"History is written by the victor. History is filled with liars. If he lives and we die, his truth becomes written and ours is lost."
- John Price
"I'm not alone." she warned him, drawing her saber. She was confident she could take him — aura or no, while she'd been spending every waking hour of the better part of her life honing her skills, he'd been building an empire for at least the last five. She could list the huntsmen capable of defeating a member of the Ace Ops on her two hands, and Percy was not on that list.
"I know." he told her, turning back to observe the battle, his right hand shoved in his pocket while his left tapped his leg to an unheard beat. "Six of you."
Winter's eyes narrowed to slits. If he knew about the Ace Ops coming for him, not only had they seriously doubted Mistral's intelligence in Atlas, but he had known they'd be coming for him personally, yet here he was, alone. Unguarded. Unarmed, even.
"You don't seem very worried." Winter noted cautiously, sliding a foot back into a practiced stance. She still hadn't figured out her messed up feelings, but it looked like it would be decided for her. They'd been expecting half the huntsmen in Mistral to be defending him. Alone, he didn't stand a chance against the Ace Ops. Even if this was a trap and he somehow got away or incapacitated them all, Ironwood would be there within minutes with his company of knights.
"I have to fight you." she warned him one last time, lifting her blade to shoulder height and leaning forwards. A few dozen feet on his other side, Harriet landed.
"That's alright." Percy told her, still casually observing the distant conflict. "I wish you'd made a different decision, but I understand. For what it's worth, I'll do my best to keep you alive."
Winter bit her tongue as the rest of the Ace Ops began landing around the plaza. I didn't decide. Winter wished she could tell him. You decided for me.
Knowing that she no longer had a choice in the outcome of this conflict, Winter steeled herself and dashed towards Percy's undefended back.
Percy gripped Riptide, finally allowing his muscles to tense. Having spotted them earlier and knowing to look for it, he could feel the rest of the bodies of water in the air (at least, the ones heading towards him) finally land. Somehow, he doubted they'd be as interested in chatting as Winter was.
Speaking of Winter's… decision, as casually as he'd treated it, knowing what she chose sucked. He knew there was a chance — a large one — she would choose the military over him, but what he hadn't expected was that she would personally be a part of the team to come kill him, or that he'd still feel the telltale sting of betrayal that came with it.
And suddenly, Winter was moving. He felt it long before he saw it, the vague presence of water in her body suddenly rushing towards him at impressive speed.
Percy span and pulled out Riptide, swinging it upwards and sweeping Winter's blade away from him. Moving with her momentum, she dashed past him several feet and turned on the spot to face him again.
Percy would have been content to stand there and have another chat or spend the entire time casually rebuffing individual attacks, but the rest of the strike force Winter was on didn't seem to agree.
Within the second a spray of bullets pattered across his aura, striking painfully on his arms and torso. But that's all it was — pain. Aura took care of the rest.
A short woman wreathed in lightning — electricity, rather — raced past him, a fist extended to collide with his cheek. He bent backwards, but decided in his current position that sticking a leg out to trip her up would be more likely to compromise his balance than hers.
She wasn't expecting the dodge if her barely audible splutter of disbelief was any indication, but Percy had no time to reflect on it because a moment later he had to roll out of the way of a bench being thrown at him, a large chunk of the earth and concrete it had been grounded in still attached.
Rolling smoothly to his feet, Percy shot the bald guy on the far end of the clearing with the giant glowing yellow arms a dirty look. There was a good chance that would hit a civilian, and an outright guarantee it would do some property damage.
"Dude, not co-"
He hadn't even finished the short objection when he was being assailed again, this time in the form of a large hammer swinging for his torso.
Scowling, Percy sidestepped to avoid a collision with his chest by mere centimeters. He had to hand it to them — he intercepted electricity girl, crouching and shoving Riptide's pommel just below her ribcage and driving her breath from her, ignoring the light pattering of bullets colliding with his aura — they were coordinated. It wasn't particularly creative how they worked as a team, their skills didn't seem to compliment each other all that much — Percy parried Winter's next strike, sending a kick to his side at the woman with the large hammer to interrupt her swing — but they knew how to chain their assaults so that he had truly no breathing room.
A large, heavily armored woman with metal gauntlets was running towards him, looking like she was aiming to tackle him just as a thin line wound its way around his legs, a small hook digging into his jeans and holding fast. Percy snarled, but he was forced to ignore it and deal with the more immediate problem, grappling briefly with the woman before tossing her several feet to his right and onto her back.
