Wayne's consciousness was a haze without the chems, which was a rather severe problem considering that the only source of them was the shit he'd packed in his bag, and the few he had in reserve at his home. Normally, he'd just head to the lab and make his own brew, but considering there weren't any of the flora and fauna common to the Wasteland here on Remnant, that wasn't an option either.
Leave it to his luck to end up addicted to chems and worlds away from the nearest dose.
"Wayne!" Clair practically screamed from the cockpit of the now-landed vertibird, frustration and concern in equal measure etched into her features. From the look of things, she'd been shouting at him for quite a while now.
He blinked once, twice, then three times before turning to look at her. "Yeah?"
"What the hell is wrong with you? You've been acting off since you got aboard the Bullhead."
Oh, so they called them 'Bullheads' here. Good to know.
"I just need some time alone, is all," he replied. "Past couple of days have been a workout."
Clair didn't seem to buy that, at least not at first. She looked just about ready to yell at him, but softened when she got a good look at him. The pause before she spoke was long and deep, and it was obvious that she wanted to contest him, but couldn't bring herself to.
"I understand," she said, in a way that made it clear that she didn't, though she wanted to. "The lady needs to talk to you when she returns, and Adam as well. We weren't supposed to play our hand this early, but we'll find a way to make it work for us. If you need to rest, then you need to rest."
Wayne nodded, slowly pulling himself free from his seat and trying to keep the nausea and disorientation under control. It was a fruitless effort—he settled for sitting upright and leaving it at that.
"There's something I need from my house," Wayne stated. "Can you take me there?"
"We are here," Clair replied. "I had Grei come with as much medical supplies as we could spare to help you with your injuries. Aura does a lot of good, but it's not a fix-all."
Wayne gave a gruff grunt in reply and once again attempted to disembark from the Vertibird, managing to find his feet with only a little bit of stumbling. Once he'd assured himself he wasn't going to fall over, vomit, or both, he turned back to look at both of the Clairs in both of the Vertibirds swimming through his vision right now, and offered her a thumbs up, one that they returned as the engines started to spin up again. Where she was going to hide that thing, he wasn't sure. Right now, there was a case of Addictol calling his name. It wouldn't cure his addiction, he knew that from Pre-and-Post- war experiences, but he knew it would take the edge off the withdrawals. He had at least ten doses for emergencies, which would be enough to, ideally, carry him through the withdrawal period for Psycho and leave only the Med-X to deal with. He had been through that before, when he first got out of the service, but the military had weaned him off of Psycho. Good thing, too. He'd seen what the withdrawals did to some of his fellow veterans while on duty.
Grei, the girl with the antenna, looked about ready to kill Wayne when he stumbled through the door, said antennas twitching violently from one side to the other.
"Scared the shit out of us, you know, dude," she stated, giving him a once-over. "You're lucky that crazy bitch sees something valuable in you. Otherwise, you'd be dead."
"Yeah, yeah," Wayne agreed. "Let me be, would ya?"
"'Oh, let me be to mope mysteriously about like I do everywhere I go, ooooooh'" Grei sarcastically crooned, making an idiotic face that Wayne was absolutely sure he'd never made. "Seriously, man, fuck. What happened at the tower?"
"Cinder ditched me and left me to get caught out by Ironwood and his band of merry men," Wayne explained, digging into the medicine cabinet until he found it. Sweet, sweet Addictol, his only release. "They busted up my knee. Ozpin and his new best friend tried to interrogate me, I accidentally-on-purpose caused them to argue, Clair busted me out and gave me an Aura. Now, I'm taking my medicine and going the fuck to sleep for the next twenty-four hours. I've had a long couple of days."
"Your medicine, huh?" Grei asked, incredulous.
"My fucking chems, what do you want me to do?" Wayne asked, throwing his hands up and unintentionally causing his head to swim even further. "Fuck!"
"Chems?" Grei repeated, angry and confused in equal measure. "The hell's a chem?"
"Drugs, you dumb bug! DRUGS! I am addicted to drugs!" Wayne shouted, before it dawned on him through the pounding in his head and the fog that covered his thoughts. "Oh, shit, I'm addicted to drugs."
"Dumb bug- you little shit! I oughta- wait, you're addicted to drugs!?"
