0115 hours, 5th Axial Rotation of Joo'Lie, Atlesian Time
Makeshift Command Center, Atlas Academy
"There it is, Operative Schnee."
The assistant's words were both a blessing and a curse.
"Show me," said Winter, her voice the sound of distant thunder as it echoed across the function room. Her boots clicked against the polished vinyl tiles as she strode towards monitor 2C3. The monitors in the room had been set up such that they corresponded to the actual monitors on the Western Sector's border wall.
"There," said the assistant, pointing towards the paused image. Her voice was high-strung with excitement. "There it is, at 2011 hours, nine seconds."
Winter's icy gaze fell on the pale white outline of the boy. He was climbing, climbing the forty feet high walls.
"How is it doing that?" Winter's voice spiked with incredulity.
The assistant shrugged. "I don't know, Operative Schnee."
"And how did it get past the motion detectors installed there years ago? Surely the VPD would have been alerted to the presence of the creature if it had been detected by the sensors?" said Winter, pointing towards the sea of lights that blanketed the outside of the wall, directed towards the dark forest of red.
"It's simply impossible to get to the wall without being detected by the sensors," she declared.
"Here's how," said the assistant.
She reminded the footage to 2010 hours, fifty-one seconds. Moments later, the immediate area was plunged into darkness. The night vision of the surveillance cameras worked decently, and Winter could see a blur of movement headed straight for the wall, right before the lights switched back on. But the boy was already on the wall, and he was already three meters above the ground.
Winter was taken aback by the turn of events.
"That's…odd," she said. "Switch to camera 2C4, same time."
The lights were off too, but like before, the camera captured the image of the boy dashing across the ten-meter fog of darkness by virtue of its night-vision abilities.
"Camera 2C5, same time," said Winter.
The lights remained on.
What the heck was going on?
The specialist fought back the urge to curse.
"Back to camera 2C3, 2011 hours and nine seconds."
Winter watched the boy climb the vertical wall; all forty feet of rough concrete that had been worn down over the years. Soon enough, he reached the top and disappeared over the ledge.
"Clip that footage, beginning from 2010 hours and forty-five seconds, and ending at 2011 hours and forty-nine seconds. I expect it within my inbox in three minutes," commanded the Specialist.
"Yes, Operative Schnee."
"Attention, please," said Winter over the microphone. "The location and time of the intrusion have been confirmed. You are all dismissed."
There were a few relieved sighs from across the massive hall. The assistants had been pulled from the ranks and file of the Atlesian Military to review the footage. This was meant to be an off day, but then again, they would do anything for extra pay.
Winter Schnee heaved a sigh of relief. Now that the search had been narrowed down to the Commercial District of Vale, things were progressing at a much smoother rate than before. The current shift had lasted for more than three hours, beginning at ten o'clock the previous day. It would last for roughly two more, ending at three o'clock in the wee hours of the morning. Sufficient biometric data could be collected by the image of the creature, and the next phase of Ironwood's plan could be set into motion.
Winter stepped into a far corner of the function room and dialled the General on a secure telephone line.
"Yes, Winter?"
"Found it, General. Monitor Seven. The intrusion occurred at roughly 2010 hours, third of Joo'Lie," reported Winter. "I'll be sending you the footage shortly after I receive it from the assistant."
"How did it get in?" asked Ironwood.
"It climbed the walls. It probably slid down on the other side to enter the city," said Winter.
"So you're telling me that…it managed to climb a vertical wall that was forty-feet high?" exclaimed Ironwood. His voice had a strained, tired undertone, the voice of a man who had slept for a measly three hours over the past seventy-two.
"I don't know how, General," said Winter. "But that appears to be the case. It was possibly due to the existence of many indentations that formed over the years, as well as the organism's small size, allowing it to take advantage of these flaws."
"I see."
James calmed down. The sound of deep breathing diffused through the microphone, and he cleared his throat.
"If my memory does not fail me, I believe there are motion detector lights aimed towards the outside of the wall. Once the sensors are triggered, an electric signal is relayed to the VPD stations as well as the nearest guard post, where it will trigger an alert," said Ironwood.
"That would be the case, General. Panoramic cameras fitted within the motion detector lights would be activated once something is detected. The cameras will immediately take a picture of the object, and the digital data will be passed through an object recognition algorithm. If a human, Faunus, or Grimm is detected, people in the guard post or the various police stations will be alerted to its presence at the corresponding wall segment," said Winter.
Ironwood smiled inwardly. The magnitude of Winter's devotion to her duty never ceased to surprise him. Her attention to detail, the depth of her memory, and her fierce loyalty to the military were attributes that set her apart from most.
"Commendable, Operative Schnee. So how did it get in without being detected?" asked Ironwood.
"The motion-sensing lights…were turned off. Along with the cameras, apparently. They were turned off right before the creature approached the wall."
A long pause.
"What?"
Winter could not detect any hints of strong emotion in that blank, mirthless voice. There was only disbelief.
"That...is not possible. How could it be turned off?"
