RWBY LPs Modern Warfare

Chapter 35

When Jackson finally came to, he felt..shocked. Shocked that he was able to open his eyes and see the light pouring in through the rear of the transport. Still able to hear, even if the first thing he heard as he regained consciousness sounded like some kind of angelic scream, an instant where he went from completely deaf to able to hear everything around him. But there wasn't all that much to listen to. Just his own painfully hard heartbeat, which sent excruciating pulses somewhere in his abdomen. Yeah, definitely internal bleeding..and that was probably something 'pretty' major that had ruptured.

Somehow he was still able to 'move'. Not that he started moving right away. He just started coughing, turning his head to check his surroundings. A fire under the seats, the twisted metal looking more like a long potato chip than something a person was supposed to relax on. For some reason he'd expected the whole helicopter to look completely crumpled, but it was still recognizable, if not ever capable of being functional again.

[Yang: Damn, and I thought the 'other' crash looked bad. Sure, both those helicopters are totaled but the inside of this one..

Weiss:..why is Jackson the only one in there? I could have sworn there were around ten people when we last got off the ground.]

His ears managed to catch what sounded like a radio transmission, though it was pretty garbled, more due to how dazed and pained he felt rather than anything with the device itself. The fact that there were any working radios at all was a miracle in itself. "..gree grid. Hotel. Surface. Juliet. Ninety seconds."

None of that meant anything to him. Neither did the fact that his guns were nowhere to be seen. What made him focus his attention was the fact that there was no one else in the transport with him, and while they 'all' could have been thrown out, it was equally possible there were survivors. The thought of actually making it through this alive gave his limp muscles strength. Strength enough to start crawling towards the ramp, towards the burning, broken world outside.

It was a horrible mistake on several levels. The clouds overhead, blackened and oppressing, only barely let any reddish light from the setting sun through. It was like the sky itself was bleeding. Anything that hadn't been completely annihilated was either twisted beyond the point of ever being salvageable or on fire. The occasional building suffered from both. It wasn't hard to imagine this was what the end of the world would look like.

[Blake sucked in a breath. That was..yikes. That looked more like the sort of hellscape that some fantasy stories ended on, with the hero marching to the land of whatever evil lord there was to break their malicious hold on their world. It was like the entire 'world' around the character had changed.]

More noise from the radio, this time a woman speaking. It was more clear than the previous transmission. "Be advised, nuclear detonation detected. Fallout predicted within a radius of seven point four miles. Epicenter located at N-G-0-5-8-6-8-0. Personnel within primary affected zone are ordered to commence immediate evacuation. Contamination centers are being established at this time, and they should be operational within two hours. Personnel are advised to be there, I am –"

[Weiss: Seven point four miles..you mean to tell me that 'one' bomb caused eleven point nine kilometers of damage?! Even if you piled up 'all' the dust gathered in 'all' the mines connected to Atlas in a four month period you couldn't get a 'quarter' of that kind of damage!

Blake: They said fallout, not blast radius.

Ruby: Um, what's 'fallout' mean?

Blake: Basically it's when something bad happens as a consequence for something, usually long term. But I'm not sure what it 'specifically' means in this context. A bomb going off, while pretty bad, tends to be a short term thing.]

The transmission stuttered as a nearby building just..stopped existing. It didn't collapse, at least not in the usual, almost Jenga-style way. It was more like a shift in the wind proved too much for it, and it just disintegrated. Starting from the top, you could almost say the building was being turned into dust. Just how much of the dust in the air used to be buildings, used to be 'people'?

[Ruby: I know we saw that happen to a building before we started playing, but..it's almost 'more' horrifying now that we've got some context for it. That building just..blew away like it was made of 'sand'. Holy crap, that blast just 'pulverized' everything with just its 'shockwave'!]

Pulling himself out of the transport, he flopped several feet to the ground, coughing, if you could call breathless hacking coughs. While it hurt a 'lot', it didn't really create any 'fresh' pains. It just flared up the parts of his insides that already felt burst open like a balloon. It was less of blinding, paralyzing agony and more of a "yeah, that was a horrible idea", mind numbing flash that took the breath out of him for a moment. Considering how little breath he had left to spare, though, that was worrying in itself.

And the view from outside the helicopter was 'definitely' worse than when he was still inside. Bits of debris were still falling from the sky like small comets, burning and leaving a short lived smoke trail as they crashed to the ground. The few street lamps that hadn't been torn from the ground were badly bent and sparking, with one constantly trying and failing to provide some measure of comforting light.

Then there was, of course, the mushroom cloud in the distance. Just the bleak sight of the long, tower-like stem of dust that suddenly thickened and widened, the clouds overhead, likely more dust from the same explosion, seemed to cower away from the almost phallic monster rising from the ground. This was not the eye of the storm, some point where people would be safe despite the insanity around them. That was Ground Zero, a complete wasteland that even after the bomb had gone off would be hostile to any life that tried to rise again. The mushroom cloud was almost like a warning from God that the land itself had been tainted, and anyone with any kind of sense and the physical ability to should get out of there.

