and found Ruby barely restraining herself from playing with my rifle. She wasn't the only one in the room, either; Weiss and Blake had both busied themselves with different parts of my gear. Weiss was inspecting one of the artifacts they found in my pack - a Kolobok, based on the ball of spikes she held in her hand. Blake, in contrast, was looking at my detector, the same one that found the artifact Weiss held. Curiously, there wasn't an armory technician or anything in sight. Time to pick up the pieces.

"Having fun looking at all my things?"

Ruby and Blake stopped what they were doing when I spoke, but Weiss still seemed lost in the Kolobok. A strange artifact to lose yourself in; most rookies tend to have their first… experience with Stone Flower or Moonlight by a campfire, watching the light play off what's inside. That said, most rookies don't see a Kolobok until months into their stalker life.

The first response came from Ruby, who seemed over the moon that I'd arrived.

"Finally, you made it. Your gun's awesome and retro and I've never seen anything like it outside of museums and can I touch it maybeshootitforabitI'veneverhadthechancetouseoldgunscanIcanIplease?"

She went from calm and reserved to hyperactive child in less than a sentence; the syllable-per-second change was impressive, to say the least. Unfortunately for her, it was all gibberish to me, so I looked to Yang for a translation.

"She wants to shoot things with your gun."

How straightforward. "And what about Blake and Weiss? What parts of my gear are so interesting to them?"

Blake held up my detector and shot me a questioning look. "What's this for?"

I walked over and plucked the detector from her hand and flicked a switch on the side. The circular LED display on the detector lit up as the inbuilt sensors began searching for anomalies in the area. I turned the detector around in my hand and showed it to her.

"In this mode, it searches for anomalies. From the humble Springboard to the annoying-as-fuck Fruit Punch, it spots them all. That is, assuming the Ecologists in Yantar have heard about it," I flicked open the cover on top of the display and the display's lights changed, lines shooting out from the center of the display towards the edges facing Weiss and my pack.

"Now, with the cover opened, it hunts for artifacts produced by those anomalies. At the moment, it's spotting the Kolobok that Weiss has, in addition to whatever artifacts are in my pack." I switched the detector off, placing it in one of the leg pockets on my jumpsuit.

Weiss looked up at the second mention of her name, eyes darting around like she was disoriented. I knew the feeling; I'd lost a night staring at a Snowflake when I first got my hands on it. Shiny, sparkly, spiky artifacts were always good for whiling away the hours, but they came at a cost. That cost, for most artifacts, was a steady dose of radiation. Most of them clocked about a tenth of a gray every minute, which would lead to a lethal dose after 80 minutes. Serious damage took twenty.

"How long has she been holding that?"

Weiss looked back down at the artifact, her eyes fading back into the spikes and warmth of Kolobok again before I plucked it from her hands.

"Does anyone in this room know how long she's been holding that artifact?"

Blake shrugged and shook her head. "Nope. I've been more focused on your technical gear than the rocks you carried."

I sighed and put Kolobok back in my pack. I'm not sure if they just didn't care, or didn't know about radiation poisoning. Considering Yang's response to me asking about nuclear power, I assumed it was the latter.

"They're more than just 'rocks'. They're called artifacts. They have all kinds of strange effects, but most of them, Kolobok included, give you a little thing called 'radiation poisoning'. It's a painful way to die, but it's not immediate. Now, what was the time when you walked in here?" If nobody could tell me how long she'd been holding the artifact, then I'd have to try and figure it out.

"I came in about ten minutes ago. Weiss was looking at that 'Kolobok' when I got here, so at least that long."

Great. At least one gray of exposure. Maybe one and a half. No time for hesitation, as symptoms would manifest within the hour. My hand jumped to my shoulder pouch, where I kept my anti-radiation drugs, but found it empty. Of course, I'd seen them take the pills and syrette out of there when I was brought in. Next step, the Wrenched artifact in my pack. That's got anti-radioactive properties, so it'll do in a pinch. The anti-rad was expensive though, so I wanted to find out what they did with it before I went back.

I pulled the artifact out and gave it a quick look over. It was an ugly thing, like someone had taken an A4-sized piece of swiss cheese and twisted it all out of shape. It didn't look damaged, but I couldn't tell if it was working from the outside anyway. I turned and passed it to Weiss, quietly wondering if they'd confiscated my third line of defense against radiation poisoning. If they had, there'd be hell to pay.

"Hold this. Should get rid of whatever radiation you've picked up." Now that the immediate problems were dealt with, I could focus on my equipment.

"Now, two questions for whoever can answer. One, my anti-rad. A blister pack of pills and a syrette. They were in my shoulder pouch, with a reserve supply in my pack. Where'd they go?"

The girls exchanged looks. Weiss and Blake both seemed to know exactly what I was talking about, but they didn't seem willing to surrender that information. Ruby and Yang, on the other hand, didn't seem to have any knowledge of it. With any luck, the fact that Ruby seemed to be leading the group would help my case.

A/N: Hey all, sorry this one's a bit later than expected, I fell behind on a few things.

For those of you wondering how long until we get to 'CHIKI BRIKI' and all the fun things like that, there's one more chapter to go.

Thanks for editing, as always, go to Challos, and see you next week!