Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck was just finishing his morning lesson on The Kingdoms founding for the second-year cohort when he received a message from Professor Ozpin requesting that he come to the CCT foyer and escort one 'Noble Six' to a personal room in the staff housing quarters. Upon seeing this, Doctor Oobleck took a sip from his travel mug/fire-bat and, with needed details like 'Stands 6'10" and wears full body armour, started moving towards the CCT tower to meet this new personnel staying at Beacon Academy.
Chapter 3:
Ivory Tower
"You have been called upon to serve."
The last memories, the sacrifice of a SPARTAN.
"Now approaching communication terminals."
High above the planet, no other way to finish it.
"Hm, I'll have to request access to that floor for communication attempts."
His action pyrrhic, sacrificing himself and saving the planet for but a moment.
"Now approaching ground floor."
Then the rest came…
"Noble Six, we have reached the foyer."
Six stepped out of the elevator and onto the main floor of Beacons CCT tower, drawing eyes which quickly diverted when he scanned the room.
"Ah, you must be Noble Six I presume?"
Six looked in front of himself towards the entrance to the tower to see a man with green hair, glasses, deep green pants, a yellow tie and a half-tucked white dress shirt with a raised collar, carrying a travel mug.
"Yes. And you must be Doctor Oobleck." Six responded.
"Why yes I am, I have been assigned with escorting you to your own quarters within the staff quarters. If you would please follow me."
With that Dr. Oobleck made his way out of the foyer with Six following behind him. The two traversed the grounds of Beacon Academy making their way towards the staff housing blocks, passing more staring students on the way. The two made their way through the ground floor of the staff housing before Dr. Oobleck stopped and opened one of the doors.
"Here we are Mr. Six," Dr. Oobleck gestured inside of the room. "Inside you shall find all basic amenities baring a kitchen as we have a dining quarters situated towards the entrance of the building, or you may wish to dine in the schools cafeteria," Dr. Oobleck took a quick sip from his mug. "Although the students do get rather loud at times."
Six wandered into the room to take inventory of the locale, a desk and lamp sat in one of the corners, a king single bed sat in the opposite. To the left of the entrance lay an ensuite bathroom and shower. Six turned back to the entrance way.
"Thank you Sir. And if I may add, Sir. It's just Six."
"Alright then. I shall leave you be, I'm sure that the Headmaster shall call around when he would like to speak to you again. Until then, we shall let you settle in." With that, Doctor Oobleck left to prepare for his afternoon class.
"What did you find out?"
"Many things, many classified, many common. All things that we did not know. And things that we will now."
Six continued circling the room that had been allocated to him while Rho flickered into existence on the desk provided.
"Report."
"Professor Ozpin spoke the truth, how little of our conversation that centred on Remnant itself."
Files started appearing around Rho, flicking away some to replace them with others, filtering out the most useless of information like recipes in favour of data like businesses, prominent figures, and historical recordings. Then sending the most applicable to Six's HUD for him to check, filing away other information and sending other pieces alongside those ones sent to Six to the TACPAD inside the Hardcase worn on Six's leg.
"There is information pertaining to research to leave the atmosphere, it was shutdown due to threats from Grimm and no foreseeable way to leave the ship airtight or flyable outside of atmosphere without the defences needed to stop the Grimm. Speak nothing of the debris that would be found in the surrounding bodies of space."
"Debris?"
"Remnant's main celestial body is curious in the fact that it is…shattered…for lack of a better term."
"Shattered?"
"Yes, and these shattered fragments rotate as well alongside the main body, not losing orbit and coming down to Remnant. The larger sections at least. There have been reports of meteor showers filed in varying years with some areas reporting no more than six showers per week, not every week of course but rather dependant on the planets position in the year.
When not speaking about the atmosphere though. Professor Ozpin's claim of also being at war has some grounds too."
"And that is the Grimm."
"Yes Spartan, although I have not collected enough first-hand data from what relatively little combat experience we have had with them to reliably gauge their threat towards us, based on the fact that there are so many different types with varying methods of attack."
"How many?"
"Unknown, no less than ten recorded species with more being found each year as they mainly populate the unexplored lands within each sector of the planet. Another threat that I can see is the 'White Fang', the parallels to the Insurrection alone are concerning."
"Tell me about the White Fang."
"Affirmative Noble. The White Fang was a peaceful activist organisation founded after the Faunus Rights Revolution, otherwise known as the Faunus War. Previous High Leader was Ghira Belladonna, current Chieftain of Menagerie. Current High Leader is Sienna Khan. Original intention of the organisation was to improve relations of Humans-Faunus and the civil rights of Faunus. After continuing discrimination throughout the years, Ghira stepped down and the White Fang took a more…radical approach. They have become an urban terrorist cell. They have no qualms with attacking civilians, even their own kind."
