Heart to Heart
Chapter 28: Atlas
The flight had thankfully been devoid of any issues, after what they all just went through they needed a break. Qrow looked behind him seeing everyone napping he didn't blame them after all that they all deserved it. He saw Ruby and Weiss were leaning against each other as he grinned seeing Ruby drooling a bit on Weiss. That was certainly going to be fun when she woke up. Looking around Blake was out cold near Oscar, the boy he was sure was trying to get Ozpin to come out given how hard the boy had been concentrating on what looked like nothing.
Qrow really hoped Ozpin showed up again, not only did he have a few pointed questions for him but also they could use him for when they meet with Ironwood.
Ren was asleep as Nora was lying on the floor cuddling up to his lap as if it was a pillow. The final two were Yang and Jaune, the boy had fallen asleep on Yang's legs and his niece had eventually clocked out as well.
Looking at the two of them brought up old memories. Memories of a simpler time when he was just a student in Beacon and he had caught her sister Raven in a rare time when she let her guard down. He had found her and Tai in a similar position when they were dating in their final year by a tree out of the view of most students.
It was one of the few times he could remember his sister actually looking happy, he started to wonder just what happened to cause Raven to turn away from everything. She had always been complicated but did she find out the truth about Salem? Given that it caused him to nearly start drinking himself into an early grave, maybe she had learned it and just ran from it all.
Still, she left her family behind and that was something that you can't just ignore.
Looking at Yang in that moment he knew that she at least wouldn't end up like Raven. He wasn't sure if her relationship with Jaune would go the distance but looking at them now he felt they were good for each other at least.
"Something interesting?" Maria asked.
Qrow shrugged and turned around. "Kids are still asleep."
"Give them a few more minutes," Maria said with a smile. "They've earned it after today. Plus, I think a few of them are enjoying their time together."
"As long as it's not enjoying it too much at the moment," Qrow grumbled although he liked how Yang and Jaune were doing he didn't need to know about his niece's sex life if they had one. He really didn't want to think about that.
"Oh please let them enjoy it, you're only young once," Maria sighed. "I tell you there is one thing I would have done if I knew I was going to lose my eyes."
"Other then not be there that day?" Qrow asked.
"Besides that," Maria nodded. "I would have found a nice young stud and rode him for all he was worth."
"Crips Maria." Qrow chuckled.
"Hey, I will have you know when I was a young lady in my prime, I was pretty darn beautiful. I had men giving me looks all the time. Wish I had more fun when I did or at least had found a decent enough person to settle down with." Maria sighed thinking back on things that could have been. "I could have had at least a family by now. You know how hard it is to get laid when you got to be on the run from whoever hired those mercenaries after me and have big bug like mechanical eyes?"
She pointed to her artificial eyes. "Trust me when you find someone don't let them go and don't wait around. Before you realize it, you'll be old and alone."
Qrow was a bit somber hearing that. Then again, he was pretty sure no one would want him anyway, his bad luck would always get in the way not allowing him to stay in one area for too long.
"But hey," Maria spoke up smiling a bit. "At least before I kick the bucket, I get to go on one last adventure, and I also got to show that Cordova a thing or two one last time."
"Well looks like nap time is over," Qrow stated nodding ahead.
"Yep, better wake the kids." Maria nodded in agreement.
Qrow got up and got to the back of the open area. "Alright time to wake up everyone, we're here!"
Various people started to wake up as they looked around to regain their senses.
Yang felt something on her legs as she looked down and smiled as Jaune was stirring awake. She was glad that his air sickness wasn't causing him issues. Plus he did look kind of cute just sleeping but she was also starting to lose some feeling in her legs. Jaune opened his eyes looking up at the smiling face of Yang as he smiled back at her.
"Hey."
"Hey yourself," Yang responded. "Sleep well?"
"Actually, yeah thanks," he slid off her as he sat next to her watching her rub her legs. "Are you okay?"
"A little numb nothing major," she assured him.
