Main theme: Enemy by Imagine Dragons and J.I.D
Arc theme: Can't Trust Anyone by Jeff Williams
Theme: Hidden Truths from the Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Soundtrack
BEACON OVERWATCH (B/OV) NETWORK:
RECORD: #194957302954
PERSONS: UNKNOWN (1)
WARNING: CALL ENCRYPTED. UNABLE TO IDENTIFY CALLERS
LOCATION: BEACON ACADEMY (FORMER DORM ROOM), VALE, SANUS
STATUS: BEACON ACADEMY STILL ACTIVE. BEACON MILITIA IN OPERATION. ASCENDANT COURT FORCES IN SANUS SPLINTERED. CHOIR OF SILVER FORCES IN SANUS SPLINTERED. DUST BARONS OBSERVED. VALE IN INSTABILITY. CRIME FAMILIES OBSERVED. RESOURCES STRETCHED THIN
THREAT STATUS: UNKNOWN
RECORDING:
(1.1): "Yeah, I'm getting everything set up. The other one is too."
{SILENCE= 6 SECONDS}
(1.2): "No, I'm not into- for fuck's sake, don't... Gods above, you are..."
{SILENCE= 7 SECONDS}
(1.3): "A great boss."
{SILENCE= 3 SECONDS}
(1.4): "Look, I'm in the Schnee's good books right now. Really worming my way into her heart."
{SILENCE= 3 SECONDS}
(1.5): "Point is, I've got her trust. She'll listen to me."
{SILENCE= 13 SECONDS}
(1.6): "No I'm not trying to fuck her either. I'm not 'Getting emotionally attached' to her. My god, man."
{SILENCE= 11 SECONDS}
(1.7): "Look, do you want me to hand you the Schnee or not? I'll even gift wrap her for you with a pretty little bow on top."
{SILENCE= 9 SECONDS}
(1.8): "His agents are moving into position as well. The council's given us the perfect setup to carry this out."
{SILENCE= 3 SECONDS}
(1.9): "Where did you find this guy?"
{SILENCE= 8 SECONDS}
(1.10): "What do you mean he found you?"
{SILENCE= 4 SECONDS}
(1.11): "Whatever. I'll pass along the message to the others. We'll be in position. Just make sure that your guys are as well."
{SILENCE= 6 SECONDS}
(1.12): "Sure thing, boss."
CALL END
Transcript of a encrypted scroll call made a few days before the beginning of the Great Hunt, deciphered one month later
It was the day before the troop inspection, and Melanie was freed from her two-week dishwashing servitude.
It was also the day that Melanie realised that Esper Fyre did not like her.
But then again, the pair of them hardly liked anyone.
A flash of blue fire erupted from the luminescent jaw of Esper, flinging itself towards Melanie with a violent roar as the latter woman held her hands out to catch it. Flaring her aura and activating her semblance, she allowed the flames to be absorbed into her body, weaving around her bones and through every individual strand of muscle in her arms like strings. The mechanical appendages on her back flashed with cyan light as they ejected the fire, sending her rocketing forwards for a punch.
She had to be careful with her semblance. After the Sleeping City battle, Velvet Scarlatina, one of the head nurses in Beacon and in contact with the teachers at the time, had banned her from using her semblance, which she called Energy Manipulation, until she could better control it. Her power had an unfortunate side effect of flaying her skin under the intense heat of her flames and almost burning her alive, so Velvet had ordered her to train herself to use her semblance, or not use it at all.
That had been around five and a half months ago.
Since then, with the help of Ruby and Eri, she had been modifying the cybernetic nervous system that had been placed into her arms after she had fried her nerves with her semblance back in the Sleeping City, tweaking them to be able to expel the excess energies of her semblance alongside the mechanical appendages on her back. Not only that, but she had been training to use her semblance in smaller bursts and swifter attacks. No more giant wings of fire and walls of flame. Not for now, at least.
It sucked. Her semblance was potentially bountiful in what it did and what it could possibly do, and yet here she was being forced to moderate it into smaller bursts and blasts so that she wouldn't burn herself alive the next time she used it. The thought irked her somewhat.
No, not somewhat. A lot. It irked her a lot.
Goddammit, she hated having to do this. She hated having to measure herself and hold herself back just to stay alive. It felt like a contradiction. Restraint in a fight was a good thing - less property damage and shit like that - but actively holding back when your life is on the line will only get you killed. It'll weaken you, sicken you, break you down and leave you open for attack.
Holding back in a fight held a special type of arrogance behind it. And that arrogance would get you killed.
And yet she was supposed to hold back to not be killed.
Then again, like she said before, restraint was also a key component in a fight. If you're trying to take someone in alive, you can't just go full blast. That'd kill them. You need to keep a tab on your power and wound them, not kill. You need to hold yourself back otherwise you might take the other guy's head off.
A misaimed blow could be just as fatal as a well-aimed blow, after all.
It was a contradictory lesson, but it was sure as hell an important one to learn.
