Disclaimer:

The works of Rooster-Teeth and their characters are their own and that of the mighty Oum. The only thing I own are the one-shot ideas that popped into my head and whatever OCs I would create for them. This is a work of pure fiction made solely for fun, constructive reviews will be welcomed, flames will be ignored. Any references to characters in real-life or fiction are purely coincidental. If I could make money out of my ideas, it would be nice...

Oum Damn It!

Date Published: 19th August 2017

Title: The Arcadian Code (Working Title)

Genre: Action Adventure, Set in a semi-modern Dan Brown inspired AU with no Grimm, still have White Fang.

Description:

A famous historian was found murdered in a museum, a computer virus plagues the Atlas Network, and chatter of an ancient order coming back from the bloodiest depths of history rang through the crime network. Amidst of it all is a young student who finds himself in the center of a conspiracy that involves research that his mentor left behind about an old kingdom. But can he stay alive while breaking the code his mentor left him, not knowing whom to trust and whether he would be in time to save the world?

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The bespectacled man with messy green hair panted heavily as he made his way through the museum, one bloodied hand to steady himself with the walls and railings, the other to curb the spilling of blood as it dripped on the ground, each drop signifying his reducing life essence.

'There is not much time.' The man winced in agony as he paused to catch his breath, risking a quick glance at his wounds. On the one hand it was wearisome, each alternate step shooting pain into his body and threatening to take him down and let the reaper take him away. On the other hand it helped to distract him, making him alert enough to accomplish what needed to be done.

'They wanted to get the information from me, that's why they haven't touched any of the vital organs. I cannot let them have it.'

The man started to move to the desired point, his determination renewed and his mind set on the purpose at hand. He managed to get to the art gallery when he heard the dreaded sounds: the pounding of feet and raised voices that was getting closer.

"Darn it!" With a quiet apology to the curator of the museum and the sculptor, he pushed a statue off its podium, setting off the alarms as the statue toppled and broke into many pieces. The security gates came crashing down, cutting off his escape routes but more importantly keeping the men after him.

'This will only give me a few minutes at best.'

The man made his way to one of the museum's most priced pieces of artwork at the farthest end of the room, his strength finally giving up and making him fall to the ground with a loud thump. He groaned in pain as he dragged himself to the wall, using one arm to push himself up and steady himself against the wall, using his vantage point to look at the security gate where he could see through his broken specs some of the men after him. Each one of them wore dark robes and white-masks and wielded guns and knives, but they could not do anything against the Dust-laced security gates.

Suddenly the group split to the sides, leaving room for the person at the back to make her way to the front, stopping just outside of the gate to glare at him through the glass. The man could vaguely see in the dark corridor her emerald hair and street clothes that bore the signs of burns resulting from the little distraction he made with the Bunsen burner and chemicals in another part of the museum.

"Nowhere to run, Professor Oobleck." The girl called out in a singalong tone.

"It is Doctor." The man replied back while spitting out blood.

"You know you are wasting your efforts and your life trying to escape from us." The girl ignored his reply and continued to talk while placing a hand on her rather generous hips. "All we want is the information and location of the item."

"You really don't get it." Oobleck gave a defiant glare at her. "You have wasted your time and effort to get to me, but as I have mentioned, I don't know what you want."

"You are a silly man, you know that? We know you have uncovered the location of the lost kingdom and more importantly, the tomb of the late king." The girl replied back. "Your documents is being decoded as we speak, but you do have the habit of retaining vital information only until the actual reveal, and that I'm afraid is something my boss does not like."

"Well she needs to have patience, if she wanted to see the great reveal." He taunted as he gasped loudly, the pain shooting through his body being more profound now that he had stopped moving.

"Perhaps, or you could tell us." The emerald-haired girl took out her scroll and tapped a few buttons before directing the screen at him, revealing a photo of himself with a smiling woman in a dress wrapped around his arms. "Otherwise we could just have a chat with your wife. I believe she can be very cooperative." For a moment there was a deep silence, then it got broken by the man who laughed softly while coughing out blood.

"I will admit, that was a good trick, you almost have me there. Just one problem." Oobleck smiled with blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. "She's already elsewhere. I knew this expedition was going to cause trouble so I sent her away. And here's the thing, she is way better at hiding her tracks than me. Good luck finding her."

"Oh, are you sure?" The girl raised an eyebrow while lightly shaking the scroll. "We could have gotten to her while having our little session~"

"Oh I am sure. If you want something from me, here's one." Oobleck raised a hand and flipped a bloody bird while letting his mouth run loose for once. "You can go and fuck yourself."

