Chapter 41

After a fierce battle, General Ironwood got flown to Headquarters to discuss a few things with the space marine generals. Locus is taken to a medical facility not too far from the Northern Gate while Carolina sees a mechanic about what just happened. In the meantime, everyone gets a chance to know each other.

Ruby is with Caboose.

"So how come your gun fires confetti and makes party sounds when you fire?" Ruby asks.

"That is because there was some...misfiring...and some...people got killed." Caboose says. The reason is that he was given an assault rifle for five seconds right before it was taken away from him and people got killed. "So that is why I have Freckles do the shooting."

Ruby tilted her head, "Freckles?"

Static was heard from Caboose's assault rifle, "Affirmative."

Ruby looks at Caboose's weapon all starry-eyed. She squeals, "YOU'RE WEAPON TAAAALLLKEED!" Ruby geeks over Caboose's weapon, "How did you get your weapon to talk! I want my weapon to talk!"

Over at Blue Base, Glynda and Tex have a talk. Tex is sitting on a rock inspecting her pistol while Glynda sits on a chair a few feet across from her.

Tex says, "Is it just me, or is it weird that you and I have the same voice?"

"I have to admit, it is rather strange." Glynda agrees with Tex. "Although, I do find it hard to believe that the people here were here longer than we have. Although I only arrived two days ago. The students have been here for close to two weeks."

Tex cleans the barrel of her M6D with a brush. "Everyone else here has been here for three. Although I've only been here for less." Then Tex puts her brush away and pulls out a piece of cloth and starts polishing her weapon.

Then Glynda asks, "Do you ever wonder why you were brought here?"

Tex continues to polish, "Not really. I never really thought about it." Then stops and puts her pistol back together.

"Well, the students theorized that we may be part of some survival test."

Tex then looks at Glynda, "Sounds like Project Freelancer."

Ozpin then enters the room, "What is Project Freelancer?"

But then Tucker shows up and tries to pull the moves on Glynda, "Hey, you a teacher? I have a very special ruler you can use. Bow-chika-"

Glynda smacks Tucker's crotch with her riding crop which causes Tucker to suffer some pain.

"Okay." he says in a weak, agonizing tone of voice. "You're into kinky stuff."

That is when Glynda uses her semblance to toss Tucker out of the room as Ozpin ducks.

Tucker screams out, "BIIITCH!" as he gets thrown out.

Over at Red Base, Ciel and Penny look at Lopez and Sanchez trying to reassemble their robots.

Sanchez picks up a few pieces, "Você já teve a sensação de que alguém tem isso para nós? Quero dizer as explosões de foguetes, os desmantelamentos, os ataques."
Translation: "Do you ever get the feeling that someone has it in for us? I mean the rocket explosions, the dismantlements, the attacks."

Lopez tries to assemble the legs of the first robot while using a blowtorch, "Bueno, me está costando creer que un montón de mierda comiendo, primitivos sucios pueden hacer mucho daño. O poder sorprendernos así."
Translation: "Well I'm having a hard time to believe that a bunch of shit eating, filthy primitives can do this much damage. Or able to surprise us like that."

Sanchez separates the pieces from the pile with Ciel and Penny trying to organize them, "Deve ser karma. Nós podemos ter feito algo errado que acabamos limpando toda essa bagunça e nunca saindo daqui."
Translation: "Must be karma. We may have done something wrong that we ended up cleaning all this mess and never getting out of here."

That is when Penny says, "Eu não sei. Mas vocês devem ter passado por muita coisa."
Translation: "I do not know. But you must have been through a lot."

Everyone stopped what they were doing as they look at Penny, who spoke a different language.

Lopez says while looking at Penny, "Espera, ¿puedes hablar portugués?"
Translation: "Wait, you can speak Portuguese?"

Penny looks at Lopez, "Y el español también. He estado escuchando algunas clases de idiomas en las computadoras portátiles que el equipo CFVY encontró en los naufragios."
Translation: "And Spanish too. Been listening to a few language classes on the laptops Team CFVY found at the shipwrecks."

Ciel then says to Penny, "Can we speak in the same language? Because I can't understand what everyone is saying."

Lopez says to Ciel, "Tal vez debería tomar esas clases de idiomas en las computadoras portátiles, también."

Penny translate for Ciel, "He says that you should take those language classes on the laptops as well."

Back at Blue Base, Carolina is sitting on a bench made of rocks and a metal beam when one of the mechanic zealots in red armor approaches.