Focusing on the immediate threat proved to be a mistake just a moment later, when a tree — roots, dirt, and all — came soaring towards him and his legs were tied together. Before he could react, the line was pulled taut and his legs were pulled from under him. Under ordinary circumstances it wouldn't have been enough to destabilize him, but his legs were already in an awkward position being forced so close together and as a result he tumbled to the dirt.
Slashing down at the line tethering him, Riptide sliced through the metal like butter and Percy freed himself, but he knew it was too late. He was no longer attached to the man who'd been pulling at him, but he was on his back, and his legs were still tangled in what felt like a mile of metal wire. Left with no other immediate choice, in the split second before collision Percy lifted his legs to take the impact of the trunk instead of his torso. He was slammed off the side of the mountain and sent rolling down its rocky face, jagged boulders and rocks digging into his back, and then his arm, and then his chest, and then his back again.
Allowing himself just a moment to groan as his stumble came to an end a few hundred feet later, Percy went to begin cutting himself free with Riptide before realizing with a jolt that no, he did not still have the blade in his hand. That might be a good thing, if he were being honest. He didn't trust that he'd have been able to keep from stabbing himself while falling down the cliffside.
Resolving to untangle himself manually with a frustrated grunt, at least for a few moments until Riptide reappeared in his pocket, Percy gripped the metal wire and began the arduous process of untangling it.
Winter watched as the tree Vine threw impacted Percy's tied up form directly, launching him off the cliff to a few hundred feet below, where he'd almost certainly lay crippled and immobilized.
"Good throw, Vine." Clover praised. "And good job distracting him, Tortuga. I've already contacted General Ironwood. The volley will be on its way in seconds." he told them, apparently deciding to be thorough anyway. "Winter, Tortuga, go ahead and start heading to the foot of the mountain. The sooner we end this, the fewer people have to die."
Winter refrained from commenting that he had just called in an airstrike on a civilian area that was likely to collapse the entire structure of that part of the mountain in an avalanche that would likely kill thousands instead of taking his team of highly trained specialists to go arrest a gravely injured man.
"Understood." Tortuga confirmed for her, nodding at Clover and dusting herself off.
Winter gave her own unenthusiastic nod, turning to the cliff face she'd just watched her oldest friend be sent off of and sprinting into a leap without another word.
Her eyes were immediately drawn to the end of the trail of debris marking Percy and the tree's descent down the mountainside. She spotted no movement, but regardless for the briefest moment she considered stopping her descent to go help him anyway. She knew it was hopeless, but if she could at least get him out of the blast area and 'arrest' him she'd be court martialed and probably arrested, but she might be able to save him…
And then in a split second it was too late. Where he'd landed disappeared from her sight as she passed one level and descended to the next, opportunity passed. Casting glyph after glyph to keep herself from running into the shallow mountainside, Winter continued on down towards its base.
She'd have time for regrets later. Right now, she couldn't go back. Percy had made himself far too vulnerable for her to help, regardless of how good of a fighter he'd ended up being. This was the result. She hoped he'd get out in time, but…
Winter focused on the mission before her. She would succeed in her mission, she would prove her loyalty without a doubt and end this battle. She would do what she needed to do to rise in rank, to be able to influence Atlas from the inside. If she didn't, if she hesitated or backpedaled, then all of this would have been for nothing.
Slowing her descent until she touched the ground at the bottom of the valley lightly, Winter flicked her blade and summoned a nevermore to distract the two armed men who had seen her land, not paying them a moment's thought afterwards.
Impatiently, Winter ducked into a nearby alleyway and waited for Tortuga. She always was the slowest…
Looking up the side of the mountain, Winter saw it before she heard it. The shells packing a hundred pounds of explosive dust in each of them impacted the cliff face near the peak of the mountain, launching rock from its side and spraying debris for miles below.
It was only a few seconds before the shockwave reached her and she was forced to look away and take cover. It shook the poorly maintained buildings around her, ripping the roofs clean off of many of them. Even through the gale she heard unseen families cry out in terror, women and children huddled where they could fit.
Fists clenched until her knuckles turned white, Winter exited the alley and continued down the broken street towards her mission, doing her best not to think about those further up the mountain — the civilians who weren't as far away from the blast as possible. She couldn't go back in time, and turning back now would do nothing but make it all meaningless. The death, the suffering. Percy's death, her suffering.
