Today's chapter is a little short as I have a health scare. I'd rather not go into detail right now because I'm hoping it will be nothing. Doctor on Tuesday, though they'll likely have to take tests and get back to me on results, etc. I don't want to even make guesses for fear of jinxing things but finding a lump where it shouldn't be isn't usually cause for celebration.

Cover Art: GWBrex

Chapter 64

There was no news over the coming day but that didn't calm Jaune any.

He took to spending his free time on the shore, the water lapping at his feet, and his eyes staring out toward the strait, and the entrance back to the four kingdoms where his family still hopefully resided. He didn't even know if they were still alive out there.

Ozma gave him the space he didn't need nor want, refusing to offer any suggestions, afraid that any he might give would only lead to a repeating of history. Sienna and her commanders had met every day since, and he'd been invited, but he hadn't come today, knowing nothing would be decided. It was the same result every time, and he couldn't even blame them when he couldn't agree on a course of action in his own head.

Jaune felt Ruby approach. Her aura clung around her like thin trails of smoke.

"Hello Ruby."

"Hey." The girl knelt, then pushed her legs out and mimicked his posture beside him. Her bare toes wriggled in the wet sand. "You didn't show up to the meeting today."

"Was anything actually decided?"

"No…" Jaune smiled and dipped his head. Ruby sighed. "Everyone is on edge. No one knows what to do. I know I don't. Part of me just wants to stay here and say what happens in the rest of the world doesn't matter."

"And the other part?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "It's all a jumbled mess."

That was pretty much how much how he felt about the whole thing. There was a violently demanding side of him that wanted to go out there and take the fight to Salem; to expose her, bring the kingdoms on board and cast her down once and for all. It was fuelled by worry for his family, and the knowledge that if she went and wiped the board clean as Ozma thought she might, that his sisters would die screaming. If the act itself of exposing her wasn't so unlikely or difficult then he'd have pushed for that course of action already.

But it was close to impossible.

Coco and Pyrrha only turned because they saw the truth with their own eyes; Weiss and Whitley because they had seen Mistral fall to the Grimm and knew for a fact the church were lying when they blamed it on him. It would be close to impossible to convince other people of that when they'd spent their whole lives being indoctrinated. If someone had tried to convince him of it, he'd have called them insane and reported them to the mayor.

Salem's divinity was just a fact of life. It was established truth. The goddess had ruled over Remnant for millennia, and it wasn't like she was some figurehead either; anyone who saw her knew she was more than human, and the fact she'd lived in view of the public for so long meant everyone knew of her. Convincing them they were wrong would be an arduous task. They would literally need her to expose herself, and as arrogant and reckless as she could sometimes be, he knew she wasn't stupid. You couldn't be to rule the world for this long.

"What do you want to do?" asked Ruby.

He told her. She had been with him since nearly the start and knew practically everything. Ruby knew about his family, about how he'd had to leave them and how much he hated it. She knew that he cared for them even now, and that news of a war encompassing the whole world would frighten him.

"I want to go and save them – bring them here – but if I was in Vale then it'd be too late to just come back. I'd not even be able to get there without an army. There would be a battle no matter how much I try to avoid it." He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the ocean. "And I'm not sure that's the right choice. Dark Lords have done the war and invasion thing before and it always fails. No one has gotten this far. At least not as far back as Ozma can remember. I'm doing better than most. I should keep at that."

It was the obvious choice. Salem being desperate was a good thing; he was winning; this was working. The monster wouldn't be in such a frantic state if he wasn't. Going against that and putting himself in danger felt stupid, or maybe even exactly what she wanted. If this was a trap she was laying, then the bait was good. That much was for sure.

"And Ozma won't help?"

"He'll talk and offer a little comfort here or there, but he's made it clear I have to make the decision." It was stupid to be angry about that, but he was. "I get what he's saying, but all the pressure is on me now and I know the right decision is to stay here and let the world go. It's the common-sense choice; it's the strategic choice as well."

