I just finished reading Pet Sematary and damn is that one hell of a book, binged most of it in just a week. Others who've read it will pick up a reference this chapter.
Also, Hololive Lamy just made her debut and she's such a sweetheart
Ruby had become a quiet girl.
She sat with her friends in Beacon's cafeteria, chatting over a Saturday breakfast. They had woken up early at Nora's insistence—she generally treasured sleeping in—because they were serving special pancakes that day. Chocolate, banana, strawberry, blueberry, bacon and other sorts. The whole room was filled with a mood lighter than usual among all the students; hey, everybody loves pancakes, right? Smells of maple syrup, cooking pancakes and sizzling meats blanketed the cafeteria. The two teams had a table by the corner just for themselves to share and enjoy the special meal.
Ruby slowly nibbled a piece of toast while listening to Weiss recount a story of her cake butler's brief foray into becoming a pancake butler. An interesting enough tale itself, it also begot Yang to tease and badger the princess in all number of ways that made the others laugh. It even made Ruby smile a couple times.
Jaune and Ruby each sat across from one another at the end of the table. She had not said much yet that morning beyond a hello. Normally, he would have taken it personally and wonder if this meant she was angry or disinterested. Truth was, this was just how she acted now.
It had been almost a week since he had confronted Ruby that night, and he had gotten to know the "new" her. She didn't laugh very much. She didn't skip carefree through the halls anymore. She didn't start conversations. She didn't smile often.
It was a tragedy that made Jaune's stomach clench up whenever he thought of how she used to be.
It felt like something had come along and stolen her vitality—as if some massive and monstrous mosquito from back in the wasteland, with heinous radiation flowing through its festering veins, had flown along, stabbed her with its slimy spike and sucked out her life force.
It made him sad and angry. Something had been taken.
He had asked Peach just when Ruby might return to normal. She had replied, "Expect her to act how she's going to act. She's starting calling her old therapist again, right? Leave some of the finer details to professional. Be supportive in the meantime. Don't impose on her your own expectation for who she should be.
"After all, how much like your 'old self' are you now?"
That had made Jaune think. It had made him think long and hard. How much was he like the Maxwell who had existed before the Lone Wanderer? As much as he would like to classify these phases of his life as being like different people, that wasn't altogether true. There were differences, but there were constants.
He still liked video games and comics. He had loved them most back in the vault, and the Lone Wanderer always took time to read what comics he found in the wasteland, even if he would not speak of it openly. Now, of course, he read whatever comics Ruby shared with him.
Speaking of that, she had called him over just the day before to spend time going over a bundle of a new series her dad had gotten her. That had been very nice.
But the old Jaunes, the Maxwell and the Wanderer, were different. The former was stupidly naïve and inviting, so willing to trust and be kind. He was bright and dumb and just wanted to help out. The Wanderer, while still having an imperative goal of righting wrongs, was incredibly vicious and unkind. That will for justice remained in him, but he was now neither so mean nor so nice as he used to be.
"And you don't even know who you're going to be a year from now," Peach had told him. "You could be a very different person indeed. Maybe just a few months from now. Already, you're very different from when I first met you. Be patient with her."
So he was. Jaune stuffed a chunk of pancake and chewed it down, enjoying the fluffy cake and the sweet syrup. He hadn't been able to eat stuff like this regularly since he was a kid in the vault, before they had to scrap the pancake machine to fix up some of the water purifiers.
"So anyway, we were there and the guys were all like…" Nora had begun some story that was probably ninety-percent fictitious, based only on a modicum of truth. Ren corrected her occasionally but mostly allowed her to run wild with it, like a tired owner letting his puppy run around on a long leash.
It was funny, and it made Jaune smile. He looked across at Ruby who was, well, not smiling. She was simply eating some of her toast and looking over in Nora's direction; he didn't know how much she was listening.
Jaune would rather this than the sick, fake smile she had plastered onto herself not long ago. He'd rather have her like this, the real her, the drained her, than whatever caricature she felt she had to prop up. Because he had fallen in love with her. And in her actions and her voice and her eyes, he knew she was fundamentally the same. He knew her care and her kindness were there, even if for now her fresh liveliness had been beaten down like a nail with a mallet.
He knew that all the things he had fallen in love with were still there. He heard it when she said good morning. He felt it when she bid him good night. He saw it when he looked into her eyes.