Melanie should know. She had learnt it a long time ago, back on the streets of Mistral with her (then still alive) sister, Miltia.
(She winced at the memory. She was like Jaune in that respect: six months on, and it still hurt.)
They had been given a shit lot in life from the moment of their birth (seemed like everyone in Beacon was suffering from the same ailment, honestly). Being born to Lil' Miss Malachite, the head of the largest crime family in all of Mistral (at the time, at least. The Bandit Confederation were still a nascent state - a fledgling, novel idea thrown around the bars and brothels - by the time of their birth) would do that to anyone. In another world, Melanie imagined that they would've been treated like royalty by their mother. She would've treated them like family, treated them like a mother would treat her daughters, and then she would grant them a seat at the table and gift to them a place within her empire.
Or maybe, just maybe, they could just settle for being a happy family...
But this wasn't that world, and reality didn't work that way.
Lil' Miss Malachite was a cruel woman, and an even crueller mother. To her, Melanie and Miltia were not children, but leeches. Parasites suckling away at her fortunes. 'Her' fortunes, as if everything and anything that she owned was hers to begin with.
Everything she had ever made or owned... it was all stolen. Taken.
Much like the life of her father.
She didn't know the man (or woman. Apparently, girls were allowed to have penises nowadays too), but he must've been one sorry sap for falling for whatever seductions or sweet tricks their mother had pulled on him. Or maybe she had simply paid him. Either way, he must've been really desperate to even consider touching that woman's fat ass.
Yeah, Melanie didn't consider Lil' Miss Malachite to be her mum. She was her mother, sure, but never her mum.
There was a huge difference between the two.
And, like she said before, it wasn't like the woman thought any differently than her. Melanie and Miltia had to fight for whatever scraps were left on the table from their earliest days. They had to scrounge and scavenge for anything and everything that would give them an advantage over the thugs and bandits thar wanted nothing better than to kill them in their sleep.
Instead of learning how to be children, they had to learn how to be cutthroats, lest they get their throats cut.
It was a treacherous, painstaking life, marked by blood and ruin, and when Lil' Miss Malachite deemed them to be worth nothing to her anymore (as if they were worth anything to her in the first place) she cast them out onto the streets, like cheap trash.
Melanie doubted that the woman knew that they were alive. Hell, she doubted that the woman even remembered them, or her at least.
After all, she would've remembered Michael, her son, and not Melanie, her daughter.
Yeah, Melanie had been born biologically as a boy. She had always been a woman in her mind, but her body had decided on the opposite. She had been born a boy, and her mother had treated her as such. Melanie had stopped bothering to correct her long before she threw her and her sister out.
Miltia never called her a boy, though. Miltia always acknowledged her true self. Miltia was like that, you see. The perfect sister, never judging, always loving. Melanie loved her for that. She still did, even though she was dead now.
(And that was a hard pill to swallow down, even to this day. Her sister was dead. Miltia, the perfect sister and her one true constant, was dead. Gone. Not of this world anymore.
Melanie still had no idea how to process all of it. Miltia had seemed invincible in how good she was. She helped out as a teaching assistant in one of the local schools during the day, on top of doing shifts at the Lightbright (Uncle Hei's bar in downtown Vale- what's left of downtown Vale, anyways) at the night as well. She had been the calm, polite, and kind sister, somehow untainted by the horrors of the underworld around them, to Melanie, the angry, violent, and aggressive twin.
Melanie had been trying to fill her sister's shoes and complete all the jobs that she had done in between operating within the Beacon Militia, but she didn't know how to do it. She was terrible around kids, and she found them to be nothing but exhausting.
But still, to know that she was carrying out her sister's life in her steed...
She wondered if she should add a little more red than before into her outfit.)
But yeah, their mother had always seen her as Michael, not Melanie. Always a son, never a daughter. It brought up a lot of body dysphoria within her, let her tell you. She was so self-conscious of herself, so self-destructive of her own mind and identity, that she had almost got herself killed, and almost killed herself, out of her own self-loathing. It had been Miltia who had pulled her out of her misery, time and time again.
She couldn't remember when Hei Xiong - Junior, or their Uncle Hei - picked them up. She just remembered that he did, and suddenly they were being whizzed away from the unforgiving underworld of Mistral, and into the cool and calm world of Vale. The two of them had loved their new Uncle Hei for that, and when he had got her the sex change surgery that she had been longing for all her life (because she didn't know how Nora could deal with the ugly little thing where her femininity should be. It was hideous on her, and she would rather see it on other people than herself), she had deigned to love the man even more.
Ever since then she and her sister had been living with Uncle Hei, right up until the Initiation Massacre, where Miltia had been killed and Melanie had been made a part of Beacon, alongside the one that saved them all, and the girl that she considered another sister.
Things had really gone off the rails then, and it had involved Melanie doing some things that she regretted... and things that she didn't. They didn't matter now. Not anymore. She was here now, and she had a job to do: avenge Miltia, protect Vale, and whatever other goody two shoe bullshit that good guys were meant to spew out.
