Playing God
Yay, I'm back with this one too!
Admittedly, there probably isn't that much left to this story, because Salem is not going to survive her assault on Atlas, which means no Vol. 9 or 10 material, and there's only so well of a way I can continue stretching things.
That being said, I have a fun surprise for everyone in this chapter!
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or RWBY
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Ironwood set his office into privacy mode. Panels came down and blocked off the windows. The main door locked, a red light appearing above it on the inside and the outside.
The Ace-Ops took up space to the general's left, while everyone else found somewhere to stand behind Shin'en.
Ironwood took his seat. "Who are you really?"
"I'm a demigod from three thousand years ago that left this world for reasons, and then decided to come back to see how things were going. Suffice to say, I'm not impressed."
The Ace-Ops did their best to remain disciplined, but some cracks showed through.
Ironwood remained composed. "Okay…now that you're…back…what is it that you intend to do?"
"What you cannot. Ozpin! Front and center."
Oscar seized, his eyes glowing briefly. Ozpin came to stand next to Shin'en, and after his show of support following the Argus Limited disaster, he felt confident that he could tell the truth without something exploding in his face. So he did. Ozpin told Ironwood, the Ace-Ops, Jaune, Nora, and Ren the truth of who he was, the nature of the Relics, the history between him and Salem, the task levied upon him by the God of Light, and the curse upon Salem that gave her immortality.
Suffice to say, there were some hurt feelings in the room stemming from Ozpin's deception, but perhaps most prevalent was the gut-wrenching revelation that Salem couldn't be killed, which obviously created a heavy rain upon the parade of a united front that would destroy her.
However, Shin'en was a most excellent umbrella. "But Salem is no longer your concern. I will deal with her when she arrives."
Ironwood's jaw finally closed. "Arrives?"
"She is on her way here now. I predict she will be on your doorstep two weeks from this day."
The general and the Ace-Ops just stared at Shin'en.
"How…how do you know that?" Ironwood managed to ask.
"I am acutely attuned to water. I can sense it down to the molecule within a certain range. Within that range, I can feel how water is moving. Putting it simply, I can tell you precisely how many people are in the shower, using the toilet, having sex, eating dinner, fighting for their lives against disease, bandits, and Grimm, and so on. And my range extends across this planet's entire hydrosphere."
Team RWBY, the remaining three members of Team JNPR, Ozpin, and Qrow already knew he could do that, which still didn't make it any less invasive, but that was a whole different can of worms for the general and the Ace-Ops, with Harriet and Elm feeling especially violated.
Ironwood cleared his throat. "Uh, so you can track her movements in real time, then?"
"Very literally, yes."
The general's military training kept his mind from wondering down the many rabbit holes of implication behind that statement.
"I…see. Two weeks, you said?"
"Do not concern yourself with fortifications or defenses more than you already have. There's no need to create a panic. When Salem gets here, I will handle her."
"Forgive me if I'm not convinced by the word of someone I just met, someone who also nearly crippled my Argus base."
"You being convinced of anything is irrelevant," Shin'en said evenly. "As I told the children, I am in command now. I will do things my way. This conversation is only happening out of professional courtesy. Do whatever you feel you need to do, only keep this in mind: I am more of a divine being than I am a mortal one. Do not think you can control me in any way, or order me to do anything I don't want to do. Suggestions are permissible, but I am the one who will make the ultimate decisions."
Silence settled upon the office.
There was no hard edge in Shin'en's tone, or anything to indicate some form of underlying threat. He was simply stating facts in the same way a higher ranking officer would outline the situation to a lower ranking one, something that grated on Ironwood's nerves.
Having been the general of the Atlesian military for so long, being talked down to rarely ever happened, and he had become adverse to the concept. More so, he was being talked down to by this…demigod(?)…teenager(?)…person…that he had never met before in his life, and the only concrete thing he had to go with on this guy was that he was an extremely skilled fighter. Surveillance footage from Argus showed Shin'en easily dismantling their defenses with surgical precision before hopping into the ocean.
