Main theme: Enemy by Imagine Dragons and J.I.D
Arc theme: Can't Trust Anyone by Jeff Williams
Theme: Threshold from the Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Soundtrack
I've been doing this for far too long.
Every night when I go to sleep, I hear them. The voices of all the people I once was. All the people I gave away in the fight against Salem. All the lives that I traded for one more day.
I hear them all the time. When I'm asleep, and now when I'm awake.
I can't make them stop. A part of me doesn't want to make them stop. They are my sins, my punishment. This is what I deserve, I suppose.
For all I've done, this is what I deserve.
WHAT YOU DESERVE
I've had so many chances to make things right, to end this war with Salem, to do whatever it took over the thousands of years of existence to end her and bring the Gods back and pray to them - pray to anyone, anything - that they would make things right.
But that's how the worst tyrants that I have borne witness to across this world started.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions after all.
Then again, it's not like I'm any better.
NO BETTER
I've taken lives. I've taken hundreds of them. Thousands over the long course of my parasitic lifetime.
Maybe even millions.
But then I got worse. I became so much smarter, so much cleverer. I stopped taking lives and got other people to do it for me.
I stopped taking lives and started trading them.
Salem and I... we've lived for far too long.
I just want peace.
NO PEACE FOR YOU
NEVER ANY PEACE FOR YOU
please
stop
just stop
Recovered scrap of paper from the ruins of Beacon. The capitalised text is scribbled and messy, as if unconsciously written
It all happened so fast.
One second Esper was here, the next she wasn't. In her place was a superheated flash of white light and flame, burning everything around it. Chunks of scaly meat, smoked and cooked and still aflame, that weren't immediately incinerated were sent flying across the auditorium, spreading a fowl stench as the people within the hall screamed and shielded themselves from the flames.
Ruby and Melanie were quick to act.
As soon as Esper's glow began to build, Ruby had surged into life. In a flash she activated her semblance and began to grab as many people in the way of the explosion as she could, flinging them to the side in superpowered bursts of rose petals and letting them crash into the faraway floor and stage, as far from the incoming explosion as she could. At the same time, Melanie's instincts kicked in and she held her hands out. Her aura flared and her semblance - something that she had tried to manage and control for so long - activated in turn with Ruby's. As the blue fire reached her, she pulled as much of it into herself, trying to lessen the detonation as the energy travelled through her body and left through the vents in her arms and backs.
It still wasn't enough.
Melanie couldn't make out how many people Ruby had got out of the way of the explosion (she could spot Glynda (shame), Morado (big shame), Ozpin (even bigger shame) and Velvet (even bigger sha- actually, she was alright) amongst their number), but she knew it wasn't all of them.
And Melanie didn't know how much fire from the explosion she had absorbed, but she knew it wasn't enough.
Everything still went-
{KA-BOOM}
Melanie was sent flying backwards as the blast's overpressure, using the last of the fire collected in her like rocket thrusters to regain her footing and still herself in the air. She paused as her aura protected her from the flash heat and-
A corpse was flung into her by the force of the explosion, sending her falling to the ground amidst the rubble and chaos and screams.
Meanie groaned as she felt the body limp down atop her. Her ears were ringing, and her eyes were murky and blinded from the blast. A few moments passed as the side effects of the explosion wore off before she looked up to the body atop her, her aura doing its best to keep her unprotected head safe from the heat. Once she saw what was on top of her, she wished that she hadn't.
It was a corpse, charred black and very much dead. Smoke lifted up from the body as red and black flesh clung to it. Entire layers of skin had been peeled off by the heat, leaving the soft meat still wrapped around it dry and hot and tough. The lips, eyelids, ears, and nose had been burnt away from the heat, and the eyes had popped and melted. Other parts of the skin had melted like clay, turning soft and squishy to the touch. It gave off a putrid smell of burnt meat and assaulted Melanie's senses. Soot flaked off the body as it burned, and it stared at Melanie with empty sockets and a burnt, empty maw.
Melanie screeched as she pushed the body off her, then looked to see that the back of the corpse wasn't completely burnt.
Judging from the faint traces of brown fabric still clinging to its back, Melanie suspected that she knew who this corpse once was.
"Coco..."
Aw, she had liked Coco. The girl had been alright, in Melanie's opinion. Annoying sometimes with her flirting with her and every other girl in the former school, and stupidly insistent on commenting on Melanie's choice in fashion, but other than that, yeah, she had been alright. Cool even, though Melanie would never admit that to her.
And now she was dead.
Gone.
Melanie turned her gaze away from the cindered corpse - trying not to let the image burn into her mind (it did) - and looked around the auditorium in a slight daze. The roof of the building was shattered open, allowing the rain to pour in and collide with the field of blue and orange fire in the middle of the shattered floor, creating a cloud of smoke and steam that bellowed out of the ceiling and filled the wide hall around them. Fragments of rubble and stone pilfered the stage and floor as corpses laid strewn across the hall. The walls were chipped and broken and cracked, covered with scorch marks and impalements from flying shards of stone and metal. The bodies on the ground were smoking and mutilated, red and black and dead all over. Some of them were bare and broken, and others had their armour fused into their bodies, slagged and made one with their flesh. Those who were still alive were either running through the smoke in a blind panic, or walking around in a daze, their armour burnt and their skin bubbling as they looked for missing limbs and loved ones in a shellshocked stupor.
Not too far away from her, she could make out the burnt corpse of Toland Noire, who had been nicknamed Steam by his co-workers in the Constructors. His pet robot bird Hammer was still alive and at his side, picking its metal beak into his burnt forehead and letting out a small sad cawk at the body's lack of response. Not too far away, the blackened form of Scrapster was dragging the still alive Skipjack away from the blast zone, the latter's face half burnt, his rabbit ears singed into blackened stumps, and his metal body melted and hardening, locking into place under the cooling temperatures around them. Next to them, Matera Teale, who went by the Nickname Tusks due to the Walrus tusks in his jaw being his Faunus trait, knelt down besides the corpse of Sora Auburn before collapsing to the ground, a smoking hole in his back that had melted through his armour and torched his insides. Nearby, a still smouldering, yet somehow still alive, Alexis Kennedy was curled up into a ball and rocking back and forth, seemingly ignorant of the horrific burns across her crablike arms and front of her body, her armour torched and her face red and black and missing several layers of skin. Next to her, the smoking body of Alexis' former teammate, Sky Lark, laid on the ground, clutched around the dead form of Leo Keith, one of the girls from the former team VAKY (Valkyrie. Whatever). He must've been trying to protect her from the blast. Judging from the fact that the both of them were no longer amongst the living, it was safe to say that it hadn't worked.