Jaune simply watched her as she ate her toast, and she didn't notice him. Instead, she finished her light meal and let her hands rest on the table, then turned to looked half-interestedly at Nora as she rambled on. There was some vague emotion in Ruby's eyes that wasn't quite enjoyment.
Jaune reached out and placed a hand over her, the one of flesh and blood. She flinched slightly, not expecting it. Jaune panicked for a moment when she nearly pulled back.
But then she looked at him. She turned her hand up and grabbed his own, intertwining their fingers. She smiled slightly, a real smile that glimmered in her pretty silver eyes.
That was enough to make Jaune very happy.
He walked down to Beacon's library in a gait that was almost normal. A slight limp remained due to his recovering leg. It was astounding that, after just three weeks, a leg which had been snapped at the knee was now almost fully healed. A fracture so serious usually required a convalescence at least two or three times longer. Not for the first time, he thanked the power of aura. The only way it could have healed faster was if he used one of his remaining stimpaks, but they were too precious for that. He still regularly kicked himself for wasting one on his little stunt at the hospital escape.
The doctor had told him it would still be a few more days until he could train like normal again. In the meantime, he had been stretching and undergoing physical therapy.
He had also been researching.
Jaune walked into Beacon's library late that night. It wasn't a twenty-four-seven facility, but he still had an hour before the librarian locked up. The others hadn't asked him much about why he was going to the library. Perhaps remembering Blake's episode, they were simply happy to have him not consumed by his research. Blake had even offered to help, but he had turned her down. The look in her eyes may have contained a gleam of suspicion, but she was yet to act on it—yet.
Of any of them, Blake was the one who would sniff out that something was deeply abnormal. He really would have a hard time explaining to her, or to any of them, just what his research was about. Perhaps they would understand more if he were looking up newspaper reports and articles about black ops or attacks or anything that obviously may be in connection with Bishop.
"The Ultimate Insect Omnibus, 7th edition," said the librarian as he walked up to the front desk. "It finally came from the university, along with the other stuff you wanted." The old lady grinned and wagged a wrinkled finger. "That demon Oobleck has you reading all sorts of weird things, huh?"
"Yup," Jaune said with a tired, flat grin. He had told her that Oobleck had assigned him a research paper to make up for class he'd missed and poor grades. He was still trying to find a topic to work on, which was why he was asking for such a variety of books.
He was lying, of course.
"Well let me go and get it all," she said. "You've got an hour before we close."
"Sounds good," Jaune replied. He would wake up early and come back tomorrow to keep going through it.
The woman left the desk and went back behind a door to search for the books he'd ordered. Beacon was committed to giving its students excellent academic facilities, meaning that not only was the library robust, but Beacon was in a book-sharing program with several universities in Vale. That meant Jaune could place orders for books from the city or ask for scans of specific chapters. That combined with this amazing "internet" that Remnant possessed meant he had everything he needed. He just had to sift through it all.
While he ordinarily would not have bothered at all with this side of school life, these were far from ordinary times.
The librarian came back out with a stack of books two feet tall. She rushed to the desk and set them down, whereupon the tower warbled precariously for a moment at the same angle as that old structure in Pisa. Jaune braced it and made sure the stack didn't flop over in disaster.
After a quick thanks, he took the pile and found himself a spot by a computer terminal in the corner, not close to others. His back faced the wall, as well, meaning no one could see his screen. He also made sure to hunch protectively over his books as he studied them. Then again, no one would really have been able to understand his bizarre selection even if they had the time to look over everything.
The Ultimate Insect Compendium, 7th Edition. The Phenomenon of Lightning. Mental Illness in Relation to the Perception of Time and Place. Aliens and Their Existence. Energy Alternatives to Dust. The Weapons of the Great War. The Nature of Cancer. Mutation and Evolution.
He had these books and more like them. The poor library clerk from the University of Vale must have thought he was making some sort of essay on insane tumor-ridden alien bugs fighting in stormy trenches, but no. These were some of the sources cited by online journals and articles he had found. Hopefully, they just might further some leads.
He opened up the insect compendium and immediately searched for the cockroach section.
When he had first begun this research project after getting out of the infirmary, the first thing he had thought to look for were radroaches. They were everywhere in the wasteland, truly emblematic of the harsh, twisted and vicious new existence that Earth and life on it had been forced into. If anything could live on, it was them.
