Epilogue
-3-
Pyrrha slid several meters across the ground - only coming to a halt when her back hit RWBY's untouched bullhead.
She covered her eyes to the powerful gusts of wind with her good hand, and lowered it when the shockwave finally passed. She saw, around her, were the prone, injured, or unconscious members of both teams. Looking to her front, she saw, just where she had been standing, was a new figure - one whose presence filled her chest with equal parts hope and dread. His longcoat billowed in the wind like the cape he had so frequently compared it to, his dark chainmail glinted in the sunlight, his long, unruly hair covered his eyes and his horrifically burned face as he leaned down and picked up what had once been his shield. Pyrrha watched him run his hand down the surface of the shield, she watched its wounds wash away as though they were paint and he were pouring water.
She watched his lip quiver, and his head turn, as though trying to hide, or suppress something. She saw him murmur something, but couldn't make it out, as he briefly cast a morose, guilty look her way, his metal eyes scanning over her, and then the others, before his morose expression hardened to one of tempered steel, as he straightened up, and bodily turned to Taurus and Null, lightly tossing the shield behind him with a flick of the wrist - it rolling towards Pyrrha and coming to a stop at her feet. The unspoken words as clear to her as though he'd said them himself: For all the time that had passed, for all that he had worked through, he still didn't think himself worthy of the shield. Still thought himself antithetical to what it represented.
Having cast aside his defense, the warrior swept his hair behind his head, and let his coat fall from his shoulders. He didn't say a word as he plucked from his belt the the blade he'd once described as the weapon he would only use when things were serious - when morals had to be set aside and lives had to be taken. That he'd cast aside the instrument of defense, and instead picked up the weapon of war - that he'd chosen the closed fist over the open hand - said everything it had to.
He had given the world the chance to solve its problems on its own, without what he considered to be his profane influence, and where did that lead them?
Back to him.
The unstoppable blade to match his impregnable shield, the Master held it tightly in his hand and ignited the it with a bright blue glow, a bone-chilling Zhoom!
And a silent declaration of intent.
"So you really did send them to soften me up, huh?" Called the Bull, to the man whom he'd declared to his face to be his enemy. "I wish I could say that surprised me, Aldric."
Pyrrha Nikos, the only one among them still even remotely cognizant, watched as her old friend just stood there, stoic, like a knight from the olden times, completely silent, his scarred and burned face an impassive block of steel as he stood in between Taurus, Null, and Teams RWBY and JNPR, his bright blue blade humming with its vibratory thrum.
"I've been waiting for this, you know!" The Bull continued, "it took you seven years to finally decide I was worth it. Seven years - and you only came out of hiding when I attacked you directly!" He ranted, a big grin on his face. "What, were you actually willing to ignore me? Or did you just forget that you, specifically, are human?"
The Master's response was to lower the blade, digging its superhot tip into the stony ground in front of him, and dragging it across the ground, carving a line into it, which he stepped across, his iron expression unchanging.
"If I didn't know any better I'd say you wanted it. Settling down in Atlas, finding a woman with a kid - it's like you were begging me to give you a reason!"
The Master didn't respond, he just kept walking, and now was when the Bull noticed his taciturnity.
The Bull grunted, expression settling into a scowl. "Fine. Be that way - we'll be done soon enough." He turned to the Weapon, and nodded at the Master.
If the tortured soul who had thrown himself back into the fray was surprised at what came his way, Pyrrha couldn't tell it from the way he reacted to it - the Weapon's power washed over him like a tidal wave, the biggest pulse she'd seen yet, and yet the Master just powered through it without even breaking stride. She knew he'd been hurt by Ruby's display back when his false identity had died, and knew it was likely he could have run into other silver-eyes during his time with Salem, but this was just on a different level entirely. He didn't even seem phased!
The fact of which managed to confound both Faunus, as the leader looked between his trump card and their mutual target, before saying, "hit him again!" Seeming to believe that the Master hadn't been affected by it.
So the Weapon did so, again, and again, and again - hitting the Master thrice before his leader gave up, readied his sword, and gave the order to charge.
The scarred warrior, still without a mote of hesitation, met their charge with one of his own.
Considering the power of the men gathered today, Pyrrha wouldn't have judged someone for expecting a mighty, earth-shaking clash of steel and sword. This was a battle of of men who with the power of their will and influence alone could change the direction of history itself. Men whose actions would never be forgotten, whose ideals radiated outwards to all who were affected by them, men who wielded power both metaphorical and very literal, and they were to do battle. One would expect landscapes to be resculpted, maps to be redrawn, skies to change color, the air to scream with their clash and the world to feel each blow.
But the reality was much different - for these weren't gods, they weren't titans, or even giants. They were mortals with one unified understanding: Someone was going to die today. They were men, who were just here to kill each other. They had fought before, they knew where each other stood - and they didn't want to fight today, they didn't want to test or to challenge each other, they wanted only to kill.
And Pyrrha realized with horror, that of the three rapidly closing in on each other, one of them was suicidal.
Memories flashed through Pyrrha's mind in an instant - of the conversation she'd had with Ozma in the train to Argus, where he'd professed a deep and profound worry over the Terran's mental state. Of her last encounter with him, years ago, where she'd found him in the middle of nowhere, passed out, dead drunk, a loaded gun on his chest. Of the words they'd shared when she'd made sure he was okay - of the 'one job' he'd left undone.
Pyrrha realized that the Master's unflinching walk through the attacks that would remove his greatest advantage hadn't been an intimidation display, it hadn't been confidence, or anything - it had been as much a declaration of intent as the drawing of his blade and the casting off of his shield. Her old friend was going to kill his sole remaining enemy, yes - but he didn't intend to survive it! His entire fighting style was built around one major idea: Taking a hit to open up his opponent for a better one.
He was going to take a lethal blow from his enemy, to then turn around and kill him back.
Pyrrha tried - she lurched forward, trying desperately to crawl towards her shield and push herself to her feet, but the wounds she'd taken were too great and too many. It was all she could do to remain conscious, to bear witness to the battle that would claim her friend's life - brief, though it was sure to be.
Brief, though it was.
The Master charged the Bull and the Weapon, gripping his glowing blade in both hands and swinging it from one side to the other, as the Bull pulled the trigger on his sheathe and slashed upwards, and the Weapon grasped his mace and swung downwards. The Master's blade cleaved straight through the Weapon's mace, but was halted fast by the Bull's blade - treated, though Pyrrha didn't know, by the same metals that made up the shield she had inherited. Sparks flew in all directions as the Master's plasma blade hit the Bull's ethereal katana, and the Weapon made every attempt to not be cast out of the fight - repurposing his now destroyed mace as a spear and shoving it towards the Master's unprotected throat, but the Master removed his left hand from his blade - giving the Bull the advantage of strength in their struggle, but also allowing him to leverage his cybernetic limb, and thus his only source of enhanced ability, against the Weapon - punching him so hard in the chest that the Weapon stumbled back several feet.
This, however, bought the Bull the chance he needed - and with a mighty pull, he deflected the Master's blade and then lunged forward, intent on ramming his own now superheated sword into the Master's chest. The Master's response was to whip his cybernetic hand around and slap the sword aside, before lunging forward and ramming his shoulder into the Bull's now open chest. The Bull reacted fast enough - ramming his head into the Master's, digging his gun into the Master's chest, and firing, just as the Weapon came charging in to tackle his enemy. The Master heard his approach and lunged out of the way, swinging wildly with his sword and managing to catch the Weapon on the back, his burning blue blade proving to be just as deadly as it had ever been, carving straight through the Weapon's aura and leaving a scorched fissure on his back.
This momentary distraction proved all that the Bull needed however - as he poured what energy he had in his blade and then unleashed it in a great tidal wave that bathed the entire battlefield with red light, overwhelming even the Master's lone island of blue. The wave of energy slammed into the Master with physical force, and he found himself unable to power through it as he had last time - instead being sent flying back by the Bull's semblance.
He skipped across the ground like a stone on water, his blade being torn from his hand and falling at the Bull's feet. As the Master skidded to a halt, the Weapon hauled himself back up, retrieving the head of his mace and trying to stick it back to its haft as the metal cooled.
Though he hadn't been able to resist the Bull's attack, the Master nonetheless didn't even seem phased by what hat happened, as he got back to his feet as casually as one may recover from a stumble or a fall, examined the grooves cut his metal hand, and then the Bull and his Weapon themselves.
Then, he looked down to his side, and the eyes of everyone present followed his gaze - beholding, for the first time, that which had gone unnoticed and unthought of this entire battle. The object which gave this land its name, which despite the efforts of some of the strongest - and admittedly some of the drunkest, sometimes even simultaneously - men on Remnant, had remained steadfast and immobile to all attempts to shift it.
The Master lifted his gaze back to the two Faunus, who, like Pyrrha, had no idea the significance of what he was about to do - as he leaned down, slid his hand into the lanyard, grasped the haft of the hammer -
- And pulled.
-I am the Secret-
Rosemary Ashmore could not believe what she'd just been given.
An alien boy brought in by conspiring demonesses and immortal reincarnating wizards, a lie that entangled two of the most powerful men on the planet, some of the most influential figures to be brought up in the wake of an ancient war, and the two most famous Huntsmen teams on Remnant, and then to cap it all off he was brought back to fight a war he'd pretty much been the indirect catalyst for beginning in the first place, and he was still running around out there, somewhere.
