Chapter time!
There will be a break from updates for a couple of weeks, after that, so don't expect anything for some time.
In her brief stay at Beacon, Winter found Ozpin to be utterly unhelpful.
All the attempts she made at figuring out the identities, or locations, of other heroes present in Vale were always thwarted by the grey haired man sooner or later. It was almost as if the headmaster of Beacon knew what she was looking for, and did his best to stop her from getting it.
Had she not already seen the negligible, when compared to otherworldly heroes, power the headmaster wielded, she would have assumed him to be another hero, himself.
As it was, however, she could only suspect that he was merely in direct relation with one of her opponents.
While it wasn't ideal, as it meant that another hero managed to snatch the obvious advantage of allying themselves with someone of importance in Vale instead of her, it certainly wasn't the worst situation, either.
At the very least, the knowledge that Ozpin allied himself with another hero told her that one of her opponents likely had close connections to Beacon unrelated to their otherworldly power.
Her first suspicion was that a member of Beacon's teaching staff turned out to be one of the heroes, but a quick check on the publicly available records of all the huntsmen, and huntresses, teaching here quickly dismissed that thought.
Just because none of the teachers was an otherworldly hero didn't mean that there were none of them in the school, though.
There were countless students here, any single one of whom could turn out to be her foe.
Arguably, an otherworldly hero who was young enough to be a student, could be a bigger challenge than someone who went to the other world only after living a long life on Remnant, already. One couldn't underestimate the strength those people could gain if they weren't constrained by the common sense of their home, after all.
As such, for the last whole night, she's been doing nothing but looking through the school's database in search of anything which could hint at one of the students being an otherworldly hero, like her.
It was a boring and tiring work, every year more than a hundred students went through Beacon, and she had to search through all of them, but thankfully it wasn't difficult, and nobody was there to make it harder for her.
If anything, any interruptions she had to endure only made her search that much easier. All of the Ozpin's clear attempts at sabotaging her by giving her a lot of false data, and putting anything suspicious deeper into the database, made her ignore all the dead ends, increasing her work speed.
The headmaster of Beacon might have been an unbelievably good huntsmen and experienced man, but he was far from being good enough to scheme around her.
"Alright, that's the last one." She said to herself as she put away all the papers of the third-year students at Beacon. "None of those people appear to be my opponents, either."
Throughout the night, she had already checked all the fourth-year students without finding a single person she could reasonably suspect of being an otherworldly hero.
The fact she couldn't find a single hero among the third-years, either, was a slight disappointment but not a surprise.
There were only twelve otherworldly heroes for the whole Remnant, total. It would have been beyond bizarre if she could find one in the first few groups of people she checked for their presence, especially so when she was certain that a few of them had to have died already.
A small sigh escaped her, as she reached out for another stack of physical papers.
It didn't mean, however, that searching for any of those heroes suddenly became any easier for her. At most, it only made her mildly annoyed Ozpin didn't want to help her with finding them.
She briefly skimmed through the papers, before putting all the ones belonging to second-year students away.
Thankfully, there was no need to go through all of them, since with all the heroes disappearing from the face of the Remnant for a year, it was impossible for any student from the second year to be a hero.
As long as they weren't repeating a year, that was.
It would have been the case for any school year, though, and checking any people repeating a year was the very first thing she did upon getting this database, anyway.
There were surprisingly few students who didn't manage to pass on their first try, the last year, and she was pretty sure that nearly all of them had their data falsified by Ozpin to slow down her search, as well.
The most important thing she should be focusing on right now, were the first-years, however.
There wasn't a set age one needed to have to start attending Beacon—aside from the requirement of passing any combat school or getting a good enough recommendation from a professional huntsman—therefore the chances for any first year student to be an otherworldly hero were a lot higher than any other year.
Not wanting to waste more of her important time, she took a deep breath, focused her attention on the papers before her, and went to work, looking through all of them.
The vast majority of the candidates, and the students, she saw as she read through all the papers, were either simply unimpressive or somewhat powerful, but within the realm of Remnant's standards.
The few students that did catch her attention were members of her sister's team, team RWBY if she remembered their name correctly, but she knew very well that none of them were a hero like her.
She wouldn't have allowed her sisters to stay with that team if they were.
With a slow, lazy, movement of her hand, she put the papers away, before reaching for another ones.
Before she could grab another stack of four papers, to look through another team's information, she heard a sudden knock on her door, and forced herself to stop.
"Yes?" She asked with a somewhat suspicious tone.
Had Ozpin finally decided that she had snooped around his database for too long?
It could be the other hero, the old headmaster of Beacon had allied with, coming here in order to deal with her, too.