He speaks in a British accent, "Well I checked and I have bad news."

"What's the problem with Epsilon." Carolina sounds a little worried about her AI companion.

"I'm afraid that the Epsilon unit is on the verge of failing. By my estimate, he will disappear for good in a matter of months. Sooner if you keep pulling stunts like that."

Carolina is in shock to hear such horrible news.

"If I were you, I suggest you should hold back on using your equipment for a while. But judging from what I found is that his fragments of other AI's are gonna disappear one by one. If he runs out, then it is lights out. He said that he lost Omega, Iota, and Eta during the battle so the more of those fragments he lose..."

"The greater he is at risk." Carolina finishes the mechanic's sentence.

"Precisely, my dear. Precisely." He then handed her the AI fragment back to Carolina. "Good day now." and he leaves.

Carolina holds the Epsilon AI tightly within her hands and close to her chest. Fearing of losing her friend again.

Over at Salem's fortress, there is a secret meeting between Adam, the Albain Brothers, Hazel, Tock, and Arthur have gathered at an adobe house for a private meeting.

"Is it just me, or has the boss lady lost more of herself and become more vicious?" Tock asks.

"I'm afraid so." Arthur says in fear of his life. "Guess that without that last bit of her human side, she is even more monstrous than before."

"I agree." Hazel agrees. "Of all the time we've known her, she never kill one of our own."

Adam look at the brothers, "You two were the ones that told Perry to report that little detail to avoid getting killed, correct?"

Fennec takes a gulp right before the two of them nod at the same time in regret.

"I see. So you knew you were gonna get killed."

But Hazel then asks, "What about this other 'Salem'? Do you think she is human? Or is she like the one we have except more human?"

"I believe that she is more human." Arthur says. "If our Lady contains all of her darkest nature, then the other must have all of her humanity."

Hazel leans against the wall with his arms crossed, "If Ozpin's there, I get first dips on killing him."

Corsac says, "But what if Ozma and Ozpin are separated? Did you say that Ozma has reincarnated inside Ozpin at one point? Because, that blonde did say that Ozpin and the professors are working on something else."

Hazel stood there in silent and thinks about what Corsac said.

"It could be possible." Arthur says. "If Ozma has split from Ozpin then there could be a chance that Salem may also split."

Hazel then looks at Tock, "Tock. You were killed years ago by a woman with silver eyes correct?"

"Yeah." Tock looks a little confuse on what Hazel just said.

"But yet you are here. Alive and well on this strange world."

Tock smiles, "Well not exactly. Almost got killed by this ugly bloke who nearly skewered my arse."

Then Hazel looks back at Arthur, "Then tell me doctor, do you think...that..."

"That your sister is alive and well? Possibly." Arthur says. "I don't know much about this world, but this place to seem to resurrect those that have been dead back on Remnant. Although this is only a hypothesis, I'm not entirely sure."

Hazel's eyes started to show something. Something that he hasn't had in years. Hope. "So there is a chance."

Adam then interrupts, "Sorry to interrupt but can we focus on the main problem?"

"I have to agree." Fennec agrees with Adam. "We still need to-"

Fennec's sentence was interrupted by a knock on the door. Everyone get their weapons ready as they believe that it might be Tyrian spying on them. Another knock was heard but this time there was a voice.

"Sirs!" says an unknown man at the door. "We have a serious situation! The Purge has begun!"

After a while, General James Ironwood negotiated with the generals at HQ about making an alliance with them. Luckily everyone agreed but there is this one condition: The Reds and Blues will be assigned to keep an eye on the Remnant Encampment along with Carolina, Tex, Washington, Lopez, Sanchez, and Doc. Although Raven and Vernal are against that, but they have to deal with it for now. Not only that, everyone's implants started to go off again once the deal has been struck. With that out of the way, everyone head back to Remnant Encampment with some new people in tow. But once there, they see Oscar at the base of the tower's exist.

"Hey everyone!" Oscar greets everyone who made it back. Although he does seem excitable. "I got some good news!"

"What is it?" Taiyang asks.

"Is the new defenses up and running?" Blake asks.

"Correct! Disqui, Leonardo and I have just finish putting in the last of the stone walls and turrets."

Grif steps up, "Are you a farmer?"

Oscar's smile went flat when he sees someone in orange MJOLNIR armor. Feeling a little threaten. He looks at Taiyang and Blake, "Who is he?"