If it hadn't been Pyrrha Nikos herself saying all of this, Ashmore wouldn't have believed it - it just sounded so insane as to be unbelievable.
But, then, wasn't the phrase 'truth is stranger than fiction...?'
There was no way someone could make this up - moreover, Nikos wasn't the type to come up with stories like this. What would she have to gain? And her answers never changed - no matter how many times Ashmore tried to catch her in a lie or an altered truth.
Either she was a very good liar, or this was the actual truth: That the fate of the world had been decided by one man.
Once again: She had to tell this story.
The problem, she realized, as she walked out of the hospital after an exhaustive many hours speaking with Pyrrha - and even an argument with an irate 'Doctor Deer' whose assistant was ready to stab her to get her out of his patient's room - was that without corroborated evidence? Without something to back the story up? If she went public with this, it would either seem as fiction, or be laughed out - or both!
She needed more sources - better yet, she needed to find this Nebo Aldric and speak to him herself!
But how would I do that? She asked herself, as she felt the late night air wash over her face. I highly doubt Ozma would let me live if I walked in there and showed him what I had... And Nikos had been absolutely adamant about refusing to tell her where he was - especially given that she wasn't even sure to begin with, given that Taurus had seemingly claimed he'd moved to Atlas for a time.
Frowning, Ashmore rolled her head about, one ear cradling an earbud that replayed the conversation between her and Nikos, as she tried to determine what her next move would be. With the less injured of Teams RWBY and JNPR having been discharged, and with those left not likely to be viable as a source of information, Ashmore found she was at square one. She was on the precipice of something world changing, but she lacked the next step she needed to continue on that path.
Maybe... She pulled up her scroll and rewound to near the end of their conversation, where Nikos claimed that Nebo Aldric's attempt to simultaneously kidnap and rescue Ruby Rose had required the services of an assassin with an illusory semblance, and his former teammate, Myrtle Lake.
Now, obviously she couldn't find an assassin - whoever this 'Neopolitan' was, Ashmore wasn't stupid enough to go looking for an assassin. Heavens forbid she try the same trick on them and just get killed for her trouble. Similarly, she couldn't look for Myrtle Lake either - she'd been missing and declared dead since the yawning days immediately after Goud Etiolate's own supposed death. That did, however, give her an idea: Perhaps the other half of GEMS may have something for her? A clue as to where to find Myrtle, some nugget of information on Aldric himself if they knew his secret, or, at the very least, contact information for Ruby Rose or her sister - the former of whom she knew she could press-gang into another point of view on Aldric's story, and the latter of whom Nikos had slipped up and mentioned had also hunted him down. That made sense, given that Xiao Long had just vanished for a year and a half only to reappear and throw herself into Huntress work with vigorous zeal - maybe she'd found him?
The problem though, was that the survivors of Team GEMS weren't really public figures - only one of them even remained working, post-Beacon. Srebro Lemarac hadn't grown to nearly the heights she could have had the rest of her team survived and continued working, but she was a respectable huntress in her own right, just a low-tier one - and that meant Ashmore had no idea how to find her. Furthermore, Ecru Lily had just outright retired after being crippled in an ill-fated attempt at retrieving a corpse that Ashmore now knew hadn't been there in the first place. She wasn't a Huntress anymore - she'd been too injured, and must have lacked the funds or connections to get combat-ready replacements.
Ecru Lily, thusly, might be the easiest to find, and the easiest to talk to, but the question remained how?
As it turned out, the answer was as simple as looking her up on the CCT Network. As it turned out, some of Ashmore's competitors had tried to do a story on the post-Beacon GEMS, but given that Lemarac wasn't home in Vale often and Lily was the type to swing a bat at anyone she didn't know or didn't like, they didn't get very far - only really able to interview Beacon's staff, and most of those obviously surrounded Goud Etiolate, the much more famous of the four.
All Ashmore needed though, was exactly what she got: A passing mention that Ecru Lily had medically retired and was living on Path.
Bingo.
The morning after her interview with Pyrrha Nikos, Ashmore chartered a boat to cross the tiny distance between the mainland and Vale's satellite island-nation. Vale's own Argus, though not nearly as powerful a trading center, closer to just a naturalistic vacation destination, or - for the lucky few - a place to live and learn how to use and manipulate one's aura, at Signal Academy.
Ashmore's advantage here was the small town nature of the island: Everyone knew everyone, not a lot changed, so that meant anything noteworthy tended to stick out.
Like, say, a random teenaged Beacon washout just moving in one day.
It took Ashmore less than an hour to get pointed in the right direction - and setting off dinner bells in Ashmore's mind was that Ecru Lily was apparently a recent household name, because out of the blue she'd acquired a child. Whose it was, nobody knew - only that it wasn't hers, given their differences in skin color. Some were pretty sure it had to be Srebro Lemarac's though, given that she was one of the few people who visited Lily with any frequency and was gone for long enough stretches of time that a pregnancy could have come and gone.
Ashmore would have been willing to buy that - if not for the final detail:
A scarred stranger in an overcoat and chain mail had also visited her recently.
Those two details lined up with what Nikos had mentioned Taurus had said - that Nebo Aldric had transitioned from his ranch out in the middle of nowhere to Atlas, and had been shadowing a woman and her kid. If Nebo Aldric had come here to deposit that child, Ashmore felt she could reliably put the pieces of the puzzle together to form a vague outline of the events that had led to Aldric's return: Some point after his encounters with Nikos and Xiao Long, he had either determined himself healed enough, or had grown bored of the isolation, and had returned to civilization. Wherever he'd gone initially, he'd encountered a woman and her child, and Ashmore was willing to bet - if the man was even half as dramatic as Goud Etiolate, or even the other way around - that Nebo Aldric saw his chance for personal redemption there: In helping this woman and assisting in the raising of her child.
But that meant returning to society permanently, and that meant he ran the risk of being discovered - which he was, by Adam Taurus, who had verifiably claimed he'd sent people after Aldric. Aldric won that fight, and given that the woman was MIA, Ashmore was ready to assume she must have died in the attack - so Aldric, before deciding to step back into the world stage, hid the child.
And wouldn't you know it: Ecru Lily suddenly had a child.
It might sound stupid, but Pyrrha's stories of Aldric painted him as a man who took refuge in audacity as a matter of course: He specifically chose the strangest, most obvious solutions to his problems, because they would be so obvious that anyone seeking them out would doubt them just for how simple it would seem. An interesting strategy, and it obviously worked - but the moment one knew his secret, or had even the slightest edge of information, it would be unraveled.
The most important part, though?
Ecru Lily had to know something. She had to.
And if nothing else, it was likely Nebo Aldric would return just to retrieve the kid. This could just become a waiting game!
This... Does all rely on some pretty big coincidences, though. Ashmore admitted to herself, as she looked between the local map on her scroll, and the rustic neighborhood she was strolling through. The best solution is usually supposed to be the simplest one... And wouldn't it be way more simple to just say that scarred guy was the kid's father, and Lemarac's husband? She didn't like how much that made sense - if only because it meant that, in one hand, she was starting to become a conspiracy theorist thanks to everything she'd found thus far, and in the other, meant that Lily wouldn't have anything for her, and she'd be back to square one again.
Putting those thoughts aside and hoping for the best, she found her target: A small, wooden, two-floor home with a quaint little yard and a garden out front.
And wouldn't you know it: There she was, in that garden. Lily had thinned out since her days at Beacon - Ashmore had seen pictures, back then she'd been this dense, wiry warrior woman, packed thin but with clear muscular definition, only hidden behind her clothes and armor. Now though, the muscles under her dark skin were less corded up, and she appeared softer than she had been once before.
Next to her was a shepherd dog, happily trotting about and entertaining the third guest - a little girl, barely six or seven years old, with jet black hair, a thin face, and iron eyes. She was at once chasing the dog and apologizing whenever she stepped on Lily's flowers, though judging by the warm smile on Lily's face, her scolding was less out of anger or frustration and more just trying to teach the child to be more careful.
Steeling herself, Ashmore stepped up to the fence surrounding the former Huntress' property, and knocked on the gate, causing it to rattle, and attracting Lily's attention.
"Hello!" Ashmore called out, flipping on the recorder, "Ecru Lily?"
Lily's face went from a pleasant smile to fire-forged steel in a second, head turning towards Ashmore and giving her an appraising look. She reached over to her side and grabbed something - a baseball bat, which she used as a cane to help push herself stiffly to her feet. A frown was on her face, and a suspicious wrinkle to her brow, as her dark brown eyes locked onto Ashmore's own.
"Go inside, baby." Lily said, briefly inclining her head in the girl's direction.
The girl slowed down, and the dog noticed the change in the air before he sniffed at it and noticed Ashmore. The girl looked between Lily and Ashmore, and opened her mouth to speak, but Lily interrupted her with, "go inside Ashley, now. Go wash up. Blue -" She clicked her tongue and nodded at the house, and the canine faithfully obeyed her order - nudging at the girl with his nose and pushing the frowning child towards the house, as his master limped over to Ashmore.