He got up and offered a hand which she was thankful for as he helped to pull her up.
"Ewww! Ruby you drooled on me!"
"No I didn't! You can't prove anything!"
Yang and Jaune looked to the side and had to laugh as Weiss tried in vain to dry off the small wet area on her shoulder. Everyone got up and stretched out as they felt a lot better after that rest. They all crowded around the front of the ship to take a look outside.
They could see Atlas now, for those that hadn't seen it before, it was a sight to behold. Half the city all in white was floating above high in the sky. It looked like a gleaming city almost in the clouds as huge cables tethered it to the ground. Below the massive city was the huge creator that they had raised from there was a lot of smoke coming from said creator. Next to the hole was a shabbier looking city. It had a small wall around it but also what looked like some housing outside of the wall of all things.
The vast landscape was nothing but snow and mountains giving the whole thing a sense of isolation.
"Wow, they made the entire city fly?" Ruby said in wide eyed fashion. Although Weiss talked about being from Atlas she never really went into much detail about the place or her life there.
Weiss nodded, "They used a lot of gravity dust to keep the city up."
"What would happen if the gravity dusk lost power or something?" Yang asked her.
"It would most likely crash back down and given that it hovers over the mine, all that weight would destroy both parts of the city."
"Really?" Nora asked.
Qrow took it from here, "All that weight coming on down all of a sudden? Yeah the Upper City would be destroyed and the mines would all cave in."
"It's a bit worst than that," Weiss continued on. "The mines run deep and all over the place, even under the Lower City. If all the mine tunnels collapse than even the Lower City would start to fall into the ground in various places."
"There were some White Fang members I remember saying they should do just that," Blake shook her heads. "It was a minority as that exact reason of what would happen put a stop to that kind of talk. They didn't think about the consequences of doing something like that would mean to the Lower City where they had friends and family."
"You think that's where Salem will hit?" Jaune asked as everyone looked at him. "She already attacked Beacon and tried at Haven. If Atlas was on her list that would be the perfect way to not only destroy Atlas as a whole but it would stop a lot of dusk from ever being moved out again."
Everyone stood still at that thought. Dust was one of the reasons they had such a better way to fight against the Grimm, not to mention all their technology ran on it. If dust were suddenly gone, everything that used power would start to fail and weapons would have to go back to being just melee weapons like Jaune's sword.
"I take it that all that smoke coming out of that hole is from the mine then?" Nora asked.
Weiss took a breath as this was the darker side of her home. "Yes, that's the main dust mine for SDC. The town next to it is commonly referred to as the Lower City and…that's where all the workers that work in the mines live."
"Wait all the workers have to live there?" Nora asked looking at the dank and somewhat dirty looking part of the lower city.
It was Blake that answered, "Yes, a lot of Faunus live down there. You can start to see why the White Fang had an easier time recruiting from there. All day you have to look up at the other city where all the rich people live while they break their backs making them richer."
"Now you see why I give people from Atlas a hard time," Qrow stated. "I've been to both parts and neither one is a saint. Up above you got all the people who call the shots looking down on the world below them thinking they are better than everyone. Down below you have a lot of resentment and anger building at the world around them. A lot of criminal groups spring up from this making the Lower City more dangerous place to walk, not to mention all that negative emotions keep bringing in Grimm."
Weiss would have liked to have argued that point, but she really couldn't. She had never left Atlas before going to Beacon and it wasn't until she saw the city of Vale that her eyes started to open at how different Atlas society was. Being with her team also helped her to grow and take a new look at how things were in the world. Atlas wasn't all bad, but it did have its own problems that it seemed blind too.
Looking up at the upper city she felt like she could feel her father there and she didn't like that feeling. But since they were here for Ironwood then they would have to go there, the military was stationed in the Upper City. She took a breath, she wasn't going to allow her father to control her anymore, she had decided on that point. She didn't care what he thought about her now, she cut her ties to him the moment she decided to run off.
