Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY, its owned by Rooster Teeth.
The basement light flickered with signs that the light bulb needs to be changed, though the fact of the matter is the small hole next to the entrance, hiding the rats that reside in the family's cottage. In front of me is a hologram showing a 2D image of Remnant with Vale and Menagerie colored blue, Atlas and Vacuo marked red, and Mistral highlighted with red-orange stripes.
It was only Qrow and me as he shows me key-points of Atlesian weakness, mainly the fact that most of the Altesian forces are fighting an increasingly tricky guerrilla war with a terrorist- or freedom fighter- group called the 'White Fang'. The White Fang has extended a white flag of truce to the Vale government to refocus their efforts on Atlas. The Resistance, which Qrow explains is only connected by remote radio stations or informants, has also allied with the White Fang due to shared interests...for the moment at least.
"But as I said, the Atlesian bastards have been putting more pressure by using cloaking camouflage and changing their convey routes, it's now impossible to locate where they might be much less when." he states.
The hologram shows past convey routes, my scanner notices a pattern, but I decided against it as the satellites orbiting around Remnant could prove useful instead..."Does this 'Resistance' have any hacker or double agents inside of Atlas? We could instruct to hack radar signals to and from satellites commu-".
"There are no 'satellites'." Qrow interrupts, stating it as a matter-of-fact.
"Then how do the kingdoms communicate outside of their borders?", Qrow then motions his 'scroll' (dumb name to call a phone) and pulls up a model of a large tower with an array of antennas and radar dishes, he continues, "CCT Towers."
"What does that stand for?"
"Cross Continental Transmit Towers...I can now absolutely say that you're not from Remnant.", he says, crossing his arms. Rolling my eyes at the jest I pointed out a key advantage, "Well then why not take out their towers, they may be heavily defended, but all you need is a suitcase bomb, sneak inside drop it off and be on your way."
"We already tried that, besides taking out one tower disrupts the entire network-"
"Damn, your people suck at communications."
"Would you like your guys to back you up?"
"Fuck you, we didn't know anything about the Grimm, although I can guarantee the UN can take out these Grimm faster than your kind!", raising my force and striding to Qrow to look him in the eyes. Even without any weapons or if I can call Qrow a...' ally', of all things, I am not going to let that insult against the slaughtered soldiers who had no idea of the Grimm and died in my place.
"If I find your so-called 'portal,' I'll be the first one to throw your ass out-."
"Stop!", a feminine voice lashed out, putting an immediate end to my argument with Qrow, who stopped his anger for the time being and me slightly lowering my guard.
Summer POV
Taking note that Alexander's and Qrow's fight settled down, I continue Qrow's point, "The towers are too well defended: dozens of AK-120's, Galtoriuses and Knight-Suits guard the areas surrounding the buildings. Not to mention the fact that if we do survive without getting slaughtered, we'll be overwhelmed by a dust swarm." His face held the look that he was ready to ask a question, "And before you ask, dust swarms are tiny robots that ignite both fire and lightning dust, Atlas recently installed them after a series of attacks by the White Fang."
"Took the words out of my mouth.", the 'Earthling' replied.
Qrow looks back at me and gives the nod, a clear signal to reveal our new operation. With his trust, I walk down the basement stairs passing Alexander and the scroll still projecting a CCT model. I pause.
"Can we trust him, though? He might be a spy deliberately sent by Atlas; he might have even been told to defend us from the AK-120's to gain our trust!" I thought as Alexander's stare was watching my every movement. It was possible as Atlas did send Special Operatives to infiltrate resistance cells, especially since Intel has revealed that recent Operatives have started using cybernetics.
Hell, Earth might have been a shitty cover made up on the spot, a portal like that wouldn't have existed...' neither would those weapons.' I concluded as there wouldn't be a need to come up with fake weapons.
"Regardless whether we can trust him or not it's not like we have a choice.", I can feel his eyes staring at me still, waiting for me to continue. Taking a few steps forward, I open the closet door and remove a rather conspicuous painting of an ancient war hero long ago. With hesitation, I remove the painting, exposing a hole in the wall holding the key to giving the Resistance key access to Atlesian operations...
A simple flash drive.
Taking it out of its hiding place, I held it up, showing it to Alexander, his eyebrow rose with curiosity, "So...is it a sex tape of you and Qrow?" he asks innocently with an arrogant smirk.
My face heats as I start sputtering out words, looking to Qrow for help. I only find him laughing despite being insulted by cyborg, and I can tell he's drunk. I was caught up in my blushing and shock that I failed to notice the flash drive out of my hand with Alexander plugging it in his arm. His eyes turn cyan as a holographic monitor appears in front of him. He seems impressed as by his chuckle. He looks back at me.
"Who made this code?" asking genuinely.
Qrow stood up as he takes out his flask, "That is-" he pauses as he takes a swing, "none of your business. All you need to know is that this flash drive can-".
"Eliminate Atlesian networks by overheating their servers and send a copy of whatever information it recovers to Resistance hackers, all the while establishing a fake network in case they do rebuild their electronic equipment...is that what you were going to say or generalize?" he asks before taking the flash drive out. "How..how did you do that!?" I exclaimed, perplexed by his almost instantaneous analysis. It should have taken at least a good half hour to decrypt.
