An: I hope you like this story. I will talk about other stuff at the end. Have fun.
Cinder had succeeded.
After putting down her hardest opponent, she bounced back and conquered Remnant.
She was doing this for years but she had a huge obstacle to completing her plans. Ozpin and Team ACES. Ozpin was doing that for years and tried so many times to finish her but wasn't able to. Team ACES, on the other hand, were a team of huntsmen and huntresses in training. Ever since they discovered her plans, they weren't just nuisances, they were downright aggravating and good at their job.
They stopped many operations and destroyed many weapons to the point she dealt with them in person. They didn't stop and continued until she noticed their team leader, Ace Storm, was doing the job alone. Even by himself or with someone doing the job with him, he was a nuisance and it blocked her from progressing and slowly started to step backward until she used a plan to frame him and prison him in one of the hardest prisons in Vale.
It worked.
She was able to bounce back and started her operations given how there weren't so many encounters with other hunters.
There were many attempts to stop her but none was able to stop her in the months she spent fixing her army. Whether it was the giant robots or the army of droids or trained individuals.
She conquered everywhere, Vale, Mistral, Atlas, Vacuo, and even Menagerie. There weren't any small and hidden towns or villages she didn't take control of. With her army and trusty circle, she was able to have an Iron grip on everything and nobody stopped her.
Controlling Remnant helped her to grow her army more thanks to conquering Atlas and taking their weapons, and secrets, and forcing their scientists and inventors to work for her. She kept many important figures such as the academies' headmasters because she might need them for the future and none of them will be able to get free anyway.
She was a queen, an empress, anything you might call her. She was strong and nobody seemed to stop her.
However, after some time, a group of huntsmen and huntresses were able to get a grip of themselves and started to fight her and her control over Remnant. She didn't care that much because she knew that they will fall.
Just like everyone tried before.
But it wasn't any resistance by any normal hunters. They were commanded by the rest of team ACES. Carl Andersmith, Violet Entrapta, and Skyler Eindhoven. They were with Ace when they were ruining her plans and preventing her from moving forward. She knew that they will be a huge problem because of the previous encounters and the knowledge they have about her army.
It showed results quicker than expected.
With the help of other huntsmen and huntresses such as Otto Voron, Sully Reigns, and many more, they were able to have some sense of fighting back and having the chance to stop her once and for all, continuing what Ace started in the first place.
The same old stuff she had to encounter but with different people.
She didn't let them win this easy. She upgraded her weapons and army until they started to think again about their actions. It wasn't enough though as the battles between the rebels and her were getting harder and crazier from both sides. Cinder didn't care as she needed to find them and kill them at their spot before it gets messy and they start to win.
In one of the largest cities around Remnant, it had wide screens and showed Cinder in her long, dark red dress with one long, wide sleeve hiding her left arm. The edges of the collar and the opening for the right arm were gold-colored, and the upper chest and left sleeve are decorated with golden designs. The right side of her dress was open from the hip down with two gold-colored straps made of interwoven ropes connecting the front half to the back half of her thigh.
Under the dress, she appeared to wear black pantyhose. On the right hip, the dress had a black rhombus-shaped gem set in a gold-colored metal of the same shape, with feathers of varying shades of blue extending from the bottom of it. On her right arm, she wore a long, gray glove, the top of which has a gold-colored metal ring with curvy branching extensions going up to her arm. Her right ear had a new ring-shaped earring higher up than the dangling black gem earring.
"My dear resistance. I'm demanding nicely to surrender yourselves. What are you doing is wasting time by making yourself in danger. Delaying this will either make you killed or get caught and executed on the live screen to let everyone know whoever tries to stop my empire will fall. The flames of hope are nothing but a false sense of hope, a fantasy that is impossible for you to resist my will. So please, surrender, and I might be merciful."