"Hi, I was hoping I could -"
"I'd give my name to a stranger, before asking them something." Lily cut her off, continuing to use the bat as a cane as she approached Ashmore, and the dog and the child disappeared inside. "Especially if you're coming to their home unannounced. Last time that happened I had this nosey blogger try to press me for information about two dead friends of mine - and I really didn't like that. You look a lot like her, so you can forgive me if I don't like you, either." She said, reaching the gate separating the two, and leaning against it, expectantly waiting on Ashmore to speak.
"Uh -" She recovered herself quick enough, clearing her throat and saying, "I'm Rosemary Ashmore... Maybe you've heard of me?"
Silence.
"Fair enough - that's a nice looking girl, is she yours?" She asked.
Lily's frown deepened, and underneath the years of civilian life, Ashmore could see the fire that had once driven her to try her luck at being a Huntress. "No, I'm watching her for Srebro - and if you so much as look at that baby you'll have a bad time." She warned, though underneath that fire, Ashmore could see suspicion. She wanted to hope it was suspicion on Nebo Aldric's behalf, protecting the girl with a fabricated story, but she knew, what with how casually she'd slipped Lemarac's name in, without a hint of it being forced or pulled from a fabricated story, that it was increasingly less likely to be the case.
Ashmore gulped, "well, she looks wonderful - does she take after her father? I've seen pictures of Srebro Lemarac, and -"
Lily brought the bat up, and Ashmore realized that it was her old Beacon weapon when it went from a bat to a shotgun in a half second, the barrel coming to rest on the gate, less than an inch from her stomach.
"You're talking a lot about that girl." Lily responded, "Her father gave her to me after the Fang made it to Mistral. Said that they were going to be right there on the front lines - and since the Fang apparently knew their faces, they didn't want to run the risk of them being willing to kidnap kids." She tilted her head, "now you don't look like a Fang, but coming here, unannounced, especially after what the news said happened in Mistral the other day?" She shook her head, "makes me a little anxious. I don't care who you are, I don't care what you want, you're going to turn around and leave, or I'm going to use this." She racked the slide on the gun, and Ashmore backed away, hands raised.
"Okay... Okay!" She said, calmly. "I'm sorry - I just wanted to talk about Gou -"
"I said leave!" The woman warned.
Ashmore did.
Or rather, she returned to Patch proper, rented herself a hotel room, and sicced her drone on Lily's home. She wanted to get a look at that kid, maybe reverse-image-search her on social media and find her mother, whom she could try and locate in Atlas.
Unfortunately, Lily didn't leave the house for the rest of the day, and no amount of peeking through the windows of her house showed her anything - except one picture of her ward with her back to the kitchen window, eating cereal. Nothing helpful.
Someone, however, did come to visit - someone Ashmore almost didn't recognize: The amazonian swordswoman herself, Srebro Lemarac. The woman looked like she'd literally just left the battlefields of Mistral, she still had bandages, dirt, and grime all over her - but she ran to the house and knocked on the door like a woman possessed, dropping her giant sword in the yard as she did. It was hard to angle the drone such that she could get a good look at the door, and inside the house, without dropping its altitude low enough that it wouldn't be masked by the sun's glare anymore, but she was able to get something to work, and she was able to see Lily answer the door.
The two exchanged words her drone couldn't pick up - but Lily and Lemarac both appeared to be speaking in hushed tones, and both of them frequently exchanged none-too-subtle glances inside the house, cluing Ashmore in to who they were talking about: The girl.
As Ashmore continued to watch her drone feed, she was so engrossed behind it that she didn't hear the lock on her door begin to be manipulated, as someone outside her room began to pick it. She was too focused on what played out before her - unable to decide what side of the story this fed into: The child being Aldric's, or the child being Lemarac's. Lemarac was led into the living room, where the drone shifted around to peer through its window, and immediately brought both of her hands to her face, the drone not able to see her cry, but the tears being evident in her body language. The giant woman fell to her knees and held her arms out, and out from an end of the room the drone couldn't see came the girl - who allowed herself to be scooped up into Lemarac's arms and crushed.
Ashmore sighed - this didn't really say anything one way or another. At least she was recording though - she might be able to get an image of the girl's face, especially if she kept watching.
But... Assume this is a dead end, and I can't find her mother. Assume I'm right and she really is Lemarac's daughter - which... That kind of looks like a Mom hug? I think? Eh - that just brings me back to square one - who else would - Her thoughts were interrupted by a tap on her shoulder.
Ashmore turned around, and saw a diminutive woman with heterochromatic eyes, hair of brown, white, and pink, having infiltrated her room without her notice, standing right before her with a bead in her hand held in front of her, clenched between two fingers, and a wide grin painted on her face.
In the time it took Ashmore to blink, a bright blue mist sprayed out from the bead, and her world went dark, as the mute just waved and let her collapse to her bed with the sound of bending springs.
When she awoke many hours later, she found herself in a wide, expansive room - almost like an empty warehouse, or for all she knew that actually was where she was. She was tied to a chair, bound so tightly that not only could she not move her limbs, she could barely even feel her arms. In front of her was the tri-haired woman that had gassed her, sitting on a lone table illuminated by a cheap lamp, one leg crossed over the other and a light smile on her face as she swiped through a scroll - Ashmore's scroll, she realized, when she recognized the pictures on it as the ones she'd taken of the final battle.
Ohhhhh no I didn't make backups! Ashmore realized with a pitting feeling in her stomach.
The mute quirked an eyebrow, and looked up to notice Ashmore's awakening. She clapped her hands together happily, and then placed the scroll on the table, before retrieving her own from the breast pocket of her coat. She held up a finger briefly, before dialing a number, sliding off of the table and approaching the tied and bound journalist.
Just as the woman reached her - with Ashmore leaning away in fear - the scroll finished dialing and the person on the other end picked up, their voice a mechanically garbled and masked mess that left the speaker unidentifiable.
"Oh miss Rosemary Ashmore, Two-Two-Three Wiltford Lane, three dead fish and a dog that ran away and was adopted by another family two years ago." Said the scroll, in a sing-song voice that almost sounded demonic with the distortions made to it. "You, my dear, are asking some very dangerous questions, about veeeeeery dangerous people, in very public places."
Ashmore blinked.
"And for that alone I can tell you're not a player in our little game - not like the man you're looking for. My dear you're lucky that it was little Neo here that heard you drop that idiotic one-liner and took it upon herself to watch you since! 'I know Goud Etiolate is alive' - what were you thinking? Or did you not realize that her skimpy little outfit versus your appropriated scrubs meant, at the very least, you could have gotten the charge nurse to remove her from the room until Deer identified her - during which you would have had the privacy to drop your bomb on Miss Nikos with the world none the wiser?" The speaker clicked their tongue, "inexperienced player indeed. And then you went to disturb Miss Ecru - and while admittedly I appreciate your doing so, it's still unbearably naïve. So -" Their tone changed, from playful to deadly serious, and even through the distortions Ashmore could hear the venom in the voice. "- who sent you?"
"Uh - uh -"
"Oh and do keep in mind that because she's been watching you all this time, it's been a couple days since Little Miss Neo here bloodied her blade, and she gets antsy if she doesn't kill at least one person each week." And to give weight to his words, the woman she now knew to be the assassin Aldric had worked with, produced a knife out of nowhere and dragged it down Ashmore's thigh - cutting through her pantleg like it was nothing and drawing up a few beads of blood, so cavalierly that she may as well have been cutting into a steak. "Oh, well, look at that - now she has. Sometimes I worry about her, I must admit." Neo rolled her dual-colored eyes and stuck her tongue out at the scroll. "Professionalism, miss Neo, else we may have to kill her out of principle. She is a journalist, after all - and anyone of our friends would notice our hallmarks. What would they think if they realized you weren't the stone-cold stoic assassin I like to tout you as?"
"No one!" Ashmore barked out, trying her best to calm her heart and ignore the stinging pain in her thigh, and get these two to stop flirting with each other while the woman had a knife on her leg. "No one sent me, I - I just saw a couple bullheads flying out of Vale, and sent my drone to follow them - and then I saw the battle and recognized the guy who showed upattheendandwantedtotellthestory!" She picked up speed and inflection as, the more she spoke, the harder Neo pressed the knife into her thigh, with a smile far too innocent for what it was she was doing.
"Oh really? Well that's certainly a revelation, Rosemary - especially as you seemed to have told Miss Nikos a different one!" Said the scroll, as Neo wiped up a bead of blood from Ashmore's leg, rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger, and then tasted it! Ashmore watched with equal parts fear and disgust as Neo dabbed her tongue with her finger, and then tilted her head to the side, an unimpressed frown on her face, as though what she'd gotten hadn't been what she wanted, but not nearly as bad as she'd expected.
The scroll continued on, as though this was something so normal as to not be mentioned at all. "Why - you aren't lying to me, are you? Or worse, lying to your... Oh, what's the word, Interviewee? Subject? I prefer the word 'target' but we're in much different lines of work." She could practically see the shrug in the pause between that word and, "oh well. Regardless - as you've now shown a propensity to lie, well, now I have to doubt your answers! And if I doubt your answers... Well, you won't doubt the severity of my response." Neo brandished the knife, flipping it about.
