Arthur Watts screamed, somewhat out of fear, somewhat out of pain, but mostly, out of anger; an anger that burned brighter than the fires of Atlas' Command Center surrounding him. How - how could he allow himself to be so easily manipulated by a lesser mind like hers? He was a man who fancied himself a great intellect, knowing full-well that he was a genius ahead of his time. Prior to his unholy alliance with the witch, he'd been beyond the shadow of a doubt, the greatest scientist in Atlas, nay, Remnant's history. Despite General James Ironwood's decision to favor that fat imbecile Pietro over himself, his genius was unmatched. Not only had he built the entire cyber-infrastructure of Mantle from the ground up, he'd led the team responsible for Atlas' most known protector and military hardware: the Atlesian Paladin-290. How in the name of the gods had he been betrayed by such an incompetent, and impudent child? Just hours prior, he'd rightfully scolded her for her rash nature, calling her out for the idiotic narcissist that she was, and castigating her for every single one of her many failures. She'd promised to come back for him, she needed him. As he fruitlessly continued to smash a chair against the impenetrable glass-window, he realized that, as the age-old expression 'pride cometh before a fall' alluded to, he'd made the critical mistake of placing his own ego ahead of prudence.
Gasping for air, Watts finally ceased in what was now an obviously futile gesture, and leaned against the chair catching his breath. He could scarcely recognize the tanned figure reflecting back at him. For the first time since he was in the desert kingdom of Vacuo, he was drenched in sweat. His salt and pepper hair dripped with perspiration, as did the moustache that framed his lips. A piece of falling rubble had exacerbated the scar on his right eye, blinding one of his emerald, green orbs. Sometime after he'd hacked into Ironwood's bomb, a foolhardy device intended as a bargaining chip, the spontaneous fires that now engulfed the entire room had caused a piece of loose ceiling to fall into his face as he gazed up in horror. The absolute agony that followed as his sclera was cooked like a fried egg, and his skin withered at its injury filled him with the motivation he used in his vain attempt at escape. His gaunt shoulders slumped in what he saw as a pathetic display of defeat and fatigue.
In a rage, Watts flung the chair back against the far wall behind him with another scream. The chair broke in a resounding crack, with pieces scattering near the corpses of the technicians he'd helped to murder. As he scanned the room in a final act of desperation, he confirmed that there was ostensibly no way out. The door he'd initially entered through was sealed shut as the result of a cave-in, sparks flying from the destroyed engineering. As for the doorway which that wretched girl and her multi-colored cohort had used as their exit, it too was inaccessible thanks to the flames that danced around its mouth. Watts feared no man, woman nor Faunus, yet the fiery death awaiting him brought about an uncharacteristic panic in the pit of his stomach.
"Ungh." Watts started at the sound of a moaning near him. To his surprise, one of the technicians stirred. Appearing to be the only other survivor, the boy was no older than 25. The auburn hair he kept pulled back into a short semi-bun was stained with blood from the head wound he'd incurred. Through the eyelids he squinted as he nursed his injury, his sapphire eyes glimmered with youth. As with Watts' customfitted grey overcoat, the boy's white uniform was stained with soot, and torn in several spots. Aside from the gash on his head, he was relatively unharmed, showing no signs of a blast from Watts' gun or Cinder's projectiles. Watts surmised he'd been incapacitated by the mute with the umbrella, who had suspiciously seemed to avoid killing unlike he and Cinder.
The technician noticed Watts, and scrambled onto his back, crawling away. "Please, no!"
Watts retrieved his gun from near the computer monitors. Before the technician could react, he seized the younger man by the collar and jabbed the muzzle into his jowls. "You have five seconds to tell me how to get out of here!"
"Wha-" Watts whipped the technician across the face with the butt of his gun, sending blood and spittle onto the floor near him. Though he did so as an act of intimidation, deep down, he was secretly just as terrified as his hostage.
"Four!" Watts gritted his teeth, stretching his matted skin across his bony features.
"Alright, alright!" The technician released his hands from their grip around Watts' stranglehold, and raised them above his head. "There's an emergency escape hatch hidden on the floor. I'll show you!" Relief washed over the good doctor, though he soon realized it was no time for celebration.
Watts permitted the technician to stand, still training the gun on him, and followed his lead to the other side of the room near the main entrance. It was then that Watts finally noticed an indentation in the floor as the technician kneeled by a body. With a sigh of despair and resignation, the boy rolled one of his fallen comrades off of the square outline. As he reached for a small, flathead screwdriver in his pocket, Watts cleared his throat as a warning, pressing the gun against the back of his head. The technician slowly withdrew the tool, taking care not to upset his captor, and stuck the end of the screwdriver under the lip of the panel. In a grunt of force, the technician lifted the creaking hatch from its place, revealing a dark ladderway
"There's a private hanger just down here. Follow me!"