Accordingly, he had settled down in the library in his cast and typed into the search bar: "giant cockroaches"
He had fallen down a rabbit hole of research from there.
Now Jaune flipped through the pages of the many inches thick book that was nearly a foot wide and a foot long. He had found an article titled "Ten Creepy Crawlies You Never Want to Meet" that mentioned giant cockroaches found in a small town in Mistral. The website sourced a more scientific article on insect gigantism, which included a quote from the 7th edition about these cockroaches.
Eventually, he got to the right page, and he frowned.
The giant cockroaches were covered for barely half of a page. Apparently, a researcher from a university in Mistral had traveled out to this city which had reported oz kyla, giant cockroaches. Unfortunately, upon his arrival the cockroaches had all been killed by the villagers, who had immediately set about using whatever poisons and tools they could find to take care of the infestation. Probably a good move, to be honest.
Dissection of the corpses left over showed that they were similar to normal cockroaches, but with bulbous organs and an abundance of benign tumors…
Tumors.
Jaune stared at the word on the page. While radroaches were disgusting, he had occasionally had to butcher some for food. They were lumpy on the inside, flesh warped by the radiation.
The book shook in Jaune's hands. This could be it. This could very well be it. He took a deep breath, forced himself to be calm and got to work.
He pulled out a notebook and recorded the name of the village, Stryza. He wouldn't be able to investigate there any time soon, but eventually.
"If Bishop hasn't already…" Jaune muttered under his breath, voice utterly contemptuous.
Bishop is smarter than I am, and he's been here longer than I have. All of this research I'm doing, there's no doubt that he's done it all already. If I had to guess from how old he looked and how he's managed to build up his resources, I'd say he must have been here for a few years.
That was plenty of time for Bishop to scour Remnant and research for whatever else may have come from Earth. Jaune was just playing catch up.
He could do nothing but scowl and accept his disadvantage—for now.
He put the book aside and, with the topic of tumors on his mind, reached for the medical book. He wanted to know just what, exactly, this world believed to be sources of cancer. His time on the computer had showed no mention of radiation as a cause, but that didn't mean a big book of medicine wouldn't have more to say.
Jaune spent the rest of his hour reading through that book. He then woke up early the next day and went back to the library. The librarian told him he could take the books with him, but he'd rather leave them there than try to explain the oddities to his team.
It turned out that radiation wasn't really mentioned.
He had, of course, spent a long time at the computer looking for any reference to uranium, plutonium and the like. It turned out, however, that Remnant's periodic table was quite different from Earth's. All forms of power also revolved around dust. It seemed that nuclear energy was simply impossible on Remnant.
Jaune had, however, found some theoretical mention of atom-splitting, but no one had ever acted on it. Resources were stretched thin across Remnant as it was, with relatively few major population centers and many places living like the medieval age. There were simply no resources to waste on theoretical energy sources when there was still plenty of dust to go around.
While Jaune looked through everything he could about known sources of cancer, he eventually concluded that radiation and the things that produced it simply were not present.
Well, at least that's one nightmarish possibility crossed off the list. He wouldn't have to worry about Bishop getting a nuke.
Onto the next book: Mental Illness in Relation to the Perception of Time and Place
He had searched the web for people who believed they were aliens or had come from different planets, insanity along those lines. Insanity. There was a very real chance that someone whose story had been written off as mentally ill rambling was in fact telling the truth.
Jaune spent several hours skimming through the book, looking first at the index and through the glossary before giving up and scanning the chapters.
He was about halfway through before finding something.
A man who believed himself to be from another planet…
This was maybe the tenth time Jaune had come across this line in the book already, meaning it hardly carried the same surprise and inspiration of energy as when he first found it. Nevertheless, he slowed down his reading and paid a bit more attention. What followed a description of events that had occurred some fifty years ago:
A man who believed himself to be a soldier from another planet. Louis Creed was taken into custody after an explosion was reported outside a village in rural Atlas. Initially he refused to speak for a full month but now banned tactics of prisoner isolation and prolonged withholding of food and water resulted in Creed eventually giving his name and then—over the course of more weeks in detention—further details.