"No, I just said it to get a reaction out of you, what do you think I said?"
Grei's anger was now laced with an uncomfortable amount of concern, all too familiar. "So that's it, huh? That's why you always look half-dead, it's because you're halfway to an OD, huh?"
"I'm plenty practiced enough not to die," Wayne replied tersely.
"Until the day you miscount your doses and fucking die, but hey, better than being here, right?" Grei asked. "Fuck me, dude, what are you thinking?"
"Thinking about how I don't have my chems," Wayne answered, finally acquiescing to reality. "I have some stuff to wean myself off, but the fact is that I'm better off high." With that said, Wayne dug into the medicine cabinet, finally finding a bit of Addictol and dosing up, the chemical sting in the back of his throat bringing tears to his eyes as he inhaled the entirety of the drug, hoping that it wasn't too late to cut off most of the worst parts of Psycho withdrawal.
"What's so bad that you have to be drugged out of your mind to be 'better', huh?" Grei was getting angry again. "Were you like this where you're from, too, or is this a new development?"
"I think you're asking too many questions," Wayne warned her, managing to pull himself together enough to look and sound mildly threatening. He was now seeing exactly one Grei, and was able to move relatively quickly without feeling like he was going to empty his stomach on the floor, which meant he was good enough to probably get in a tussle with the girl if she insisted on it. Not that he wanted to. His knee still hurt like a mother. "Why are you even here, just to play babysitter?"
"I'm here to help you with your injuries and make sure you're in one piece for when everything is said and done in Vale," Grei explained. "So, yeah, I am your babysitter until everyone else gets back. Plus, we figured that Jimmy Steelplanks would've given you a couple of new holes. Guessing I was right—even after you just took whatever the fuck that is, you're limping bad. Was it just the knee?"
"Right shoulder, and right across the back too," Wayne replied. "Some kid with a scythe cut me up good. Not too worried about the second, though, the shoulder cut was deep."
"I'll take a look at it. Shirt off, go sit on your bed. Don't worry—I know my stuff."
Wayne sighed, and went to comply, stepping out of the common area of the house and into the little awning that constituted his bedroom, throwing off his jacket, then his shirt, leaving them across his now-useless bedside terminal. He was getting thinner, he noted. He'd been a rather large guy when he stepped out of the Vault- before he was put on ice he had three square meals today and kept a rigorous exercise regimen, and while he didn't get nearly the nutrition he did back then, the exercise was almost identical. He went from a broad, burly tank to more of a lean, trim muscle car, and now, the analogy seemed to be carrying more towards those ugly one-seater nuclear racers he'd seen in Indiana, shaped like darts and looking like they'd go up in a mushroom cloud if you breathed on them funny.
The analogy was starting to become a rather uncomfortable one, so Wayne dropped it as Grei returned, dropping a couple of bags on the bed and giving him a quick once-over.
"Damn," she muttered, antennae twitching slightly. "You've been through the wringer, huh?"
She wasn't talking about the shoulder or back, that was for sure. Wayne was basically a patchwork man, now. The war cost him some skin and bone, sure, a divot in his hip from a Chinese rifle, a scar across his nose from an infiltrator's knife. The Wasteland, though, had been a far harsher taskmaster. Latticed blade and bullet wounds lined both sides of his torso, his arms were scored with gashes and stitches from wounds long past, and his bottom lip had a noticeable scar down to the jaw from where a Super Mutant had given him the business end of a nail board. His right leg had a deep set of scars from where a Deathclaw had gotten a piece of him through his old Brotherhood-issued T-60, and another deep line from where he took a long fall and had a nasty break.
"You could say that," Wayne replied. 'The wringer' was an apt description. He was pretty much wrang dry.
"Well, I'll focus on fixing what I can fix," Grei said, reaching into one of the bags and pulling out some bandages and a bottle of disinfectant. "Let's start with that leg."
When Wayne awoke, the sun was slowly passing the horizon, the sky a ruddy orange that almost matched the trees surrounding his abode. Grei had dressed his wounds with relative swiftness before leaving him to rest, and oh, he'd slept like the dead. The Addictol was still going strong in his system, and the lack of residual malaise from month after month of chem dependency made him wonder how he'd ever functioned high. Still, there was a nagging voice in the back of his head reminding him that he'd been through this cycle before, and the moment the Addictol wore off, he'd be basically nonfunctional until he got his fix again, and that fix was what made him the savior of the Commonwealth. Trying to escape his vices when there was work to be done would only make the task at hand that much harder. There was always tomorrow, and the day after that.
