Main theme: Metro Exodus rap by Jt Music, featuring Andrea Storm Kaden
Arc Theme: Atlas Shrugged by Vacuum
Theme: Preface to Misfortune from the Re:Zero season 2 soundtrack
In the two months or so following the beginning of the Second Great War, as the forces of free Remnant began the process of militarising and arming themselves, through careful reconnaissance and observation, they discovered a damaging truth (At the time) About the Grimm of the Ascendant Court, and the few other Grimm factions (Take the Choir of Silver, and the dozens of Grimm gangs that rose up in the absence for example) That were in operation:
None of them had a air navy.
Oh sure, the Grimm had their Vetol aerial fighters, and their Carrier gunships and troop dropships, and they had deployed them wisely through careful planning and coordination, performing lightning raids, strafing runs, and bombing campaigns against human and Faunus settlements, airships, supply lines, and military targets across the continents, but they had no real airship force to their name. Not ones to the size of Atlas' battleships.
From the observations gleamed to them by both the Initiation Massacre and the accounts of the students (Led by the Hunters Three) That thought against the Choir of Silver in the Sleeping City, it had become (Seemingly) Clear that the Grimm were being forced to piggyback off of humanity's achievements in engineering and airship construction in order to transport large amounts of supplies and war material across their countless battlefields. In those days, it was not uncommon to see Grimm capturing and reusing old airships that mankind once used against them, and turning them into FOBs (Forward Operating Bases), Supply shuttles, and ferryboats for their forces, as if they were not a fully-fledged military, but a vast collection of scavengers and pirates picking from the bones of mankind's technological marvels.
As such, the kingdom of Atlas began a rapid crash course in airship construction and deployment in order to seize on this advantage. From their vast shipbreaking and building yards in the Epos Mountains and Treiben Basin, the kingdom began stripping down and taking apart vast swaths of old territories and relics of Solitas that belonged to the old world of the First Great War, reducing entire abandoned cities to skeletons and stray bits of scrap as they were all pushed into their ship construction program.
Soon, hundreds of new ships, and dozens of new classes- Meant to eventually replaced the two to three-hundred meter long Atlesian battleships that had long been the flagships of the kingdom- Were being deployed to the fleets of ships and troops being sent out across the kingdoms to defend against the Grimm. New airship types-
Such as the tri-pronged, four-hundred meter long Interceptor-Class Cruiser, the smooth-edged triangle of the seven-hundred meter long Saviour-Class fleet/fighter carrier, the long-barrelled, eight-hundred meter long Liberator-Class Capital Ship, fifty meter long Warden-Class Support Ships, and, (In the prototype and construction stage at the time) the gargantuan, fighter and frigate carrying, one-thousand two-hundred meter long dagger-shaped Victory-Class Dreadnaught, capable of holding a one-hundred and fifty meter long Corsair-Class Corvette within its belly-
-Would be deployed alongside the venerable three-hundred meter long Aequitas-Class Frigates, Verity-Class fighters, Dropships, and Bullheads from the previous generation of capital ships, deploying to achieve air superiority over the skies of Remnant.
But out of all of the fleets scattered across the planet, none would be more powerful, and more well-equipped, than the Atlesian Home Defence Fleet itself, the pride and joy of the kingdom in the sky.
The Atlesian Home Defence Fleet- Or AHDF for short- Was one of the most powerful military forces ever assembled by Atlas in the days leading up to and following the Second Great War. Composed of the most advanced ships of the line, this fleet would be the one that protected the entirety of Solitas in the absence of the military's chief commander, General James Ironwood, and his cabal of allies and followers within their ranks. From their vast Festungen (Old Germanic word for Fortresses, a language almost forgotten by Atlas) Across the coastlines, each one assigned a vast portion of their fleets, grounded, but ready to fly at a moments notice, the AHDF would serve as the tip of the spear for all of Solitas against the Ascendant Court, and so on.
Or, more realistically, it would serve as the tip of the spear for Atlas, and Atlas alone.
Indeed, in the months following the Initiation Massacre, as the Schnee Dust Company and Ella Industries gained more and more control over the floating city during the Atlesian Civil War, the AHDF would serve as the police force of the new Atlesian Imperium, and would become a symbol of oppression and fear to those whom resisted against them. The reputation of this once proud symbol of Atlas would forever be tarnished by the worming influence of the new Imperium.
And against the coming darkness, it would do nothing to stop the tide.
Excerpt from chapter twenty-four (Atlesian Naval Power) of The Tides of War, a record of the Second Great War (Time of publication is still unknown)
One day after arrival...
The sky above was cold and cloudy, a slurry of greys and whites, punctuated by the continuous presence of the floating island of Atlas and the pinprick ships that surrounded it, ready to cut the heavens in twain. Flickers of ice, snow, and frost blew with the wind in patterns and loops as Warden ships and Vulture drone helicopters hovered over the frozen city of Mantle below, training spotlights and gun turrets on the ground, scanning for something- Anything, that may be alive and moving down in the streets.
Moving across the city had proven to be much more difficult than Jaune had anticipated, though he wasn't sure what exactly he anticipated from a police state. He was constantly weaving himself around white lights and into dark alleyways and corners, moving over rooftops to avoid ground patrols and slinking onto the streets to hide away from the ships above. Every action was a chess game in avoiding detection. Every move was a play against his enemies.
His current enemies being Atlas.
What he found to be even more difficult was corralling the people of Mantle to safety, even with the help of his team and the resistance movement behind them. Out of the one hundred million people across the entire planet, Atlas boasted a population of five million (The lucky upper classes of Remnant), With Mantle having a population of 10 million (The downtrodden who had to clean the toilets of the upper classes), And that was before the civil war began. From what he had been told, around forty to sixty percent of Mantle's population had either fled, been taken away, or just plain killed, meaning that there were still around five million people left in Mantle, hiding away and not daring to go out onto the streets.
That meant that the resistance's exodus of the people of Mantle was going to be a long, difficult effort. One could not just safely evacuate an entire people within a day, after all.
On top of all of that, much like getting these people to trust him despite being the most wanted in Atlas (Thank goodness that he had his helmet on him, or he would've been even more buggered than he already was), In the very short time that he had been in Mantle, he had noticed two distinct patterns emerging in the people that he encountered. There were the cooperative, and even helpful, families and friends- The desperate to leave, the thankful (Not that he needed or wanted thanks), And the mournful of that which they would have to leave behind- And then there were the... Less than helpful- Looters, robbers, and those who merely sought to take advantage of the chaos.
Thankfully, right now, it seemed to be the former.
Jaune and Reza found themselves crouched on the edge of a broken, abandoned building, the gentle wind weaving past them as they looked downwards, onto the broken street of Viermart Alley, far away from the edges of the city and Nicholas' Folly. The two of them had been running around and over the streets of Mantle for four hours straight now, and had been either directing people to the closest and safest tunnels out of Mantle, incapacitating those who were trying to take advantage of the despair over the city in anyway that they could, or Atlesian patrols that were scanning the streets searching for them.
Jaune was tired and feeling rather miserable from it all, but he did his best not to let it show. He couldn't let those little things bother him. Right now, he had a job to do.
Down below, a family of Faunus- Two mothers, a son and two daughters, all of them with rabbit legs being their shared trait- Were being dragged out of one of the houses and onto the cold, frosty pavement, a gang of Atlesian soldiers (Presumably all human, and all moving sluggishly and robotically like before)- All armed with cheap looking armour, swords, staffs, batons and so on- Surrounding them, with two of them pulling out electrobatons and-
{BAM}
{CRACKLE}
"AUGH!"
-Beating and kicking the Faunus family to death.
Jaune and Reza shared a look. Time to move.
Pushing all of their aura into their feet and legs, the maid and the knightly soldier jumped down from the roof of the two-storey building, and-
{CRASH}
-Landed on the backs of two of the soldiers with a sickening-
{CRACK}
-That made Jaune's stomach flip over in discomfort (Either from the sudden motion or from his old wounds. Probably both), But he did his best to push it out of his mind as he pulled out two pistols (Now suppressed) From his belt, and-
{TWIP TWIP}
-Send two suppressed bullets into the arm groves and pits of two of the soldiers, and then doing the same for another two, wounding- Not killing- Them, before shoulder tackling another soldier to the ground, and planting an elbow into his neck, winding him and leaving him down for the count.
Reza, meanwhile, busied herself with taking down the other Atlesian soldiers swinging her Morningstar about and into their backs and heads, swiping her feet under their legs, disarming them, and in the case of the two soldiers with the electrobatons, ripping them out of their grasps and-
{CRACKLE CRACKLE}
-Sending them both into their necks, shocking them with yellow electricity, and leaving them steaming on the ground.
Within seconds, every single soldier on the street were on the ground, groaning and muttering to themselves.
The family was saved, and under no more harm.
From the building that Jaune and Reza had just leapt off of (They had been running overhead reconnaissance for their people below, being careful to keep out of the sight of the Warden ships above), Seven figures walked out. Four of them were Mantle militia in mismatching and rusting gear, armed with hardlight spears and Luger pistols that he doubted had been used since before the First Great War. The other three were White Wolves, dressed not in robes and bone (He was pretty sure that they were actually just plastic) Masks, but rugged, professional, military-grade body armour and survival gear, covering their arms, legs, waist, and chest, with a black bodysuit, grey and white armour plating, brown belts covering their waists and shoulders (In the groves between their armour) And domed helmets with tinged blue visors and a white stripe going down the middle, holding the blood red emblem of the White Wolves within them. In their hands, they wielded suppressed Star Model Z84s submachine guns and Star 31PK pistols (He had to remember to thank Ruby for her constant talk about weapons).
From what Sienna had told him (In her own inflated and self-aggrandising way), these specific White Wolves weren't just run of the mill militiamen, put professional soldiers with experience in the Atlesian military, Hunter academies, and various PMCs across the world. El Guardabosque, she had called them, and from the Menagerian that he had been taught from Apollo, he knew it to mean 'The Rangers'.
As the White Wolf Rangers and Mantle militiamen spread out across the street and secured the perimeter, one of the two mothers, sporting fresh burn wounds and bruise marks, looked up from her crouched position, her rabbit legs wobbling underneath her as she looked around, and went, "Wha… What just..."
Whilst the others secured the perimeter around them, Jaune and Reza turned back to the Faunus family, and, on prompting from Reza via a jab to the side, Jaune quickly said to them, "Er, you, um, you're safe now, okay? Now, if you could just-"
The Faunus mother quickly jumped up onto her feet and hugged the armoured Huntsman in training (Once again, thank goodness for his helmet, otherwise this conversation might've been going a lot differently), "Oh thank you thank you thank you! I don't- If you hadn't saved us, my children- They would've taken my children away!"
"I- That's alright, ma'am," Jaune said as he allowed the woman to get the rest of her emotions out before she let him go, before gesturing to the Rangers and militiamen around them, "You just- Look, these guys are going to get you to safety, okay? It's not safe out here. Not in Mantle. Not anymore. If you follow these guys out-" One of the militiamen quickly swung his head to them and made a show of lifted the scrap helmet on their heads to show a friendly face with Faunus cat whiskers. The gesture lasted only a second. "-They'll get you somewhere to safety. Somewhere out of here."
He presumed that they would be heading out of the city, anyways. That would be the smartest decision to make in their situation, what with them having children and all. It would be best for them to take the chance and get out of this place.
Of course, there was the obvious concerns, as the other mother got off of the ground and stood in front of her children with narrowed eyes, "How do we know that we can trust you?" she asked, "For all that we know, you set this up to gain our trust and cart us off to the Atlesians."
It was a good question. A matter of trust, this all was. One that he himself was still juggling with. All he could say in response to that was, "I don't know. I... Look, I can say that you can trust us a million times, but I know that my word is nothing more than that: A word. That's all I can give you. But... Okay, let's be honest: Can you- We- Really afford to take that chance?"
The two mothers looked at each other, and then to him again.
"Mantle and Atlas are going to hell right now. What other options are there?"
Once again, they looked between one another, and then nodded. Two of the Militiamen gathered around the family, and in less than a minute, they were gone, with a silent 'Thank you' directed at Jaune and Reza once more.
The two in question, as well as the other Rangers and Militiamen around them, stayed in the middle of the street as Reza lifted her Morningstar up into the air once more, and-
{CRUNCH}
{SQUELCH}
-Brought it down onto the head of one of the soldiers below them, killing him in a spray of broken metal and shattered bone and gore.
Jaune looked away and grimaced under his helmet, "Do you really have to do that?"
"If we leave them alive, then they'll call for reinforcements, locking us down in this area and making it infinitely more difficult to escape. Plus, if we keep their helmets intact, then they'll be able to access their helmet cameras and learn our identities and fighting styles. Our weaknesses," she brought her Morningstar down onto the head of another soldier in a splatter of blood and bone, "This right here? This is me killing two birds with one stone."
{CRUNCH}
{SQUELCH}
"Literally."
