Chapter time!
Not for the first time since the war had started, Pyrrha found herself experiencing an unsettling feeling of unease when witnessing her ally's unexplained knowledge.
It might not have been as bad as the first time Qrow introduced himself to her, but, as they effortlessly moved between huge groups of powered thugs and patrolling soldiers of Atlas, that feeling was still very much present.
No normal person could have felt completely at ease when interacting with someone who casually knew things they logically shouldn't possibly have.
That was just how human psychology worked.
Of course, she knew that this knowledge didn't actually come from absolutely nowhere—it was simply supplanted to him through Qrow's power—but it didn't change how it looked from their perspective.
The only thing which prevented her from freaking out more was the fact that this surprisingly off-putting power was used to her benefit.
A slight shiver went down her spine as she saw her ally carelessly distract some passers-by with a seemingly random rock throw that made precisely enough noise to gather the attention of the entire alley, without making them stand out.
"You couldn't have given me a better method, could you?" Qrow whispered to himself with a small scoff.
Yeah, she really was lucky for accepting that alliance offer from him.
She didn't even want to imagine fighting against someone who could so accurately execute a spontaneous plan, accomplishing exactly what it was meant to do, and then complain about not liking it.
If she had tried to do something similar, she would have been lucky if all the surrounding people focused on her familiars making a mess instead of her commanding them.
"That's some nice aim you have." A whistle came from her side as Clover, her other ally, appraised the throw. "Wouldn't have done much against any type of opponent, but the fact you could hit that was impressive on its own."
"If I ever entered a direct combat against another hero, I would never bother throwing a rock at them." Qrow grunted in response before turning back to the path and hurrying forward. "Let's go, they won't be distracted for long, and we still have quite a way to go until the safe house."
"Yeah, yeah." Clover laughed a little as he moved forward, as well.
Not wanting to be left behind, and turn into a highly vulnerable target, she followed right behind them.
Despite being in a relative safety by now—at least when compared to the nightmarish fight she had to endure earlier—she couldn't help but feel that her allies were treating their situation a bit too lightly, at the moment.
They might have made the power granting hero run away from fighting them, but that villain was still at large, and there were other heroes in the city, or close by, who could find them.
The three of them might have been strong, but she would be the first one to say that they were far from invincible!
Qrow's sister alone could probably wreck them quite well, if she escaped from her temporary imprisonment inside the weird alternate dimension the dusty hero often used.
It was all without talking about any of the other heroes, they haven't encountered yet.
Who knew how powerful and terrifying they could be?
"Relax, Pyrrha." Clover said comfortingly as he slowed down to match her pace. "Being so tense is only going to make your recovery that much more painful and slower. Trust me, I know from experience."
"Huh?" She blinked as she turned to her newest ally. "I-I'm not–"
She didn't have the time to finish her excuses as she felt Clover's hand compassionately ruffle her hair in a somewhat consoling manner.
"Don't worry about it, too much." Clover chuckled. "I suppose anyone would have been shaken up after nearly losing their lives in a fight against a mob of enemies, but you have to leave it behind for a while. You're safe now."
With a small frown on her face, she carefully pushed the rustling hand away from her.
"I don't think we could be considered safe, just yet." She said, as she let go of Clover's hand. "At the very least, we aren't completely clear until we get to the safe house Qrow is leading us towards.
While the comforting gesture wasn't completely unwelcome, it certainly wasn't the time for it, right now. Relaxing, and letting her guard down too early, could lead to a disaster.
Clover Ebi merely laugh boisterously in the face of her worries.
"What do you think will that safe house of ours change?" Clover asked.
She looked at the short haired man with her frown deepening.
"We will get the place to hide?" She asked the man, as if what she just said should have been the most obvious thing in the world. "With a hideout, we wouldn't be completely in the open anymore."
"Do you really think it would work?" Clover smiled.
"What?" She asked.
"For all the otherworldly heroes, things like secret hideouts, or enforced buildings, are a momentary obstacle at most." Qrow said, deciding to join their conversation. "In reality, it won't be even half as much for most of our enemies, anyway."
Clover nodded in agreement, as she turned towards the man currently leading them to a hideout they could rest at.
"Then why are we searching for a place to hide, in that case?" She couldn't help but ask.
A smirk appeared on Qrow's face.
"Who said anything about searching?" Qrow asked. "I'm simply leading us to a place that, I know for a fact, will last us precisely enough for you to recover, and the city to become chaotic enough for us to strike at other heroes."
