Booze, wine and spirits from Vacuo and below

[Castor Achromos]

Castor’s past few days have been anything but pleasurable, hell the better part of his school year has been a nonstop disaster, one after the other. First was the whole fiasco with the Beacon academy tournament…thing? Having “won” his first round thanks to interfering from an unwanted accomplice, only to thoroughly get his ass handed to him a platter in the second round. Not only that, in all his time being a student in Beacon Castor not got a chance to investigate the one thing he was after. Luckily thanks to his “friend” he finally seemed to finally found a lead on what…or more accurately who he was searching. There was however one small problem.

His eventual destination was in the middle of the dry hellhole known as Vacuo, luckily no one should recognize him as a huntsman in training but even then, he had a set of false papers with him to cover his ass…. once again provided by his “friend” Their information one Castor’s would be target used to be one of many bars frequented by all kinds of nasty, no good, convening bastards…so in short, his kind of people. After all they knew how to party!

Unfortunately, it seemed the run-down place had picked up new guests, in the for of the usual riffraff who were either to cheap or poor to afford a place to live, none of them seemed like type he couldn’t handle but if his target was nearby a fight would tip them off, Castor knew he would have to take a more subtle approach to this. After all his real prize was under the corpse of a bar not in the bar itself, Castor would slip into their encampment when the sun goes down and should be out before any of them even catch his shadow. Now to find some shade and wait, at that point however the bizarre and slightly twisted nature of Vacuo had other ideas as a loud thunder accompanied by heavy clouds appeared overhead.

“If there is a god…I’d wish they’d stop shitting on my day…” Castor mumble to himself as realized today was the start of the once-a-year weeklong monsoon season starts, he was starting to realize just got a little bit complicated. But regardless he would have to though out the rain, so what if he ended up getting a cold from it his “mission” was more important.

Once night fell Castor would make his way towards the little “bar”, its name was ironically called the dropping mermaid, what was dropped you may ask? Well sadly the part of chest that would be exposed seemed to have been shot off by one the bar’s new residents recently as target practice…Luckily the rain mask his sound and Castor had an easy time staying on step ahead of the bandits and their lights, sticking to the shadows he was confident no one had spotted him. Castor at this point had a small bit of cloth covering the bottom of face as well as a pair of goggles to protect his eyes, but by the time he finally danced his way of the numerous lights and patrols he found his way to the main entrance of what was left of the bar.

Castor guessed any bandits inside were probably asleep, drunk or…occupied to notice him, the main room with its floor covered without cold bums seemed to prove him right. Castor would try to slowly sneak his way past them without waking any of them up, he was sure they would be an easy fight to deal with but with the amount of bandit all concentrated in one point it speaks to the idea that they were being lead by someone, Castor’s hunch was it being an ex-huntsman, he was just hoping it was the one he was looking for…

[Professor Simab Zibaq]

Simab's normal teaching at Beacon was interrupted when he had received reports from his old mentor, Ramadi. More bandits had been harassing Jannah, more bandits than the village militia could handle themselves. Had Ramadi been young and spry like he used to be, he'd gladly take a squad with him to show them who's boss. Fortunately for them, Simab was not going to turn down this favor. He stocked up on any supplies he would need for a trek through the Vacuan desert and set off. Clad in his usual battle-gear and a red litham headwrap to combat the desert environment, Simab arrived at the bandit's supposed headquarters, a ramshackle bar named the Dropping Mermaid whose tasteful sign had been damaged and defaced recently. Placing a hand to the outside wall, Simab focused on any signatures of trace metals inside the building, particularly those found inside the bodies of humans and Faunus.

Hmm... about 15 people in the building... Trace metal content suggests... 5 female and 10 male bandits... One male seems to be slowly moving through the building right now... Strange, the intel Ramadi provided seemed to be certain that there were only 14 of them... No matter, I'll figure out if the anomaly is one of them soon enough... Simab thought, carefully unsheathing Sandsplitter in preparation for a dramatic entrance through the wall...

One of the bandits, currently sleeping against the wall, was in for a very rude awakening. He briefly stirred as they felt the wall vibrating and heard what sounded like metallic humming, then metallic creaking and groaning as the wall seemed to bend inwards before loudly bursting, instantly alerting the bandits inside the bar. He turned to find a lone desert warrior, clad in a red headwrap, whose kick sent him flying back towards the center of the room.