She shifted a little, preparing herself to unleash all her magic at the door in case of an emergency. Whoever was on the other side, they weren't going to catch her off-guard.
"Winter, are you here?" Weiss's voice came from the other side of the door. "I am looking for you."
Her body relaxed a little.
"I'm here, sister." She said loudly, before standing up from her chair. It did seem like a rather good time to take a short break from all the searching, she was doing. "Please come in, the door should be open."
The door opened slowly, as her younger sister took a peek inside the room, before coming in.
"Winter, you're here!" Weiss said with sparkles in her eyes. "You have no idea how long I was looking for you! I was starting to suspect you have already returned to Atlas."
She tilted her head to the side slightly.
"You thought I returned to Atlas?" She couldn't help but ask. "I don't think I would be capable of doing that, even if I tried with all my might to escape from Vale. It's still early morning, after all."
Weiss frowned at her.
"Winter, it's already past midday."
She blinked.
With a somewhat awkward movement of her hand, she took out a scroll from her pocket, and checked the time.
Huh, apparently she really needed to have some way to measure time when doing monotonous work. It was way later than she thought it was based on how she felt the time pass by.
It was another reason to take a break now, she supposed.
"I must have gotten lost in the work again, then." She briefly glanced at all the papers she went through, shrugged, and turned back to her younger sister. "Is there a specific reason you were looking for me?"
Weiss took a couple steps towards her.
"I-I just wanted to talk to you, I guess." Weiss said, as she approached her. "You did disappear for a whole year, after all. It wasn't like we really had any time to catch up with each other after that, either."
Her expression immediately softened.
It had been quite some time since she had a true, and extensive, conversation with her younger sister, and she could already tell that her brief time at Beacon did change her sister's mannerism a bit.
She certainly wouldn't have expected any stuttering from Weiss before she visited Terravia.
A quiet hum escaped her.
Although, her sudden disappearance from Remnant might have also been related to Weiss's attitude towards her. In the end, it had been a whole year of her being gone without any warning or explanation, at all.
Either way, she wasn't opposed to some good old conversation.
"Alright, I do have some free time right about now, I suppose." She smiled kindly. "What do you want to talk about, sis? I assure you, we can talk about anything you could possibly want, today."
In response to her positive reply, her younger sister blinked in befuddlement, widely opened her mouth for a second to say something, and ended up closing it after realising she had no idea what to do.
A quiet giggle escaped her, at her younger sister's antics.
"Argh!" Weiss groaned in frustration at her own indecisiveness. "Let's just talk about whatever you were doing right now, Winter. At this point, practically any possible topic we can talk about together would be good enough for me."
She lightly nodded her head in agreement.
"In that case, I was currently looking for people who went through similar experience to me." She admitted earnestly. "For reasons I cannot really tell you about, I'm currently looking for such people, and I believe there could be a couple of them hidden in Beacon."
Weiss perked up at her words.
"You mean people like Pyrrha?" Weiss asked.
Her whole body instantly became tense.
"You know a person who meets these criteria?" She couldn't help but ask, before realising something, and becoming worried right away. "You didn't approach them, did you? Any single one of those people is incredibly dangerous. You shouldn't even think of talking to them."
Her sister looked at her with clear confusion in her eyes.
"I don't think Pyrrha is dangerous to anyone." Weiss tilted her head slightly to the side. "If anything, she's the only person from Beacon who's actively helpful in the current situation. She's the only one allowed to actually go outside the Beacon and help the city."
She gritted her teeth in anger.
It was incredibly useful information, that could have helped her localise other heroes in Vale, in no time! How was it possible that she only learned of it right now, from her own younger sister no less?
Just the fact that the girl was allowed to leave the Beacon on her own, alone, would have been enough of a clue for her to realise that she was dealing with another otherworldly hero.
"You don't think that the fact she can leave Beacon at any point she wants, is suspicious, at all?!" She couldn't help but bit out, getting somewhat angry at her little sister. "Please tell me you didn't try to get close to her, Weiss."
Weiss visibly flinched.
"Pyrrha is not dangerous." Weiss tried to argue quietly.
"She is dangerous!" She countered. "You have no idea what sort of powers that Pyrrha girl could have, let alone what she was willing to do with them! A single bad day on that girl's side could have cost you your life!"
In a moment, the entire room became silent, as her younger sister shook with anger, and tears appeared in her eyes.
A sigh escaped her.
It was beyond obvious that her sisters had been entrapped by that Pyrrha girl, and likely considered her a good friend by now. The mere implications that the girl was an unnaturally powerful murderer was enough to cause her to react in anger, regardless of how true, and based on logic, they were.