Jaune stayed quiet, not responding to her comments (And trying his best to not vomit at the sight of the headless people below him, because dead Grimm he could stomach, not people) As he looked around once more at the soldiers beneath him, and moved to say something, but was stopped by-
{CRASH}
{SHATTER}
-The sounds of windows and doors breaking down the other side of the street.
Reza gestured to Jaune to go ahead without her, and the knightly soldier nodded in agreement, and began to move through the alleyways between the buildings around them, always making sure to keep an eye on the skies and say out of sight of any Atlesian ships overhead or any soldiers in the streets around him.
Peering out into the street next to him, Jaune looked outwards, from one side of the street to the other, and saw a band of looters- All with cliché hoodies and balaclavas- Throwing rocks and bricks into the windows of businesses and wedging open the closed shutters of others, running in and out with handfuls of stolen pharmaceuticals, scrolls, rotten (He assumed it all to be rotten by now) Food, and so on. A few of them looked like they were steaming and smoking, cooking like meat in the oven. One of them looked like they had injected diluted ice dust into their veins via a needle. They were obviously using.
"Hey," Jaune did his best not to jump as he looked over at Reza, trying not to vomit in his helmet. She was covered in splatter upon splatter of blood. He retched his sight away from her as she asked, "Looters?"
"Y-Yep."
"Get your rifle out and set it to stun," Jaune did just that, and Reza readied her bloodied Morningstar, "Non-lethal rounds shots. Everyone else, keep us cover."
The others with them nodded, and Jaune and Reza shot outwards, sprinting down the street as the street thieves spotted them, Jaune raising his rifle and-
{ZZAP ZZAP ZZAP ZZAP}
The fight lasted barely any longer.
The thieves and druggies were on the ground, either groaning in unconsciousness or spitting up blood from split lips, their makeshift weapons and stolen goods left on the frozen streets as the Rangers and Militiamen came forward to pick them up and carry them away.
Jaune looked down to the packets of blue and red powder that fell out of the looters' pockets. Diluted ice and fire dust. So they were dusties after all (Dusty being a form of slang to those who use dust as drugs). It was hardly the safest high- Not that Jaune would know, but he had honestly half-expected the looters as high as a kite to either freeze or burn alive from the inside out- But he supposed that even in the apocalypse, everyone needed their high.
As he watched the Rangers and Militiamen carried the looters away, Jaune looked to the side, and thought back to their encounter with the soldiers only a minute ago.
"...That was too easy."
Reza looked at Jaune, "What do you mean? These guys were street thieves and drug users. What did you expect?"
"Not that. I mean, that fight with the soldiers back there? On the other street nearby? That only lasted a few seconds. Shouldn't it have been a lot longer? More difficult? And none of them had guns. Why didn't any of them have guns?"
"Hmm," Reza hummed, "Those soldiers must be conscripts, then. People taken from Mantle and forced into the army. That's why they don't have any guns: Cinder and Jacques must've sent them out after only an hour's training, and I doubt that even she would be stupid enough to send a bunch of poorly-trained trigger-happy nutters out with loaded rifles."
Jaune looked to Reza in surprise, "What?! Those guys are Mantlian? Shouldn't we've be trying to, I don't know, recruit them or negotiate with them, or something?"
"We have done. We've been trying to do that for ages since Cinder came into power, but none of them responded, and still don't respond."
"What about the conscripts who deserted and went to the Winter Shores?"
"They never passed the hour long training, and were able to escape during that time," Reza frowned, "We've tried talking to the conscripts that were pressed out before, but they're unquestioningly loyal to Cinder and Atlas. I've seen conscripts eat their own guns rather than surrender and let us help them."
Jaune was shocked, to say the least, "Are you... Are you serious?!"
Reza nodded as they began to move off of the street, "It's strange. Weird. It's like, before Cinder sends them out, they're ordinary people. But once they've been deployed, it's like a switch flipped in their minds. Totally loyal, and willing to do anything to help their cause. We've tried taking apart the helmets of some of them to see if they've been doing anything to these people, but so far, our top engineers have found nothing."
She sighed, and shook her head.
"Nothing but a useless old bolt."
Two days after arrival...
Down in the street below, in the darkness of the night, there came and went a parade.
"ALL MANTLIANS WILL LEAVE THEIR HOMES. ALL MANTLIANS WILL COMPLY WITH ORDERS FROM THE ATLESIAN IMPERIUM STATE. ALL MANTLIANS ARE TO BE CONSCRIPTED INTO WORKER AND MILITARY FORCES AND DIRECTED TO YOUR NEAREST STAGING AREAS. ALL DESCENTANTS WILL BE TAKEN TO ATLAS FOR SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH ATLESIAN ORDERS WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION BY ORDERS OF FIRST CITIZEN CINDER ELLA, AND THE ATLESIAN IMPERIUM STATE."
A hundred Faunus were being paraded through the streets, covered in bubbled burns and blooded slashes and ugly slave marks. Some of them were missing their Faunus traits, bloody marks and stumps where ears, tails, and even hands used to be. Shackles and collars around their arms, waists, and necks chained them all together as brothers and sisters as their bloody scars and swollen bruises marked them more than their own brands, standing out and perfectly visible even against the darkness of Mantle.
As they marched, spotlights, laser sights, and gun barrels scanned the buildings around them from the sleek Atlesian army cars and jeeps that surrounded the parade of prisoners, as well as the Bullheads that hovered overhead, whilst Grimm Techions-
Both the four armed, white and blue Techions with pointed heads, which he and the resistance had begun referring to as Enforcers, and two new types of Grimm Techions.
The first was hunched over with heads tilted forward atop clawed hindlegs, and covered in maroon-coloured armour and green lights, with a Y-shaped, glowing yellow-coloured visor in its helmet, and covered in chitinous, almost organic-looking armour, with thin black arms and long, clawed fingers, carrying either a blood red and glowing orange single-shooter rifle that looked just as chitinous as them, or a long blade made out of hot blue hardlight, glowing against the darkness and painting the walls a mixture of denim, indigo, and Chrysler Daytona. These Techions, the resistance called Zealots.
The second was a thin, mostly gunmetal black machine, with a hunched over head and long, thin horns poking out in a crescent, and a single yellow eye in its centre. The glowing red emblem of the new Atlesian government covered their chests, and drew glowing amber lines down their thin, skeleton-like arms and legs, and leaving glowing circles in their joints as purple rings covered the lower half of their arms, a purple glow covering the ground below them as they gently hovered above the ground, floating like ghosts amongst the living. The resistance called these ones Techwraiths.
-Marched with Atlesian soldiers, all of them sluggish and machine-like (Which only made him suspicious more). Atlesian robots lead the column, with the black, white, and glowing blue domed droids- That Jaune had learnt were called Sentries- Rolling at the sides of hulking white androids, tall and bulky with dark red visors in their heads and repeater cannons built into their arms, their feet stomping against the ground and leaving cracked prints in the cold pavement below. He had learnt to call these droids Sentinels.
A Faunus on one side of the column tripped over on black ice fell, almost tripping up the two connected to him. One of the Atlesian soldiers pressed a button on a controller, and the collar around his neck detonated, sending his head rolling to the side in a flash of blood, light, and smoke. Those Faunus slaves were now dragging a corpse behind them.
"THE ATLESIAN IMPERIUM STATE IS IN CONTROL. MANTLE BELONGS TO ATLAS. ALL MANTLIANS WILL COMPLY WITH ATLESIAN ORDERS. RESISTANCE IS USELESS. DISOBEY THE ORDERS OF THE ATLESIAN IMPERIUM STATE-"
{BOOM}
Another Faunus' head rolled off their body, and onto the floor.
"-AND YOU WILL DIE."
Far away from the nightmare parade, hidden from the Atlesian's thermals via housing radiators, windows, and thermal blankets, all that those that belonged to the resistance could do was watch as the people that they were meant to protect were charted away to a terrible fate.
"We need to do something," Jaune heard Sienna growl as they looked through the windows of the abandoned apartment building they had found and occupied. With them, Robyn, Pyrrha, Nora, Ren, Reza, Brawler, Sara, and six Winter Wolves Mandarins occupied the room, pointing their guns to the doors to stop any intruders from peering in and trying to catch them by surprise.
"There's nothing that we can do," Robyn answered her with, much to the displeasure of everyone around her.
"We can't just leave them with Atlas!"
"I know."
"Then why should we not do anything, then?!"
"Because they want us to attack them!" Robyn retorted with as she threw a hand to the window, gesturing to the parade of suffering below, "Don't you see? They want us to take the chance and attempt a rescue! That's why they're parading a hundred prisoners through the streets so openly, even with all of the firepower that they have with them! They want us to try and save the prisoners. This is clearly a trap."
"A hundred Faunus prisoners," Jaune couldn't help but frown at Sienna. Was that really what she took umbrage with?
Robyn waved it off, "That's irrelevant."
"No it isn't."
In the back, Nora snorted, "Don't pretend that you actually care about them. You just want to take advantage of their suffering and recruit them into your band of anarchists."
Ren jabbed her in the waist, but the damage was already done. Sienna whirled around to her with a snarl, but Robyn stopped her, "Enough. She's not worth it," the politician responded, "Besides, we need to be smart about this. If we go in guns blazing, then they'll just detonate the explosive collars around their necks and capture us. Or worse."
"So what? We do nothing and leave them to die?"
Robyn's eyes narrowed, "That's not what I'm saying and you know it. We're going to save them, but we need to be smart about it. We need to think tactically. We need to move methodically, and carefully. Slow and steady wins the race."
It was Sienna's turn to snort, "'Slow and steady'. Spoken like a true politician. Always making promises, always failing to keep them."
"Oh, don't you-"
"I have to agree with Sienna," Pyrrha raised up a hand, and caught everyone's attention, "We can't let Atlas win in this regard, or any regard. If we allow this to continue, then we shall just be putting these people through more needless suffering and loss, and as a Mandarin, my pride and duty cannot allow this to continue. I say we go in and win. Kick them down into the dirt and steal away the hostages, before Atlas may have the chance to drag them further into the city."
Around her, most of the Winter Shore Mandarins nodded in agreement. Their Mandarin pride was just as at stake in this regard as well.
Jaune had to admit, he agreed partly with Sienna as well- In rescuing the prisoners below, but he didn't make it known (Much to Reza's growing annoyance), But in truth, he didn't know how he was supposed to help them out. There were three ships overhead, guarding the convoy of prisoners, along with droids, Techions, and soldiers, numbering forty in total, as well as armoured cars and jeeps.
Not a lot, considering how many Grimm soldiers of both the Ascendant Court and the Choir of Silver that they had fought in the Emerald Forest and the Sleeping City before. Even if they were fighting against people now, and not just Grimm (Well, fighting against people and Grimm, but that was besides the point) His teammates could handle these guys in a fight, their chances made better by the added forces of the Winter Wolves, militia, and White Wolves with them in taking out the vehicles that the Atlesians had with them.
But the problem was with the Faunus captives below. They would be in the way of the fight, severely hampering their ability to fight in fear of hitting the people they were trying to save, if the Atlesians hadn't decided to just detonate the explosive collars around their captives' necks, killing them all anyways.
Another problem were the conditions of the fight itself. Mantle wasn't like the open fields of the Emerald Forest and around the Grimm Tidings, or the shattered skyscrapers of the Sleeping City: Mantle was a block of streets shoved together uncomfortably, meaning that every fight that they had was a mess of close quarters combat, leaving them little room to manoeuvre, and giving the enemy far too much cover to protect themselves. Granted, Jaune and the others had had a bit of experience with urban combat, such as the night of the murders that he had solved with Winter, and the Battle of the Sleeping City. But, the night of the murders, save for his and Ruby's fight against the Neopolitan Butcher in the warehouse, was hardly a good example of urban warfare, and he and the first years hadn't had to bother about fighting street to street in the Sleeping City because the Choir of Silver were already doing that for them by killing each other.
This was different. They were surrounded by Germanic buildings and roads, of which the enemy had the tactical knowledge of their surroundings, plenty of cover, and hundreds of places to hide and take pot-shots at them. Jaune and his team, as well as the resistance, were at every possible disadvantage, which means that they would be forced to bog themselves down into a slow battle in close quarters against a professional army scattered in advantageous positions.
That meant that the Atlesians would have time to call in reinforcements, and soon they would be surrounded by quick reaction forces and intercepted by ships above baring down on them. On small scale engagements, like the ones from before, this wouldn't have been a problem, and the resistance pockets would be able to slip away before they were spotted. But larger forces were harder to scatter quickly and carefully, and with the added weight of the prisoners below on them, they would be reengaged on unfavourable ground by fresh troops from all sides, and swept aside quickly.
But Jaune didn't say this to them. They probably already knew this, and even if they didn't, they probably wouldn't listen to him either way.
(This raised Reza's ire as well, though she didn't say anything either. She would be having words with him later...)
But, as a token effort, he did say, "Pyrrha, we really shouldn't-"
"There are people suffering, Jaune."
