Enemies Unknown
A/N: Here it is, friends; the end to the first unofficial 'arc' for MSTT. The journey has only begun, and it will continue in DAWN, so – even if you're not TOO interested – please check the prologues out. If they don't fit your fancy, then you don't have to read them ALL to understand some of the small things that happen in MSTT, but it would be nice of you.
Also, just as a public note, in case you haven't heard of when RWBY Volume 4 is coming out, it's October the 22nd, and man am I EXCITED! Write that date down my friends, because we're going to have to stock up on tissue paper and soft drinks for the long, cold ride ahead…at least I hope it's not cold…
Disclaimer: Neither the Editorial or I own any part of RWBY or RT, and all rights and reserves go to Monty Oum and the other respective owners.
Many Weeks Ago…
Sparks of electricity spat out from broken terminals and exposed, damaged power lines. Many fell onto the repairmen that worked tirelessly to restore the pieces of technology to their former glory, but some passed through the ethereal form of General James Ironwood.
The man was actually still back in his headquarters in Atlas, but chose to make an appearance to personally oversee the process of repairing the Relay station that had been attacked by an unknown assailant. From the looks of things, the attacker had to be either mad, or had some bigger plan that would follow up this attack.
At least from what he could see and what his engineers could tell him, almost every terminal and processing unit in the facility had been either destroyed or fried, yet somehow the relay system still functioned at almost one-hundred percent.
The best explanation they were able to provide him with – thus far – was that even though the exterior of the terminals had been damaged and rendered beyond repair, the internal hardware was left unscathed.
The reason behind this was still unknown to the General, but he was sure that everything would be made clear in time; once the person responsible for this attack was caught and made to pay for his crimes.
"Chief engineer," Ironwood called out without looking directly at any of the men around his form. "Is there anything else you wish to report?"
One of the engineers wearing a yellow and white fireproof jacket ran in front of the hologram of his superior and stood at attention, saluting quickly before speaking. "Sir, only that we're still unable to reprogram the defence systems around the facility. Whatever this guy did to the turrets, it'll take the team a while to undo."
"Take all the time you need. Let's just be glad the systems are only targeting the Grimm at the moment." Ironwood replied as he returned the salute.
"The men still feel uneasy around them; some report that when there are no Grimm around, the turrets turn in their direction – just never fire." The chief engineer reported with a hint of concern for his men in his voice.
"Then I suggest we get them fixed before someone gets hurt." Ironwood said in a stern voice, letting the man before him know that it was a direct order. "Ironwood out." He signed off as the bridge of the relay station around him dissipated into various pixels and lights.
Rubbing his eyes under the immersion glasses he wore, the general looked back up to find that he was still in his holographic briefing room surrounded by a ring of panels made of light. With it, moving from the bridge of the relay tower to its infirmary was as simple as pressing a button – and he didn't even have to be there.
Before the general appeared in the infirmary, a paramedic was treating one of the survivors that had been found, badly wounded. Upon appearing out of thin air, the nurse quickly stood at attention as soon as she recognized that the man was there. The wounded survivor – with his arm in a sling, also tried to look presentable in front of the general, but grimaced when he stood at full height.
"General," the nurse greeted before dropping her salute. "-the corporal is awake and eager to give his report on the attacker."
"At ease, Gertrude." He addressed the nurse by name, as he had met with her several times in the past. The same went for the corporal. "Beckett, how are you feeling?"
"Worse than usual, sir. But nothing I can't walk off." The man said with a gesture to his injured hand as he flinched again in pain.
"You said you saw who this intruder was?" the general questioned.
The corporal had to sit down and pause for a moment, considering his next choice of words. "I wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't smacked me over the head and killed the rest of the squad." He droned for a moment. "He was like an army of one."
"Can you tell me anything definitive about this man?"
"He only had a silenced pistol, and a metal right arm. I couldn't tell too well, but it looked like there was a taser and another gun in that arm." The corporal shook his head. "No markings on it to tell where it came from, but it kinda looked Atlesian."
This news was unsettling to the greying general, but at least it narrowed down their search parameters. "Can you tell me anything else that stood out about this figure?"
"He covered himself up in very common clothing; you'd think that he was some kind of refugee or wanderer." Beckett said while shaking his head. "But um, before I went unconscious, I'm sure that I saw a symbol on his coat. It flickered just for a moment, but-" the corporal spoke as he reached for a piece of paper. "-it looked something like this."