A small shiver went through her as she saw the glint in her ally's eyes.
There were no doubts, or hesitation, about the knowledge he had. Qrow simply knew where he was meant to lead them, for them to succeed in their plans, and maybe win the whole war in the future, too.
"I knew it was going to be something like that." Clover said with a grin, and absolute confidence they could handle anything the world threw at them had something went wrong, anyway.
She really hated the unwavering confidence both her allies had in their powers.
She sighed.
Before she had experienced fighting against Jaune back when the war had just started, she had been almost as confident in her familiars, as well.
Now, she knew different.
As they turned to some rather dingy looking alley, and saw that there was almost nobody there, they abruptly stopped. Had they finally arrived at the place, which Qrow was leading them towards?
"We're here." Qrow exclaimed, confirming her suspicious.
They, as in she and Clover, briefly scanned through all the surrounding area to check whether it was truly as isolate as they were hoping it to be.
Upon seeing nothing more than some trash cans, and a couple homeless people in the distance, they decided that it was good enough for any temporary stay, they might be forced to use it for.
"Will we be staying in this alley?" She asked.
Qrow shook his head, before pointing towards one of the windows.
"We will be staying in that flat there, it had enough resources for us to take care of any small wounds we might take, and there's some food for us to enjoy in there, too."
Clover frowned at the mention of food and resources.
"We won't be breaking into some random person's house." Clover said. "Involving ordinary people in our war, no matter how slightly, would be amoral. I won't allow you to do that, not if I'm your ally."
With a complete agreement to her ally, she nodded her head.
Stealing from innocent people would never sit well with her, especially not in a crisis like the one Vale was currently facing. Those people needed houses and resources more than them.
"It's not a home of some random Valean citizen." Qrow quickly raised his hands as if to prove his innocence. "In fact, it actually belongs to one of our opponents. The one we had just sent running away, in fact."
She couldn't help but blink at the Qrow's words.
"You're joking, right?" She asked.
"Nope." Qrow answered, audibly popping the 'p' at the end.
A loud groan escaped her.
Clover laughed.
"Are we sure it's safe, then?" She asked.
"Don't worry about it. After we've defeated mister power giver back there, he won't be coming to any of his less secure hideouts, for quite some time." Qrow answered with a slight grin. "At the same time, the fact this is one of his older hideouts give us safety from all the other criminal elements of the city, for now."
"No crook ever wants to share his safe places with the others." Clover nodded thoughtfully. "Especially if those other people work in the same business as them."
There was still hesitation present in her as she looked at the window above them, but after thinking about it for a minute or two, she decided to put her trust in the ideas of her allies.
Qrow's unnatural knowledge hadn't led them the wrong way, yet.
"Alright, let's break into this thing." Qrow said as he casually jumped towards the window, with both his hands in the pockets of his long coat. "We don't have the entire night for contemplating our options, everyone."
Clover jumped onto the window just as easily, not a few seconds later.
She grumbled quietly to herself, before summoning one of her nimbler familiars to take her to the half opened window.
Although, she was easily capable of jumping out of that window without getting injured at all—any huntsmen or huntress in training would have been really—getting onto it was a bit more difficult for her.
At the very least, she didn't need to summon any of the more eye-catching familiars she had to do that.
By the time she took her first step into the hideout, through the window of course, she already saw both her allies making that place their own.
"Really?" She asked upon seeing what her teammates were doing.
The only responses she received to her question were a shrug from Qrow who was deep inside some old cabinet, searching for any bottles with alcohol in them, and a loud yawn from Clover who was laying spread wide open on a random couch in the flat.
She sighed.
Fine, if neither of her allies was going to even check if the hideout was safe to be in, then she was going to do it herself.
One couldn't be ever too sure of their safety, after all.
(...)
Out of all the different vessels Sienna Khan had the honour, and dishonour, of boarding, the one she was currently using to travel from Menagerie to the centre of all the otherworldly heroes action, Vale, was among the least impressive.
The fact it was a rowing boat, operated by no one but her, had absolutely nothing to do with it.
In her journeys through the other world she had used far less grand looking vessels, and yet, all of them were far more impressive and respectable than whatever she was forced into by her subordinates back in the Menagerie.
At least those vessels weren't decorated with frankly embarrassing amounts of her faction's imagery, and propaganda posters.
Why were those things even on this vessel?!
It wasn't like she was going to be convincing people to join her cause by showing them her boat. With how small, and unimpressive looking it was, it would have brought adverse effects, anyway.
