Stardust

Chapter 16

Revelations

Smoke Carver watched as his team leader, Cerise knelt in front of a fold up satellite dish as he sent files off to Lighthouse. It was imperative that tean CCTS sent off all they had learned tonight. All of it important. Though from the expression on Cerise's face he may have been focusing on the first thing they had witnessed.

Once they had gotten Citrine and Titania calmed down (relatively speaking) they continued to observe and the craziness was only just beginning to a point.

As not long after from the sky descended a bunch of airships and they watched as Cerise's Uncle Silver proclaimed that these ships would take all the faithful followers to a "place of worship where they would be taken care of and they could prepare for what comes next."

Clearly whoever was at the end of this farce had deep pockets…

And that was only the second of tonight's discoveries!

After the gathered people were gone leaving the brute Uncle Silver, the woman, and the man from earlier were left with their tents. Not long after the two of them came out and started placing what seemed to be a random assortment of objects in front the crystal that now held the entombed girl.

Then from the main tent where Uncle Silver was staying the man emerged carrying a strange metal box that he held almost reverently.

Approaching the collection of objects, he set the box down and then the trio backed away hurriedly.

What happened next was astonishing the box practically disintegrated revealing a spark of energy that floated in mid-air then from the stone that imprisoned Alice dark technicolor gathered and swirled about it and the random objects they had placed started levitating and they all converged on the spark resulting in a bright flash.

When it faded what was seen was beyond astonishing. Elemental energy formed parts of the body with random objects from a head, tail, and claws.

They had just seen an Anim be born right before their eyes.

Movement on potential terrorists and the secret of the Anim. This was huge and needed to be sent off ASAP.

And sure, enough Cerise had confirmation the copied data was sent off and as he stood his team leader said "okay now"

"No, no absolutely not." Smoke interjected obviously seeing where this was going.

"We need to get back to Lighthouse with this data. This a recon mission and we're done with expectations beyond fulfilled I'd say. This is not apprehension, and we are not equipped for it."

Cerise gave Smoke a frustrated look and said "but Alice_"

"Could already be dead." Smoke interjected he then added on "if you do this you will go to your death potentially and take the rest of us with you!"

Cerise just stared at him eyes blazing and said "I never said you had to follow me I'll go by myself."

Smoke just stared at him aghast before saying "are you serious? There's three of them and one of you, even with aura and your semblance you will go down fast!"

The two stared off with Titania looking between them worriedly while Citrine glanced to the side thinking.

Ideally, they could return to Lighthouse. Their mission was complete technically and Smoke had a point. Fighting them was not their place, and they certainly didn't really have the means for it.

But also, Cerise had a point sort of. Alice could be alive, but she also couldn't be. And what about the all other people entombed? On top of all that though Cerise was their friend, teammate, Citrine's partner.

Citrine looked up to the brawl waiting to happen and cleared his throat catching their attention and with a bit of a blush and stammer said "Smoke has a point but so does Cerise and… if we leave now I don't think it will end well. Stories like these are how wars start and we may not be able to find these people again once everything goes down… And what's more if we leave those people may do this to even more people."

Citrine swallowed as his team stared at him and he finished "what sort of Huntsmen would we be if we let this be? We need, no" Citrine shook his head "we have to do this. Cerise I'm with you, confront your uncle, I'll take one of the other two."

Cerise stared at him while Titania looked at Smoke who frankly looked constipated and had a hand to his face, his ears down against his head.

"…fine." Smoke finally said "fine we'll do this God willing we all come out of this relatively unscathed." The faunas turned to Cerise and said "send another message to Lighthouse saying to get here quick please?" The he looked at his partner and said "me and you against the third person?" Titania nodded.

Cerise broke in and said "OK I'll send the message, anything else?"

Nobody said anything, the enormity of what they were about to do hitting them.

The leader of CCTS nodded and said "OK I'll send off the message, one last look over for preparations, and then let's do this."

And sure, enough Cerise did what he said he would do. He sent the message off while the other three did last minute checks and preparations. While the others did their thing, they did notice Cerise was also doing some preparations but they weren't really paying attention to him.

That is until the moment arrived and they had their stuff stashed in the sand and Smoke caught of Cerise and stopped dead aghast.

"You cannot be serious" he said with Citrine and Titania also sporting confused looks.

Cerise simply nodded and it was Titania who said "why?"

"Safety precaution" was the response.

Citrine looked at his partner curiously. "What?"

Cerise explained.

(CCTS)

Pushing aside the flap of the tent Citrine saw a young woman sitting in front of a mirror and he hefted his halberd and pointed it at her. The movement caught the woman's attention and she quickly stood up whirling around to look at him.

The world around the two then went dark.

(CCTS)

Smoke and Titania pushed past the flap of a tent to see a young man staring at them in astonishment. Smoke threw his arms down sending wolf shaped streams of smoke about, Titania called her wings forth, and the two charged.

(CCTS)

Much like the rest of his team Cerise pushed past the tent flap and stood in the large, opulent space of his uncle's tent.

And as he stepped inside he heard his voice call out saying "Shadow is that you dear? Perfect timing, I need you to fetch Brutus. We have some things we need to go over and we'll need to pack up camp. Pity we have no servants to do this."

Cerise couldn't help himself and rolled his eyes and he said in a flat dead, tone "no one's coming to help you uncle."

The man turned and surprise flitted across his face and he said "nephew, Cerise… what are you doing here?'

Cerise unfolded the fans he held in each hand and said "what did you do to Alice, to the other children of our group, to other people?"

Silver rolled his own eyes here and said "ah I see revenge that's why you're here. For pity's sake. Well so much for keeping you alive. He'll have to be disappointed."

He waved his hand… and nothing happened.

Cerise smirked and Silver looked astonished before he too smirked and said "finally figured it out have you?"

He looked over Cerise who was barefoot wearing sweat pants and his dust infused jacket looked absolutely mangled as he said "all that time, all those years I was with you I tried to figure out how you were able to manipulate the people around you. But after Lighthouse I realized it wasn't people you were somehow manipulating."

There was a pause as the man before him raised a hand almost lazily as Cerise's hands formed blades of energy and his jacket and sash lit up with color as Cerise said with a fierce scowl "you were manipulating what was around them!"

From within the confines of the tent his weapon an enormous battle-axe came flying out of nowhere the hilt landing in his palm, fingers, closing around it and Cerise finished with "your semblance is polarity, magnetism."

Silver hefted the weapon and Cerise lowered himself into a duel wielding combat stance.

Then the two charged at each other.

Author's Note: Hello everyone! Here's the next chapter for Stardust my RWBY OC story. Doing this chapter was slightly cathartic as believe it or not the confrontation with Uncle Silver and the whole polarity semblance revelation has been in my plans from the get-go and there's still a bit more from my plans to get through but the ending for Stardust is in sight now. This chapter might have covered some of the fight but the pacing wasn't right so if you were wondering there you go. Again there's a drawing to accompany the chapter with the version on AO3 and it's up on DeviantArt and Tumblr so feel free to check that out. Not much else left to say. I hope you like this. I do not own RWBY in any way, shape, or form. My OC's are my own. Reviews welcome.