Winter allowed a single tear to trail down her cheek.
Shiro had a headache.
He hadn't thought leading an army or organizing the defense of a hundred million souls would be easy, but he'd thought he could handle it. After all, he'd been more or less running the country for a good part of the decade, and overseeing other projects across Remnant in the most complex game of telephone yet conceived. Gangs in Vale, White Fang in Atlas, Royalists in Vacuo, the entire island of Menagerie, Johnson and Wesserschmitt and all of its subdivisions — small arms, drones, autonomous defenses, airships, the list went on — and the Mistral Trade Company on top of it, organizing trade agreements, applying for licenses, founding banks, rigging elections, paying off media, and just as a cherry on top keeping an eye on the largest subterfuge and espionage network in the world.
Point being, Shiro had a lot of experience in leadership and organization. He knew what he could handle, and it was quite a bit. So when the fighting started and all had been more or less calm, he'd figured that's how the entire battle would be. There would be constant but calm radio chatter, every few seconds he'd get a status update, and once in a long while he might get a direct question or request for permission to do something.
"White Eagle One-Seven Romeo this is Bluejay One-Six Romeo, requesting ETA on that medevac-"
"White Eagle One-Six Romeo this is Hammerhead Seven, requesting ground reconnaissance at point one five three dash six three two-"
"Lightning Three this is Blizzard Two-Seven, effect on target was minimal, request another run at vector southwest to northeast, adjust fire right twenty meters."
"Hammerhead Six Romeo this is Beowolf One Romeo, requesting fire mission on position four eight five dash six-"
It didn't stay that way.
Don't get him wrong. They were all calm, collected, and precise like they'd been trained to be, but the sheer volume was… too much. His attention was being split seven ways every second, and every bit of it was about something life or death.
They weren't even all for Shiro, but they were all for his 'command' unit — every officer at the top of the totem pole, in the central command center. That meant he had to know what was going on, or at least be aware of it, and it meant that even if they weren't directed at him they were all over one radio frequency so that he could monitor everything. In hindsight, having so many people in charge of such large parts of the force and the many radio operators that came with them in one room was… not the best idea. Or maybe they were just too centralized to begin with, he had no idea. He did know he'd be having some long nights reorganizing it with Percy if they survived this whole thing.
"How far out is their force now?" Shiro asked, turning to the radio operator specifically assigned to him, to receive requests being sent not to someone in the command center, but to him directly. Considering just about everyone who reported to him directly was in the room, Shiro thought it was a bit redundant.
Quickly acknowledging he'd heard the question, the young man that was Shiro's… assistant? Leaped to speak to someone on the other end of the room before hurrying back. "Just under a kilometer, sir, just barely within the effective range of our guns. Apparently they've been that close for a few minutes now, just shooting at our defenses."
Shiro blinked. "They have the same rifles as us, don't they? Our effective range should be just as far as theirs, and they're in the open."
"I'm not sure they're in the open." his radio operator told him. "Some might be, but there are hills, fences, brush, and even a few trees for them to take cover behind. I can check, but my guess is most are laying in battle lines just behind hills. It's worse cover than our trenches, but, well, there's one metric where those machines have us beat by a mile."
"Their aim." Shiro cursed. It had been one of the main selling points. Automatons were heavy, required constant maintenance, power, and a bevy of other downsides, but they had a lot of advantages as well. Perhaps the strongest was that despite not being all that much better than a regular soldier in close combat, at range it was like having an army of the best marksmen anywhere in the world. Calculating trajectory given every contributing factor was something machines could do a whole lot better than humans. Well enough to hit a head peeking over a trench a kilometer away.
His communications assistant turned away for a moment to receive a report from someone on the other side of the room, and then quickly responded with some terminology Shiro barely got the gist of.
Shiro pursed his lips. They hadn't thought of this scenario exactly for some reason (or at least, he hadn't. Maybe Percy had and didn't say anything) but they had a way to deal with it nonetheless.
"Alright," Shiro started, causing the comms guy (Shiro really should have asked his name) to drop the conversation he'd been in the middle of by saying 'break' as if it were a game and he were taking a time-out. "Contact the-''
Shiro was interrupted mid-sentence by the room shaking violently, and for a split second it felt like an earthquake. The only reason he knew it wasn't was the distant echo of an explosion following it, even as deep as they were into the mountainside.