"I should be glad, it has space to sit at." She grunted to herself with an audible sigh, as she stretched forward a bit.
Thankfully, despite the absolute travesty that was her rowing boat, the situation wasn't all so bad for her.
It took next to no effort at all to convince Ghira to become the leader of the White Fang, once again. Apparently, the man wanted to do something to steer their organisation away from the senseless terrorism for quite some time already, but he could never actually do it because of the low support his pacifist policy was having due to its lack of any meaningful results.
In all honesty, if she still cared about all the results of White Fang's actions as much as she did before visiting another world, she wouldn't have thought about putting the old leader back in charge, either.
The opportunity her newfound powers, and the war of heroes that was happening, brought to her, however, made it a necessity for White Fang to have a calm leader.
Of course, it was true only for as long as said calm White Fang leader was only a temporary one, that was. The moment she accomplished what she needed to do, and become a hero, who ended the great Vale's Crisis, in everyone's eyes, she was going to get back to commanding her organisation by herself.
In the end, White Fang was hers, and she didn't like to share.
She heard her stomach grumble in hunger.
Now that she thought about it, it had been quite some time since the last time she ate anything.
With a somewhat lazy movement of her head, she slowly glanced to her side to check if she packed any provisions for her trip to Vale. Although, it might have been more accurate to say that she checked whether her subordinates had loaded anything on this ship for her, instead.
There was no way the White Fang leader herself would stoop so low as to prepare every little aspect of her journey to Vale on her own, after all.
Sadly, it seemed that none of her men thought to pack her anything to eat, or drink, either.
She hummed quietly to herself in thought, as she looked at the state of her boat with narrowed, and suspicious, eyes.
Not only was her vessel, in which she was expected to cross an entire ocean, a rusty old rowing boat, that was most likely picked up from some dock's garbage unit, but also they sent her away with no resources to take care of herself.
No ordinary faunus of Remnant would have been able to survive in such a vessel while deep in the ocean.
Was this an assassination attempt on her?
If it was, then it was the most inept attempt at killing someone, she had ever seen. Any other idiot who saw the vessel she was steering, for even a moment, would have immediately realised that practically everything about it was wrong.
The only reason she didn't notice it earlier was because her sense of normalcy about traversing the seas and oceans had been completely skewed from travelling through the Raging Seas between the Kingdoms of Elements.
Back there, it had been normal for her to journey from one end of the ocean to the other with only a simple wooden desk as her traversal method.
An amused grin appeared on her face.
"I suppose, it is as good a moment as any to polish my elemental skills." She slowly stretched her muscles, while slowly standing up from her half sitting, half laying position. "One can never be too competent at using their own powers."
With a slight movement of her foot, she gently tapped the bottom of her boat with the tips of her toes.
This action instantly sent multiple small waves of water away from her boat, and allowed her to use the water she controlled as a provisional sonar to locate any edible fish nearby, she could easily catch.
A multitude of different fish suddenly made themselves known to her.
She smirked.
Although her powers didn't really allow her to create any elements, or energy, out of nothing, it did allow her to quite effortlessly control any of the already existing sources of those elements.
With the entire ocean beneath her under her control, catching a few fish to eat wasn't going to be a problem.
None of the approaching seafaring grimm, she could sense with her powers, caused her any worries, either. In an area like this, she was certain not even the other heroes could pose a real challenge to her, let alone some wayward grimm.
In a calm and practiced motion, she slowly shifted her legs slightly apart and lowered her hands down a little, to take a more comfortable position.
Next, she closed her eyes.
The waters around her calmed down, at once.
All the seafaring grimm, in the distance, began their charge at her.
She didn't even bother to open her eyes.
By the time all the grimm were close enough to be considered a danger to her, she very slowly raised her arms in a smooth way, and made the water drastically spike upwards as if it had been fired by some sort of weapon.
A tiny grimace appeared on her face.
Out of all the elements she could control—with included fire, wind, earth, water, and lightning—it was the water she usually struggled with the most.
All the charging grimm momentarily fell to impossibly deadly water spikes, she made out of the ocean, disappearing into nothingness as if they had never existed in the first place.
Of course, her issue with controlling the water wasn't the fact she couldn't cause enough damage with it for it to be deadly. On the contrary, her biggest problem was the fact that she simply couldn't reliably restrain herself enough when using it.
The giant, and rapid, jets of water might be immensely useful when dealing with people she wanted dead, but if she wanted to do something more subtle using water was usually the last thing she would think about.