[Weiss blinked at the sight of the cloud, whatever she was going to say about the ridiculousness of this fantasy bomb cut off by her own respect for attention to detail. "Huh. Actually I can believe a bomb that powerful would make a cloud like that. I still feel like it's so far out of the realm of plausibility it hurts the story, but they didn't just do it because they thought a massive explosion alone is awe inspiring. They clearly put some thought into it."

Yang: Yeah, I'm used to the usual movie explosions. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. This is..after all the constant shooting and yelling, if anything the 'quiet' after the fact is downright 'creepy'.]

Then his eyes focused on what was closer to him, and his heart sank. There were only two people from the helicopter he could see. Captain Pelayo and Lieutenant Vasquez. Anyone else, there was no way to tell what happened to them. Maybe they got thrown out of the transport before it crashed, maybe they'd survived and decided to abandon the three of them. Impossible to tell. All he could say for certain was that the captain was already dead, and her body was just starting to figure it out.

[Ruby: No..]

Coughing blood, writhing on the ground like a fish out of water that couldn't quite manage to flop, her chest rose up and down at a rapid rate, possibly hyperventilating as the reality of what happened and the severity of her injuries caught up with her. It didn't take long for her breathing to slow, weakening rather than calming down. Shifting from laying on her shoulder to being on her back, she stared at the sky as the life drained from her, taking her last gasping, blood soaked breaths as she stared at the broken heavens.

[Ruby: Really. Really?! We charge in to save her, pull her out, and she just bleeds out in front of us?! WHY?!

Weiss: Not every rescue has a pleasant ending.

Ruby: We spent that 'entire' mission saving people! What kind of mean spirited, cruel person would write a story where the hero's actions feel so..so..

Yang: Trying has to count for something, right?

Ruby:..it does. Just..ugh. Really not a feel good moment.]

Vasquez..well, he was on his feet, which prompted Jackson to lift himself up. Limping in the general direction of the mushroom, maybe he was trying to find the rest of the squad somewhere in the city. Maybe he was trying to find the rest of the people who used to be in the chopper, or maybe he had just given in to despair and wanted to let the radiation finish him off. Whatever the case, he didn't get far before he just collapsed, his legs giving out on him. He tried to crawl to continue on, maybe getting an extra yard or two before slumping down, immobile. Probably also dead.

[Blake: Given the word "fallout", let's try to move 'away' from the ominous looking death cloud.

Ruby: Yeah, good idea.]

Turning to the right, Jackson stared down the broken road, rational enough to think he needed to move 'away' from Ground Zero, not towards it. While there were plenty of shattered vehicles and the road was in pretty bad shape, smoke obscuring the street sign that probably said in Arabic where it was supposed to lead, there looked like a path he could travel along. Not like he had anything better to do other than just meekly lay down and let oblivion take him.

Unfortunately the Grim Reaper apparently felt he was ready, and he was in no condition to argue. He hadn't even gotten ten yards before 'his' legs gave out, and his head smacked against the cement. He didn't have the energy to keep going, drowning internally in his own blood and suffocating regardless of how much air he breathed. Still, he did have the strength to shift his head upwards, able to see the street sign as everything started to fade. Autostrad..he forgot if that was supposed to be the city he was in, or a neighboring one. Did it even matt..

There was no death quote like every other time Ruby had made a mistake in gameplay. The screen just went black before the emblem of the USMC started spinning around again, and she just paused right there. It was 'dead' silent in the room now. That was so drastically different in tone from the rest of the..no, actually now that she thought about it, Ruby could 'maybe' compare it to that moment where that president guy was shot earlier in the game. But it still felt jarringly different from most of the rest of the game.

Putting the controller down and pulling out her scroll, Ruby asked, "Anyone else curious what they even meant by fallout? Because after something like 'that'..just..just what the crap."

Yang stood up to stretch for a second before going to the fridge, opening it with a grimace. "Yeah, when I said I wanted something interesting, maybe I should have asked some more about what he ended up giving me. I knew he was a gaming nerd but if I'd known his idea of 'interesting' was morally ambiguous heroes who occasionally get their asses handed to them by the outright villains.."

Considering she was the person who had the first objections, it was nice to see that Blake was a good deal more comfortable at this point. She just leaned back against the seat and did her own little stretch. "Oh it 'is' interesting, there's no denying that. A few nasty surprises but it doesn't look like the game's done just yet, and I'm actually 'really' looking forward to the ending now. Do you mind telling me the name of the friend who gave you this?"

Yang turned back to stare at Blake with a raised eyebrow. "Oldwin, from team VOLT. Why?"