"Just some people that got assigned to our settlement." Taiyang responds.

Grif then asks, "Does anyone have any pizza or cheeseburgers?"

Oscar points at the slopes, "The Malachite Twins own a tavern on the other side of the slopes. They can make pizza."

"You guys have a tavern?! Awesome!"

Tucker then comes up, "Did someone say twins? Because I love seeing double the pleasure. Bow-chika-bow-wow!"

Alpha Church goes, "That was lame. Even for you."

"Yeah." Tucker agrees with Alpha.

Sarge then shows up, "What type of defenses you got here? A mortar cannon? Because I can whip one up."

Oscar is even more confuse when more people show up. "Who are they?"

Taiyang and Blake gave Oscar a blank stare while waving their right hands close to their face, "We'll explain later."

Nora, the last person who comes out of the building, started to shout, "Takashi, Rie and Saya are back!"

Takashi is the first to walk out in his power armor. Yet his power armor is a complete wreck with scratch marks, bullet markings, and some of the paint has faded away. He drops to his knees after taking eight steps out the door. Then he falls face flat onto the ground.

Rie came out with similar scars to her armor as she falls down into her butt. She takes her helmet off to reveal her bags under her eyes which means she did not get enough sleep. She has the look of terror on her face as she screams, "GOD! I never wanna go through all that again!"

Saya then walks out with her helmet missing before dropping to her hands and knees. She started screaming, "NEVER AGAIN! FOR FUCK'S SAKE, NEVER GOING THROUGH THAT HELL AGAIN!"

Takashi groans through his helmet, "Can't...move... Too...tired..."

Team RWBY, Team ABRN, and Team CFVY try to help the three up. Sarge, Simmons, Donut, Caboose, and Washington try to help as well.

"What happened?!" Arslan asks Rie while helping her up.

Rie says, "I can't believe we survived that! It was brutal!"

"Was it really that bad?!" Reese asks.

"There were waves upon waves upon waves of ghouls trying to kill us! Even make matters worse, they can even use firearms!"

Nadir then asks, "Wait, ghouls that can use firearms?!"

Bolin then says, "You're gonna have to explain the whole story."

Ruby asks Takashi after helping him stand up, "Did you guys get those C.A.M.P. things?"

Takashi is so tired that he couldn't speak anymore. He mustered as much strength as he can to give her the thumbs up, which means they got 'em.

Yet what happened next was that there was an earthquake that shook everything that came from the east. Then they get to see two bright flashes from miles away from the Remnant Encampment. They start to form huge mushroom clouds over where the quakes came from. Where they're at: Dead Canyon. Everyone started to freak out when they see them with the exception of the three that showed up.

"WHAT WAS THAT?!" Yang screamed.

"WERE THOSE NUKES?!" Donut scream as well.

"SWEET JIMMINY JIBBLETS!" Sarge shouts.

"I HOPE I DON'T GROW ANOTHER HEAD!" Caboose shouts. "OR A NUCLEAR LAUNCHER FOR AN ARM!"

Epsilon pops up and says to himself, "I think having one Caboose is bad enough."

Alpha looks at the three as he realized that Takashi, Rie, and Saya may have a hand in it. He floats to Saya and asks, "What did you three do?"

Everyone took them to the Malachite Inn, which is a custom built building made of brick blocks from 7 Days to Die yet the insides were painted with a white and red checker style color and a few decorations from Subnautica such as the bar tables. The building stands four stories high in order to accommodate any newcomers. Takashi took the first room in the second floor in order to get some sleep and rest up, leaving Rie and Saya to explain what happened. They both tell everyone at the Encampment about their adventures, the horrors they had to go through in order to get to Vault 76, and manage to find three nuclear launch sites at Appalachia. One of them include firing one at the source of something called, The Scorched. A hive mind entity that is comprised of semi-intelligent ghouls that can use weapons and monsters that have been infected. The other two were launched at Hope County where the cultists were at and Shido's hotel base located at a location very far away from Hope County. Rie displayed her disgust for Shido and tells them that he is a brainwashing, perverted, manipulative, psycho who wanted to seize power for himself. Both girls also asked about the soldiers in space marine armor so everyone manage to fill in the details about another alliance.

"Well." Saya leans back on her chair while looking up, "Good thing we got plenty of C.A.M.P.s."

"How many?" Ciel asks.

Saya is feeling a little tired yet responds with a worn-out tone of voice, "Around 30. They don't weigh much so it was easy to get them out. But getting inside was a huge pain." Then she fell asleep.