For now, though, as far as he knew, he had no task to complete. He'd done his part at that tower, and he'd managed to survive it, despite Cinder's best efforts to ensure the contrary. What had once been blistering, all-consuming rage had simmered, and was now a cold spike lodged in Wayne's head, never budging or diminishing. He remembered every detail of that short-lived brawl, and if Cinder had the balls to try and come by to explain herself, she'd get both barrels. From what it sounded like, though, there wasn't much going on in the house. In fact, if Wayne wasn't hearing wrong, there wasn't anybody else even here.
'Perfect. More rest for me.'
Wayne slowly pulled himself from bed, his leg giving him a bit of grief at first, but not so much that he couldn't walk to the fridge and see what of his food was still salvageable. There wasn't much, so he settled for a bowl of Sugar Bombs and a bottle of Nuka-Cherry. It wasn't exactly a king's meal, but it'd take the edge off of the Addictol and his mind off of everything else. Besides, he had some things he wanted to try.
Wayne decided that perhaps thinking about home might be a positive. Sure, the Commonwealth sucked, but maybe there would be some sort of encouraging message from months past that would only draw his attention now, in his hour of need, or maybe he'd just try and play some Red Scare, he didn't give a fuck.
The computer booted up, much to Wayne's surprise, and even seemed to be functioning properly, save for the lost connection to the Sanctuary switchboard. Nothing he could do about that from all the way over here. Instead, he settled on thumbing through his messages until he found something that might pique his interest. Unfortunately, there wasn't much, just a few people here and there that had been checking in on him once in a while. Wayne decided he'd make something, see if it got out.
From: Harbor Terminal 40-A user WSTAFFORD
To: Sanctuary Terminal Network 1 users RMACCREADY, PWRIGHT, CSULLIVAN, CURIE, PGARVEY, JHANCOCK
If this message somehow gets out, I'm alive. Stuck on another planet, apparently, but I'm alive. The teleporter network somehow came online. Get with Tom, fix it, try and send me a message so that I can be ready for you to pull me out. No guarantees.
I want to get the fuck out of here. Bring as much Fixer, Med-X, or Calmex as you can carry.
Wayne.
As expected, hitting the enter key did nothing. Clicking the send button did nothing. All he got were errors stating that he had no connection to the mainframe, which wasn't at all a surprise, but Wayne was still the kind of guy to believe in miracles, even if only by the longest stretch of the word 'belief'.
Letting out a breath he didn't even realize he'd been holding, Wayne turned off the terminal, leaning back in his chair until the rusty, dried-out bearings creaked. His head hurt, his back ached, and his knee felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, but he was alive, and supposedly one step closer to home, as much as he doubted Cinder had any intention of keeping up her end of the bargain. While Clair and Grei had both told him this was Cinder's idea, he couldn't help but wonder why the hell she'd abandoned him in the first place. It was a big risk, leaving someone with no skin in your game but a half-empty promise to take the fall for you, only to bail them out about 24 hours later. Were he not an asshole, he probably could have told Ozpin and Liam everything he knew and been on his way out within half the time. That, or he'd catch a bullet from Ironwood, but either way, he'd be out.
For some reason, he hadn't. Somewhere in his mind he thought that the woman that abandoned him was the safe bet, and for the life of him he didn't know why. Maybe it was just the path of least resistance, but that wasn't true, because giving up and spilling it would have been far less stressful and potentially painful. It could have been loyalty, but he had no reason to be loyal to someone who had just betrayed him.
He wasn't sure what the answer was. Hell, he wasn't even sure how to start asking for it.
