RWBY - The Pen and the Sword

by TwoChimpsWithoutOne

-For the Record- Surviving a plane crash? Not enough. Being hunted by super predators? Not even close. Hopping worlds? Why not? I'll see that, and raise getting recruited by a woman who fashions herself a goddess. OC/I

107. TLI2 - Dark Matter

Dark Matter

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"This isn't farming! This isn't crop rotation! This is ignorance! And ignorance is ugly!"

Ashley Lilly groaned as, once again, her alarm was beaten by their giant farmer's boisterous bellowing blasts. It didn't matter how often it happened, she always wondered just how the hell they had a literal siren on their team, and the farmer boy could shout louder than her.

Groggily, she rolled over in bed, reaching around and feeling for her nightstand. Her hand smacked the hard wood heavily, and after some blind reaching, she found her scroll. She cracked an eye open, and saw its display light up - it and the daylight outside doing their level best to blind her. She snapped her eye shut the moment she was able to force her vision to clear, so she could determine if today was a 'get up before the sun' day or a 'throw something at Dusty' day.

Sunday.

Throw something at Dusty day.

"Dusty…" She gasped, breathily. "Come on, not today." It wasn't her best idea, but she could feel it in her bones - she hadn't slept much at all last night, and not well when she had, so she acted on impulse, and threw the first thing she could:

Her scroll promptly slammed against the wall on the other side of the room.

Wait, that sounded way closer than Dusty's side of the room should be.

"What the hell even is this? How did he manage to over water this and under-water that and they're right next to each other?!"

Come to think of it, Dusty sounded like he was outside of the room to begin with. That alone wasn't technically surprising - Brothers knew he could shout loud enough to be heard through walls. She'd once heard the guy shouting from a full floor below her. Her sleep-deprived mind did its best to just convince her it was nothing, go back to sleep, but the wall being closer and him being outside scratched at something.

What, had they just dropped her down in Dusty's bed?

No, that wasn't right either, but why not?

"How is this man even alive? I figured this stuff out when I was eight and I started when I was six - and I was a dumb kid! He's been here for eighteen years with a CCT connection and whatever that other thing was, he outplanned a witch demon, killed gods, started and stopped wars, he WAS a god, and he still ain't figured out how to harvest wheat?! Hell, looking at all this, I'd even accept him cheating and just magicing up the know-how just so he stops torturing all this beautiful land! And I can't even imagine what his plumbing must look like, all these damn beans! And why the hell do those beans taste like burnt nothing? And why are they crunchy? How do you mess up beans so bad you make them crunchy!? Did he even cook 'em? Why did he feed us raw beans?! Why'd it feel like I was gonna blow up when I ate a handful? What even are these things?! Why are they the healthiest things out here?!"

Ashley groaned, reaching up to rub the sleep out of her eyes. She took in deep breaths and pressed hard against her eyelids, trying to force her brain to boot up.

"Wait - wait! What in the good and innocent name of agriculture is that?" Ashley tried to place herself, piercing the fog in her mind. "IS THAT GARLIC?! IS HE GROWIN' GARLIC NEXT TO BEANS!? What the fuck? No - no, I'm makin' this my business, Schwarz, do you see a shed?! We got daylight - we're fixin' this TODAY!"

Who the hell had started talking to Dusty about crop management? How were they so bad that they didn't just have him yelling, but actually cursing on top of that? She tried opening her eyes again, blinking away the pain brought on by the bright light. It took some time, and some tears, but she was able to forcibly adjust her eyes, and reveal - not her dorm, but a bedroom.

Was she home? Her aunts had a garden, but no crops, what had -

Ashley sprang up, head darting around as her brain finished booting up. She was surrounded on all sides by walls made from felled trees, in a soft bed in the corner of a small room. Right next to her was a window, through which the early morning sun had done as much work waking her up as Dusty had. Across from her was a door, and in front of it was her scroll.

It had been the stray thought that had done it - she was home.

Just not the home that came to mind when she pictured it in her head.

Oh gods. Exactly how she'd gotten here was still fuzzy, but the rest of it was coming back, and what little she'd picked up just now was enough to fill in the blanks, and was enough to get her to scramble to her feet and desperately sprint to the door:

Dusty was yelling and screaming at the most dangerous man in the world.