[Castor Achromos]

Castor knew bandits were not the most hygienic folks but some of these idiots smelled like a mixture of piss, booze, and rot. Luckily, they all were lying across the floor. If he didn’t know any better Castor would have expected them to be dead...or at least halfway there with all the bottles lying everywhere. Fortunately, it made it easy for Castor to “sneak” his way around them. Careful to make sure each step would avoid contacting any of the sleeping bastards. The lack of any natural light also around them also helped, only thing even resembling light would be the occasional flash of lightning coming outside. Fortunately, he would be able to get in and out before the storm passes. Around the bar didn’t seem like anything out of the usual, especially one being used by bandits… everything was tossed and turned over like a storm had just passed over it. Doing his best to find any clue of his target’s whereabouts, Castor was certain that his target was not among the many sleeping face first on the dirty bar floor. Maybe they left already? Or maybe there was more to the small bar than he expected? Worst case scenario Castor could “ask” the bandits for their location? He did have a reputation for associating with the underworld.

As if right on que though a sudden and loud noise snapped him out of his thoughts, whatever caused the noise in the bar seemed to have slowly started waking the other bandits from their naps. As one of the bandits nearest Castor, still groggy simply asked aloud “what’s going on?” only the replied with a swift kick in the chin from Castor “don’t worry about.” Of course, by the some of the other bandits around them snaped from their groggy state…or at least as best as they could reaching for their barely held together weapons.

“All right might as well have a little warm up before the right fight starts.” In front of them was four other bandits all with the intent to kill, but Castor wasn’t worried about them, in fact Castor didn’t even bother going into a stance once he noticed…their legs were shaking like if they saw a ghost…At that point Castor turned around only to be surprised by a kick by the opponent from behind. The bandits with what little common sense they had left ran out as if staying there any longer would be the death of them.

Castor’s new foe was covered in a red wrap, it seemed like their weapon of choice was a pair of daggers, but something seemed off about them were not made of metal but instead with gravity dust. More importantly how was this person able to sneak past him so easily?

Before Castor could react “my brother will be taking care of your friend, as for you.” With a raspy voice they replied as they pulled out a second knife, this one being made with a serrated metal blade. It seemed Castor wasn’t the only uninvited guest.

[Professor Simab Zibaq]

"Get that motherf-" ordered one of the other bandits before Simab zoomed forward and delivered a swift left hook to his chin. Taking a quick moment to assess the situation, Simab came to the quick realization that the fifteenth person was, in fact, not one of the bandits. The former bandit was out like a light, but another one had the brilliant idea to reach into his pocket and throw sand at Simab. Simab was quick enough to have his nictitating membrane close before the sand hit his face. Simab then retorted with Sandsplitter by swinging the blade upward from the floor, sending up the leftover sand back into the bandit's face. Simab then tackled the man to the ground, and with a quick jab to the head, knocked him out. Noticing most of the other bandits running away, that left Simab, the bandit with the raspy voice, and the other person with the goggles.

"If you're not a bandit, then you're not my enemy." Simab spoke to the goggle-clad figure. Simab then began walking towards the last bandit as Sandsplitter began to vibrate and emit a metallic hum.

[Castor Achromos]

Castor was glad the bandits had another uninvited guest to deal with, would have been better if they weren’t as subtle as tip toing elephant but he could make it work, hopefully this new person was only heard to clear out the bandits. More importantly for Castor however was the bandit who was in the middle of trying fillet him, though the bandit in question was swinging hard with his knife with no sense of direction. Like they were just flinging it around the air hoping Castor would be too stupid to just let the strange knife carve him. Of course, though Castor easily avoided this oh so avoidable fate. They did not seem be the talking type, but the new guest of honor did seem like they were willing to talk “I could work with that for now, but how about we focus on these little, small fries first before we finish this conversation?” Castor replied while in the middle of casually bobbing and weaving between a knife strike aimed at his neck, arms and gut. Despite what little non-existent skill they ha, it was clear they had some killer instinct to it. Though at this point he suspected they were more used to fighting people who usually could not fight back. On que the bandit with dark dust blades reached for something out of his pocket. At first Castor thought it was some dust crystal but once they threw the small object hard into the ground with an explosion of dust and smoke filling the room with the bandits slowly slipping into it as if blending with it.

“Looks like their getting a little serious…finally.” Castor would shift his weight forward leaning with only his bare hands to guard himself, almost as if daring one of the bandits to strike, which of course didn’t take long as one of the small fries loudly rushed his location hoping the lack of vision would take Castor by surprise but only for the face to come crashing onto the floor by one of Castor’s right hooks. At that moment Castor feel a sudden pressure of blood lust aimed straight at him and instinctually ducked, and not a moment to soon as Castor could feel something whizz by him by just a hair length…If he had to guess this was the work from the bandit earlier with the dust knives. Something fell off to him though the knife before was made of gravity dust they tend to make a particular sound when going through the air, but this one was silent as a ghost? Castor could only guess the lack of sound was intentional either the enemy’s semblance is tampering with sound or something else is.

"i don't suppose you're have fun with you're dance partner?" Castor yelled out this the other person before realizing the smoke from before seemed to have gotten denser, it had gotten to the paint he can barely see a few feet in front of himself let along the other people in the room.