Around them all, many more began to pick themselves up from the bodies strewn across the ground as the fire continued to burn, filling the auditorium with smoke and heat that began to burn everything around it, the flames spreading and spreading right until-
{FWOOSH}
-It suddenly disappeared. The fire and the smoke were all suddenly gone.
Melanie instantly knew what had happened. She looked to the side and saw a battered Nora leaning a wounded Ren against the wall with one hand, and her other hand outstretched as a sheet of ice suddenly covered the ground, melting under the heat and cooling into a cloud of steam. Twin lines of pink flame trailed from her eyes. She must've used her Winter Maiden powers to snuff out the fires. Nice.
What wasn't nice was the immediate aftermath of the fire, as everyone began to pick themselves up and the shellshock took over. As a hundred Guardsmen from outside - Crimson, White, Obsidian - came rushing in to assess the damage, treat the injured, and count the casualties, in front of them was a soaked Jaune Arc, a panicked look on his face and Neon in his arms, his glowing hand latched around her bloodied throat as she twitched and groaned in his grasp. Eri hovered in the air above him, taking a moment to shake off the water on her frame like a dog, before spinning off to Ren and Nora and buzzing in a panic around them.
"What the- what the hell happened?!" Jaune called out as Neon gently craned her head to one side and let her eyes widened as she spotted something, "All I saw was a bright light and then- what, Neon? What are you-"
Neon forced herself out of his grip and drop to the ground with a {THUD} and a loud groan. She wheezed for breath amidst the smoky fumes as she clutched her throat and wiped away the red covering it. Her throat was smeared with blood - it must've been cut before the explosion - but it wasn't bleeding anymore. Neon let out a croak as she moved across the floor and took hold of a body on the floor. Tears streamed down her face and drew lines through the red as she pushed her hands onto the body and began to shake it, as if trying to get it to wake up from its slumber. Melanie had to fight through the shellshock and smoke to see who Neon was rocking back and forth in tired desperation, her hands smearing themselves with burnt skin and ashy blood as her mouth mouthed something over and over. The body underneath her was dead and burnt, but there were still traces of the person that they once were underneath, with black and white armour melted into the skin, still bubbling, and the smouldering remains of a helmet stylised to look a little bit like a fedora and-
Oh.
She couldn't hear what Neon was quietly saying to the body over the ringing in her ears and the chaos around them, but she could read her lips.
Flynt.
Oh...
Now she understood.
Flynt was... Flynt was dead.
Flynt Coal was dead.
Someone who had been her teammate for three months, and someone that she had known for six... was dead.
Dead.
As in gone forever.
...
That was... that was hard to imagine.
You don't really think about someone's place in the world until they're gone. When they're with you, you have a tendency to take them for granted. You lazily wander around their existence each day after the next, never taking the time to appreciate the fact that they are there, and they are with you.
It's only when they're long gone from this world that you finally take the time to realise that they were there, and they were with you, and now they can never be with you again.
That fact never made sense to Melanie. She was a smart girl - she was one of the smartest in Beacon, actually - but she could never make sense of that fact. It was a simple fact of life, but it had befuddled her many a times. It had confused her to no end when Miltia had died...
And it was confusing her now.
She hadn't really liked Flynt, but then again, she had never really liked any of her former teammates. They had all been too concerned with their own ways of living - of coping with the traumas of the Initiation Massacre - and their own habits and desires. Flynt had been no different. He and Neon were always slinking off to go sing and dance with their little band with Jolie and DJ (where the hell was that guy), and neither of them would take any of her orders into consideration when she was their leader. The cheek of it, the absolute cheek.
She hadn't like him, and she hadn't got along with him since, but now that he was gone... she didn't know what to think. She just didn't.
It was only now that she was beginning to reflect on what he - and all the people that had died around her - had brought into this world.
...
She had no idea how to process that.
So, she shelved it for now. Neon was crying over Flynt's body. A hundred other people were scrambling inside. A collective shellshock had fallen over the survivors and new arrivals. Smoke still flooded the room. The only thing that she could do right now - the only ethical thing - was to compartmentalise the conflicting and confusing feelings within her. Shove them to the side and allow the logical part of her brain to take the driver's seat. As a former team leader and current commanding officer within the Beacon Militia, she had a basic duty to look at any situation as coldly and dispassionately as possible, to not let her emotions cloud her judgement, to be as cold and logical as possible in order to make the best decisions.
Deep breaths.
In...
And out...
In...
And out...
...
Good. Now that that's covered, time to go over the current situation and figure out the Whats, Hows, Whens, Wheres, and Whys.
Esper had bombed the auditorium in the middle of the troop inspection. That covered What, When, and Where. How had she bombed the auditorium? She used her own semblance. She had been the bomb itself. That covered the How. Why had she bombed the site? To presumably kill Ozpin and the leading figures of the Beacon Militia.
That was only half of the Why. That covered the objective, but not the motivation behind it.
Melanie wasn't one to care about personal reasons when it came to committing a crime. It was how she was raised back in the Mistralian and Valerian underworlds. The sad truth was that crime families and mob bosses didn't give half a shit about the reasons that someone had for carrying out a crime. No one did. A murder was a murder, no matter the motivation behind it. She never gave a shit, and neither did anyone else.
But that didn't stop her from trying to guess the late Esper's motives behind this. Contrary to Flynt's sudden death, Melanie had no reason to give any sort of damn about the woman. She had been a bitch before the troop inspection, and she remained one in death as well. Melanie wouldn't mourn her.