Her voice was showing her serious attention. She had enough of the resistance fighting her. Her being merciful about them was funny to them because she wouldn't be that merciful. She would torture them and get every single piece of information out of them for her advantage. The message repeated itself to keep them reminded of this gentle offer.
On the smaller buildings, a mysterious figure was walking and listening to all of this. He laughed at that demand from Cinder as he had previous encounters with her and her army before. He or anyone really wouldn't consider that option in the first place and instead of fighting.
After what happened when he was far away, he would deal with this seriously.
As he was walking, a chopper was flying and spotted him. The chopper started to scan the cloaked figure before releasing a sound.
"Target recognized! Eliminate-"
BANG ZZZZZAAPPP
Before the chopper continued, the cloaked figure pulled a black gun and shot an electric bullet that the chopper to the point it got destroyed from it before crashing down.
"Years later and still can't handle this amount of electricity." The figure chuckled while putting his gun back. "Thank you, grandpa and uncle."
BOOOOOM
The figure turned to the sound of a bigger explosion from far away. He predicted that it was coming from the rebels fighting Cinder's forces. With a big smile cracking his face, he started sprinting and jumping around the building to the location as he hoped to find them and lead him to the resistance's leaders.
"Don't worry, guys. I'm coming."
…
In the empty streets, three individuals were covering their faces and bodies with hoodies and cloaks while sneaking around the place to not get caught. They walked into a dark alleyway and stopped in front of a door. One of them pulled a key and unlocked the door before they entered with the door getting closed behind.
As the lights turned on, they pulled to reveal their faces.
The first one was a male who had spiky blonde hair, and yellow eyes. His outfit consisted of a black shirt, black and yellow leather jacket, black pants, and yellow and black boots. On his back, he had a yellow and black guitar ax.
The second one was a female that had violet hair with two pigtails and purple eyes with pink goggles covering her eyes. She wore a dark purple top and had the back of it open to reveal her purple turtle shell, purple skirt, pink and black stocking, and pink boots. On her hands, she wore two blue, black and purple metallic gauntlets with multiple dust tanks. On her back, was a large purple gun that looked like it had been used before.
The last one was also a female that had a black top, black and blue leather pants, blue hair with purple bits tied to a hair clip, and blue eyes. She carried a black and blue hammer with three buttons for her weapon's forms.
What shared them was the tiresome stress they had as they sat down on the chairs and huffed with the blue-haired girl covering her face with her arms and the blonde male calling from his earpiece.
"Otto! Sully! What's your situation?" The blonde boy spoke to his earpiece.
"Positive, Carl." The voice that came out of the calling device was feminine and referred to the male as Carl. "Otto and I located the base and finished it without hiccups. You?"
"Pretty tired." Carl groaned loudly. "Violet had to use the BFG…again."
"Was it THAT bad?" Another voice came out, this time a masculine voice. "How big?"
"I don't want to go to the story of how we nearly buried ourselves inside that tall building." Carl covered his face with his hand and shook his face. "Anyways, how about team JSSC?"
"I will call them to check their situation. Also, be careful, she's taking so many measures to put us down, lately."
"Yeah, see you later."
With that, the call is ended. Carl sighed and went to the fridge to pull anything to eat or drink. "This stuff is getting stressful, how did Ace deal with this all the time?" Carl wondered.
"I don't know but given how Lisa and Azure mention the Storm mentality a lot, they seem like they don't lose hope any time soon." The turtle Faunus said.
The blue-haired girl didn't say anything and stayed silent instead.
Carl grabbed some snacks and water bottles for the three of them before he put them on the table. "Yeah…" Carl sat down and gave snacks and water to his female companions. "So, what's the next move, Violet?"
The turtle Faunus refereed as Violet pulled her scroll and showed a hologram. "There's a hidden training base in the northwest of Vale. It's surrounded by many guards and robots for anyone to not enter unless they're progressed to their systems."
"Another one of those?" Carl took a bite from his food. "I'm getting sick of these things. How many places did she get? We spent over a year fighting them and it looks like there are more that appear."