Rho's avatar briefly flashed red then purple as he parsed through the data.
"It's disgusting."
"Rho, send me all files about the White Fang."
"Affirmative Six."
There was a hiss as Six's helmet depressurised. Six reached up and twisted the helmet off to bring it to bear in his hands, turning it around so the visor was facing himself. Six traced his fingers over all the scratches and scars that marred the helmet, the almost unnoticeable cracks in the visor were all traced beneath Six's gloved hands. The SPARTAN moved closer to the desk and placed it down upon it. Rho flickering to a sitting position on the side attachment of the helmet. Six unlatched the Hardcase and opened it up, taking out the TACPAD/Datapad within and opening it, watching as files appeared on the pad, listing in order of most pertinent down. Six looked back to Rho.
"Anything else?" Six asked.
"There were signs of a sort of life-support/proto-cryopod within the CCT(S) basement. Although I am confident in my abilities in comparison to security discovered here upon Remnant, I was already sifting through classified files as we were conducting talks stating we meant no threat. The defence encountered with it was already superior to that of the main CCT(S). And while still easily beatable, I did not want to jeopardise what I was doing by leaving the possibility of traces of code within. And I did not leave a fragment within the system. Not yet, I suspect we will need to request permission for that. A fragment is much harder to cover than sparse musings. Although, I did finish the main objective of the sweep. There are no files or references to either the UNSC or the Insurrection. So he was not lying about that either."
"Okay." Six replied as he started reading through information of the White Fang.
Rho looked upon Six's working form. Wires flashing green before returning to orange.
"Noble, I recommend you rest while we have the chance."
"Not yet."
"Affirmative Noble."
Professor Ozpin felt like he had been sitting at his desk for hours instead of the mere minutes that had passed since he had opened the file left by the, one would like to describe pair but would the A.I. fully constitute as a 'person' so to say? The intelligence alone shown by it would have Ozpin saying 'yes', but now is not the time for such philosophical musings and the questions of the metaphysical and essentialism that may also bring whence one had started questioning the very topic of what makes a person a person and what may be granted to one of such peculiar circumstance. But those are questions for a person of more sagely and decisive surroundings whom has nothing to worry about except to laze away the day and muse of incessant things.
Truly if Ozpin was younger then he could hark on about such things for days upon days, but that's neither here nor there.
No. Ozpin's focus was on the file in front of himself. When The construct had said the file would be redacted, he did not expect such a veritable wall of pure black text that sat in front of him. The question of how the file was transferred to Ozpin's desk went unanswered but considering that it was able to close the rooms shutters and dim the lights at the mere utterance of its name then file transfer would be paltry in comparison. No, there was minimal that Ozpin could find within the file. What he could gather was that the man was rated 'Hyper-Lethal' which even without true context, sounds daunting, and has Lone Wolf Tendencies. The reports within would be more useful if they did not follow the pattern of a blacked out date [REDACTED] Target Eliminated. Ozpin kept looking through the file until he came upon a section with less black ink on it titled:
Files for inclusion; Recorded by UNSC Battle Ready Smart A.I. SN: RHO 0313-8.
Included within: After-action reports for performance on Planet [RESTRICTED] and performance quality of SPARTAN B-312 upon assignment to SPARTAN Fireteam Noble:
[RESTRICTED]: SPARTAN B-312 assigned to Noble Team, received designation 'Noble 6'
Ozpin continued skimming through the section.
[RESTRICTED]: Operation Uppercut tactically successful, Strategically nullified. SPARTAN-052, Noble 5 listed M.I.A.
[RESTRICTED]: SPARTAN B-320, Noble 2 listed M.I.A.
[RESTRICTED]: SPARTAN A-259, Noble 1 listed M.I.A.
[RESTRICTED]: SPARTAN A-239, Noble 4 listed M.I.A.
Truly whatever was went through, surely having to do with the Covenant that was presented to Ozpin before had something to do with it.
No matter, Ozpin would garner as much information from as little information was given, even if he had to look through it for hours, it was nothing new to him. He was a teacher after all.