Like it or not, she would have to move away onto a different topic.
The last thing she wanted was to alienate her sister further.
At the very least, she did manage to find out a single name of an otherworldly hero to narrow down her search. It left her with only nine, possibly eight or maybe less if she was lucky, heroes to find.
"Okay, let's just talk about something else than Pyrrha." She sighed. "How about other people like the two of us? Have you seen anyone else that you could reasonably suspect went through a similar thing?"
For a solid moment, her sister only glared at her in response.
Thankfully, it didn't take long, before Weiss became more willing to talk to her.
"I don't think there's another person in this school who has gone through a similar situation to you, or Pyrrha." Weiss murmured, sulking. "Certainly, not one that's still alive. The only other person that could possibly be like that, is already dead."
"Thank you, Weiss." She said with a smile.
Her sister slowly nodded her head, before retreating toward the exit a little.
"I see, you are still engrossed in your work, Winter." Weiss said, in a forcibly polite tone. "I will leave you to it, then. My team probably has made quite a few plans for today, and I wouldn't want to ruin them."
She winced, as she saw her sister leave.
It didn't take her long to figure out that she had blundered pretty badly back there.
A tired huff left her.
"As long as you are safe, Weiss, it's enough for me." She whispered, knowing full well her younger sister wouldn't hear it. "The moment I win this cruel war, I will make sure to mend our relationship back together."
With a tired glance, she looked over all the papers on the desk before her.
The fact that the papers most important to her research were hidden amongst the ones she had put away, because she believed Ozpin had given it to her as a red herring, didn't even arouse the emotion of anger out of her.
It only made her feel more tired.
The only thing her mind bothered focusing on, right now, was her sister, and the terrible war she had to win for her safety.
"I will make all of it better again, Weiss." Once again, she whispered to herself. "I promise."
(...)
Flying above the Remnant's oceans at supersonic speeds was a surprisingly calming experience for Penny.
There were hardly any obstacles she had to worry about, provided she flew high enough, and the path to her target was a straight as it could possibly be. Thanks to which, most of her processing power was free to be used however she wanted.
Usually, it would have meant that she could put it to use by browsing all the internet, playing some games, and listening to music, at the same time. If she had been in the other world right now, she would have probably done that, with no second thought.
Of course, she couldn't just waste all of that power on nothing but amusing herself the entire way, this time around.
This time, she had to plan, and prepare, for the war she was flying towards.
It was highly likely, that all the extensive experience in fighting other androids, she gained on her journey through the other world, wasn't going to help her in this war of heroes, in the slightest.
The scarce information she had managed to get on the other, already defeated, heroes, pointed towards each of the heroes having completely different sources of their powers.
She was confident in her capabilities—all the data she had on her own strength only assured her of her strength even more—but it would have been beyond stupid to assume there wasn't someone who could defeat her.
Unbeatable beings were a statistical impossibility.
All her frighteningly powerful computing processors and hundreds of thought-threads went over myriads of possible, and impossible, scenarios she could find herself in, once she arrived in Vale.
Her mind formulated plans for facing armies, and beings incapable of being harmed.
The threats which all the scientist who worked on her assumed to be theoretical impossibilities were reassessed as highly probable, and dangerous, possibilities, she had to plan around to survive.
It seemed as if the only thing she wasn't planning against, while on her calm journey through the skies above the Remnant's oceans, was the possibility of winning the war effortlessly, and she didn't feel particularly worried about that.
If the war turned out to be well within her capabilities, all her plans would simply ensure she would be able to easily win it unscathed, instead. There were simply no detriments to her extensive planning, from her perspective.
It wasn't like she had anything better to do, at the moment, anyway.
Her flight path stuttered a little, as she saw her long-range sensors detect some disturbance in the distance.
Immediately, she slowed down to a near stop, and turned her head towards it.
Had she accidentally found another hero?
There was no reliable way for her to check what exactly it was, without getting closer, and using her visual receptors to get a clearer image. Her long range sensors, unfortunately, could only tell her that it was some huge disturbance of water.
As far as she was aware, it could be literally nearly anything, from an otherworldly hero flaunting their powers, through a huge pack of aquatic grimm wandering through the world, to some random big wave.
All she knew was that, given the chance it could be another hero, she didn't want to engage it in a place she held no advantages.
It didn't mean, however, that she was going to leave it be.
"Acquiring target." She said, in the highly monotone way she used when interacting with her more primitive systems.
On her vision, she saw multiple red hollow squares converge onto the distant, barely visible, target as she used the data from her long range sensors to pinpoint its location with accuracy the most modern weapons system wouldn't be capable of.