"We don't know yet. Here's the footage," said Winter as she sent the recording to the general.
Silence filled the call as James viewed the footage for the first time. He observed the fleeting image of the creature that flickered across the screen in an instant. Ironwood paused the video, and there it was.
Every muscle was suspended in agonizing tableau. Time had come to a halt, and Ironwood's gaze fell upon the creature's pale body. It was the naked form of a boy child, suspended mid-air in a perfect posture any sprinter could only dream of attaining, a boy child born of a living God. Lean muscles bulged from its legs and arms, and the boy's statuesque countenance glistened with sweat — the shape of a man shrunk to the size of a child.
He was stunned by the boy's beauty. He truly was. There was something deeper, something about the way the boy's torso, arms and legs looked. Something about his stance, his demeanour. Something about his face, that perfect countenance of a living God. It was something indescribable by the human tongue.
If perfection existed, this was it, captured in the grainy footage of a cheap surveillance camera.
Ironwood un-paused the video, and the white blur of movement cleared a dozen meters of view in a heartbeat before the lights turned back on.
"The VPD's trackers are still searching the Forever Fall Forest. It's best that we inform them of this new discovery. Now that we've finally found what we're looking for, we can finally use the recognition software the programmers in the task force have created by inputting the creature's biometric data values into the program. I've already gotten permission from the Valean Council to collect all the recent footage from the surveillance cameras around the Western Sector of the Commercial District, and then finding the creature's last known location will be an easier objective to complete," said Ironwood.
His calm voice exuded confidence, but Winter could discern the faint undertones of uncertainty that had come and gone in so many of these fleeting moments. She felt sorry for the General, sympathy for the man who bore the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"The surveillance cameras in Vale. Are there plenty of them, General?" asked Winter.
"I'm not sure, but there should be a decent number of surveillance cameras interspersed throughout the Western Sector. It's too bad that facial recognition modules have not yet been implemented within the surveillance cameras in Vale," said Ironwood.
"I understand, General. Pardon my ignorance, but what does the council intend on doing about the creature…in the grand scheme of things, so to speak?" asked Winter, choosing her words with care.
There was a long pause. For hours, the councils of the four kingdoms had debated among each other of the implications of the incident and the possible consequences of every move they made. And yet, they had so little actual evidence. Evidence that could be easily interpreted easily. There were so many interpretations, so many feats of mental gymnastics, and yet, so little substance.
James gathered his thoughts.
"We don't have enough information. Atlas's finest minds have been stumped by the technology that's onboard that object. For now, we'll simply have to improvise," admitted the General.
Of course, that was not all that he believed. James knew that she would be very interested in this creature as a tool of destruction. It was an important piece in the long game that she played. If what Alice and the other biologists had told him had been correct, the creature would be exceedingly dangerous for even the Atlas Operatives to neutralize.
Salem's eyes and ears were interspersed throughout the Kingdoms. Sooner or later, she would know of the incredible capabilities of the creature. And when she does, James was confident that she would do everything in her power to gain its allegiance to herself and herself only. James trusted Ozpin's plans. They needed to secure the creature's allegiance before she did. Its destruction was the only alternative.
It was truly a race against time, and the fate of the Kingdoms hung in the balance.
Winter had expected the reply. Many of the researchers she supervised had, sometimes reluctantly, confessed that their low productivity was caused directly by their highly limited understanding of the alien technology. And, despite their myriad protestations, their shifting of the blame to the limitations of the Atlesian technology, they each knew deep down that primal emotion that froze their blood and chilled their spines the instant they made an attempt at a cognitive appreciation.
It was fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what was incomprehensible. The existence of such a variant of Fear was predicated upon the morphology of their neurological circuitry. For it was that which determined their comprehension of the cosmos, however limited, that decided when to fear and when not to.
The apex of a civilization's intelligence, brought to their knees by the apex of another's. Admittedly, it was rather disheartening for Winter to watch.
"Our researchers have provided us with a rather limited amount of information. We don't have the required information, and the researchers seem to have encountered severe difficulties understanding the nature of the unidentified object and the organism it once contained," said Ironwood. "However, there have been a few successes, especially on the topic of the organism's physiology. Thanks to our supercomputers, we were able to sequence the genome of the organism in a short period of time, and thanks to the simulations they were capable of computing, a few of our researchers were able to gain a basic understanding of the organism's anatomy."
"Indeed, General. The researcher that Augustus was supervising yesterday, Dr Alice Lockwood, with the help of her assistants, have managed to gain a basic understanding of the creatures anatomy," said Winter.
Ironwood gathered his thoughts.
"Basic seems to be an overstatement. She has only described a few potential organs, and the peer review council has described her detailing of said organs as 'shallow' and 'highly generalized'," he said. James let out a breath of hot air and swallowed. "However, the peer reviewers seem very impressed with the discoveries she has made, given the magnitude of the situation. Therefore, I have no qualms about keeping her on the team."
"I understand, General."
"I have been notified by the peer reviewers of the progress the researchers have made. They believe that Alice Lockwood and Hammond Schwarz's team have contributed the most. What do you think about this assessment?"
