Note: this is a spiritual successor to my V7 alternate ending, "The Salvation of James Ironwood". Briefly: instead of freaking out at the end of V7, Ironwood passes out, and things subsequently go much better. How much better? Let's go see...


"Relax, kid."

"I'm not a kid," was the automatic response from Mowg; he realized immediately how childish he'd just sounded, and blushed brightly.

The Atlas Academy faculty overseeing this little field trip showed mercy. Instead of needling Mowg further, he said, "Relax, trainee. This is all routine. Nothing to get worked up about."

Mowg's denial was in his mouth when he realized he was about to repeat his mistake, that protesting how relaxed he was would betray the opposite. "Yes, sir."

Their Skate-class airship tipped into a bank; Mowg braced himself against it, while the instructor reached up to an overhead rail without ever seeming to sway. "Alright, we've briefed this before, but this is your refresher," he said to Mowg and his fellow trainees. "Our mission is simple: containment. An airstrike is scheduled to hit the target area at 1431 exactly. All we have to do is make sure the target doesn't escape the strike zone before impact.

"Everyone be ready for ranged attack," he went on, "with school loaner rifles if you don't have a ranged mode on your base weapons. This is not a target you want to go anywhere near! I'll be in front of the line in case the target breaks contain and you lot don't manage to keep it pinned down. Once the airstrike lands, we load back up and we're out of here. Everyone understand?"

There were vague affirmations to which Mowg half-heartedly contributed.

"This is a routine op. Regular Atlas military normally does this job, but the General likes for his students to 'see the face of the enemy'. Just keep to the plan and we'll have you back at the Academy in time for afternoon study hall."

The Skate leveled out and decelerated, enough that another student pitched forward before catching themselves. The instructor smirked, but said nothing. "Okay. Limber up and stay frosty." He walked towards the cockpit, dog's tail wagging behind him.

The sight made Mowg feel better. He could pass as human as long as no one looked too closely at his footwear, which was specially fitted to accommodate his webbed feet. There were more Faunus in positions of prominence and power, these days. It made Mowg wonder if that might eventually be him.

His parents were always talking about the "bad old days", back when conditions for the Faunus were so bad some had taken up arms over it. Mowg was glad those days were past.

The Skate continued its descent. Out the window, Mowg saw the distant shape of Amity Tower floating at extreme range- close enough to be protected by the Air Fleet in a pinch, far enough to do its job as the backup CCT tower. Other backups were under construction, he'd heard, past the five primary towers (the three surviving originals, rebuilt Vale, and newly-built Menagerie)... but Amity, the first backup, was the best, the big guarantee that no matter what the system would stay up, that there wouldn't be another Dark Time.

Not that some of his classmates seemed to have left the Dark Time, he thought with a scowl.

"Why do we have to do this?" said another student named Cassandra as soon as their instructor was out of earshot. "If this is a job for regular Atlas grunts, let them handle it."

"Yeah, be sure to call the troops 'grunts' next time you're around 'em. See how they like it."

"All I'm saying is it's a waste of time and fuel dragging us out here for nothing."

"It's a containment mission," Mowg said.

Cassandra looked at Mowg like he was stupid. "And you buy that? C'mon. The bombing site is inside Atlas' hard-light shields, and they've been bombing the same spot every two hours for twenty years. What the hell could they possibly be bombing?"

"It's the site where Monstra breached the shields during the Battle of Atlas," said another student knowingly. "It took all Atlas' military might, all the Huntsmen of Atlas and Mantle, and assistance from other Kingdoms to contain the breach and destroy Monstra."

"And the Faunus Militia," Mowg piped in.

"Right, of course. If the Kingdom hadn't been united, the battle might've gotten messy in a hurry."

"Listen to this guy, talking as if he was there. None of us was alive during the Battle of Atlas!"

"Sure, but we can still read about it and watch videos."

"Fat lot of good those videos are. They show some of the fleet battle, sure, and a little bit of the battle in the agri-fields, but the parts that're supposed to show 'Monstra', so-called? All we see is a big dark shape, silver light, and then it all goes to static. Freakin' useless."