But right now, she had one central objective: beating the crap out of Esper Fyre.
She rocketed forwards, bursts of flame breaking out of her wing-like metal appendages and the glowing blue circles on her arms as she moved. Her fist shot forwards and connected with the side of Esper's head and sent her rocketing backwards, their auras connecting with each other as Melanie used her body as a springboard to launch herself backwards and expel the last remnants of energies from within her. Not too far from her, at the far end of the circle beneath them, Esper immediately recovered as pushed herself upwards, letting a swirl of flame built in her mouth as two jets of sapphire fire burst from her hands and out towards Melanie.
She caught them in both hands and channelled them into herself. Without a second though, she pulled the nifty little throwing knives that had been made just for her (thank you, Ruby) and funnelled her new energies within them, tossing them at the floor around Esper and letting them detonate into tiny balls of fire. The force from the small blasts was enough to throw Esper off her game, but as she regained her footing Melanie quickly tackled her to the ground, laying punches into her as she widdled away at her opponent's aura.
Esper retaliated with a boot to the stomach as she kicked Melanie off her, right before applying a stream of fire from her mouth and right into her foe's face. Yep, that hurt. Very hot. Smelt bad too. Esper needed a breath mint badly. Melanie allowed her semblance to carry the flame for her as she moved for another attack. Esper stopped her in her tracks though, as she applied another force of fire to Melanie's face. Then another. Then another.
Again, she was starting to think that Esper didn't like her. The manic cackling after each blast of fire helped confirm that theory.
Then again, maybe Esper just like fighting people. A lot.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
A hell of a lot.
Melanie swore under her breath and expelled the fire inside her from the metal wings on her back. With another step to her, she moved forwards and-
"That's enough."
Melanie swore again as she looked to the side. Hazel Rainart - Beacon's new combat instructor for both former Hunters of all sorts and Beacon Militia fighters after Glynda Goodwitch resigned from the position - was presiding over the sparing match, as always. He had this stern look on his face, as always, though she wasn't sure if the hint of disappointment in it was for him or for Esper.
"The match is over. Malachite, good work on managing your semblance into more controllable bursts, though I can still see slight damage across your arms. Fyre, on the other hand, you need to learn to control yourself in the fight. What I just saw right now was unacceptable."
Ah, so it was for Esper.
Esper said nothing to Hazel's remark. She just snorted and looked to the side, a huff of smoke and blue flame leaving her mouth.
As if on que to raise her point for her, their second onlooker, former Professor Arthur Watts (why was he even here, other than looking out for his favourite student, creeper that he was) defended her with, "Personally, I must disagree with your opinion, Mr Rainart. Aggression and ruthlessness are a keen trait to have in a warrior, especially in this day and age. Plus, holding back one's strength in a fight, even a sparring match, will do nothing but cost you the fight itself."
Was... was that an insult?
Whilst Esper was preening at Watt's (not Arthur. It felt weird to call him that) compliments, Hazel instead countered with, "Be that as it may be, lashing out randomly will only get both you and your opponent killed. Keep fighting like that, and she'll be killed alongside her foe the next time she enters a battle."
"You mistake strength for recklessness."
"No, suicidal overconfidence."
There was a glint of some kind in Esper's eyes, but Melanie couldn't place it. Jaune was supposed to be the one who was bad at expressions, not her.
"Confidence is not a bad trait to have on the battlefield, but if you say so," Watts said before turning to Esper, "Come, child. We have much work to do for the show tonight."
Esper nodded to him like a dog. Melanie never liked how obedient she was to him. She was like a dog chasing after its master. It was disturbing to her.
As the two of them began to walk away, Melanie looked to the side and saw that during the fight, her aura had gone down into the amber.
Esper's was still in the green.
Damn.
Six months later, and she still had so much catching up to do.
"There is a meeting, yes? A meeting of the clans- of the houses. Together in Beacon for your masters to see."
"How did you know that?"
"Guards talk. They talk more than they should."
Ruby frowned as she stood in the middle of the hallway, one of many in a section of Beacon Academy that had been dedicated to holding prisoners and convicts. It had originally been made back during the Opium War, when Beacon stood as Vale City's protective miliary fortress against its enemies and held captured spies and terrorists within. How ironic that a military base that was repurposed into a school for children would be turned into a military base once more.
It was almost funny how things came around that way.
She looked down the sterile white corridors, blocking her ears out to the raucous noises of the prisoners filling the various cells in the walls of the hallway - all of them Grimm and convicts - as they continued to yell out and bay for their freedom as she stayed lingering in the corridor. When she was but a child, she could never have imagined that Beacon had a dedicated prison built into its underbelly. It just didn't seem possible to her. Beacon was a safe place, dedicated to learning and prospering under the watchful eyes of their guardians.
That was what she believed as a child.