Simply shrugging the "Earthling" calmly replies, "That's for me to know and you not to find out. I must say, though, that the encrypting of the virus is lacking."
"Now you see there's our problem", Qrow cuts in, "the virus took a hella long time to create and multiple tries to get it right. Even then, the Resistance can't enlarge the virus. Gathering that much dust and dust chips would gather too much attention from Atlesian agents. The SDC owns most of the dust shops and warehouses, we'd get caught for sure."
"SDC?"
"Schnee Dust Company" I fill in as Qrow takes the opportunity to drink more whiskey. As the flask was near his lip, I quickly snatch the foul thing as Qrow took notice and starts complaining. As he does, I explain further, "They're a megacorporation that holds a vast monopoly on imports, exports, manufacturing, and mining of Dust- either artificial or natural."
I activate my scroll and pull up numerous profiles, databanks, and pictures of SDC activity. Alexander took notice of the holograms, "Manufactories, arsenals, testing facilities, a new battle platform prototype? Are you sure this isn't just a megacorporation? By the looks of it, they look like a small nation."
"Atlas relies on SDC for most of their weaponry now of days, although the shipyards are nationalized. Jacque Schnee is a close ally to General Ironwood, from what we can tell the SDC has been realigning their budget towards infiltration droids and new cloak suits after discovering a kind of dust that moves the light around it."
He soaked in the information, "You guys are fighting an uphill battle, I mean y'all are fighting against a fucking super army with technology I haven't heard of!" exaggeratedly raising his hands. I am perplexed however, curiously I ask, "Doesn't 'Earth' have technology like this?"
"No. So far the UN has no idea what dust is except for the shit you find on the ground.", "I still don't believe it though. How does Alexander never even heard of dust for oum sake?!", doubt clouded my mind. I don't know if I could trust him. Usually, I trust anyone as long as they aren't from Atlas or been associated with Atlas unless proving their loyalty. A glance of his cybernetic body confirms this; only Atlas could construct a body of this complexity. Yet there was this small voice in the back of my head telling me that he wasn't one of them.
Silence pass as Qrow looks around the room, waiting to take back his flask from my pocket quietly.
"I have an idea.", he replies, tapping at his wrist computer.
Alexander POV
A loading 3D hologram appears in front of Qrow and Summer, who both are sitting down. Qrow failed again to take his flask whereas I quickly snatched it and start drinking it down like it was water. Finishing the last drop of that hard tasting drink the hologram finally loads and shows a specific part of my plan, of course utilizing the virus, which almost fried a few mods I installed. Of course of couldn't let it fry my Taste Bud mod!
"Alright, the files that I found from the Resistance shows that your intel in mostly correct, Summer. Keyword almost, your dust swarms are in the prototyping stage. If I can install the virus without getting detected, I can then find a signal that interrupts the still new processing chip developed by SDC and even control them. Reports from the company express the fact that these swarms are having problems swarming together, thus slowing down their collective targeting."
"But how are you going to get inside?" Qrow demanded, obviously not convinced.
Perfect
"Does this satisfy your answer?" I activate my hologram disguise; my camouflage uniform changes into a t-shirt and khaki shorts, tennis shoes replace my boots, and cybernetic metal becomes skin. I feel almost normal, rather than having to keep showing my prominent cybernetic body, I could instead pretend at least that I was a healthy, average person. Usually, I engage my camouflage for recon missions or when undercover, occasionally I use it when trying to regain the sense of being human.
Both Summer and Qrow jaws hit the floor as they see me in regular clothing.
"So the next part of the plan-", "Whoa whoa whoa, can you explain just how the hell you did that? I mean, you just made yourself not look a robot!" Qrow exclaims as he looks with genuine amazement, pointing a finger. His face holds a drunken smile and his body language indicates that he's about to pass out, yet still sober enough to speak...kinda.
Sparing him a look I continued, "-Anyways, the next part of the plan is me getting inside one of their towers and plugging the virus into their network. Now, if I'm going to be honest, plugging it in a computer will not work."
"Why?"
"Most networks use a protection system to detect and stop intrusions. But if I can wirelessly send out an ad, and people click on it, then the virus can be sent in silently. And-"
Summer chirps in again, "Ads won't work, we tried that last time."
"Let me finish, please.", getting annoyed with Summer's constant interrupting. She stops and motions me to go on, saying a quick sorry.
"The ad will be actually a deal sent by this 'SDC' company, a very enticing deal...If you know what I mean."
Summer looks at me with complete certainty but doesn't press on with more of her endless questions. Qrow meanwhile is asleep on the chair, haphazardly as it begins to lean a bit too far back. She appears as if she was deciding to take the deal or not, obviously considering the possibility of-
"Okay, but if you're going to do this, then you're going need to meet with someone."
Qrow falls out of his chair.
A/N: Hey y'all, its been a while since I worked on this chapter. Schools been a fucking load on me and so has other things, of course, this doesn't mean I abandoned this story. Now some further stuff I like to say; every time there's a holiday I'll write a micro chapter based on Alexander's experience, usually these stories are going to be planned as small poems or short stories, but it'll vary on how big they actually will be.
Short road map idea (subjected to change):
Arc I: The Arrival
Arc II: Beacon
Last thing: here's a hint.
AGNT
See ya.