"Take us up to the Upper City," Qrow stated as Maria did just that.
As soon as they were closer enough something else became apparent, there was a huge military force stationed around the Upper City. Battleships flanked the city on all sides with support craft next to them.
"That's…a lot of ships," Jaune stated in awe at it all he had no idea Atlas had this many ships.
"Is it always like this?" Yang asked.
"No," came the same reply from Weiss, Maria, Blake and Qrow who had all been here before.
"It's like they're preparing for a war or something," Ren stated looking at them all.
"Damn it Jimmy what are you doing now?" Qrow said under his breath at the size of the fleet.
The radio came to life as a female voice was heard, "Manta 5-1, welcome home."
Maria motioned for Qrow to take this one, given that the last time she spoke they knew right away she wasn't an Atlas military member given her age. The others would sound too young on the line to pass either.
Qrow turned on the microphone, "Yeah, this is Manta 5-1, request clearance to land at HQ."
"Roger that, please respond with current passcode."
There was a pause as Qrow killed the microphone, "Well that's not good."
"You don't know the password?" Ruby asked.
"Why would I have an Atlas password?" Qrow asked her back.
"I don't know! You go all over the place so I figured you would have some kind of thing that let's you into other places or something."
"Well I don't," Qrow looked to Oscar. "I really hope Ozpin is paying attention and he has something."
Oscar waited a moment, "He's not saying anything…I think I'll take that as no then."
"Damn it," Qrow started to think fast because they could only stall for so long. "There hadn't been one last time I was here. Normally they would ask your business and check it out before landing not for a passcode."
"They must have tightened security," Blake surmised.
"Manta 5-1 send your passcode, you are entering restricted airspace." Came the warning.
"Well think of something and fast," Maria told him.
"Damn it…okay let's hope for this." Qrow turned it back on. "Sorry about that had to find it. Passcode is…Alpha-five-five-four…"
"That is not the correct passcode Manta 5-1."
"Sorry we're flying out from Argus and we weren't given the update with the CCT Net down." Qrow hoped that they bought it.
"I'm sending a flight to your position. They will lead you to landing bay at North Base, do not deviate from the flight plan."
"Got'cha, uh…over and out." Qrow turned it off as Maria winced. "What?"
"You don't say 'got'cha' or 'over and out' on military lines you just say out." Maria explained.
"Will they be suspicious of that?" Ren asked.
"They already are, hopefully they'll think it's just an idiot on the comms." Maria sighed. "Now we got a bigger problem."
"What's wrong, we're going to the land at Atlas right?" Yang looked around.
"You heard them," Qrow explained. "We're going to North Base and not HQ and as soon as we land and they see that a bunch of non-Atlas people are flying one of their birds…"
"We'll be arrested," Weiss sighed.
"Well we could just wait in a cell until they tell Ironwood that we're here right?" Nora asked hopefully.
"If they tell him," Blake shook her head. "The problem is whoever is in command most likely won't believe us. When a report does come up to someone that might inform General Ironwood we have no idea how long we'll be in a cell for. Plus, all our stuff will be taken including the Relic."
"We can't let it out of our sight," Qrow said as he thought about what she had said. "We have no idea how far Salem's reach is, if she has agents here and find the Relic just waiting in an evidence locker it would be way too easy for it to just 'disappear' while we're waiting for someone to tell Jimmy we're in jail."
"There's another problem," Weiss said. "They'll process our identities and once they find out who I am, my father will pull everything he can to get me out and place me back under his control again."
Weiss felt a warm hand take hers as she looked to see Ruby looking at her with compassion. "We won't let that happen remember?"
Ruby looked out to see the other two aircraft coming closer. "So, if we can't let them take us so what does that leave us?"
There was a pause before Jaune spoke up. "We run, we try to lose them and land somewhere else and make our way to Ironwood by ground if we have to."
"Yeah sounds about right," Qrow nodded and looked to Maria. "You think you can shake them?"
