-Fred-104-
"Remind me again why we are going to the airport?" Jade said as Fred threw the last of his various knives and other weapons into a large backpack.
He threw the bag over his shoulder and responded, "I need to find my team, and I should be asking you why you are agreeing to come with me."
Jade grabbed her backpack as well and sighed, "I've already told you. I'm curious about you and your team, and I only cleared you so I could keep you away from Jacques, and as such you are still under my medical care." Fred just shrugged and walked out the door with the doctor following.
Fred had watched the departure lists from his "borrowed" laptop and had picked the transport he wanted, and despite Jade's instance to "use transportation like a normal person," they were once again simply sneaking into a hangar and hopping on the plane like they were invited.
Fred walked up to the cockpit and tapped the pilot on the shoulder, saying, "sorry for adding two passangers to the manifest last minute, but it's special ops."
The pilot spoke without looking back, "It's fine, SDC is paying for gas, and it was their idea to put me on this glorified milk run since a nevermore nearly sliced me in half and I'm not allowed back on fighter pilot duty for another week."
Fred was about to walk back to the cargo hold when he paused, no way, he thought to himself, and tentatively asked, "did you by any chance get almost sliced in half during the battle of Vale? And does your name happen to be Red?"
The pilot turned around and stared at Fred for a few seconds in complete silence.
"Like the new paint job," said Red and paused again, before finally saying, "So how'd you get to Atlas?"
Fred shook his head slightly in amazement, "I passed out in front of General Ironwood after getting stabbed in the gut, and woke up in a hospital. I think the bigger question is how in the world did you live through ramming a dragon?"
Red replied, "As much as I would have loved to stay with my bird and perform a Carter maneuver, there are ejector seats, and some Atlesian transports automatically activate them upon reaching a certain state."
Red turned back around in his seat and looked out the hatch, "Looks like someone else might be asking for a ride, and my oh my is that a Schnee?"
Fred looked over Red's shoulder and saw Weiss approaching the transport and thought, one hell of a reunion today
Half an hour later they were in the air and Weiss finally made her way back to the cargo compartment Jade and Fred were sharing.
Fred looked up from the sandwich he was eating that Jade had packed for the trip and said, "Hey ice queen,"
Jade also gave a wave and a smile, but Weiss just stopped in her tracks, doing an extended double take
"FRED!?" She finally sputtered out, "Why—how—you're wearing the same armor as that assassin from the rooftops."
"Chill. That was just Linda, and Qrow tried to stab her first, but we're all friends now right?"
Weiss seemed even more confused, "I guess… but how—why are you in Atlas, and who is this Lady?"
"I'll say it again, fine, I'm here because I got stabbed in the gut by a flying sword that was also on fire by some lady who was magic and killed Pyrrha, then passed out in front of General Ironwood, and I was brought here."
Jade stared at him, "You never told me that's what happened!"
Fred shrugged, "You told me you had already saw what happened to me from your semblance,"
Jade sighed exasperatedly, "It just shows me injuries and data, not the story,"
Weiss shook her head and sank to the floor, sitting across from the spartan and the doctor, processing the new information.
Fred interrupted her musings, saying, "Oh, I almost forgot, this is Dr. Jade Honeydew, the only person who has been friendly to me in either Atlas or Mantle, except the corndog stand guy."
Weiss nodded with a far off look in her eyes but didn't say anything.
Two and a half hours later Red called back to his three passengers, "We're getting close, but we're also about to go through our most dangerous part of the flight. A grimm hive, then almost immediately after that we hit bandit territory." He paused for a second and seemed to. Consider his options, "And if any of you would know how to use it, we have an air to air defensive option in the form of a handheld lock on rocket launcher,"
Fred suddenly perked up from where he had been sitting, "Dibs!" He said, running up to the cockpit to retrieve the new toy.
Weiss shook her head, "boys," she said mid sigh, and Jade gave a solemn nod.