"Tch! Fine if that is how you want to play it, you can rot in this area." The girl glared at him before getting the others to leave. She paused before looking back one last time. "I guess it does not matter whether you talked to us or not, you merely delayed the inevitable. We would just have to find another translator for your research." With that she left, leaving him alone in the empty museum, waiting for the Grim Reaper to come and claim him. The man merely coughed as he rested his head and closed his eyes while focusing on his breathing.

'I can't die yet, the secret must be passed on.'

Those words were echoing in Oobleck's mind as he struggled to keep conscious, thinking of a way to relay the information, but even if it could be done, it would be useless to the group protecting the most guarded secret and it might be too late by then.

'We would just have to find another translator for your research.'

His eyes went wide open as his assailant's voice echoed in his mind. That was it, the person ideal for the job would have to be one who could understand the ancient symbols of the lost kingdom, and someone who could bring the information to the protectors and more importantly, know the true meaning behind the lore that involved the disappearance of the kingdom.

But that in itself was a problem. First and foremost, there were not too many who could read the ancient Valean text, mostly on the basis that there was no reason to read up on the text, gunning more for ancient artifacts that would earn them cash. Those who could have varying success, him being the most prominent in his field. Based on their conversations and interrogations, he deduced that they had already gone after those people in their line of work, each of them likely trying to decipher his secrets in the hopes of uncovering a clue.

No, the person he needed would have be fluent with the ancient language, understanding of the old ways, ingenious in his execution of decisions, one not to be influenced so easily by his old group and finally, the last person the assailants would think to be capable of carrying the secrets.

And there was one in mind, one that he wished he did not need to bring into this private war.

Groaning in pain, he moved his bloody hands to get himself into position, before starting to piece together the items needed for his plan, his breath getting more rugged and his eyesight going dark. He gritted his teeth and pushed on, making sure that he conveyed what was needed to the authorities and more importantly, the person he had in question.

It was only a few minutes to get his objective done, but the effort he needed to exert in his state made his pain seemingly dragged on for hours. He managed to finish his idea when his body finally gave way, making him slide down the wall and hit the floor hard, leaving him heaving as his blood flowed out of his body and stained the marble flooring around him. With a feeble whimper, he moved his bloody finger and drew one symbol, before taking his one last breath.

'Forgive me my boy, for having to force this on you.'

=()=

Executives and assistants moved out of the way of the one person that was literally stomping her way to an office with a scowl that would make man quake in their knees in fear. The person in question was a girl in her late teens with unusually pale-white skin with pure white hair tied into a pony-tail. She wore a simple shirt and skirt of light blue and white, with a symbol of a snow flake on her back. Her face could be described as that of a porcelain doll, one that retained a youthfulness of her childhood and almost flawless if not for the one scar over her left eye, but that in itself helped to bring notice to her blue eyes that shone like gems and now had a fire in them.

This girl was Weiss Schnee, heiress to the biggest Dust Company and Technology Giant of Atlas. And right now she was seriously contemplating mass murder.

One of the assistants squawked in terror as she stumbled in the floor in her haste to get out of Weiss's path, dropping the documents all over the floor in the process. Weiss ignored her and continued making her way to the office where she was to be informed of a situation that was dire enough to have both her and Winter called up to the company. Normally she would be thrilled to meet her elder sister, but the issue at hand was so severe that all joy was wiped out. She paused at the door to take a deep breath to recover her thoughts, then with a mental nod and a deep frown, she pushed open the doors to see the situation for herself.

And it was pandemonium.

Groups of people rushing from table to table with armfuls of papers, some of which drop to the ground in their haste. Several men with messed up hair were yelling into their phones while a few tech support staff were hammering at the keyboards, the empty cardboard cups of coffee and their bloodshot eyes being the indicators that they had stayed up all night dealing with the issue.

"Weiss!" The girl turned to find her older sister walk over with an expression of concern that was reduced at the sight of her. The woman came over and hugged her tightly. "Thank God you are safe."

"Winter." Weiss let herself a quick moment to smile back and hugged her sister warmly. "What is going on here? Has there been any improvement?"

"I am afraid to say that is not the case." The both of them broke their hug and turn to the officer standing near them. The man took out his handkerchief and wiped the brow of his head. "The situation has actually worsened before you came, Madam Weiss."

"Great." Weiss sarcastically replied. "As if I getting attacked a couple of hours ago by those radicals was not bad enough, now we have this issue with the servers and machinery going nuts!"

"If only it were that simple." The officer gestured to follow him as they made their way to the front, Weiss occasionally getting pushed back by accident from the frantic assistants who were going back and forth between monitors to fix the issues. It only took a few seconds to get to the front where there was a door leading to the private room. They entered through it to reveal a room that was covered in huge plasma screens all over the walls. Weiss was watching the screens completely covered in streams of data as the guy made his way to the nearest monitor, their green colouring coupled with the movement making her a little queasy.