"What the hell was that?" Shiro asked. Hundreds of shells had been striking over the mountainside, but they hadn't felt so much as a vibration. For something to reach them so far into the rock it didn't bode well.
The radio operator did his best to listen to the myriad of incoming reports.
"A concentrated barrage, sir. Until now they've been rolling fire within their entire fleet over our entire frontline and static defenses — that is, there's a constant rotation of shells landing over a wide area. But it looks like they just concentrated fire from several ships on a single point, near the peak. It's possible they were aiming for the capital, but if they were then from the sound of it they missed."
Percy. It had to be. They had to be firing on Percy.
Shiro cursed him and his recklessness internally, but brothe a sigh of relief. Nobody was on the first floor, and a small few were on the next few — most of the nobility and their families had either joined in the fighting as officers, or had fled before the battle. The only one likely to be hit by the direct fire up there was Percy… who was a god... half god?
Regardless, Shiro was not worried.
"Let's thank them for giving us the advantage then." Shiro transitioned. "And focus back up. Like I was about to say, contact the tanks. It's time to enter stage two. When that's done, move right to stage three."
The only sign of the radio operator's nervousness was a visible swallow and a single nod. Shiro watched as he turned to his radio, paused, took a deep breath, and then began speaking to cut over whatever report was currently being given over the signal.
"Break. Break. Break. All elements, this is White Eagle One Romeo. Proceed to phase two. Out."
For the first time since Shiro had entered the room the radio was silent for a brief moment, before resuming just a moment later with a renewed flurry of activity.
Shiro held his breath. This kind of war was very, very new to Remnant. It was hard to command an army when he didn't personally understand or agree with the strategy they were using, but he had to have faith. Remnant had never seen a war anything like this, but Percy had. He still had his doubts, but they'd been committed to this course of action for years. Now, the only thing Shiro could do was play the cards he'd been given.
"Sir," the radio operator broke Shiro out of his thoughts some time later.
"Yes? What is it?" Shiro turned to him, hoping desperately nothing more had gone wrong so soon.
"I've just received reports of contact with infiltrators."
Shiro's features furrowed in concern. "In the city? How many?"
"Reports vary, but we think there are two squads, sir. And no, not in the city. They're in the base."
Captain Noble could get used to his soldiers being robots. Don't get him wrong, they could never fully replace humans — they had no intuition, no tactical decision making ability, no independent thinking or creative processes, and they were predictable. But while he knew they had downsides, he had to admit that in such a large battle like this they were dream soldiers.
There were no casualties — if a machine took a bullet and was injured, it would just keep doing its job. If it couldn't keep firing, it would calmly move to the back of the line and wait. If it couldn't move it would just lie there calmly. No blood, no screaming, no medics running into fire or having to stop their shooting to pull one of their men into cover and treat them — it was great.
Normally he'd have to keep up with his soldiers to make sure they were properly spaced, had enough ammo, were timing their fire and reloads properly, and to generally keep a hold of everyone in the chaos of battle. Half the time they hadn't heard his last order over the gunshots, or there were technical difficulties with their radios, or they strayed too far, or one of a million other problems. But with a squad of Knights, he just calmly said his orders and they snapped to obey. For the tens of thousands of them they had on the field they only needed a few hundred human officers. And honestly, Noble thought that might have been overkill.
"Captain Noble, sir. Auditory cues indicate a large motorized hostile presence bearing one hundred and forty, approximately eight to twelve hundred meters."
Noble frowned. He didn't hear anything, and he didn't see anything but open fields leading up to the enormous mountain that constituted Mistral, but it made some sense they'd hear it before he did. "Any idea how many?" he asked.
"I am able to determine a maximum of fifteen different auditory cues simultaneously. My capacity has been exceeded."
So, fifteen at a minimum then. What were they, trucks? Deciding it wasn't his job to worry about it, Noble quickly turned to his radio. Noble's battalion was the most south-easterly unit and so likely the first to get a report like that, so he quickly repeated the report to his commander before returning his attention to the battle, making sure to keep an eye on the south-east.
He was able to do so for about a minute and a half before he saw it. Or more accurately, before he saw them.
And there were a lot of them.
Noble picked up his radio to call it in for a moment, before pausing. What even were they? They weren't cars, that was for sure, but they weren't trucks either. They were a little shorter than a truck, but so much wider. It was hard to gauge exactly how wide with no perspective, and he didn't even know how many there were in the first place. Maybe three dozen? But he could see some behind them too, and when one of those had crested a hill, he'd seen one behind them. Three rows more? How many files?