Thankfully, something else was there to occupy his attention. Specifically, a knock on the door. Wayne thought he heard something approaching the home, but he wasn't sure in his current state if he could trust that. The knock, however, was loud, clear, and real. Wayne stood up from his seat, not bothering with making himself decent beyond tightening up his belt and putting his holster on, and made his way to the door to find…
"Oh, fuck me…" he muttered, seeing Cinder's little red dress through the splintered boards next to the door. Just when he thought he'd get a few minutes to unwind…
Wayne opened the door to find Cinder standing off to the side, her expression taciturn and indecipherable, while her two shadows, Emerald and Mercury, looked bored to tears. On the latter's shoulder was a large metal crate that he shoved into Wayne's hands without even a word of explanation save for "I'll wait in the truck." Emerald seemed to agree with his decision, and quickly followed suit, leaving Cinder to deal with Wayne's barely-concealed anger.
"You've got some explaining to do," he said, measured and far more restrained than Cinder deserved. He'd killed men for lesser betrayals.
"What is there to explain," Cinder replied. "If I had wanted you dead, I would not have sent that girl back after you. If I am compromised, then our plans fail—you were a convenient scapegoat that allows us to work more covertly. Ironwood and his men are looking for you, now, they won't have the time or resources to pursue the rest of us while we do the hard work. All you have to do is continue to hold Ironwood and Ozpin's attention."
She motioned to the crate in Wayne's hands and offered him The Smirk that she seemed so fond of, that unnerved Wayne no matter how many times he'd seen it. "Still, I can understand your anger. Perhaps it would have been better for me to tell you the plan, but it's far too late now. I wanted to give you something, a way to apologize for the inconvenience. I recall that you wanted proof that I could return you home, no?"
Wayne cocked a brow, his hand on his, as he now noticed, empty holster. That was a bad move. At least he still had his knife in his boot, as much as he didn't want to get in close to those hot hands of Cinder's. He wasn't looking to end up like Madder.
"Yeah, I did," he said. "You got proof?"
"When I said that I would have your answers, I meant it. Open that container, and wait. There's something you're going to want to see."
Wayne didn't trust the container, but it was light. Far too light to be carrying a full-sized bomb. A grenade? Maybe, but with this Aura stuff, a grenade wasn't going to be enough to take him out. Cinder had followed him, too. If it was an explosive, she would have been in the blast radius, so that mostly ruled out that idea. He took it over to the couch, and sat down, placing the box on the floor in front of him and regarding it as one would regard a live, beeping landmine.
"What's in here?" Wayne asked.
"Open it and find out."
"You're really gonna be that way, huh? Fine." Wayne sighed, taking a deep breath to steel himself for whatever lay inside the box, and then, he opened it.
He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but what he saw was far from it.
The thing inside the box was similar to a jellyfish, but all kinds of fucked up, like the creatures he'd run into on his first night on Remnant, black and red and bony and hideous to look at as it slowly floated out of the box and came to rest right in front of his face. This felt like a trap, looked like a trap, and Wayne was very much ready to deal with as a trap as he pulled his foot up and went for his knife.
"Wait a moment, would you?" A woman's voice emerged from the creature in front of him, stopping him with his hand halfway down his boot. The red, foggy cloud in the creature's dome-like 'head' cleared to reveal a woman… but not a woman like the kind he was used to seeing, more of a perversion of what a woman was supposed to like like, with ashen skin marred with pitch-black veins and red eyes with no light or white behind them, blood red against pools of black.
"Wayne," Cinder explained, "you had questions. You may ask, now."
"Let's start with the obvious," Wayne said, backing into the couch as much as he physically could. "Who are you, and what do you want from me?"
"A simple question," The woman replied with an almost motherly smile. "I am Salem, and you have my interest. A man falls from the sky in the city of Vale while another kills three in a back alley, then resurfaces to kill multiple Atlesian soldiers after breaking into one of the world's premier Huntsman Academies. Why wouldn't I want to see you, Wayne? After all… you've already done so much for me, the least I can do is greet you personally."
"So you're Cinder's boss?" Wayne surmised. It seemed like the most likely option, considering she most definitely was talking through the Grimm in front of him, meaning she couldn't be bothered to meet him face to face. Made sense for an overlord type. The real question was what her endgame was. Was it similar to Cinder's? A one-sided rage against the machine, a quest for vengeance? Or was it something else? "The one that can get me home?"
"Given the proper… resources, I can. However, said resources are not in my reach at the moment. Cinder and my other subordinates are searching for them, but for now, Beacon, and what it safeguards, have our attention."