The long range missile targeting system was one of the very first upgrades she had received on her journey through the Met-Earth. It could barely be considered advanced when compared to any of her other subsystems and weaponry, she had installed inside of her, but it did have the impossible to forget advantage of granting her access to quite an impressive firepower.
"Preparing an antimatter missile salvo." She said, this time with some hearable emotions in her voice.
A multitude of miniscule valves opened themselves on her back, as her miniature missiles pried themselves up.
Although it was true that, plasma cannons and particle beams might have been far more sophisticated methods of attack than a crude missile salvo she was about to unleash, they could hardly boast the same amount of sheer destruction her antimatter mini missiles could.
An excited grin appeared on her face.
"Fire!" She shouted.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of tiny missiles, only slightly larger than a typical ballpoint pen, launched themselves out of her back before flying directly towards the distant target at speeds which would put the most advanced projectiles from Remnant to shame.
They flew as silently as the wind itself, subtly cutting through the clear skies, approaching the remote target in no time.
Whether the target of her projectiles was one of her few opponents, a huge gathering of grimm, or some unreasonably huge wave, Penny honestly had no idea.
The moment those missiles reached it, however, the only thing it became was a huge blindingly white explosion, as the sparse milligrams of the antimatter, packed into each of her payloads, erupted violently when coming in contact with the metal outer-layers of the shell containing them.
"Target eliminated." She said with a satisfied grin, as she watched the aftermath of her attack.
That explosion had been powerful enough to light up a good part of the ocean, and, had it been closer to a continent, it would have probably alerted the entire kingdoms, as well.
The chances that anyone, including her fellow heroes, came out of it unharmed were practically zero.
If her target truly was an otherworldly hero capable of surviving her attack, like she silently feared it was, then it was more likely they have dodged out of the danger's way, rather than tank through it.
Either way, she was pretty sure that disturbance she picked up wasn't going to cause her any immediate issues.
She turned back to her path towards Vale.
There would be time to properly deal with any opposing heroes in it, later. She shouldn't be wasting time wondering whether she actually got someone or not, without getting to the city first.
No matter what, she could only really execute all her plans after she arrived in the city.
The oceans weren't her preferred territory, anyway.
(...)
If there would ever be a time Roman was glad that he thought ahead and made all the grunts he gave his powers fully subservient to him, whether they liked it or not, it probably would have to be now.
The knowledge of just how much control he could exert over them had been made public—as public as a secret only shared among a single gang could be, that was—with his last loss against the annoying trio of heroes, and most people would have probably rebelled immediately after hearing that.
Thankfully for him, his powers made it quite difficult for them to do so.
Sure, he might have been constantly exhausting himself, and his mind, to do so, but it did provide him with safety no other deal could have.
After all, having an organised army of people, who were practically ruling over the whole city, directly under his control allowed him to be both fully hidden, and protected at the same time.
He grinned slightly, as he closed his eyes in concentration.
With the slightest amounts of effort on his part, he was capable of having the entire city under his surveillance, too!
There wasn't a single building, street, or alley, he wasn't observing with at least one of his men. The amount of information he was receiving was so large, he was almost struggling with comprehending it all.
If he didn't have the access to multiple superpowers capable of boosting his mind, he probably wouldn't have been able to comprehend it, at all.
It was a pity, though, that despite all the surveillance he was doing at the moment, for some unknown to him reason he couldn't for the life of him locate those three bastard heroes he was forced to ran away from.
No matter what part of the city he focused on searching, there seemed to be no damned sign of them!
At this point, he was almost ready to give up, and admit to himself that there was no possible way for him to find them with his current level of control over the Vale.
A hollow chuckle escaped him, as he searched through the visions of every single one of his subordinates, and ended up finding absolutely nothing.
It could also be possible that no matter how hard he looked, he would never find them anywhere in Vale, anyway.
There were three of them, with each having unique abilities from outside the Remnant. It wouldn't be a surprise to him, if at least one of them was capable of teleporting them way outside the kingdom, or even the world itself.
It certainly wasn't like he could use any of his powers as a point of comparison to them.
He could still feel shivers from all the mental connections he had with the stooges, he had ordered to fight those three, disappearing in mere seconds after the red haired girl summoned her weird butterfly.
Throughout his entire journey on Earth-Av3 such a thing hadn't happened even once.
Well, he supposed he should consider himself lucky that disturbance to the connection with his grunts was only temporary in nature.
If that girl had truly been capable of permanently disabling one of his most crucial, and useful, powers with such ease, he would have really needed to change his strategies for this stupid war.
