Reactions to a Bomb (side story by ScipioSmith)

The Emerald Forest was still on fire. You could see the smoke rising above the trees – the trees had escaped the searing flames of the atomic weapon, at least.

The smoke would die down, eventually. The resources of Vale were being poured into fighting these fires, and although they were being hampered in their efforts by the radiation that limited the extent to which they could bring in personnel to fight the flames, they were making progress. Twilight had seen that on FIST's mission with Team JNPR a little earlier that week: the airships dumping their cargo loads of water on the flames. They hadn't gotten it under control yet, but they had come along way from the immediate aftermath of the bomb when so much smoke had risen from the burning wood that it had blocked out the sun and choked the air they breathed on Beacon campus. Vale had come a long way, and it would come further still.

But though it could fight the fires, all the power of Vale could not return things to the way that they had been before that awful weapon exploded. Fortunately, the weapon having detonated in the air, the radiation would not be sufficient to render the forest toxic to life for long; soon – in a geological sense, at least – Twilight guessed that the radiation levels would be about equal with the background radiation levels across Remnant. The Emerald Forest would regrow. Life would return to the edges of Vale. The fires would be extinguished. But there were other consequences of the destruction of the Furchtlos that would not be so easily pushed aside.

Genies, once unleashed, were difficult to put back into lamps; toothpaste could not be put back into the tube; if you stirred your porridge clockwise then the jam would mingle with the porridge, but stirring it counter-clockwise would not separate the jam out again. You couldn't detonate a weapon like that and expect that to be the end of it. Before the Atlesian forces had sailed for home, Radstorm and Twilight had both received offers to join a group known at this stage only as the Everton Project, a gathering of the brightest minds in Atlas working to replicate the atomic bomb – they had both declined, because they were both hoping to compete in the Vytal Festival, but Twilight had a feeling that they would be asked more forcefully once the tournament was over if the project hadn't succeeded by then – and if the other kingdoms didn't already have their brightest minds working the problem as well then she would be astonished.

Twilight didn't know who had set off that bomb, but in doing so they had changed the world of Remnant forever. A new power was rising, and it was a power that would reshape the world.

They had come to the end of the Remnant they had known, for good or ill.

And in the meantime the Emerald Forest burned, and its smoke rose into the sky, visible through the dorm room window.

It was a little hard to see at the moment, however, because Rainbow Dash was standing at the window, her arms spread out as she leaned against the window sill. Her head was bowed, so that very little of her multi-coloured hair was visible. And she was grinding her teeth. Loudly.

"Do you have to keep doin' that?" Applejack demanded, giving voice to what everyone else in the room was thinking. "I can hear you from over here," she added, and since she was stood on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall by the door that said a lot. "I wouldn't be too surprised if they couldn't hear you all the way down the hall."

Rainbow rounded on her. "That's the thing that's bothering you? That? One of our ships just got turned to dust and ashes, the rest of the fleet turned and ran for home with it's tail between its legs – and if that doesn't show everybody that we're wounded and scared then I don't know what will – General Ironwood is in trouble because he didn't run, someone's out there with a weapon that makes the biggest gun we've got look like a pea shooter, we still have no idea what's really going on and your problem is with me grinding my teeth?"

"My problem is with everything you just said, but that noise you're making is the only thing that I can actually do a darn thing about right now!" Applejack snapped.

Rainbow snorted loudly out through her nostrils. She breathed in, and she breathed out. She looked away. "Sorry," she muttered. "I just…"

"I know," Applejack said, her own tone softening. "I hate it too."

"Like…what are we supposed to do if someone decides to drop the next…what is that thing called, Twi?"

"An atom bomb," Twilight said softly.

"What if someone decides to drop the next one right on top of Atlas?" Rainbow demanded. "I couldn't stop it, all of us together couldn't stop it, the whole fleet and everyone in Atlas Academy couldn't do a thing about it. Scootaloo, Apple Bloom…Pinkie…how are we supposed to protect the people we care about from that?" Rainbow paused for a moment, her magenta eyes flickering towards Twilight. "You know I was kind of hoping for an answer there, Twi."

Twilight's eyebrows rose. "What kind of an answer do you think I have?"

"I don't know," Rainbow said. "Can't you design, like a jammer or something?"

"That's not how physics works," Twilight said. "You can't just turn it off because you don't like the results. Certain semblances aside, at least." She sighed. "Much as I wish it wasn't kind that simple sometimes." Now I am become death, or someone has at least.

Applejack took off her hat. She turned it over and over in her hands, staring at it as though it held the key to all the mysteries of life. "So what do we know?"

Rainbow glared at her a little. "Really? Everything that's happened and you want to go over this again?"

"I want to do something other than worry about what's gonna happen to my little sister and my big brother and my grandma, sure," Applejack said. "I want to do something other than worry about how we're gonna manage without the air support, or how the general is gonna manage with half the council gunnin' for him. I want to do something that I can something about."

Rainbow's hands curled into fists. "I'd rather do something that involved punching somebody," she said. "But…I guess you've got a point. Anything's better than this, right?"

"I think so," Twilight said softly. "I hope so, anyway."

Applejack nodded. "So, what do we know?"

"Not much," Rainbow said. "We kind of suck at this."