"Hmm…" Ruby hummed and splashed her feet in the water. "I think everyone knows that as well, but they're still unable to make a decision either. Sienna and the others. If it was so easy, then they'd not be having so many meetings."

That wasn't as much a comfort as she would have liked it to be. Not that it was her fault; Ruby was feeling this indecision as hard as he, but at least her family were here. She didn't have as great a connection to the bandits left behind – her uncle, her sister, and her father's first partner. They were going to die as well, he realised. Jaune wouldn't say he was close to them, but they'd looked after him through the winter and taught him to fight both alone and in formation. They'd fed them, homed them, and never criticised or asked questions. They didn't deserve what would come to them, but then no one out there did.

"I should end the indecision," said Jaune. Ruby looked his way. "If I tell Sienna and the others that I refuse to leave the island, they'll give up on it as well. They can't fight Salem without me, so they'll choose to stay here. They won't even feel bad about it; I'd take all the blame."

Ruby looked down at her feet. "I guess…"

Neither of them moved.

Knowing the right thing to do didn't make it any easier. His family were out there. His mom, his dad, his sisters; people he'd grown up with. He couldn't just walk up to Sienna and tell he wanted to abandon them. A lot of people on Menagerie had family and friends back in the four kingdoms.

"You know…" Ruby trailed off, then picked up her words again after a few seconds of thought. "Do you ever think that maybe Ozma wants you to decide because he's always made the sensible choices and they've never worked before?"

Jaune glanced her way and hummed.

"I mean, the people he's possessed weren't idiots. They made the strategic choices; they made the common-sense choices; they did things rationally. And it never worked. Because common-sense only works when there isn't something working against it, and Salem is, and she has all the power and all the resources to make the common-sense answer fail."

"They chose to declare war on her. I'd say that was the dumb choice."

"In hindsight maybe, but they didn't have a convenient island to run away to like you did." Her smile took the bite out her words, but he still felt them. "They probably weren't as dumb about it as history makes them sound either. I bet they took their time building up allies and an army and picking the right place. But things didn't work out because that's what Salem expected from them. They did what she thought they would do. And right now, Salem expects you to stay here while she pits the world against you, then to either win and call it a day or lose and wipe the kingdoms clean with Grimm and start again."

"Are you saying we should go face her? All because she wouldn't expect it. I bet she wouldn't expect us to hurl children at her in trebuchets either, but it's probably not a good idea." Ruby giggled and slapped her hand against his side. He hadn't really meant it as a joke.

"What I mean is that cold logic hasn't always worked in the past. The ways you've escaped her is by thinking outside the box. I think that's what Ozma can't do. He's too used to overthinking things and taking the logical approach. Salem too, I bet. They've both been alive as long as each other so they probably think they know best, and it can get them both in trouble."

"I don't deny that, but I don't see how that helps us make a choice here. I get what you're saying – we have to be surprising; we have to do the unexpected, but there's unexpected and then there's stupid. We're protected here. The island is defensible."

"Salem is immortal," Ruby pointed out. "We're not. If she wants to spend eighty years gathering Grimm outside the strait, enough to turn the sky black with beating wings, then she totally can. No one would be able to stop her."

Jaune groaned into his hand.

"Menagerie can't stand forever, Jaune. You know that. Maybe it'll take one lifetime, maybe two, but she'd have every bit of landmass in the world to play around and gather Grimm on, and we'll be trapped here. Or our descendants will be."

"Do you want us to go out and fight?" he asked her.

Ruby didn't answer for the longest time. Her eyes looked out over the water, her hair fluttering gently in the breeze. Eventually, she looked back, her silver eyes narrowed. "Kinda."

"Why? Our chances are astronomically slim."

"Because I'd rather die fighting, I guess. And there are a lot of people out there I wouldn't want to be killed by her. I mean, either way is death, right? If I have to choose between dying with a chance of beating her and dying as one of the last people on Remnant, waiting for her to send her monsters to kill us, then I know which I'd choose." She tilted her head. "Wouldn't you?"