He winced, "I know that."
"Then why aren't we doing anything about it?" Pyrrha's Mandarin pride flared once again. Of course it did. There were people suffering before her, and she was being told to do nothing about it. He felt like such a bastard.
Jaune winced again at Pyrrha's retort, "Because we're not in a good position to do so."
"Then we should be-"
"Jaune," Reza finally spoke up with, "I think that it would be best if you kept your teammates in line, yes?"
He blinked, and looked around. He couldn't see past the helmets of the Mandarins with them, but he knew that they were looking at him mockingly. Pitying him. Seeing him as lesser. Even Nora and Ren were shooting him sympathetic looks, though Sienna gave him no such mercy, shooting him a glare of mocking pity as she crossed her arms together.
Jaune just looked away, and made it a point to speak no longer. This only earned him Reza's further ire as she glared at him for his weakness.
Robyn, meanwhile, deigned not to pay him any mind as she looked to the Atlesian parade of prisoners, "They're moving off. We're out of their range."
"We need to move to attack now," Sienna said to her, "If we're quick, we can ground the ships and free the prisoners before the Atlesians respond."
"Do that, and they will detonate their collars and surround us within minutes," Robyn retorted, "As much as we all want to save them, we have to-"
"What? Do nothing? Leave them to suffer further?" Sienna growled at her, "Let them fester and turn within the Schnee's mines?"
"Why Faunus?" Jaune finally found the courage within himself to ask as the parading column began to retreat out of sight, the frightful images of slaves and bloody whippings escaping into the darkness of the night, "Why just Faunus in that... 'Parade'?"
"A show against the Faunus houses," Robyn answered for him, "It's a show of force against the White Wolves and Winter Shores. I imagine that this display was meant as a way to draw them out from hiding, and into the open," Robyn looked to Sienna as she said this.
"I also imagine that there are several White Wolves and Winter Shores Faunus captured and placed in the column as well," Sienna added, "All the more reason to rescue them."
"Or they took them all from Animal Farm."
Sienna frowned, "That too."
Jaune looked to them in confusion, "'Animal Farm'?"
"It's a derogatory name," surprising him once more, it was Nora who began to speak up, "After the Rights Revolution, when slavery was abolished, the Jerks up in Atlas decided to shove all of the Faunus in Atlas into part of the slums and named it Tier Town," she paused, "Tier is animal in Germanic, so it means Animal Town, and then they decided to take it a step further, hence the name, Animal Farm."
Sienna looked to Nora, "For a human, you are surprisingly invested in the happenings to Faunus in Atlas," for once, there's no pointed accusation in her voice. Just a mere statement of facts.
Nora had no such mercy within her, "Someone has to look at the facts, and since it's not-"
"Nora," Ren cut her off with. No more than that, but it was enough to get Nora to lean back and look down.
Jaune looked at how Ren was able to command her like that and immediately felt jealous of him, before stopping himself and feeling guilty for it. Ren and Nora had known each other for years, and as such, they were the best to deal with each other. Jaune had no right to try and intrude or be jealous of it.
"Is that what it's like here?" Jaune asked quietly to himself, "As a Faunus. I've only read about it, but... Is this really what it's like?"
"It varies from place to place," Jaune jumped in place as Reza quietly spoke to him. Behind her, Brawler and Sara were quietly talking to each other, and Reza ignored them as she continued, "Atlas is just one of the worst places. Even after the Rights Revolution, Atlas was like Mistral: Hardly ever tolerant of those that they considered inferior, though luckily there was a lot less sexual fetishization. Honestly, is it really any wonder that the White Wolves turned to violent against them?"
Yes? No? Jaune began to think to himself as he watched the dim lights of the parade fade into nothing. Two months ago, he had read about the conflict between the White Wolves and the SDC, and had had nothing but mixed feelings about it.
Now?
That hadn't changed.
He just didn't know what to think about it. Things only seemed like they were getting worse and worse, and no one was willing to try and change it for the better.
Was this really the only way to answer racism? With violence?
Was Blake right?
Jaune needed to organise his thoughts. Put them down onto paper. Something- Anything- In order to understand what was going on, and to finally narrow down his perspective on these things.
In the distance, the lights of the devilish parade faded into nothing, and the night was finally laid to rest.
Three days after arrival...
"We should be doing more! There are hundreds, thousands- Millions!- Of people suffering across this damnable city under the bootstraps of Schnee and Ella, being trampled and kicked down just because of what species that they belong to, and yet here we are, hiding away in underground bunkers and wasting time in these damnable meetings instead of going outside and actually making a difference!"
Sienna's words were powerful and shrilling, echoing across the bunker that they had made a temporary home in underneath Mantle. Around the cramped confines lit by harsh overhead strip lights connected to a portable generator, militiamen, White Wolves, and Winter Shores Mandarins momentarily paused in their tasks to observe the 'Passionate' argument between the three leaders of the resistance movement.
"This is about more than just the Faunus, you know," Robyn's voice echoed outwards from the room opposite, and Jaune took a quick peek inside to see her and Sienna, as well as the hologram of the leader of the House of the Winter Shores, Ransel Torban (Transmitting through over a dozen encryption cones that hid the communication from Atlas' prying eyes and ears), Gathered around an oak wooden table covered in dusty papers and scrollpads, "This is about all of Mantle. If we try to divide ourselves in protecting only one group of people in the city, then we'll never get the chance to clear the field and take the fight all the way up to Atlas."
"That implies that my Winter Shores will even be helping you in that task," Ransel shot in with over the hologram, flickering momentarily as the others looked at him.
"What? What ever happened to your Mandarin pride!?" Sienna growled at him, "You would leave hundreds to suffer under Atlas' grip, just so that you can hide away like a coward!?"
"For once, I agree with her," Robyn glared at the hologram, "What's with all of this? You've been assisting us with the evacuation efforts so far- And you've been fighting against Atlas with us- But only now do you decide to back out and leave us?"
"That's not true and you know it," Ransel shot back to her, "We have assisted you in clearing Mantle of innocents- And we shall continue to do so- But we will not directly attack Atlas-"
"Because you are afraid of them?" Sienna growled.
"Because we have fought against them before, and lost. Hard," was Ransel's retort, "When they attacked our first home, they not only destroyed all of the relics and cultural archives that we held there- A hundred years of work and thousands of years of Faunus culture- But they wiped out two thirds of our number in an instant. I will allow my forces to assist you in securing Mantle, but I will not endanger them further in a fruitless conflict against Schnee and Ella. We have already suffered too much against their forces, and I will not allow them to suffer any further."
"Jode el bien…" Sienna muttered to herself in Menagerian, before speaking out loud, "The SDC and EI will come for you eventually, don't you see that? If they wipe us out, then they shall do the same to you!"
"And without your support, how are we supposed to protect Mantle?" Robyn threw in as well, "And how are we supposed to make Atlas and its damnable people pay for what it's done to us?"
"Oh, don't act like the two of you are anymore saints than I am," Ransel said as he began to chastise them, "You, Sienna, only care about the Faunus within Mantle, and you, Robyn, only want to see Atlas burn without a care for the people within."
"And you don't?" Robyn fired back, "You don't want Atlas and its loyal dogs to pay for the blood that they've spilt in their own name?!"
Jaune leant back and began to walk back to the desk that he had been able to claim for himself. He and the others had been given an hour of rest- A rare luxury in Mantle, it would seem- And he had decided to take the time to catch up on something that he had been writing recently.
However, as he passed by the open door to another room, he leant in and asked the two people inside, "Are they always like that?"
The first person to look at him- An elderly, dark-skinned man with brown hair and eyes, white hair, glasses and a cap, a dark red vest over a cream button up shirt with a pink bowtie, and mustard-coloured trousers and dark red leather boots, and sitting in a white, yellow, and green moving chair with glowing green accents and four moving legs- Looked up from a dissection of an Atlesian helmet to Jaune, and, hearing what he was asking about, answered with, "I wouldn't say that. They have been known for their passionate disagreements, is all," before immediately getting back to his work.
Jaune couldn't help but notice that there was a certain... Slack, to his movements. The way that his hands moved over the individual components of the helmet... There was a lax to it. A lethargy to it all.
He just... Seemed so tired...
So sad.
Nearby, the other person in the room, whom Jaune assumed to be his assistant-
A young, petite, pale-skinned Rabbit Faunus woman with blonde hair tied into a bow and green eyes, square black goggles atop her head, a white, green, and yellow turtleneck crop jacket over a green and grey formfitting bodysuit with glowing green accents lighting it, and a small white and orange robot, shaped like a mammal and small enough to fit in a person's hand, sat on her shoulder and tilted its head from side to side.
-Looked up from the dissected carcass of an old AK-BX and began to speak in an Upper Mantlian accent, "Ah, don't let Pietro's maudlin attitude get to ya. Ever since- Well, ever since Will died-"
'Pietro' stopped momentarily, a small sigh escaping from his lips before he continued on with his work.
"-Things 'ave never 'ad the same energy to 'em, specially not when we lost Orion to the Wolves two years ago. S'been up to me to keep all of the fockin' braggadocios energy in this fockin' shitehole."
In that instance, Pietro's head shot up, and whirled around to look at the rabbit Faunus, and almost shouted at her, "Cammie! We must work on your cursing!"
'Cammie' just gave a cocky grin, "Why? I think I curse pretty good!"
"..."
Her smile fell of her face, "Fine, F-in' S-hole. S'up to me to keep up the F-in' braggadocios energy in this F-ing S-hole."
"Ah," was all that Jaune could say in response, before looking from the woman to the elderly man in the wheelchair, only to see that he had gone back to his work, tweezing a pure black bolt in a metal grip. He went to try and say something to him, but caught himself, and just said, "Alright then," and then walked off, putting that awkward interaction behind him.
Finally finding the desk that he had taken for himself, Jaune sat himself down, and placed the papers in his hands onto the metal surface before him. Picking up his pen once more, he looked over the cover of the document that he had been writing for himself.
For All Mankind, a Thesis on the Relations Between Human and Faunus.
He'd come up with a snappier title later. This was just a first draft, after all.
He remembered beginning the document- Or essay or whatever- Back in Beacon, after everything that had happened with Winter Schnee and Harriet Bree, and what he had learnt about the White Wolves and the SDC then. But, after the events of yesterday and what he had learnt from Nora and Reza about Animal Farm and the conditions of the Faunus in Atlas and Mantle, it had inspired him to continue working on it some more.
He had only decided to bring it with him on the trip out of Beacon because he figured that he'd get bored of failing to try and corral his team, so at least it would give him something to take his mind off-
"What's that?"
He looked over his shoulder, to see Nora staring not at him, but at the title of the document before him, her eyes, for some reason, consumed by the words on the pages before them.
Jaune had to admit that, besides Eri, Nora was probably the closest person that Jaune could consider a friend on JNPER, if only because of when one of them had been... Yeah, they had both woken up, and talked, but he would rather not think about that night.
Nothing good came from it.
But yeah, besides Eri, Jaune was probably closest to Nora than Ren and Pyrrha, but even then, they had never talked about the giant elephant in the room- The biggest obstacle between them, being his leadership, and her response to his leadership.
Something told him that they weren't going to for a long time.
"This?" Jaune responded awkwardly as he readjusted the papers before him, "Ah, this is, um, it's just something that I thought of writing... Something that I figured might help take my mind off of things?"
"A political essay detailing the racial relationship between humans and Faunus?"
"...Yeah?"
Nora smiled, "Oh minion number one, answer your Weirdo Club President this: How is that supposed to take your mind off of the things around you?"
"...Um... It won't?" he asked cautiously.
"Exactly."
"Er, okay then? Then I won't-"
"I didn't say stop writing it," Nora leant down, and tilted her head to the side, "Actually, can I..."
"?"
"Can I take a look at this?"
Jaune blinked, and Nora took that as a yes, taking a pen and one of the papers into her own hands.
For the next hour, the two of them would work on the thesis together. Nora would contribute so much to it that one would consider her his cowriter, or even his ghost-writer.
Jaune wouldn't ask why.
Four days after arrival...
Ren held Nora's head as she vomited into one of the rubbish bins nearby, Jaune doing the same in another bin as-
{CRUNCH}
{SQUELCH}
-Reza brough her Morningstar down onto the head of one of the Atlesian soldiers nearby, whilst-
{CHOOM CHOOM}
-Brawler sent twin purple blasts into the heads of the other soldiers, and Rui Sara (In her Canaan personality)-
{SLICE}
{CARVE}
{TEAR}
-Cut off the limbs and head of a floating Techwraith Grimm Techion, overcharged the limbs and head with her semblance, and-
{BOOM}
-Threw them into the last four soldiers and Atlesian droids, scattering them into fragments of metal and blood, all of them disgusted by the sight before them.
And how could they not be?
The sight of corpses was hardly ever pleasant.
