Before anything else, I own nothing but the original characters, and content therein related to them. RWBY is owned by RT, and any mentioned creator's work belongs to them, and them alone. Rest in peace Monty, your vision lives on in us all.
CHAPTER 2
Outside of the slightly dramatic arrest, the teams calmed down once the transport ships they were all on started heading to Atlas. Siniy was being kept in his own separate ship, and team JNPR was put on one with Qrow and Oscar. Teams RWBY and SPL of SPGL crammed into the last aircraft. "Great, military prison…" Clayton said, as he shifted in his seat, having seen Atlas Academy out the window.
"Fuckin' mil school… Anyone know how the shit the Atlas counsel let their primary huntsman academy be absorbed by the military?" Halcyone asked. "Because that's still a head-scratcher for me."
"That is what happens when one person can sit on two counsel seats." Pale said before spitting through the wire mesh separating the cabin from the back, hitting the pilot in the head. "Mistral did the same shit once upon a time… Kinda' led to a war."
The three aircraft landed, and the teams entered the academy in silence. There were knowing looks swapped between everyone. They were getting out of this. Whatever it took. If Ironwood had betrayed Ozpin like Leo had, then they'd do what they needed to do. Once inside they were huddled into separate elevators with their guard detail. Siniy again being too large, was put into a separate one with just a guard.
The three elevators opened at the same time, and though the normal sized people were walked out with their attachment of soldiers, Siniy was being shoved out with a cattle prod by his. Having been electrocuted for the 5th time since he got in the elevator, the giant finally fell to his knees, tired of the induced muscle spasms. Weiss's eyes went wide with fury, and without wasting a second, she broke away from the group, and shoved the soldier away from Siniy. "Stop it! Stop it you bastard, you're hurting him!" The shove wasn't much with the gravity cuffs on, but it did well to give her boyfriend a second to recover.
Clayton was the next one to break rank and help his teammate. "Get you're fuckin' hands off him!" Clayton kicked his boots off and used his gorilla feet to grapple the other soldier zapping the giant. All Hell had broken loose. Jaune shoulder rammed the man closest to him into a wall and headbutted him in the chin. Yang used her augmented feet to jump into the air, kicking a guard's helmet off and knock him out. Pyrrha, with her polarity, was able to force the remainder of the guards into the wall, and steal their guns, which, while of a poor quality, would do until the teams could get their weapons back.
The fighting stopped as soon as it started. Penny, Winter and General Ironwood himself came into the elevator hallway when they heard the fighting. Ironwood had one of his pistols drawn. There was a moment of silence as everyone pointed their stolen guns at the General. Clayton was the first to speak. "We still under arrest?"
Ironwood sighed as he lowered his gun. "Thankfully not… Let's get those cuffs off of you."
Before he could be unlocked Siniy ripped through the gravity nets binding his arms in place, the taser no longer hurting him. "Finally." He muttered, before he simply began breaking everyone else's cuffs with his bare hands.
"Please come in." Ironwood said, welcoming them to his office after all of their belongings were returned. "It's good to see you all again, and I'm sorry for the way my team treated you… But there are a lot of red flags raised when unidentified airships enter Atlas, and even more when prototype military hardware is cruising around in Mantle." Clayton rolled his eyes.
"Wouldn't be the first time Atlas lost a bunch of it's toys." Blake muttered inaudibly.
"Obviously you stole it, but I have a feeling I know who from, and why." Ironwood said.
Halcyone chuckled. "Let me guess, you like Cordovin less than we do." Ironwood sighed at that, and Winter's attention was thoroughly caught.
"Stole airships?… What in the world were you thinking? You could have been shot down!" Winter said, raising her voice at her younger sister. She was mad, but only in the way a sister could be, full of worry that Weiss could have been hurt going through with such carelessness.
"Actually we were shot down." Pale said with a shrug. "How do you think the tank ended up in Mantle?"