Also, since Shin'en had arrived in Manta 5-1, that meant he had caught up to the Bullhead after it had left the base. Doing basic math with the time between departure of the aircraft, Shin'en's own departure, and the speed of the Bullhead, analysts determined that Shin'en was fast.
Extremely fast.
Since Manta 5-1 was still connected to the Atlas mainframe, they knew for a fact that Maria had been flying at top speed as soon as she got airborne, and didn't let up on the throttle until she started approaching the kingdom.
And Shin'en still caught up them despite their generous head start.
"James," Ozpin said calmly, bringing the general's attention to him. "I know this has been a lot to take in, but I assure you that it's all true. I trust Shin'en. I've seen what he can do. You can put your faith in him as well."
"If it helps," Qrow added, "back at Haven, it was Shin'en that killed Adam Taurus, Emerald Sustrai, Mercury Black, Hazel Rainart, and Cinder Fall all by himself, while also neutralizing my sister and her little helper. After some other things I've seen him do—which he can talk about later if he wants to-" the Huntsman enunciated heavily while looking at the kids, making it clear that they were not to go blabbing about the necromancy thing "-I can vouch for him. He's got the bite to back up his bark."
Ironwood considered this. "I see. In that case, if it's all the same to you, I'm going to adhere to the plan I was already working on prior to your…arrival. I'm going to convert Amity Colosseum into a communication tower, and put it back into the sky to replace the CCTS. This will reestablish communications with the other kingdoms."
"Your Plan A became Plan B, eh?" Shin'en asked. "The backup plan?"
"Yes," Ironwood said slowly. "That amuses you?"
The corner of Shin'en's mouth had quirked upwards, his scarlet eyes glittering ever so slightly. "When I was a child operating with a black-ops death squad in the midst of a civil war, one of the key tenets of our group was to always have a backup plan."
Everyone stared at him after that little tidbit of trivia, no one more shocked than the people behind Shin'en who actually thought they knew him.
Child.
Black-ops death squad.
Civil war.
"That's…a good key tenant," Ironwood eventually said.
In this day, the idea of child soldiers in the capacity that Shin'en indicated was tantamount to unheard of. Sure, kids were taught how to fight Grimm from young ages as that was as fundamental a life skill in Remnant as toilet training was anywhere else, but the Huntsman academies only took in students once they were 17. Even then, most Huntsman teams never acted as black-ops death squads.
Clearing out bandits and organized crime was one thing, but actively planning assassinations was rare.
Too many Grimm to be trying to kill other people.
For the most part.
"Indeed," Shin'en said. "I will help with your project. Communications between allied forces is crucial. I once had something of a sibling in only the strictest of loosest terms refuse to do anything about a communication problem between him and his friends on the grounds that he had already done enough and just wanted to focus on his own life….His cousin and hundreds of people died in a battle that he very easily could've won all by himself had he been present."
Everyone once again stared at him as he released yet more personal details about himself, which only led to way more questions than answers.
Again, the general struggled to find words. "Ah…thank you?"
"You're welcome. Well, shall we turn in for the evening for a good night of rest to be prepared for tomorrow?"
"Wait," James said. "What about the Relic?"
Shin'en pulled it out of his personal pocket dimension. "The Relic will remain with me at all times. This is nonnegotiable." Then he put it back up and closed the portal.
Ironwood blinked. Then, "You said you killed Cinder Fall?"
"Correct.
"A report I have says she had the powers of the Fall Maiden. Who has the Maiden power now."
"O-Oh, u-uh, that would be me!" Ruby said nervously. Her eyes alit with fire to prove her claim.
General Ironwood first stared at her with shock, and then he released a sigh of relief. "The power is in good hands, then." He looked at Oscar. "Amber?"
Ozpin shook Oscar's head.
Ironwood sighed, this time sadly. "Unfortunate….Very well, then. In that case, welcome to Atlas, Teams RWBY and JNPR, Qrow, Ozpin, and Shin'en. Ruby, I have an old friend of yours who will show all of you to your quarters."
The red light above the office door turned green, and no sooner did that happen that were the doors blown wide open.
"SAL~U~TATIONS!"