But why would she do this? You don't just decide to become a suicide bomber on a whim. This had to be premeditated. Predetermined. This had to have been in the planning for a long time, and she had to be following someone else's orders. Or maybe she was indoctrinated into one of the Beacon Militia's many enemies. Radicalised by them. But who? The Choir of Silver? The Ascendant Court? The Dust Barons? Some other group of malcontents and misfits attempting to subvert their very way of-
Wait.
Esper used to talk to that creepy guy Watts a lot.
Oh that son of a bitch.
Melanie fought through the ache that now covered her body (her skin red and hot underneath her armour) as she got up. Her eyes scanned over the chaos, darting through the crowds. Up in the elevated rows above, Watts was absent. She looked down and-
There. In the choking smoke, on the ground, feigning interest in the bodies of the dead, was Watts. His expression was that of concern, but it was shallow and fake, like someone was trying to superimpose emotions for others onto his face. It was so shallow an attempt. Too obvious to see, from his darting eyes to his upturned nose and scoff – scoff, scoff, he dared to scoff at the dead at what he had helped do – that he had no interest in being there, with the fallen, helping them, saving them.
She had been on the streets and in the underworld of Vale long enough to know when an expression was fake, and his was like a child's poor attempt at a person's face, like a paper mâché that had been left to rot in the sun.
Someone let out a whimper of pain next to him. Watts, whom seemed to think that the smoke could obscure his subtle movements, looked at the injured body on the floor and sent him a disgusted glare, looking away and ignoring it, a disgruntled look on his face.
Not shell-shock. Not horror. Not even sorrow at his favourite student.
Underneath his mask, it was just… disgust. Annoyance.
Like he had been expecting it.
"Watts…"
The smoke was obscuring him into a haze, but she could still see him turning to her as she approached him. In his best impression of sympathy, he began, "Ms. Malachite… are you-"
"Esper was your favourite student."
He paused, "I fail to see how-"
"She's gone. Dead. She blew herself up."
"I know that, but-"
"So why aren't you crying?"
He stopped.
"Why aren't you sad?"
"…Well, one has to put their emotions to the side in order to help those around them."
He was trying to blend into the crowd, make it seem like he was on their side.
He was a fool.
"How stupid do you think I am?"
"…Exactly as much as I thought you are."
Her eyes widened, then narrowed. He knew his cover was blown and sent her a glare, the mask slipping off. She threw her hand down, itself alit with cyan flame, only for him to pull some fancy looking revolver out from under his coat, plant it in her stomach-
{BANG}
-And pulled the trigger.
The sound was muffled from being pressed into her stomach, but the force of the blast was enough to send her to the ground with a grunt. Everyone around her either looked around in sudden shock at the blow or did nothing, still too muddled by shellshock to do anything but sit and stare at nothingness.
Watt's got up and ran for the exit. A crumpled bullet, turned flat against a body flowing with aura, rolled off Melanie's stomach.
She saw red.
She got herself up and looked up to the door nearby, Watts escaping through the chaos as he ran through the doors.
Their eyes met for just a moment before he took his leave.
Melanie roared.
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSS!"
He made his way out of the building, and Melanie threw herself up and after him.
Leadpipe looked around the empty hanger bay in silence. Everyone else was busy with the troop inspection above, so there was no one else around here to pilot any of the ships parked across the bay floor or hanging on the racks above. None of the other workers were in the hanger bay either. None of the mechanics and techies and so on. Only the security droids prowling the floor and corners. Everyone not made entirely of metal (even Techions had a bit of their organic selves left in them) had all been called up as well.
Everyone except for him.
It wasn't like he wanted to be there anyways, and it wasn't like he had to be there. Quite the opposite. All he had to do now was wait for the inspection to end - however long that could be. Probably hours, if that - and then hitch a ride on the first ship out back to Vale.
He wondered if he should say goodbye to anyone before he left. The idea was quashed down before it could take root. Too many of his former classmates resented him for leaving, He had no desire to stir that pot any more than he had already done by being here.
He would've liked to have found Blake and said a proper farewell to her, though. When he had last spoke to her a few days before the troop inspection, their interaction had been uncomfortably... final. Like it was going to be the last time that they ever talked to each other. And so far, Blake seemed to be very keen on keeping it that way, in fact. He hadn't seen head or non-existent tail of her ever since, and from the sounds of it, neither had anyone else.
He was starting to worry. Where the hell was she? What was she up to? Was she even up to something or had she...
No, Leadpipe wouldn't go down that path, that trail of thought. He had to hope that she was alright. He had to. Blake was his friend. He had no idea what he would do if she was gone... one way or another.
He looked up to see a Bullhead before him, parked and strapped to the ground. If he knew how to pilot it, then he could probably fly himself down to the city below by himself. It was right there. It would be so easy. He didn't move.
It wasn't like he could fly it even if he could. It was locked down, and even if it wasn't the doors to the hanger bay were closed shut. The entirety of the former academy was on lockdown for the troop inspection. If nothing else, High Command (both the official one and the much more respected unofficial one) were dedicated at least a little bit to the safety of the-
{SHUDDER}
The entirety of the hanger bay rattled and shook around Leadpipe, making him lose his footing and slip to the ground. Before he could even think and react to the sudden vibrations-
{KA-BOOM}
-The echo of a massive explosion followed a single second afterwards, muffled slightly by dozens of layers of concrete and rock and metal between it and the source. Above him, the lights flickered on and off rapidly before switching off. The hanger bay was suddenly awash with red light from the emergency beacons above.
The stocky blue, white, and purple Techion pulled him up from the ground and looked around. What was that just now? Was that an explosion? Were they- were they under attack? Was Beacon under attack? What the hell was-
A pair of yellow lights began to flash through the red at the sides of the wide hanger bay doors, accompanied by a blaring drone of noise. A few seconds later, those same hanger bay doors began to slide open, filling the room with the dull light and wet air of the stormy world outside. Rain began to pour into the hanger bay in a deluge.
Around him, the droids switched off and fell down to the ground.