Winter looked at Pale, then at her sister, who just hugged her into a shocked state of silence. "I'm sorry I worried you, but I was with my friends, we had the situation under control." Weiss said. Winter closed her mouth and hugged her sister back.
"I suppose you survived… But you." Winter pointed at Qrow as she broke the hug with her sister. "I can't believe you allowed them to go through with that."
Qrow shrugged. "I was passed out for most of it, woke up in the woods, and they told me they were stealing airships… The plan was actually frighteningly well thought out."
"Speaking of plans… After Beacon fell, I got to work on one of my own… And Qrow, trust me when I say I know what I was doing when I decided to tell Winter, Penny, and the Ace Ops everything I knew about the relics and the maidens." Ironwood said. And with that, any shred of trust that the teams had in the general were gone. "Until now, I believed it was truly impossible to turn the tide against Salem. Oz pushed her back, kept her at bay for who knows how long, but she will keep returning… Unless we destroy her."
Ruby looked at the floor for a moment. "What about the Atlas relic?" She asked.
"Safe in the vault." Penny reassured them.
"And the Winter maiden is secure… And in stable condition." Winter added.
"What do you mean; stable condition?" Yang asked, fearing the maiden would be at risk, regardless of how 'secure she was.' If she was dying like the one Pyrrha had told them about, then that was a problem waiting to happen, just like at Beacon.
"She's not exactly a spring chicken." Qrow said.
Pale huffed. "Great, so one of our powerhouses is old." It was exactly as Yang feared.
Everyone looked at General Ironwood, and Siniy crossed his arms. "I know how this all looks. Recalling the military, the embargo. I know I don't seem the most trusting right now." Ironwood said.
Blake shook her head. "Then why keep going?" She asked.
"The people of Mantle are hurting." Nora pointed out, as Siniy huffed.
"Suffering is nothing new to them." The giant spoke slowly, looking right at Ironwood.
"I wanted to ensure that Salem couldn't infiltrate Atlas. I wanted my military here, to protect the people." James reasoned. Clayton narrowed his eyes.
"But it's not protecting people. Everyone hates you right now." Yang said.
"PR is a very important part of politics, and dropping trade in its entirety is not something that bodes well for an economically depressed city as it is." Clayton pointed out.
"More to the point, we got into Atlas, and we weren't being very stealthy about it." Pale said.
Ironwood sighed, before pressing a button on his holodesk, darkening the room as shutters covered the window. "It's a price I'm willing to pay for their safety, and I can assure you, your crossing the border was entirely in part to having access to the only Atlesian airships outside of the kingdom right now." He came out from around his desk, as a strategic table started to rise out of the center of the room. "I need you all to trust me on this. I've got a plan. For the longest time Ozpin wanted the war against Salem to be fought in secret, and while I'm not going to argue if he was right to make that decision, we find ourselves needing a new approach." He said, stepping up to the table.
"And what do you suggest?" Qrow asked. Ironwood clicked a remote, and the table projected an image of the Amity Colosseum. Bad memories were brought to mind for many in the room. Though she could not hear, Pyrrha was left with yet another reminder of the night she'd cut Penny in two.
"Amity…" Clayton said flatly.
"When Beacon tower fell, and the world lost it's communications, I knew our system was outdated. Amity was designed to bring the four kingdoms together. And it will serve that purpose once again." With another click of his remote a tower formed at the top of the projection.
"You're gonna replace Beacon tower with a new one that can float around wherever you need it to go… That's… A might bold." Pale said.
"We won't just be floating it around. The plan is to send it high into the atmosphere, achieve a low orbit. That way in the event another tower goes down amity can keep the world connected." Winter explained.