"Penny!?" Ruby's eyes popped out of her head, and her intestines were nearly squeezed out through her ass when the android hugged her.
"It's so good to see again!" Penny cheered.
"How are you alive!?" Weiss demanded. "We saw Pyrrha…um…"
Dismember you sounded a little too harsh, and Weiss couldn't figure out anything better to say.
"Oh, my father built me a new body," Penny informed.
After two seconds of silence, Shin'en spoke up, "It does appear that all of you have a lot of catching up to do. I will take my leave now. General, good evening."
"Where are you going?" Ozpin asked.
"Out. There is work to be done here and below in Mantle. I will be busy. In the morning, I will rejoin you. Goodbye."
And before anything could be said, Shin'en was gone in a swirl of vapor.
Not a moment later, Harriet stepped forward. "Do you want us to apprehend him, sir?"
That sentiment was met with widespread opposition from the good guys who knew from personal experience that "apprehending" Shin'en was going to be a serious threat to everyone's health. Through the cacophony, it was Ozpin's shout that ruled over everything else.
"Enough!" The eyes of Oscar Pine levied a hard stare at the short Ace Operative, before he looked at the general. "I know my word may be in question at the moment, but believe me when I say that crossing Shin'en Yūrei will be the last thing you ever do. Leave him to his devices."
Ironwood leaned forward. "And what if those devices are to sabotage my entire defensive force and leave my kingdom vulnerable to destruction? I know all of you have your experience with him, but the only thing I've seen him do is murder my soldiers and attack my army. Yes, I know he killed Cordovin—not necessarily a huge loss, I didn't like her much myself and intentionally stationed her in Argus so she'd be out of my hair, but she was still an officer in my army. And for all appearances, he's a Faunus, one that was caught on camera destroying Atlas military property.
"I am actually in a serious situation here. How am I supposed to handle this, Ozpin? I've got several minutes of security footage of a Faunus with horns, a black outfit, and a sword, slicing up airships and gun turrets, after he murdered a high-ranking enough Atlesian military officer. Argus is in a state of controlled chaos, and my own military here is on high alert, with word having already spread of what's happened. There will be questions, and I will be the one who has to provide answers. What am I supposed to tell the people about this?"
Blake Belladonna stepped up. "You can say that a follower of Adam Taurus did all of that, and he jumped into the nearby ocean, and hasn't been seen since. Or the remains of his body were recovered. Turns out an aquatic Grimm got him."
"And what happens when people see Shin'en walking around, and his appearance is a perfect match to the one in the footage?"
"He can change his appearance," Yang said.
Qrow backed her up. "If he hasn't already done that, he will."
"What makes you so sure?" Ironwood challenged.
"Well," said the lanky Huntsman, "he really undersold that water thing of his. What he can really do is feel the water in all our cells, meaning he can feel the scars on our bodies, the chemicals running through our bloodstreams, and how much shit is up our asses. He can also feel the way our mouths are moving, and can read our lips without even being in the room."
The general sat back in his chair. "Oh."
"How do you know that?" Clover, leader of the Ace-Ops, asked.
His answer was a communal blush.
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Shin'en hadn't changed his appearance in the slightest. His black hair was still arranged in thin spikes pushed back over his scalp. His horns were still protruding at his hairline. The vertical slit that hid his Rinne-Sharingan from view was still there. He was still wearing his black ensemble with its red highlights. However, his eyes had changed.
Typically in the form of the Sharingan, with the three black tomoe arranged around the black pupil against the vermillion background, now they had shifted into their Eternal Mangekyou form. First realized many, many years ago during Shin'en's very first Battle of Manhattan, where he had to fight an alternate version of his big sister Persephone if she had been the one taken by the Lady Styx instead of him, and he had gained her own Mangekyou through victory, his eternal eyes were the combination of his and hers.
Admittedly, that wasn't saying much on account that they had the same Mangekyou pattern of three overlapping red triangles that formed a nine-pointed star. Combining those, Shin'en's Eternal Mangekyou looked like a red, eighteen-pointed star, a pattern that was so compact across his iris that it was basically just jagged red with a jagged black outline.