What the hell? Why were the doors opening? Why were the droids shutting down? Beacon was supposed to be on lockdown for the troop inspection, and even more so when under attack.
Right?
Around Beacon, the lockdown began to fall alongside the power. The lights flickered off and were replaced by a red soho glare as the doors unlocked and the hardlight shields shut off in response to the explosion.
It wasn't protocol. The emergency generators had kicked in, but something - or someone - had overridden the lockdown protocols...
As well as freed the Grimm prisoners below.
They all began to fight against the few guards that were still there (and not at the troop inspection) and take their weapons, rallying together to take control of the prison level and spread out across the rest of the lower levels. The doors around them were opened and chaos followed with them.
Only one of them chose not to take part in the violence. A Disciple wrapped in chains stayed in the shadows, choosing not to partake in the hateful insanity and kept to itself. Its single eye watched the dissenting prisoners around it. It awaited someone that it could guess was going to come down.
All around it, Beacon fell into madness.
Jaune found himself shaking as he stood in the middle of the auditorium, as still as a statue and yet shaking with every breath. Smoke filled the air as people ran back and forth and in and out of the building, some screaming, some crying, some silent, and some not doing much of anything at all, as still as a stone and as cold as the corpses that they were.
He clenched his hands repeatedly in order to calm himself. His eyes were blurred by sweat and traces of tears and the smoke and soot flowing around the hall like an ocean. His ears were still ringing, rattling, letting out a high-pitched whine. The armour across his hands and lower arms and chest were painted red with Neon's blood. The girl in question - now healed and with a closed throat, yet still smeared red and pale and without much of a voice for herself - was still near his feet, on the ground and rocking herself against the corpse of Flynt Coal. Nearby, Ruby Rose was busy counting survivors and shying away from the barely familiar dead.
It was all chaos and smoke and death. Mantle and Atlas all over again, and he was right in the heart of it.
A bomb. A bomb had gone off in the middle of the troop inspection and he had no idea how or who or what or why. Dammit, he had known that this was a bad idea. He had told Glynda that the troop inspection was a disaster waiting to happen, and now look what had happened. He-
Stop it. Stop it now. People are dead and dying, and you're making it all about you. Get a grip already and do what you have to do to make things better.
He looked around himself and began to take count of who and what was around him. It was still too murky and smoky to make out exact details on who had survived and who hadn't, but he could make out Ren and Nora near one of the walls, surrounded by a rapidly forming wall of Obsidian Guard soldiers. Over the din of chaos, he could hear Glynda Goodwitch yelling out orders to everyone. They were either unheard of ignored. He couldn't get a read on anyone else.
At least the fire was gone now. Nora had done good with that. Got rid of a lot of the smoke too on the first go, but now the world was filled with a dull grey shade as the lingering heat and flash burn continued to smoulder and give off soot and ash against the rain flowing down from the opened hole in the roof above.
He pulled his helmet off of his belt and slapped it onto his head. The feeling of rainwater trickling down his face was cold to the touch as it ran in droplets down his face, but it was a welcome feeling. Cooling, refreshing. He welcomed the sensation.
He began to collect himself, but was given no time for further thought as-
{BANG}
A gunshot!? Where had that- Watts ran past him and towards the exit out of the building. Where had that gunshot-
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSS!"
Melanie's roar was gutteral and laced with rage.
As the auditorium was flooded with an intake of bodies and panicking soldiers, Jaune watched Melanie run out of the broken auditorium, "Where are you-" he then remembered what Melanie had cried out as the former Professor Arthur Watts fled the broken hall from the stands above them, a rushed pace in his step, "Oh shit... wait up!"
Watts. This was all him. It had to be. It was the only explanation that he could think of. It was the only explanation that made sense right now. The man had been so creepy and invasive during his time at Beacon, so dismissive towards anyone that was not himself and his golden child-
Esper. Was Esper the bomb? Had she been the reason that the auditorium had gone up? Was she the reason that so many people were dead?
"Where's Esper?" he called out randomly as he began to run after Melanie, the woman bolting out the door as he continued to call out, "Was she here? Was she near the explosion?"
"She fucking was the explosion!" someone called out over the din of chaos and commotion around him. He couldn't make out who it was, "I think she built up her semblance or Faunus trait or whatever and turned herself into a bomb! Tried to kill everyone and- where the hell are you going?!"
Jaune didn't have time to come up with a reply as he ran outside the smoking auditorium and into the rainy outside, pushing through the crowds as he followed Melanie out through the dark and stormy day outside. The heavy rainfall slowly began to clean his armour of soot and blood. The water on the ground made the floor like ice and almost made him slip up as he sprinted through the pavements and underneath the metal stairwell bridges and flickering lights and blaring red sirens.
He heard a flash and a flutter, and suddenly Ruby was at his side, her helmet shoved onto her head as she pulled and unfolded her rifle from her back and hefted it in her hands as she sprinted alongside him, "I'm with you, Jaune. I'm with you."
Before Jaune could come up with a response, a single blue bolt flew out from nowhere-
{SLAM}
-And landed square in his chest, sending him spiralling down to the wet ground with a splash.
"Jaune!" Ruby called out as she stopped and leant down to his side, "Are you-"
"I'm okay," Jaune wheezed out as he picked himself up with a groan. The crumpled bullet rolled off his chest and landed in an expanding puddle on the ground, "Aura protected me. Armour as well."
Still though, that was going to bruise like an ass. He could already feel his ribs smarting underneath his body glove and armour, even though his aura was already healing the bruise and minor damage. Thank the Gods he had taken his daily painkillers earlier that morning. That would make the pain of the shot a little easier to deal with.
He'd been taking painkillers for a long time now. Six months and counting. Ever since the Initiation Massacre, even. His body had gone through so much punishment in the first three months of the war, being stabbed multiple times, shot at, blown up, battered and beaten, torn and apart and then healed over by his aura. His body was littered with scars, knitted together into an ugly web of pale skin and reddened ruptures that marked him as someone that had escaped death many times before.