It was a vague, open ended question.
"I can only make an assessment on Alice's productivity based on her presentation from the meetings. Although I do not understand much of what she says, the sheer amount of information she provides is a testament to her immense productivity and usefulness to this enterprise," stated Winter.
"Hmm," there came a low, guttural grunt of approval from the other side. Winter could tell that the General was exhausted. "What about Hammond?"
"They are certainly extremely useful, but they have encountered a slight problem with the object's outer casing," said Alice. "However, that is due to the limitations of the technology they had at their disposal."
"Indeed. From what I can recall, the outer casing of the unidentified object was made from an extremely durable element, not an alloy," said Ironwood. He recalled the basic terminology that Hammond had elucidated the day before. "The element they discovered displays extraordinary tensile strength and hardness. It also has an extremely high melting point. Of course, such a thing is not outside the realm of possibility."
"Of course, General. And what do you think of the other researchers?" asked Winter.
"Well, they are obviously the best researchers in the nation. Most of them have been awarded the Golden Scepter for contributions done in their particular fields. The finest minds in Atlas," said Ironwood. He sighed sadly. "Though that is by no means a guarantee that they are able to easily comprehend the alien technology. The fact that some of our researchers are able to understand it at all is quite impressive, considering the apparent complexity of the technology. But most, if not all of the information they understand is virtually useless at this point."
"Would it be best to publicly reveal the image, considering the…physical differences between the creature and regular humans?"
There was a long pause on the other end.
"There is an old proverb, Winter," said James. "When on the hunt for a snake, causing a disturbance in the grass will likely cause the snake to be alerted to your presence, and thus the snake will flee. What is the moral of this story, Winter?"
It was an easy one.
"That one must not act rashly and alert the enemy, General. But the strategy I proposed may be logically sound. Given Vale's large population, the creature will not be able to hide for long."
"And what do you propose we do in conjunction with publicly revealing the creature's identity?" asked Ironwood.
"We could…request an audience with the creature. Find out why it's here, in exchange for useful information. Quid pro Quo, so to speak."
"Perhaps. But we know next to nothing about him, his origins, and the purpose behind his coming to Remnant," said Ironwood. "Alice has re-checked the data and run a few more simulations. As you may recall, she informed the council yesterday that the creature is possibly several times stronger than the average huntsman. That makes it a significant security risk to the people of Atlas and Vale. We need to gather more information at the moment before making any big decisions. We don't know its motives, its exact strength, its abilities, its intelligence, as well as several other variables. Therefore, we shouldn't make any decisions that would endanger the lives of the people and key personnel."
"Affirmative, General," said Winter.
"But to be certain, we will first have to answer two questions: Why — and how — did the lights go out? Why didn't the surveillance cameras stop working?" said James. "I believe the solution to many of my — and the council's questions lies in the answers of those two."
The boy who would be king
520 hours, 5th Axial Rotation of Joo'Lie, Valean Time
Western Sector, Commercial District, Vale
The boy awoke early in the morning, long before the break of dawn.
He had awoken with a start. Dirt trails of the tears whose origin he could not discern streaked down the length of his face, and his hearts were hammering against his chest.
And then the memories of that dream rushed back to him. That perfect voice. Those creatures, that species struck from the light of its former glory.
The boy rose from the cold concrete. He patted the dust off his sweat-soaked clothes. The boy hears the voices in the distance. The city was stirring, stirring in its bed.
He felt it again. The hunger returns, more spiteful than ever.
The boy clutches his abdomen in newfound anguish. His ribcage stretches his pale skin as he breathes the humid air, and the boy sets off, intuition guiding his mind as he navigates the concrete labyrinth.
After a couple of turns, the boy emerges from the darkness of the alley, into the tar clad street where the light of the lamppost reigns. This street was different from the one he had called home the night before.
There was a dead end to the right, at which the river of tar culminated in a large shophouse.
And then he saw it. There was a massive crater in the middle of the road, as though a bomb had been set off. There were chunks of debris strewn around the battlefield, and the boy could see the raw earth through the ugly wound.
From Dust till Dawn was the name of the shop name, it seemed, from the rustic coppery font engraved as a heading.
Through the shattered sea-blue windows, the boy could see plastic packets and half-depleted glass tubes containing the all-important source of energy known as Dust. Armed robbery? That seemed the most probable answer to this conundrum. Police tap had been set up around the scene, cordoning off the areas of interest to the boy.
The boy gnashed his teeth in anger at the injustice. How he wished that he'd been there to stop the crime. But there were more pressing issues at the moment. He needed food, and he needed food now.
The harsh iron railings bit into the boy's supple palms, and the cold wind stirred his ragged hair. The ladder's mechanism was deciphered with but a glance and the boy inched up the rusted thing with backbreaking speed. He heaved himself over the ledge, gripping the flat concrete rooftop with the force of a hydraulic press.