The general did have a point, though. Shin'en's lack of stealth or altering of his appearance was an action that did have consequences. However, for someone like him, those consequences would have a minimal effect. In two weeks' time, it would all be over anyway.
In the meantime, though, there was work to be done.
There was always work to be done, and it would be nothing less than hypocritical of Shin'en to not address that work given his iron-clad stance on power and responsibility.
As for what the work was…well…nothing new or original.
It brought a sardonic smirk to Shin'en's face as he casually walked down the putrid halls of this evil place. In a world full of technological marvels such as hard-light holograms and prosthetic limbs straight out of Star Wars, and incredible energy sources like Dust and Aura, and amazing powers called Semblances, and a constant existential threat to all called the Grimm—in a world with all of that, there were still rich people that somehow managed to find the time to spend their wealth on complete, utter, absolute depravity.
Shin'en got to the door at the end of the hallway, and he brought a very abrupt, very timely end to the horror.
A Faunus boy of ten years had been strapped to a chair via his wrists, ankles, and forehead in a room that made a mockery of life-saving medical practice. About to take a scalpel to the poor boy's face was a human monster dressed as a doctor. On the other side of a glass wall was a luxurious lounge occupied by seven piles of filth, with three waitresses attending to them with platters of champaign and expensive hors d'oeuvres, all ten wearing ball masks.
Everyone was looking at Shin'en in shock, taking express note of the horns on his head.
With a flick of his hand, the surgeon went flying headfirst into the glass wall so hard his skull exploded. The rich ones screamed and tried to run, only to find a wall of ice blocking off the entire back wall of their lounge.
The glass was frozen all the way through, and collapsed into a huge pile of tiny pieces it became so brittle.
Shin'en approached the cowering scum, and didn't turn his head or break his stride when a dozen armed guards came running in from behind through the hall he just came from. The glass shards came to life and eviscerated all of them, reducing them to piles of gore and bloody clothes.
A man amongst the group gave into his fight instinct, and charged Shin'en with a shriek. The Red Dawn held his hand out to his side, palm up, and the man was suddenly flat against the ceiling. Shin'en flexed his fingers, and the man's arms and legs were torn from his body with some of the most disgusting sounds anyone in the room had ever heard.
The man didn't even scream. He was in too much shock.
Shin'en let him drop to the ground, leaving to bleed to death.
"Boy," he said. "Come here."
The restraints upon the Faunus broke clean off the chair, and after everything he had seen, the boy hadn't a single inkling of disobedience anywhere in him. Avoiding the body of the surgeon, the boy came to stand next to Shin'en.
"How many were in that chair before you?"
The boy's lower lip trembled. "I-I don't know, b-but…my big sister…"
He gestured back to the operating room. On a table next to the chair were four plaster busts with no outstanding features, but upon three of them were little masks of flesh.
Tears spilled down the boy's cheeks. "They made me watch."
Shin'en only nodded. He produced a kunai from his sleeve, and handed it to the boy. "Destroy them."
The boy looked at the kunai, then at the cowering cretins, and he ignored the kunai in favor of going absolutely feral. His fingernails popped into claws, his incisors lengthened, and his pupils became slits as his eyes turned bright yellow. He attacked with claw and fang, and Shin'en helped as needed.
The boy was only ten after all, and these were grown adults.
Quickly, though, all were slaughtered, and the boy was drenched in their blood.
"Let's go," Shin'en said. "We will free the others."
"I know where they are, follow me!"
Shin'en also knew where they were, but he allowed the Faunus to take the lead.
Within the hour, the only ones left alive in the privately owned building were Shin'en, the Faunus boy, and five other Faunus children between the ages of seven and twelve that had been "adopted" out of a Mantle Faunus-only orphanage that truthfully functioned as a barn to keep the livestock healthy until time for auction.
Shin'en didn't hang around the building in Atlas after the killing was done, nor did he even attempt to contact the police. Instead, he dissembled his and the children's atoms into the water vapor in the air, and he reassembled them all in front of the orphanage. While they were getting their bearings, he went up and knocked on the door.
It was late evening now, the orphanage officially closed, but when Shin'en knocked, people answered.