The woman, despite her grisly appearance, was nothing but polite and magnanimous as she made her sales pitch, which somehow unnerved Wayne more than if she'd gone full ham on him. She almost seemed decent, which, compared to his recent company, was a gift from God.
"I'm guessing you want my help, then," Wayne said.
"Your assistance has been thus far invaluable, whether you realize it or not. While I understand you may have reservations about being the target of Atlas' wrath, I assure you that you are more than capable of rising to the task. Cinder will give you whatever resources they can spare to ensure your safety, and with an Aura, you are now more than a match for most mere men. All I ask of you, Wayne, is that you continue to bring your best efforts forth to see our plans to fruition. Do so, and I will ensure that you are rewarded handsomely, and that your return home will be as swift as possible."
It didn't take Wayne long to think about the offer, honestly. True, he didn't trust Cinder any further than he could throw her, and none of her 'friends' were particularly nice, but Salem seemed to be very straightforward about what she wanted done and what she could do. Still, he needed insurance, a way to say, with certainty, that he'd be given what he was owed when the time came. Cinder seemed to think just speaking to Salem would cut it. Wayne disagreed.
"I need insurance," he said. "Proof that you mean what you say. Cinder left me in the lurch to ensure she didn't blow her cover, and I could have gotten killed. I need proof that you're on the level, and that you're going to get me out of here when I hold up my end of the bargain."
Salem simply kept smiling, and nodded. "What would ease your mind?"
"You said that if you had the resources to get me home, you would. How?"
"Myself and my allies are searching for 'the Four Relics', four objects of immense power that were created with the old magic. Two of these relics, I believe, may allow you to return home. The Relic of Knowledge allows one to ask any question, and receive the truth. That would allow us to learn the means by which to return you, whereas the Relic of Creation would allow us to generate the materials needed to facilitate such a transport. We don't need to know anything. We just have to gather those relics."
As odd as it was, it was a plan. More of a plan than anyone on Remnant had given him on how to get him out of here, and that was plenty good enough for him. Creepy as she looked, Salem seemed to have a far better head on her shoulders than any of her subordinates had, and now that he had access to the top of the food chain, Wayne knew where to look if things didn't pan out. He wasn't about to let Cinder, or anyone else, screw him again. Just because he didn't have the chems in his system didn't mean he couldn't deal with someone who tried to pull a fast one on him, even if that person could burn shit to ashes with her hands.
The road home was long, dark, and treacherous, but at least now there was a road, and it had an ending.
"Alright, Salem" Wayne replied. "You've got a deal."
Beacon Academy
The Vault
"This is it, then."
"Yes," Ozpin replied solemnly, both hands on his cane. "This is it. You wanted to see it, and now you will. Go on. I'll be right behind you."
Liam O'Ryan was a pretty simple young man. Ever since he was a boy, the line between good and evil had been drawn clearly for him, both by his father, and by his Father. 'Thou shalt not kill, lie, steal, blaspheme, et cetera' and 'Do no harm' were the axioms on which the young man had begun building his life in Vault 101, and while he hadn't exactly lived up to them, what with the beatings he'd handed the Tunnel Snakes when they tried to hand each other knuckle suppers outside Brotch's classroom, he'd tried, and he'd carried that trying from the Vault he called home into the Wasteland, and while he would never brag about it, he'd like to think that he'd done a pretty good job pleasing the Father Above and his father on Earth, while the man was living.
This, though? This was a bit beyond his usual purvey.
He'd faced some moral quandaries in his time in the Wasteland, but most of them were black and white. Helping Burke blow up Megaton was a no-brainer, he gave the man his right dues the moment he drew on Simms. Paradise Falls? If Liam could have done it any other way, he would have, but he wasn't going to cry over Eulogy Jones' cracked skull. The FEV? He'd have sooner dropped dead. There had been some choices that were harder for him- the Point Lookout situation was a fucking mess from top to bottom, and morality was less a concern than just surviving the whole thing, but he still came out okay, and the Pitt… well, he would hold Ashur to his word, and Ashur knew that very well, Liam hoped.
What Ozpin had told him was far beyond what he'd ever been through. It was one thing to trade your life for something. When Liam walked into Project Purity's irradiated chambers, he didn't think he was going to be walking out again. He'd made peace with that.