He should've died. All those times that he had been stabbed and shot and shit like that... he should be dead, but he wasn't. All his knew about his miraculous ability to survive hell itself was because his aura count was so high that it dwarfed most other Hunters, even the ones in the primes of their careers. If it wasn't for that, then he very much wouldn't be here right now.
But scars weren't just cosmetic additions. They weren't just drags across the skin and patches of inflamed muscles underneath bruised layers of flesh. His bones had been shattered and his flesh had been torn and healed over with rough patches and cosmetic layers. There was a real physical cost for all of them. No amount of time in a healing gel bath or pushing his aura into the wounds would ever get rid of that.
His time out in the field earlier that week, where he had spent days as a willing captive of the Dust Barons? That had been his first real mission in months, and not just a training simulation or exercise drill. He had spent the last three months since the Surge (minus the incident in Jewel) resting and recuperating, properly healing from his wounds, and going through the physical therapy needed to overcome the aches and pains that had come with his new litter of scars (in between giving out orders to his men, arranging missions for his subordinates, filing reports to the higherups, attending logistics committee and High Command meetings, and so on, so forth).
On good days (with his daily medication of painkillers), his scars were only a little itchy, and his bones only gave him a dull ache. On bad days (without the painkillers), it felt like his entire body was on fire, itchy and prodded with sharp pains that left him almost immobile. He would force himself to move through the pains on all of them, but it was still a nightmare in of itself to deal with.
And Jaune had to live with that for the rest of his life. It was the cost of war. He would have to live with the fact that his body, by his hand or another, had been broken apart time after time again, chipped away and torn like a piece of meat at the butcher's. He would have to live with the pain of having lived through hell as his body aged and withered, more than likely growing worse with every passing year.
He wasn't looking forward to it.
He pushed himself up onto his feet but was pulled to the side by Ruby as another blue bolt flew by him. He looked down the path ahead of him and saw Watts running into Beacon, his arm thrown behind himself as he fired an old pre-Great War era double-barrel revolver, twenty-rounded and coloured in golds and silvers. Melanie was behind him, filling her throwing knives with the energies collected by her semblance and flinging them at Watts, each one setting off an explosion the size of a grenade. Watts avoided each one of them, even managing to shoot one of them out of the air.
He wasn't a former Hunter professor for no reason, after all. Jaune was hoping that that wouldn't be the case.
The two of them moved to join Melanie in her pursuit of Watts, Ruby firing red bolts from her RGX Sable Sniper Rifle at the man whilst Jaune pulled his ML-15A carbine from his chest and sent several blue bolts at him. However, the rings on Watt's right hand glowed blue before forming a hardlight shield and stopping the bullets.
Cheater.
Around Jaune, he finally noticed that the AK-PD bots that had been left to patrol Beacon during the troop inspection were all slumped onto the ground, lifeless and dull. At the same time, whilst the light around the buildings and doors were all red and yellow and flashing alongside the blaring alarms and sirens, none of the doors had locked down and none of the automatic perimeter cannons and barriers had flipped on.
Watts' doing again, surely.
Before anyone could comment on it, the rings on Watt's left hand - the one holding the revolver - flashed blue, then green. A few seconds later, the droids around them quickly stood up from the ground and raised their guns, their eyes and lights glowing a sickly green.
Ruby pulled him down to the ground as the police droids started firing, red bolts filling the air as Melanie ducked down near them to avoid the blasts, pulling her ML-17 Heavy Pistols from her waist and began firing at the droids, landing bolts into their heads and sending them crumpling over to the ground.
"Fucking dammit!" she cried out as she scooted over to Jaune and Ruby, still sending blue blasts into the robots around them, "Fucking Watt's got our droids in his pocket!"
"We noticed!" Ruby called out as she lowered her rifle and pulled up one of her arms. The bracelet around it unfolded, along with the long scythe-like blade along her arm, and silver bolts began to fly out from the barrel that poked out the bracelet, "We're pinned down!"
"Goddammit, Watts' is getting away!" Jaune called out as he saw Watts retreating into Beacon, "We need to-"
{BOOM}
Another explosion rippled out from the other side of the academy, sending a ball of fire and smoke stretching up into the sky. A mass of flaming debris and rubble flew out with it, flying down like meteorites and crashing down with smaller explosions and clouds of smoke of their own.
"Shit," Jaune went, "Was that another bomb? Does Watts have more suicide bombers with him?!"
"That looked like it came from the lower levels," Melanie commented, "The cells... shit, he must've released the prisoners!"
"Goddammit, just what we need," Jaune growled to himself before shooting another rogue droid in the head, "We need to-"
{BAM BAM BAM}
Red bolts of light landed on each of the droids around them, right in their heads and chests, dropping them all and sending them spinning to the floor, splashing onto the ground with wet thuds.
"-...Okay then."
Jaune, Melanie, and Ruby looked up to see a group of Obsidian Guardsmen, led by a lieutenant with a blue pauldron, running up to them, the barrels of their custom ML-15SEs trailing smoke as they approached the three. Taking the risk to stand up and out in the open, they looked to the Obsidian Guardsman lieutenant as he said in the usual stoic monotone voice belonging to those in the Obsidian Guard, "We've got your back."
Ruby chuckled, "Copy that," before asking, "What's the situation?"
"We've got multiple KIA in the auditorium and triple the wounded," the lieutenant reported, "Local CCTnet is scrambled, and emergency and backup communications are as screwed as the regulars."
"Watts," Jaune growled, "This was all his doing..."
"Yeah, no shit," Melanie shot him with, "As much as the lockdown not going into fucking motion and Watts taking control of the droids."
Ruby looked to the lieutenant, "Select messengers and couriers from our ranks and start spreading our men across Beacon once more. Lock it all down. Prioritize armouries, the prison level, lifts, communication centres, power production, and the medical centre. Tell them to expect anything, rogue droids, escaped Grimm prisoners, the like. Beacon's hostile territory now."
Jaune looked down at Ruby and nodded. Good on her for taking command of the situation. Being promoted to a commander was clearly good for her confidence.
"What about the wounded in the auditorium?" the lieutenant asked.