A woman's tired voice buzzed through a speaker. "Visiting hours-"
"I am here on military business with orders from General Ironwood. Open this door."
It was hard to tell what made the woman act faster: the base in Shin'en's voice, the sheer authority, or the part where he said he was here with orders from the general. Whichever one it was, the woman inside went running from the door.
Shin'en smashed straight through and apprehended her before the splinters could hit the ground. His scarlet eyes blazed brightly in the darkness of the orphanage lobby.
"You knowingly and willingly sold children to be tortured to death."
Flashing through her mind in a nanosecond was the despicable thought of they were just Faunus and in the next nanosecond, her head was removed from her neck.
There were two other women that ran the orphanage, but only one was needed for the sake of testimony. Besides her, there were twelve children in the orphanage between four and eleven. They were roused from their sleep by their fellows that Shin'en had rescued, and there was great confusion as to why the ones that had been "adopted" had been brought back, and then were was great sorrow when the adopted ones revealed what had really happened, and that the ones before them were all dead.
While the sobbing took place, the Faunus boy that Shin'en had rescued came up to him. "What'll happen to us now?"
"I will inform General Ironwood of this."
"What about Robyn Hill and her Happy Huntresses?"
Shin'en stared at the boy. "Who and what?"
"You've never heard of Robyn Hill and her Happy Huntresses!?"
"No."
"Well, Robyn's better than Ironbutt! She actually wants to help Mantle, including us Faunus."
"Very well. I shall bring Robyn Hill here."
"Wait, wha-"
Shin'en was already gone.
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Finding the woman took less than a second. Shin'en detached his spirit from his body, using one of the first divine techniques he ever learned, essence projection, and willed himself to find this Robyn Hill and her…Happy Huntresses.
The search was almost instant, the woman and her companions winding their evening down in front of the fireplace and the TV in Robyn's living room, and when he willed his spirit back to his body, he was on the move. Dispersing into vapor, he appeared smack in the middle of the living room.
The five…four…women only had time to blink before Shin'en froze them all in place.
Scarlet eyes locked with scared violet ones. "We need to have a very serious conversation."
It was a very quick and horrifying conversation, even more so when Shin'en took them all to the orphanage and they got the testimony of the rescued children and the surviving woman that Shin'en had left alive. There was also something else.
Shin'en handed the furious and shocked Robyn a data stick. "On here are all the files from the building's mainframe. The children, the clients, dates, payment, videos, everything."
"V-Videos?" Robyn shuddered. She took the stick. "I…who are you?"
"Shin'en Yūrei."
Robyn blinked, and then she looked at the stick. "I…I don't know what to do with this."
"Keep it in your back pocket for now. I disabled the communications of the building. Right now, no one knows anything is amiss. The other clients still alive on that list have no idea what has happened, nor that I am coming for them."
"Coming for them? You mean-"
"They will not live through the night," Shin'en said coldly.
Robyn gulped. It was abundantly clear to her that this Faunus was packing some very serious power, was not shy about using it, and didn't have a lick of a care for the judicial system. Granted, given Robyn's own experience with holding rich people accountable for their crimes, someone who was willing to forgo due process and just execute people was a nice change of pace.
At least in the idea that he was killing the bad people that deserved death.
"Do what you can for these children," Shin'en said, his tone softer. "Exercise your best judgement regarding whether or not to reveal this to the public."
"I mean, a bunch of rich people being found dead in their homes is going to raise tons of questions, and me accusing their corpses of…this…isn't going to be easy to pull off, even with this data."
"Then it is a good thing you will have the backing of General Ironwood. After all, I am a black-ops agent that has been tasked with investigating the disappearance of several Faunus children from this orphanage, and given the authority to exercise my best judgement on those responsible."
"I…see."
"Good evening, Ms. Hill. I suspect we will meet again. Until that time, then."
And Shin'en was gone before Robyn could get another word out.
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The son of Poseidon did exactly as he promised. He hunted down all the clients on the list, and killed them all in their homes. Whether he also killed the families depended on the nature of said families. Some of them were just as despicable as whoever was on the list, and some were blissfully ignorant.