"Honestly, giving up isn't a solution anymore. We did a lot so far that giving up is throwing all of this progress to the nearest lava pit. I know how stressful we became, except Otto, Jade, and Aqua, but it's too late anyway." Violet looked down and took her bite before she and Carl turned to their downed friend.
"Skyler, are you going to eat?" Carl asked.
"I don't care." The blue-haired girl refereed as Skyler rasped.
"But Sky-"
"I DON'T CARE!" Skyler slammed her fist on the table. "I'm losing hope on this. I was trying so many times to be positive for myself and the others but this doesn't want to end anytime soon."
"Look, I understand-"
"NO!" Skyler raised her head, showing her anger with tears falling from her eyes. "We were wrong to stop doing this in the first place." Skyler covered her face with her palms and cried.
Carl and Violet were silent at this. They understood what Skyler meant. After all, Ace was doing all of this by himself.
"Don't you see how our decision to stop getting involved in this did? We abandoned Ace to fight all of this by himself. We thought about ourselves before others and now look at what happened. Ace was preventing a larger problem all along and we didn't realize it until that bitch started this. And now, we're stuck in a circle we won't get out from any time soon."
Carl and Violet looked down and didn't say anything. She was speaking facts about their situation. Their relationship with Ace started to have a lot of question marks especially with Ace getting some level of obsession about this.
"The worst thing is that I broke up with him. The person I loved ever since I laid my eyes on is now a heartbroken man who didn't care and continued by himself. He got prisoned and we didn't care about him. I'm ashamed that I did that action after being with him for four years and now, I…I-I." Skyler didn't hold it any longer and cried so hard. "F-Forgive me, Ace. Forgive me for being selfish."
Carl felt the most guilt when he saw Skyler crying. He was the first person that started doubting continuing and he was the one who encouraged his teammates with him. He didn't realize how big the problem became until Ace was down.
"No, blame me instead." Carl closed his eyes in guilt. "I'm the one who caused this in the first place. I started to have doubts when we fought Cinder for the first time. I'm the one who started to argue with Ace in the first place because I didn't want to continue this and didn't want you to get hurt." Carl looked at Violet and she understood that Carl meant her. "I was the one being selfish about this and led to this mayhem."
Tears started to drop from Carl's eyes as the guilt beat him. Violet hugged him to comfort but she was sad as them.
"All of us are, Carl. I cared about you too and after leaving Ace this long to the point he couldn't help himself made me feel remorseful and a bad friend." Violet said while keeping her hug.
They stayed silent after that and continued to eat and drink their stuff from the fridge. Skyler looked the saddest out of the three. Even though they were guilty but the blue-haired girl seemed the most affected. Skyler felt all of that given how she was in a relationship with her leader. She was the happiest girl in the world when he confessed his feelings for her before the second year started.
It was great until they encountered Cinder for the first time. Like Carl, she doubted continuing it and it affected her relationship with him yet she loved him a lot to leave him alone. It didn't help that his mother was cautious about not breaking his heart but the thoughts of continuing it resulted in her thinking about herself and how their relationship might go when they get married and have children. She didn't want herself, Ace, or her future children to get hurt from it. Now, She didn't know if he will forgive her if they met again but she hoped that he does even if she doubted it.
After they finished, they checked their weapons and the dust in them. Violet was checking her scroll and talking with other people to check their stats. Carl was checking Nevan's strings before he saw Skyler keeping her sad face and decided to comfort her.
"Skyler, I'm sorry for this. I know that I'm repeating the same words but you shouldn't be this sad." Carl put a hand on her shoulder.
"I get it Carl but still, I need to know if we will finish this and if Ace will forgive us after what happened," Skyler said in a sad tone.
"You know, I remember him saying that he wants to put all of this behind after finishing this bullshit and open a new page. Also, he probably still loves you so try to be positive, at least for this time."
"Yeah, you're right…" Skyler responded with hope but was unsure at the same time.