Watts and the technician walked for what had to have been only a matter of minutes but felt like hours. The station's inferno was no longer an issue as they traversed the bowels of Atlas, yet Watts refused to allow himself a second of respite. Free from the sound of lapping fire, and his frantic efforts with the window, he could now hear all too clearly the attention-grabbing AI voice on the intercom. "Warning! Warning! Atlas is falling. General Ironwood is dead. All remaining personnel, please move to the nearest evacuation ship. This is not a drill, repeat, this not a drill. Warning! Warning! Atlas is falling. General Ironwood is dead. All remaining personnel, please move to the nearest evacuation ship. This is not a drill, repeat, this not a drill." The voice repeated itself in a maddeningly monotonous loop. On more than one occasion, Watts again bludgeoned the technician in an effort to hurry along their escape. He would not die - at least, not that then.
"The hanger was commissioned by the brass for HVIs in the event of the island's destruction." The technician mused aloud as if hoping to placate Watts. As he spoke, he dragged himself along with a visible limp and sway, exposed by the haphazard flickering of the overhead lights. Watts surmised that the mute had given him a concussion, as he took care not to inflict any serious damage on his unwitting savior.
"How much further?"
"Right around this corner." Watts and the technician took a right at the end of the hallway, revealing a metallic door with a hand scanner next to its frame. The technician looked back at Watts, gaining his silent approval, and placed his own hand on the device. The glowing red outline of a handprint flashed to green against the blue background, and with a confirmatory jingle indicating acceptance, the door slid open.
Watts, having no intention of being betrayed twice in one day, grabbed the technician by the shoulder. "After you." The pair stepped into what was indeed a hangerbay. Sure enough, three Atlesian cargo shuttles sat vacant in the middle of a large room. The shuttles were yet another of Watts' creations, allowing him earlier to access the airship carrying Ironwood's bomb. Although bulky in the design of its hull, the shuttle sported a sleek design, with two wings bolstered by three winglets. The cockpit was transparent, allowing full visibility to both the pilot and any outside onlookers. On the back of the ship, just under the back engine, one could gain entry via the cargo hold, which hung open as if waiting for passengers or freight. The ships were among Watts' favorite creations, thus somewhat saddening him to see one shuttle had been hopelessly crushed by a fallen pillar.
"Come along then!" Watts grew frustrated as the technician froze in place. He was about to hit the boy once more, when he spoke without turning to face him. "You're just going to kill me anyway."
The blood within Watts' veins boiled at the technician's reticence. "We'll both die if you don't fly us out of here, you dimwit!"
"Yeah, exactly." Without a further moment of pause, the technician spun on his heel, and plunged the screwdriver into Watts' breast. Yelping in pain, he loosened his grip on the gun, granting the technician a chance to punch the doctor in his gullet. Watts collapsed to the ground, dropping his weapon. His aura had been broken from the falling debris that scorched his face, which left him completely vulnerable.
"You know, you killed a lot of my friends today." The technician coldly stomped on Watts' hand as he reached for the gun. Bones crunched as Watts seethed at the sound of his fingers breaking. The technician recovered the gun himself, and now aimed it's barrel right between the Watts' eyes as the latter backed himself against a wall.
"This is for them." Watts refused to close his eyes in anticipation. As the gun clicked, indicating an empty chamber, Watts chuckled hoarsely. The technician's face morphed from an expression of confidence, to one of bewilderment.
"I always count my shots." Before the technician could react, Watts ripped the screwdriver from his chest with his good hand, and thrust the makeshift blade into the technician's fleshy neck. He mercilessly jerked it from the entry wound as the technician sputtered. Blood sprayed wildly like a geyser, sprinkling droplets onto Watts' face and hands. Within moments, the boy's eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell to a side, limp.
Disgusted by the bodily fluids that had showered him, Watts wiped himself clean with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, cringing to the touch of his singed skin. Wasting little time, he rose to a standing position, and strode as briskly as his body would allow him towards one of the shuttles.
Inside the shuttle, Watts familiarized himself with the controls. Though he'd hoped to force the technician into piloting him away while he nursed his wounds, he could instead set the shuttle to autopilot, and tend to himself as he was delivered to safety. The only question being, where would he go? Cinder doubtless planned to cultivate favor with their mistress upon her inevitable resurrection, leaving him to be killed or worse upon a hypothetical return to the Land of Darkness. The kingdoms of Vale and Anima both respectively teamed with suspicious onlookers, and were also not options. Left with but one locale, and facing no viable alternatives, Watts reluctantly programmed coordinates into the autopilot system, and took his place in the pilot's seat. With a heavy sigh, he relaxed his muscles as the engines roared to life, and the shuttle began to move. Within moments, the orange sky hanging above the once-mighty frozen kingdom became larger, and the shuttle took to the air around Atlas.