Ruby looked at Jaune, and he frowned underneath his helmet. Despite being higher ranked than him, she was still looking to him for advice...
Well, it wasn't the worst thing ever.
They just had to decide on what took priority over the other. On the one hand, Watts had just outed himself as a terrorist and criminal mastermind, had spent who knows how long hacking into the Beacon Militia's comms and networks (had he been there when they had set them all up? Had he had a hand in creating them?), and had orchestrated a suicide bombing of the auditorium, killing possibly dozens of people, and had who knows how many more bombers intermingled in the crowds if the second explosion on the other side of the old campus was his doing (because who else could it be if not him?). He was a rogue agent working for who knows who, and he had to pay for what he had done.
But on the other hand, there were wounded in the auditorium. Possibly a hundred of them, in fact. The dead needed to be collected and the living needed to be protected. It was their basic right.
...
...
...
...
However, they weren't going anywhere. Watts was though, and the dead needed to be avenged.
"The people in the auditorium can protect themselves," Jaune justified. They had Nora - one of the Maidens - with them. She can take care of herself and everyone else for now, "Watts and securing Beacon take priority."
The lieutenant looked to Ruby again, and she said, "You heard him. Keep some of the medics in the auditorium and run a squad up to the medical centre. Another squad runs with us as we head after Watts. Everyone else is to prioritise taking back Beacon."
"Best to leave no stone unturned," Melanie commented, "Watts and however many assholes he may have corralled into working for him could be hiding anywhere in this place."
The lieutenant didn't acknowledge Melanie. He just kept looking at Ruby, "Copy that," before turning to the soldiers behind him, "You heard her. Grab some Crimson Guard squads and head with them. Relay the orders back to the ranks."
The other Obsidian Guardsmen with them nodded their heads, and one of them ran off back to the smoking auditorium.
Jaune, Melanie, and Ruby looked to each other. Their helmets and armour were smothered by the heavy rainfall. The audio settings in their helmets filtered the pattering of the rainfall out.
"Well then," Jaune said, "Let's get this son of a bitch."
Ruby Rose was many things: a survivor, a warrior, a child in a sweet shop when it came to weapons and armaments, and now a commander of a small private army of former soldiers and mercenaries assigned to her by Ozpin and that looked to her for guidance and hung off her every word despite the fact that she was younger than all of them.
(No worries about that. She was the one that was supposed to save them all after all. She had to. It was her duty as a Silver-Eyed Warrior. It was her destiny. She was confident that she could lead them to victory.)
But above all else, she was a Hunter. A Huntress.
And right now, she was on the hunt.
The corridors around them were dark and filled with flashing red lights. The siren blaring around them was loud and deafening if not for her helmet's audio filters. Her night vision made it easier for her than the others to move through the corridors and anything (from dead bots to stray luggage to still smouldering debris from the explosions earlier) that got in their way, but it wasn't comfortable for her. It never had been. Night vision was good, but it wasn't perfect. Everything in her sight was just a blur of green outlines against a black background. She, much like everyone else, enjoyed the pleasures of an unfiltered view.
However, it would have to do. If they used their spotlights, then they might have alert Watts to their position before they could catch him. He had a healthy head start, and they needed all the ground that they can get on him in order to grab and bag the bastard.
Huh, Ruby never used to swear before. She never liked it. Swearing, she meant. She still rarely did it now (it wasn't something that she liked doing still), but she was more open to it now than she had been before. That didn't mean that she was going to start swearing like a sailor, but still...
She wondered briefly when she had become so accepting of swearing, but then put it down to the fighting and militant actions that she had taken over the last six months. When you're greeted by the face of death time and time again, you tend to learn to let a sill few standards go, especially around swearing.
The war did that to her. All the blood and the death and the horrid violence... it had ruined her, in a way. Both physically and mentally.
This war has done nothing but ruin people.
She ducked underneath a slab of twisted metal that had been thrown into the building from one of the explosions and spared a look behind her to see Jaune and Melanie trying to keep up with her, followed by a squad of Obsidian Guardsmen and three squads of Crimson Guardsmen. It felt strange to be of higher rank than all of them. She still looked to Jaune for advice when trying to issue orders. He was the one to save all of Remnant after all (it just felt right).
She caught sight of a coated figure running through a door leading to the stairwells that accessed the lower levels. Watts always did love his coats, "There!" she called out, and they sped up their chase. Running into the stairwell, they began to scale down the stairs leading to the lower levels, right as Ruby activated her semblance and buzzed down the stairwell-
{CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM}
-Only for a trio of shots to fly through the cloud of rose petals, as an escaped Grimm Baron with a captured ML-15A in its hands, covered in red and smoking black blood and roaring in rage and pain from the bullet holes in its abdomen.
Ruby reformed herself right in front of the Baron and shoved her arm blades into its neck, decapitating the Grimm in a messy spray of blood. The Baron's head fell to the floor and the body followed afterwards, the both of them splattering gore onto the ground as Ruby jumped over the corpse as it began to fade.
She caught sight of Watts running further down the stairwells as a pair of Disciples with stolen weapons peaked around the corner at the hallway connecting to the stairwell and aimed at her, "Heads up," she said as she aimed one of her arms down and fired twin bolts of light into the Disciples' heads, "The Dust Barons are out of their cells. Watts must've released them. Floor negative-eight has already got escapees in it. Watts' is heading further down. Expect the lower floors to be chalked full of them."
"Copy that," someone pinged over her comms as a pair of Obsidian Guardsman, followed by a full squad of Crimson Guardsmen, passed by her to retake the level, "We'll send a messenger out for reinforcements," behind her, another pair of black-armoured soldiers ran back up the stairs.
"Roger," she said, before turning to Jaune and Melanie behind her and said, "Jaune, Melanie-"
"Codenames," Melanie muttered.
"Sorry, Kingsman, Weaver," Ruby corrected, changing to their on duty callsigns instead of their casual names, "We're heading down. There're only two more floors that Watts can go down to," she was referring to levels negative-nine and negative-ten.