Nowadays though, when she understood the concept of necessary evils, all she could wonder was whether all the 'Criminals' that Beacon had dragged down into these halls truly deserved it.
(Ozpin seemed like the sort.)
"It's not any of your concern," Ruby said to the Chained Grimm within the cell next to her as she continued to lean on the wall besides the door, "You're not going to be there."
"Yet you will be."
"So?"
"You tell me."
Ruby swallowed, "If you think I'm going to discuss how I feel about all of this with you-"
"Why not? I am but your humble servant, am I not?"
Ruby's face screwed up with hesitation. The Chained Grimm that she was speaking to was from the Choir of Silver, a cult of Grimm separatists from the Ascendant Court that worshiped Silver-Eyed Warriors like herself. Originally a sect of human and Faunus vagabonds that had been organised around a religious zealot known as Templar, after the Initiation Massacre, he reorganised his army out of the scattered and stray Grimm survivors and defectors from the Ascendant Court, all of them looking for a purpose, and turned them into his new army. With his new force, now more powerful than ever, and with a cabal of risen Grimm that became his own Silver Court, he planned to launch a devastating crusade across all of Remnant, wiping out the kingdoms one by one and beginning a new world order, starting with Vale.
However, Templar's own ego and fanaticism proved to be his undoing. It turned out that he was once part of Ozpin's inner circle and had been the leader of Team STRQ's (the last iteration of Team STRQ, which her mother had been the leader of) sister team. It also turned out that he had been infatuated with Summer Rose, to an unhealthy degree-
(She remembered that Viola Arc, Jaune's sister, had apparently met Summer Rose once, when she was younger. Dammit, she should've asked about that when she was in Jewel.)
-And when Ozpin learnt of this and his growing fanaticism, he expelled Templar from his circle. He had been so sick in the mind that he had built an effigy - a mechanical monstrosity - to her mother and had wanted to live his desires for Summer through Ruby once he had captured her during the Battle of the Sleeping City.
Right after tearing out one of her eyes, of course.
That had proved to be his undoing. Ruby Rose - alongside Attis, one of the Grimm in the Silver Court, and more loyal to her than his priest - took advantage of the Choir of Silver's religion to dismantle the cult. She took up the image of a goddess and broadcast her wounds and Templar's across the Sleeping City, decrying him as a false priest and ordering her worshippers to destroy him and his loyalists. The Choir fell into civil war, slaughtering each other in the streets as she and Templar duelled in the depths of his fortress cathedral...
And she killed him.
She had hated taking up the role of a god - of something that she was not (although nowadays she couldn't help but miss the praise that she had received) - but it had been worth it. Oh, it had been worth it to put down the son of a... the son of a bitch that was Templar.
She hated Templar. She didn't like killing people (nowadays, she was just numb to the art of killing), but she didn't regret putting an end to the fowl zealot's life. Templar was trying to wage war against the world in the name of his fanatical crusade, and he had cut out her left eye and talked about violating her in the process, parading her around like a god - a deity made from bloody skin and broken bone. He was a bastard, and he got what he deserved.
But that didn't take into account the rest of the Choir of Silver. Most of the Silver Court had been killed in the Sleeping City, including Attis (and gods, did Ruby miss him). Hephaestus, the Tinkerer and God of Machines, was the only surviving original leader of the Choir of Silver, and he took his ship, the Pilgrim's Flight, to Atlas to join with the Imperium, all before abandoning them to die in turn and fleeing to parts unknown.
The rest of the Choir, after killing most of their members back in the Sleeping City, fractured into separate bandit tribes and raider clans, and though their numbers had swelled with new Grimm recruits - defectors, deserters, and vagabonds of all sorts - they had splintered further still into warring fiefdoms that the Beacon Militia had to keep an eye on and curtail, lest they drag Vale into another Grimm civil war.
However, Ruby remembered Flynt and Jolie's report from a few days ago, about how the barn that they were protecting had been raided by a group of Choir Grimm, and about how they had featured the new Deacon rank amongst them. Certain sects of the Choir remnants were giving themselves new ranks in what seemed to be a sort of alliance, and Hephaestus was still out there in the wild...
The Daughter might be Remnant's biggest threat, but Hephaestus was surely the most immediate. According to Jaune, the Grimm was an opportunist, and there was a potentially massive powerbase waiting for him in Vale. If he gained even a single foothold in the kingdom, then he had the potential to rally the rest of the Choir splinters to his command. After that? Who knows, but it wouldn't be any good for anyone, that was for sure.
Hephaestus had to be stopped, before he could do anymore damage to both Vale and Remnant than he had previously done before.
But back to the Grimm in the cage...
"I'm not what you want me to be," Ruby said to the Caged Grimm in the cell next to her, "I can't be. You want me to be a god, but I'm not that. I can never be that."
"So that performance back in the Sleeping City...?
"Was just that. A performance. Nothing more."
"Are you sure?"
Ruby wanted to say yes, but...