Blake gave one of her hard to really read smiles. "Well is this is the kind of game he's interested in, maybe he's got some good book recommendations as well. Even if it turns out it's not to my taste it's interesting enough that I can keep going from beginning to end, and sometimes that's all I can ask for..and now I feel guilty that I can't put a face to that name."

While still a bit distracted trying to find information on her scroll, managing to find the StrangeReal site..which had quite a number of subsections, yeesh these guys did a lot of fiction, Ruby could still answer distractedly, "He's the guy who's constantly writing during Port's class regardless of if Port's actually saying anything or not. Has glasses, never really seems to wear them."

"Ah. Thanks."

That was when Ruby found the section talking about nuclear fallout..and nearly dropped her scroll. "Oh..oookay then. Well, I found out what the game meant by fallout for over seven miles."

Weiss looked at Ruby's scroll, reading aloud a few bits that caught her attention as they both read the wiki article. "Residual radioactive material, highly dangerous..huh, lots of factors that could affect long and short term dangers..oh wow. That's..well if they want to make a weapon that seems insanely dangerous, that seems like quite the route to go on. Very brutal."

Pouring herself a drink and taking a quick swig of it, Yang chuckled a bit. "Don't leave the rest of us in suspense. What's got you thinking it's brutal?"

It was like reading information on the weapon, fictional or not, was solidifying the idea of it enough that Weiss wasn't just calling it stupid anymore. "In layman's terms, this is a kill everything weapon, as in the ground at the point of the explosion becomes sickly, it can have some scary affects on the atmosphere, anything that lives in the area of effect is essentially poisoned. Not a great thing to use if you want to set up your 'own' base in that area, but a good way to make sure your enemies can't use it either. Add in the fact that outside the area of the outright explosion it can have terrible effects on electronics, an Electro Magnetic Pulse..ouch."

Ruby could see why Weiss had been interested in that part, but a different tidbit had her completely flabbergasted. "Megatons..they measure the 'power' of some of these bombs based on how much force you could get from how many thousands of tons of dynamite it would take to make a similar amount of force. They have 'single' bombs that could level entire 'mountains'..and this world doesn't have any monsters like Grimm to use them against. Just other people."

Turning off her scroll's screen, she just put it down and hissed, "Just..just why do you even 'need' something like that? 'Why'?! It's like stealing Nora's hammer to just crush a spider on a table then setting the table on fire!"

Blake put a hand over her eyes and groaned. "Yeah, that doesn't sound all that off considering the 'last' StrangeReal story I tried to read. While the writing is extremely good for the most part, it's like the company as a whole considers individual people to be capable of being good, selfless, and many other noble traits but put them in a group and they become 'far' more self-destructive. Like a bunch of freedom fighters overthrowing their tyrannical king and just getting addicted to 'slaughter' and going on a directionless purge. Just because I respect the writing and some of the individual stories, though, doesn't mean I'm a fan of the idea of people creating their 'own' monsters when there aren't any others to contend against."

Weiss wanted to say something about people occasionally going to war with one another despite the constant threat of the Grimm, but held her tongue. It was actually rather interesting how both Blake and Ruby seemed to have similar preferences in stories. While Blake was definitely more mature abut it, she was just as much a fan of the easy to understand good guy against bad guy thing, and hated ambiguities. The clear cut. But Weiss? She had grown up with 'plenty' of ambiguities, contradictions, mixed feelings to the point that it was easier to try making things seem more 'logical' than 'fair' or 'nice'.

So she just listened to the sound of Yang refilling each of their glasses, thinking about the fact that at least half of her team had such fundamentally different world views than herself. That was part of why she came all the way to Beacon, to experience the unfamiliar. To get a more complete view of the world. Did having a different viewpoint mean she was going to be driven crazy on this team? Or did it mean she'd balance them out? 'Could' she balance out the 'idealism' on the team if at least two and possibly 'three' members of the four huntress team all shared something she didn't? Still, somehow she felt less..alone here than she did at any of the family dinners she could remember.

Author's Note: And that does it, another chapter down. I tried to mix in details from both the remastered and the original. While the remaster does a great job with the visuals, and throwing in those two people dying in front of you is rather effectively depressing, for some reason I felt that the atmosphere of the original was better.

Either way, Aftermath isn't so much of a mission as it is a moment to drink in the fact that sometimes, regardless of how good they are at what they do, the good guys don't always prevail. And it helps to give this bit of tension when the final mission comes along, where you're wondiering if absolutely everyone is going to die 'including' the main character. After all, two people we've seen through the eyes of have already died and named characters look like they're dropping like flies in front of you.

Hope you liked how I had the girls react to it. We'll see when I can get the next chapter out. Based on the rest of this fic, I'm going to assume it's going to awkwardly split apart 'another' mission.