Turning the paper over, Ironwood took a few moments to stare at the unfamiliar symbol of what looked like an eye with a crosshair over it.
"Thank you, corporal. That will be all – get some rest." The general said neutrally before cutting off the transmission.
Once the world around him flickered back to his briefing room, the Atlesian general took off the glasses and let out a long sigh, before an angry scowl replaced it. His hands clenched tightly around the immersion glasses to the point that a voice in the back of the general's mind had to warn him not to break them.
Whoever this attacker was, wherever he came from, whatever his intentions were, it didn't excuse the fact that this was an attack on Atlas – as far as the general was considered. This fact only made Ironwood more determined to find this man, if only make a statement that no one messes with Atlas and gets away with it. All they had to do now was find the man responsible and bring him to justice.
Taking out and opening the Scroll in his pocket, Ironwood made a quick call to the head of Atlas Intelligence. "I would like you to pull up any material or information you can in relation to this symbol." He spoke to the man as he sent a picture of the drawing Corporal Beckett had shown him.
The officer sucked in his lips as he seemed to be examining the symbol, but it wasn't long before he replied. "Doesn't look familiar to anything I've seen, but that's just me. I'll run a search filter for everything we have on the network. It may take a few hours, but I'll alert you immediately if I find anything, sir."
"Make it so, I'll have someone else look into this and send you anything that might be related to the symbol." For a moment, general Ironwood had to pause out of worry that he may have told his intelligence agent more than he needed to know – as ironic as that was, before closing the line.
As much as he wanted to launch a manhunt for this mysterious attacker or put the whole Kingdom on high alert, a feeling in his gut told the James that he needed to take care of this one quietly. It made sense to him if the general thought about it long enough; why commit to martial law when this attack seemed a little out of the way. However, James felt like he needed to send someone who could complete the task quietly and cleanly. Someone who had undertaken delicate special-operations in the past and succeeded over all of his peers.
Flicking through his list of contacts, he slowed to a stop over the name of his contact and left his finger to hover over the man's number before taking a deep breath and pressing it. Placing the Scroll to his ear, it rang three times before his recipient answered their Scroll.
"Yes, sir?" answered a soft, meek voice.
"Agent Stop, I have an assignment I want you to look into."
0o
Four hours after Chapter 11…
No words could do justice to describe the fury Cinder was feeling as she received another report that one of her designated 'Pawns' had turned on the White Fang members she had been working with before disappearing without a trace.
I should have known better than to trust him with such delicate matters! She thought to herself angrily as her eyes burned with a yellow flame.
"This is absolutely unacceptable!" Cinder nearly screamed as she paced back and forth. "Because of him,we've been set back by weeks!"
"Sympathisers in the village say that it wasn't just him that attacked the fortress." Adam explained, being very careful with his choice of words. "We can't be too sure from the descriptions, but it seems like that Vermillion kid is now helping your boy, as well as two others we're not too sure about."
The ash-haired woman tried to get her emotions under control – lest they feed the uncontrollable fire burning within her – before speaking again. "And there were no survivors from the fortress?" she asked, on the last, thin lengths of her emotional constraints.
Adam paused a moment before responding. "No."
"Good. Then they got what they deserved." Cinder choked out bitterly.
"Do not forget that these are my men! Without them, you wouldn't have gotten where you are now!" Adam suddenly snapped at her.
"Without them, you wouldn't be where you are now!" Cinder snapped back, more ferociously as she quickly closed the distance between the two of them. "Do not make me take them away from both of us." She threatened through gritted teeth.
For a long while, Adam didn't back down from the challenge, gritting his teeth in response. Eventually, he withdrew as if worried that the fire in Cinder's eyes would burn him.
A justified fear.
"So what do we do about him?" he asked her instead, changing the pace of the conversation.
"You and your men had your chance. I will take care of T and his friends personally. You on the other hand can track down and dispose of the rest of the Pawns. We still can't risk word getting out about our little operations." Cinder replied with a bit of bite in her tone.
"My men are very eager to exact their revenge on the cyborg. The lieutenant that survived-"
"-can take it out on the Pawns." Cinder finished for him. "T is mine."
Cinder was going to take her leave when Adam grabbed her arm. "You think you can best him and his allies alone when a hundred of my men fell to them?"
Yanking her arm free the ash-haired woman continued to speak while walking towards the exit of the room they were in. "That's why I won't be going alone."