"Right," Jaune said. He probably wasn't used to being the one to follow orders and not give them, and so was Ruby. Melanie was as coolly blithe as always.
They continued to run down the stairs, another pair of Obsidian Guardsmen and squad of Crimson Guardsmen splitting off at the next floor, right when they reached the bottom of the stairwell and onto the last floor, where a group of escaped Dust Barons were waiting for them at the entrance, having just ducked out from cover from being shot at. Watts, probably. They jumped up from their cover and aimed their stolen weapons at Ruby and the rest of them. A dozen corpses laid at their feet, their throats slit and their heads removed.
The room was suddenly filled with red and blue flashes of light, but it ended as soon as it began in a sudden burst of violence. The Grimm escapees all dropped to the ground dead, black splatters on the walls and floor behind them. On Ruby's side, three Crimson Guardsmen (who had been standing out in the open without any cover, displaying how inexperienced they were in combat. Probably former cops, if not fresh recruits) were on the ground, moaning and writhing in pain from the rounds that had slammed into their armour. Two were sporting scorch marks on their chests, one a nasty glancing blow to the side of his helmet's helm. All of them were alive but wounded. A medic began to pull them back. A Crimson Guardsman knelt down beside them as a guard. At least some of their training stuck with them.
"Ru- Reaper, Watts is getting away!" Jaune called to her, correcting himself in the process.
"I know!" Ruby said. Technically Jaune was being insubordinate for talking that way to a commanding officer, but in Ruby's mind both Melanie and he were more experienced than her in every way to not outrank her, so she was more than willing to allow the two of them (especially Jaune...) to speak casually to her, "Obsidian, Crimson, secure this floor! We're going after Watts!"
The three of them didn't wait for a reply. In a flash they were off, Melanie taking a shot at a rogue AK-PD and rendering it offline as they moved. They ducked around a corridor and took down two escaped Cleric Grimm and a Lasher, scoring headshots on the creatures and sending them falling to the ground with wet splatters of blood, right before Melanie threw a throwing knife into the eye of a hulking Marauder and let the bomb explode, the backwash of deafening noise filtered out through their helmets' audio settings.
Down the corridor, they spotted Watts getting into an elevator and closing the doors shut. She fired a series of rounds at him, only for him to pull up his hardlight shield and regard her with a smug look on his face. The doors to the lift closed shut and sealed him away.
"Dammit!" she growled out, only to stop in place as a pair of AK-PDs with glowing green optics and lights rounded the corner and-
{BANG BANG}
-Fell dead to the ground, a smoking hole at the centre of each of their heads.
Ruby blinked under her helmet. She looked behind herself to Jaune and Melanie, and they looked at her. None of them had fired those shots.
They approached the lift doors, much slower and more cautious this time. They kept their guns trained on the corners of the room as they approached, hugging the walls and keeping their weapons raised. As they reached the end of the hallway and turned to the intersection, they pushed outwards and thrust their guns in the opposite directions...
And Ruby came face to face with her devilish conversationalist.
"You," she said to the Chained Grimm as it leant against the wall next to the elevator wall, a stolen ML-15A freckled with blood in its hands, "What're you doing here?"
The former Disciple prisoner tilted its head to the other side, as if in mock confusion, right up until it raised its gun next to Ruby's head-
{BANG}
-And fired a blue bolt, colliding with something behind her and dropping it to the ground.
Ruby spun around to see what had been hit, but Jaune was still standing. So was Melanie, just as easily tense and shocked as Jaune.
The sparking AK-PD drone that had been sneaking up on them, shuddering for a moment before falling still, was standing no more.
"I am here to help."
Ruby turned her head back to the Disciple, only to see it walking over to the elevator doors-
{SHUDDER}
-And pried them open.
"Your heathen foe awaits you down below."
They stood like that for a long while, the three of them. Jaune, Melanie, and Ruby could do nothing but stare dumbly at the Grimm in response to its sudden act of assistance.
"...Well?"
"...Let's get moving," Jaune said after a long pause, obviously not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth. Ruby heard his feet scoot over to the opened lift doors. Melanie followed after him, and soon the both of them were making their way through the door and climbing into the dark elevator shaft, clinging onto the walls and their pipes and rungs, and beginning to scale down to the bottom floor below.
Only Ruby remained.
"Why did you help us?" the red, white, and black armoured Silver-Eyed Warrior asked the Chained Grimm, "What do you get out of this?"
The Chained Grimm looked like it was taking its time in considering its answer, tapping its finger against the gun in its hand as it leant back against the wall, before he eventually came out with, "I just wish to serve my goddess, is all." It said it quietly enough so that neither Jaune or Melanie in the lift shaft could hear it.
"You're lying."
"Am I?"
"You're a liar."
"So are you," was the Chained Grimm's counter, "I take it you haven't told your friends that we have shared conversations with each other. Why?"
...
Good question.
Ruby wished that she had an equally good answer.
"They'll know soon enough," was Ruby's answer, "Just not right now. Not while everything's gone as mad as it is. When things have calmed down, I'll tell them about our talks."
"Our tête-à-têtes."
So he knew some Old Valerian as well, then.
"Is that your answer?"
"Yep," she popped the P.
"I have a better answer."
Did he?
"You haven't told them yet... because you are interested in what I have to say."
"..."
"You have a destiny, dead silver-eyed goddess. You have a path in this life that you must walk. One of righteousness and godhood. One where all will see your divinity and fall to their knees before it."
"..."
"I wish to see that destiny flourish and prosper, is all. And I can do it better at your side instead of in a cell."
"..."
"Perhaps I am being selfish in my wish to be free, but I would wish for the freedom to be at your side and help guide you - mentor you - to the world that you envision to be yours."
"..."
"All that I desire in turn is to speak... and for you to listen."
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
"No."
Ruby shook her head.
"No, I... I won't... I..."
...
"I have to go."
Ruby walked over to the elevator doors.
"Get back to your cell... try not to get shot on the way there."
The Chained Grimm chuckled, "I am humbled by your concern."
"It's not concern."
"Is it?"
Ruby had no answer to that.