"It stands to reason there's some sort of leftover from the battle that needs to be bombed periodically."

"Well, look who's been programmed by the state!"

"Excuse me?!"

"Please, what kind of 'leftover' could that possibly be? You've been taking Grimm Studies for how many years, now? Have you ever read of a kind of grimm that needs to be bombed every two hours?"

"They say there was a—"

"'They say', of course they do. Man, there's nothing there. They bomb an empty field every two hours."

"But that doesn't make sense, it'd be such a waste. Like, not just the cost of the bombs, but the cost of the bombers, and the troops who do containment missions, and the barriers around the site…"

"The military has to justify its budget somehow, doesn't it? Ironwood was on the Council how long? And he hand-picked his successor. The military's gonna get fed, whether it deserves it or not."

A fourth student piped in, "Speaking of getting fed, this is prime agricultural land that's been portioned off. What with the population boom in the past fifteen years, good land's at a premium. Keeping farmland like this off the open market? It drives food prices up."

"Oh, come on, not you, too. What do you think, Mowg?"

Mowg felt a rising panic as six eyes turned towards him—panic that was relieved as the Skate touched down with a gentle bump. "I think we're gonna find out in a few minutes," he said.

"Cop-out," muttered Cassandra, but their instructor's return ended any further discussion.

"We're at the foot of the containment ring," said their instructor. "Let's go, just like we discussed."

The Skate's side door slid open. Their instructor was first out; Mowg, by virtue of being closest to the door, was up next.

The containment ring was a fortification that looked like the joint efforts of a scientist and a siege engineer. The structure stood 7 meters tall at its peak. It was shaped like an arc, enclosing this corner of the Rock of Atlas and isolating it from the rest. The back side of the ring had staircases to go up, lateral walkways at half its height so someone could move around the ring without exposing themselves above its lip, and standing positions at the top protected by parapets and with occasional crenelations. If you'd told Mowg that this was a transplanted castle wall from an old-timey fortress, he would have almost believed it, if not for the periodic generators for another set of inward-facing hard light shields.

Whatever this 'target' was, the military sure was treating it as something apocalyptic.

Mowg followed his instructor up a set of stairs and through a door. Stepping through, he saw that he was standing on a firing position on the inside of the containment ring. The inner edge of the containment ring was set up like stadium seating, with three tiers of firing positions. Not all of the positions were manned, but plenty were; Mowg reckoned there had to be at least thirty guns pointed at the center of the ring.

And what were they pointing at? Blast marks, mostly: turf that had had all the life and moisture bombed out of it until it was little more than blackened sand. It was a stark contrast to the lush agricultural fields behind Mowg on the other side of the ring. Shards of metal, no doubt the remains of bomb casings, littered the area, but other than that the scene seemed empty.

Except that something didn't look right. Mowg peered closer, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He thought he saw shadows, but there was nothing standing there to cast them.

"There we go," said their instructor. "Five minutes to showtime. Spread out, you've got room to work with, we don't need to be elbow-to-elbow. Act like you've taken a marksmanship course before, get some overlapping fields of fire here."

The Huntsmen-in-training spread to either side of Mowg, two arms-lengths apart to give everyone plenty of room to work with, but Mowg paid them no mind. Something was wrong down there in the ring, he could feel it. His chest felt tight for reasons he couldn't explain, like instinct was reacting to something his mind could not perceive.

Mowg limbered his rifle into firing position and looked through his scope. There were shadows down there, he was certain of it, and they were moving—swirling in patterns that made his brain itch. He was more certain than ever that nothing above the ring could be casting those shadows, and especially not causing them to move in the unnatural ways these shadows were moving. The sensation made his stomach lurch like he was motion sick. How could something exist and be impossible at the same time?

"Two minutes," said his instructor. "Keep your guns handy just in case, I'm hopping down to the next tier."

He bounded over the crenelation they hid behind, his own rifle in hand; Mowg could distantly hear it mecha-shifting, but he had no attention to spare for it. The shadows looked like they were growing thicker, somehow. Those were words that shouldn't go together, but it was the best Mowg could do. Language was failing him, was inadequate to encompass the coalescing horror below.