"I - I swear, no one sent me, I just saw it all by accident!" Shouted the terrified woman, "I - I just told her that because who would believe someone seeing that by accident?! Please - I'm -"
"You'd be surprised what people would believe, my dear Rosemary. If you tell it right, why - some would believe an unrepentant terrorist to have been recruited decades ago by a demonic goddess!" They said, "or - my personal favorite - a mafioso having been effectively pardoned by the world because he claimed the same thing, and was backed up by a General no less! Much as I dislike Mister Taurus and Mister Torchwick, they do know how to tell a story! Mister Torchwick is even angling for Vale's Council of Three, the fool, can you imagine that? And it's all in the construction of the story, you see. Make it ridiculous enough, or with just enough truth, and believe it yourself, and you can make anyone else believe it." The Scroll continued, "for you - well, I can hear in the desperation in your voice that you believe what you just said... Or... Wait, is it maybe the blood loss? Neo?" And in response, Neo moved the scroll over, facing its camera towards Ashmore's leg. "Oh wow, you're rather restrained tonight! I was expecting to see muscle." The assassin flipped the scroll off and turned it back to Ashmore. "She skinned someone, once - scariest fucking thing I've ever seen, and I was there at Salem's castle.
"So - if you weren't sent by anyone, am I to really understand you're so arrogant as to want to pull apart a worldwide conspiracy for pure greed's sake?" He asked, bluntly.
"Uh -"
"Because that is what you're doing. You're stepping into something so much bigger than you that you are a grain of sand, and it, the entire world of Remnant. You're going to make a lot of people very concerned and very angry with this little stunt. And, well - while I may not be affected by it, as I've been preparing for this little eventuality, others... Not so much. They're too busy. And if you keep bumbling about like you did with Miss Nikos, well - Neo's treatment may not be quaint by comparison, but at least you'll die at her hands, so it will end." A beat, "after a couple hours."
"I -"
"And don't give me that 'truth' nonsense, my dear, it's trite. I may not have read your little blog - oh, sorry, website! - but I can tell just by looking at it that your central preoccupation right now is just making money and making a name for yourself. So while I can guarantee you, you will get that name doing this... You'll likely wish you hadn't by the end of it.
"Are you ready for those consequences?"
Ashmore blinked, was - was the speaker really doing what she thought they were?
Gulping, she nodded, "yes." She breathed.
"Second question: If I were to help speed your journey along - say, for instance, I knew who to point you towards who would be much more open with Aldric's location - what would you be willing to do to help me?" They asked.
"What - uh, what do you want?" She asked, her nerves still getting the better of her.
"Oh, my dear, that's a powerful question - and you, are about to become a powerful woman. What do I want? I want a publicist that the world will trust. I want someone who will take my already extensive measures hedged against the loss of my reputation should Aldric's story go public, and make them so much better, spin them in such a way, that absolutely nothing will have changed from one day to another. No investigations, no criminal trials, nothing but the continued public goodwill that I've managed to acquire thanks to my tireless service to the world of Remnant, blah blah blah... I want that person beholden to me. Can you do that? Can you owe me what is effectively your career? Are you willing to bend your words at my will?
"Or should I ask: How badly do you want to tell Aldric's story?"
An hour later, with one word echoing repeatedly through her mind, Ashmore found her next 'target.'
Junior's... If she recalled correctly that was a bar, or a nightclub, or something, it wasn't really her thing, but Neo and her handler had told her on no uncertain terms that if she left right now, she'd find Ruby Rose's sister there, and she'd likely be willing to tell her where Nebo Aldric was under normal circumstances, but if she was intoxicated? Even more so.
So, with the sun having set and the shattered moon having taken its place, Ashmore found the nightclub they'd mentioned. Unfortunately they hadn't given her anything special to get past the bouncer - either it had slipped their minds or, more likely given how playful they were with bodily safety, they didn't on purpose because they thought it would be funny - so she had to wait in line for two hours before she could finally be graced with low lighting, bright strobe lights, and deafening music. She felt a shiver go down her mind as she walked face-first into a haze of booze and sweat, it made her gag.
But she pushed on, examining the dance floor and the booths until she found the bar - and the 'Lovely average-looking man in a suit and tie, sans the jacket in case he needs to fail to fight a teenage girl again' - and approached it, her scroll held tightly in her hand, and a picture already queued up and ready to be shown once he asked for proof of what she claimed. Approaching him, she leaned onto the bar and got his attention. She confirmed he was the eponymous Junior, gave him the script she'd been given, and then the proof of her claims.
When she asked where Yang Xiao Long was, Junior went from the gruff 'seen it all' bartender to an anxious, stern, brick wall in a second. He just said "Oh" and pointed off to a corner booth - and following his hand, she saw, just barely, a tuft of golden-blonde hair over the back of her booth seat. Ashmore bee-lined it over to the booth in question, and found Xiao Long in an expected position - given where she was - but still a surprising one, given that she was part of Team RWBY, and Ruby Rose's sister on top of that.
She was halfway through a bottle of expensive-looking alcohol, eyes shut, and head bobbing back and forth to the beat of the music.
Ashmore sat down on the opposite end of her booth, briefly taking a moment to be surprised at how the music managed to go from deafening to manageable with just her sitting down, and Xiao Long opened her eyes, taking Ashmore in in one quick examination, and shaking her head.
"No." She said, bored. "Go home, I'm not here for that."
Ashmore blinked, but then realized, after looking at herself, she may actually look like she was here for something a bit more carnal - her clothes were already disheveled from her encounter with Neo and her boss, and she looked rough, sweaty, and ragged from having run here straight from the warehouse. All she was missing was the smell of cheap booze - though Xiao Long seemed to have that part covered.
Regardless, Ashmore cleared her throat and spoke up, ensuring she could be heard over the music. "I'm actually here to speak, Miss Xiao Long." She said, placing her scroll on the table and surreptitiously activating the recorder.
"I'm definitely not here for that." Said Xiao Long, grabbing the bottle and up-ending it, taking a deeper swig than Ashmore could have done even in her college days.
"Someone... Told me you might." Ashmore said, taking Neo's Boss' words to heart in that she should approach this carefully - both because, as he'd said, she'd kind of bumbled about at the beginning, but also because Yang Xiao Long's emotional tendencies were a matter of public record, and apparently she loathed Nebo Aldric. "If I asked you how you knew Nebo Aldric."
Xiao Long stopped drinking, eyes opening, going from violet to red as they slowly drifted down to make contact with Ashmore's brown. Xiao Long removed the bottle from her lips and slowly brought it down to the table - though Ashmore could see her cybernetic appendage had already cracked the neck of the bottle.
"If you know that name." Xiao Long said so quietly that, under the music, she almost couldn't be heard. "Then you know I will not talk about him. Go back to Ozma and tell him he came and went too fast for me to even try and kill him - I was unconscious to begin with. Didn't even realize he'd come until I heard about what happened to Taurus and what happened to the White Fang the same day. I'm pissed and I'm drunk, and you just said something you really shouldn't have. That's not a good combination, Bar Girl."
"It's Rosemary -"
"I really don't care." This tug on the bottle was more angry than the last - and some of the alcohol spilled through the cracks she'd left in it.
"Well... I want to reveal him to the world." Said Ashmore, curating her narrative differently than she had with Pyrrha. "Ozma didn't send me - I saw your battle and saw that Goud Etiolate was alive. I followed that trail until I started learning things about Nebo Aldric, and that they were one in the same. I've already spoken to Pyrrha Nikos, and this... Assassin? Thug? Some mute by the name of Neo, and her boss. They pointed me to you, because you won't be biased in favor of him." She explained, "and that's what I want. I've heard someone in support of him, now I want someone critical of him."
Xiao Long rolled her red eyes - and for a second Ashmore was ready to swear she saw her hair glow dimly. "He was a lying sociopathic asshole who kills people because it's easier than letting them live. He cut off my arm and murdered my mother, was willing to murder my sister, almost killed Blake, has a god complex, murdered gods only know how many of his own people - and yes, they're aliens! You're stupid if you don't believe that - and instead of facing the consequences of his actions, he fucked off to the middle of nowhere to grow beans." She waved Ashmore away, "go home."
There it was - the ledge she could latch on to.
"Don't you want him to face those consequences?" Ashmore asked, "Roman Torchwick may have been pardoned for what he did, Adam Taurus - well, we know what happened to him - but Nebo Aldric? If I can find him and bring him to the light, he hasn't been charged for his crimes. He hasn't been tried. If you want him to face some kind of judgement, if you want to bring him down to our level and show him he isn't a god, you have the power to do that - tell me what you know, tell me how to find him, and I can shine a light on him for the world to see!"
The bottle exploded in Xiao Long's metal hand, causing Ashmore to jump.
"Fine." She growled, "but the next one's on you, and don't say I didn't warn you about the fucked up things he did." She said, teeth bared. "Now listen close..."
Yang gave her sister the party.
Ruby either couldn't or just plain didn't want to understand why Yang needed to do what she wanted to. They'd yelled and screamed and argued and cried with each other for hours over this, but Yang couldn't change Ruby's mind, just as Ruby couldn't change Yang's mind. For her sister's sake, and indeed because she simply wanted to spend time with her after having been apart and assumed dead so long, Yang gave Ruby until the party was all well and over. Ozpin, or Ozma, or whatever name he wanted them to use now, tried to convince her to stay longer - the story he and Ironwood cooked up worked better if teams RWBY and JNPR were both together and whole for the aftermath, but Yang refuted him. She had someone to hunt down, and she would.