Twilight was too polite – and valued her friendship with Boomer and Spurs too much - to actually agree with them out loud, but in the privacy of her own head where no one would ever find out…she agreed with them. Rainbow Dash and Applejack were two of the best and the bravest people that she knew, but they weren't cut out for this kind of business. They were both too blunt, too direct, too prone to wearing their hearts upon their sleeves – Rainbow had gotten into a fight with Weiss recently in which she'd nearly given everything away in the heat of the moment - to make good spies or good spycatchers. Applejack was a terrible liar, and almost as poor at spotting deceit in other people; Rainbow as too direct, she didn't have a mind for twists and turns, during the aforementioned argument with Weiss – on faunus rights, of all things; since when had Weiss become an advocate for racial equality – Rainbow had, aside from paradoxically taking the position against greater equality, fallen into every single one of Weiss' rhetorical traps. Twilight loved them both, and she knew that either of them would take a bullet for her if need be, but she did wonder if she wouldn't have been better off working with her own team-mates in Team FIST on this.

Mind you, it's not as if I've proved to be brilliant at this, so who am I to talk?

"Not much is still something," Applejack said. "So what do we know?"

Rainbow took a deep breath. "We know that something is going on at Park Place, and has been since second semester of last year."

"We know that something happened at second semester of last year and nothing's been the same since," Applejack said. "And I reckon-"

Twilight raised her hand. "Let's keep our speculation out of it until we have all the facts straight. We know that Weiss Schnee visited Park Place…because I told her to, and she found something that certain individuals, whose identities remain a mystery, were unhappy about that fact. We know that these individuals, whoever they are, have power in Atlas sufficient to concern General Ironwood."

"We know that Weiss Schnee is a member of Team Ruby," Applejack said. "And we know that another member of Team Ruby is Blake Belladonna, whose old man was the leader of the White Fang a while back-"

"And that Blake herself faked her own death," Rainbow said. "And all the while Weiss Schnee frequents a bookshop in Vale owned by a White Fang recruiter."

"We know that Cinder Fall, apparently a Haven student, has fled the school after a battle with the authorities, and is now a wanted woman," Twilight said. She drummed her fingers on the bedpost. "And we know that a weapon of unparalleled destruction was just detonated in the skies over Vale. That's what we know."

"It ain't much," Applejack said.

"But it isn't nothing either," Twilight replied. "That's what we know. So what do we think?"

Rainbow frowned. "The White Fang have to be connected to this somehow. The bookstore, Blake Belladonna…it's too much."

"Maybe Miss Schnee is working with the White Fang to stop-" Applejack began.

"Let me stop you there," Rainbow said firmly. "The White Fang are not the good guys. The White Fang are a bunch of murderous scumbags who give the rest of us faunus a bad name."

"And yet…" Twilight trailed off. "I'm certain that Weiss' intentions are good. If she is working with the White Fang, and I have to admit that the evidence points that way, then perhaps they're not so bad after all."

"Walk a mile with these ears and tell me that," Rainbow muttered, as said ears flattened moodily down upon her head. "Just because they're working against other bad guys doesn't make them good guys."

"And it still don't make no sense a Schnee working with the White Fang," Applejack opined.

"That's also true, unfortunately," Twilight acknowledged.

"Did you get anything from Team Juniper when you went on that mission with them?" Rainbow asked. "They seem pretty tight with Ruby…aside from the fact that their leader seems to be trying to date the whole set and break their hearts one by one."

"It's complicated," Twilight said, remembering what Jaune had said on the flight over. "But I don't think it's that complicated. Anyway, the rest of the team were pretty explicit that they were good friends…but they didn't give anything away." She hesitated. "Do we think whoever set off the bomb is the same group behind whatever is happening at Park Place?"

"Yes," Rainbow said in a tone of firm conviction. "They knew that General Ironwood stood in their way so they set off the bomb to cut his legs out from under him."

"It won't work," Twilight said. "Just because they're talking about dismissing him…who would he be replaced with?"

"I don't know," Applejack said. "Maybe the fact it's even bein' talked about is enough."

"True," Twilight said. "I think Apricot might know something."

"Because they went on a mission with Ruby Rose?" Rainbow asked.

"And gave her a callsign," Twilight added. "They seem pretty tight."

"If Team Ruby works for Ozpin," Applejack said slowly. "Then maybe…could Team Apricot be working for General Ironwood…like, they're working together? Maybe we could just ask them and they'll tell us what's going on?"

"Not likely if it's classified," Rainbow said. "Twilight, what do their records say?"

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "Why do you need me to tell you what their records say?"

"Because there's so much black in there."

"I'm not hacking our fellow students."

"Why not?"

"Because they're Atlas students and fellow soldiers," Twilight said. "Don't we have to have some trust, some loyalty?"

Rainbow cringed at that. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. We need to stick together or we'll all die separately. I just wish that ran both ways."

"If the General and Professor Ozpin are both working against…whoever," Twilight said. "Possibly in alliance with the White Fang – possibly – then it is equally possible that Cinder Fall was an agent of…this group, whoever they are, sent to find out how much they knew about the activities of…this organisation. She was exposed and forced to flee, so our enemies reminded General Ironwood of their power by destroying the Furchtlos and depriving him of his military strength by forcing the retreat to Solitas. If," she repeated. "If, if, if, if! So many ifs!" She groaned as she put her head in her hands. "Why," she said. "Why oh why does this have to be so complicated."

Neither of them had an answer. There were no answers to be had.

That, indeed, was the whole entire problem.