BEEP BEEP BEEP
Carl and Skyler heard that familiar sound and turned to Violet who looked panicked and pulled both with her semblance and used her gauntlets to cover them in a small dome using Crystal dust. Something that she kept after Ace gave some to her.
BOOM
Suddenly, explosions erupted from above, destroying the building with it.
From the outside, a giant robot was standing in the empty streets and shooting rockets at the location where CES was staying at. The robot stopped and started to scan the area with its sensors, detecting if they were alive or not. After a few seconds, the robot detected a moving object hidden between the smoke but suddenly, it started to move toward it quickly.
(Insert song: Rules of Nature)
Coming out of the smoke, Skyler with her trusty Meta Cavalierly in the hammer mode and anger shown on her face. Skyler was running towards the giant robot-like a blur. The robot activated the rocket launchers and shot at the running target.
Skyler didn't stop and instead continued running forward and dodging the rockets while deflecting some with the hammer. When she got closer to the robot, she started to bounce on the rockets to get on the top of it before she pressed a button in her weapon to activate the dust and with a war cry, she swung her hammer down.
The results of the hit when it landed were strong it destroyed the robot's head before it fell slowly to the ground.
Skyler huffed in anger and gritted her teeth. She wasn't in the mood of having that type of surprise appear to her but that made her in the mood of destroying robots.
"Target detected!" Skyler turned to the robotic voice to see two more robots coming in her direction and activated their weapons. "Capture the resistance leaders!"
CLANG
Just before one of the robots was about to shoot, one of its legs had been cut.
Below that robot was Carl with his trusty Nevan while playing on it to build his semblance after cutting the metal leg like butter. Carl didn't wait for a second and started to climb on the robot so quickly before jumping on the top of it and processing to cut the entire thing in half using dust and the built-up soundwaves.
The other robot that was standing next to it focused on Carl and didn't pay attention to Violet who was running towards it. Violet froze the weapons of that robot with the Ice dust in her gauntlets before climbing on it. She started to use her semblance, Metal Manipulation, to remove the metal that was covering the core of the robot. After removing it, she changed the dust to Fire dust and shot a big fireball at the core, resulting in an explosion from inside of the robot.
The resistance's leaders looked around for any more robots. They knew that she sent more to kill them. However, they were confused by how they found out where they stayed temporarily. It couldn't be that she put a tracker on them. No, someone or something followed them and gave them the coordinates of their locations.
Suddenly, more robots appeared but with choppers and ground troops to assist them. Skyler saw that and got angrier. She wasn't scared at all, she stopped being scared after many encounters and instead saw the robots as a motivation and a way to release her anger.
Skyler decided to attack them without a second thought like a blur. The robots aimed for her and shot her with Gatling guns but Skyler blocked them by spinning her weapon so quick before she jumped and landed on the top of the building and jumped again with her weapon changing to the Ax mode, proceeding to cut the robots' weapons quickly.
Carl and Violet were surprised to see Skyler that vicious as she wasn't so serious as now. She was serious before but never that serious. They didn't care and followed her to end those pieces of junk. Violet got inside her shell before Carl launched her with his semblance while keeping his speed. Violet landed on one of the robots' heads and bounced off it before she returned and shot Electricity Dust to do some damage to them by launching herself to one of the choppers at the same time.
Violet got on the top of one of them and used her semblance to split its parts and used them to destroy other choppers and maybe robots with them. One of the choppers focused on the turtle Faunus and shot multiple rockets at her but she bounced on them while changing their direction to the giant robots for extra damage. She punched the chopper so hard that she destroyed it before going for more.
On the ground, Carl was running at high speeds and swinging Nevan swiftly at the ground troops. Thankfully, they were droids so Carl didn't care about hurting them. Not that he would care if they were humans. His swift swings were quick at slashing and blocking any shots from them. As he was destroying droids, they surrounded him in a circle and shot at him but Carl's reaction was quick and released a shockwave that bounced the bullets back which landed on some of the droids while others got destroyed from the shockwave.