So, after the party was over, when the sun came up, Yang bid her farewells. No one took it well, but she could tell that no one really cared too much, either. That man, Nebo Aldric, the one who had gone for so long as 'Goud Etiolate,' he'd hurt every last one of them, some personally, others collaterally, but everyone all the same. The only ones who had any faith in him at all were Ruby and Pyrrha, and the latter was specifically the one Yang was trying to outpace and beat to the finish line, in this situation. As strong as Yang was, as strong as she'd grown since beginning her education at Beacon, she still knew which of them would come out on top if it came to blows, and if they ran into each other on the road to him, they would inevitably fight, and potentially even to the death, as Yang wanted Aldric gone, and Pyrrha wanted the exact opposite. Fortunately, even without a head start, Yang at least had one advantage over the Invincible Girl: She had transportation, and she knew where she could start.
Her first destination had been one close to home, and born out of a lack of any other options - GEMS' dorm, and after putting aside some rather unpleasant worries about where the girls were, since she hadn't seen them in ages, she tore the dorm apart looking for any sign of Aldric, before remembering what had set her down the path to the event that, in another time, sparked the barest flickers of some feelings she deeply regretted now: When he'd saved her life on the Terran warship.
The loose floorboard underneath 'Goud's' bed that had held Aldric's bag of effects had sent her down this path. Aldric hadn't bothered to find a new hiding place for that bag, and when Yang retrieved it, she was presented with a physical clue as to where she could go next for information on him: The glass coin. She remembered the coin as it had nearly given Blake a heart attack, and he'd claimed had come from his made-up sugar mama. No doubt in actuality it was evidence of his connection to Roman Torchwick, and she was confident in assuming that the man himself was currently holed up in the very 'Garden' it had supposedly originated from.
So, after a visit to Junior's rebuilt nightclub, and giving him a near heart attack when presenting the glass coin, he reluctantly pointed her to the Garden, and after a tense meeting with the concierge that only ended when she provided the coin and proved she was 'capable of doing business,' Neo revealed herself to save the concierge from having to repeat the fact that he couldn't confirm or deny the presence, or lack thereof, of any guests in the Garden, ad nauseam. Neo brought Yang to Torchwick after Yang reluctantly acknowledged that the diminutive assassin had played a rather vital role in saving her sister's life, and keeping her safe from the Terrans on their carrier, but the annoying thug refused to answer any questions as to her companion in the endeavor, leading Yang to some rather dark thoughts as regards Myrtle's fate.
Nevertheless, when she met Torchwick, Torchwick did what he usually did and bargained what he had and Yang wanted, for something she had, and he wanted, namely - Weiss Schnee's ear. Through her, he claimed, he could get the Schnee heiress' father in the same room as him, though for what purpose he didn't say. All he did say was that if Yang promised to do that favor for him, he could give her the location of a hole-in-the-wall inn a ways outside of Vale that Aldric frequented, whose owner owed him a personal favor, and who Torchwick had tremendously bribed to keep quiet about Aldric, Cinder, and their team almost killing the Fall Maiden nearby. According to Torchwick, said owner had texted him not three hours before Yang had come knocking, and had left the description of someone remarkably like Aldric having stopped by.
Yang gave Torchwick her word that she'd talk to Weiss, Torchwick gave her the navigational coordinates to the inn, and when she made it there that night, Yang found herself on Aldric's trail, having learned he was travelling north to a town whose name he'd expressed a curiosity about, and from there would be continuing north to look for some airship crash site he called the 'Null Zone.' A day behind him, Yang drove like a madwoman to try and make up time, but still managed to just miss him, as when she arrived at the rinky dink town called 'Gurstheim,' he'd already came and went, having bartered a night in some farmer's barn for the same beans that Yang had remembered Qrow giving to Blake to heal her from her attempt to save Ruby from being kidnapped.
No amount of arguments and even physical threats of violence convinced the farmer he'd stayed with to get rid of the beans or to disavail him of trying to plant them, as he'd eaten one and it had not only cured an injury he'd been dealing with for years, but it had filled his stomach better than anything he'd ever eaten before. She was at least able to drag out the location of the next village up north, which the farmer assumed Aldric would probably go to next, if he was really going in that direction, to which Yang agreed. By foot, it was supposed to be a week away, but by bike? Yang was there in a day, and she stayed there for the next six, paying for a room in a small townhouse to spend her nights, and spending her days sitting on her bike at the village's southern gate, waiting for him to come.
But he never did. After eight days, he never came, either having never intended to go there in the first place or, more likely, having somehow known she would be there to begin with and just decided to avoid her altogether. This infuriated Yang, as his doing so meant that he would just be cutting through the Grimm-infested wild country in his journey north, and even if she felt confident in her ability to effectively go to war against all of Sanus' Grimm, she knew she wasn't a tracker by any stretch of the definition.
But that didn't deter her, it only slowed her down. She spent another day in the second town trying to piece together where Aldric may be going, and she came up with a workable idea: They hadn't seen Aldric during their aborted attempt at rescuing the Winter Maiden, the first time they'd seen him was at Haven Academy, after he and Cinder had killed three of the four Maidens, and convinced her mother to do their dirty work for them, before they killed her. From there she didn't know exactly where Aldric had gone, as they'd spent the time trying to get to Atlas, but she knew he had to go to either Mistral, or Atlas - and both of those required crossing over Sanus' northern edge again, if they were going from Mistral.
So she marked the location of all of the major and minor settlements in northern Sanus, and settled in for the long haul: She'd visit every damn one of them if she had to. An airship going down wasn't something one would forget, and she just needed one of them to confirm that something like that had happened right around the time the CCT Network went back up and Ozma and Ironwood made their address to the world.
She systematically went to each and every single settlement and village near Sanus' northern edge, interviewed everyone she found, showed them all Aldric's picture and asked if any airships had gone down in the local area. Every single time she was shot down, her determination never wavered, especially when she would find the odd morsel of someone who had actually crossed paths with him, or a village where he'd actually stayed, allowing her to slowly chart a path through Sanus and determine a general direction, which indeed pointed north, and sometimes even narrowed her search fields. Every time she ran across someone who had met him, her drive to find him only deepened, as every one of them had one detail in common: He gave them something. Individuals got a plethora of 'gifts,' ranging from weapons meant to protect them from Grimm they may run afoul of, to medicines they may need, to some even being given maps annotated by him, alongside the claim that he'd 'cleared' the areas he'd marked, and that they should be 'safer than they were', while villages typically got the beans he kept with him. Some people and villages even got pieces of technology, some things that looked like things she'd seen on the Terran ship, some she couldn't even recognize, and it was only after she'd smashed the tenth one and they just kept popping up that she realized it was a futile effort. Yang had no idea what his goal was, but she knew the bastard well enough that he had some kind of plan - he didn't do anything just because, and it only made her angrier that he was still playing his damn game even with Salem gone.
It took a year and a half, but eventually, she hit gold: A village where he'd stayed, and one that gave her a yes to the question of whether or not an airship had come down in recent years. She got its general direction, and took off minutes later, and after another month of thoroughly searching every damn inch of ground, she found it - and she knew she did, because the first thing she heard was music. Loud, loud enough to be heard even over the rumble of her motorcycle's engine, it gave her a heading, and when she followed it, she found, cresting over the horizon, a house. Quaint, just one level high, made of some dark wood and topped with a curved, thatched roof, upon which rested several large, glass panels that reflected the sunlight above, and a wide floor, in another life Yang would have been entertained at the fact that there was actually a door leading in, considering the fact that there was no need for one, as she doubted he ever intended to bring anyone here, or have to lock the place up.
She killed the engine, partway through whatever the madman's current attempts to deafen himself was.
"Pour out the anger and hide it away lest it spill to the blameless and lead them to pain -" The red-eyed Huntress heard, as she approached the door and unceremoniously smashed her fist into it, blasting it off its hinges and granting her entry. "- In the steel and the rags I will cover the shame so the innocent need not be judged in my name." She was greeted by a stark contrast to the hot air outside - her face getting hit full-blast by cold, frigid air coming from a small foyer that led to a quaint living room, with a television hung up on a wall just to the side of a fireplace, some number of electronics on the floor beneath it, and a couch a few meters away, upon which appeared to be a game controller, no doubt linked to the still image on the screen, depicting a man in armor staring down a gigantic black cuttlefish - a controller was discarded on the ground, and just as she questioned that, she heard a door shut and a loud 'clank'. She snapped to its direction and sprinted over to it, kicking open the door which she suspected the noise to have come from. "Pour out the anger and hide it away lest it spill to the blameless and lead them to pain -" But there was nothing - just an empty bathroom, and, now, a frowning Yang. "- In the steel and the rags I will cover the shame so the innocent need not be judged in my name!" Huffing, she returned to the living room - something under the television having caught her eye. Feeling her heart thudding in her chest from the mounting tension, and reaching for a sawed off shotgun affixed to a wooden plaque above the fireplace.