Halcyone stuck her tongue in her cheek, and chuckled. That wasn't going to work. "Rocket science" was very much an extremely difficult field, and Halcyone was the only one in the room of her group of friends that ever even studied the broad overarching field of space. And even then it was recreational, used mostly for travelling the desert at night by constellations. The notion of putting anything into an orbit was decades away, and that was assuming they managed to get past the issue of every dust type failing to work outside of an atmosphere. Unless this time around Atlas figured to add an oxidizer to the rockets, it was going to be nothing more than a multi billion dollar firework, and Halcyone was content to see if the egg heads cocked it up. Pale was in much the same boat as Halcyone. Ballistics wise he couldn't see dust propelling anything into space. It was too weak, hence his preference for home made chemical propellants.
"This project doesn't sound like it would require the entire military." Qrow said, snapping Pale out of his musings.
"It doesn't… But telling the world about Salem does." Ironwood corrected. And once again nearly everyone in the room was immediately conflicted, or now more unwilling to trust Ironwood. Chief among them Clayton. He didn't like that the entire world was in the dark about the fact they had a living immortal enemy, but telling everyone at once was a stupid idea, bound to draw the grimm to every nation's borders.
"Hold up, wait a minute. That seems like a really half-cocked idea. Telling the world all at once would put everyone in a state of panic, and that would bring the grimm. I'm not saying I disagree with doing it, but are you even remotely prepared for the fallout? And what constitutes "telling the world," just the councils, or every citizen of every kingdom?" Clayton asked.
"The military is ready to assist. After we inform the Atlas council, then the people of Atlas and Mantle, and fend off the inevitable waves of grimm, we can tell the people of the world to unite them, and Atlas will be there to assist the other kingdoms." Winter said. Clayton put his hands up. He'd gotten his answer, and wasn't going to counterpoint how poorly that plan could go… Or counterpoint how that plan made for the easy occupation of every other kingdom under false pretenses.
The lights came back on, and the table retracted into the floor. Qrow looked over at Ironwood. "Ozpin spent multiple lifetimes keeping this secret."
Ironwood nodded at Qrow's words. "I know… But without him, we only have our best judgment to work with." He said, walking back to his desk.
Pale looked between everyone and shrugged. "Ah Hell, if nobody else is gonna' speak up." That caught Ironwoods attention. "Ozpin came back, he's in Oscar's body, but he ain't here right now…" Pale was glad he said that before Ironwood got all excited that Oz was back. "We uh… Had a disagreement, and I think I upset him. Said some things I shouldn't have… We all said some things we shouldn't have… He ain't helpin' us…"
Ironwood looked at Pale. Though he remembered the young man as a prolific outlaw and faunus murderer, he seemed to be the honest type… Shoot you in the face instead of the back kind of honest, but honest... Unfortunately Ironwood wasn't as good a judge of character as Pale was.
"What sort of disagreement?" Ironwood asked.
Pale sighed. "Leonardo was a cowardly traitor, and Ozpin using Pyrrha the way he did in Vale was morally bankrupt. I pointed that out to him after we found out a little too late that the relics attract grimm to a degree… Admittedly it was a slight overreaction, and we didn't ask if the thing posed any sort of danger to the user… It's partly our fault. In any case he and I came to blows and Oz locked himself up… Like I said, we had a bad disagreement." Pale said smoothly.
"Did he tell you anything else about the relic?" Ironwood asked.
Pale shook his head. "He said; it was powerful, and could answer 3 questions every 100 years, but all of the questions were used before it was put in the vault." Pale said. His friends were astonished that he was able to lie to Ironwood without actually lying to Ironwood. They all knew Pale had a weird way about him. He noticed things, saw people for who they were. If Pale didn't trust The General with the knowledge Jinn gave them, they were willing to bet he had a damn good reason.
"Is this true?" Ironwood asked. Clayton looked at Pale, then at Ruby and she nodded. Ruby had received the message. She trusted her boyfriend with her life on more than one occasion, if Clayton was willing to back one of his guy's instincts, she would too.
"Every word." Ruby said with a nod. Ironwood closed his eyes for a second, then took the lamp off of his desk. He carried it over to Ruby, who looked at him skeptically. "You're giving it to me?" She asked.