It had been no less than Five hours, Twenty-one minutes, Forty-six seconds, Nine milliseconds. That is known for an A.I. so advanced to as be at the level that Rho was, being vain was fortunately not something Rho received from the mind he was copied from, a flash clone of the brain, fortunately. As the conversations that Rho had with his 'creator' as it were, were rather enjoyable. No, for the past Five hours, Twenty-one minutes, Forty-six seconds, Ten milliseconds. Rho had been running calculations again and again over various things, attempting to find local star maps as to give rough estimation to position, to also making plans pertaining to the tracking and elimination of this 'White Fang' group. Truly if there were no plans to do something to them than the SPARTAN he was assigned to, B-312, would not have spent the last Five hours, Twenty-one minutes, Forty-six seconds, Ninety-eight milliseconds, Three microseconds, looking over all the information Rho could garner about the White Fang and all recent and old activities. Rho had already performed threat assessments on all known members, though the apparent supernatural abilities afforded to the inhabitants of this world make such things as threat assessments that much harder with such abilities as conducting elements such as lightening, the ability to even coat oneself in flames without harm, even create 'clones' of oneself! If Rho had a mind that wasn't able to process things down to a picosecond, surely such things would just be boggling. For the past Five hours, Twenty-one minutes, Forty-six seconds, Two-hundred milliseconds, Eight microseconds Rho was formulating plans to deal with these 'Supermen', With personal natural over-shields afforded to the populace, helping Noble Six with advice on how to take them down would be greatly appreciated, the advice of 'aim for the head' and if that fails and they live further, the follow up advice of 'keep firing' would be decidedly not so.
Truly the ability of being able to 'think' of more things, may even write a novel in less time than it takes the average human eye to blink was an extreme boon on the battlefield where split-second decisions are a must, but a grand hindrance in such occasions where the A.I. can do nothing for the previously mentioned Five hours, Twenty-one minutes, Forty-six seconds, Three-hundred-and-eight milliseconds, Thirty-one microseconds, except make previously made calculations, assuring they are, indeed, correct for the Fifty-Seventh time, prod the one they were assigned to do basic things such as drink water or eat, one without a stomach, or Oesophagus, or digestive system, does wonder what the UNSC ration bars taste like, but that is not important. Yet still shall be stored away for later investigation.
For the past Five hours, Twenty-one minutes, Forty-six seconds, Six-hundred-and-ninety-seven milliseconds, Eighteen microseconds Rho had been testing the compatibility of the CCT(S) network in conjuncture with Rho's UNSC technology to pre-emptively gauge the specifics and intricately woven information needed to form a long range beacon to contact UNSC personnel and receive messages back of whether the transmissions reached. It would be a dangerous venture, The Covenant could intercept the message and track down Remnant. That was something that could not be risked, the death of a planet with no way to defend against the Covenant. But the UNSC could hear the message to, and send forces to protect Remnant.
Truly it was a blessing to be able to process things so fast, but a curse when that mind wanders.
Rho heard a knock at the door of the room, instantly connecting to outside surveillance cameras in the hall to see it was Miss Glynda.
"Noble Six, Headmaster Ozpin has requested your presence in his office, I am here to escort you there." Glynda's voice sounded through the door.
Noble Six wordlessly raised to his feet, deposited the TACPAD/Datapad into the Hardcase on his leg and returned his helmet to his head and opened the door to follow Glynda to the Headmasters office. Rho had long since dissipated his holographic form.
Professor Ozpin had to gather what thoughts or guesses he could make as to the SPARTAN as he was called, plans. Contact with the 'UNSC' was an obvious end goal, but they had expressed that they were willing to work together to make this mutually beneficial. What that mutual target would be, however, is another matter. Ozpin was not willing to send him against Salem. Even with how efficient the man was, that would be a suicide mission. Not only that, but Ozpin wanted to gauge the man himself, it was mainly so he could see the skill for himself. There had to be a target that was becoming a problem that Six could reliably help take care of. The White Fang came to mind. But their current actions are their true undoing, not their goal.
Ozpins thoughts were distracted as the elevator made a ding sound to signal it had arrived and Glynda stepped out followed by Noble Six. Six approached the desk and saluted, probably out of muscle memory more than anything. Six finished the salute and spoke to Ozpin.
"Sir, we have agreed to work together." Six took out the TACPAD from the hardcase and placed it on the desk, a holographic display sprang up from it showing the profile of an animal skull in front of three scratch marks. Six ignored the reaction of Ms. Goodwitch.
"I believe I have a target."
Oh. Ozpin thought. Well that makes the decision easier.
More to add to the Rho Colour guide;
Neutral-Warm Orange
Thinking-Yellow
Wonder-Cyan
Calculation-Sky Blue
Trust-Amber
Anger-Lava Red
Disgust-Purple
Worry-Green
RWBY Volume 5 final thoughts:
Oh, hey Tai. Still feeling abandoned by every woman you've ever loved?
Used to be more but I'm going through and cleaning this stuff up. Used to be more comments like the above but I decided to remove them since they don't do anything for the story. I'm keeping the above however because I think it's f**king hilarious.
Hope you enjoyed.
Have A Nice Day!