"What's that down there?" said Cassandra, finally catching on to what Mowg had seen.

"Living shadows," Mowg said, the words coming straight from his brain stem.

"That doesn't even make sense," was the retort. It sounded like Cassandra wanted the words to be an insult but couldn't manage it; they were a whine instead.

The shadows were moving faster now, closing in on each other, forming into a denser spiral around some vacant point. They seemed thicker than ever, almost solid.

"Safeties off," called their instructor from the tier below. Mowg heard clicks all around him as weapons were put in firing condition. He did the same, but with difficulty, because he felt like his hands were made of lead.

He was afraid, he realized.

Even hidden in thick fortifications, even with students and instructors and soldiers surrounding him and toting enough firepower to level a city block, he was afraid. Afraid of whatever was down there, that needed all these precautions just to contain.

The shadows whirled tighter and tighter, thicker and thicker, until they seemed firm enough to touch, until they coalesced into a shape as inky black as grimm-skin.

And then white and red burst out of the black mass in a shower of darkness; Mowg would have called it gore except that no decent, honest viscera was that devilishly dark. A sound like a scream reached Mowg as, with terror rising, he zoomed in with his scope.

A woman looked back at him with blood-red eyes, her gaze piercing his soul.

It was an abomination he saw through his scope, a woman-grimm, her very existence a violation of nature. She had the form of a woman but the colors, the essence, of a monster. He felt her rage as much as he saw it, felt on an animal level her hate, her wrath. This was a woman who'd tear a man to shreds just to bathe in his guts.

It was worse than any grimm. He knew; he'd seen them, fought them. They didn't hate, not really, they just did what they were made to do, fulfilled their purpose, brutal as that might be. This woman was worse. She chose it, embraced it, wanted it.

Who could stand against that? Who could fight so much hate—

Blinding light.

Mowg jerked away from his scope, shielding his eyes; he heard and felt the explosions washing over him. Bombs, big ones, to rock him like that even this far away from the epicenter. After a few seconds when the afterimages started to fade, he looked up again.

A new crater had been blasted in the moonscape in the center of the ring. Smoke from the enormous explosion was still rising into the air. The wraith-woman was gone. Bombed out of existence.

"Confirmed hit," came the instructor's voice from below. "Good effect on target. About five seconds late, though."

"Copy all," a voice answered over the radio.

The instructor leapt back on to his students' balcony. "So," he said with jarring cheeriness, "not that hard a mission, huh?"

"What was that?" said one of the other students shakily.

The instructor didn't answer immediately. His eyes fell on Mowg. "You saw her face, didn't you?"

Mowg, numbly, nodded.

"I can tell because you look how I felt, back during the Battle of Atlas," said the instructor. "When I—we—came face to face with her."

"Her?" said Cassandra, sounding concussed. "But… that was a grimm, wasn't it?"

"Only sort of," said the instructor with a gallows grin. "Congratulations, class. You all came face-to-face with Salem, Witch Queen of the Grimm, and walked away with your lives."

There was a thunderstruck silence.

"Salem?" said one of the students. "That's Salem? She's real?"

Their instructor laughed. "Yes, kid. She's real as I am, or my name's not Marrow Amin."

The students murmured; Mowg did not, still stunned to silence.

"What, did you think she was a metaphor?" said Marrow. "Some kind of figure of speech? A fairy tale?"

No one was willing to answer him.

He seemed to understand their silence. "Yes, Salem's real. You've all heard the Unity Message. They broadcast it every year to commemorate the Battle when the whole world came together. Well, nothing in that message was just flowery language. It was literal truth, every word of it. We all came together to fight Salem."

"I thought it was just, you know, Atlas being Atlas," said one of the students quietly. "Trying to make itself seem important."

Marrow burst out in laughter that left the students more bewildered than ever. "Oh, man. If any of you knew Ruby Rose, you'd know that she's never made an empty gesture, and she never once did something just because a government told her to."

Remember her message. Mowg knew those words. He'd had some inkling of what they meant to the last generation, but he gained a new appreciation for them when he heard "Ruby Rose" come from Marrow's lips.