Carl looked around and saw some robots falling thanks to Skyler's action or the rockets destroying the robots. Carl saw one of the rockets coming at him and looked behind him to see many droids so he decided to let the rocket do his job as he avoided it easy to let it destroy the droids and anything close to it.
Thankfully, there wasn't anyone living inside those buildings as they became empty because people were forced to. It helped as they didn't hold back their attacks at some places.
Anyways, the former members of ACES were able to get rid of the rest of the robots on Tuesday. After they finished them, they looked around if there were any more robots.
"WHERE ARE THEY? SHOW YOURSELVES!" Skyler was so angry at that point. She couldn't contain it anymore and was about to release anger she didn't felt for years.
CRASH
Another robot landed with a small quake at the landing. That robot looked different and bigger. It was bigger than other robots they encountered before. It had a large sword arm on the right and a giant dust cannon on the left. It reminded them of Atlas' but better.
The robot aimed his cannon at them and used Electricity Dust. Violet reacted quickly and made a wall out of Crystal dust but the impact was so strong it destroyed the dust, the nearby buildings, and sent the rebels' leaders away with their aura getting nearly broken.
Barely conscious, the three of them tried to get up but it was getting late as choppers and droids appeared and surrounded them. They didn't seem to attack them but waited for them as if they were surrendering or not.
"Carl Andersmith, Violet Entrapta, Skyler Eindhoven, you are surrounded and should surrender for the empress." One of the robots warned.
They thought it was a joke as she should kill them and not wait. They tightened their grips and stood in their fighting stances. They promised to fight until the end and finish what Ace started.
"One last warning! Surrender to the empress!" They got warned again but didn't care as they were ready to fight more.
When the robots were about to shoot, a blur appeared and went through all of them before they got destroyed in half a second.
Carl, Violet, and Skyler got caught off guard at that quick moment. After the smoke settled, they saw a cloaked figure standing there. They felt something odd yet similar about him.
However, the choppers said something and started to shoot rockets at the cloaked figure which they landed. To their surprise, the figure came out of the fire and revealed himself as the cloak got burned in the fire. He started to bounce off the rockets while heading towards the choppers at high speeds until he got close enough and revealed a katana before he demolished all of the choppers in a blink of an eye.
The figure landed on the building's rooftop and they were shocked to see him.
He wore a familiar outfit that consisted of a black shirt, black pants, brown leather boots, Black fingerless gloves, and a long red trench coat. He had a demonic red-colored eye, long light blue hair with a few black ones in the front that covers his forehead, and a black beard.
He had a claymore sword on his back with a dust revolver in it. He also had a pair of black gauntlets and greaves that had dark blue lines, with the greaves taking the appearance of a wolf foot. Lastly, he was carrying a katana in his right hand that had a gravity dust collar and the sheath on the waist that also had a gravity dust collar.
It was him.
The person who was fighting Cinder all along.
He was Ace Storm. The leader of team ACES.
"Target detected! Eliminate Ace Storm!" The giant robot said loudly before it aimed its cannon at Ace and shot another one of his Electricity dust shots.
Ace didn't wait for a second and jumped off the building as the shot landed, resulting in a huge explosion that took the top of the building with Ace using the shockwave to push him towards the robots. The giant robot shot another one and it seemed like it would reach Ace but the blue-haired man cut through the entire ball of energy with his katana like nothing before spinning like a sawblade and going through the giant cannon, destroying it entirely.
Ace landed on the ground pretty safely and put his katana back to its sheath before looking at the robot who seemed like he had more. The giant piece of metal raised its sword hand as it would strike Ace. He stepped aside from it and didn't waste any second as got on the top of it before he pulled his katana and start slashing it while he was going. It worked as the blade was getting cut easily the more Ace moved closer to the body before he jumped just above the robot's head and slashed the entire thing in half.