Before he'd so much as said a word the line was buzzing with activity about them anyway. Giving up on his radio, Noble looked through his binoculars to try and get a better look. Were those modified trucks with metal armor stuck on the sides? Not a hard light shield, no, just… metal.
Shaking his head, Noble followed the orders filtering through the radio and ordered his soldiers to direct fire on the approaching vehicles. They were still hundreds of meters away, and something that large couldn't be going very fast, so Noble was not worried about being the closest element to them. He knew that he'd probably be overrun eventually from sheer numbers if nothing else, but even so it was a simple matter to order his remaining soldiers to fight until they were dead and leave.
From what he could hear, even the fleet were directing a few of its guns to shatter this thing, in case there were just too many. But he wasn't very worried about that — each of the drones came equipped with grenades, each squad had a heavy gunner, and if it came to it they had a hundred bullheads right there to blow these things to hell.
Noble sighed, shaking his head and letting his binoculars fall. This was their main force? This was the plan? If he was being honest he'd been hoping for a close fight to be able to really make a difference, but Mistral didn't look like it wanted to give it to him. At least he'd be on the news, he thought, looking skyward where on the periphery of the battlefield news bullheads were turning the whole thing into a media circus. He truly wasn't sure who had more bullheads — the media, or Atlas.
Noble turned his gaze back to the approaching enemy when his men began opening fire on the large vehicles in the wide open, and his disappointment returned.
What a surprise — Atlas would be effortlessly winning yet another war.
Within a few short minutes of being ordered to deploy the Mistral tank corps was rolling out at top speed. Their orders were very clear; they were not to fire until the first of them had already breached the enemy line. If they revealed the threat they posed too early, Atlas could very well focus the fury of its entire fleet on their approach. By itself that wouldn't be near enough to take out every one of them in time, but it would at the very least hamper them; you couldn't drive over the bombed out shell of the tank in front of you, after all, and driving through craters half a dozen feet deep wasn't too appealing either.
That's why, for the first two minutes of having the enemy in range, they'd done nothing but drive towards them. But when two minutes had passed and the kilometer separating them from their prey was gone, pandemonium erupted.
The first row crashed into and over hundreds of automatons, following their orders to keep going. That's what they were there for. As far as the driver was concerned, it was just a race to Atlas' back line.
The gunners had a different idea of just what they were there to do.
High explosive cannons emptied into the Atlesian forces with shocking speed, and the heavy machine gun attached on top of said cannon wasn't idle either.
They drove over and through bullets, grenades, fire dust, and even the occasional gun run from a bullhead left them with not much more than a scratched paint job.
It was only when the bullheads began deploying their rockets and Atlas' fleet resolved to begin firing amid their own forces in the confusion that there were reports of destroyed tanks.
They did not pause. They did not falter. They kept going. They weren't destroying every knight they came across; quite far from it, in fact. They might have been able to if the gunners were sitting still on stable ground rather than rolling over hills and through low walls at forty miles an hour, but the tank crews had been informed very clearly that that wasn't their job.
Their job was to keep going.
Back in the trenches, cheers echoed at the sight of the enemy frontline being absolutely and completely decimated. It was a mirthful sight, the machines that had been firing at them with absurd accuracy, who had already taken too many friends from them, were driven over like speed bumps and crushed like tin cans.
It was almost entrancing, the way the enormous column of tanks — thousands large — spread in a fan to bowl right through the entirety of the miles-long enemy line, shattering cohesion and causing chaos.
And then suddenly, the cheering and celebrating was replaced with a single phrase being repeated all up and down the line of defenses. One command that was universally understood.
"Stage three!"
They hadn't been told what stage two was — just that stage one was to hold their positions, to defend the city with their lives if necessary.
Most figured stage three was some sort of anti-espionage tactic — a fake plan.
After all, what sane commander would order an entire army to leave their heavily fortified positions in favor of charging at the enemy over an open field?
The few that hadn't figured it was a fake plan had obviously had some reservations about it. But now with Atlas' bullheads and fleet distracted, as they looked at Atlas' forces shattered and disarrayed under the force of several-ton metal machines?
Their silent objections had been dropped.
Mistral's army climbed from the trenches, quickly joined by the reserves in the base that couldn't safely fit into the defensive line. As one they charged at the enemy as their grandfathers had, and their fathers before them.