"So what is the issue?" Winter turned to the man who was consulting with one of the technicians.

"Since this morning, we have been tackling with a virus that has infected our entire system and has been wreaking havoc all over our equipment and security systems. The workers are trapped in the construction building and the reactors have been pushed to their limits." The man said while the technician beside him was hammering away at the keyboard. "We almost experienced a core meltdown and it was lucky that one of the older staff members was around to work around the lockdown to shut it off."

"What about the Dust deposits? Are they secured?" Weiss asked knowing about the company's most prized commodity.

"They are safe. It was sheer dumb luck we went to change the locks the other day and had to use the older models while awaiting the latest versions. The older locks don't carry the chip that is in most of our equipment so they are not affected." The officer assured her.

"I see." Weiss turned to the monitor again to look at the code. "I am seeing a lot of weird symbols, what is it?"

"That is where things get really weird." The officer typed a few more buttons to show some screens with said symbols on what looked to be parchments and stone tablets. "Much of what you see originated from historical artefacts and relics regarding some old kingdom. What little we gathered suggest that the hacker who may have made this virus did so with the hieroglyphs and symbols, likely to prevent people from neutralizing the virus too quickly."

"I highly doubt it is that abstract. There should be more people working on the translation right?" Weiss asked sceptically.

"Yes and no." The officer winced as though it was hard to admit the issue. "You see, the symbols you are seeing a sort of dead language that has not been used for the past few millenniums, so we went to search for historians who could read them. And that is where the bad news start."

"Go on." Winter nodded while Weiss rolled her eyes at the idea of more bad news.

"I think it is best if I showed you." The man typed a few buttons before pausing. "I must warn you, this is going to be a bit nasty." Before the two girls could comment, he pressed another button to show several windows, each depicting different people with a disturbing pattern emerging.

Winter's eyes went wide while Weiss covered her mouth in horror. "Good Lord!"

"Yup." The man remarked while photos of different people appeared on the screen, each showing signs of what looked to be the most excruciating torture given to them before getting a bullet to the head. But it was not the mangled bodies, the amputations or even the torn out intestines that got the sisters' attentions. It was their faces, the expressions of extreme terror permanently etched to their faces.

"Who or what did this?" Winter murmured as she looked queasily at a photo that showed a young woman with her limbs twisted and her neck slashed viciously.

"We are not sure." The man replied as he manipulated the controls. "But this has apparently happened a few times for the past couple of weeks, and it is always the same pattern. Historians who are fluent with the history and language of the old kingdom, each one successful to a certain degree and able to find relics in the most obscure places. And for whatever reasons, they all showed signs of torture and their research were taken away."

"Someone went through a lot of trouble to get it in order to write a virus with those symbols." Weiss commented while glancing away from one particularly gruesome photo.

"We believe it may be something else." The man remarked as he pressed a button to remove all the windows displaying the photos, much to the two sisters' relief. "We think that whoever is doing this is trying to find something, they are just using the symbols as a means to write the virus so that it will take us longer to break it down, like we needed more of a challenge to deal with." The man grumbled the last part out fiercely. The two women looked at him and the other technician who merely gave a grimace. Seeing their glares, the technician opted to carry on the explanation.

"Whoever wrote this virus did it two ways. Firstly, that person made it a self-replicating worm that keeps on attacking the system no matter what." The technician started to talk with a symbol diagram of their situation. "Thankfully we can counter it by cutting off the source of its food, in this case data."

"Go on."

"The second method applied to the virus is the more complicated bit. Whoever wrote this is a genius, making it semi-autonomic in order to counter most methods of erasing it. Essentially it is learning to go against our best measures and somehow in the process, it is becoming a Biggleman's Safe."

"A what safe?" Weiss blinked at the unknown description.

"Biggleman's Safe." Winter replied with a hint of reluctant respect. "It is a hypothetical encryption scenario where someone builds an impenetrable safe that cannot be broken into and places the blueprints inside it to keep the secrets hidden. The idea is such that by encrypting oneself with the same algorithm it is made of, it becomes unbreakable."

"So the virus is making itself more immune?" Weiss tilted her head in frustration.

"That is putting it lightly." The officer spoke after looking through the files. "Damn thing is learning faster than we can kill it, and those symbols are not helping."

"Aren't there any other people able to translate?" Winter asked. "How about the leading expert in these symbols? Surely he is available."