It didn't take any of his mind boosting powers for him to figure out that it would have, at best, decreased his chances of winning by a lot.
At worst, he would have probably died the moment half of his army was taken out.
Although, he certainly had a lot of practical powers, and an unmatchable experience when it came to surviving dangerous encounters, he wouldn't exactly call himself the greatest fighter in the world.
In the end, he was a thief first and foremost.
Whenever he had been forced into a combat situation in the past, his first instinct had always been to look for a safe exit, and run away the moment he noticed any safe chance to do that. It didn't matter whether it was on Remnant or Earth-Av3.
He sighed.
Sadly, with all the remaining heroes deciding to use his city as a battleground for their highly destructive war, and him being a clear target for them, as well, running away wasn't really an option for him, anymore.
With a tired huff, he stopped looking through the eyes of his every minion, and relaxed slightly.
It looked like searching for those three heroes who had fought him was nothing but a waste of his time, he wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to do once he found them, regardless.
Whether he found them or not, they still outnumbered him three to one, and against such odds, he didn't fancy himself winning.
The huge army of gangsters he had, while good at giving him an early warning of any potential threat, wasn't exactly suited for fighting truly powerful opponents. At most, they would only inconvenience them for a while.
It wouldn't actually work against an alliance of multiple heroes, either.
A single hero might have been capable of defeating armies if they bothered, but for a group of three returners from other worlds, an army wouldn't even be considered an annoyance.
No, if he needed to deal with an alliance of multiple heroes, the only thing he could really do was making his own alliance.
He let out a hollow, half-amused, laugh.
Yeah, as if it was possible of a person like him.
All the other heroes would have liked nothing more than to kill him as quickly as possible the moment they learned that he was one of their opponents. If he told them about his powers and identity, on top of that, he would end up with a person sworn to kill him, instead.
It was next to impossible to have any allies worth anything in a war like this.
To be honest, he was quite impressed those three heroes who fought him, actually managed to form a one.
They had to know they would have to kill one another in the end anyway, right?
Whatever, it wasn't his problem in the first place.
He would simply have to split all his powers into three, maybe four, different people in order to match them. If he chose correctly on what powers to give away, there was a chance he might not feel that much weaker, too.
Although, with whom he should share his power?
It wasn't like he could give it to some random minions of his, and control them all the time. Sooner or later, his would have ended up frying the brain by doing so, and dying from literal overthinking was the last way he wanted his life to end.
If he wanted it to actually work, those people would need to be both strong enough on their own, and somewhat trustworthy, at least.
He felt a ping of worry, and boredom, from the harmless mental connection he had with Neo.
A wide grin found its way onto his face.
His old partner in crime, was his strongest and most trusted ally, already.
Surely, she wouldn't mind if he gave her more powers for her to play with, would she?
He might even offer her a tub of her favourite ice cream on top of that, to convince her further. It wasn't like they couldn't afford such luxuries while in Vale, they practically owned this city, after all.
"Who would be the other trustworthy ally, though?" He hummed as he leaned back.
Now that he thought about it, there really wasn't that many options for him to choose from.
The only one he could somewhat see in that role, was that single twin girl he received from Junior back when he first made a deal with him, but, while she was quite strong, she wasn't really that trustworthy to him.
He thought about it for a moment or two, before shrugging, and deciding to choose her, anyway.
Well, he could keep her in line with Neo on his side as a way to show her that he had the number advantage, he supposed.
It wasn't like that girl would have anywhere to go, either way.
And cut!
Things are happening in Vale, and Penny's coming to town.
I'm giving you the file on her right now, as well. (I'm pretty sure that's the last one, too.)
That's it for now, see ya!
[World Name: Met-Earth]
[Inspiration: MegaMan/Nier Automata]
[Hero: Penny Polendina]
[Description: In a year 21YY a major breakthrough in AI technology was made, allowing the creation of real sentient Androids. Throughout the next years, with the sentient AI helping with its own development, this technology rapidly became better and better to the point where human brains were no longer capable of keeping up with the advancements. At some point during that technological singularity, the Androids began taking over more and more dangerous, and demanding, jobs from humanity. Yet, despite that they did manage to live in peace with their creators, and any Android genuinely willing to exterminate humans was seen as insane by its fellow machines. Unfortunately, despite their general positive attitudes towards humanity, it didn't stop a couple faction forming which wanted to destroy humanity. The ultimate result of that was a great war between machines fought for the survival of mankind. Currently, nobody knows for sure how long this war had lasted, or how many humans are still surviving, but there's still no end in sight to this mindless slaughter.]