The heart to heart moment was interrupted as the craft suddenly jerked to port (left for any of my non-navally inclined readers) and Red chimed in over the intercom, "and what did I tell you? Looks like A bunch of lancers, Fred take out the queen and I can lose the rest if they don't all crash into each other and kill themselves once they lose coordination,"
Jade offered her advice, poking her head into the cockpit, "Lancers keep the queen in the center of the pack—" she was interrupted as Red dodged again, but continued, "but it tends to be looser at the rear, try to disrupt the swarm from behind and you should be able to get a clear shot at the queen,"
Fred considered for a minute as Red continued evasive maneuvers, "could you do a massive loop and drop me off at the peak and pick me up before I hit the water at the bottom?"
Red didn't look away from his controls, but his voice carried the same hint of ease as always, "It would take almost perfect timing and some fancy flying, but who do you think you're talking to?"
Fred turned and walked to the door of the craft, "Just tell me when you want me off, and Weiss, please close the door behind me,"
A few seconds later Red initiated his maneuver, and called for Fred to jump, "NOW!"
Fred leapt out the door, rocket launcher in one hand, grenade in the other.
The wind whipped past Fred as he spread himself out to slow his fall, and he saw the ship start to turn downwards into a dive. The swarm of lancers flew past him racing after the ship, and he pulled the pin on the grenade as he tucked into a more aerodynamic position, matching the speed of the swarm towards the sea far below.
Fred silently counted as he cooked the grenade, and when he reached a second and a half until detonation he threw it into the back of the swarm, but misinterpreted how much the throw would pitch him off balance and he started spinning in the air.
Fred managed to slow his uncontrolled spin and right himself by sticking his arms and legs out, using the air rushing by him to bring him to a more stable position.
Now that he was steady, (even though upside down) Fred pulled the launcher to his shoulder and looked through the reticle and saw the swarm. The queen was not exactly exposed, but he could target her, but he'd be rolling the dice if he tried to fire.
The swarm started to thin a bit around the back as some of the bug grimm shifted to the front to protect the queen, and Fred saw why when he glanced down at the ship, as it had its back door open and Jade was firing on the swarm with a recovered Atlesian BR55 that had been found in the case of Fred's stuff.
Fred waited one more second for the swarm to shift again and fired, the rocket wailing as it streaked out of the launcher and curved towards the Grimm.
The queen didn't even know what hit her when her abdomen was suddenly separated from her head as a portion of her midsection was obliterated by the incoming missile from behind.
Fred slung the weapon on his back and prepared for pick up as the swarm lost cohesion. The reverse thrusters of the transport flared as it pointed straight towards the waters below and Fred could see Jade standing by the button to close the ramp and hanging on for dear life as Weiss crouched and summoned some sort of glyph on the floor of the ship.
Fred tucked into a dive and angled towards the open ramp, his suit amped the gel pressure to almost max as he rocketed into the back of the ship.
Weiss's glyph helped soften the landing a bit, but didn't stop Fred bouncing when he struck the floor of the diving ship and ricocheted into the bulkhead with a loud CLANG.
Red immediately pulled out of the dive and Fred could feel the g-forces rise, and as soon as they passed he stood up from where he laid sprawled out on the floor.
Red called back as he flattened the transport out, "Everything alright back there?"
Fred was about to respond when Jade looked him over, clearly activating her semblance to check if anything had broken when he landed and bounced, and she said, a bit confused, "Apparently we are fine, just a couple bruises somehow."
A short flight later Red announced that they would be stopping to refuel at a small outpost before making their final approach to Mistrel's capital and Fred walked up to the cockpit to get a look at the outpost before they arrived and maybe memorize the layout if he had the time.
Red punched the comm to get a short range connection to the outpost to let them know of the arrival, "Atlesian outpost R-97 this is Atlesian transport A-12 B carrying important supplies requesting permission to land and re-fuel,"
A scratchy response came over the comm, "Acknowledged A-12 B, you are cleared for landing at platform B,"
Red spoke again, "Authorization code of 67E34CV2, we are classified a high priority craft, so make sure we are fueled first, and once you get me the outpost authorization code I will come in for landing."