"What of all the people here, though? A lot of them would want to stay and leaving would mean putting them at risk. We'd need to take an army with us, leaving Menagerie defenceless, or if we went alone and left the faunus here then we'd be defenceless in the kingdoms. It's one or the other."

"Unless we made it a proper invasion." Ruby grinned. "If we landed on Mistral and started making a big show of taking over the island then Salem would see that as her chance, wouldn't she? Attacking Menagerie failed, but it's you she's afraid of, and suddenly you've come out of Menagerie and put yourself at risk. It'd be the perfect chance for her."

"If she falls for it. Us stepping out from behind our ocean barrier is a dumb move."

"But it's what every dark lord in the past has done, isn't it? It's the usual choice. For her, it's probably the comfortable choice. I bet she'll think Ozma has taken over and driven you mad – you could even play it up. That would calm her down, make her think everything is going her way and maybe even convince her she doesn't need to start planning a genocide. Things are going back to how they should be. Everything is back under control."

It would push things back toward a comfortable narrative for Salem, that was for sure. The question then, was what they would do after. There was no point handing themselves on a silver platter if they were just going to roll over and die. How could they turn such a thing to their advantage? Sienna and her various commanders would need some reason to think this was a good idea. Or that it wasn't just suicide.

"The Dark Lord has always lost on the open field before," he said. "What changes here?"

"Well, she doesn't have Mistral and Atlas for one."

True. Two kingdoms down – one destroyed and one crippled by her own Grimm. That would cut her forces in half, to say nothing of those who had died in the first attack on Menagerie, been executed after, or become disillusioned and left. Things weren't going well for the church after their recent string of losses, and that must have hit manpower by now. Her armies would be weaker than they'd ever been before.

They had their own aura users too. They weren't on the level of the Chosen, but they were far above the level of amateurs or regular soldiers; they were capable of things that would rout the common soldier. They also had a navy, though how to best utilise that wasn't something he was sure of. Salem also couldn't afford to use Grimm if she was using human soldiers, so if nothing else they would get the benefit of choosing their favoured enemy by doing this.

Am I really going to do this?

The answer was obvious – and he knew he'd just been looking for an excuse to make it happen; to go back for his family and have one last stand. Ruby hadn't changed his mind; she'd simply given him the reasons he needed to convince himself. He would need to apologise to Ozma if this ended up being the wrong decision.

"It is all well," said the man, deep in his mind. "It is not the decision I would have made, and that is why I am pleased that you have made it. Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps there is no salvation. Either way, we shall try to make this work. Just beware that I may lose myself if we see her."

/-/

"Are you insane…?" Sienna was less than thrilled with their plan. "What you're proposing is that we drop everything to take the fight back to the kingdoms, leaving out most vulnerable here and challenging the greatest might this world has ever seen."

"Not in open battle," said Jaune. "We want to draw her out with that, but we don't have to fight if the odds are against us."

"Then what? We run? Constantly?"

"We survive. We expose her. I know we can't expose her as inhuman unless she makes a mistake or loses patience, but the latter isn't that unlikely. Salem is panicking. We know that from Neptune's report of what happened to Atlas. She's making irrational decisions because she's spooked, and she wants to drag things back to normal. It's gotten to the point she's taking unnecessary risks to make that happen."

"All the more reason to stay here, surely?" asked one of Sienna's men. "Let her make her mistakes and give her time to make more."

"That won't work in the long run. We know Salem is planning one last no holds barred attack on us here. If that fails, and it might, then she'll let the kingdoms fall and just go full Grimm on us. And at that point she'll lose every reason to rush things. She can afford to take her time over decades building up Grimm for an unstoppable attack. No matter how hard we train or grow, we're limited by the size of the island. Salem can make four kingdom's worth of Grimm to destroy us."