"You are Ozma's chosen one. His champion-"
He was right in that regard. She was his chosen one, the one destined to bring peace of Remnant. She always liked to think that it was her destiny to be a great warrior and hero, so hearing it said out loud to her felt like a prideful conformation. But after everything that had happened with Ozpin, all the lies and secrets, she wasn't sure if she believed him anymore.
Ozpin didn't know about May Zedong. He couldn't know. Then he'd have two Silver-Eyed Warriors to make use off, and May was unstable in of herself. Her powers were unstable, and no one trusted Ozpin with that kind of person, and with that kind of power.
(Ruby had an ulterior motive, though. If Ozpin had another Silver-Eyed Warrior in his cabal - even just half of one - then Ruby wouldn't be the chosen one anymore. She wouldn't be anyone's chosen one.
She needed this.
She needed to be more than she was already, in order to save people.)
"-You are more special than you could've ever imagined. Is it not your right to take what is yours?"
"And what is mine?" Ruby wasn't sure why she asked this.
"For starters, you do not agree with this troop inspection, no?"
No one did, but Ruby didn't voice that.
"Like I said, you're Ozma's champion. You're in the Arc boy's circle, are you not? Why not use it? Push your case forward via your status as Ozma's chosen."
...It was a tempting thought, but...
"That's a dangerous path," Ruby added, "One that leads to power unearned. There're always those who try to use their status to gain wealth and glory for themselves, and it always starts with the occasional suggestion. The occasional forced suggestion. I won't let myself fall down that path."
"Then why bother talking to me at all?"
Ruby didn't have an answer for that.
"Your mistake is confusing responsibility for greed. Those who do not crave power are those who should have it. Do you crave power?"
"No," the question was instantaneous, so why did it feel like a lie?
"Then that is why you should have it. That is why you should be taught on how to wield it."
Ruby's eyes flickered to the cell door, "You would teach me?"
"Why not? A humble servant teaching their master the vigour of the task before them? It is quite the story, and I wish to be of the utmost use to you."
She could feel the chains in the Grimm's cell shift, and suddenly his voice was so much closer to the door than she felt comfortable with.
"All you have to do, is open this door."
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
"No."
Ruby shook her head and began to walk out of Beacon's prison level.
"No..."
No.
She wouldn't fall for the Grimm's tricks.
She wouldn't.
She couldn't.
(At least, that's what she told herself.)
"What do you mean, he's gone?"
Jaune's frown intensified as Neon continued on, Flynt and Jolie at her flanks, "I mean that he's gone! DJ usually always shows up to our band practice on Sundays. It's not like him. Not only that, but Lavendar told us that he was due for some kind of check-up at the medical centre and sent us to go get him. We went to check his quarters, but they're empty, so we started asking around. No one around his bunks has seen him for days!"
"Days?" Jaune went, surprised at the sudden lapse in security. Had DJ been kidnapped? It couldn't be possible, right? Not in Beacon, and especially not with thousands of trained soldiers and support staff walking around the place. The old classroom that they were having their current meeting in suddenly felt suffocating. Jaune remembered that DJ kept a bunch of equipment in his room, "What about-"
"The equipment in his room? It's thumbed to his hand signature. We tried to manually access it, but its password protected and includes, like, a million questions on top of that. We didn't want to touch it, because if we got it wrong then it might've locked us out for good, or something," Jaune didn't doubt that. DJ was a paranoiac at heart. He had no doubt that the Techion had dozens of firewalls and protective fail-safes on his computers.
"The official documentation online reports that DJ filed for sick leave around three days ago," Flynt added in, "Around the same time that people stopped seeing him."
Jaune paused before confirming their information on his scroll. According to the information on Beacon's official network, DJ called in sick around three days ago. He noticed that there was a follow-up from Lavendar Nera and the rest of the team in the medical centre asking him to report to them to confirm the need for a leave, but it was never read.
That lined up with what Neon and her crew were saying.
"Do you know if there was anyone that could have been... targeting him?" Jaune asked. He already knew his answer: DJ was always talking about Professor Watts and how suspicious he was, and Jaune had never corrected him on it because, well, there was nothing to correct. Watts was suspicious as hell, but so far DJ's investigations had found nothing on him, no real reason to be suspicious. Jaune had ordered him off the case multiple times, but DJ had always been so insistent on it.
But if Watts had something to do with it...
"No idea," Neon cut through his thoughts with, "DJ was- oh, DJ always kept his cards close to his chest, Jaune. He was had his secrets."
"Yeah, that makes sense," he mumbled to himself. That was right, they didn't know about DJ's investigation into Watts. No one but Jaune knew, and that meant that right now, he was the only one who might have a clue as to where DJ had gone.
Which he did not.
If that paranoid idiot had gone off on his own, Jaune was going to have serious words with him.
"It's possible he went off on his own," Jaune said to them. He decided that there was no harm in revealing part of the truth to them, "A few months ago, he came to me saying that he had... concerns. It's possible that he's gone off to look into those concerns on his own," he put a hand to his chin and furrowed his brow, "Though why he decided to disappear now instead of earlier on, I don't know."
