Final pre-volume 4 chapter. Catch you on the flip side of the premiere.
Reviews:
Marsa: I managed to keep some of the plan? The first break-in, yeah, but round two is looking substantially different. I removed Pietro for a reason. Maybe I'm just too involved to see it lol.
'apostrophe sentences in italics are thoughts.'
[brackets are words written down]
Disclaimer: I'm running out of creative ways to say that this is only fanfiction.
Chapter 25 - Anywhere but here, please.
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As Team YWBNPR joined Qrow inside of the bullhead that was waiting for them, they felt a definitive sense of dread. They were as ready as they could be, of course, but the fact remained that they would only have one chance at this. If they failed to get Griza or his machine, getting Ruby and Jaune back would be impossible.
Qrow spoke first as the plane began to lift off. "Ol' Ironhead's troops are waiting for us in the Emerald Forest. The spot we chose is far enough away from the school that we won't have the White Fang busting down our doors. I gotta say, kid, while I'm impressed you came up with this whole plan, it carries all kinds of risks. Are you prepared for what could happen?"
Yang looked him square in the eyes as she said, "Of course. Anything to get my sister back." Blake wordlessly put a comforting hand on Yang's shoulder.
"Hmm." Qrow took his flask out to drink, but thought it better not to. "We're just a bit out. Go ahead and call up the Doc."
xXxXxXx
Griza was, as he frequently had been these days, lying on his bunk. His cell was basically a windowless room with a bed. No toilet or other amenities. While he had been forced to spend every day bored, he was determined not to be helpless.
During one of the bathroom trips they let him out on, he managed to steal one of the White Fang goon's scroll charger for his own use. He had tried to figure out where he was, but all he could find out from a guard was that it needed better A/C. That particular guard being a bear faunus, Griza had no idea if even that was reliable.
'Ms. Yang hasn't contacted me for a while now. I wonder if she-'
He was snapped from his thoughts by the vibration of Ruby Rose's scroll. He quickly swiped the answer button and brought it up to his head. Griza whispered, "Please tell me this is a 'how we're gonna rescue you' call."
"Very close, Doc, but this is a 'how you're going to rescue yourself' call. Now listen closely, because I'm only going to say this once."
His head hung down at her no-nonsense tone. "Oh goodness, you're being serious. I'm old and frail, so please don't make me run too far."
"No promises. Here's what you're going to do: You make up some kinda excuse to get you to that portal machine. Pretend that everyone might die or something, I dunno. When you get your hands on it, open a portal to this spot: 5BGZ3416510254. Repeat that."
"5BGZ3416510254. They're going to kill me as soon as I do that, you understand."
"Not if we can help it, because you have a team ready to go at the destination. Just remember the coordinates, and that I'm putting trust in you not to lead us into a trap."
"Got it."
"Oh, and Doc?"
"Yes?"
"You're doing this right now, because it's rude to keep a girl waiting for her date." With a click, the line went dead. Griza laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.
'I don't think I could handle dating that firecracker of a girl.'
He took a few moments to figure out his lines; it had to be at least semi-believable, after all. They had scientists of their own, the ones who had been studying his machine and making a duplicate of it. He had no clue how that particular venture was going, and he didn't have time to worry about it now.
Satisfied, but not confident, he began to yell at the top of his lungs and bang on the door. "Hey! SOMEBODY! I need to talk, this is urgent! Is anybody listening!? We could all die, come on!"
A slam came from the other side of the door. "What the hell is your problem?"
"Look, I forgot to give your scientists valuable information about the machine. If you don't let me see them and explain what's going on, the energy accumulated over repeated uses could wind up leveling this entire place."
"Is that so?" Griza heard a disbelieving snort from the guard. "And I'm supposed to let you out on your word alone?"
"No, of course not. Call them up, or your boss, or whoever. But we're talking about a machine that rips holes into the very fabric of space and time. Do you really want to run the risk of ignoring me and having the top and bottom halves of you separated?" No snark came back, and for a moment Griza thought he had walked away.
The guard started talking on his scroll with an unknown person. After he hung up, the lock on the door clicked and fresh air rushed into the cramped space. "The boss says to make it quick. I'm taking you there, but if you even twitch weird I have orders to smash your head in."
Well, that sounded pleasant. "Understood. Please, let's go."
Step one a success, he began to think about which parts of the machine were most important. Visually, it was composed of four major parts: The main control console, the reactor that gathered and used energy, a remote that could be used instead of the console to start the machine and pinpoint where the portal should open in the room, and the large upright circle that used to serve as the opening point of the portal. Originally, every portal had to open inside the circle for the sake of stability. But over months of improvement he got it to be more...flexible. The 'O' was more or less a decoration at this point.