He claimed to have destroyed a suit of armor he had brought with him from another world, which he called "Earth". He claimed to be a soldier, but he never stated what organization he fought for or what cause. Among other delusions he experienced was that this planet had been destroyed by fire and that he had been brough to Remnant in a storm of yellow lightning. There had been local reports of a strange, yellow-tinged thunderstorm at the time of Creed's arrest (determined to likely be the result of electric dust released into the atmosphere by a nearby refinery). This likely inspired that section of his delusional beliefs. Police officers found wreckage determined to be perhaps some sort of vehicle that Creed had exploded with a makeshift bomb.
Creed was declared insane and kept in the Atlas National Asylum. His original identity was never determined, as no course of therapy was able to shake him from his delusion, not even after drug and electric therapy. Neither did his fingerprints come up with any matches. Unfortunately, a now outdated attempt at brain surgery left Creed lobotomized. He died in a vegetable state seven years after his discovery. This sad story was used as one of several examples to ban the practice of lobotomies, as well as an example of the limited abilities of electroshock.
Jaune slammed the book shut. The sound was practically as loud as a gunshot; it boomed throughout the quiet library and shocked the few other patrons there. The kindly old librarian was just about to drink water and nearly spilled it on herself.
Jaune shook. His hands trembled, and he had to strongly grip them together to try and regain control. He looked around furtively at some of the others, who gave him quizzical looks but quickly turned away. The librarian put a finger over her lips, a reminder to be quiet, and then turned back to her computer. He pressed his hands against his chest, trying to calm the quickly rising and falling diaphragm that contained hyperventilating lungs.
Louis Creed.
Jaune knew that man. He had fought beside that man.
Louis Creed had been a knight in the Brotherhood of Steel. With a square jaw and a buzzcut, he had looked like the stereotypical soldier type, the sort of brave-faced young recruit whose visage got pinned up on walls across a country in wartime, beckoning others to follow in his footsteps. However, a good sense of humor bellied that fierce image. Jaune, back when he was Maxwell, had enjoyed a chat or two with him. He was the sort of person who could start off a conversation with a firm handshake and have someone smiling and talking in five minutes as if they'd known each other for five years. He was respected for his skill on the battlefield and was the youngest official member of the Lyons Pride.
He was also one of the knights who had accompanied Jaune on his trek to hunt down Bishop one last time on Earth. The mission that ended with him coming here.
Louis, a talented and moral young man. He had been practically tortured, then rendered brain dead. He had told the truth, up to the point that would have betrayed his oath to the Brotherhood. He would never reveal their name, the last loyal secret he could cling to.
Jaune felt bile squirm up his throat like a slimy frog trying to get up and out; he forced himself to swallow it back down with a grimace.
Bishop certainly knew of this. He may well have visited the site of Louis's arrival to seek out possible technology left over.
An explosion.
The Brotherhood taught that it was better to destroy one's equipment than let it fall into enemy hands. There was even a line from the codex dedicated to this: "It is better to be turned to ash, than to be lost." They hammered those words into every recruit, Jaune included. That was definitely what that explosion had been. Louis had destroyed his power armor and whatever energy weapons he may have brought through with him using the nuclear core in the armor.
Jaune had not done that.
Images came to him of that beach, that unbelievably blue sea, that rusted and ailing lighthouse, the forest which was so lush and beautiful that he had thought it all a dream. A beowolf as well, deadly as a deathclaw. The damn thing had almost gutted him, and he was only saved by the sudden surge of his unlocked aura. He had forgotten completely about the power armor left behind on the beach.
After all, he had crawled out of it, gathered what relevant supplies he needed and gone up the lighthouse. He didn't yet detonate the power armor, lest the Brotherhood be nearby, able to fix it up. Then, after seeing the forest, he had concluded he was in a dream and could not care less about the suit. Then he had been mauled and presented with a massive new reality… After that, things became so fast-paced and incredible that it just slipped his mind.
It was fine though, right? He had left it on a secluded and long-abandoned beach.
Jaune scrawled a reminder in his notebook to make sure that he one day returned to that beach to destroy the evidence. It was largely broken, but it could very well provide inspiration to some ambitious engineers.
Jaune ran a hand down his face and looked back down at the book. Slowly, he pried it open again with fingers that very nearly trembled. He read over Louis's entry again, then a third time and a fourth. One more thing stood out to him: "a strange, yellow-tinged thunderstorm."