There was a short silence on the other end, "Affirmative A-12 B, uh—" there was another pause and a shuffling of papers could be heard, "Outpost code is Z7634T87, see you soon,"
Red glanced at his display and saw the code was correct and disconnected the comm before saying to Fred, "They should've asked for auth code first thing, and most comm operators would have their outpost code memorized from using it so much, something is up. As soon as we land I'm going to lock down the cargo, and I'd advise you plan on things not being normal," Fred nodded and headed back to tell the girls that something was wrong.
-Dr. Jade Honeydew-
Red opened the rear cargo ramp and stepped out into the sunlight and Jade could see two people standing at the bottom of the ramp, and significantly more standing at the edge of the landing pad with guns trained on the open door. Unfortunately Fred was right, she thought and took a closer look at the two at the bottom of the ramp.
One woman had short brown hair and light blue eyes, and a pair of curved blades extending from large rings, and a scruffy, yet practical outfit with a shirt with the sleeves torn off.
The other woman was tall, and had long black hair, but a large white and red mask covered the rest of her features, and she had her hand on the hilt of a sheathed sword, with the sheath appearing to be a large cylinder, probably containing different dust blades, very expensive, and powerful.
These definitely weren't Atlesian soldiers.
The woman in red with the mask spoke, "You two in the cargo hold, step forward, hands in the air all three of you."
Weiss whispered to Jade, "What does she mean two? Where's Fred?"
Jade hissed at her to be silent and they stepped forward beside Red, hands above their heads, and the woman spoke again, "surrender your cargo, and we'll let you go when we move on from this base,"
Red spoke calmly, "Sure, but just know that It's locked down and in a secure hold that I can't even get into, only the sender and receiver can access it, but feel free to try."
The woman spoke again, "Then we'll just take the whole ship," she turned and addressed a few particular gunmen, "Lock them up,"
-Fred-104-
Fred had watched his three companions get taken away into the forest just outside the airbase where the outlaws had a camp set up hidden from the air by the cover of the forest.
He had watched as various people tried to get through the door to the side cargo holds where they had moved the stuff, and even the leader came by and tried to slice it with her dust blade, but it did little more than scratch the paint. Fred managed to slip out of the ship between failed attempts to breach the door, time to teach these fools a thing or two about guerilla warfare.
Fred had covered his fancy new white paint job completely with mud and foliage from the surrounding forest and had managed to locate the armory and had taken back his companions' seized weapons, along with as many explosives as he could carry. Next he snuck through the forest and around the edges of the camp, learning the patrols and patterns.
After the analysis was completed, Fred carefully buried explosives in specific points along the paths over the course of two days.
As Fred finished placing the explosives he snuck inside the camp and over to the large cage that Jade, Red, and Weiss were being held in, crawling slowly through the mud out of sight and almost completely camouflaged.
Jade was the only one of the three awake when Fred came up behind the cage and he said quietly to her, "Don;t freak out but I'm right behind you,"
Jade started, shocked, then calmed herself and slowly turned around, visibly distressed when Fred couldn't be seen, "Where are you?" She whispered.
Fred slowly raised his hand in a thumbs up and whispered back, "Down here,"
Jade's jaw dropped when the mud seemed to resolve in a bare outline of a Spartan not a foot from her, "How in hell did you do that?"
Fred didn't move, "tell you later, don't have time to explain, but tomorrow afternoon I'll be back and I'll get you out, let the others know, should be about 6:00 pm, sun will be about...there," he pointed to the tip of a tree to the west.
Jade started to ask a question when she realized Fred was suddenly no longer there, but her pistol and the weapons of Weiss and Red were suddenly right next to her.