The slumbering city that lay before him was a beautiful sight to behold. An amalgamation of traits that distinguished man from beast, and man from man. The dark outlines of spires rose above the low-dwelling gable roofs, and the boy recognized the basic schematic of the street where the library was located. It was a few hundred meters away, and the boy finished computing the optimum path to reach there a nanosecond later.
The boy also recognized the street where the weapon store from yesterday could be found. As his eyes traced the faint outline of the street to the store's approximate location, he was surprised to see that it was open.
Hopping down from the building, his sandaled feet absorbing the brunt of the impact, the boy returned to navigating the streets once again. There didn't appear to be any restaurants in the distance, or rather, any that he could see. But then again, how would he be able to pay for the food?
The boy clenched his teeth in frustration and agony as his stomach knotted on itself and groaned with need. The lack of water, however, was not an issue. Interspersed throughout the city were public water coolers. The boy was cautious at first, of the purity of the fluid it offered, but after a round of sampling, he was filled with a newfound conviction of unknown source that the water was safe. There were trace elements other than liquid water in the fluid, but they were not harmful — at least in their current levels.
Suddenly, the boy's sharp eyes seized the image of something shiny in the distance. A vending machine. It was filled with food — junk food of lacklustre nutritional value. It was better than nothing; it could at least sate his hunger. The boy crossed the road. It was deathly silent here — not a soul had been seen since he awoke, and only the illumination of the streetlight and the shattered moon bore down on the city.
The boy was against stealing, but that conviction had no reign over extenuating circumstances such as this. There was a rush of hot saliva. It dripped onto the dusty brick pavement and sizzled.
The moonlight glinted from a thousand and seventy-five shards of glass. The psychic blast of pressurized air was stronger than expected. Many if not all of the potato chips in the machine were reduced into crumbs, and their packages had been shredded, burst at the seams. That didn't matter to the boy; he retrieved a single large packet of chips and poured its contents into his mouth. And another one. And then another one.
As quickly as he had arrived, the boy departed. But for a fraction of a second, he felt something soft and mushy underneath his sandals. Losing his balance, the boy fell onto the rough grey concrete floor, and he felt a sharp pain that emanated from his palms as he tried to support himself.
He had fallen over.
It was a banana peel. He had slipped on a banana peel. What were the odds?
The boy cursed his misfortune, but he found it funny not to laugh. The scrapes on his palm had already begun to heal. New flesh emerged from the superficial injury as a process that took a day or two was shortened to a span of seconds. The boy grunted in annoyance and rose from the ground.
Just as he did so, something perched atop the branches of a lamp post caught his eye.
It was a crow. A large one at that. Unlike others, its eyes were a sharp cherry red.
And it was staring at him.
The bird was silent, and the boy was slightly perturbed by its behaviour. More disturbing still were its eyes. The cherry-red orbs were glazed over, the eyes of a corpse atop its funeral pyre.
And then he noticed it.
It had no heartbeat.
The conclusion was frightening.
The 'crow' appeared to have been aware of the fact that it was at the centre of the boy's focus; with a flap of its shiny black wings, it began to fly away towards the roof of a nearby apartment complex. Its movements were so natural, so inconspicuously true to the natural chaos of muscle motion, but the boy saw through the façade at first sight, or rather, at the first hearing.
Automaton!
The boy's placid form exploded into quicksilver action. Faster than lightning, he grabbed a large fragment of the chipped concrete pavement. Adrenaline spiked his blood. His fingers wrapped loosely around its chalky surface. It was hard. He was sure of that.
Time seeped like resin. The boy made a series of intuitive calculations as a computer would decide the angle of an artillery cannon.
The stone moved faster than thought, a deadly brick-red blur of matter. There was a puff of black feathers and a glint of grey metal. Something large and sharp flashed through the air and smashed the rock into hundreds of fine pebbles.
The boy reared his head in surprise.
He saw the weapon. It was a massive, tapered sword, longer than the average man was tall. The boy saw it leave its owner's hand—
—There was a tremendous bang as it pierced the air, covering a dozen meters in an instant, a silver lance in the darkness before daybreak.
But the boy was already moving.
He sidestepped the sword with a speed unmatched by most huntsmen, and it was embedded several inches into the road, several meters away. One thing was certain — it would have been a murderous wound.
It was a man. The crow had transformed into a man who now stood atop the sword's hilt. His incredulity was dressed in the skin of a stoic.
He was draped in a familiar smell. It might have been imperceptible to the ordinary man, but the boy was a breed apart.
Of all the myriad possibilities, the boy did not expect this.
A shapeshifter.
The man rushed him at impossible speeds. The boy dodged his blade again, but just barely.
"Did the girl Ruby tell you of this? Of me?" asked the boy.
The man's eyes widened in shock.
"How did you know?" asked the man.
"I can smell her scent on your clothes," said the boy. His voice was all sibilance and subtlety in an accent the huntsman did not recognize. The man furrowed his brows in disgust at what he said.
"Why are you here? Why are you here on Remnant? What are you?" cried Qrow.
Without warning, the huntsman sprang forward, covering a dozen meters in the blink of an eye. His blade swept out murderously at the boy's midriff with enough force to bisect him, but the boy's body lurched backwards, narrowly avoiding his untimely death.