For a rare occurrence like electric-dust induced storms to coincide with someone coming from another universe, now that was just a stretch. Not only that, but it had been lightning running amok that had brought him here. Them. That had brought them here.
Jaune remembered vividly the crackling alien pillar, glowing with an unhealthy yellow; it was the kind of color you saw mixed in with pus or vomit or under the skin of a dead man just beginning to rot. A sick color.
It would make sense, that a violent and noticeable expression of that lightning would come up in this world as well.
Jaune sighed and looked at the time, then swore when he realized that he was going to be late for breakfast and had in fact missed several messages from Ruby and his team about where he was. Quickly, he put his notebook away and brought the books back to the librarian.
Then he went through the day with a shadow over his shoulder. He was wound up tightly like a spring, taught with anticipation for what other discoveries might lurk in those pages. Pyrrha pulled him aside after class quickly and asked him if he was alright, because he looked on edge. He replied somewhat honestly that there were things on his mind, things from the past. She didn't ask further. A worm of guilt slithered around in his stomach for taking advantage of her kindness like that, but Pyr wouldn't have understood if he'd tried to tell her the truth. Nobody could understand.
He came back to the library just after class, making an excuse that he wanted some alone time to think. He went straight to that book on mental illness.
And he found nothing else like the story of Louis Creed. There were plenty of other people who thought they had come from a different planet, but none of them named Earth as their homeland. Jaune looked through the internet as much as he could. Nothing new was found.
Louis Creed had been presumed mad and treated as such; his story, so incredible in its legitimacy, had been made just a blip in the study of those plagued by unfortunate mistruths.
Frustrated, Jaune came near the end of the book. This particular section was about a man who had invented his own language, which, after being described by the book, sounded nothing like any of the languages back on Earth. The book read:
It was certainly not any variant of Common. Outreach to various linguists confirmed that the gibberish the patient spoke also had no relation to the remaining indigenous languages of Remnant—
Realization struck Jaune with the shock and suddenness of a bucket of ice water straight to the face. It splashed all over him, chilled him, shook him and compelled him all at once.
"I'm a fucking idiot," he murmured, eyes wide, thoughts suddenly wild.
English. The dominant language on this planet was English. He had just accepted that as a fortunate shared trait of a parallel universe. There were many bizarre things he had accepted, from a shattered moon to superpowers to cat girls, but is the language really a coincidence?
His eyes snapped back to the insect book, remembering now how the giant cockroaches had first been described under a different name, presumably a foreign language that was translated into Common. Into English.
He shoved the books aside and logged into the school computer before him, typing furiously: common language origin.
He pressed enter and clicked on the first website to come up. It was an informational page from the International Linguistics Association, and it had this to tell him:
Although the near universal acceptance of Common is taken for granted today, it was only after the Great War a century ago that a standardized system of grammar and formalized dictionary parameters were established among the four kingdoms. After the peace was signed, the language was actively refined in the image of what it had been centuries prior in an effort to promote peace and community globally. A controversial move, it met fierce resistance among nativists everywhere. Ultimately, however, the language reforms were passed and have since created a more homogenous community for the whole planet. It was not altogether difficult for the variant branches of Common to reconvene into a single similar version. Now the great majority of people on Remnant speak Common, with native languages still retained in rural areas.
What is now called Common is extremely unique in that it is not related to any other known linguistic group. For instance, despite originating in Southern Mistral, there is no connection between Common and proto-native-Mistralian.
The method of pronouncing the original language varied and changed depending on regions and their accents, but the most common scholarly reference now for "Old Common" is "Anglo''.
Against all odds, this small and unique language came to be the most enduring and widely spoken in the world. It's spread began over a thousand years ago, coinciding with the Breaking of the Moon…
In a deserted old village in the deep parts of the woods far from the city of Vale, under a ruined house and behind a solid steel door, Bishop Beauvais sat and listened. He sat on the edge of his bed, now able to hold himself up by his own strength. He couldn't stand for more than a minute without crumpling to the floor, but he at least had the strength to sit up.
Before him were two of his closest confidantes.
Standing immediately in front of him was a man in a pristine suit, a man as thin as the artisanal pens in his pocket; he held up a scroll pad and flicked from one slide to the next, showing each in turn to Bishop as he explained them. Bishop usually just read the reports on his own, but today was a bit of a special occasion. It was good to have everything explained by Blaire.