"'Concerns'? He was worried about something?" Jolie said, "What?"
"I'm afraid I can't say," Jaune asked, "It was between him and myself. He didn't want anyone else to know."
Before the others could say anything, Neon added in, "He trusted you? That makes sense," Jaune assumed that she was referencing his current reputation, "But why didn't he tell us?"
He shrugged, "Trust is hard to come by these days, unfortunately. We all know what DJ's like. He's always been one to hold others at arm's length."
"So, he couldn't trust us?" Flynt asked.
"Sounds like he couldn't trust anyone," Jolie added.
"Yeah," was Jaune's reply, "I'll inform the rest of High Command of DJ's disappearance, but I doubt that they'll do anything about it. Not until after the troop inspection tomorrow."
"But... you'll try, right?"
Jaune sighed and gave Neon his best smile.
"Yeah, I'll try."
"There's another one."
Leadpipe looked to where Blake was pointing, to see another transport ship - a freighter it seemed, though he couldn't tell the designation or make of it - dock in Beacon's underside hanger, steam hissing out of its vents and exhausts as its landing gear folded down and planted itself on the floor. As its ramps fell downwards and its dozens of passengers - all White and Crimson Guardsmen, particularly officers - disembarked onto the hanger bay floor, Leadpipe said to Blake, "That makes five ships now."
"Five that we've seen," Blake commented as she leant herself against the handrail before them. The two of them were sitting atop the overhead bridges in the hanger bay, watching the ships below coming in and out of the old academy. Mostly coming in.
"The council's serious about this, aren't they?" Leadpipe went, "They're serious about this troop inspection thing."
"It would be a first," Blake added, "Politicians, and all."
Leadpipe hummed in response.
"It's a bad idea," he heard his companion and former partner say.
"Yeah," he breathed out, "Things could go badly."
"You think something will go wrong?"
Leadpipe sighed, "Something always goes wrong."
"We can't think like that," Blake said to him, "We need to think positively. We need to think that things will get better, because if we don't, then what the hell's the point in trying?"
"...Why are you like that?"
Blake blinked, "Like what?"
"That," Leadpipe added, "You're nice to me. You really are, but... but you're angry towards everyone else. Spiteful, I'd say. You always seem to be eager to pick a fight," he shrugged, "I don't know, it's weird. I think it's weird."
"...I'm nice to people I like."
"And you like me?"
"Is that so weird?"
"Yes? No? Maybe? I just thought that it was because of- well," he pointed to his head, "Because of my condition."
"The fact that you're a Techion?"
"No, the fact that I, you know, think differently than others. Process things differently."
"It's not that," Blake said, "It was never that."
"Then what?"
"...You... reminded me of someone?"
Leadpipe thought back to the first few times that he had been with her, from their first meeting in the ballroom back before everything went to hell, to the locker room, to the Grimm Tidings, to-
Wait.
"Ilia?"
Blake froze for a long time, before she looked at him and uttered, "What?"
"Back during the Initiation Massacre-" Leadpipe blanched and shuddered at the memory of that day, "-You, you called me Ilia. I was... I was just wondering if there was a connection-"
"There isn't."
If Leadpipe still had the capability to frown, he would be, "Blake-"
"Forget that name, it's not important," Blake cut through whatever he was going to say like a knife through butter, "It's not important at all."
"...Then why hang out with me at all?"
"...I've got to go," Blake said, pushing herself against the rail beneath her and moving to walk across the bridge beneath, away from Leadpipe, "Get some things ready for tomorrow."
She never answered his question.
Leadpipe let out a breath and leant himself against the rail beneath him. He had been thinking about heading back to Vale soon and going back home. Blake had allowed him to stay for a few days in her room because he didn't feel safe in Vale. Not after the attack on the barn that he was in and Harrower's maiming at the hands of the Choir of Silver. He didn't want to impose on his former partner, but at the same time... he just didn't feel safe in Vale. Not right now.
"You should head back to the city," Blake echoed his thoughts as she stopped in place, not turning around to look at her, "It'll be less... chaotic and loud down there, and I know how much you love the peace and quiet. Plus, if you're right, and something bad does happen tomorrow... then you won't be here for it at least."
Leadpipe hummed at the prospect, "I was just thinking that, but... but Harrower should be waking up soon, and I'd like to thank him for saving me. Plus, if something... if something does go wrong, then I can at least, I don't know, help out or something. I'll ask one of the pilots to give me a lift when the troop inspection is over" he stuttered for a moment, "I-If that's no trouble, of course."
"...I thought you left Beacon because you didn't want to get into any more trouble," Blake asked.
Leadpipe paused in thought himself, "Well, if I left now and something did go wrong, then I... well, I'd feel like hell afterwards if I didn't do anything about it."
"...I suppose that's as good a reason as any."
"I guess."
Leadpipe heard Blake shuffle on her feet. He turned to look at her, and saw her giving him... well, as kind of a look as she could muster.