The Atlesians had been placing corpses around what Jaune learnt was called Onus Square (A break from the traditional Germanic naming of Mantlian locations), All of them once innocent civilians, now shoved onto bloodied pikes that pierced through their bodies like spears, entering through their rectums and stabbing themselves out through their throats, their jaws split wide open as the bloodied spear poked out, wearing the skin of the people around them like rags and clothes. Pools of dirty blood formed at the bottom, mixed with rot and something that gave off a foul stench as it froze to the ground in a red and brown sheet. Flies buzzed around their death flesh, eating away at the skin and dried blood, and burrowing into their opened mouths and entry wounds, spawning more of themselves inside their fleshy new homes.
Had these people been alive when this... Torture, had happened to them? Jaune hoped that that wasn't the case. It would make stomaching the sight before him a little bit easier if he knew that they died before this evil act had been carried out on them.
"By the gaze of Azama," Pyrrha muttered to herself as Eri floated next to her, "Who are... Who are these people?"
Reza walked up to one of the corpses on pikes- Moving around the disgusting pools on the floor as she went- And lifted the rags on one of their shoulders, revealing the reddened and bubbled slave mark underneath.
"They're slaves," she answered as she moved to another corpse and revealed their tattoo as well, "Conscripts from the SDC mines and plantations, it would seem. If the barcode underneath is any indication, these guys were in the same unit," she looked from one of the corpses, spotting bloodied marks on their dislocated heads, and then looking at another, and spotting no bloodied marks on their corpse, "No correlation on if they're all either human and Faunus, though. This one here is a Faunus, and this one here is a human, so this is a mixed unit," she hummed in thought, "Don't know why these guys weren't pushed into the army, though. Or maybe they were, and this is punishment for... Something. Desertion, failure, something, I don't know."
"Who- Reza, who cares about that?! These people are dead!" Jaune cried out to her as he wiped his mouth and put back on his helmet, gesticulating wildly to the corpses on pikes as he continued, "They're dead, and they've been- Oh god, they've been put on fucking pikes! Who- Who does that-"
"I don't know."
"-Why do that?!"
"I don't know," Reza repeated more firmly to him, "I'm not Cinder or Jacques. I don't know their thought processes," a pause from her, "But from what I have seen, this doesn't seem like the behaviour of the SDC."
Jaune found it within himself to look away from the staked corpses, and to Reza, but it was instead Ren who asked, "What do you mean?"
"Jacques Schnee is a bastard," she began to explain to him, and to JNPER by extension, "And a terrible human being all around, but this?" she waved her hand over the upright corpses circling the roundabout in the centre of Onus Square, the statue of a proud knight holding a cutlass holding the chains keeping the corpses upright, "This doesn't fit his previous behaviour. He's a businessman, not a dictator. He would gain more from just taking over and privatising all the public functionaries and businesses in Mantle, not ruling a tyranny through fear and blood. None of this makes sense according to his character."
"As always, Reza is right," Brawler interjected with as Rui (Now back into her Sara personality) Clung to his metal leg with an oblivious smile on his face, "As much of an awful man as he was, he was also a shrewd businessman. He was only ever concerned with profits, not policy and politics. He's probably supporting the conscription laws and slave trade in Mantle, since it means they're turning a profit for his business- Hell, he's probably all for this Imperium state and corporate kingdom, if it means that he's raking in all of the dividends- But this?" he gestured a thumb to the mutilated bodies near them, "This would be harming his profits, if anything. There's no point in him doing it."
"Maybe he- Ugh," Pyrrha looked away from the corpses in disgust, "Maybe he doesn't know that this is going on?" everyone looked at her, "I'm not trying to- I'm sorry, I'm not trying to justify him, but... Maybe that could be the explanation?"
"Hm..." Reza tapped her chin, "That... If we're to assume that, then we have to assume that the rest of Atlas is running under this veil of ignorance as well."
"But what about Cinder Ella?" Nora asked as she wiped the sick from her mouth, spitting a last droplet of it out before allowing her helmet to reform, "Could she be- Ugh, my mouth- Is she also ignorant to what's going on?"
"I don't know," Reza frowned underneath everyone else's gaze, "Don't look at me like that, this First Citizen Cinder woman hasn't been on the scene for as long as Jacques has. That makes it a lot harder to get a read on her, but," she spared a glance to the corpses, "If she isn't ignorant of what's going on in Mantle, then she is willingly allowing such macabre acts like this to happen, possibly even ordering them, if she's not under the thumb of this Ascendant Court or Choir of Silver Grimm group that you were talking about before."
Ren looked at the corpses, his stoic face hiding the brewing emotions within him (Though his balling hands betrayed him in that regard) As he then said, "If she is being manipulated by this Hephaestus Grimm and the Choir of Silver, or the Ascendant Court, then it would somewhat make sense as to why acts like these are taking place, but if it is the other way around, and this Cinder woman is ordering desecrations and acts such as this... I cannot understand what there is to gain from all of this."
"Agreed," Pyrrha frowned, once more looking away from the corpses as she went, "By the gods, there's no honour in this. All of this- All of these acts committed against Mantle by Atlas... It's just evil. Pointless senseless evil. What is there to show for it? What is there to gain? What does this Cinder woman gain from this all?"
"I don't know, but you're right. Cinder seems more interested in acting like a Saturday morning cartoon villain and committing acts of barbarianism than actually cementing this Atlas Imperium State into a functioning form of government. I reckon that if she had actually tried to ingrain herself into the people of Mantle instead of suppressing them- Especially now, when we're all in a Second Great War- She might've been really popular... Well, might've been. Hard to tell, what with the relationship between Mantle and Atlas being as unstable as it was. Maybe this was bound to happen regardless," she shrugged, "Still doesn't explain the civilian executions, slave camps, and everything else."
"Is it to draw in the Grimm?" everyone looked to Ren as he continued, "Grimm feed on negativity- Or are at least attracted to it- And we know that Atlas- Or at least the SDC and EI- Are using Grimm Techions in their forces. Could all of this be just to lure in more Grimm?"
"As much as your theory holds logic, Mr. Ren," Brawler shot in with, "That's running on the logic of the old Grimm hordes, back when they were just mindless beasts running around Remnant, and not an organised army ready to wage war on us all. If that's the case, then why don't the Grimm just order some of their forces into the city, instead of wasting time creating scent lures of negativity within Mantle?"
Jaune finally added something to the conversation, "That's assuming that we're fighting against the Ascendant Court, and not the Choir of Silver. Heck, maybe this Imperium that Atlas is running is its own separate entity from both of them."
"So, in conclusion, we don't know anything more about what's going on," Reza finished the conversation with, "Great."
"Don't you guys have age-"
"Keep it down!" Reza hissed as she suddenly shot forwards and put a hand over the faceplate of Nora's helmet. She couldn't actually cover her mouth, but the gesture made clear her intentions, "The bad guys have eyes and ears everywhere."
And sure enough, the sound of an incoming Atlesian dropship began to fill the air, along with the stomping of Atlesian droids as they marched down one of the streets nearby.
"We need to move," Reza called out as she began to march back down to where they came from- One of the alleyways in between the abandoned shops and houses- With the rest of her team following shortly behind.
Jaune sent a queasy look to the corpses on pikes, "We can't just leave these things here!"
"There's no time!" Reza shouted to him, "We have to leave them, now come on!"
As the rest of Team JNPER (Reluctantly) Began to follow Reza and the others down the corridors, Jaune spared one last look at the bodies rotting under the cold of winter's embrace, bit down the rising disgust and sickness at the sight before him, and then forced himself to run with them, reminding himself to take a moment in the future to mourn their passing, and learn their names.
They were another group of lives that he had failed to save, and he would wear their names as reminders of his weaknesses on his very soul.
And so the corpses on pikes were left in the middle of Onus Square, left to fester, turn, mould, and rot underneath the cold sun.
Their spirits would soon join the others that had died in this square only a year ago.
Five days after arrival...
"Look over there."
Jaune frowned underneath his helmet, "Where?"
Reza handed him a pair of binoculars, and pointed to an iced over riverbed dug into the frosted soil in the distance, "Over there. At the far end of the Eldeweiss Aqueduct."
From their prone position- The two of them and the rest of Team JNPER laying belly-down in a broken hole in the middle of Mantle's wall, hidden from the sights of snipers and cameras- Jaune put the electronic binoculars to his helmet, and zoomed into the end of the aqueduct in the far distance.
Local Atlesian patrols outside of the walls had become more insistent, for lack of a better word. More thorough in their searches. The SDC and EI were looking more carefully now for the resistance movement, and had doubled their patrols in order to find them and drag them out of hiding. As such, Jaune and his group had been deployed to monitor and record the new routes for their patrols, judge their size and capabilities, and send back the information to the resistance command, so that they could reorganise their supply lines and refugee networks in and out of the city. Apparently rearranging their routes was not an uncommon thing to do in order to keep their operations intact.
Jaune wasn't sure if what Reza had pointed out was even relevant to that mission, but his curiosity got the better of him as he spotted, in the centre of a frozen basin, flashes of red and yellow light flying back and forth between each other.
A battle? Jaune thought to himself as the electronic binoculars focused and cleaned up its image, allowing him better sight on the fight in the far distance, Have the Atlesians discovered one of our tunnels out of the city?
His theory would immediately be proven wrong as he caught sight of the battle, and noted the presence of Atlesian vehicles throwing lances of bullets and blasts into... It was too far away to see the specifics of the vehicles that they were fighting, but the basic shapes that he could see made them out to be Ascendant Court combat rigs, though they were small and few. Scouting vehicles, maybe. There were smaller shapes- Infantry- Surrounding both sides' vehicles, with one side being Atlesian Grimm Techions, such as Enforcers, Zealots, and Techwraiths, and the other being what Jaune presumed to be Disciples, Barons, and so on, ducking into old wooden and metal shacks and behind upturned canal boats and fishing ships- An old fishing and holiday port, maybe?
Jaune looked to Reza, who then asked him, "Thoughts?"
"The same as you, I guess," he shrugged, "I have no idea."
"But if you had to take a guess."
It wasn't a question. It was an order. Reza was probing him. Testing him. She had been doing that ever since they had arrived in Solitas, and Jaune didn't know why. Or at least, why him specifically.
He hummed in thought, tempted to ask the others for their own, and then looked through the binoculars once more, "If I had to take a guess... Then perhaps we're not dealing with the Ascendant Court at all. If we were, then those guys over there wouldn't be fighting each other, them being on the same side, and all."
"So it's not Ascendant Court," Pyrrha said as she looked through the scope of her own rifle into the distance, Eri probably feeding her tactical information into her helmet as the little drone floated gently above her, "Choir of Silver, then?"
Jaune nodded slightly- At least Pyrrha was acknowledging him again. That was a good sign- Before he then said, "I would guess so. I mean, maybe. Maybe it's Choir of Silver, or maybe this Imperium is truly its own separate faction from both the Choir and the Court."
"Whatever the case, we can rule out the Daughter and her Court, then," Ren added in as he looked through a pair of binoculars as well, "Unless this is just a distraction set up to throw us off our game, and make it seem like the Court are not the ones in control here."
"That doesn't make a lot of sense to me," Nora added in, "I mean, I love explosions as much as the next guys- As I'm sure those guys over there do as well- But I wouldn't throw away the lives of my troops just to make a show of throwing us off. Me thinks this is genuine."
"If so, then why would they be attacking each other? What's there to fight over?" Reza was looking at Jaune as she asked this. She wanted him to answer the question.
"Oh, er, I don't know. I can't make a good guess, but maybe it's over the spoils of the port in the basin that they're fighting in?"
"A canal port for tourists?" oh, so that's what that was.
"I said that it wouldn't be a good guess."
"Then make a better one," Reza hit him on the shoulder. His armour protected him from the blow, "You're the team leader, aren't you? You have to be the one to understand the tactical decisions of others in order to make your own."
Jaune blinked underneath his helmet. That was the first time that Reza had called him out like that, and in front of his own team, no less. Had she been testing his worth as a leader this whole time? Is that what her needling him had been all about?
"Um," Jaune didn't gauge the rest of his team's reactions as he thought of a possible timeline about what happened.
Pyrrha, meanwhile, decided to add in her own comment, and began with, "If I may make a point, I would say that-"
"Are you the team leader?"
Pyrrha looked at Reza, "Pardon?"
"I asked you if you were the team leader. Are you the team leader?"
"Um, no-"
"Then keep your thoughts to yourself," Reza admonished her, "It is the team leader's job to analyse the enemy and make the tactical decisions, not the teammates. By interrupting my conversation with your team leader in order to throw in your own comments, you are being insubordinate, and by trying to talk to me about it, you're bypassing the chain of command. You take orders from Jaune, not me," Reza glared at Pyrrha, "Understood?"
"Um-"
"Understood?"
"I- Yes," Pyrrha backed down, and looked back through her scope, "Understood."
"Good," Reza turned to Jaune, "And you?"
"Huh?"
"Do you understand the chain of command?"
"I- Yeah."