The last time foreign invaders had defeated Mistral, the great empire their ancestors built had rotted and decayed. Generations suffered and starved. Now, as it was getting better again, they couldn't allow Atlas to return power to the nobility.
For the freedoms they'd been granted, for the chance at a better life, for their children, for the future; for the one who had given them all of those things, they would win.
The shelling had caught him off guard, Percy had to admit.
He'd heard the whistling of the rounds coming closer and been able to make a thin barrier of water from the moisture in the air moments before they'd impacted, but it didn't do much to help. The water evaporated near instantly, and he was forced to take the brunt of it with nothing but his aura for a handful of long seconds before the groundwater he'd been pulling at with desperation could break to the surface and encase him.
He'd lost track of time after that. It could have been seconds, it could have been hours. He genuinely had no idea. All he knew was the tug in his gut and the heat. Water might be able to stop rock and shrapnel, but it turned out it couldn't stop much of the heat. As miniature suns erupted all around him, Percy knew his nature as a son of the sea was all that was keeping him from being cooked.
But as uncomfortable as that was, the painful, gut-wrenching feeling in his stomach was a million times worse. It was no Styx, but he would not hesitate to say he hadn't exerted himself this much since Mt. Saint Helens. Every fiber of willpower he possessed was directed towards pulling more water from the ground. The water in the air had been evaporated for hundreds of meters around, and the trees and grass burned and dissipated. There wasn't near enough time to collect it from the surrounding environment, so he was forced to make up for it with brute force, pulling at millions of gallons from the rocky depths below him, just barely managing to keep his barrier of water intact, teetering on the edge of destruction. Every time he thought the volley was slowing and his barrier began to grow, the explosions just reintensified moments later, melting away whatever progress he'd accrued. It was a balancing act. If his focus slipped for even a moment, if he faltered for a second, the barrier would break and he'd be left to face the shelling head on. If even a single shell more landed on top of him, Percy doubted he could have held.
That was his life for what may as well have been an eternity. Heat, the pressure in the pit of his stomach, and the desperate will to survive. Every now and then he thought he might have heard himself screaming his lungs raw, but mostly it was drowned out by the deafening roar of explosions consuming everything around him, and even that was only on the rare occasion he could hear it over the rushing in his ears.
But eventually it did come to an end. He didn't trust the stillness for some time, only growing his protective dome and watching as it swelled to contain tens of thousands of gallons in seconds. It was only when most of a minute had passed and no more shells landed that Percy cautiously allowed the water to stop surging to the surface, building it up just beneath instead. But he kept his now-sturdy barrier up — he was in no hurry to be caught off guard again.
Panting heavily through a very dry throat, Percy took a moment to simply process that he'd lived. Looking down at his state, it was far from a given. Much of his shirt had been torn through by shrapnel, and burned by the hot metal. His jeans had followed suit to a lesser extent.
Examining his arms and hands, he found them to be almost glowing red with heat. Instinctively he called the water to envelop them, and sighed in cathartic relief as the water cooled his arms.
Continuing his once-over, Percy froze nearly immediately. Touching his torso as if to confirm his eyes weren't playing tricks he felt the telltale sharp pain of irritating a wound, and his fingers came back covered in dark crimson.
Right in the center of his abdomen, a piece of shrapnel had ripped into him. Quickly more water flowed to intercede, cleaning the wound, removing the shrapnel and closing it in seconds. He would be fine, but if anyone else had been wounded like that and it went untreated long enough, it would be a death sentence.
That had to be from the initial blast, right? But no, he had had his aura up in time. He knew that for a fact.
Paling, he rapidly reached into his pocket and pulled out his scroll only to find it shattered and bent nearly in half at the middle. There were no holes from shrapnel there, so that had to have been from his fall.
Scowling, Percy tossed the thing aside and tried to concentrate on his aura. There had to be a way for him to know how much he had, right?
For the first time since he'd received the offer, Percy decided that some information he could've gotten at Beacon would have been useful. He'd never bothered learning much about using aura on account of having so gods damned much of it, but now he was cursing himself.
Deciding he only had one way to know for sure, Percy pulled out Riptide and brought it to his finger, mentally willing his aura to concentrate in his hand.
Riptide touched his index finger and instantly brought forth a rivulet of blood. Water came to heal the injury just as fast, but the fact remained;
He was out of aura.
Between his fight with Winter's team, the fall down the cliff, and the shells he'd taken directly, it had been just barely enough to completely break his aura.