"I'm not the first Grimm to assist you, you know. Attis-"
{SHING}
"Do not speak his name," Ruby said as she held one of her swords from her back in hand, keeping the blade pointed at the Chained Grimm's throat.
The Chained Grimm just nonchalantly nodded in response, "As my goddess commands."
"Ruby, hurry the hell up!" she heard Melanie call out to her from the lift shaft below, her voice a dull echo over the blaring alarms and sirens around her.
Before she could respond to her, the Chained Grimm had turned around and was walking back to its cell.
"I shall be in my humble little abode as always, my goddess, waiting for when you are ready to speak. I look forward to guiding you on your journey forwards."
Ruby gave the creature no reply as it walked off, lazily dropping the gun in its arms down to the ground and practically prancing away with a spring in its step, like it had accomplished something that Ruby had no understanding or comprehension of.
Maybe it thought that she did, even though she clearly didn't. Or maybe it didn't care.
...
...
...
...
It didn't matter.
Not right now.
At least, that's what she told herself.
She sheathed her blade and turned back to the opened lift doors, pulling herself inside the dark and empty shaft and beginning to climb down its damp, icy rungs. The air around her was a cold breeze that echoed against the pipes and bars slotted and running along the walls.
"What kept you?" she heard Jaune's voice reverberate through the dark tunnel as she began to climb downwards alongside them.
"Just showing the Grimm the door is all," it was part of the truth, at least.
But she wasn't going to tell them all. Not yet.
(Because no matter what, she would deny the fact that the Chained Grimm was right.)
Arthur Watts was angry.
No, he wasn't just angry, he was furious. He was positively fuming. Rageful, even. Every negative emotion that he could feel - anger, indignation, frustration, humiliation - he was currently feeling it.
That stupid little girl... she was supposed to complete her task. She was supposed to do what she was told.
Instead, she had failed.
It was supposed to be so simple of a mission for her: convert herself into an explosive and wait for the troop inspection to make her move, and then assassinate the leading figures of the Beacon Militia and other important staff members in one fell swoop. It was to be an easy task for her, an assignment that was so difficult to fail that she may as well have been doing it blindfolded.
And yet, she had failed.
He should've asked for better help when infiltrating Beacon Academy back in the day. At least then he might've got someone with actual skill, or at least had a few braincells more than zero.
Because thanks to that stupid Esper Fyre girl, his mission had failed, and his cover had been blown. Now he was a wanted criminal in the eyes of the children of Beacon and had just run halfway across the old campus just to avoid them.
And he had been blending in with the teachers so well on top of that. He probably could've kept this silly illusion of him being on their side for several more months, or maybe even years.
A damn shame.
At least he had access to the Summer Maiden down below. He could always use her as a hostage - a bargaining chip to use in case they caught up to him.
If nothing else, then his new allies in Beacon should be making good use of the failed lockdown to do what they needed to do. Heh. He had only aligned himself with those fools because of his new allies in Vale, and he had only helped those two just to spite Beacon. The more they made the school - and Ozpin by extension - bleed, the better.
Watts was fully aware that it was a petty reason to help someone, but he didn't care. Pettiness was something that he excelled at.
He made his way out of the lift and down the long corridor under the Wishing Well Lake, the glass corridor shining white light through the inky blackness of the watery world held behind the glass. A pair of AK-130s with neon green lights in them greeted him, but he pushed them aside. He marched into the wide glass dome facility and ordered the drones to ready the base's self-destruct and began to tap away on one of his computers. He would have to contact his new allies and ask them to greet him at the shore on the far end of the lake. He would have to swim there, along with the Winter Maiden, pod and all. The difficulties of this task were irrelevant to him. He would make it. He knew he could.
The vat of Grimm matter sitting above him loomed like a deity looking over the living. Watts had no patience for deities, nor for the dead Techion floating lifelessly in it. The likes of the gods themselves held no sway over his actions. Only himself, as it always had been.
Contact. A transmission had been sent and received. The line opened. A secure channel and communication. The call was made.
The screen in front of him flickered with life, and a holographic figure began to form before him, turned into a 3D projection of hardlight and noise.
Shimmering under a gentle blue light, a figure wreathed in silver and white robes greeted him. Dull silver armour covered its chest, arms, and legs, and a domed helmet in a neon blue rectangle of light running vertically through it - as well as a pair of squat fins at its sides - sat on its head, a pair of tubes feeding into a pack on its back lined with yellow lights. Shards of yellow electrical dust were embedded into its arms, sparking electricity across needle-like appendages and amplifiers and rods running up its arms all the way down to the tips of its clawed fingers. A fur belt-cape ran across its legs and knee-high fur white boots ran up its legs, plated with silver armour around the sides.
The figure leant down to look at him.
"Watts," said the Tinkerer, more commonly known as Hephaestus, the God of Machines, the last of the Silver Court, and the last legitimate leader of the Choir of Silver, "Hope you have good news."
Reviewer response time:
MilitiaMasker: Esper threw it out the window like she didn't everyone else!
dominickwarcimaga666: Don't worry, be happys now she life'is! Unlike Esper who is lifen't.
Guest: Someone booped the snoot of the merry suicide bomber... and your guesses may be correct, they may not be. Who knows?
Everyone, meet Hephaestus, otherwise known as the Tinkerer, otherwise known as the second biggest bad of the entirety of Ascendancy!
(For anyone wondering, no I didn't miss the 'I' accidently. It's just how he talks.)
To the familiar, ya'll know Hephaestus, his strange origins, and his evolution from simple side protagonist into major villain. For those who don't know... why are you here? Go read Phase One of Ascendancy, what are you doing if you haven't!?
But yeah, anyways, here's the next chapter of Ascendancy. I hope you've all enjoyed it. I had quite a bit of fun writing the beginning parts of this chapter, going into detail about the bodies and the gore covering them.
Trust me, the next few chapters will be showing you why this story has its M/Explicit rating.
Mwahahahahahaha!
But anyways, as always, please leave a review, follow and favourite, and with all of that said and done, I shall see you all next time!
Titanmaster 117 out!