"Good," Reza looked back to the fight all the way at the end of the aqueduct, "Your teammates answer to you. It would be best if you reminded them of that."
"Hey-"
"Now back to the battle in the basin. Your thoughts?"
"Reza-"
"Your thoughts, Jaune Arc?"
Jaune swallowed a ball of air, "R-Right," and then looked back to the now waning battle, "Well, if I had to take another guess... I would say that the Ascendant Court guys are probably a scouting party, judging from the size of their combat rigs and how few they have with them."
"And?"
"And they came across the Atlesians- Or Imperium, Imperials, SDC, EI, whatever they call themselves. I don't know why- There's not enough information for me to take a guess at the reason- But a firefight broke out between them," he paused for a few moments, "A fight that I think the Atlesians have won."
Overhead, the ceiling began to rumble, and dust flickered down onto the prone people below as a Verity-Class Frigate, accompanied by a flight of Verity-Class fighters, flew low over the walls of Mantle, and towards the battle at the end of the aqueduct, where Jaune could see that the Grimm Techions were surrounding a group of Ascendant Court Grimm, the latter group on the ground, and with their hands behind their heads, their vehicles wrecked and fading away into nothing. It reminded Jaune of the Choir of Silver prisoners that he and the rest of the first years had taken after the Battle of the Sleeping City.
"Hm," Jaune hummed, "It looks like the Imperium- Or Atlesians or whatever- Are taken the Ascendant Court Grimm prisoner."
"Why would they do that?" Reza probed him further.
"I-I don't know," he replied honestly, "For interrogation, I suppose. Maybe even trying to convince them to join them and be turned into Techions as well."
"Why would they bother with trying to convince them, though?"
Jaune spared a look to Reza, "You think that these Imperium guys-"
"Atlesians."
"-Er, whatever they call themselves, you think that they're forcefully converting them?"
"You don't? I would think so."
"If that's the case, then why would they stay loyal to Cinder and Jacques? What's to gain?"
"Why don't you ask your teammates?" Reza asked- Told him, "In times like these, it is important for a team leader to gauge the advice and insight of their teammates."
He paused for a few moments, processing Reza's words, before finally turning to the rest of his teammates, and asked, "Okay- Er, I mean, okay guys, what's your- What are your thoughts?"
"...If I must say something," Ren began, "I noticed that the Grimm Techions and Atlesian soldiers that we have been fighting against have been acting... Sluggish."
"'Sluggish'?" Pyrrha asked.
"Yes. Almost like they're tired- Robotic. And the way that they talk also sounds slurred, like they've been drugged."
"'Drugged'?" Nora asked, "You mean, like, Cinder got them hooked on dust or something?"
"Not like that," Ren explained, "I mean like they've been chloroformed. Like they're on painkillers or something. I can't quite explain it, but something about them just feels... Off. Very off."
Jaune decided to add in, "I've noticed that too. It's... Weird. Like they're..."
Reza looked to Jaune, "They're what?"
He looked to her, "Is it possible that the Atlesians aren't in control of themselves?"
Reza paused in though, seemingly surprised by his question, or maybe even intrigued by it (He tried not to notice how happy she seemed at his intuition), Before she finally said, "I... I'm not sure. Perhaps, perhaps not. It would certainly explain why the soldiers are so willing to commit atrocities across Mantle, but... I don't know. We don't have enough information. As good as our men in Atlas are, they're not enough. Unless we get a direct feed into Atlas and its systems, we're going to be in the dark for the rest of this civil war."
There was a long pause from Jaune as he took in her words, trying to figure out why she had added that last bit on to her speech, before finally realising why she had added it in: She had been probing him once more.
He hated to risk his teammates like this, but now, he realised that he had no choice.
Turning to look at Eri- Still floating above Pyrrha- He asked her, "Eri, didn't you hack into the Choir of Silver's jamming network back in the Sleeping City? You made a spoof-key to access their systems, right?"
Eri let out a series of beeps and whirls as she nodded her blue optic in response.
"Do you think that you can do the same with Atlas' systems?"
A long pause from Eri, before finally-
[VWEEP BOOP VWEEP]
-She gave a chirp of confirmation.
"Something like that's going to take a lot more time than it did in the Sleeping City," Nora added in with, "Maybe more than a week. Back then, Hephaestus and Templar's network was slapdash and made from hundreds of different old network from before the First Great War. Atlesian electronics are probably a lot more refined, and with tons of firewalls. Hacking into the network is going to mean writing our own code and worming it into their networks, even with the spoof-key from the Sleeping City as a jumping off point."
"We've got people who are uniquely experienced with Atlesian tech," Reza quietly said to them, "If you send your droid-"
"Eri."
"-And it's-"
"Hers."
"-Electronic spoof-key over to them, then they'll be able to use that as a jump-off point into accessing Atlas' systems, and cut it down to just a few days."
"So, we've got a plan then?" Jaune asked, "Get Eri to start spoofing another key into Atlas' networks, and go from there?" the others nodded to him, "Alright then, that's as good of a plan if anything. You, er, you guys cool with it?"
The others nodded, before Pyrrha began to sit up, and went, "I'm going to go find a better vantage point. There's not enough sight for me here."
"Well, I..." Jaune paused, before relenting as Pyrrha began to move off, "Er, fine. Sure. I guess you do whatever you have to do..."
Reza frowned at this, and said, "Jaune, I need you to tell Nora and Ren to give us some space."
"I-"
"Ah, don't worry about it, O faithful minion! We'll be sure to give you lovebirds some space," Nora said as she got up and began to pull Ren along with her, "C'mon, Ren! Your Weirdo Club President needs her daily dose of attention and affection!" and with that, they were gone, taking Eri along with them.
Now alone, Jaune looked to Reza, and began with, "Reza-"
"You know, for once, you were actually acting like a team leader, and then you folded like a wet paper bag yet again."
Jaune paused, "I-"
"What is it going to be, Jaune? Are you going to be the fearless leaders that commands armies against the Grimm and the enemies of mankind, or are you going to be the weak failure of a leader that can't even command the respect of his own teammates, because right now you keep alternating between the two, and it is getting more annoying than endearing."
How do you know that? Jaune wanted to ask, before thinking the question stupid, and saying to her, "Reza, you can insult me all you want, but you don't get to go off on my teammates like that."
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"The leader in you. The fearless leader that I know is in you. Why aren't you more like that then a wet blanket?"
"Reza-"
"What I said to them? That was me giving them a wakeup call. They can't walk all over you, and you can't let just them walk all over you as well. A leader must carry with them the will and confidence to lead, and as far as I can tell, you have neither."
Jaune stood up straight, "It's not that simple!"
"Why isn't it that simple!?" Reza shot up straight as well, and even with his helmet on, Jaune could tell that she was looking at him straight in the eye, "You are their leader, are you not? Then why can't you lead them?"
"I never wanted to be a leader!"
"And I never wanted to be a warrior!" she hefted the Morningstar in her hand, "But we can't all have what we want! We get what we get! That's life."
Jaune looked away, "It's not... That's not fair."
"You sound like a child."
"I technically still am one."
At that comment, Reza took Jaune's hand into her own. When he looked back at her, she was looking at him not with a look of anger, but of compassion.
"What are you so afraid of, Jaune?"
"..."
"Are you afraid that they won't listen to you?"
"..."
"Or are you afraid that they will?"
Six days after arrival...
"You see anything?"
"No, I can't see anything at all," the White Wolf Ranger said as he and the two others with him moved backwards from the lip of the tunnel entrance, and back into the dank, cold artificial cave, shouldering their rifles as the lead Ranger continued, "I can't say for certain, but I think we're in the clear."
"Thinking that we're in the clear and knowing that we're in the clear are two different things," a nearby Mandarin spoke out loud as he leant against the wall with his arms crossed, "Are you sure that there was no one out there?"
The Ranger turned to the Mandarin, "No, I just said that I wasn't. I just said that I wasn't sure."
"Then we should leave this departure for a little while longer," the Mandarin continued, "Until we know for sure that we are the only ones here and that the refugees can't be tracked back to our base, we can't run the risk of accidentally revealing ourselves to the enemy."
The Ranger seemed to balk at this, "If we stay here for too long, and with civilians no doubt, then we just increase the odds of us being found by Atlas, or the Imperium or SDC and EI or whatever the hell we're supposed to call them!"
The Mandarin leant off of the wall and approached the Ranger, "We run the same risk of detection if we leave without throughly assessing that we are not being tracked."
"Well then we'll just have to take the chance."
"Oh for god's sake, don't be an idiot. You are meant to be a soldier, aren't you?" the Mandarin scoffed, "Or at least, as close as a terrorist can come to one."
"Oh why don't you-"
"Guys," Reza got in between the two and pushed them away from each other, "Not in front of the refugees."
Further down the tunnel, over sixty escaped slaves from the mines deep within Mantle- All of them adults and covered in brand marks, with some sporting bloody patches where their Faunus traits had once been- As well as a few children apparently rescued from Atlas- With one of them missing all of the fingers and thumb on one hand- Were huddled together near a trio of saddled Lundwurm Dragons, the snakelike beasts snorted out a puff of hot air as their undersides glowed against the still puddles and dark walls surrounding them.
The Ranger and the Mandarin looked at each other, both scoffed, and then moved back to their respective positions, intent on ignoring the other for the time being, until it really was safe to move.
"He's right, though," Reza said as she turned to the Rangers near the entrance to the tunnel, "Go make sure that no one else is there. We can't move out unless we know for certain."
The Ranger nodded to her in agreement, and he and the other Rangers went to do as they were told, but not without one of them muttering under their breath, "Can't believe we have to take orders from a fucking humie. Should be us telling them what to do," though a glare from Reza was enough to get him to be quiet and go about his tasks.
With the civilians, an elderly woman sitting to the side with her arms crossed in front of her scoffed quietly, "Why do I have to stay here with the animals from the slums? I would much rather be in Atlas than down here..."
"You'd rather be out there than in here, lady?" one of the other Mantlians with them- A man with a fox tail- Called out to her, "Then why don't you go out and hand yourself over to the Atlesians? I'm sure that they be so grateful to have you!"
"Hmph, well I'm sure that they would. It would be so much better than having to crawl in the gutter with the rest of you beasts."
The fox Faunus got up to his feet to approach her with balled fists, but was stopped by a female Mandarin warrior as she grabbed him by his arm and said, "Don't. She's not worth it," before looking to the elderly woman on the floor, "And you, shut your mouth. We're all in this together now, and most of the people trying to save your miserable life are the animals that you're complaining about, so you're in no right to whinge about it."
The elderly woman rolled her eyes and looked away, "Shouldn't have to rely on animals for protection..." no one paid her anymore mind than she was worth.
Which was, suffice to say, none at all.
On the opposite wall, Team JNPER had gathered themselves together- Nora cradling the inactive Eri in her lap as Pyrrha leant against the wall with her arms crossed in front of her, and Ren sat next to Nora, whilst Jaune just stood to the side and watched the scene unfold before him.
It shouldn't be this hard to get people to work together, Jaune thought to himself, before looking to the rest of his team, and taking it back. It really was that hard to get people to work together.
He frowned under his helmet, and then moved to take it off to get some proper air, but was stopped by Nora as she leant over and patted him on his armoured leg, "You shouldn't do that," she said quietly to him.
"Why?"
"Atlas' most wanted, remember? No one's going to trust you when your face that posted on every TV screen in the kingdom."
He blinked under his helmet, and then moved his hands away from it, "Oh yeah."
"You forgot about that?" Jaune could tell that under her helmet, Nora was raising an eyebrow. When did she become the observant type?
"Well... Yeah," he couldn't help but shrug, "It's been really stressful recently, running around the city, fighting Atlas, and all that. It just slipped my mind."
"Hm," Nora hummed, "I guess that makes sense."
Jaune nodded to her, then crossed his arms together and asked, more loudly now, "How's Eri?"
Nora looked down to the inactive red, black, and bronze drone on her lap, and patted her on the dull optic, "She's doing well. She handed over the code for the..." she stopped, and whispered to him and the rest of the team, "The spoof-key," and then continued as normal, "Yeah, she gave it over to those Cammie and Pietro people, so they're making good progress on that subject. Now we just need to continue on as normal, until they can get the coding done, and... I don't know, take the fight to Atlas, or something."
"'Normal'," Jaune muttered to himself in bemused amusement, "'Take the fight to Atlas'... Would be nice if Atlas was helping us, instead of just standing by."
Now Jaune knew for a fact that Nora was shooting him a confused look through her helmet, "'Standing by'? You do remember that we're fighting them, right? They're not just standing by and doing nothing."
"Not the kingdom," he clarified, mildly annoyed at how the kingdom and the academy shared the same name (Sometimes people forgot that there was a difference between them), "I mean Atlas Academy. I get that a lot of the graduated Hunters were sent out with the rest of the Atlesian military-" he thought back to the Ace-Ops and Happy Huntresses in Vale, when he had been interning with Winter Schnee, "-But shouldn't there be, like, a few hundred Hunters in training up in Atlas?"