It took Shin'en less than thirty minutes to complete his task.
Less than half an hour to find and render judgement upon the scum that took pleasure in watching Faunus children be tortured to death in gruesome, grotesque ways. At least, the ones immediately involved in that particular illegal sex ring.
"Who have you covered," Shin'en muttered to himself on reflex.
So, so much time had passed since his time as a member of Yūrei Squad, but that little jingle was still stuck in his head.
Atlas and Mantle were far from purged of the sin Shin'en had just expunged, but it was a good start. A few less colonies of mold in the house, if you will.
Now it was time to change the pace for the night. Instead of ending lives, Shin'en was going to save them. The underequipped, understaffed Mantle General Hospital was the perfect place to do that.
You see, when it came to "playing God," the actions associated with the phrase typically came with a negative connotation. Jurassic Park may come to mind, with the scientists playing around with genetics in order to bring back the dinosaurs, or perhaps Shin'en's recent actions may fit the phrase, with him acting as judge, jury, and executioner, deciding who got to live and who got to die.
Very rarely, however, was the phrase "playing God" ever tied into doing the biggest thing God ever did: saving lives.
Shin'en popped in right outside the room of a teen girl, a Faunus of course, the majority species of patient in Mantle General, with deer antlers sprouting at her hairline. Ovarian cancer, despite her age, and she only had hours left to live, contrary to the professional estimate of a few days. The girl's parents had stressed themselves asleep in the chairs in the room.
Shin'en got to work. Using the water in the girl's body, he isolated every single cancer cell and moved them all outside, literally clearing her body of the cancer. And then he simply fixed her DNA, rebuilding the strands back down to their telomeres so all of the proper genetic instructions were where they needed to be.
After a little boop on her nose with the tip of his finger, making her wrinkle her face in her sleep, Shin'en was on the move without anyone knowing he was ever in the room.
He did the same thing for the all the bad cases in the hospital.
Pneumonia? He simply cleared the lungs.
Staph infections? Gone.
Unidentified diseases whose symptoms included, but weren't limited to, lethally high fever, vomit, and diarrhea? Whatever virus was in there was obliterated.
Patients that were backed up on the surgery list because there were only so many available surgeons and only so much available equipment? Whatever was inside of them, Shin'en pulled it out and closed the hole without even waking the patient up in their bed.
In a similar vein, patients that needed blood transfusions, or platelets, or whole organ transplants, that were all on the extensive waiting list received a visit from Shin'en who freely abused the Rinnegan's Banbutsu Sozo to simply make blood, platelets, and organs that were perfectly compatible with the patient in question (assuming that the failing organ couldn't simply be repaired). As for actually putting the organs inside of people, Shin'en hailed from the time of chakra.
People were swapping eyeballs in and out of their heads like they were changing their underwear.
Speaking of changing underwear, bones and nerves weren't anywhere near the list of things Shin'en couldn't fix. Properly hooking up a boy's spine to his brain so he could feel when he had to go to the bathroom was easy, as was making it so the girl paralyzed from the neck down could move again.
As a father that had dealt with kids that battled incontinence due to whatever affliction, Shin'en was happy to lend a helping hand to parents of kids in the same boat.
His time in the hospital was less than two hours, but the whole place was already abuzz barely 30 minutes into his excursion. To be fair, though, cancer mysteriously disappearing would do that to a place of healing.
In less than two hours, without anyone in the hospital actually seeing him, Shin'en did more for the ailing people of Mantle than anyone else had in over 20 years. Perks of being a godlike being with healing powers.
Power and responsibility.
Of much is given, much is required.
Because you can help those in need, you must help those in need.
After his excursion in the hospital, Shin'en decided that was enough for one night. Healing the sick and slaughtering the wicked, involving a well-known public official like Robyn Hill, was going to cause enough waves for the coming weeks. Just because it didn't really matter to him in the end didn't mean he wanted to deal with any more headache than was necessary.
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Come the next day, the air in Ironwood's office was a bit tense.
"Uh, did something happen?" Blake asked.
