I had such a hard time coming up with dialogue for this chapter. Please forgive me.

RWBY Watches Classic Movies

Chapter 65

As the camp slept through the night -though how they tell night from day in a subterranean cavern is beyond my comprehension- a group of warriors silently snuck into their camp. They had been following the expedition for some time now, especially after they had used their fire to collapse the Great Pillar and span the Chasm. Each warrior was garbed strangely, with the majority of their bodies covered by white hair stemming from the massive masks they wore, whose eyes and mouths emitted a faint blue glow.

Their presumed leader approached Jaune's tent and quickly began rooting through his rucksack, jumping at the slightest change in the noises of the camp. They pulled out several items and tossed them aside until they found the picture of Jaune, his sisters and their grandfather. They took a moment to admire the happiness displayed in the photo before quickly putting it back and dashing off as Jaune yawned and emerged from his tent, a small shovel and a roll of toilet paper in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

"Okay, good, I at least know that." Jaune said in exasperation.

"What am I missing?" Weiss asked, though she felt she might not want to know.

"While camping, bathrooms are not exactly available." Jaune started to explain, "So when you need to do your business, you just bury it. Out of sight, out of mind."

"Out of scent range." Ruby added.

Remembering his grandfather's teachings about camping etiquette, he quietly made his way to the edge of camp and walked past it. He dug himself a small hole, before he began taking his pants off, the beam of his flashlight briefly shining on the glowing rock on the ceiling.

The soft glow that had been coming from within grew and, slowly, fireflies began drifting out. A few of them approached Jaune and began harassing him. Jaune, still half-asleep and his pants now fully down, tried to swat the little devils away. When that failed he grumpily grabbed his shovel and hit one with the toilet paper that sat on the handle. It was a good hit, but he not expecting the toilet paper to catch fucking fire!

"O-hokay, literal fireflies. Yeah that's just perfect, why not?" Sun said.

"What in the- whoa!" he cried in alarm, dropping the shovel. Looking out on the camp, he saw that wherever these things landed, if it was flammable, it would light up. He looked up at the glowing rock and saw the things were now swarming from within. "Fire." He said simply, before pulling up his pants and running through the camp, trying to warn everyone.

Within his tent, Adam growled as he looked at the time. Oh, that answers my earlier question.

"I'm gonna kill him." He said to himself. "Arc, go back to bed." He said as he exited his tent to see the inferno the camp had become.

"Get some water on that fire!" Sienna yelled, handing a bucket to one of the troopers.

"No time!" Adam countermanded and pointed across the bridge. "Get us in those caves! Move it! Move it! Move it!"

Not wasting a second, the trucks were on the move, the digger in the lead as they reached the narrow bridge.

"There's no way that thing'll make it across." Yang said, "Not unless those tracks have hidden spikes."

"You're forgetting the bigger danger." Blake told her.

"What?"

"The Oiler."

"Oh. Ooooh. Oooh shit."

"Jaune, jump!" Ruby yelled from the back of one of the trucks, her hand outstretched. He gladly took it and was hauled in just as a truck exploded behind him.

Unfortunately for all, the Oiler was swarmed by the flies and at the back of the column. The driver screamed as his truck exploded at the base of the bridge. The rock formation was broken loose by the shockwave and fell, hitting the weakened bridge at the worst possible point and making it snap at the middle. Despite Neptune's best efforts, the Digger lost traction and slid backwards, taking what remained of the column with it. Thankfully, the bridge was just long enough to create a ramp, though the drivers of the various cars still had to try and wrestle control back from the clutches of gravity and momentum. With an almighty crash, everything came to a halt and darkness took over.

"Looks like we were both right." Blake said.

"Unfortunately." Yang agreed.

Recovering quickly, Adam lit a match. "Alright, who's not dead? Sound off." He was answered by groans and muttering, and Oz's ornery humor.

"Dang blasted bugs done bit me on my sit-upon. Someone's gonna have to suck out this poison. Now don't everybody jump at once."

The entire theater was filled with sounds of disgust and dry-heaving. Even Ozpin himself was disgusted with his counterpart.

"Ruby, status report." Adam called as he turned on the headlights of one of the cars.

"Not as bad as it could have been." She said, looking around with a flashlight. "Rigs 2 and 7 are totaled, no question, but the Digger looks like it'll still run. Lucky we landed on something soft."

Neptune zoomed his googles in as he rubbed some dirt between his fingers. "Pumice ash. We are standing at the base of a dormant volcano."

"Yeah, real lucky." Sienna muttered as she fired a flare into the air.

"It just keeps going." Ruby commented, watching the flare climb higher and higher.

"Maybe that's out ticket outta here." Nora posited, before the flare impacted the ceiling with a soft thump.

"Maybe not." Sienna commented.

"It appears the magma has solidified in the bowels of the volcano, effectively cutting off the exit." Neptune explained.