Which meant that if he'd been a single second slower in raising his barrier…
He wouldn't have just lost, he'd have died. Him, with all his titles and accomplishments and prophecies, bested by a group of mortals. Even though he was alive, he'd pretty much been defeated, hadn't he? He was defenseless without aura. One bullet, one cut, one good hit and he was done for. Where had he gone wrong?
Arrogance. His mind supplied. He wasn't sure why that occurred to him, but looking back on the way he'd treated the battle…
Yes. It was arrogance. The him of years ago was objectively weaker in just about every way, but he never would have treated a life or death battle so lax. He could quip, he could try to make light of the situation or get inside his opponent's head, but he had never toyed with someone in the way he'd been toying with the team sent to kill him.
That kind of play fighting, just toying with his opponent, it reminded him of how the titans fought. Arrogant, assured in their victory, confident that losing was not possible right up until the moment they were on the verge of defeat.
And why shouldn't they be? Percy had just been a teenager. A mortal. They were thousands of years old, had practiced with their weapon for longer than Percy had been alive, were stronger, faster, harder to kill, and had come out on top over and over in battles against opponents that were Percy's better in every conceivable way. The giants, who couldn't even be killed by a demigod alone, were similar.
And yet they'd been defeated all the same, every last one of them. Every time, Percy won.
It wasn't because he was better in some way, or more skilled, or more powerful; in every case that was objectively false. Percy won because they fought like they were playing a game, while Percy fought for his life. Because losing meant the unacceptable; his friends, his family, those that looked to him for protection and those that looked up to him would all die if he lost. The world was forfeit if he lost.
The same was true here. He refused to accept any alternative. It might not be as immediate or as direct, but if he lost here then the vast power he'd accrued would be removed from the forces arrayed against the grimm when the time came, and some might even cause more chaos without a guiding hand. The Tammany Hall, the Valean underworld, Menagerie, the White Fang, the Asturias' and all of Mistral would all lose the one thing holding them together.
He was so close to uniting such large parts of Remnant. He was so close to ending the fighting. If he fell here and all of it was for nothing, just to restart in a cycle of destruction and violence that would take its place when he wasn't holding everything in check, then he knew that the witch and the grimm would claim Remnant.
But that was just a guess. More immediately and far more certainly Mistral would return to the power of the great families. It would be the politicians officially, but this nation had known corruption and the right of blood far too long to function without it. The people had to make that decision themselves, but the great war had stripped them of such a choice.
They'd return to what he'd spent so many years eliminating. Fighting on the streets, extortion by a gang leader on every corner, the settlements losing the defenses of the city and the city losing control of the settlements. The empire would collapse and the people would suffer again, to say nothing of Menagerie; they'd go back to how they had been, plain and simple. The medicine and dust and power and modern living they'd developed would vanish in an instant. Without his guidance the White Fang would go rampant until it was put down like a rabid dog, and Junior's gang would splinter every time an internal conflict arose.
As the water enveloping him brought relief to the last of his wounds, burns, and aches, Percy debated if that was really what he had to live for. It was a noble goal to fight for and Percy could espouse moral posturing until the sun went down, but while it might be why he'd started doing all of this in the first place, when he'd realized how close to death he'd been and felt the sudden flash of fear he hadn't since he was a kid, if he were honest the poor and sick of Mistral and Menagerie hadn't flashed across his mind for so much as an instant. Instead, he'd seen his loved ones. The few people he'd grown to care for in his time here.
Ruby and Yang would grow up hearing of him as a terrorist, as a maniacal despot who lied to everyone for his own ends. Even Taiyang would have his original fears confirmed, that Percy was an unhinged lunatic and a danger to his family. Whether or not he'd believe what he heard… Percy wasn't sure.
Qrow would blame himself in some way, Percy had no doubt. He hadn't done well enough convincing Percy to leave the life of crime, he hadn't trained him well enough, he had caused his death by telling Ozpin about him, who had advocated for Ironwood becoming the general — Qrow would find a way to place the burden on himself. Percy wasn't sure he could take it.
He'd die Alexandros' enemy, the man that tried to take his daughter from him, assuming the backlash from being the one to sponsor Percy in the first place didn't bring his house to ruin. Jacques was little different. Even though the war Percy now fought was against him, Percy held on to the miniscule hope he could make amends in some way.