This time, it was Ren who talked, "Yes?"
"So where are they?"
Pyrrha leant herself off of the wall, "What do you mean?"
Okay, we're actually communicating as a team now, Jaune thought to himself, At least we're getting somewhere, "We've been in Mantle for six days, and we haven't seen a single Hunter. Not even one of the Hunters in training."
"...That is a good point," Pyrrha admitted, "I can't say that I have an answer. All that we've ever fought in this city are soldiers, robots, and Techions. No Hunters at all."
"Maybe they've all been sent out with Ironwood and the rest of Atlas across the world?" Nora asked.
(And that gave way to another thought for Jaune: The Atlesians scattered across the kingdoms. If they even were aware of what was happening in Atlas, would they support this new Imperium State made by the SDC and the EI, or would they rebel against it?
If they chose to support the Imperium, then that meant that if Cinder and Jacques succeeded in wiping out all opposition across Solitas and established their control over Atlas, then not only did they have a vast economical powerbase to lord over all of Remnant, but they also had forces in all of the kingdoms, ready to wrest control over all the kingdoms and establish the Imperium's rule over the entire planet.
In short, this Imperium's rule needed to be stopped before it even began.)
"I doubt that," Ren added, "If they assigned the Hunter trainees to missions outside of the kingdom, then they would run out of new Hunters within the kingdom. Every kingdom only has so many available Hunters, especially the ones in training. They wouldn't just send them out on missions with such a high risk of loosing the possible replacements for their already existing numbers."
"But... Isn't that what Vale's council did for Beacon?" Jaune cut in with
"Hm... Good point," Ren conceded to him, "So I suppose it is a possibility."
"I'm not so certain," Pyrrha added, "I don't believe that this governmental body- Especially one that deals in authoritarianism and fascism- Would be so willing to give up any slight bit of power, especially one that would give them an edge over the endless hordes of Grimm. Perhaps Cinder and Jacques are keeping them in reserve, and has yet to deploy them."
"Perhaps, but this Imperium- And by extension the SDC and EI- Came into power a month ago, whereas the Second Great War began two months ago, so Cinder and Jacques wouldn't have had the chance to order about the Hunters without the approval of the rest of Atlas' council, even if they were in office as well at the time."
"But the rest of Atlas' council seems to be subservient to Cinder, remember?"
"True, but there is also another point: The fact that the Imperium is using Grimm Techions at all. Wherever it be their pride or patriotism, there is no way that any Hunter would willingly side themselves with the Grimm. If anything, the Hunters would've rebelled against the Imperium and brought an end to their reign."
"...What if they already have?"
All three of them looked to Jaune, "What do you mean?" Pyrrha asked.
"I mean, if what Ren is saying is true, then the Hunters in Atlas Academy should've launched a rebellion against the Imperium, but considering that we've seen nothing but Atlesians down here... Then did they lose?"
There was a long pause from the others, as Jaune continued on, much more quietly now than before.
"Maybe the Hunters in training tried to rebel, but failed... Or maybe they're still trying to rebel, and that's why we've heard nothing from up in Atlas... I don't know, but the fact that the only Hunters down here are us, Reza's team, Robyn, and Sienna... That doesn't exactly fill me with a lot of confidence."
"...I wouldn't call Khan a Huntress... Far from it," Nora muttered to herself.
Everyone else just looked at the helmeted Viking warrior as she balanced Eri on her lap, and pulled her Magnhild hammer from her back, balancing it on her shoulder as she looked downwards. Her free hand seemed to drift to her back, but she stopped herself.
Jaune's curiosity as to why she hated the White Wolves so much was beginning to boil over, and he made a move to ask her about it, and-
Nora's head poked up, and she looked to the wall behind them, "Do you hear that?"
The others blinked, "Hear what?"
Nora stood up and handed the inactive Eri to Pyrrha, before moving to the wall and putting her helmeted ear to it.
"Behind the wall," Nora put her hand on said wall, "It kind of... Sounds like..."
Her head shot back, and he could sense her eyes widening underneath her helmet.
"Beeping."
Nora leapt back, and urgency filled her voice.
"Everyone, back! We've got-"
{KA-BOOM}
The tunnel wall exploded outwards in a cloud of smoke and rubble, sending rocks and loose bricks flying into the Rangers, Mandarins, and civilians as the members of JNPER were sent flying backwards into the floor and opposite walls, and others were flung to the side from the overpressure of the blast ripping through the tunnel. Smoke and dust flooded the tunnel and leaked out of the entrance like an upwards stream, acting as a beacon on the surface of Mantle for the rest of Atlas to flock too. The roof above them began to crack and weep dust and stone, clattering against the ground like a flood of rock as the members of JNPER were left groaning on the ground from the blast.
Pyrrha, Nora, and Jaune were mostly unaffected by the blast- Their aura having tanked most of the blast, and their armour taking the rest- But Ren had taken the worst of the blast, as his aura had shattered and recharging. The armour around his legs had protected them, but the rest of his body had not been so lucky, as his upper-body clothing had been torn and burnt from the fire and stone shards, some of them embedding themselves in his skin as he tried to get himself up.
(This was why full body armour was better than nothing, Jaune had learnt.)
Nora got up quicker than Ren and went to help him up, and Jaune began to pull himself up off the ground and-
{SLIP}
{CLUNK}
-His helmet, having been loosened by the blast, slipped off of his head, revealing himself to the people within the tunnel.
Needed to get that fixed, Jaune thought to himself as he picked it up in a slight daze, Get better latches, or whatever they're called. Clamps? Whatever they're called.
"My god..." he blinked, and realised that it had been one of the civilians talking, "It's him... Atlas' most wanted."
"That kid? That's him?"
"Oh shit, did he bring them here?"
"He must've... He must be the reason that Atlas is trying to kill us!"
"What?!" that was enough to get Jaune to snap out of his stupor and raise his arms in surrender, "I didn't- I only got here a week ago! I didn't-"
"Fucking lies!" one of them called out as they threw a rock at him. It bounced off of his armour, but it still got the point across, "I lost my entire family to Atlas! I had to watch my entire family be dragged away and turned into slaves! And now you, the one person who's face is on every screen in Mantle, the one person that Atlas wants to kill the most- Now you're trying to tell us that this isn't your fault! How stupid to you think-"
{BANG}
{SPLATTER}
A green-coloured round went through the civilian's head, and splattered blood, bone, and gore over the others as he was sent falling to the ground with a wet {THUD}. The other civilians began to scream as the White Wolves, Mandarins, Reza, and Jaune and his teammates pulled themselves together and aimed their weapons at the freshly made hole in the tunnel.
Peeking out of cover was a tall humanoid figure in sleek, obsidian black armour, with slightly oversized pauldrons, a segmented chest plate, holsters for dual HH-212 hand cannons on his upper hips, a black belt with a silver buckle, black lines running down the outside of his arms, a large backpack on his back, and a black domed helmet with green and black tubes built into the bottom, a rangefinder antenna on its right side, a frowning grill on its lower half, and a green slit visor with a circular cut-out on the right side. In his hands, he held a custom sniper rifle that converted itself into a marksman rifle, with wrappings covering the rifle stock, a rectangular main body with 3 glowing green slits in the middle, a circular scope with a square laser sight, and a circular muzzle with a bandage wrapped around its tip in a bow, and fresh smoke drifting from the muzzle's end.
The armoured figure tilted his head to the side as he looked at Jaune.
"Well well, Jaune Arc... There's fifty grand waiting for me if I bring your head to Cinder upstairs."
He chuckled.
"It's not a lot, but it's a nice bonus."
Jaune's eyes widened at the familiar voice, and next to him, Pyrrha growled.
"Malcom Croft..."
The man- Malcom Croft indeed- Didn't reply with any verbal retort.
He simply raised his rifle and-
"DOWN!"
{BANG}
Reza tackled Jaune to the ground as Croft sent a green round right where his head should be. If Reza hadn't thrown him to the ground, he would've died right there and then.
Everyone else in the tunnel opened fire into the smoking hole, but their rounds were stopped by a pair of glowing blue hardlight shields blocking them. Soon, several Grimm Techions, the four-armed Zealots, stormed through the broken wall, blue hardlight shields in front of them as their raised their hardlight swords and-
{SWIPE}
{SLICE}
"GAUGH!"
-Began to cleave through the necks and unarmoured sections of the Mandarins and White Wolf Rangers like hot knives through warm butter, disassembling them into bloody and gory piles as Imperium (He finally settled on the Imperium name) Soldiers, glowing yellow helmets and all, followed behind them, supported by the imposing black and white Sentinel droids as they raised their guns and arm cannons and-
{CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM}
{BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG}
-Began to fire at the civilians.
"NO!" Jaune cried out as he and Reza jumped back up to their feet, only for-
{BANG}
{CRACK}
-A green round from Malcom's rifle slammed into the side of his helmet, scraping along its side and almost throwing him back to the floor from its force, though Reza was quick to pull him back onto his feet as she pulled the ML-15A from his chest and-
{BANG BANG BANG BANG}
-Sent several rounds flying between the Zealots' hardlight shields and in Malcom's direction, forcing him to duck for cover behind the broken wall as she moved Jaune to the side.
"Jaune! Are you alright?" Reza asked him as she continued to pour fire at Malcom.
"Ugh, I felt that one..." Jaune muttered to her, once more in a slight daze from the sudden force.
"I would imagine that it would be hard not too..."
"Mm," Jaune's brain took a moment to catch up with reality, before he finally remembered what was going on and his eyes widened, "The civilians!"
He looked to the side, to see-
"Huh?"
-The Lindwurm dragons slithering to the front of the fight, two of them moving themselves in front of the civilians, using their bodies to shield them from the blasts and bullets flying at them, and the last one charging up to the fight, and-
"RAUGHR!"
-Throwing its head to one side, and with a sweeping motion-
{CRASH}
{BEND}
{CRUMPLE}
-It used its own body as a bludgeon, and threw many of the Imperium Techions and soldiers into the wall, crushing their armour and breaking their metal, before snatching another Grimm Techion in its jaw and-
{CHOMP}
{SPLATTER}
-Splitting it in half in a spray of metal shards, Grimm blood, and Black Ether, right before it then threw both of those halves into a pair of Imperium soldiers, throwing them both to the ground, and then-
{SLAM}
{CRUNCH}
-Slamming its head down into the ground and crushing one of the Sentinel droids into pieces.
"Huh," Jaune said out loud as he pulled two of his ML-17 pistols from his hips and looked to Reza, "I guess they've got it handled."
"Not yet," Reza said, before she and Jaune began to pour fire back into Malcom's position, keeping the traitorous mercenary pinned as he occasionally peeked out of his corner to-
{BANG BANG}
-Throw more green tinted rounds at them and the rest of JNPER, forcing them to duck behind the fragmented pieces of wall for cover as up above, the Lindwurm dragon let out another roar, just as-
{SCREECH}
{SCREECH}
-A pair of Imperium jeeps surfaced at the far end of the tunnel, blocking them all in.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" Jaune heard Nora cry out as she moved to lower her back cannons and fire on the jeeps, only for Malcom to peek out of his corner and-
"Nora, no!"
{BANG BANG}
-Send two green blasts towards her, though Ren was able to pull her out of the way and-
{BANG BANG BANG BANG}
-Fire a stream of bullets from his pistols at Malcom, suppressing him once more as the Lindwurm dragon from before screeched and-
{SLAM}
-Threw its head into the ceiling above, and-
{CRUMBLE}
-Brought the roof down on top of what was left of the Imperium soldiers and Techions, burying them underneath an avalanche of rock and dirt, and-
"No!"
-Blocking off Malcom from taking anymore shots at them, and sealing his entrance into the tunnel, just as the jeeps reared their guns towards the Lindwurm, and-
{RATATATATATATATATATATATATATA}
{RATATATATATATATATATATATATATA}
-Opened fire.
The Lindwurm tried to move itself back from the gunfire, but it was too late. It was shredded by the rippling gunfire of the jeeps, and then was crushed by the mountain of rubble that fell on top of it. The snake-like beast let out one last roar as it was buried alive- One last wriggle of its tail- And then, it fell silent.
"No..." Jaune muttered as he placed his hand on the exposed flesh of the dead Lindwurm, sparing a moment to mourn its passing, before turning back to the others behind him, and looking to Reza next to him, "Have we got a headcount?"
"We've got Pyrrha, Nora, Ren, and your little drone with us," Reza noted as Eri, now activated, twirled around in the air with a slight panic to her movements and electronic vocalisations, "Most of the civilians are here, though we've lost a few, as well as the Mandarins and Rangers."
Jaune blinked, "Seriously?"
"We were taken by surprise. They weren't given enough time to properly react and get to cover."
Hit hard. Hit fast. Don't give your enemy the time to get their bearings. It was a solid tactic.