Lightning quick, the boy wrenched a rod of iron that supported a nearby railing from its foundations. It was a crude, deadly thing. Moving with terrifying speed, the boy struck out at him, and the killing point of the crude stiletto stopped just shy of Qrow's throat.
The huntsman's eyes widened in fear. The boy's arms had moved lithely and with a fluidity beyond the capabilities of a huntsman. The boy frowned in frustration. The expression was genuine. His grip did not falter, however.
"I don't know. The earliest memory I have is of waking up inside the pod. You have to trust me."
There was a long pause. Qrow searched desperately for an opening. There was none.
"How do I know if you're telling the truth?"
"The fact that I am unable to prove my honesty is predicated upon the circumstances of my arrival," said the boy. "In other words, there is no reason for you to trust me, and there is no way that I can convince you otherwise. For all you know, I could be lying to you. About everything. The same could be said of you. But this is not how it ends. Not in bloodshed."
The boy studied the man's face. Sorrow and uncertainty lurked in his vermillion eyes. The boy listened to the rising thunder of his heart and beheld the widening of his dilated pupils. The boy could smell something, and with an impossible, instinctual clarity he knew what it was.
Fear. The man was afraid. Afraid of him.
The boy lowered the makeshift dagger on purpose.
"Then why did you throw the rock at me?" said Qrow. "You knew."
"It was never my intention to injure you. If it had been an ordinary bird, I would not have killed anyone, only a bird. If it was a reconnaissance device engineered by the Atlas Institute of Technology to track me down, then all the better. As far as I know, no shapeshifting semblances have been catalogued in the official record of semblances," the boy said. He paused. "How do I know if this conversation is not being recorded by some device? How do I know if you have not engineered this scenario? What master do you serve?"
The boy's eyes narrowed.
"Fine, I believe you for now. You can count on me that it isn't. Listen, I just want to talk-"
The boy cut him off. "And what is the weight of a stranger's words, especially to one such as I? Do I have to pry the microphone from your bleeding corpse?"
Qrow's heartbeat quickened at the sound of the boy's words. His grip on Harbinger's hilt tightened, but something about the boy told Qrow that it was a battle he could not win.
"No, I promise!" cried Qrow. "I believe you!"
He sheathed the massive weapon and gestured towards the boy. He emptied his pockets and rotated his body a full 360 degrees. There was nothing.
"Now do you believe me when I say that this conversation is not being recorded?"
"Precisely my point."
"Huh?"
"Be honest: who sent you to spy on me?" whispered the boy. His voice was softer now.
"Nobody! I came because I wanted to watch over my niece when she went out shopping for dust. She got into trouble at the dust shop as there was a robbery and then she managed to chase off the robbers," said Qrow.
"Is your niece Ruby?"
Qrow swallowed. "Yes."
A cold gust of wind sent a shiver down his spine.
"Were you watching over Ruby at the time of the robbery?" asked the boy.
"No, I wasn't," said Qrow.
There was a hot flash of anger, more piercing than a laser and more luminous than the death throes of a star in the boy's cold black eyes. It was so fleetingly faint, but Qrow spotted it, nevertheless.
"Is your niece at home?" asked the boy.
"Yes, she is."
"Then why are you still here?"
"I was at the bar," said the huntsman. The story was not very believable, and Qrow remembered how annoyed he was when Ruby stayed shopping, even at night, against his advice.
"Why did you come and spy on me?"
"I was curious about what she told me. I wondered if what she told me was true, that you were really the alien," said Qrow.
"Alien. Perhaps whether or not I am an alien will be the subject of a philosophical debate reserved for another day," mused the child.
"I saw you…sleeping on the floor," said Qrow.
"Why didn't you kill me then?"
"Kill you?" scoffed Qrow. "Why would I want to kill a child? You are…beautiful."
The boy was silent.
"When did you start following me?"
"When you woke up."
"How did you know that I woke up?"
The dialectic was draining every drop of legitimacy Qrow's story had.
"I…um, saw you wake up," said the huntsman.
"And when did you first see me?"
"Yesterday, at around eleven in the evening."
"And what is the time now?"
"Five forty-six in the morning."
"How did you know if I was going to wake up?"
"I didn't. I arrived at three in the morning and saw that you were still asleep."
The boy did not say anything. He simply nodded. There was a long pause.
"Walk."
"What?"
"Start walking in this direction," said the boy, gesturing ahead. "And then turn left at that bend."
"O-Okay! Sure!"
The two walked briskly down the street. A space of five meters lay between them.
Qrow could cover that distance in 20 milliseconds and slice his head off if he wanted to. The boy could not move with such speed, but there was no guarantee that he could not react to and dodge such an attack. Qrow was certain that the boy had not unlocked his aura, and as such he was especially vulnerable to sharp objects such as his sword. That was perhaps why he had hitherto attempted to dodge all of his attacks.