"No matter what happens, I'll be looking out for you, okay?" she said to him, "I always have been... remember that."
"...Okay then. Thanks."
"Thank you," Blake said to him before turning to walk away, "For being... my friend."
As she walked away, Leadpipe looked down to the ground below, filled with assembling troops and material, marked by bad decisions and regrets on the part of those supposed to be their leaders, and could help but wonder:
Why did her tone sound so... final?
The night had come, and Beacon was falling silent.
Perfect time for DJ to move around.
He skulked around corridors and avoided patrols, always staying out of the sight of the camera network as he wandered the halls. It was difficult to say the least, especially with all the extra soldiers arriving daily for the troop inspection tomorrow, but he managed.
It was better this way.
He couldn't trust anyone. The traitor amongst their ranks could be at any position in the Beacon Militia, at any rung of power, and they would never know. They could be in the middle of High Command right now, and no one would have any way of knowing it.
He had to do this on his own. He had to do this, and he couldn't tell anyone about it, lest the spy find out and cover up their trail.
A trail that, as of now, led him right into the depths of Beacon Academy, and into the lower levels.
It was easy enough to stun and knock out the Black Guardsmen guarding the lift. They took him for a friendly face, and he fed them a lie saying that he was lost. One of them moved to escort him off the premises, and he fired two stun bolts into them, knocking them unconscious.
"Sorry about this," the Techion muttered as he dragged them away, finding a disused storage room nearby and sitting them down in the middle of it. They'd remember him in the morning when they woke up, but it would take a long time for them to do so. The stun blast that he had hit them with were set at full power. It would be a good day or so before they woke up, "But I need to find the spy. I need to know what Watts is hiding. I need to see this through."
He'd come too far to back down now.
Exiting the old classroom, he marched back to the lift door, and moved to call up the lift. He stopped himself. The lift might have CCTV inside, and the traitor might have access. No use going down the lift.
If his theory was correct, then he'd have to free climb it.
He had told Jaune before that there was a secret base in the Wishing Well Lake below, and that Watts and Ozpin were hiding the entrance down to it in the lower levels of Beacon. He hadn't believed him, but that didn't stop the Techion from investigating his theory for weeks and months on end.
The fact that someone had wiped all the drives on his decoding equipment meant that he was right on the money.
He tasted it. A signal, coming down from the depths of the lake. It tasted like encryption. The same encryption that had been heading out into Vale, both the city and the outlands, for months now. He remembered a week before the Battle of the Sleeping City that an encrypted signal had been sent out of the lake. He had assumed that Ozpin had placed Beacon's transmitter there, and that the CCT tower built into the academy itself was just a decoy in order to fool any potential attackers.
It wasn't.
He remembered that the first transmission that he had detected from the bottom of the lake had travelled into Vale's wildlands. If it wasn't the Ascendant Court that their traitor down below was calling, then it must be the Choir of Silver. That must've been how Templar and his forces knew about Ruby and the fact that they were coming in the first place.
It had to be Watts. It had to be. It all just made too much sense.
He grabbed hold of the lift doors. Time to uncover the truth.
He pulled open the doors, and was greeted by a gaping void, boxy and dark and going all the way downwards in a cold, windy shaft.
He was right. He was right! The lift did go down to a hidden level!
Now it was time to see what their traitor was so eager to hide.
He pulled himself into the shaft, and gripped the wires, pipes, cables, and rungs laid across the walls. Closing the lift shaft doors behind him, he clutched around his support as the wind blew around him, seeping through the gaps and ports of his armour and causing him to shiver.
He began to climb down regardless.
It took him hours to climb down. Literal hours. He was essentially climbing down an entire mountain, of course, and he didn't want to alert anyone. It was torturous, though. Each support he took hold of felt like it could slip out of his hands. Each step down he took was a mission to not misstep and fall down to the bottom of the shaft and be crushed under his own weight.
Yet still he pressed on.
He didn't know how long specifically it took, but eventually he made it down. Planting himself down on the floor of the shaft, he pulled the lift doors open...
And was greeted by a corridor of water.
It was long and cylindrical, shaped into a half dome and lined by blinking red lights. The world outside was a deep murky green, dark and muddy and difficult to see through. Thin wisps of light shone through the ocean below as the surface of the lake above (he was at the bottom of the Wishing Well Lake, he knew it!) continued to ripple from the constant March rainfalls above. Rungs and rails separated the curved glass plains into rows and sections as algae and undersea growth spread themselves across the outsides of the windows, almost glowing in the dark and giving the corridor and otherworldly feel, as if he was looking into an alternate dimension.
He stepped inside and began to slowly walk down the corridor.
The lights around him continued to blink a deep red, giving the air around him an ominous vibe, but DJ didn't let that stop him. He had expected something like this. He knew what he was getting into.
Soon, he reached the end of the corridor.
No going back now.
The doors in front of him opened up, and he stepped through.