It was also something that Atlas and their Imperium forces hadn't expressly shown before. For the most part, in the last six days that they had been here, the tactics that the Imperium had shown was robotic, easy to predict and counter, without any initiative or imagination. Almost like they were being programmed, like robots, and not people.
But here? There had been actual tactics used, which meant that their commander was not suffering from the same lack of initiate that those under his command seemed to show.
And then, there was something else that had immediately caught his attention.
Malcom Croft.
The same Malcom Croft that had pretended to be part of the Atlesian forces in the Sleeping City, only to betray the rest of the first years to the Choir of Silver, and then slip away on the Pilgrim's Flight with the last of the Silver Court, Hephaestus, to parts unknown.
Not unknown anymore, it would seem, now that he was in Atlas, and working for the Imperium.
So the Choir of Silver really was calling the shots in Atlas, then...
Except, that might not be the case, anymore.
"There's fifty grand waiting for me if I bring your head to Cinder upstairs."
Cinder, not Hephaestus.
Did that mean that the Choir of Silver really wasn't behind all of this, and if so, then was it really this Cinder woman that was pulling the Imperium's strings? And if this was true, then were was the last member of the Silver Court during all of this? He knew that they were using Grimm Techions, so he must be up there in the command chain, but was he a superior or a subordinate?
And why did Cinder want Jaune dead?
Questions for later, Jaune thought to himself as he looked to the panicking civilians, now huddled together behind the Lindwurms, shaking and scared. He holstered his pistols and raised his hands to them in order to try and calm them down, "Everyone, can we please-"
"Shut the fuck up!" one of the civilians yelled as they chucked another rock at him, "You're the one who brought them down here, aren't you!? You're the one behind this all, aren't you?!" the others began to latch onto these words, and began to throw heckles and damning insults at him, like a tidal wave of (Hopefully) Misguided malice against him.
These people were scared and confused as to what was going on and why, and as such, they were grabbing onto whatever form of explanation that they could find.
Jaune didn't blame them. Therefore, he took their insults in stride (He tried to, at least. Just because he didn't blame them for insulting him didn't mean it didn't hurt) And turned to Reza, who had put her scroll to her ear, "Any chance of help coming our way?"
Reza lowered her scroll and said, "I've just called Brawler. Had to break radio silence to do so."
"Is he on his way?"
"He'll be here in about a minute or two."
"How is he supposed to get through the jeeps at the entrance?"
"Who said anything about going through that entrance?" Reza smiled, "He's good at making his own," before turning to the civilians, and saying, "For now, let get these people onto the Lindwurms, and..."
She stopped herself, and looked to the wall of rubble behind her. A faint rumbling began to echo out from the other side of the makeshift wall of piled rock and dead dragon flesh.
"Shit," she muttered, "They're digging their way through," she then turned to Ren, "Ren, use your semblance to calm these guys down and mask their emotions. If the Grimm with the Imperium can still sense negative emotions, then I'd rather not them being able to follow these guys out of the city. I'll get to saddling the Lindwurms. Jaune, use your aura to boost Ren's aura. I know that his is already broken, and I don't want to take any chances."
"How did you know what my..." Ren stopped himself, before nodding, "Mm, understood," and then moving to the civilians. Jaune paused for a second, before following shortly afterwards, and putting his hand on Ren's shoulder, his aura flaring in a white, fire-like glow, right before-
{VWOMP}
-Their section of the tunnel turned monochrome, and an alleviating sense of calm flooded over him as the negative emotions within him were shielded from the Grimm.
"Ah, that's better," Reza muttered, before turning to Nora and Pyrrha, and saying, "Right then ladies, let's get these Lindwurms prepped to move. I'll call Brawler and get-"
{BOOM}
The wall near them exploded outwards. Another breach by the Imperium. Instinctively, Jaune panicked and sent an oversized flare of aura into Ren's semblance, overcharging its effects. Ren shivered, and looked to Jaune, "What was-"
"Sorry! I panicked a bit!" he moved to take his hand off of Ren's shoulder, "Let's just-"
A trio of poorly equipped Imperium soldiers, armed with swords and hatches (Conscripts from Mantle, then), As well as a four-armed Grimm Enforcer Techion walked through the freshly made smoking hole in the wall, and raised their weapons to kill the rest of the civilians once more.
But then, as they were consumed by the monochrome hue of Ren's Tranquillity semblance.
They fell to their knees and began to scream.
The others flinched and stepped back, the civilians letting out a screech of terror as the soldiers and Techion let out wails of pain and agony, grabbing their heads and scraping their hands across the metal, trying to tear it apart as their cries of horror continued, the Techion banging its head against the ground and breaking apart the metal that covered it.
"What..." Jaune began as he watched the scene unfolding before him in morbid curiosity, "What did... Ren, what did your semblance do to them?"
"I don't..." Ren slowly explained, "I... I don't know."
Then, as if desperate for air, the soldiers ripped off their helmets and began to smash them into the ground like clubs, spilling the mechanical components and wires within like sweet treats from a spilt bag. There were screw ports and wire sockets stabbed and carved into their shaved heads, surrounded by plates of metal, all of them spilling blood as they screamed, but what Jaune found his attention drawn too the most was not the bloody intrusions in their skin and skulls, but their eyes...
And how they seemed to glow and flicker yellow.
"Failures," Jaune heard Malcom Croft state as the black armoured mercenary walked through the fresh hole in the wall, looked down at the Grimm Techion and soldiers writhing on the ground, pulled out one of his hand cannons, and-
{BANG}
{BANG}
{BANG}
{BANG}
-Put a round into each of their heads, spraying blood and Black Ether on the ground in messy splatters and puddles, their bodies hitting the floor and falling still like dead weights.
Malcom then raised his gun to Jaune again, and the others with the latter raised their weapons again, only for-
{CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM}
-Several Sentinel droids to march through the entrance with their arm cannons raised, and began to spray rounds at Reza and JNPER, forcing them all to duck to the floor to avoid the fire, before the Lindwurm dragons nearby-
"RAUGHR!"
"ROAR!"
-Shot forwards to protect the civilians, their jaws snapping and-
{BANG}
{BANG}
Malcom had raised his hand cannon and shot them both in the eye. The Lindwurms dropped dead to the floor with in wet thuds as the Sentinels turned their guns on the civilians and-
{CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM}
-Opened fire.
"NO!" Pyrrha cried out as she used her semblance to lift up the Sentinel droids and crush them all into balls of sparking metal, but it was too late.
The civilians were all dead.
Nora jumped up from the floor and brought her back cannons to bear, aiming them at Malcom as he raised his rifle and-
{BANG BANG}
-Shot both of the cannons on her back, creating a pinkish-
{BOOM}
-Explosion that sent her flying forwards, which Malcom reacted to by-
"UGH!"
-Grabbing her by the throat as she flew towards him, and-
{SLAM}
"ACK!"
-Slamming her into the ground, before putting away his rifle, kicking up Nora's Magnhild hammer into his spare hand, and-
{CRASH}
-Slammed it into Ren's head with a single clean hit, knocking the man out before using it to-
"HYAH!"
{CLANG}
-Block Pyrrha's incoming attack with her double-bladed spear, and then singlehandedly holding her back as he pulled out one of his hand cannons and-
{BANG BANG BANG BANG}
-Shot her four times in the waist.
Pyrrha was stunned by the attack as her aura broke and her armour bent underneath the pressure, and Malcom used the opportunity to throw her off him, swing the hammer in his hands around, and-
As good as Pyrrha was, she wasn't that good.
Not in non-arena conditions where the rules of honourable combat, which she had fought and trained in all her life, didn't apply.
And not when her opponents were fully grown and completely experienced Hunters and warriors with every possible advantage in training and experience against her.
{CRACK}
The hammer slammed into Pyrrha's leg, and bent it backwards. The cracking sound of snapping bones and tearing muzzles filled the tunnel, accompanied by Pyrrha's screams as she fell to the floor, only to be silence as Malcom-
{WHAM}
-Slammed Magnhild into Pyrrha's helmeted head so hard that it knocked her out.
If she hadn't been wearing it, her head would've been turned into paste.
Hefting the hammer upwards once more, and converting it into its grenade launcher form, Malcom looked over to Jaune, now standing tall with ML-17 pistols aimed at him, with Reza to one side, and the floating Eri to another.
Next to Malcom, the wall made of flesh and rubble gave way, and a tunnel formed in its centre, supported by pillars of self-repairing mechanical supports as more Imperium soldiers and Techions moved in, aiming their guns at the three of them. Around two dozen in total, if he had to count.
They weren't going to survive this.
Jaune spared one last look to the dead civilians nearby, the fallen Lindwurms, and the pained members of his own team on the ground, and scowled under his helmet.
If he was going to die- If they were all going to die- Then they would go down fighting.
So he held his pistols firm and kept them levelled at the obsidian-clad mercenary in front of him. Next to him, Reza held her commandeered ML-15A in one hand, and her Morningstar in another. To his other side, Eri crackled with energy, her blue optic flaring brightly as she buzzed like a hornet in the air.
"Heh," Malcom mocked, "Cute."
He then raised the muzzle of Magnhild to them, and-
{BOOM}
Further up the tunnel, another part of the wall exploded outwards, and-
{CHOOM CHOOM}
-A twin pair of purple blasts shot outwards and into the crowd of Imperium soldiers-
{KA-BOOM}
-Detonating into a purple flash of smoke and fire as they were all scattered, and most of the Imperium soldiers killed in the blast.
Jaune and Reza were thrown to the side from the overpressure of the explosion, and began to pick themselves up as their armour and clothes began to bubble and burn from the flash heat, their aura absorbing as much as they could as from the smoke, a towering green and glowing purple Techion with a yellow visor on his head and two smoking cannons on his back walked out, and waved.
"Hello there, all you lovely people," Brawler cracked his head, "Apologies that I couldn't make it here sooner. Traffic is a nightmare around here."
Malcom and several soldiers picked themselves up off the ground and raised their weapons-
{CHOOM CHOOM}
{BOOM}
-Only for Brawler to unleash another round of fire into them and force Malcom to duck back into the ground and-
{BANG BANG}
-Throw some rounds into Brawler himself, the Techion merely tanking the rounds as he turned to Reza and Jaune and waved them to him.
"Now come on then, everyone! Let's get a move on before these chaps reorganise themselves!"
Malcom growled as he found the space to pick himself up, and moved to hide himself behind the various Imperium droids, Techions, and soldiers that were now flooding into the tunnel, all of them forming a wall to protect their mercenary commander as-
{TSCHE-CHU-CHU-CHU-TSCHE}
-Eri transformed herself into Pyrrha's backpack, attaching herself to the wounded warrior and stretching her fans out to drag the Mandarin warrior behind her through the thick of the fire, whilst Reza moved to pick up Ren, and Jaune to Nora.
"Hurry up!" Reza called out to Jaune as another twin blast of purple light soared over them and impacted with the Imperium forces behind them, Ren slung over her shoulders as she began to run towards their Techion ally, "This tunnel's going to collapse on top of us thanks to all this fighting, and I'd rather not be here when that happens!"
"One second!" he called out to her as he slung the groaning Nora over his shoulder, and sifted through the remains of one of the soldiers helmets, "Got it," he muttered to himself, as he picked up a broken, seemingly useless old bolt, filled with tiny wires and circuitry.
He then noticed something. Something within the still writhing body of a ravaged Enforcer Techion. A glowing swirl of energy, like a living mist, or a writhing flare of fire, trapped within a glass container with a metal container.
Jaune could sense that there was something... Familiar, about the swirling mass of energy. Something real.
Something human.
Pocketing the broken bolt, and with Nora over his shoulder, he quickly sprinted over to the writhing Grimm Techion, and with two swipes of his Crocea Mors, he freed the container of swirling flare of light from its mechanical prison, and picked it up by its metal handle. The Grimm spasmed violently at the removal of whatever the colourful flare of light was, and then fell still.
"Jaune, come on!" Reza called out to him as she and Ren, as well as Brawler, Eri, and Pyrrha, made it to the makeshift entryway out of the tunnels, spraying covering fire down the corridor as Malcom's forces began to regroup and recover themselves.
"Coming!" Jaune called out as he began to leg it towards the entryway, bullets and blasts rounding off around him as-
"Seal the tunnel! Bring it down on top of them!" Malcom ordered his forces.
-The Imperium soldiers raised their guns to the ceiling and-
{BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG}
-Opened fire on the ceiling of the tunnel, breaking it apart, and-
{CRUMBLE}
-Bringing the whole thing down, just as Jaune was able to toss Nora towards Brawler in the entryway, and then-
{SLAM}
{CRASH}
-Jumped out of the way of the crumbling ceiling and falling rubble as they were all shrouded in a cloud of dust, leaping to safety into Reza's arms (Having placed Ren on the ground a few seconds before) Just as the tunnel was sealed behind them.
Jaune removed himself from Reza's arms and shook himself off, "Thanks. Thanks a lot."