Blaire, Bishop's personal assistant and one of the first real additions to the fledgling Enclave that he and Arthur had begun over two years ago. Back then they were just a couple of mercs who'd just gotten their aura unlocked; then they ran into Blaire. A man with supreme logistical skills and loyalty to the cause. If Arthur was Bishop's right-hand man, Blaire was his left. If Arthur was his sword, Blaire was his pen.
"As you can see," Blaire said, "the first prototype can be prepared in a month. Once we work out the kinks here, our shop in Mistral can be outfitted appropriately to produce them at a more consistent rate, perhaps as many as four a month for now."
"Four?"
Blaire nodded. He licked his lips with a loud smack; that was an annoying habit of his that Bishop had come to tolerate but still disliked.
"The labor we procured is focused on the diamonds," Blaire said. "And we've only managed to secure a few deemed skilled enough for our purposes. It's important, after all, not to draw much attention to a string of missing mechanics."
Bishop nodded. Secrecy had been paramount for the Enclave for years.
"Part of the reason, however, that our actual production capabilities are behind is because we didn't think the schematics would be completed so soon. We would have invested more in the shops if we had known."
"A good thing we found that suit on the beach," Arthur said.
"Indeed," Blaire replied, licking his lips.
The suit on the beach. Thinking about it now made Bishop scowl. He balled up his hands into weak fists.
"It was Maxwell's," Bishop said. "I'm sure of it."
"It likely was," Arthur said.
"I'm certain." Bishop nodded resolutely. "Aside from the timing matching up perfectly, only he would be stupid enough not to destroy what was left behind."
Finding that piece of Brotherhood power armor abandoned on a beach in Mistral had seemed like a godsend for the Enclave. He had made it a priority, once they were able to afford some of the resources, to develop work on power armor. The suits back on Earth were just as good as cutting-edge Atlas tech. It would be an incredible boon to their cause.
Sadly, the only power armor they had was Arthur's ruined suit. When they had been transported here, Bishop had been wearing his officer's uniform. Luckily, Arthur had changed into his suit when the Brotherhood attack. Unluckily, they had been attacked by an ursa shortly after coming to Remnant. Getting dropped off on a glacier in Atlas near a bear monster had been a rather unkind arrival.
So the Grimm had ripped up Arthur's suit, which they then buried and returned to much later. Ruined as it was, it at least gave a decent idea for a model and had a manual that detailed some ways to help repair and upkeep the suit while on missions. That was hardly a detailed schematic, but it was a start. The manual combined with a ruined suit made for some difficult and slow progress.
Bishop had known, however, that there was still very much a chance they could find some other examples to reverse engineer. After all, that alien device had been spewing lightning all over the place. Someone would have to be an utter moron or in deep denial in order to think nothing else had come into Remnant.
There was that volatile development a thousand years ago… with plenty more after it.
Bishop had kept digging. He remembered well the lightning and the putrid yellow haze it emitted. The thunderstorm which had spat out he and Arthur on that glacier so long ago was not alone. He had discovered a handful of other recorded incidents. One in rural Mistral six years ago. One near Mountain Glenn almost twenty years ago. One in Atlas fifty years ago. One near the Mistral coast less than a year ago. There were many other thunderstorms that might fit the bill, but these were the ones that all shared some aspects: they were especially violent, had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and simply looked downright unnatural with their sickly yellow atmosphere.
Louis Creed, a filthy knight who was stupid and weak-willed enough to tell his story and get lobotomized for it. Nothing would be gained from him other than a cautionary tale. Scouring the Grimm-infested forests around Mountain Glenn was simply too dangerous, not to mention a comprehensive search of the wilderness would take years. That event in rural Mistral seemed to have nothing more than radroaches and some cement rubble from the Enclave lab on Earth.
Then came the suit by the beach.
Blaire had set up a program that compiled international weather data with keywords to pick up on storms that might fit Bishop's bill. Blaire had accepted the explanation easily enough that they might indicate a unique semblance possessed by a certain old enemy. (No matter how trusted Blaire may be, the true nature of Bishop and Arthur's origins had never been shared.)
They had it running for a year without any hits, and Bishop had been electrified when finally, there came a report that meteorologists were investigating a bizarre yellow thunderstorm in Mistral. There was even a village nearby which could be an excellent source of information about it.