'The reactor is key. The console is easy, if annoying, to replace, and I can throw the remote through the portal when it opens. But the weight of the reactor is no joke, we'll need quite a number of strong people to push it through before the hole closes.'
No way to do it but to try. He was dead anyways if he failed, so what was the harm at this point?
Going through the building took a few minutes, with several hallways branching in four directions. They apparently put him as far away from the machine as possible, which was probably the right choice given he was about to make a break for it.
The duo finally reached their destination, a large auditorium. The machine was on the stage, and several White Fang men in lab coats were waiting for them. As they made their way down the central steps, the lead Faunus researcher, a rabbit, asked, "What do you mean you forgot to tell us something? What is it?"
It was time to play the bluff hard.
"The reactor generates all the energy it needs for a cross-dimension transfer before the coordinates are input. When the end location is another world as designed, all the energy is used. No issues there. When both the entry and exit points are in the same world, the machine doesn't have to use all of the gathered energy. The 'leftovers' are stored, but the machine still generates a whole new batch of energy instead of borrowing from the old. Over repeated uses this could cause an overload, which would likely kill us all and send pieces of us across the multi-verse." They all flinched, which meant they were buying into it. "Have you been using this for a lot of transfers within Remnant?"
The White Fang members glanced at each other with looks of concern; none of them figured out that this was a load of bull. His work used all the energy every time, because the energy cost was equal regardless of the destination.
"Okay, let me say this. We can resolve this without too much problem, and I'll show you how. But allow me to ask: did you all make a copy of my machine at another location?"
"Yeah, they've been using it for a few days now."
That was a good thing to know, even if it's bad news. "Make sure you explain this to them after we're through here."
He spent the next five minutes going through a fake diagnostic process. His guard had stepped away due to the console being so crowded with scientists. Now would be his one and only chance.
"Alright, I'm going to run a demonstration. Watch the console and keep your eye on the energy levels, because this test spot is in our world."
With a hope and a prayer he typed in the coordinates and set the portal to open in the built-in circle. The machine hummed, and a blue rip in space appeared as commanded.
It took only a moment for chaos to erupt.
A blur of black hair came from the portal. Just as his guard began to raise his voice the blur put it's foot into his face as a makeshift pacifier. The force of the hit caused him to slam into a wall and pass out.
Multiple people began to pour out and he heard a familiar voice call out, "Weiss, freeze the doors." A girl with silver hair thrust her rapier into the ground, and a wall of ice completely coated the main entrance of the auditorium.
Griza turned to the voice with a smile and said, "You must be Ms. Yang. Sorry if I made you wait, but traffic these days is just unbearable."
The blonde returned the smile. She had long hair, lilac eyes, and an air of confidence that made him wish he was young again. "Just show me a bouquet of flowers and we'll be good, Doc. What do we need to grab?" Several Atlas soldiers had already secured the White Fang scientists, and with the only guard present knocked out the stage was theirs for a moment.
Griza pointed to the reactor as he slipped the remote into his pocket. "That is the most important part right there, and believe me it's heavy. We can leave the computer console, I can make any decent computer and monitor act as a replacement."
"Nora, help me with this." Another girl with a hammer on her back jumped forward, and between the two of them they lifted the entire reactor off the floor. The duo managed to make it through the portal without wobbling once.
A man with gray hair strode over to him and asked, "These white coats know anything useful?"
"Maybe. At the very least, they should know the location of the duplicate portal creator the White Fang made based on mine." The man motioned to the soldiers, and the group of new captives were forcibly marched through the blue hole.
Gray-hair called out, "We aren't taking any risks, everyone retreat." The group responded positively, and all present walked through the portal. With everything that had happened, Griza was just glad to be escaping.
The exit revealed a forest clearing with several bullheads running and ready to take off. Yang and her companion were busy strapping the reactor inside of one, so Griza entered the second transport, the one that the more colorful peoplepresent had boarded. He witnessed the portal closing and silently said good riddance.
Their were no seats, so he just grabbed one of the pulldown straps and braced himself for the ride. The older man in charge, who had followed him on, raised his voice to be heard over the engines. "So you're the Doc I've heard so much about. Sorry to burst your bubble, but my friends and I have a lot of questions for you."
He couldn't help but chuckle. "Get me some decent food for once and I'll answer anything you need me too."
If you look up that MGRS number, it should be nonsense.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please leave a review, and have a nice day.