"I'm more worried about our fuel, we burned a lot in that fight but if we can pull this off, I might have to land on fumes." She told them.
"Do it," Ruby said with a nod.
"Alright then," Maria grinned. "You all better strap in then this is going to get wild."
Everyone got into the back and started to strap their luggage down first so it didn't fly all over the place. Then they quickly strapped into harnesses on the side of the ship. By the time they were ready they were flanked on either side by an aircraft leading the way.
"Everyone ready back there?" Maria called out.
"Ready," Ruby replied.
"Alright everyone hang on because things are going to get wild," Maria grinned as she suddenly took the craft into a nosedive.
"Manta 5-1 what are you doing?" Came a new voice on the communications line.
Maria didn't answer as she dived as far down as she could, the other two started to follow her down. She banked hard right as she flew close to the buildings in Lower City. She dodged and weaved as best she could.
"Are you crazy?" Weiss yelled from her spot in the back.
"Relax she's knows what she's doing." Qrow assured her and then said to her. "You do know what you're doing right?"
"None whatsoever!" Maria cackled.
She went around as many tight corners as she felt she could get away with. The problem was there were two craft. One would pull away and get higher to report her position and then it would continue the chase if Maria got too far away from the other. She had to admit the Atlas pilots were at least well trained enough to use team tactics to keep from losing her.
Everyone in the back felt the tight turns in their spots, they would have been thrown around if they weren't strapped in.
"Woooo!" Nora shouted as she was actually having a good time as it was the best ride ever at the moment.
Jaune however was looking very green as his hand went to his mouth.
Yang saw this as her eyes widened in horror as she was right next to him. "Jaune don't you dare!"
He nodded his head but kept his hand over his mouth trying very hard not to throw up.
Maria tried a new tactic by pulling straight up, she saw the other two follow her and then cut nearly all the power to her engines. They started to slow and then fall backwards as they flew past them. She tried to kick in the engines again to fly off, but they pulled away and made a tight turn in opposite directions to get back in sight. She had gained some distance but not enough to lose them just yet but she had more tricks up her sleeve.
By this point the Atlas pilots were getting frustrated as whoever this was it was obvious, they were trying to get away. One of the pilots flicked on the small guns on the craft as he waiting, he couldn't just blind fire because the rounds could either go into the Upper or Lower City. He tried to line his shot for one of the engines and waiting until the enemy craft was out in the open and fired.
The rounds mostly missed but a few lucky shots got one of the engines.
The damage was bad enough, but Maria saw a new alarm. "Well good news and bad news. We won't have to be doing this much longer, the bad news is that we're about to run out of fuel."
"We still have to lose them before we land," Qrow said looking for anything to help.
Maria noticed something and it was the only option they had to both land and get rid of their pursuit. She went down again as everyone noticed that she was going very closer to the ground, actually it looked she like was aiming for the ground.
"What are you doing!?" Oscar yelled seeing the ground coming up at them. Even though he had been with her before while flying he was certain this woman was crazy.
"I got a plan kid," Maria then pulled up as they felt the bottom of the ship scrap the pavement with a horrible screeching sound and the whole ship shuddering. "Okay that was actually closer than I thought."
"Uh…you do know there's a tunnel in front of us, right?" Qrow asked her nervously as they were coming up to a tunnel. "You know we won't fit through that right?"
"Not all of us have to fit," Maria told him as the engines died. "Well now we're stuck with this idea."
Maria glided them in with their forward momentum carrying them. The entire ship shook even more as the wings of the craft were torn off. The center part of the vehicle kept going on for a but until the belly hit the ground. It skipped a few times before grinding to a long halt, sparks coming out from the craft as it started to roll a bit to the side as it started to turn.
Eventually what was left of the craft shifted as it wedged itself in the tunnel.
There was a long pause no one said anything as the power fluctuated making the lights flicker as some sparks came out of some areas. Some cables and even some panels had been knocked lose as the craft had taken enough damage to warp the hull of the ship.
