Servants in Remnant

Monster? Hero? Why not both?

Dr. Oobleck jumped from one specimen to another, clearly hyped on coffee. Or just the thrill of this new thing, Charles thought to himself, chuckling softly. He yawned briefly, wincing as he looked at the time on his scroll. 3:00 in the morning. And he was the only chump pilot that decided to answer his scroll. Seriously, nothing good every comes from Scroll calls that early. In this case, it resulted in him being asked if he could pilot a bullhead for Oobleck, team STRN, and several scientists. Or were they doctors? Meh, It's too early to think about that, and he yawned again, only to jerk back when Oobleck appeared next to him.

"Coffee? Fresh as of a couple hours ago." Oobleck offered, holding out his thermos.

"Ah, no thanks professor" Charles declined a little warily. Seriously, the thermos was part of his gun! wouldn't that change the taste or something? To something that probably wasn't good? Wait, why was that scientist trying to signal him?

Ooblecks eye twitched, and with a strained voice stated "That's Doctor Oobleck. I went through a lot of effort to get my doctorate I'll have you know!"

Charles blinked and rubbed his head in an embarrassed fashion. "Sorry doctor, my head is still functioning a bit slow. So what have you guys decided to do about 'these' things?"

'These' were numerous statues of Grimm, mostly Ursa Minor with one Ursa Major, in various stages of attack or running away. Charles hadn't gotten close to them yet, but they looked amazingly detailed from where he stood. Somebody had made the call around midnight apparently, saying that they had appeared in this field outside of Vale. He wasn't sure why somebody would go through the effort of making statues like these only to perch them in a random field. Seemed kind of pointless to him. Sure, they were of Grimm, but he's sure that they would fetch a pretty penny on the market.

"Ah, that is the question isnt it" Oobleck said, his eyes lighting up. "For sure we are taking one with us. Two if we can squish some people together. With any luck, we can figure out some clues on how they turned into this."

Charles nodded thoughtfully, before blinking as he thought about what was said. "What do you mean 'How they turned into this? Didn't somebody just drag them out here and dumped them here? I mean, it would be stupid to carve these statues out here. The Grimm aren't going to spare you because they were flattered you carved a statue out of them!"

Oobleck's eyes lit up even more, and he grabbed Chareles arm and dragged him closer to the statues. "Nope! That theory was disproved before we got here. Come, look at the fur, the masks. From the smoothness of the masks, to the individual furs, the amount of effort that would have had to go into these statues are astronomical! But the real kicker is over here, at this statue!" As Oobleck talked, his voice got faster and faster, only stopping when they reached one statue that looked like it had taken several hard blows.

Charles looked at it for a second, before sighing, "I'm sorry, I must be tired still what exactly am I looking fo..." he trailed off on what he was saying. he stared for a bit, and then asked "Um, doctor? why does that statue have stone, um, gutts?"

The doctor smirked at him. "That, my dear pilot, is why we are here. That is proof that something was able to turn a grimm completely into stone, from their furry and scaly outsides, to their formerly beating heart and squirming intestines."

Charles stood dumbfounded for several seconds before he spoke up again, "Bu-but how is that possible? A-and for them to get so many Grimm?!" he glanced around. there was 6 statues - 5 Ursa Minor, and 1 Ursa Major.

Oobleck tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Hmmm, well, most likely whatever it was is a single target only. Observe the positions of the statues - most are in various positions of fighting, but clearly whoever was fighting them was moving around a fair bit. This Ursa Minor was hit first, and was probably smashed by that Ursa Major soon after petrification. Then, the Ursa Major got hit. If I was a betting man, I'd say that there were other creatures here as well that were fighting whatever it was, and they were killed instead of petrified. That Ursa Minor was probably the last of the lot, and tried to run." Oobleck grinned at Charles, "It's fascinating! Whatever this was, was able to petrify the creatures in a matter of seconds based off of their positioning. Once we get a couple more samples and bring it back to Vale we should be able to determine more, like what exactly was petrified first, the progress of said petrification, the material that they were petrified into, what exactly they..." Oobleck's talking slowly became faster, and he began mumbling other potential questions that he had regarding this phenomenon.