The wide dome that greeted him was dark and lit by low lights. The air pulsated with a red light and the outside continued to hum a deep green and black. The halfsphere around him was almost entirely made of glass and crisscrossed by tiny lights, and the thin wall to the side was lined with computer monitors, all of them off and leaving shadows in the faint light. A wider shadow was being cast by the giant vat of liquid hovering over the room, two pairs of metal steps moving up to both sides of the giant silver metal tin can as down below, at the far end of the room, were two silver glassed pods, hovering under a single white light.
This must be the traitor's base, no doubt funded by Beacon's money. There was no way that Ozpin couldn't have known that this was down here, there was just no way. He must've known that this entire base was down here. He sensed one of the computers nearby was still active. It would no doubt be password protected, though. He moved towards it. He should've brought his decoding equipment down with him. If he had known that this was here-
A signal activated behind him. He whirled himself around to see a green-lit AK-130 marching towards him, armed raised and cannons blaring-
{CHOOM CHOOM}
-And, before he could activate his aura, two blasts of red light punched right through his armour and left him falling to the ground on his back, his armour slagging under the heat and leaking oil and blood.
He tried to push himself upwards, but another blast hit him again in the chest, kicking up shrapnel and Black Ether, and causing him to let out a cry of pain. No one would hear him down here. He was all on his own. He tried to look at his attacker, but his optics were getting fuzzy, as were his audio receptors. The organic remnants within him were beginning to fail. His oxygen filters were jamming up. His systems were failing.
Through his muddled audio filters, he heard someone say, "Take him to the vat. Our little detective will provide a suitable experiment," he couldn't make out who it was, but it must've been the same person who wiped his data. The traitor! DJ tried to swipe his hand at the traitor, but he couldn't move his arm. He felt someone - the AK-130 droid, most likely - tearing his prone form open, peeling away the orange and cyan metal, and ripping something out. Was that his spinal column? It must've been.
A pair of hands grabbed him and began to drag him up the stairs. A long trail of blood and Ether followed behind him. He could feel it slipping out of him and pulling in his insides. His remaining human components began to wither and fail from exposure. Through his broken filters, he could hear the lid of the vat being opened wide.
They reached the top of the stairs.
He tried to stop them- tried to say something, but he couldn't. One of the droids grabbed him by the throat and ripped his vocal cords out. Black Ether poured out of the gaping wound.
He was picked up by the droids. They heaved him into the air and tossed him into the vat. There was a splash. Water. No, not water. It seeped into his wounds and felt cold and dark and alien.
The vat lid sealed over him. The liquid touched his exposed organic remains and they began to change.
Pain immediately followed.
He screamed, or at least he tried to. There was so much pain and revulsion in the liquid around him as it began to rewrite his DNA and mutate it. He tried to wriggle and writhe against it, but nothing worked. The droids had ripped out his spinal column. He was dead weight.
His mind began to fray-
HATE
-And-
RAGE
-Began to seep into his heart and pollute his soul-
BITTERNESS
-And-
FURY
-Filled him so, breaking his mind and leaving him screaming into his own thoughts as they were torn apart. New instincts to-
KILL
-And-
MAIM
-And-
DESTROY
-Wormed their way into him as purple tendrils and puss began to worm themselves out of him.
Pain.
Pain.
PAIN FOR ME. PAIN FOR ALL.
As his mind flooded with darkness, and his soul was destroyed and rewritten a thousand times over, DJ hoped that someone out there would at least hear of the fate that had befallen him.
He never should've come down here alone.
Death would be preferable to whatever fate had now befallen him.
(He would get his wish, as a few seconds later, as his mind was totally destroyed, DJ died from his wounds.)
Reviewer response time:
MiltiaMasker: Really? Blake? I would've never imagined it!
bosterflaming: Glad to see that you enjoyed it so much! I tried to include a little bit of that same feeling in this chapter, so let's hope that it was successful again!
Baneis: Thanks for the compliments! It's good to know that you feel that way about my story! I do like adding these kinds of moments into my stories, as I feel that it makes them a little more grounded and realistic, so it's good to know that I was able to communicate them well.
ZACK2357: ¡Muchas gracias! Realmente estoy haciendo lo mejor que puedo con estos capítulos, pero se hace difícil mantener el nivel de calidad que ya he establecido. Es un verdadero impulso para mi espíritu saber que usted y todos los demás aún disfrutan leer estos libros tanto como yo disfruto escribiéndolos.
Sorry if this chapter isn't quite up to snuff as the others. I've been really stressed recently, what with having to think about my future for the first real time in my life and haven't been able to completely concentrate on my writings.
Hopefully you all enjoy this regardless. Things should hopefully be calming down soon, and that's when the real fun of this arc will begin.
Also, I have a poll up on my profile page relating to Ascendancy, so if you could please go vote for your favourite arc in this series, that would be grand of you!
But until then, stay safe, stay healthy, and I shall see you all next time!
Titanmaster 117 out!