Ruby groaned feeling like every bone in her body was in one of those paint shaker things she saw in a hardware store that time her dad took them to get some pain to repaint the house that one time. She thought she might have bitten her tongue a bit in the end there.
"Is everyone alive?" Ruby groaned.
"I think I'm going to throw up," Weiss groaned.
"Seconded," Ren said next.
Jaune was able to free himself and took a few steps before going to his hands and knees and emptied his stomach out.
"Well Jaune's got that covered," Yang sighed glad it wasn't on her shoe as she managed to get free and managed to kneel next to him and rub his back.
"Everyone else okay?" Qrow asked looking back.
"Think so," Blake managed to say.
Qrow nodded thankful that everyone seemed okay. He looked to Maria, but she was slumped over the controls and not moving. He reached out to shake her gently. "Hey Maria you okay?"
She didn't move or say anything as Qrow unbuckled himself as he placed his fingers by her neck for a pulse. Did the crash kill her? He had heard of crashes where the whiplash can snap a person's neck and given her age, he could see it happening.
"What are you doing!?" Maria suddenly shot up and groaned.
"Just making sure you were okay," he sighed.
"Don't kill me off yet," Maria said as she undid the harness. "Although anymore landings like that and I won't be. Not the best landing I've ever done but at least we're all alive and in mostly one piece."
"Right," Qrow grinned. "Alright if you can move, we better get going. Atlas will send in a ground team to track down whoever was in this and we need to get enough distance from it and us as possible."
-General Ironwood's Office-
Winter Schnee was making her way to her commander's office, she had been given an emergency summons by him. She quickly walked as fast as she could without looking like she was running. The member at the desk looked to have been notified of her presence and nodded to her and let her in.
When she got into the office, she couldn't help but look at General Ironwood. She masked her emotions looking at the man. Ever since Beacon he had slowly been isolating himself and although his uniform looked pressed as usual, his physical appearance wasn't up to the usual standard.
While he kept his hair combed it was longer than regulations demanded and the beard, he had been growing also was a bit unkempt. Normally she would have known what this was about but lately he had been cutting even her out of his plans. Yes, there were times when she wasn't privy to information but that was the military.
If you didn't have a need to know then you didn't know.
It was just that it seemed that the General felt she didn't have a need to know a lot of things lately. Part of her was a bit hurt from that, she looked up to the man and him not having any trust in her hurt in ways she didn't want to admit.
"Sir." She came to a parade rest in front of him.
"Good timing Specialist," He nodded and then inputted a few commands as the one of the screens on the left side of the wall came up. This side of the wall held several screens showing various information. The large central one came on and Winter looked at what looked like fly camera images from one of their aircraft.
"An hour ago, one of our aircraft from Argus came into our airspace," He got up to point at it in question. "It was not scheduled, and it didn't have the passcodes."
Winter watched as the video of the aircraft, whoever was flying that vehicle must have been a mad man.
"When being brought it, it then tried to flee as you can see our forces had to force it down."
The image showed the guns firing at the ship as it kept evading, but a shot managed to hit one of the engines. Smoke was coming out of it as it seemed to go into a controlled dive. It looked to have had a hard landing somewhere in the Lower City. The thing that was crazy was how the craft had flown through a tunnel. The aircraft couldn't follow that of course as she heard the request for ground forces on the video.
She guessed this was why she was here to lead the ground team.
"What are my orders?"
Ironwood turned off the video. "Given the recent unrest in the Lower City we can't afford to send in a large team."
Winter knew all too well what the unrest was, a week ago her father had stopped shipping out dust because of the closed borders. He made a public statement saying until the borders were up, he would not sell anymore dust to the Atlas government. It wasn't like they could legally force him to sell to them after all. But it put a huge strain on the economy, a lot of people were running low on dust and shops had to sell them at inflated prices.
Both her father and the General were playing a dangerous game of chicken at the moment and people in the crossfire were starting to suffer for it, especially in the Lower City where people had to struggle to make ends meet.