"Long I've suffered the hunger, long I've silenced the cry." She pulled the gun off the plaque - revealing words printed behind the firearm, which simply read, 'This is my (super) boomstick!' She cracked open the barrel, seeing two shells loaded, and she pulled them out before putting the gun back where it came from and stowing the shells in one of her pockets, creating a chance for distraction in the fight to come. "Long I've fled from the thunder, to ascend, still I try -" She turned around, seeing a loaded kitchen on the far end of the room, and a hallway on the other. "To carry the pain..." She stalked down the hallway, finding four doors which revealed the still empty bathroom, his bedroom, a fully-decorated, lived-in looking guest bedroom of all things, and what looked like an office, replete with computers of both Terran and Remnant design, and several bookshelves filled top-to-bottom.
"To keep it contained, till the end." She gave both rooms a cursory inspection once she confirmed he wasn't in them, and even patted down his bed and his drawers, but was astonished not to find any weapons or armor in his room. The office at least had a stand upon which his usual outfit was hung - the dark chainmail suit, the metal shirt, his overcoat and belt, a pair of cargo pants and his boots, it left Yang paranoid, because she knew Aldric wasn't dumb, he knew that there were people gunning for him, so there was no way he was walking around unarmed, unprotected. This had to be a part of some plan.
She inspected the computers in his office, "To carry the pain." She didn't know how to work the Terran computer, but a tap of a button on the Remnant computer showed an active connection to the CCT, a strong one at that, considering how far out in the middle of nowhere he was, and there were two pages open - Vale News Network, and Sawt, a news aggregator-slash-forum website. The fact that he was keeping tabs on the world only made her grit her teeth, and sent a brief pulse of light through her hair as she stood up.
So he's inside... Then what was that noise I heard? She frowned, shouldering her way out of the office and back into the main house. "To keep it contained, 'till the end." She looked around the main area again, and then she beheld a backdoor, and immediately stalked over to it, arms swinging with each step, hands clenched tight.
She did to it the same she did to the front door, and there he was, standing amidst a field of beanstalks, plant pots, wheat, and yellowed grass, of which only the beanstalks appeared to be universally healthy - the rest appeared mostly dying and rotten, the crops having failed due to his lack of skill or inattention, or both. "Bellows of pain, and scraping of chains -" Aldric twitched when the door crushed some of his crops, and he straightened up, garbed in baggy blue jeans, a loose white shirt stuck to his back with sweat, and simple shoes. "The echoes they taunt and deceive me!" He turned to face Yang, a basket of what looked like the only successful tomatoes of the batch held in his cybernetic hand, while his fleshy one brushed his sweat-slicked hair out of his face horrifically scarred face, one small line on his chin, one nasty-looking scar running down the left side of his face, and burn scars trailing down the left side of his face and neck, and vanishing underneath his thin shirt, twisting across his skin like veins, his gunmetal gray eyes met Yang's burning red orbs. " Oceans of blame, and rivers of shame -"
The two stared each other down, Yang a budding ball of rage as she beheld the object of her abhorrence, while Aldric, after casting a brief glance over her shoulder and at the house, and then back to her to meet her eyes, deflated with a sigh, his scarred face settling into an expression of resignation as he pulled a remote from his pocket and pointed it off to Yang's side, attracting her gaze to a collection of large speakers and a Terran scroll. "The fury it never leaves me." And with a press of the button, the music faded away and went silent.
The two regarded each other for another moment, the silence more deafening than the music had been.
Aldric broke it, calling out, "you sure chose one hell of a song to show up to." He his scarred face cracked into a grin that didn't even come close to reaching his eyes, "You know - I was just listening to the Numa Numa song, you couldn't have shown up to that?"
Yang threw her fist forward, a concussive slug blasting out of her gauntlet and crossing the distance between them before Aldric could attack. He could only drop his basket before the slug reached him and slammed into his chest, the non-penetrative projectile hitting him like a sledgehammer and putting him on his back, sliding across the yellowed grass and digging up dirt as he slid to a halt. Yang had already been charging forward, anticipating his response, and before he could even groan, she reached and grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt, hauling him into the air so she could ram her metal fist onto his nose, immediately splitting it open and covering her black and yellow knuckles in his blood. Yang followed this up by bodily hauling him over her shoulders and them slamming him back onto the ground, the Master hitting with a loud grunt that drove the air from his chest - and quick as a flash, Yang slammed her boot onto Aldric's left shoulder and knelt down low, grabbing his synthetic arm with both hands and twisting first clockwise, and then counterclockwise, until it yielded to her and disconnected, allowing her to throw it away.
She didn't give him a chance to react, and with how heavily her heart was pumping, how loud the blood was thundering in her ears and how angrily she was yelling, she didn't even realize he wasn't trying to to begin with. She dropped to her knees, straddling him and using one knee to pin his remaining arm to the ground, before - with a flick of her wrists - her gauntlet collapsed back to its inactive state, and the analogue to said gauntlet in her cybernetic arm sheathed itself back inside - she wanted him to feel this, she didn't just want it to be over.
With a loud yell, she smashed her good arm into his face, snapping it to the side, and then her metal fist into the other side of his face, sending it back. She continued this, beating at him, sometimes bouncing his head back and forth, sometimes not hitting him properly and instead just snapping it backwards, pushing it into a small groove in the ground. She felt his skin split on her knuckles, his blood spill onto them and then fly away with each swing, she heard him gasp and sigh with each strike and felt and heard his bones begin to fracture and break under her relentless assault. Every strike, he gasped, every punch, she yelled, throwing her entire body into it - abandoning style, disregarding skill, devolving to the raw animalistic strength of hatred and anger that made her throat grow hoarse as she let it take her over and guide her fists to his face. With each punch she saw flashes of all the things he'd been involved in, all the things she'd seen and all the things he'd done.
One punch that opened a cut underneath his eye, she saw the Terrans invading Vale, the sun bomb they'd dropped on it, and the dark, tepid, disgusting prison they'd kept her, her friends, and her sister in for seven days. Another punch that bent his nose at an unnatural angle and even pushed some cartilage through the skin, she saw the Grimm that invaded not long after, remembered the feeling of her aura breaking and their claws raking her back, could see her team exhausted and injured, his team exhausted and injured, and could feel again the cold feeling of raw terror when she couldn't find her sister underneath tons of rubble in Beacon's vault. Another punch sending blood spraying from his mouth and breaking off one of his teeth, she was back at home, desperately searching for her missing sister and her teammate, only to not find the former, and to discover the latter at death's door, the surgeons telling her that she wouldn't make it the night. She pounded onto the front of his face like a gorilla, she was sobbing into Weiss and Blake's arms as her uncle told them that they had to call off the search - that if they hadn't found Ruby by now, there was only one place she could be, and it wasn't a place they could follow her to. Another pound, this one splitting his forehead at the scar Blake had left him, and she was in the Vacuoan desert, being dragged away by Nora, Ren, Jaune, Weiss, and Blake, after Pyrrha was forced to make the call and abandon their mission to save the Winter Maiden, now that they'd identified one of the Masters. Another punch, Yang briefly collapsed onto the Master, gasping for air as she was presented with the apathy her own mother had shown to her and Qrow's presence in her camp. She hauled herself up, grabbed his hair with her fleshy hand and then smashed her iron knuckles into his face hard enough to pop one of the bruises that had been forming and coat the back of her hand in dark red blood, the image of Ruby's scythe being thrown at her feet filling her with a second wind and making her eyes glow bright red. She slammed the back of his head back into the dirt as the memories of their retreat from Haven, and the realization that her mother, for all her faults, was dead, and had died trying to launch a surprise attack against them. She screamed at him, long, low, and loud, as the train ride and the utter betrayal that draped over every single memory of him settled into her mind.
Only when his face was purple and red, when one of his eyes was swollen shut and her knuckles were stained in his alien blood, did it finally click to her that he wasn't even trying to fight back.
Gasping for air, heart thundering in her chest, Yang leaned upright, looking down at the Master pinned underneath her, as he coughed, sending a spray of blood over her chest and stomach. He murmured something, blood bubbling on his swollen, stiff lips, but she couldn't hear it.
"What?!" She growled, grabbing him by the hair hard enough to hurt and pull a few strands out by the roots, and then leaning in close.
"I am..." The scarred, bruised, and bloodied Master gurgled through his own blood. "The... Path of least resistance..." He slurred, "Yang Xiao Long." He gasped, before his head went limp and his eyes fluttered to a close, his ragged breathing evening out as consciousness left him.
Yang blinked, "wha -" She shook her head, an immense feeling of deja vu filling it, "what does -" The rage that had been in her was now joined by rampant confusion, "what does that mean?!" She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook, "wake up you asshole, I'm not done with you!" She screamed, dismounting him, hauling him up by his shoulders and throwing him at his house, expecting this to be a trick of some sort, but finding the act to be genuine when his back hit the wall, he slid down and hit the ground with his shoulder, remaining limp and unconscious. "Do you know what you did?!" She screamed at the unconscious pile of meat, "and you're just going to, to what - just lay there?!" Her voice echoed out into infinity, the only human voice for hundreds of miles. "GET UP! YOU DON'T GET TO LAY DOWN!" But her rage, while mighty, was not enough to pull him from the depths of his own mind, and he remained in an unconscious heap at the threshold to his home.