Reza let out a cough from the all of the dust around her, "No- Ack! No problem," patting herself down, she moved to pick up Ren once more, and said, "Let's just get out of here, before... Wait," she looked down and pointed at the container that Jaune held in one hand, the light within flickering in a golden hue, "What the hell is that?"
"...Mind control."
Reza looked up at Jaune, "What?"
In his spare hand, he pulled out the broken bolt from the side compartment in his armour, its tiny wires spilling outwards, "Did you see their eyes? How they glowed yellow? Unnaturally yellow, I mean. And how they reacted to Ren's semblance?"
"Ren's Headmaster semblance."
"Exactly. Take into account how willing they are to follow orders and commit acts to cruelty that no ordinary person should be able to stomach, plus how static and robotic they all are... I don't think any of them are doing any of this out of their own free will. At least, none of the humans, but then again, with how the Grimm Techion reacted... Maybe someone in Atlas has some kind of mind control semblance, and this is how they transmit it to everyone in the Atlesian military. Maybe this is a way of infecting their aura with it."
"Within the Atlesian Home Defence Fleet," Reza corrected, before shaking her head, "Wait a minute, 'Infecting their aura'? Grimm don't have aura."
"I think that's what this thing is for," Jaune hefted the glowing golden canister in his hand for show.
Reza paused, and then pointed to it, "Is that... Aura? Is that someone's aura?"
"Someone's aura that was separated from their body, and then fed to the Grimm. Attached to it. Hell, stitched to it if we want to use medical terms."
Her face paled in horror, "Atlas Academy... Oh god, the children of Mantle..."
Jaune blinked under his helmet, and then once he realised what Reza was thinking, he too was filled with horror.
The children of Mantle, being taken up to Atlas...
They weren't being used as a slave workforce.
They were being used as a farm.
Seven days after arrival...
{FWOOSH}
{BANG}
The Tinkerer watched Malcom impact with the wall, bending the dull grey metal underneath him, and breaking apart the bland white lights that ran down them, flickering and buckling as he collapsed to the floor and groaned in an equally dull pain.
"One job!" Cinder roared as she stomped over to him and pressed her heeled boot down onto his helmeted head, "I give you one job, and you couldn't even do that!"
"We- Augh, we... Were ambushed!" Malcom growled back to her, his tone not apologetic in the slightest as he struggled against Cinder, "We... Had them... Dead to rights!"
Cinder growled, and took her heel off of Malcom's head, only to grab him by the neck and lift him up into the air, "And yet you still failed, you incompetent ingrate!"
"I- Ack!- Don't... See... You... Helping!"
"What was that!?" Cinder tightened her grip on his neck, choking him, "I can't quite hear you..."
The Tinkerer could tell that Malcom was struggling for air underneath his helmet as he clawed at the hand holding him up, his gasps for air filtering through his helmet as-
"He had enough."
-His movements began to go limp and fainter and-
"Stop!"
Cinder's glare switched from Malcom to the Tinkerer, and her eyes flared with stolen power as the device in her chest- An aura syphon, leeching the Fall Maiden powers from their resident captive- Blared to fiery life (If the Tinkerer focused really hard, he could hear the pained screams of said captive). If looks could kill, the Grimm would've been turned into dissolving ash underneath her gaze.
With a roar of anger and an accompanying blare of stolen fire, Cinder threw Malcom to the side-
{BANG}
-And let him crash into the opposite wall, the mercenary's armour saving him from any broken bones and limbs once more as the sheer force of the blow left a dent in the wall.
"He is a boy!" she growled to Malcom as he picked himself up, "He and his friends are petulant children-"
Not only thing that is petulant, the Tinkerer thought, but did not say.
"-And yet you somehow let them slip through your grasp! Are you that incompetent, Malcom? Are you that unable to complete a specific task?"
"You want someone to blame, First Citizen?" Malcom said the last two words mockingly as he stared Cinder down, "Blame your Imperium's fodder. Your soldiers and Grimm are idiots. That brainwashing semblance crap that Merlot's cooked up has dumbed them down. Reduced their brains to mush. I can't coordinate your army if they can't think at all. They're too robotic, too inflexible, too unimaginative. They wouldn't know initiative if it slapped them in the face," he didn't raise his voice once, unlike Cinder.
"I did inform Miss Ella that if we stretched the Jax and Gillian Asturias' semblance too far like we have done, it would result in the breaking down of mental faculties," nearby, Merlot sat calmly at one of the desks available, tinkering on the equipment that the Tinkerer had brought him from the Sleeping City and its catalyst churches. A side project, he had told Cinder. She hadn't cared, and in all honesty, it was better for everyone that she didn't know, "The Mindbender can only keep so much of the original personality intact when spread out so far."
"Exactly," Malcom nodded to Merlot, before turning back and pointing to Cinder, "I can't properly manage your army if they act like robots all of the time."
"They are completely obedient, Malcom," Cinder retorted, "That should be more than enough."
"The only tactics they know are marching in a straight line and spraying bullets at the problem. They can't think-"
"Don't think," Cinder willed a ball of fire into her hand, and their captive screamed in the distance once more, "Obey."
"Cinder-"
"Don't forget, Malcom, that there are a million other mercenaries out there who would be more than happy to take your position within my Imperium. You are expendable. Never forget that."
Malcom folded his arms and looked the side with a scoff, "Sure thing."
Cinder was lying, and they all knew it. She needed someone like Malcom to manage her army, and he knew it. As such, he constantly made sure that Cinder knew that as well.
"...Better ways of ruling, Cinder," the Tinkerer finally found it in himself to say, "Better ways of ensuring compliance."
Cinder's eye twitched as she looked at him, "What."
"We using too many resources in creating fear," he began to gesticulate with his hands to emphasis the point, "Too much potential manpower being wasted on slave forces and executions."
There were many different ways of creating obedience within a kingdom's populace. One of the least effective methods of coercing control was fear, and unfortunately for everyone, it was Cinder's favourite. She was addicted to others fearing her, and she revelled in their suffering.
It was why she had brought the children of Mantle to Atlas, and used their unlocked auras to control the Grimm by binding them to it, turning them into braindead sacks of meat as their souls were ripped from them.
Because they were left in pain.
It was why she had the entire Atlesian Home Defense Fleet, and the Grimm Techions that her Ella Industries company had created enmass, lobotomised instead of trying to willingly coerce them.
Because they blindly worshipped her.
It was why she had ordered the mass execution of hundreds of people, broke Atlas' deal with the Winter Shores and had the majority of them killed, created mass graves and execution grounds across the city below, created a slave force that numbered in the hundreds, forced many more to join the military via lobotomization, had anyone with a mental or physical defect killed, ordered the torture and skinning of many Faunus, blockaded Atlas Academy in an attempt to starve them out instead of just storming the building and taking the Winter Maiden from them by force, and had turned Mantle below into a wasteland, thereby drawing the entire kingdom into a civil war.
Because it made them suffer.
Because it made them fear her.
And it was why she never killed their captive deeper in the facility, and took the Fall Maiden powers for them
It didn't have to be like that. Merlot's Mindbender device (Powered by the kidnapped twin children, Jax and Gillian Asturias) Had already bent most of the Atlesian council to their will, with Ironwood unable to change things whilst he was in Vale, and Jacques all too willing to step to the side and let Cinder Ella do whatever she wanted with his resources as long as she kept the Lien rolling in by the millions. Hell, the situation with Jacques could be said for pretty much the majority of businessmen within Atlas. As long as the money kept coming in for them, they couldn't care any less about the Imperium, and with Atlas' armies and resources at her disposal, she could've created a state that gained the popular opinion of both Atlas and Mantle.
But that would mean that Cinder would have to act against her nature: As a good person. She had been doing that for months- Years, even- And she would not stand it any longer. Not when she had the power of Atlas at her disposal, and not when there was more power to take.
Cinder Ella was evil. That was all there was to it. She was evil for the sake of being evil. She was cruel for the sake of cruelty.
And she wanted power, just for the sake of power.
(At least, for that last sentence, that was what the Tinkerer thought.)
Even if the Tinkerer could, he would not dare to look into her mind. He dared not think about what depraved and monstrous things laid within her mind.
Cinder snarled at the Tinkerer, "Are you questioning my rightful rule, Hephaestus?"
Why no one call me by nickname? the Tinkerer thought to himself, before saying, "We lose too many soldiers and Grimm in civil war. We-"
{FWOOSH}
{BOOM}
A fireball slammed into the walll next to him, sizzling the metal and blackening it under the flash heat.
"Silence," she growled as she lowered her hand. Cinder had abandoned niceties when she had come into power. She was being her true self now, and she was revelling in it. A smug smile adorned her face, "This little distraction-" the Tinkerer took slight umbrage that she thought this costly civil war to be nothing more than a distraction, "-Will not last long now. Now that I know how this... Resistance are moving in and out of the city, my forces are already moving to block the tunnels-"
The Tinkerer could tell that Malcom's eyes were narrowing underneath his helmet. It had been him who had discovered how the resistance were moving people in and out of the city, and it had been him who had ordered the tunnels to be blocked. But, as usual, Cinder took the credit all for herself.
"-Soon, this rabble will be dealt with, my control over Atlas and Mantle will be solidified, and I shall present our little thief downstairs with the boy's head on a platter, complete her suffering, and fulfil my vengeance."
With her angry spat complete, the grace that Cinder was known for returned to her, and she turned to leave the room with a sultry twirl to her movements.
"And I will not allow a mere boy and his insolent friends," she said 'Friends' with veiled disgust, "To deprive me of what is destined to be mine."
Then, she paused, and smiled.
"Merlot, you said that we were running out of chances to effectively use the Mindbender, correct?"
"That was not how I worded it, but yes," the cyborg scientist replied without looking up from his desk.
Cinder put her closed hand to her mouth in thought, and then smiled.
And oh, what a wicked smile it was.
"Malcom, send a message to every major industrial and business leader in Atlas that is not under my control. Inform them of a party at the Schnee manor in two days time."
"What am I, your personal mail boy now?" Malcom growled, only for Cinder to throw a fiery look his way, "Fine," he growled, "What else?" because there was always something else.
"Gather our forces, and move onto Mantle. Burn it to the ground."
Both Malcom and the Tinkerer shot her a doubletake, "What?!"
"But Ground-Mantle our main supply of manpower," the Tinkerer called out to the First Citizen, "We take all people from Ground-Mantle, yes?"
"No," Cinder smiled sharply," Kill them all. Down to the last."
Another doubletake, "What you-"
"Mantle has resisted my rule for far too long, and we have more than enough soldiers taken from the outlying settlements across Solitas, and more than enough Grimm from across the continents, to solidify our rule over the continent, and then the rest of the kingdoms. I want the city below wiped out, down to the last man, woman, and child. It's usefulness has come to an end, as has this pointless civil war."
Cinder's smile turned cruel and pointed.
"This is the price that they pay for their defiance."
And just like that, she was gone.
Nearby, Malcom just scoffed, "Delusional bitch," whilst Merlot continued with his work on his desk, the Tinkerer soon joining him as he began to weld shards of metal together for one of the many devices that Merlot owed his greatest benefactor.
Cinder's brief reign over the Imperium wouldn't last long. Not with her stupid, delusional obsession with power and being feared. This was obvious to everyone except for her.
When she eventually fell, this Imperium that she had created would be up for grabs.
And when that happened...
Well...
Cinder had been somewhat useful, what with bonding the Nuckelavee to him as his personal bodyguard.
But someone in the past had once called the Tinkerer an opportunist.
And you know what?
They were right.
Reviewer response time:
rarrarshark: Thank you for the review!
avatarlopes: Yeah, those fabrics do be itching, don't they? And nice parallels with Game of Thrones. Let's just hope that I don't drop the ball like they did with season 8... Not that I've watched GoT at all. Not my cup of tea.
gogo bananas: Yeah, I just yeeted Qrow's ass to oblivion, didn't I?
gogo bananas (Again): Goddamn indeed...
Before we go, some quick information:
New character Cammie is indeed a lift of Cameron MacCloud from Gen:Lock, just as a rabbit Faunus now, instead of a girl who really likes rabbits. And the 'Will' that she mentions is indeed Will Scarlatina, who is now dead. Sorry Velvet...
Many of the new ranks of Imperium soldiers, droids, and Techions that serve Cinder are based off of different models and roles from different series, with the Sentry droid based off of the Defence Drone Daleks from Doctor Who, the Sentinels based off of the White DT Sentry Droids from the first episode of the Bad Batch, the Zealot Techions are the Elite Zealots from Halo 4 and 5, the Enforcers are the Fallen Captains from Destiny, and the Techwraiths are based on the Psion Councillors from Destiny 2.
Meanwhile, the various ships that I have introduced as well are based off of ships from Star Wars and Halo, which is always fun, but I can't be bothered to write them down, so apologies for being lazy.
And with all of that said, leave a review, follow and favourite, and with that said, I shall see you all next time!
Titanmaster117 out!