"Well…" the general trailed off. He leaned forward on his desk, setting his hand over his fist in front of his mouth. "This morning, I received a copy of a file of…intensely disturbing things…from Robyn Hill, who is in the running for the available council seat. In this file was proof of the otherwise elite of Atlas being involved in a Faunus smuggling ring…where they bought Faunus children out of an orphanage down in Mantel."
Ironwood had to take a deep breath. Both to calm himself because of how hot his fury was becoming, and to center himself because what he saw had left him rattled to his core.
Next to Ironwood, the Ace-Op Marrow Amin, a Faunus, was shaking, his fists clenched so hard his nails were gouging his skin.
Blake wasn't fairing any better. "What did they do?"
Ironwood considered his answer very carefully. "…things that they received the death penalty for already."
"Already?"
"On the file was a list of all the people involved. I sent soldiers to arrest all of them to stand trial. My soldiers only found their corpses…in varying states of identification."
A thought occurred to Qrow. "Black-ops death squad," he said heavily.
Ironwood nodded. "In addition to all of…that…Mantle General is in a state of utter chaos. In a good way. Patients that were terminally ill are now cured, the disabled are walking again, the blind can see, and the deaf can hear."
After a few moments of silence as everyone processed all of this, it was Clover that finally broke it.
"It appears that Shin'en is a man of many talents."
"He's more god than man," Oscar said.
Qrow produced his whiskey flask. "Good thing he's on our side."
"It appears so," Ironwood said. "This morning, I was going to have all of you accompany the Ace-Ops to a Dust mine in order to kill the Grimm that have taken over the place because that's the launch site for the Amity Comms Tower, but I understand if any of you want to-"
"No," Blake said firmly.
Yang stepped up. "I think we all need to go on this mission. We need something else to think about."
The general nodded. "Very well, then. Clover, it's your op."
"Alright, Huntsmen," the leader of the Ace-Ops said. "Listen up!"
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After an inspiring speech, the mission briefing, and the trip over to the mine, which happened to be one of Weiss's family's mines, the big group of good guys was assembled out front of the gigantic hole.
"Alright, team-"
And then all of the Grimm that had taken roost inside the mine came charging out. Dozens of Centinels, centipede-like Grimm, and the shadowy Geist all bull-rushed the Huntsmen. The ensuing battle was explosive, vicious, brutal, and short. Despite being caught off-guard, the Huntsmen quickly recovered and killed the Grimm.
After all the black mist faded away, Nora raised a brow. "Uh, what just happened? Did all the of the Grimm in there really just run out all at once?"
"I think so…" Clover said, giving the mine a critical eye.
"I don't think they were attacking," Ren said.
"More like…" Jaune struggled to find the word.
"Running," Ruby supplied with the simplest, easiest word available.
"What could make that many Grimm run for their lives?" Weiss asked.
And then a booming, bone-rattling, soul-shaking screech erupted from the depths of the mine.
Everyone had their weapons up in ready positions, but nothing further happened. Whatever was down in there wasn't coming out any time soon.
"Clover?" Harriet asked.
Clover looked behind him at the kids. "We all stick together and watch each other's backs. No one goes anywhere alone. Whatever's down there, we'll find, and kill it."
"Oh, that won't be happening anytime soon."
The sudden voice of Shin'en had everyone whipping around to see him just casually standing there in his standard pose with his hand clasped behind his back. He was looking down the mine shaft as well.
A million questions blasted through everyone's mind, but it was Clover that kept the current situation in focus.
"Do you know what's down there?"
"Yes," Shin'en said, somehow sounding amused and concerned at the same time. "She's far beyond any of you."
"She?"
"Indeed, she. Down in that mine shaft, ladies and gentlemen, is my oldest niece."
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Yeah, Shin'en's niece is here in Remnant. Which niece, though? His oldest? Who could that be?
It's not a trick question. There is a definitive answer, and veterans of my stories may said answer. Or at least some good theories.
And just a tad more Shin'en lore in the type of stuff he's seen as a parent. Just how many kids has he had?
While you ponder that, please Fav, Follow, and Review!
And have a Merry Christmas of 2023!