She growled, then it turned into an impotent scream before she stomped over to him, grabbed him by the shirt, and dragged him inside, roughly dropping him on the couch. She glared at him on the leathery sofa, blood freely leaking from his face, staining his shirt red, filling the deep grooves of his many scars, and running over the leather. With an enraged huff, she turned around and marched into the kitchen, finding a pitcher that she then filled with ice and cold water, which she then poured right onto his face, washing the blood away, and providing the needed shock to jerk him awake.
He grunted out of shock and surprise, and straightened up, face scrunched up in pain, and no sooner did he make eye contact with her than did she hit him again, this time in the sternum, to enforce the pecking order: He was going to stay on his ass on that couch.
He grunted, tenderly touching his broken, swelling face, jerking his hand away when it brushed against the exposed cartilage of his nose. "Good morning, starshine..." He took in a deep breath, and then grabbed his nose and wrenched it back into a position, pushing blood out of his nostrils with a forceful exhale, and then a pained twitch of his head. "The earth says 'hello!'..." His bloodstained hand fell limply into his lap, and he looked back up to Yang. "Can you just fuckin' do it and get it over with?" He asked, voice a low rumble.
Arms crossed in front of her chest, Yang said, "believe me I'm tempted." From behind bared teeth and red eyes, "why didn't you fight back?!" The brawler demanded.
"Lady, there's three people on Remnant that will convince me to put that armor back on." He nodded in the direction of his office, "you were never one of them." He swallowed some of the blood in his mouth, and seemed to predict what came next, as he braced himself for another punch, this one to his limbless left shoulder, Yang wanting to put the pain on the less injured parts of him now that his scarred face was rapidly swelling to unrecognizable.
"So you would've let me kill you? After all you've been through? All you've fought?!" Yang barked at him, "after all you've survived you would have just let me beat you to death!"
"Yeah." Aldric grunted flatly, his one visible gray eye staring dully into her two red ones.
"Why?!" She screamed, "after all that, you - Nebo Aldric - would just lay down and die?!"
"Technically I'd lay down and be killed."
"Shut up!" Yang kicked him in the chest, bouncing him off of the couch cushions, and she was pretty sure she cracked a rib. "What happened to all that nonsense Ash used to spout?" She asked, "about not giving up? Or do you not believe that, either?!"
Coughing, Aldric responded, "I did my fuckin' job, Yang." He grunted, rubbing at his bruising chest. "Salem's dead. Remnant and Earth are back to where they belong - on opposite ends of the universe. I didn't give up, I went the distance, and now the fight's done." He made a time out motion with his hands, "I'm tapped out. If you want to kill me, go ahead and fuckin' do it." He grunted, what little strength he had appearing to fade away as he deflated, shoulders slumping and back curving as he leaned back into the couch.
"What possessed you to do the things you did?" She demanded, "you came from a planet without our problems. So what the hell even made the thought of what you did enter your mind?"
"Circumstance, and a deadly amount of genre-savviness." Aldric responded, forcing his head back up to look at her. "It was either go with them and pretend to work with them, or refuse and be killed. I made the best of a bad situation, and you can put that on my gravestone." He elaborated, "I don't regret anything I did. Only that I had to do it."
"You're really telling me that if you could do all this over again you wouldn't change a thing?!" She demanded.
At this, Aldric grinned - or tried to, at least, given how swollen his face was. "Well... That's a loaded question, Yang." He grunted, swallowing another load of blood "If I went back to the plane crash, loaded with the knowledge I have now... I'd be able to skip to the end, wouldn't I?" He asked, "gather the relics... Supplant Ozpin's soul for Cinder's, maybe mine for Ben's. Still be able to -" He snapped his fingers, "finish the game. Especially now that I know I can overpower gods with what I did. Wouldn't even need Jaune and the Master Sword." He sighed, "your mistake is in thinking that I wanted to do the things I did, Yang, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. Every life I took, every decision I made, was weighed against every other one imaginable. Whenever I had to do something bad, I did it because there was no other option."
"Ruby?" Yang challenged.
"Either bring her to Cinder, or ruin all of my work for no benefit."
"Her life wouldn't be beneficial?!" She screamed, grabbing by his shirt and hauling him up to eye level.
"One life for billions." Aldric responded, levelly, causing the brawler to throw him back on the couch in disgust. "And you know I didn't go in without a plan. I didn't just dedicate to killing her from the get-go -"
"Yes, and you yourself didn't even know if your plan would work!" Yang rounded on him, face red with anger. "Where is Myrtle, Aldric?! Why have I seen Neo and not her? Is she even alive?!"
To which, Aldric shrugged. "That was up to her, and Neo." He responded, making Yang feel revolted both at his cavelierness, and at how unsurprised she was at the answer. "If Myrtle wouldn't keep the secret... Neo had my blessing to kill her."
"Oh - oh, so the life of your teammate - one of the three who trusted you with their lives - was worth less than Ruby's?!" Yang challenged.
Aldric arced an eyebrow, "are you saying you would have rescued her over Ruby?" He countered, "and besides... Of everyone in the world, Neo understands how I make decisions the best. For better or worse I trust her judgement -"
"A psychopathic assassin!"
"- and I told her that killing Myrtle was the last resort." He let his head hang again and a long sigh passed out from between his lips, sending a small fleck of blood to the floor. "If no one's seen her since, she's probably dead."
"And you're okay with that!" Yang shouted, "with just letting her die! Didn't you just say you had a way to alter memories?! Why not give Neo whatever you used to do it to me!?"
"A psychopathic assassin." Aldric threw her words back at her, snorting as he did so. "Oh yeah, let's give her a neuralyzer. No way that'll backfire." He shook his head.
Yang snorted in disgust, turning away from him, unable to look at him anymore. "What kind of life did you have before this?" She asked, "what, did your parents beat you? Get murdered in an alley? Did you grow up in a warzone?! Were you in a gang or - or something!? Which one was it?" She eyed the shotgun on the wall, "which trauma was it that made you think doing this was a good idea?!"
To which Aldric shrugged, "barking up the wrong tree, Yang." He said, "no problems there. Folks loved me, raised me right, taught me right from wrong." He said, "is it really so difficult to think that I just made that choice on my own?"
"Yes!" She rounded on him, a crazed, angry look in her eyes. "Because it says you did all these things and you knew how evil it was! That you knew it and you did it anyways!"
Aldric nodded, "every time." He agreed, "every time I took a life, hurt someone, or anything the like, I knew I was doing something wrong... But I did so, such that no one else would have to." He glared into her eyes, "are you seriously going to tell me that you think removing me from the equation would have been for the better?" He asked, "if you let Salem run rampant all over the planet, a lot more than the people I was connected to would die." He told her, "a lot more."
"Do you know that?!" Yang asked, "or are you just convincing yourself you do so you don't have to face your own guilt?!"
"Confirmation bias." Aldric nodded, "and no, because I already am facing my guilt." He leaned back and indicated his ranch.
"Oh, yeah -" Yang reached back and smacked the television hung up on the wall behind her, "real prison here, Aldric! Really making you feel the weight of your actions!"
"The isolation." Aldric countered. "You're the first human being I've seen in six months. That's six months I've had to go over every single second of my records -" He pointed to his kitchen, where she saw a leatherbound notebook, the edges of its cover and the pages within showing clear signs of frequent use, "- question every single action I did, try to plot out that perfect sequence of events that would have let everyone ride off into the sunset, all sunshine and rainbows." He told her, "six months to come to terms with the heinous deeds I've done." He lowered his voice, "the lives I've taken or ruined. The lies I've told. Your mistake is in reverting back to the idea that I wanted to do the things I did. That I enjoyed it. I'm not Goku, Yang - I never did, and still do not, enjoy fighting. The only time I took any pleasure in taking a life was when I killed Cinder in her sleep, and now I'm done, lady. I told you once before I wanted to die, and I was kind of hoping you'd do it when I saw you there." He didn't even nod at the now missing backdoor, instead keeping as wide-eyed eye contact as he could given his bruised, swollen face.
Yang blinked, "what - what?!" She was struck with a similar feeling of deja vu as she'd been hit out in his backyard, "what do you mean? You've never said anything like that to me." She said, jaw clenched and a glare leveled at him.
To which, Aldric shrugged. "Yeah I did, you just don't remember." He wiped a fresh layer of blood from his face with the back of his arm, smearing some of it, before he indicated her cybernetic limb. "I did it."
Yang blinked.
"In addition to everything else... I cut your fucking arm off and altered your memory of it." He said, looking her dead in the eye as he did. "Before I did, I told you that the only way you could fix everything was if you killed me, because I was the path of least resistance. You asked me if I wanted to die, and I said yes... And I think the most ironic thing right now is that you, the same person who despises me for the things I've done, when I put you in my shoes, you made the same choice I would have - that I did before and did afterwards. You -" She beat him again, hitting him with a cross from the very arm he claimed to have personally severed, and once his head finished recoiling, he spit some more blood, and continued, "- tried to kill me. To grant me that mercy, and remove my threat... But you did so in the middle of my mission, so I was obligated to defend myself. And then, just like under Haven, you learned a valuable lesson: Every fight with me you'd had, you'd had against Goud Etiolate. You weren't prepared to fight Nebo Aldric." He said, with words that may have convinced one he was gloating, were it not for the dead tone he spoke with.
"You..." She growled, shaking with rage.