As he stroked his moustache in contemplation, Watts stared blankly out the window. He could spot another shuttle in the far distance, though he paid it no mind. When his aircraft turned, he was given a full view of Atlas. Seconds after the shuttle left its berth, the city began its descent onto the ruins of Mantle. Watching the colossus fall like a massive bird shot from the air by a huntsman, he considered the words of the AI. James Ironwood, his friend, his ally, his betrayer was well and truly dead as a result of his paranoid ignorance, going down with his proverbial ship. He lamented not for the cybernetic tyrant, wishing only that he could have been the one to lay the decisive blow as reparations for their previous encounter. His thoughts soon wandered to Pietro Polendina, his archenemesis. Was he still alive? The answer mattered little to him, as he instead closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Dr. Merlot was pouring himself a glass of fine wine when footsteps sounded down the hallway of his bunker. Sitting the bottle down, he looked up at the sound that had interrupted him. The footsteps came closer, and closer until a lanky silhouette emerged from the shadows. It did not take long for Merlot to realize the identity of the shape even as they hid behind a yellow, nomadic headscarf.
"Arthur? Is that you?" Merlot leaned forward in his chair, crinkling his wrinkled visage as the figure stopped in front of him. With a shriveled hand, Watts pulled the material from his face. Merlot's mouth fell agape at the sight of his milky-white eye, straining his own robotic optic to assess the extent of the damage.
Watts smirked. "In the flesh." He grabbed the bottle, taking a healthy swig from its lip much to the chagrin of Merlot. With a wipe of his mouth, he hissed with content.
"You're supposed to be dead." Merlot raised a bushy, white eyebrow. "I haven't seen you since that expedition to Feldspar."
"So are you." Watts took another drink from the bottle. "I recall hearing of the destruction of your lab at the hands of those children."
"Feh, I would never allow myself to be done in by a bunch of moronic brats." Merlot waved his hand dismissively. If there was anyone who held themselves in as high esteem as Watts, it was Merlot. Their shared arrogance kept one another at arms-length, giving Watts thankfully little history with his fellow scientist.
"I suppose that's something we have in common." Watts replaced the bottle, and leaned against a workbench.
Merlot scratched at his beard. "Why are you here?"
Watts turned from Merlot, and set to playing with a syringe filled with an indescribable liquid within. "I won't play coy with you, Merlot, my previous arrangements have fallen apart and I am now in the market for a, shall we say, new alliance?"
Merlot made clear his dubiousness. "Why come to me?"
"Because at the end of the day, you're one of the few people I actually respect. You are, by all accounts, my intellectual-equal." Watts brushed some stray sand off his tie. The silver tongued words of Merlot's past colleague were clearly designed to stroke his ego, and it worked. If there was one thing Merlot and Watts shared, it was their endless passion to have their geniuses appreciated.
"Ah, so you finally accept that your mind is not without rival?" Watts visibly recoiled at Merlot's chide, but he seemed to easily regain his composure, turning back to smile at him.
"What can I say?" Watts starred daggers into Merlot. "I'm finally ready to seek companionship with those on my own cognitive level. So, are you interested?"
Merlot twiddled his thumbs for a moment before answering. "Oh, why not? It could be fun!" He said with almost childlike giddy, extending a robotic hand. Watts grinned devilishly, and lightly shook Merlot's claw with his healing extremity.
"So!" Merlot rose, only coming up to Watts' abdomen. "What's our first move?"
Watts wrapped his arm around Merlot's shoulders, and walked him towards the hallway. "For now, we wait, but once this ongoing war reaches its conclusion, we can carve out as much of Remnant as we so desire."
"I like the sound of that!" The two men laughed maniacally as they disappeared into the darkness. There, in the depths of the Vacuan Desert, two of the smartest men on Remnant had found kinsmanship, united by a shared adoration of knowledge. Their gift of intelligence was contested only by their malevolent egotism. Watts' lust for vengeance against those who had wronged him melted away. Merlot, shunned by Ozpin and the rest of polite society, similarly abandoned any aspirations for retribution. Salem, Ozpin, Ironwood, Pietro, even Cinder, none of these powerplayers or their inane plots mattered to the pair. Now free from the influence of inferiors, they were at last left to claim their rightful places in the world, and once they had done so, Remnant would never be the same again.