Ren would have no home, and be thrust back onto the streets. He'd return to a life of killing without knowing anything different before it inevitably caught up to him. Weiss, the girl he'd only truly spoken to once but had left an impact on him despite it would be left under her father's thumb for the rest of her life — his paranoia left unchecked.
Raven… Percy was surprised she came to mind, but he supposed he did care for her in the way that she cared for him in their strange relationship. She'd be one of the first targets for Salem, he was sure. And with all the chaos his death would inadvertently cause, the grimm would be out in force. Raven was strong, but you could only survive outside city walls for so long when every grimm for a hundred miles was after you.
Winter… he didn't know what would become of her. She'd be guilty by association with him, doubtlessly. She might be discharged, and end up being brought back into her father's fold. She'd watch as the nation she was so proud of continued on as a crude imitation of what she'd envisioned it, unable to do anything but spending her life trying to help fix it. Despite the choice she'd made in the end, Percy couldn't help but feel his heart drop at the thought.
Shiro — his best friend, his one true rock for years, who had done nothing wrong but put his faith in Percy — would be killed. It was that simple. Likely executed. Maybe publicly, and he'd certainly be dragged around like a prized show animal in captivity for the final weeks of his life.
But Pyrrha…
She might have it the worst of all. She'd go the rest of her life hearing nothing but horrible things about the things he did behind her back, just like Yang and Ruby. She'd think about if she could have saved him, had he just let her come with him. Ironically, she probably would have. Were she here, he would not have treated a threat to her life as lax as he did his own.
She was very publicly his student, and already had the eyes of the world on her. All that attention would turn to hate. With Shiro and he dead and nobody else to blame, Pyrrha would be up next. While he and Shiro would have the luxury of death, Pyrrha would live her life despised by the masses, the closest living thing to an epitome of evil and wickedness. She'd be used as a tool, if not by her father or Atlas than by the other great families. Anyone looking to legitimize a coup of Mistral would see her as their first target, and anyone looking to enact revenge upon him or destroy his legacy would see her as the same.
His death here would see Pyrrha's future stripped from her. It would see her every choice made for her, her hopes and dreams burned to ash in a day. It would set her on the path to live the rest of her life drowned in hate under the constant threat of violence. She'd lose her friends, she'd never get to go to Beacon, and her last memory of him would be one of rage — of an unreasonable, controlling man who forced her to watch her people suffer.
And Percy's last memory of her wouldn't be her exhausted satisfaction after a training session, or her peaceful face as she settled into sleep that night, or her frustrated indulgence when he teased her or messed with her hair. It wouldn't be the way she looked at him on her birthday, or when she saw he'd shown up at a tournament, or when he'd told her she could go to Beacon, or when he took her out shopping for the day, or even on the odd occasion they spent a day inside together, Percy throwing together some sandwiches and just watching a movie or playing a game one of her friends showed her. His last memory of her wouldn't be the unconditional love and adoration that single handedly made everything that led up to that moment worth it — growing up a halfblood, fighting wars for the fate of the world throughout his childhood, all the friends he'd lost, even having to let go of Annabeth so that she could survive in Tartarus — In those moments, Percy knew all of it had been worth it; that he'd made the right decision.
But that would not be his last memory of her. If he died here, his last memory of the girl he'd grown to love as a daughter would be her tear-streaked face, the betrayal of the one person she thought she could trust deciding her destiny for her like everyone else.
Damn the world. Damn Mistral and Menagerie. Damn his fight with the grimm and the relics and destiny. He would fight to keep the ones he cared about from suffering.
He would fight because he refused to lose Pyrrha.
Feeling several bodies of water moving on the ridgeline above him, Percy took a deep breath and let it go.
He knew what he was fighting for. He knew what he had to lose. He knew how close he was to losing it, and he knew the price he'd pay not to.
Looking up, Percy resumed the flow of water from the ground to the surface, but instead of forming a barrier around him it filled the inside, creating a sphere of water with him at its center. He focused on the people looking down at him. There were less than there had been, he noted, but it was likely that Winter was still there. She was a friend.
But that didn't matter. Whether she was there or not didn't matter.
Percy had been told all those years ago that he'd let the world burn to save a friend. He didn't doubt it, but now it made him wonder.
If he'd destroy the world for a friend, what would he do for Pyrrha?
Atlas was going to wish they never gave him the chance to find out.
Hope you enjoyed :)
I'm going to start shifting the chapters earlier when I can so that I can get back to the top of the month, and eventually have a smoother transition to three a month. So, next chapter will be on October 25th