"But now I'm done. Now my mission is finished. I have no reason to keep going... So now I'm going to say the same thing I said then. I'm tired, and tonight, I'm going to sleep... If I wake up again is your choice." He finished with a tired huff, head falling down and hanging limply, eyes shutting as he awaited her decision.
Yang stared at him, her mind almost completely unable to reconcile the image of the giant she knew - the proud, arrogant, irresistible warrior, the man who stood tall and firm against everything, the monster who sacrificed everything for some perverted vision of a greater good - with the husk she saw now - a pathetic, broken coward who had abandoned the very world he'd once sworn to protect, who had resigned himself to death, but was too scared to do it himself. For the first time she saw what was beneath the determination and grit, what was hidden by the wit and smothered by the drive - she saw the person, Aldric, and not the idea. She saw how he knew of the heinous nature of the things he'd done, how he completely comprehended the evil of his actions, and they all weighed upon him. The guilt was eating him, consuming him from the inside out until all that remained was this thing moving on auto-pilot.
It didn't change how she felt, though. Man, monster, or broken wreck, she hated the person in front of her, she hated him so much. Not just because of all the things he'd done, not just because of what he'd done that she either didn't know about, or, as it seemed, didn't remember. Not just because he'd betrayed everything he had convinced them all he'd held dear, but all of that, and because in his victory over Salem he'd proven to everyone who hated and doubted him that he had been right to do so. All the lives he took, all the darkness he created, the evil he did, and he'd achieved his desired result: Salem was dead. The Grimm were thinning out. Earth was gone, and he had been right to take that evil path, and worse was that because he was right, because he'd won, they had a world with which to criticize him, and doubts as to whether or not a different, nobler path, would have even achieved the same result.
She loathed this. She didn't know words powerful enough to describe how much she hated him, everything he stood for, and even everything he had become. She hated the monster she remembered, but she hated the wreck that was left even worse. At least the monster, the warrior, the fighter, at least those she could justify her hatred of, could fight and kill without a second thought, but this? This was a broken man, barely even able to pull himself together, there was no justifying hating this thing. Yang herself felt the rage that had been fueling her begin to fade away, as she realized that by seeing him like this, seeing him so defeated by himself, he'd effectively stolen her drive to kill him.
But in that rage's place was a cold fury, which fueled her words as she said through gritted teeth, "I'm not going to kill you." Her heart thundered in her chest, and Aldric didn't so much as move. "You deserve to die, you deserve so much... But I can tell what you're doing to yourself out here is worse than that... But look at me." And he did, with a bruised and scarred face that appeared to have aged several years in the span of just a few moments. "If you ever come back. If you ever return, and I find you, I won't hesitate again. I'll kill you on the spot."
They stared each other down for a long time, before Aldric responded with, "then you better get out there, and build a world that won't ever need me."
For the first moment, she thought nothing of what he said, but as that first turned to a second, a third, her world slowly ground to a halt as she realized what he'd just done, and it left her in a state of the most confounding mixture of shock, awe, and rage.
Did he - She blinked, staring down at the morose Master. What did he just - She couldn't believe it - she was almost physically incapable of believing what he'd just pulled off. Did he plan this from the beginning? How the hell could he have?! She'd walked into his house without warning, all but trashed the place looking for him, found him, and beat him within an inch of his life, all with the full intent of killing him, and somehow this asshole had managed to turn it all around on her, sap her of her desire to kill him and force her to do what he wanted, lest he feel it necessary to return from his self-imposed exile and do more of what made her hate him so much in an effort to fix any flaws or problems he perceived.
No matter what she did, she did what he wanted her to - if she killed him, he died, would have no problems anymore, and would no longer have to suffer under his own guilt - assuming of course he actually did feel guilt and this wasn't all an act! If she left, she left knowing well and good that he still had his finger on the pulse of the world, and if Ozma, or Torchwick, or Taurus ever went out of control, or if the kingdoms started lobbing shells at each other again, or anything the like, he'd come back and would apply his own brand of problem solving to the situation; so if she didn't want that, if she wanted him to stay here in exile and torture himself with the memories of his actions, she would have to go back to her sister and their team, to work endlessly, tirelessly, to keep the world glued together and to keep the peace. No matter her response to a situation she'd set up, that she controlled all the variables to, and in which she had all of the advantages, he won.
He'd played her.
Did he even feel guilt? Was this all genuine? Or was this an act he'd thrown together the moment they'd made eye contact? Was his snide remark about how she wasn't one of the three people who would get him to fight again some kind of hint at how he was already making her dance to his tune? Was this the true scope of the game he'd begun once he'd come to Remnant? Or was it just the tip of the iceberg? Had this been difficult for him, or was it as effortless as it appeared to be? Where was she on his list of threats, if he'd been able to so easily toss her aside without even throwing a punch?
But she knew the answer: She would be lucky if she were even halfway up his list. This was a man who had spent two years mentally dueling some of the most cunning minds on Remnant, on both sides of the moral scale, and he'd come out on top. She may even be nearer the bottom, all things considered. All she was, was a good fighter - and he'd proven to her in Mistral that he had ways around that, while holding back. She'd failed in her mission, and he'd achieved victory, the absolute second she let him open his mouth.
Yang suddenly felt much smaller than she had an hour ago. Despite Aldric being the one, literally disarmed, bleeding and bruised, sitting below her on his couch, by speaking that one sentence he'd managed to reverse their positions. Now he felt like a giant, and she the ant, so much so that she wondered if this wasn't him holding back for her sake. To spare her her pride and her life.
If nothing else, the anger of the impotency these revelations brought her, it heat back into her fury, as her teeth gritted. Every fiber of her being wanted to call him out on this, to force him to tell her if he'd planned this turnaround, but there was the small part, the intellectual one that he'd tried to build up during the time he'd answered to another, more honorable name, that was worried about what the answer would be.
So instead, from behind a face contorted with rage, she asked, "who are they?"
He cocked an eyebrow, "who?"
"The three people you'd come back for."
"You gonna kill them?" He scoffed.
"Who are they?!" If nothing else, it would give her a heading, an idea of who she would have to look out for.
Aldric broke eye contact, running his hand over his face, to find that most of the blood had begun to dry. "Ozma is the big one." He told her, "I've got quite a few plans to deal with him if he goes rogue." He said, looking back at her, "be amazed at how easy it is to remove a reincarnating soul from play. The next would be Adam Taurus... But Remnant Reddit over there -" He nodded in the direction of his office, "at least gives me the barest hint of hope that he might have mellowed the fuck out... But it could also be a long game. He outright told me he wants to start a war." He grinned, "and the third one... Well, that's Cinder Fall."
She blinked, "you - she's still alive?!" She shouted, "and you're just sitting here?! Your fucking job isn't done then, Aldric!"
She noticed a shadow of something dark briefly pass over Aldric's face, the faintest memory of the fire that had once filled his eyes, it made her blink, and when she opened her eyes again, the shadow was gone, replaced again by his newfound apathy and depression. "My job... Yang... Is done." He said, without any room for debate. "Even considering all you know, you simply would not believe the explanation I have for why I left Cinder alive. The context and reasons behind it. Suffice to say I left her alive for the same reason I left Ozma alive: She deserved the chance to prove me wrong. To make good on the promise she made."
She wanted to fight him, to force him to keep talking, but that look he'd given her, so fast that she almost didn't see it in the first place, it gave her pause. She was stepping onto something here, perhaps the one thing - or would it be more appropriate to say 'one of the three things?' - that would inspire him to get off that couch. He'd already shown her he had full control of this situation, if she made him angry, he would demonstrate that control.
So, forcing the bubble of fear that had welled up in her gut to refrain from showing on her face, she said, "fine." And with clenched fists, added, "I'll do it. I'll go out there, I'll help my sister and I'll follow through on what you're too much of a coward to... As long as you stay here." She growled.
Aldric closed his eyes and nodded, "I don't intend to leave here for a long time, Yang." He told her, slowly getting up to his feet, and indicating the front door she'd nearly blasted off of its hinges.
She didn't let him lead, instead just marching out the door, and at its threshold, she paused, and then looked back at him. "I wasn't kidding." She warned, "I see you again, all bets are off." She warned.
And he cracked a smile, "and we saw how well that turned out today."
He followed her outside, stopping at the threshold of his home and leaning against his door frame as he watched her ready her motorcycle for its long trip back to civilization. This familiar routine did a decent job of calming her down, which he promptly ruined with another set of words.
"Hey." He called out, as she slid on her bright yellow helmet.
She turned to him, violet eyes masked by the helmet's darkened visor.
He looked away a moment, stowing his hand in his pocket as he appeared conflicted, trying to search for the right words. "Your mother... She cared about you, Yang." He said, "I don't know if you know that, but she did. I know she left you and I know your anger about her is more the principle of the thing, but regardless. She willingly gave Cinder her powers - and in so doing, her life - to make sure I didn't kill you."
Yang glared at him for a long time, before kicking the engine into gear and driving off, unwilling to play his game any longer. Due to this, she didn't see him remain to watch her leave, to stay at the threshold to his home until the sound of her engine faded away and the dust she kicked up settled down, and she didn't hear the words he left at her wake.
"There's a price to pay for all that we have done." He hummed, once the strength to move finally filtered from his body and into his soul. "Turn my eyes away, and watch the setting sun." He pushed off of the doorframe and strode back inside.