No, he thought. It was too big of a risk. The boy could move with speed comparable to that of a veteran huntsman's, but he could not sense an upper limit to the boy's reaction time. Was he on par with the maidens? Ozpin? Higher still?
Whatever the number was, it was definitely higher than his.
"So…um…where are we going?" asked Qrow.
The boy did not give a direct reply.
"What is your name?"
Qrow hesitated. Information was valuable, and there was no doubt that the boy would ask some more. It was all his fault, really, that the surveillance effort had been discovered. If he had only kept his distance, the boy would not have had the misfortune of slipping on the banana peel, and he would not have been discovered. The huntsman clenched his fists in anger. Perhaps more information could be gathered if he spoke to the creature personally.
"Name's Qrow."
The boy giggled. Undoubtedly, his laughter was genuine, but it was the strangest sound Qrow had ever heard. The reaction was primal — every hair on Qrow's arms stood up, and adrenaline spiked his blood. It was not the laughter of a child, it was just…wrong. There was a wrongness to his voice, plain and simple.
"Was that really your name?"
The laughter ended suddenly. Any hints of humor had disappeared.
"Yes! It's spelled K-R-O-W."
"I see. That's an odd name," mused the boy. "Though not unheard of, given the wide onomastic variety in these regions."
"It…is."
There was a long pause as they walked down the street, with the boy directing Qrow's every move from behind.
"So, where are we going?"
"Nowhere in particular," said the boy. "Ask me some questions."
"What?"
"Ask me some questions."
It was usually the other way around. Or so, that was what Qrow had imagined.
Atlas had a few protocols for the scenario he was caught up in, but he was not currently gathering information for Atlas. He could think of a few options, of course. He could escape if the creature ran slower than him. He could possibly kill the creature — the limit to its speed and strength had not yet been established, but it was able to casually dodge his attack. It appeared as though the researcher Alice Lockwood's report could be correct.
"So, um…what's…your name?" asked Qrow.
There was a pause.
"I thought Ruby told you that," said the boy.
"She did?" said Qrow, feigning surprise. "Oh, yeah. Number eight, right? Does that mean there's a number one? How about two?"
This was something the boy had considered in the past. He had never given it much thought, however, though the implication of the serial number was that others like him existed.
"I hope so."
There was another long pause after the words.
"So, what do you think the government would want to do with you?"
"Information."
He didn't know the exact answer to that either. Several variables were at play here. A few hypotheticals were the most logical. They wanted information — that was obvious. He could empathize with that.
What concerned him was the type of information they wanted. From what he had heard, his arrival upon the planet had, for all intents and purposes, been a surprise. Their opinions of his purpose were crucial in assessing the threat they posed.
In other words, if they viewed him as an enemy, they would surely treat him as such. Did they view him as a weapon? An insurgent? Surely, those responsible for sending him here must have known that the process of re-entry was anything but subtle. If they wanted to wipe out the planet's population, deploying a vector of disease would be a more effective solution.
A conundrum indeed.
There was a method to this madness. There had to be, out of logical necessity, a grand plan to his existence as a designed being, a purpose to his existence upon this planet. The boy reasoned that it would be the height of ignorance to stumble upon a watch in a desert and not question the reasons behind its contrivance and the evident manifestation of design. Yet it would not be so to stumble upon a rock and be assured that there was no purpose, however infinitesimal, to its existence. The same principle applied to him and the circumstances of his arrival.
And yet, as the boy probed the depths of his embryonic memories, there was no reason to be found. There was only one place where knowledge did not know a priori could exist.
The pod. He had to get back to the pod. But to his knowledge, the place where it had been held was heavily guarded, deep within the city of Atlas. He'd have to get there quickly.
Qrow knew that there would be a surveillance camera aimed directly at this bend on the opposite side. He got ready to transform when they arrived. The boy was fast, but he was experienced in these types of situations. He was sure that the boy would pursue him — directly into the snare of the camera.
Ten seconds.
Nine seconds.
The pair walked at a steady pace on the brick pavement. The bend was near.
Eight seconds.
Six seconds.
Four seconds.
Two seconds.
The boy could see the anxiety soiling the man's clothes and the hair rising on the skin of his nape. The pulse of his heart quickened. Something was going on, but he did not know what.
One second.
Qrow turned first.
The boy saw the glint of metal from the camera, that fine metallic bezel.
Qrow dashed, running faster than he ever had in his life. He heard the boy curse in a tongue he could not understand.
There was a mighty bang. Qrow witnessed the destruction of the camera. It exploded the instant he began to run. He saw the shards of metal and glass and silicon circuitry falling in slow motion. He saw the flash of the electric arc pulsing through the ionized air.
He flew faster than he ever had in the arcane simulacrum, never turning back.
Something long and dark shot past him. He did not dare to look at it, though he had a good idea as to what it was.
When he had flown for a whole thirty seconds, Qrow turned back to look at the ground.
The boy was gone.
Night, 5th Axial Rotation of Joo'Lie, Atlesian Time
Main Building, Atlas Institute of Technology
Alice loved the view from the top of the researcher dormitory. By virtue of the fact that the dormitories were situated at the top of the institute's building, it was also the view from the top of the building that she enjoyed.