As he landed, he slowly retracted his blade before it entered and made a loud clicking sound.
CLANG BOOOOM
Just like that, the robot was falling to the ground in two pieces with explosions erupting after the slash. After the explosions calmed down and the smoke settled, Ace walked away from the robot and closer to his teammates or former teammates.
(End Song)
"You can do everything." Ace started to talk in a serious tone, catching his former team's attention. "You can try to kill me, send your army, frame me with the best you have, and anything but you will fail. I will finish what I started this time. YOU'RE LISTENING?! I WILL FINISH YOU AND YOUR EMPIRE ONCE AND FOR ALL!" Ace shouted in the air before he looked down at his friends with a sudden change of his mood. "Hey, guys! Long time no see." Ace greeted before he got closer.
The resistance's leaders were surprised at that sudden change of mood and protected themselves from any attack. However, they got caught off guard by the hugging. He hugged them in affection and seemed like he was…crying?
"Oh, man. Thank goodness I was able to find you and reunite with you!" Ace exclaimed in happiness while keeping his hug before he released them.
"Wait, what? A-Aren't you angry with us?" Violet asked nervously.
"Why? I'm very happy to find you alive. I heard a lot about what were you doing in the last year. I hoped that whenever I can get out, I could find you and reunite with you and my family again." Ace explained as he removed his tears of joy.
They were speechless at Ace. He didn't care about their situation or anything at all. He was happy.
"W-Wow…that was weird yet good," Carl commented.
"Guys, look, I want to say something." Ace sighed and looked down. "I want to apologize for what happened. I focused so much on finishing Cinder and didn't care about you. My obsession with stopping her led to this situation to happen. If you want to blame someone, blame me for what happened."
"N-N-No! Don't blame yourself, Ace." Skyler shook her head. "We did this for ourselves and didn't think of others. You were right all along and we're sorry for leaving you and not even thinking about rescuing you."
"It's okay, Skyler. Look, I'm not angry at all with you. While I was sad that you left me, I didn't care and told myself to fix this after I finished Cinder. I can't be that towards you forever because you're still my friends," CES were speechless again and didn't know what to say. He simply forgave them and didn't scoff at them at all. "and you're still my girlfriend." Ace looked at Skyler who hugged him so hard and released all of her tears at his chest.
"I-I'm sorry, Ace!" Skyler rasped, "I'm so sorry for yelling at you and leaving you like that. Forgive me for what I did."
"Hey, I forgive you, girl. It's okay." Ace patted her back before he looked at his other two teammates who went to hug him.
After a couple of minutes, Ace released his hug to let Carl and Violet. He saw Skyler keeping her grip but saw her falling asleep after she cried. Ace patted her head and carried her before he looked at Carl and Violet.
"So, anyone could tell me what happened?" Ace asked.
"Yeah, that's a long story. It involved many people like your family, their teams, and many more." Carl rubbed the back of his neck. "We will explain along the way."
What a reunion! Ace was so happy to have that reunion with his team and would have more with the others. He would join the rebels to finish what he started and nothing will stop him from doing that. The danger would rise as he escaped the prison but that wouldn't stop him from achieving his goal.
"Also, Ace, where were you stayed and how did you escape? I couldn't find you anywhere." Violet asked.
"That's…a long story."
AN: Oh BOY!
Hello there, guys. As you read this, it is an alternative version of Unfinished Business. It tells how the story might go if Ace didn't escape earlier. Read the original version to understand more of this.
I have gotta say, this was fun to write even if I was lazy about writing just like One More Chance. It was fun nonetheless. I don't know about you but I feel like I want to continue writing this and see what might happen. I like this plot more and have multiple ideas and certain OCs to show up in this. Who knows? Also, I finished writing this before Eid. It's crazy how I was able to finish this story before I went anywhere today.
Anyways, I hope you like this and don't forget to tell me your opinion.
Sincerely, Eslam.