Bishop had of course prepared for disappointment. It may have been nothing more than some big chunks of cement or ruined lab equipment. The search had certainly started off with frustration, as the nearby village had been attacked by bandits and Grimm, and it was shortly evacuated due to a reported Grimm migration. That left no witnesses to interrogate. Still, they managed to get someone to guide them around there and…
A find greater than Bishop could have hoped for. A suit of power armor almost fully intact. Certainly, its motor systems had been smashed and it had suffered some various other failures, but some skilled engineers could certainly reverse engineer it.
A good thing that they had kidnapped several skilled engineers.
Thank you, Maxwell, for your wonderful incompetence.
"As you can see by some of these models," Blaire continued after licking his lips again, "we will have to terminate this supply chain shortly after the second shipment for security purposes…"
Bishop nodded along and paid attention while Blaire went over the logistics. He personally had never been one for administration; he led in the battle. Thank god for talented subordinates to delegate to.
Bishop maintained his patience, understanding the importance of grasping Blaire's presentation. Every general, after all, had to not only lead the troops but look after the means by which they were able to fight. The Enclave proper now number sixty full time operatives, without counting their other pursuit…
Accordingly, Bishop listened, all the while anticipating the real reason why Blaire had come there in person rather than just sending a report.
"Alright," Blaire finally said. He licked his lips, giving them a fresh coat of saliva. "That wraps up the presentation segment of our visit. Now on to the show and tell."
Bishop smiled. Finally.
Blaire moved away and bent over a duffel bag he'd brough. He stashed the scroll pad back in and pulled out a black case. He straightened up and spent several seconds meticulously adjusting his tie—it wouldn't do for it to be made askew by bending over—and smoothed out the hems of his suit. Then he strode back to Bishop and handed off the case.
"It was made according to your exact sketches and specifications," Blaire said. "It includes a built-in respirator and can have night vision adjustments placed on. We can begin manufacturing these immediately to replace our current masks."
"Perfect," Bishop said with excitement in his eyes.
Blaire averted his eyes. He licked his lips once, twice, three times. He nervously fidgeted with his cufflinks, twisting them askew before quickly righting them again.
"I know what you're thinking," Bishop said as he unclasped the locks on the case. "You've voiced before that you think it unnecessary to use our limited manufacturing abilities on this when we could continue using the military-grade helmets and masks we've already acquired."
Blaire hesitated a second and licked his lips, then tentatively nodded.
Bishop opened the case. His grin widened.
"But as I explained," he said, "it is necessary for us to have a specific look. An aesthetic that is distinct and easily recognizable."
Bishop pulled out from the case a unique helmet. It was unlike any used by any military currently on Remnant. It had big, nearly insectoid, eyes and a slanting front bulge almost like a compact beak. A perfect replica of the helmets from Enclave MKI and II power armor. Bishop had always preferred this look over the later beady-eyed and horned models. It just felt a bit more recognizable.
A bit more… inhuman.
"It is certainly odd," Bishop said. He looked deep into the eyes of the helmet. It had so much promise. "The people of Remnant are unused to this. They don't know the look of it, just like they don't know the Enclave."
Bishop turned the helmet around and raised it in the air. His heart picked up pace as he lowered it. Many, many times he had placed an Enclave model helmet over his head, back on Earth. This was the first time it would happen on Remnant. The Enclave was being reborn.
The helmet descended and fit snugly on his head. He breathed deeply in and out, and the built-in respirator made a husky, windy sound as it filtered his breathe. He was pleased to note that the big bulging eyes gave him good visibility. It was comfortable.
"The people of Remnant don't know us," Bishop said, voice deep and inhuman thanks to the helmet. "But they will. And they will know this look, this visage, this face."
He nodded slowly, with purpose.
"They will know us, and they will fear us."
I'm aware that, over the course of a thousand years, English would have mutated significantly. However, there's a precedent I'm following for a lag in cultural change. The whole premise of Fallout is that American culture pretty much ceased to evolve starting in the fifties. Though I also found a few other ways to justify why Remnant's English is pretty much just like Jaune's. I'll go into it a little more next chapter.
And yeah, I like the look of the Enclave armor from Fallout 1 and 2 more than the models that come in 3, so I just included them instead lol. Bishop has good taste in supervillain suits.