She huffed to herself, in nervousness.
Unfortunately, when it came to getting a couple fish out of the deep waters for her to eat, all the other elements at her disposal would somehow be worse.
"Alright, now I only need to keep calm, and be as gentle as possible." She took a deep breath, before murmuring to herself, a little bit anxiously. "No sea, or ocean, likes a rough person."
It had been an old mantra of all the Water Guides from the Kingdoms of Elements.
Supposedly, learning its true meaning was necessary for people to properly control the element of water. As an outsider to that world, she had never bothered with learning that correctly.
In the end, to save the world from the forces of evil one rarely needed precision, while the firepower and capacity for destruction would always turn out to be useful for something, sooner or later.
With determination to succeed going through her, she quickly opened her eyes, before raising both her arms towards the sky to pull all the fish she wanted directly from the ocean.
The next moment, more than a few dozens of fish were floating above her.
As well as multiple dozens of tons of water.
She twitched a little.
The floating water violently exploded outwards, splashing itself all over the ocean, and flying fast enough to be considered dangerous.
A sigh escaped her.
At least, all the fish she wanted to eat had landed directly on her shuttle, regardless of how small the chance for that actually was.
She grumbled as she slowly collected all the fish, thrashing about her vessel, into a small pile.
Thankfully, there probably wasn't going to be nearly half as much trouble with using her fire control powers to cook them properly. Fire was something, she believed, she could control rather well.
If she couldn't, then she would really have to rethink her chances at winning this damned war.
After she was done with her meal, though, she would certainly have to make some effort into getting into Vale properly.
It would be a pity, if the moment she arrived, she found out that she had only one, or maybe two, otherworldly heroes left to defeat. Her plan at becoming a Remnant's hero would have been quite awkward in that case.
As she made her way to start cooking her fish, she stretched a little in tiredness.
Before any of that, however, she still had some fish to roast.
(...)
The vast majority of information related to the hidden war of the otherworldly heroes was either considered to be so classified that no normal person could hope to learn anything about it, or so obscure it was regarded as nothing but a madman's gibberish.
It did not mean that it didn't exist, however.
As an otherworldly enhanced Artificial Intelligence with enough power to easily monitor the entirety of Remnant's online activity at all times, Penny Polendina was bound to go through all of this information, the moment it started to actually exist.
All the things she learned thanks to that, though, weren't exactly the best news.
A second skirmish between otherworldly heroes in Vale, which all the hastily taken by reports Atlesian soldiers from all the distraught citizens back in Vale seemed to indicate, would have been bad news on its own. The fact she could, with a lot of decent evidence, suspect that another such a fight happened in some random village not too far from the city, as well, was sending shivers down her processor subsystems.
There was so much happening, right now.
There were so many people were losing their homes, and lives, in the mere scuffles between her otherworldly peers, that she felt guilty for not helping them despite not even being there.
She bit her lower lip, in an uncannily human motion, as she went through all the available data on Remnant, for the eight time this minute.
It would have been so easy for her to, at minimum, de-escalate those confrontations if only she had been there to encounter them on her own, in the first place.
Unfortunately, her father, someone she considered to be as important to her proper functioning as she did herself, had been adamant about her not attempting to fight anyone until she could guarantee her complete safety.
For now, it was something, she sadly couldn't do.
There were too many heroes still alive, and she had far too little information about them to act safely.
It didn't mean, however, that she liked staying in hiding and biding her time.
The longer she did that, and thought about it more carefully, the less pleased she was about avoiding all the combat, too.
Not only was it stopping her from helping all the people who needed her help, but it would actually decrease her chances of winning the war, in the long term. At least, all the calculations, she ran in order to contemplate this issue, pointed towards it being the case.
How could one expect a hero who has been passive the entire war and never fought against other people of similar power to win against someone who bested all the competition aside from them?
All the logic stated they wouldn't, definitely not when all the battles relied so much on secrets and outside elements.
The one with more experience, and someone who had already proved themselves more than capable of defeating other heroes, would win all the time in situations like these.
In the end, by staying in hiding, she was only delaying her defeat.
Her fists tightened.
She didn't like going against her father's requests, but if she wanted to ensure her victory in the war, and her safety as a result, then she would simply have to somehow do it, anyway.
Although, if she really wanted to leave for Vale, she probably should do it rather sneakily.
It would be easier, and more efficient, to ask her father for forgiveness after winning the war, than trying to convince him to let her go now, instead.