Mowg looked back at the blast site. The smoke of the explosion was gone. There was no trace of a body, of anything resembling either human or grimm. "Is it Salem the Kingdom bombs every two hours?" he said quietly.

"Every two hours, give or take a few minutes, for twenty years," said Marrow with a nod. "And we'll keep doing it as long as she keeps coming back."

"How long will she keep coming back?"

"Who knows?" said Marrow with a shrug. "There's only ever been one Witch Queen of the Grimm. We haven't exactly done studies on the species. If you believe Ruby—and I do—Salem's cursed by the gods themselves. She'll keep coming back forever."

"Forever!" said a student. "But that's…"

"Impossible?" said Marrow sardonically. "Kid, what do you think you just saw? I saw a grimm-woman reform herself out of nothing but vapor. Your usual ideas of possible and impossible don't apply to Salem.

"Which is why the only safe thing to do is keep her contained. Every time she reforms, we immediately blow her up. If she's early or the bombs are late, all the soldiers on contain duty fill her with lead to keep her pinned until the bombs arrive. She never gets a chance to do Salem things."

"Are we supposed to know what Salem things are?" said a student as if petrified of the answer.

"Oh, you know, toppling kingdoms, creating new grimm, performing eldritch magic, the usual. Half of the bad stuff in your history books traces back to her in one way or another."

"No wonder Atlas takes no chances when it comes to her reviving and escaping," said one student, but another shook his head.

"Can she really be as bad as all that?"

"Yes," said Mowg impulsively. He regretted the outburst when the other students' eyes went to him. "She just… The way she looked, the expression on her face, she just felt so…"

Marrow nodded companionably. "And you didn't even really see her in action, not the way we did twenty years ago. But honestly, that's a good thing. You've all grown up in a world with fewer and weaker grimm. A world of better relations between people and nations.

"And all because we came together when it mattered most, to beat Salem when she overplayed her hand and moved in the open. In a way, we owe this new golden age to her."

"If that's true, then blowing her to smithereens every two hours doesn't seem very grateful."

"Yeah, well, gratitude would be wasted on the Witch Queen of the Grimm, you know?" There was a moment of quiet as the students digested this, while Marrow changed his weapon back to its travel form and stowed it on his back. "Alright, everyone back on the airship, I've got to get you back to the Academy."

He led the way back towards the Skate. No one was up to making conversation. Each student was dwelling fully in their own heads as they tried to digest this new and overwhelming information.

Mowg struggled to keep it all inside, and ultimately failed. "It's just so hard to grasp," he said, "that there's a reason for all this, that it all actually happened."

"You weren't there, you didn't live it," said Marrow charitably. "It's all just stories to your generation."

"But it shouldn't be," Mowg blurted out. "It's an important part of our lives!"

"It's important that someone takes care of it," Marrow said. "Not quite the same thing. Sure, it's important for this world that someone keeps Salem suppressed, but if you don't have experience with it, if you're not directly involved, it's easy to get suckered into thinking it's a myth, or a fairy tale, or a conspiracy."

Some of the other students made guilty noises.

"Which is why we do these missions," Marrow said. "So that you see, so that you know.

"The funny thing is, it's not that hard to see for yourself. The military enforces a quarantine around the region, but you can take an airship to a point outside the quarantine and look down and see, or you can apply for permission on a press-freedom basis. People could check it anytime. They could see Salem themselves. It's just easier not to.

"But here's your reality check," said Marrow as they approached the Skate, his voice turning deadly serious. "All the yelling and backbiting and getting upset with people that you see on the CCT-net sometimes? It's small potatoes, really. People winding themselves up out of boredom or a search for bigger emotions. But evil is real, and it's out there. It just so happens that the biggest evil we know has a face we can put to it, and that we can blow away twelve times a day."

"Lucky us," said Mowg.

Marrow barked a laugh. "As General Ebi always says, it's better to be lucky than good, but it's best to be both."

Mowg thought about that. He tried to imagine a world where Salem wasn't in a place where she could be blown to vapor every couple of hours, a world in which that much hatred and rancor could run free.

He shivered.

Yes, he decided. He was very lucky indeed.


End.