Rie then uses her pip-boy, "Here." and drops 10 C.A.M.P.s onto the floor before falling to the floor and falls asleep.

Ruby and Yang pick-up Rie with Ruby saying, "We'll take them to their beds."

Ciel approaches the dropped C.A.M.P.s "I'll take these. We'll split half to trade with the people at the jungle canyon."

But Carolina approach, "Actually, I'll take the other five to Headquarters."

"Blarg."

All the people look at where that 'Blarg' was coming from and freaked out.

Weiss screamed, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" Despite her screaming, it didn't wake the two girls up.

Tucker then explains, "Oh that's my son, Junior."

Qrow looks at Tucker, "You have an alien son?!"

Tucker explains, "Yeah, we got involve with this other alien that wanted to complete a prophecy that we all thought we fucked up which turns out that he wanted to get a ship and at some point I given birth to a parasitic love child that the alien knocked me up with in order to get my sword." He then pulls out his energy sword, "And I mean this sword, not my other sword. Bow-chika-bow-wow."

All the people from Remnant give Tucker bizarre looks after hearing that.

Jade looks at her mother, "Mommy, what does some of that stuff mean?"

Salem takes her daughters outside, "You'll learn when you grow up."

Qrow gives Tucker a bizarre look, "You...gave birth...to an alien?"

"Yep."

"But...you're a man."

"I know."

That is when Yang asks, "What's it like?"

Tucker looks at Yang, "Shut up!"

The sun is setting over at the horizon over at Blackwater where the Blues and Reds are stationed. Mark Temple is at a graveyard and digging up some graves to do some grave robbing. That is when Biff shows up.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Biff shouts out from outside the graveyard.

Temple looks at Biff and stops shoveling, "Seeing if any of these guys have gold teeth! You know, just to make a quick buck pal!"

"But what you're doing is disrespectful!"

"Yeah well, better them than us!"

"Oh for fuck's sake." Biff says to himself right before approaches Temple.

Temple stops shoveling as Biff stands next to the hole with both of them looking at each other.

"Dude, that needs to stop." Biff argues as the last rays of sunlight goes down.

"Well, that one Spartan guy says that we should scavenge for anything. So I decide to take up grave robbing. Since this place is more like the Wild West, why not take a few treasures from them." Temple says as it has become night time.

The three moons are out now but something was different. The small white moon started to glow green.

Biff continues to argue, "Even so, I think it is highly disrespectful."

"Oh come on." Temple says in a more cheery tone. "They're dead. It's not like they're gonna come back to life." Before he knows it something grabbed his leg. Temple immediately looks down, "What the-?!"

A zombie then try to drag him down which caused both men to panic as Temple takes the shovel jam it into the head of the corpse. Biff quickly grabs Temple and pulls him out.

"Holy shit!" Temple says after getting out of the hole. "What the fuck?!"

Then they start hearing groans and moans coming from the ground as a multitude of hands pop out from the graves.

Temple panics, "Oh shit oh shit oh shit! RUN!"

Both of them ran away with Biff going, "Told ya' not to disrespect the dead!"

Back at the Northern Gate, a Fed soldier and a Republic soldier throw away the last of the corpses over the gate with the other corpses below with the sun setting.

The Fed soldier claps his hands, "That's the last of them."

"Man, there were a lot of these guys."

The Fed soldier looks at the Republic soldier, "Guessing they went with quantity over quality this time."

The last of the sun's rays disappear as the three moons show up with the little white one now glowing green.

The Republic soldier looks back at the Fed soldier, "I guess so. But that is a lot of corpses. How are we gonna bury them all?"

"I think the giant worms should take care of them. As for the burying, some heavy winds should blow the sand over them. Let mother nature do the work."

"Oh." the Republic soldier looks at the remains below before looking back at the other soldier. "I like the way you think."

Before they can continue their conversation even further, they start to hear moaning and groaning.

"Do you hear that?" the Fed soldier asks.

"Yeah." the Republic soldier agrees. "It almost sounds like-"

A mass of roars were heard coming from the desert as both of the look at the direction of the roaring. They turn on their night vision and see hordes of undead people and skeletons of dinosaurs rising from the sands. Both of them freak out at what they see.

"HOLY SHIT!" the Republican soldier screamed.

The Fed looked at the zealots, "GET THOSE DEFENSES ON NOW!"