The institute's domination of the education district skyline had no purpose other than necessity. By 80 AGW, the city of Atlas was saturated with skyscrapers, and there was nowhere left to build but into the heavens. All of the departments had to be fused into a single, massive building. The facility boasted state-of-the-art safety mechanisms designed to isolate and neutralize any biological and chemical hazards. Of course, the facilities containing the most dangerous of these agents were built and maintained off-site.
Alice's hands were cold. The iron railing they gripped was freezing. The view up here, of the myriad colours and raucous advertisements that were a faint whisper to her, was truly spectacular. She could see for miles and miles across the horizon, but it was the view of the night sky that mattered the most to her.
Her coat flapped in the wind. Alice did not mind the cold that diffused through her pyjamas and crept up her thin legs. She stared off, upwards, into the stars.
There was a certain quality to this view. Alice could not describe it lucidly — the matter was an emotional one. A disconnect between herself and the world below. Something about the view — those tiny skyscrapers that stood below in perfect harmony, those cheery lights that tinted the air blue, and the distant stars sprinkled across the void above — made her feel sad. And yet, she enjoyed this sadness. This bittersweet melancholy.
There was a sound behind her. Alice turned and saw who it was.
"Oh, it's you…You always seem to know where to find me…"
"All huntsmen have been trained in the art of tracking. But then again, we huntsmen aren't at the liberty to know the emotional states of the creatures we hunt," said Augustus. His voice was somber, as though he was deep in thought.
Alice gave him a rueful grin.
"How are you here?" she asked.
"I've finished my daily report. There is fresh information — one of Ironwood's spies had a brief encounter with the creature," said Augustus, approaching the biologist. He leaned against the railing and his gaze panned out across the city.
"What happened?" asked Alice. This certainly piqued her interest.
"He got into a fight with the creature."
"Not much of a spy then, is he?"
"Top of the line huntsman. Professor at an undisclosed academy. Excellent at gathering information. He has a peculiar semblance that grants him stealth capabilities, or so I've heard," said Augustus.
"Then how did he get caught?" teased Alice.
"I wouldn't know exactly, not until Ironwood tells me what that semblance is. But the point is, he got too close, and somehow the creature noticed him."
"How did he get noticed?" asked Alice.
"Don't know," said Augustus. "It just did."
"And then what happened?"
"The huntsman defended himself and counterattacked," explained Augustus. "The creature fought back and almost killed him. Don't know why he did so. First thing he should have done was escape. But then again, he wasn't on official duty at the time, so Atlas had no jurisdiction over him."
"How fast is it?"
"Well, nobody died. The huntsman told Ironwood, who told me and the specialist Schnee that the creature was extremely fast. Freakishly fast reactions and combat speed, but nothing outlandish in terms of movement speed. It easily sidestepped an attack from the huntsman that broke the sound barrier. After dodging another of the huntsman's attacks, the creature counterattacked before the huntsman could even react."
"What did it use?"
"A makeshift dagger. Iron. Enough to cause some serious injuries," said Augustus.
"Other abilities?" asked Alice.
"Hmm, now that I think of it, there was something special. I was told that the huntsman noticed the camera going off. It exploded."
"Interesting. I would ask the council to elucidate the causal relationship between the creature and the explosion, but I presume they have not a clue?" asked Alice. Augustus nodded his head. "How did the huntsman escape? I'll be sure to ask Ironwood plenty of questions later. "
"They talked for a while. The huntsman had to fabricate a story as to why he was spying on it. He said the creature was extremely intelligent and spoke with the vocabulary of an adult even though it appeared to be a seven-year-old child. The huntsman also gave the creature a fake name, but he doesn't believe that the creature bought it. The huntsman said that it probably didn't catch on due to the homonymous nature of the name," said Augustus. "What an idiot. Should've escaped the first chance he got. He escaped in the end."
"I see. Homonymous as in…"
"Yes," confirmed Augustus.
"Ah, I see," said Alice. She stared at Augustus' shirt for a while. Alice clenched her jaw, and her face turned red.
A few seconds later, they burst out laughing.
"What did you expect was going to happen? That I would come up with the huntsman's name? It's impossible for me to brute-force the calculation with my pre-existing neuroarchitecture anyways. Nor am I able to make an educated guess of the identity of this huntsman."
"Even an eidetic memory has its limits. Unless you're trying extremely hard to pretend you are human," said Augustus.
"I've successfully fooled you for more than a decade," giggled Alice. "And so has the rest of the populace been fooled by the authorities. The world will soon know that the Super Scientist Alice Lockwood is actually an Artificial Superintelligence."
"Not unless you wish to play a game of semantics," said Augustus. "Then whatever abomination the AIT cooks up in their labs can be called human."
Alice chuckled. "Do you happen to know the name of this huntsman?"
"No. It's beyond 'top-secret' information," said Augustus, finger quoting 'top-secret'. Alice giggled at the implications of his gesture.