"I got the same problem with sauerkraut." Glynda commented.

"Uh, back up just a sec." Sun said, "Are you saying this whole volcano could blow at any time?"

"No, nonono," Neptune reassured him, "That would take an explosive force of great magnitude."

As one, the entire expedition turned to Nora, who was idly working on a time bomb. She looked up and all the eyes on her.

"I'll just, work on this later, yeah?"

"Okay, okay, that is freaking hilarious!" Weiss said amid her laughter.

"This movie is amazing!" Yang agreed.

"If we could blow the top off that, it could give us a straight shot to the surface." Adam theorized. "Mr. Arc, what do you think?" he received no answer, because Jaune wasn't there. He had been thrown from the crash.

Jaune lay on his back, unconscious and wounded in his shoulder. He roused when he heard soft voices speaking a language he didn't automatically recognize, which was surprising considering how many languages he spoke. He opened his eyes to see the warriors who had infiltrated their camp that night. Seeing their spears aimed at him, he panicked and tried to back away, only to gasp as he felt the pain in his shoulder. He grabbed it and looked at his hand, seeing the blood on it. The one who had gone through his stuff knelt next to him. They lifted their mask to reveal a familiar redheaded woman with darker skin and small tattoos under one eye.

"There's our girl! Arkos sails once again!" Nora cheered.

"How is her hair red when it was white in her childhood?" Weiss asked.

"It could be some kind of genetic quirk specific to Atlanteans." Velvet guessed.

"That's not unheard of." Weiss said, "The populace of Mantle used to be filled with people with white hair and blue eyes until a few hundred years ago."

Jaune was stuck by how beautiful she was, but it didn't distract him from when she took the crystal on the necklace she wore and touched it to his wound. He felt a brief rush of heat as the woman pressed her hand against the cut and the equally sudden relief when she removed her hand and the wound was gone. She gave him a mocking grin as she put her mask back in place.

Jaune was just about to speak to her when a massive rumbling signaled the arrival of the Digger and the rest of the expedition, and caused the warriors to flee.

"Hey wait!" he yelled, climbing over rocks to chase after the warriors, who used their spears and natural ability to agilely vault over the rocks. Despite this, Jaune kept up with them briefly, but lost them when he exited the caves onto a cliff covered in moss and grass. "Wait a minute! Who are you?"

The expedition soon caught up with him, the Digger easily bursting through the cave wall. Any comments they were about direct at Jaune were quickly abandoned as they looked out from the cliff and saw a moderately sized island sitting in the middle of a circular lake surrounded by waterfalls. Even Sun rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

"Sweet Mother of the Maidens." Oz said in surprise.

"It's beautiful." Ruby agreed.

"What she said." Velvet said, wide-eyed.

"Jaune, I gotta hand it to you." Sun said, grabbing Jaune's shoulder, "You really came through."

Near-silently, Pyrrha's warriors appeared behind the expedition, spears at the ready.

"Holy cats, who are these guys?" Adam said, grabbing the hilt of his sword.

"They gotta be Atlanteans!" Jaune said, the pieces coming together.

"What? That's impossible." Sienna said, going for her whip.

"I seen this back in Vacuo." Oz said, "They can smell fear just by looking at ya, so keep quiet."

The leader lowered her spear and began speaking to the expedition in Atlantean, pointing and presumably questioning them.

"I think it's talking to you." Neptune said, nudging Jaune's arm.

The warrior repeated her question, and Jaune walked forward. He had caught the gist of what she wanted, and replied as best as he could. Frowning, the leader took off her mask and handed it to one of her warriors. She was dressed in red cloth over her chest, with a matching skirt around her waist, a pauldron strapped to one shoulder, and bracers on her forearms.

"How do you know our language?" Pyrrha translated for her double.

"It's my job?" Jaune guessed for his.

"It's your job to know our language?"

"Ita, sum amice viator." Jaune said, switching to Latin, the original tongue of ancient Vale and the basis for the Common Tongue.

"Dices linguam Romae." Pyrrha replied, a bit surprised.

"Parlez-vous francais?" he switched to Attika's ancient regional tongue, a direct descendant of Latin.

"Oui monsieur."

"Oh! Let me try!" Neptune said, pushing past Jaune, "Pardon, mademoiselle. Voulez-vous…" he whispered the rest to her, though apparently Pyrrha didn't like what he said, based on how she decked him and the lack of hesitation she showed.

"Woo! I like her." Sun clapped.

"'Bout time someone did it." Ruby commented, "I'm just sorry it wasn't me."

"Everytime! Why? Why?" Neptune lamented.

The Atlantean warriors all took off their masks and greeted the expedition in various languages. Jaune noticed they all shared the same shade of white hair, in contrast to Pyrrha's vivid red.

"Okay, scratch my theory." Velvet said.