From what it sounded like, this lady didn't even have a choice. And whoever got stuck in there was going to have a hell of a choice to make, and just because Ozpin swore up and down he wouldn't force it didn't mean he'd make it a bitch to say no.
Damn that Wayne for getting in his head, and damn him for being right.
Liam placed his bat on his shoulder and looked over the complex machinery that contained the so-called 'Fall Maiden'. The 'maiden' in question was on death's door, by the look of her, kept alive by the machine that kept her locked within, with an identical machine resting on the opposite side of the consoles in the center of the room, connected by a series of long, thick black cables stretching into the ceiling.
He could only let out an awed whistle as he turned back to Ozpin, making his disapproval clear by his expression.
"This looks bad, Oz," he stated.
"I know," Ozpin replied, nodding with a sorrowful look in his eye. "But it is necessary. If her power were to fall into the wrong hands, the results could be catastrophic. Some of it already has, and with events being as they were at the Dance I have reason to believe that whoever tried to kill her has found her again. We cannot allow them to succeed in their plans. They've already done enough damage."
"Aye, that we can agree on," Liam replied, rolling his shoulders and trying his level best to not be intimidated by the scale of things here. He was playing with forces far beyond the usual levels here. He'd seen things here—the average lad or lass his age was slinging around enough firepower to kill a Yao Guai, and that was with their bare hands. He was woefully underprepared for the powers at play on Remnant. He hadn't even brought power armor.
"That is why I need your help, Liam," Ozpin continued, stepping beside the former Vault Dweller and looking to Amber's machine. "You're an outside actor. You can, perhaps, provide insight that we're missing. I have seen…"
The pause was pregnant, imposing, like a third man between Liam and the Headmaster, but eventually, it was broken by a surprisingly choked Ozpin.
"...so much in my life," he stated, before a subtle shift steadied both his stance and composure, "things that most men could not even begin to understand. Evils that defy explanation, and forces that make mortal men tremble. And then there's you. A mere man, with no Aura, no knowledge of the politics and persons of this world, no knowledge of this world at all, and yet you face the challenge before you without taking a single step backwards. You've befriended the students of my Academy and stood up to those that would do them harm. And, in spite of all that you've seen, you still trust me, and you know that I trust you, or you wouldn't be in this room. There are forces at play here that my students are not, and cannot be made aware of. Enemies that lurk behind shadow and threaten the safety of not just Beacon or Vale, but the world as we know it."
Ozpin turned to fully face Liam now, determination etched onto his features and a fire in his eyes he'd not yet witnessed. Liam knew that look well. Sometimes, when things had gotten hard and the weight of the Wasteland had borne down on his shoulders, he would stand in the shower room at the Citadel and look into the mirror, examining every inch of himself and breaking down in a place where none could see, then coming back with the same fire and conviction that it seemed Ozpin held now.
"Liam, this is not your home," he said. "I know that. And you had no obligation to fight for it, but you have. I do not know if you are a superstitious man, but I believe that you were brought here for a reason. The Gods' ways are not known to men, after all, but I do know this- your strength will be desperately needed in the days to come."
Liam sighed. It was low, deep, and long, the result of long days spent trudging through a land of confusion to get to the here and now, a deep, dark vault that housed the dying and those that by all rights should have died. Now, he was being asked to put it all on the line again. Not for the Brotherhood, not for the Capitol Wasteland or its people, but for a world that he'd never knew existed until a few days ago.
So be it.
Liam smirked, because dammit if he didn't love a challenge, and placed his free hand in the pocket of his jacket as he gave Ozpin a short, snappy nod.
"No more secrets," he said, "and I'm in. Start from the top."
Ozpin let out a long, heavy sigh, like the weight of all the world was contained in his lungs, before he spoke, far quieter than he'd been prior.
"You say that Earth is not so different from Remnant, no?"
Liam shrugged. "Some ways, yeah. Others it's pretty stark."
"Tell me," Ozpin asked, "do they have fairy tales there?"
A/N: And here we are, at the end of OPOT. That's right! The fic's done! Why?
BECAUSE THIS WAS A PROLOGUE, BAY-BEEEEEE, HAHAHAHA! GOTTEM!
So yeah, this was a prologue to the major overarching story, intent on introducing Wayne, who is our main antagonist! The next chapter of the story will be out soon, so stay tuned as we find out how Liam got here!