There were worried murmurs between them. Little surprise, though. They must have come to the conclusion themselves. No wonder they hadn't been able to decide on a course of action. They were all bad.

"We think that if we sail out and make a show of landing on Mistral to prepare for an attack, then Salem will relax," he said. He had their attention now. "The Dark Lord mustering an army and coming for her is a comfortable thing. It's how it's always been. Salem will be convinced I've gone insane and given up on my advantage to hunt her down, and she'll fall back into old habits. Menagerie will be left for another time – no longer a threat – and her focus will be on us."

"On you," said Sienna. "It makes sense. It's a good chance to take our home out, but if she does that then she leaves her own kingdoms undefended. She stands to lose more than we do in a situation like that. But what happens when she comes to Mistral? What happens when an army made up of Vale and Vacuo lands on its shores to challenge us?"

"We can't win a pitched battle," said one faunus.

"Then we won't fight one," said another. "Fall back, take to the ocean, and make a move for Atlas – or even Vale. Our fleet is manoeuvrable and experienced, while their best sailors and ships litter the ocean floor."

"Even if they were building as fast as they could, which they probably are, it's unlikely they've managed to replace their losses," said Blake. "We took down far too many ships, and she's lost the use of both Atlas and Mistral's lumberyards and shipwrights."

"Her navy has been neglected anyway," added Adam. "Her greatest threat on the water was pirates, and you don't need a fully equipped naval armada to deal with them. We could run them ragged on the waters, and if their armies lose cohesion and land piecemeal then we could engage them and pick them off."

"If we aren't annihilated the moment we set foot on a country overrun with Grimm," Sienna pointed out. "Or have you all forgotten what destroyed Mistral?"

"We haven't forgotten," said Ruby, "but Salem can't afford to send the Grimm against Jaune, can she? If she does, then she completely ruins her story about them being sent by him to destroy Atlas."

Blake snorted. "I wonder if she'd order them to fight with us to sell her story."

"I doubt it. Chances are she'll just have them avoid us or maybe try and sweep in when the battle is over to finish us off." Jaune leaned in. "But there doesn't have to be a battle at all."

"We can't run forever. Our supplies would run out, to say nothing of people wanting to go home." Sienna waved her hand. "What's the end game of this? What would be our objective?"

"To either have their forces weaken themselves by being out of position like Blake said." He nodded to the faunus. "Or until we see an advantage to take, like fighting them on the water when they're vulnerable. Or, if needs be, to push Salem until her patience snaps. We already know she's desperate; that's why she faked the attack on Atlas from me. If she makes a mistake and does something like that again, or sends the Grimm after us, then that will blow her story wide open."

Sienna slumped back. "That's not much of a plan…"

"It's a plan in the making. I'm happy to adapt it or have you take over if you see an opportunity."

"He's right about one thing," said Adam, leaning over Sienna's shoulder. "We can't afford to do nothing. We are looking at another naval invasion destined to be multiple times larger than the last, and then an even greater invasion of Grimm immediately after. If those fail, then Salem will give up on pretending to be a merciful goddess. If we push out, we control the tempo. We decide the battle, the battlefield, and the timing. We can also afford to cause as much collateral as we want out there. The same can't be said here."

"And if we're accepting our role as the evil army then she has to pretend to be good," added Blake, smirking a little. "After all, she can't be seen as worse than the Dark Lord, can she? It would force her to act nice and be the honourable foe. We'd have more freedom. Freedom to search Mistral for survivors, and maybe to gather some from Atlas as well."

"You all sound like you've made up your minds," said Sienna. She didn't sound angry, more resigned. "Damn it all. This is the worst plan I've ever heard, but I'll be damned if I can think of a better one. Our only choices are to go out there and face her or wait here and let her bring the world crashing down on our heads. Bugger it all." Her hand slammed down. "Let's do it. We've bloodied her twice now. Might as well risk our lives seeing if we can make it three for three."

This is as much as I managed.

Next Chapter: 4th June

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