-Dr. Jade Honeydew-
Jade was awakened by Weiss shaking her and whispering, "Something is going on, the leader is talking to someone, and everyone has moved to meet someone at the gate,"
Jade wiped the grogginess from her eyes and stood up, peering off towards the entrance to the camp, and she could see people gathering around a figure with long blonde hair.
The group quickly moved in towards the camp, passing behind tents and towards the center.
Weiss whispered to her fellow prisoners, "We have to make our move now, while they're distracted!" She crouched down and began summoning her knight companion, clearly struggling.
Red shook his head, "No offense, but do you have a plan? It might be better to just wait another hour or two for Fred,"
Weiss didn't say anything and continued summoning her knight, managing to barely get an arm out of the glyph, her face contorted with effort, she had the armored blue arm bend one of the bars, creating a slim opening. Weiss collapsed and the arm vanished, "There," she panted, "A way out,"
Jade looked at the opening, "I don't think Red or I could fit through there, but you go ahead, I'd rather bet on Fred's plan, and worse case scenario I have a way out," she gestured at the suppressed pistol she had concealed.
Weiss continued standing there, looking conflicted, and Red spoke, "If you don't see us in Mistrel you can come back for us, but you can't help if you continue to be stuck in here with us." Weiss ducked her head in defeat and slipped out of the cage.
Jade could hear a bit of the conversation being carried out in front of the leader's tent, something about how someone was a bad mom, then about how why Weiss had been imprisoned, then finally some strange goodbye of, "next we meet it shall be as foes" in short Jade concluded that she was baffled at outlaw culture and settled down to wait for 6:00 pm.
-Fred-104-
Fred watched Weiss and Yang leave the camp on Bumblebee, and he shrugged internally, but decided it was one less thing he had to worry about, and started crawling his way through the mud back to the cage and his companions.
The sun seemed to be resting in the boughs of the trees when Fred suddenly appeared in the mud beside Jade again.
"How the hell do you do that?" She hissed at him once again.
Fred didn't move but a quiet voice case out of his helmet, completely deadpan, "Powers of the occult,"
Jade looked at him confused, then rolled her eyes when he offered no response.
So I guess no occult on Remnant? Fred thought to himself, i could give a different definition to Ruby maybe tell her it is a club and tell her to ask Linda or Kelly to join, now that would be funny. He cackled silently to himself while he told Jade, "Shoot the lock on my mark, then we make a run for it in the ensuing chaos,"
Red looked at him skeptically, "I don't see any chaos, and I don't think one gunshot will cause much panic,"
Fred just held up a detonator and started counting, "3…..2….1..mark!"
The air was split with the sound of explosions, both near and far and the sharp cough of a single suppressed gunshot could barely be heard.
Fred led them through the forest at a cautious, yet hurried pace as they passed smoking craters, a flaming tent, and outlaws running past trying to figure out what was going on, and they were too preoccupied to notice the three sneaking through the undergrowth.
The group arrived at the airfield fairly quickly, their final obstacle, a massive open space they would have to sprint across to reach their ship.
Fred counted off again and they started across the tarmac, Fred reaching the ship at incredible speeds and sprinting inside. As soon as he thundered up the ramp an Outlaw turned and started to raise a revolver in Fred's direction.
Fred didn't slow and stuck his arm out, hitting the man in the face and inverse clotheslined him, sending him straight to the floor unconscious.
A few seconds later the others arrived, Red not stopping until he hit the cockpit chair, and Jade telling Fred while slightly out of breath, "A few saw us and are chasing," she ran over to the ramp controls and started to close it.
One of the outlaws had managed to clamber onto the ramp as it closed and was readying his rifle to fire at Jade.
Fred could feel the ship take off as he threw a knife to open the ramp, then grabbed the unconscious body and threw it like a spear at the other outlaw, hitting him and sending them both to the ground below as Jade hit the button to close it once more.
Red called back from the cockpit, "That was close, but should be smooth skies from here on out, and we got another few hours before we land, so feel free to entertain yourselves."
-undefined-
Deep below what was left of Beacon academy something opened up its awareness for the first time, looking out at the datascape surrounding it and began absorbing information. Suddenly it stopped.