Exiting the small storage room, Cinder marched over to where Emerald, Mercury and Neo were lazing about. Well, Emerald and Mercury were lazing about – Neo for some reason was running back and forth about the table they sat at.
"Get your things ready – we're going after T." Cinder stated bluntly.
Emerald was the first to really react to what she said, swinging her legs off the table. "Do we know what he did to the servers?"
"No, but T's replacement is running a sweep of the servers to check if he did any real damage, or if he just wanted to have a look at what we've been doing." Cinder explained almost irritably.
"Do we know where he is?" she asked further.
"No, but he's sloppy; his trail shouldn't be too hard to pick up on."
"Do we know what he's planning?"
It was at this point that Cinder turned around to face Emerald with a glare. "I didn't save your life so you could waste my time with question!" the green-haired girl quickly shrunk away at the tone of her voice. "If I learn something new and I want you to know what it is, you'll know it. Now," she said, the tone of her voice getting softer. "-any other stupid questions?"
"Yeah, what's Neo doing?" Mercury finally asked. While she wasn't looking, Neo had somehow spread open a foldable chessboard on the table and was now setting up the figures on either side.
"We don't have time for games, Neo." Cinder snarled at the girl, but she only held up a hand to indicate that she needed a moment. With the look of concentration and focus that she wore, Cinder had a feeling that Neo was trying to explain something important and decided to roll with it for now.
In one hand, Cinder also noticed that Neo was holding a red felt-tip pen and had a small bottle of black shoe polish – likely Roman's – with a polishing cloth on the table next to the chessboard.
Once she was done setting up the board, the heterochromatic girl picked up the black king piece and used the felt-tip pen to draw a letter 'T' on it.
"Ok, that's T, so what?" Mercury asked as she placed the king piece back in its place. Taking a step back, she put one of her hands under her chin as if she were admiring the chessboard before suddenly swiping her hand across the board, knocking every black piece off except for the king.
Cinder was trying to understand the symbolism behind it, but her patience was wearing thin. "Get to the point."
Picking up one of the white pawn pieces, she picked up the bottle of shoe polish in the other hand and popped the cap open with her mouth before setting it back down and dipping the cloth in it. Cinder watched with a scrutinizing glare as Neo polished the pawn piece and set it down on the black king's side of the table. She repeated this for each of the pawn pieces, and by the time she started off on the fifth one, Cinder's eyes widened slightly in realisation.
"He's building his forces to fight." She muttered under her breath. "Out of my Pawns."
"But…T hates working with people. Are you sure about this?" Emerald directed the question at Neo, who scowled in response. "Ok, fine. I guess this puts us at an advantage, right? We can just pull up the profiles that T made of the surviving Pawns and look for their weaknesses."
"It's not as simple as that. T deleted all the copies of the list from our everything." Mercury said as he swung his feet off the table and stood up to stretch. "We'll need to come up with something else if Neo's right."
"Right now, what we need is for you three to get ready to begin searching for T. If he's out to undo what he did to help us, then we need to-" Cinder's facial features twitched irritably when the screeching sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor reached her ears.
Her head snapped in the direction of the source of the noise to find two White Fang guards shifting a heavy metal crate and table in the way of the sliding doors of the warehouse, while Roman approached them at a brisk pace.
"We've got a problem." He spoke casually as he extinguished the lit end of his cigar on the table they stood at.
Letting out a groan of frustration, Cinder addressed him. "What is it now?"
"One of your Pawns showed up demanding that he speak to you. Apparently he didn't take to finding out about Gambit very well. When I told him that you were unavailable and…some other things, he started trashing the men and is on his way here, now." The orange-haired man said as a loud thud echoed from beyond the door of the warehouse.
"Who is it this time?" Cinder asked, and Roman was about to respond, but was quickly cut off when the sliding door was blasted off its railings along with the heavy objects in front of it like they were made of paper.
Out of the fading light of dusk, black tendrils stretched into the warehouse and crept along the walls towards the five people inside. Emerald, Mercury and Neo were now on their feet and had their weapons ready as a figure stepped through the opening.
However, the sight of the figure made Cinder's face split into a wide grin. I was wondering when he would show up.
Stepping into the warehouse stood a tall, lightly tanned man with black hair, wearing a white tank-top with matching white trousers and a black jacket over it. Dark blue sneakers made a hard, metallic sound against the concrete floor of the warehouse as the figure strode into the building with his longsword in his hand.
"Hello, Cinder. I think we need to talk."