"Hmm. I've always suspected the existence of such a clearance level," said the biologist. "By definition, the most stringent clearance level is 'top-secret'. I suppose the Atlesian bureaucracy's ineptitude in logico-philosophical matters really shines in this one."
The Specialist laughed, and Alice's gaze panned out over the twinkling city below.
A heavy sigh escaped her chapped lips. "It's beautiful. An amalgamation of human effort. Order and peace, a social construct. Evidence of sociability in the human species."
"An elegant façade draped over the basal instincts of humanity. It is the latest iteration of an unending cycle of emotional cladistics. We are, after all, extremely good at adapting," said Augustus. "As long as the means justify the ends."
There was a long pause as Alice looked to the stars. She could see them clearly, in spite of the extensive light pollution nearby.
She laid a hand on her friend's wrist. Augustus recoiled at the touch.
It was as cold as ice.
"Your cynicism was much uncalled for," she murmured. "Cladistics. The classification of organisms in clades, whereby a clade is a group based on the most recent common ancestor. You used it figuratively, I see. I don't remember teaching you the meaning of that word."
"I learned it on my own," said Augustus.
"Hmm. The rhetorician in you is showing," grumbled Alice. "Using terms you don't fully comprehend the meaning of. The way you used it reminded me of the obscurantist abuse of scientific terminology by philosophers long dead. Don't ever do that again."
Augustus sighed. "There is no such thing as a perfect analogue, Alice. Emotional cladistics. Emotional phylogeny. Emotional evolution. The nuances are so minute that nobody gives a damn. The reason we use analogies to convey ideas is that we tend to rely on our intuition to interpret phenomena such as that which I just described."
"My point stands," said Alice. There was a moment of unspoken tension between the two. They shivered as a frigid gust of wind blasted them full in their contrasting frames.
"You ever wonder what it's like on the moon?"
"I think we've had this conversation before," came the reply from Augustus.
"Have we? Hmm, I think we did…a year after we met. We never got to finish the conversation, I think," said Alice, sighing. "I've always wanted to go to the moon. I wish I could go there someday and live there. Away from all…this."
Alice's tone darkened on the last word. She looked down at the cityscape, and Augustus followed her gaze. She drew closer to her friend. He was taller than her by a little, and his body was warm, unlike her's.
"Will you come with me to the moon, friend?" she asked, drawing closer to him.
"Now there's this…incident. I'm scared of the implications, Alice. I really am," said Augustus. "The stars may not be as friendly as we thought they were."
"I know that's how you feel. Because it is exactly how I feel at this instant. The insignificance. The indifference on a cosmic scale," said Alice, her voice trembling with emotion. A lone tear slid down the side of her cheek. Augustus turned and saw that her eyes were teary and red.
"Will you come with me to the moon?"
Augustus smiled. He pulled her closer and ruffled her lank hair, and they looked up to the stars in unison.
"Of course I will. I'll be with you forever and wherever you are."
AN: It sure is interesting to see the situation evolve on the Atlesian side. Everyone has their own ideas about the incident, and all of them are wrong, to some degree.
Below are a few notes I've written after reading the reviews.
I. A few replies to dispel any doubts:
Q: Why is Slaanesh involved?
A: We should understand the duality of the concept that Slaanesh represents. A certain facet of this dual nature will be important in the upcoming installments, but I'd be venturing into spoiler territory if I gave a more in-depth explanation.
Q: Why is Alice able to understand the primarch's anatomy?
A: We're talking about exascale computing here, as well as the ability to simulate the development of organs (this is possible in the present day on a protein level, by the way). Alice has the help of futuristic Atlesian technology. Sequencing the genome of a Primarch is a piece of cake for the Atlesians, but understanding its anatomy is a whole different game. She hasn't the faintest inkling of the functions of several of the organs, let alone how the body functions as a whole, even with the help of her assistants, and her understanding of the human organ analogues is flawed at best. For example, her estimate of the primarch's strength is far off, among many other things. Still, she's the best researcher in this particular field on the planet, and she'll be crucial in the development of the plot in the future.
II. On the trajectory of this story, no, this isn't going to be that stupid Primarch-joins-Beacon-and-befriends-RWBY-and-JNPR-fanfic-etc. etc. storyline. The central theme of this story is 'Unification'. Interpret however you'd like, but I'm going with the classical tale of the Primarch's conquest of the world he landed on.
III. Power-scaling. Here's an important topic.
According to a bunch of calculations I found on SpaceBattles, named RWBY characters (with the obvious exception of the Maidens, Ozma, Salem, and the Gods, are generally capable of travelling at subsonic speeds in the 60 – 200 m/s ballpark. Their reactions and combat speed are in the supersonic to hypersonic range, given that they are able to casually dodge/block bullets at melee ranges. They also have an output in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of joules, and the ability to create large craters. I'll be using this, then.
IV. On a final note, I'd like to thank some of my reviewers for their thoughtful and eloquent reviews. You know who you are.
Also, the ending to this chapter was largely symbolic. It's quite the antithesis of the Grimdark theme, if you ask me.
See you all in two weeks!