She winced slightly, at the thought of that.
The thoughts about the shouting match between them that would have formed if she tried to talk to her father right now, was more than enough to dissuade her from trying to convince him.
No, she needed to leave as soon as possible, and hopefully without alerting him.
With a quick action of glancing to her side, she subtly checked her dad's position with her multiple sensor to confirm that the man was still in his room, groggy from just waking up from the sleep.
Knowing that she needed to get to Vale sooner rather than later, she decided to make use of this occasion, and, upon leaving a small digital note on one of their computers, she swiftly moved to exit the building.
Her synthetic body might not have been the best at sneaking around, but with her father as out of it as he was right now, she should be able to do it.
She moved through the house completely unopposed— after all, there was no reason for her to be, it was her house—and after passing through some small corridors, and rooms, she effortlessly reached the front door.
Her body stopped as she was about to push it open.
Despite knowing, she was most likely making a good decision, she couldn't help but hesitate.
It would be going against her dad's wishes, and she was doing so secretly, on top of that.
A quiet grumble escaped her.
If a situation like this one had happened back in the day, before she had been snatched into another world, there wouldn't have been a reason to contemplate it, at all. She would have simply listened to her father, and not question it.
What would have been the point of questioning anyone's decisions back then?
There was no way she would have been able to judge any decision correctly at that time, anyway. She did have practically no experience when it came to any real issue back then, after all.
She sighed.
The world had been so much simpler, before she received all the otherworldly upgrades to her body and mind.
Not wanting to stall for any longer, she decided to push the door open.
"Penny?" Her father's voice echoed from behind her. "My daughter, what are you doing?"
Her body twitched a little in surprise, but she didn't stop opening the door.
"Where are you going?" Her father asked woefully.
The door opened before her, and she couldn't go through it, her conscience was preventing her from doing that. Yet, she knew she couldn't stay here for much longer at the same time, either.
"I'm going to Vale, dad." She said softly.
She felt her dad looking at her with saddened eyes.
"You know it's dangerous, Penny." Her father said in a pleading tone.
"It's less dangerous than waiting here for the last remaining fighter to defeat all the opposition, and potential allies." She tried to argue. "I'm not invincible, father, and there's bound to be a couple of heroes capable of defeating me in a fair fight. If only a few of them remain before I join the fight, all of my competitors will be stronger than me, I cannot allow that to happen."
Her father frowned.
"I don't want to lose you again, Penny."
She gritted her teeth slightly.
"I know, dad." She lowered her head a bit, before going through the opened door. "After I come back from Vale, I can promise you that I won't be doing anything risky anytime soon."
There was no need for her to use her advanced sensors in order to know what emotion her dad was feeling at the moment.
It was a distraught.
A small explosion of violent wind went through the front of their house, as she used her powerful engines to rapidly propel herself high into the air, and set course towards the capital city of Vale.
In the end, the only thing she could do to appease her father's worries was making sure to be the winner of this disastrous war.
Her father looked at her in a pained melancholy, as she disappeared into the horizon.
"What's going to happen to you, my sweet Penny." Her dad whispered, unaware she could still somewhat hear him through the multiple connections she had with their house's anti burglar systems.
Her straight flight path experienced a slight shaking from the emotions she felt when the words of her father reached her systems, before quickly stabilising itself as she took consciously took over to make some corrections.
A sigh escaped her.
At the very least, she had another good reason to win this war, she supposed.
And cut!
A chapter mostly meant to introduce the powers of the remaining heroes, at least a little bit.
I know they as a characters had been shown earlier, but it's the first time they actually do something, even if this is just them travelling towards the Vale for now.
Also you get the files for Sienna for now, not for Penny, yet.
See ya!
[World Name: The Kingdoms of Elements]
[Inspiration: Avatar The Last Airbender/ The Wizard of Legend]
[Hero: Sienna Khan]
[Description: The world, known to all the people living in it as The Kingdoms of Elements, is a place where some talented people could become capable of guiding the elements. The ability to do that makes someone a Guide of an Element. The elements capable of being controlled are limited to Fire, Earth, Lightning, Water, and Wind. Throughout the history the nations, and kingdoms, of the world's most often divided themselves based on the elements, their citizens were able to Guide. Usually, a person can only be a Guide of a single element, as this ability is based on genetics and a person's mental compatibility to their element. However, every thousand years in the Kingdoms of Elements there's an exception to that rule, when an Outsider with the capability of mastering all five elements is brought to help stabilise the world.]