"Yeah, that is the other problem." The officer typed a few more buttons before pausing again. "I should warn you again, this is going to be more disturbing." With that, he pressed one more button to reveal the picture.

This time Weiss did not bother to hold back and ran straight to the nearest trash bin to empty out her lunch, while Winter looked ready to follow suit. "What on earth happen to him?!"

"Meet the late Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck." The officer sounded ill himself as he displayed the photo of the person in laying in a pool of his own blood, but with his shirt open to reveal several stab wounds on his stomach, the biggest one being on the side where his kidney was situated while his eyes were glazed over. But that was not the reason that the two women were horrified of.

It was the crime scene itself that made their situation all the more terrifying.

Drawn around him and the wall above him in what looked to be in his own blood, several symbols and pictograms were made, some resembling the same ones used in the virus code. His body was placed within the center of a six-point star with each tip containing a different symbol and one was drawn on his open stomach, giving the overall scene a very satanic look.

"This was taken a few hours ago in a museum that he helped with procuring ancient artifacts and old text. The police received a disturbance alert there and went to check up on it." The officer started his report while minimizing the window for their benefit. "As you can imagine, it was a major shock to find him there. When they checked the body and the other parts of the museum, evidence suggests that he was tortured for information."

"And after that, whoever it was decided to kill him and desecrate his body like that?!" Weiss looked at the man with disgusted disbelief and fury.

"That is the weird thing." The officer paused to take a breath before dropping the bomb. "The person who tortured Oobleck did not do that. He did it to himself."

"What?" Weiss dropped her angry expression and looked ill again.

"When the police found him, he was behind the security gates that were designed to trap anyone who wants to steal any of the artwork or artefacts in the museum. The broken statue on the floor and security footage proved that he was the one who shut the gate, likely to stop his captors from getting to him." The officer handed a folder containing the details. "There is no way to override the gates without the curator's keys and the security codes. So in that case, it would make sense that he drew those symbols and laid himself in that manner."

That explanation prompted Weiss to go for another trip to the trash bin, while Winter was gripping the folder with a shaking hand as she read the report. She had met the man briefly and found it hard to believe that he would do that to himself.

"Why?"

"The police believe that it was meant to draw attention to the captors, but also to another person whom they should protect." The officer answered.

"Protect? Protect who?" Winter raised one eyebrow, to which the officer pressed another button to show some of Oobleck's work and one part of the crime scene that had initials written in blood.

"Doctor Oobleck is known to work with a partner for some of his more obscure and dangerous work. No one knows his identity but Oobleck has attributed a fair amount of his successes to the partner named Jumile." The man said while focusing on the initials 'JMLA'. "It is a pen-name for the partner, a common practice for people in the archeology or history sectors who wished to remain anonymous but have their work published."

"What makes you think that this person needs protection?" Weiss asked from her side before bowing her head in preparation to vomit again.

"Some of the translators who have basic understanding of the symbols said that Oobleck kept drawing one symbol around the initials, its meaning is 'Protect' or 'Guard'." The officer replied. "Coupled with their partnership, it became clear to them that his partner might become the next target."

"I see, do we know him?" Winter asked as she lightly patted Weiss's back to ease her pain.

"We think we found the person." The officer typed a few more buttons to reveal records and photos. "When we were investigating some of the chatter, we found phone calls and letters to one person, which when cross-referenced with his time-table and his digs, gives us a possibility of 96% that this is Oobleck's partner."

"Okay, do we have a picture?" Weiss wiped her mouth while one of the assistants held the used trash bin at arm's length and went away quickly.

"Yeah, here's what we know of this guy." The officer picked up another folder and handed it to them. "Honestly speaking, this is the last person I expected to be Oobleck's partner." Weiss raised her eyebrow while Winter opened the folder and started reading. Weiss got closer to read the contents while thinking in her head. She may not have met the late Doctor, but she had respect for the contributions he made to the world of history, and of the few she did meet in other areas, she expected this partner of his to be a distinguished person in the ranks of his fellow historians and archaeologist.

Instead she found herself looking at a photo of a young man roughly her age with blond hair, blue eyes and a goofy smile that made him look a little silly. Puzzled at this, Weiss went to look for a name and stared for a moment before turning to the officer with a frown.

"Who the hell is this Jaune Arc?"

0-0-0-0

Hello there, here is another idea for the think-tank, this time set in an AU inspired by Dan Brown. I had looked to the best of my ability and I could not find any of the sort, so I thought I try to be the first one. There is no Grimm and no supernatural stuff, but there will be plenty of headaches. Pairings is undecided at this point, so it is anyone's game.

As always, please review and let me know if you want more of this, either as one-shot chapters or as an actual story.

And I put my pen down for now.