"Maybe it's a mark of nobility." Blake guessed. "In certain fantasy settings and myths, certain genetic traits are often associated with royalty or seen as blessings from the gods."

"How do they know all these different languages?" Ruby wondered aloud.

"Their language must based on a root dialect. Just like the Tower of Babel." Jaune theorized.

"Bun, explain." Coco said.

Velvet poked her in the side, but did so. "It's another Christian story. To put it somewhat simply, a4fter a great flood, all mankind lived in one place and spoke one language. They decided to build a city there, along with a massive tower that would reach up to Heaven. Their God then comes down, sees their city and confounds their speech to the point they can't understand each other and their scatter around the world."

"And they still worship this guy?" Yang said. "He kinda sounds like a jerk if you ask me."

"Well, maybe Common is in there somewhere too." Adam said. "We are explorers from the surface world. We come in peace." He said aloud.

"Welcome, to the city of Atlantis." Pyrrha said cordially. She walked up to Jaune and grabbed his wrist. "Come, you must speak with my father now."

As the trucks started back up, Adam doled out his orders. "Squad B, head back to the shaft. Salvage what you can and rendezvous back in 24 hours." As Squad B followed their orders, the rest of the group piled into two trucks and followed the warrior troupe across a rope bridge over a magma flow into the city. Jaune sat with Sienna and Adam, and was talking aloud about the Atlantean language.

"And what's really amazing, is that if you deconstructed Latin, then overlaid it with a little Sumerian and threw in a dash of Thessalonian, you'd be getting close to their basic grammatical structure. Or least you'd be in the same ball park. Take that, Mr. Schnee's office!"

"Someone's excited." Sienna commented.

"Like a kid at Christmas." Adam agreed, leaning his head on three fingers as he drove.

Sienna frowned, her concerns getting the best of her. "Commander, there were not supposed to be people here. This changes everything."

"This changes nothing." Adam said resolutely.

'What are you planning, Adam?' Blake thought to herself.

"God, it is really freaking weird seeing this guy's eyes." Yang said, rubbing her prosthetic arm.

"Especially when all you've known is a mask." Weiss agreed.

They stopped near the top of a mountain in the center of the city, atop which sat the royal palace.

Pyrrha led Jaune, Adam and Sienna deep into the palace, to the royal throne room. Guarded by a pair of men with matching tattoos on opposite sides of their faces, the chamber was open to the elements, with a massive pool in the center and a series of stone squares leading to the dais where the King sat on his throne. He was a massive man, and Jaune supposed he would have been even more so in his prime, with short white hair that still held small streaks of red in it and a matching beard that framed his face. Pyrrha strode to the base of the dais and bowed to the king.

"Greetings, your Highness. I have brought the visitors." Respectfully, Jaune adopted the same stance as her, while Adam and Sienna remained standing.

"You know the law, Pyrrha. No outsiders may see the city and live."

"Then how did the Shepard write the Journal?" Ruby said.

"He's probably the reason why they have that law." Blake argued.

"Father, these people may be able to help us."

"We do not need their help."

"But father…"

"That is enough. We will discuss this later." The King said with finality as he turned to Adam.

"Your majesty? On behalf of my crew, may I say it is an honor to be welcomed into your city." Adam said with a bow at the hips.

"Um, 'scuse me, commander?" Jaune said.

"You presume much to think you are welcome here." The King said.

"Sir, we have come a long way looking for- "

"I know what you seek, and you will not find it here. Your journey has been in vain."

'They're standing right on top of it.' Blake thought. 'Whatever Adam is after is right beneath his feet and the king knows. He's probably seen it before.'

"But we are peaceful explorers, men of science."

"Heh, and yet you carry weapons." The King gestured to Wilt and Blush.

"Our weapons allow us to, remove obstacles that we may encounter."

"Indeed, but not all obstacles may be removed with a mere show of force." He rose from hit throne and grabbed his scepter. "Return to your people. You must leave Atlantis, at once."

"Your majesty, be reasonable."

"Sir?" Jaune piped up.

"Not now, son." Adam growled back to him.

"Sir, please. Trust me on this. We had better do as he says."

Adam paused and thought for a moment, trying to play all the angles he could think of.

"May I respectfully ask that we be permitted to stay one night?" He asked, "That way we can be rested and resupplied, and ready to travel by morning."

"Hmm. Very well." The King said begrudgingly. "One night, but that is all."

"Thank you, your majesty." Adam bowed as he led his delegation out of the throne room.

"Well, that went about as well as I figured it would." Yang said.

"I've heard worse negotiations at home." Weiss added. Why her father wanted to conduct so much business at home, she knew and wished he would stop.


Over sixty chapters of this story, and by far this one feels like my weakest. Hopefully next week will be better.

MCU Tracker: 1,335/2,000.

Next Update: 3/17/20