"After what happened with the Ace Ops, I don't want you thinking I'm keeping anything from you." Ironwood said, extending it to her.
Ruby took it from him, and clipped it to her belt. "Thank you…"
Ironwood smiled at her, then looked around the room. "Now if you're all on board?"
Halcyone snickered. She had zero confidence Ironwood's plans would work at all, but it was going to be a good fun ride watching it all burn. "Whaddya need done?" She asked with a grin hidden partially by her shemagh.
"Right." Ironwood said.
"Before we begin, let's see about getting everyone fit for combat and re-equipped." Winter said, looking at the half held together members of the teams before her, and the lack of, or broken and ill maintained weapons.
The team left Ironwood's office escorted by Penny. The Ace Ops were standing around out in the rotunda that led to the hallways, and Clover silenced his team to reintroduce them all now that the circumstances were better. "I sincerely apologize for the miscommunication down in Mantle." He said.
"Had we known who you were, we wouldn't have acted the way we did." Elm said, shaking Clayton's hand quickly, doing little to move him.
"It wouldn't have hurt to ask questions first." Weiss said.
"Or to tone it back with the cattle prod." Siniy muttered loudly.
"Questions are for the weak. But we're on the same team now… Not that I'm happy about it." Marrow said, his tail making a liar out of him as it wagged back and forth. Pale just made a "huh," noise, then pulled Freedom or Death out of its sheath on Pyrrha's right hip with his left hand, pressed the mecha shift as he drew it, and shot Marrow in the chest in an act of revenge for handcuffing his hand to his leg. Pale wasn't using his semblance, nor was he trying to be particularly quick, and Marrow was fast enough to react by putting his aura up, so he was uninjured if only dazed by the fireball from the magnum pistol. Still, Marrow fell on his ass, as everyone looked at Pale handing Pyrrha back her weapon.
"I told you I was gonna shoot one of you sumvabitchs for handcuffing me the way you did… And I keep my promises." Pale said with a shrug before he held out his left hand to help Marrow up. The dog faunus looked at him like he was crazy, then accepted the help to get back to his feet.
"So how's about we get ourselves some medical attention?" Halcyone asked looking around to all of her injured friends. With a smile, Penny led them on a quick walk to the infirmary.
South of the border, Cinder and her new companions were now able to see the Kingdom of Atlas out of the cockpit window, Neo using her semblance to mimic an Atlas airship, as Brennen plugged in his Que clearances. The SDC enforcer smiled at Crag from across the two seat cabin, and the older man just rolled his eyes at his associate. "Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Atlas." Brennen said to the room.
Once they landed on the roof of Brennen's apartment complex overlooking the city from the north, he led them all inside. "Beautiful isn't it?" He asked, drawing up the tinting shades with a remote kept by the door, the rest of the lavish home's lighting turning on. "The kitchen, dining and living room are clearly open concept, the bathroom is downstairs to the left, don't go into the walk-in closet, and if you want to sleep on my bed, I have to be in it." Brennen said with a cheeky smirk looking at Cinder, who just scoffed.
"Do you have some sort of operations room?" She asked. Brennen clicked his remote again and a hidden door to the left revealed a room neatly packed with gear and work related bulletins.
"I hope it's to your liking."
Author's note.
So a bunch of people with preexisting authority issues are asked to trust a man (who they already don't like) who's plan very much involves using his military power to protect the rest of the kingdoms potentially forever or until Salem is destroyed... Yeah that's going to go well. At this point, after Leo betrayed them, and Ozpin not only lied, but is apparently lying about more than just Salem if what Rot has told Ruby and Ren in regards to his dark and haunting past, nobody trusts Ironwood to do any better.
And yes if you were attentive Brennen's apartment is the lower end interior of the expensive houses in GTAV. Simple, but elegant, especially for a man who does not spend much time at home.