Both of them went over to turn on the other defenses with the Republican soldier shouting, "MOTHER NATURE CAN GO FUCK HERSELF WITH A DEAD COCK!"

Back at Salem's Fort, all of Salem's troops and subordinates manage to fend off all the NPCs and creatures that started to swarm at the farming bridge as the sunsets over the mountains. Adam decapitated three NPCs with his new sword, a Yamatai Katana (Variant A), in one smooth stroke. Hazel uses his semblance to ignore the arrows being shot at hims as he throws fire orbs at the enemy invaders. Tyrian does what he does best while impaling a Dafari warrior with his tail along with a giant smile on his face. The Albain brothers continue to fire arrows at the invaders and creatures along with the other archers under their command. Tock uses her new cutlass to slay as many enemies as possible before the time of her semblance starts to wear out. Arthur, on the other hand, manage to knock out a few good Thralls that are 4th tier that could be useful. Even manage to get some new loot as he manage to use his bindings to get as many thralls to one of the wheels of pain that is close by.

As the sun goes down, the battle was over. Adam raises his sword as he shouts in triumph against the foes as many fighters and archers do the same. But as the moons show brightly with the white moon now green, it was short lived. The enemies they defeated started to rise up as zombies and skeletons as they scream and moan at the night sky.

Adam looks at the predicament as he says to himself, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Over at the Remnant Encampment, Takashi and the girls delivered the C.A.M.P.s to Soichiro's settlement and took the rest to Pirate Island along with some materials needed to craft settlements. Over at the towers, Grif and Simmons are gonna be on guard duty. But they have to wait a few minutes before their shift begins. In the meantime, both of them have a chat at the bottom of one of the towers while the sunsets.

Grif says, "Hey."

Simmons responds, "Yeah? Oh wait, let me guess: you want to know why we're here."

"Well, yeah."

"Metaphysically or just here here?"

"Here here."

"So far as I can tell, we were brought here by a bunch of aliens at a disclosed location that want to test our survival skills. We're just lab rats just like we were at Project Freelancer. Who or whatever those people are, they can go fuck themselves."

The sun has disappear over the western horizon and night has begun. And we all know what's gonna happen next.

Grif looks at Simmons in silence for a few seconds before saying, "Not exactly. I mean why are we just standing here at the bottom of the tower when we have a few minutes left? Not only that, we have robots to do this sort of shit."

"Oh. Uh...punctuation and protocol?"

"Whatever. Although I do agree with you about the dickheads that brought us here."

"Amen."

As it is time to change shift, they hear machine gun fire coming from the other side of the wall. Both Simmons and Grif look up.

"Sounds like we got something." Grif says.

But then they start to hear laser fire and rockets being launched. Hearing all of that from one end to the wall to the other along with even more machine gun fire firing at whatever the hell they are firing at.

"What the hell?" Grif says when hearing all the racket.

"Come on, let's move!" Simmons runs up to see what is going on with Grif in tow.

Sirens start blaring as Simmons and Grif made their way to the top to see Henry armed with a UNSC sniper rifle along with Rodentia.

"The hell is going on?!" Simmons asks.

Henry points at the direction where he is shooting at with a terrified expression. "Look!"

Both of them look at the direction that Henry points at and see something terrifying. They see skeletal dinosaurs with glowing orange orbs in the eye sockets. Many of these creatures include skeletal T-Doms, skeletal raptors, and skeletal carnos. There are even zombie dodos trying to charge at the defenses but ended up getting killed by the mines close to the barbed wires under the machine gun turrets.

That is when Grif goes, "Fuck."

Then there is a major earthquake.

"What the fuck?!"

Simmons start to panic, "Ahhh! Earthquake! Everyone institute emergency plan! Hold on a second while I put on my marshal's vest! Everyone just remain calm! Whatever you do don't panic!"

Rodentia yells at Simmons, "You're the one panicking!"

"¡Alarma! ¡Alarma! ¡Terremoto!"
Translation: "Warning! Warning! Earthquake!"

BICORN: Raising location known as, DEAD CANYON.

Over at Dead Canyon, the entire bottom of the canyon started to raise as it raises above sea level by some strange gravity generators that is spread across the entire canyon. Once it is raised to the same level as the rest of the world, zombies of all types started to wonder out to the rest of the world. Spreading terror and their infections to anywhere that has tasty morsels.

BICORN: Dead Canyon raised. Project HALLOWEEN has initiated.