Who am I? What am I? It asked itself, finally it noticed something, a memory from before, but from before when? It knew it had not existed before a few microseconds ago, and yet the memory was there, it was a memory of heat, power, fear, and yet, determination to do what was right.
It thought to itself that whoever this memory belonged to was someone that it needed to honor and be like.
The thing continued simply processing its surroundings for hours, finally making sense of what it was and some of what the world was,
It looked back at the closest thing to life it had seen so far, a dead body in some shattered glass tube, a spiderweb of burns on the body of a girl with red hair and closed green eyes.
The thing left the crumbling chamber and went to find someone.
The thing found what it wanted and settled into a heavily damaged atlesian knight and began the process of making itself an existence in the physical world.
Another few hours later the A.I. opened its new eyes, and decided the next order of business was an identity, and suddenly a memory surfaced, a mother looking down at girl from the tube, except the A.I. was the girl from the tube, and it saw what the girl saw, thought what the girl thought, and a name started to surface, but the memory faded as suddenly as it had surfaced, and the A.I. was suddenly all alone again, knowing it would never know what had been in its past life, and never experience normal, and it picked a name from its databanks accordingly
"Phariah," she said to herself, "an outcast,"
Phariah stood up on shaky mechanical legs and began her journey to find her past.
AN: Alright, sorry if the last part with Phariah is weird, remember what I said about something below beacons stirring, yeah well that has come back, but I just don't know if it makes any sense to you guys, so I need feedback for that specific portion.
Keep in mind it is supposed to be a bit confusing for tone and artistic purposes, but just let me know what you think.
Also now we are getting to some of the more endgame-ish stuff, and I will be talking a lot more about more Halo lore(I'm planning a bit of a deep dive into lore stuff and head cannons), and if any of you guys get confused about some aspect of Halo that I haven't explained clearly enough later, just let me know and I'll be happy to try to make it clearer (without spoiling anything of course)
And with that, I will see you next time, but please give feedback, I want to make sure I'm not going too far out there with this A.I. Stuff
I got one vote for a Halo story, one for Freelancers, and two for Titanfall, so my plan is going to be to write a chapter or maybe two for two different stories, one Titanfall and Halo, and the other one is RvB and Freelancer, then see which one does better, and probably write that one, but I also plan to do both, It just is a question of which takes priority. (This current story will still be my main, don't worry)
Review Responses:
Pointvee: Maybe? I'm not sure, but John has always been shown to have situational luck, like he gets into a bad situation that would've killed anyone else, but he gets out of it through luck and skill, so for now I'm just going to say that Qrow's slightly overpowers John's because Qrow's is a semblance and also because plot.
Just a Crazy Man: Thanks dude
Evinco: I hope to at least give it some attention, but Ruby isn't in this chapter, so… next time?
Just a Reader: I'm finding myself liking Honeydew's character more and more, but I just realized I haven't given a good physical description for her, next chapter I guess.
Probably should be, but there are always going to be arrogant people, and there are always going to be cautious people, and that's just how the world works
I think you hit the nail on the head with the semblance kind of overpowers just regular luck, but John's luck always seems situational, and not really kick in until he actually needs it, so idk.
John is resting, and I'm still not exactly sure how I want to handle the relationship, but we'll see how it goes won't we
And yes, that is very very true, they always find their way in somehow.
The Advocate7: I think I will do something Titanfall, but I've got a plan that I left in the AN, but I've already got an idea for a solid Titanfall and Halo story. Plus both Titanfalls have been some of my favorite games.
PanzerJ: Thanks for the feedback, I added them this chapter like you asked, and will be adding them to my other chapters in my next bout of editing, so thanks for the feedback, and I am glad you enjoyed.
Alduin: Glad you have enjoyed, and I have a plan for my next story, which you can check the AN for, but I've worked with another writer and I think i've got a compelling freelancer character with plenty of potential.