To say that things were tense was an understatement, all they needed was a big enough spark and it would ignite riots. So, having a large Atlas military force suddenly swoop in would not be a welcomed sight.
"So, you'll be leading a small four-man team to capture whoever was on that flight." Ironwood stated looking out the window of his office. "I want you to capture them if possible, we need information and they have it."
"Back up?"
"If you capture them, I can have a transport ready to your position with extra troops if you need them as well."
"Could this be related to what happened at Beacon?" Winter asked him. "Could the White Fang and whoever helped them finally be after us now?"
Winter wasn't privy to all the information that Ironwood had learned as part of Ozpin's inner circle. He only told her as much as was needed so she had no knowledge of things like Salem and the true nature of their enemy. He felt she was more effective this way and also, he wasn't so sure who he could trust fully these days.
"It's possible, that's why I want you to capture them." He told her. "Two of the members will be waiting on launch pad five for you, they are both Specialist like yourself. The other member should be here fairly soon as I felt this was the perfect mission to test them out on."
"Test out, is this person new sir?" She asked trying to think of anyone that just recently joined the Specialist that it might be but no one new had been promoted to the unit in months.
There was a buzzer sound from his desk as he went to it. "Yes?"
"Sir, that person you were waiting for is here." Came the voice of the man at the desk.
"Excellent let them in," Ironwood looked at the door. "Another fortunately timing. This individual is going to be assigned to your team to help with capturing the fugitives."
Winter turned to look at who it was that opened the door as she stared in wide eyed shock and surprise. "You!?"
-Atlas Airspace, 4 Hours Later-
Cinder could see Atlas now as they flew into view the massive fleet positioned there looked intimidating, but she knew that looks could be deceiving.
"It would seem that Ironwood didn't learn his lesson in Beacon," Cinder smirked she would love nothing more than to have a repeat performance here but that would have to be later. She had more personal business in Atlas after all. "And I thought he was supposed to be a military general, using the same strategy with just more forces is just doomed to fail."
Neo nodded as something Roman told her a few times about how if you pull a job try not to do it the same way. Being predictable would mean you can get caught much more easily. She looked over her shoulder at their 'passenger' Adam. While he did look pretty pale at the moment he at least was still breathing. She honestly wasn't sure if he would last much longer without at least a blood transfusion. Well she wasn't going to offer, and she doubted Cinder would as well.
Suddenly the communications for their ship came alive.
"Attention aircraft you are entering restricted air space."
"Well at least they are punctual," Cinder picked up the small microphone to her mouth. "This is Atlas Flight Phoenix 22 from Argus, this is a priority alpha-red mission. Verification one-nine-two-eight-black."
Neo gave her a sideways look.
"We got a lot of files off of Ironwood in Beacon. I made note to remember the more important bits." Cinder was glad she did since she had lost her scroll at Beacon with the majority of the information on it. But remembering passcodes was always important and if anything, when she put her mind to something she was focused like a laser.
There was a moment of silence as Cinder was a bit worried that maybe the passcodes had been changed. It wasn't a generic one, but one used only for the Specialist, Ironwood kept them on a separate passcodes for missions that were sensitive and only answered to him. She didn't think he would change the code it would be difficult since there were Specialist out in the field outside of the borders even now. He couldn't change them without locking them out of Atlas. She also figured he was secure in his own self that he couldn't fathom his personal codes had been taken as well.
"Clearance verified."
Cinder smiled and in her most serious manner with just a hint of a threat behind her words said, "Good now listen up, you will scrub all data of this flight and our conversation. We never talked, we were never here and you will have no data about us. We were a ghost nothing more, do we understand each other?"
"Y-yes, perfectly ma'am!" The other line disconnected.
Neo might have clapped at that if she wasn't too busy flying.
"Once we're past the line you can drop the image." Cinder looked at the lower levels. "Take us down, it's time we look up an old acquaintance of mine. It's time to go see the Crocked Man."
TBC…