She slammed into the door, desperately working the doorknob and throwing it open. She found herself in a hallway, down to her right were a few other doors to a few other rooms, to her left was a living room, upon the wall of which was a large, non-holographic television, where she could see a cartoon man with a bulbous blue head fleeing another man in tights. She sprinted in that direction before she even realized there was a couch in front of the TV, and only stopped briefly when she heard:

"He's fine."

She stumbled forward a step, only then noticing Sylvie was there, watching the television. Her appearance stopped Ashley in her tracks - she looked strange! Her clothes were ill-fitting, and her face was even less expressive than usual, like it was carved out of marble. When Sylvie turned to look at her, Ashley was ready to swear she felt her heart jump into her throat, it looked so wrong, inhuman, even!

"What?" Ashley breathed, blinking at Sylvie and barely even able to ask herself what was wrong with their stoic siren.

"He's fine." She said, "Wake up more. There's coffee behind you."

As she finished speaking, Ashley realized her strangeness actually did look familiar, but before she could pursue that thought any further, Dusty promptly cut through things again with: "Why is all this stuff so clean? Wait - WAIT! WHERE'S THE FERTILIZER?! DON'T TELL ME HE'S OUT HERE USIN' NIGHT SOIL!"

"Don't."

Ashley didn't listen - seeing a door that led out to the backyard, where Dusty's voice was blasting out from. She crashed through the door, revealing a large backyard filled with crops in varying degrees of growth. Some were green and healthy, some were brown, some were completely bent over and dead looking. Ashley blinked hard, wondering why everything looked so dull. All of the colors looked muted, the sun wasn't as bright even without a cloud in the sky. Looking around, she eventually saw a shed in the distance, one man in front of it, while the most vocal of the group was no doubt inside it, given the open door and the sounds of clatter echoing out.

Her mind told her that the man she could see was Schwarz - anybody that spent enough time around the farmboy knew the 'Gods damn it Dusty' stance - but it looked strange. Was it the distance? Had she hit her head? Was she just that tired?

She shook her head, and a moment later Dusty stomped out of the shed. In one hand, he had a hoe, in the other, a shovel, in the belt loops of his pants were plant shears, hanging from the crooks of his elbows were several different buckets - none stacked on top of each other, she noticed - and hanging off of his shoulders were two bags of what she hoped were seeds, given what he'd just been yelling about.

It was the look on his face that stole away her attention - it was just as bizarre as Sylvie's. It felt like she was looking at an animatronic trying to look angry. The expression was stiff and uncanny, made all the worse by how it went from angry to outrageously happy the instant he locked eyes with Ashley.

"Hey sleepyhead!" He called out, dropping everything as he lifted a hand to wave at her. "Your fu - uh, uh, your Dad is an agricultural disgrace! Man's lucky it's me here, if it were my daddy or my uncle he'd get beaten black and blue and then put to work! And we're ALL lucky it's me and not my Ma! My Ma'd've put him in a wheelchair and given him more work - on account of not needing his legs so he won't get as tired as usual!" Without further ado, he dashed over to Ashley, working his way around the crops despite his apparent hatred of them. "You see these crimes against nature?" He indicated everything as he stomped right by them, "man's got crops that need a lot of nitrogen next to crops that EAT a lot of nitrogen! Man waters all this by hand - no irrigation system! No measurement tools! What tools he does have are so clean I don't know if they've EVER been used, footprints all over the place - even the crops!" He stopped briefly to look at a certain pack of sad-looking tomatoes, and Ashley had never in her life see someone look at something with such an intense look of anger, sorrow, and pity. "No fertilizer, no crop rotation, no insect protection - man ain't even got a fence for all those Grimm out there!" He said, finally reaching her, and then bending down so they were face to face.

Why did he look as fake as Ozma?!

"Hey girl!" He brought her into a big bear hug, lifting the bewildered and increasingly scared young woman off of the ground. "I'm gonna have so much fun while we're here! Lemme go get Sylvie, me, her, and Schwarz will un-fu - uh, uh, fix - fix up your Daddy's farm while you and him catch up! Oh! Can you ask the other two if they'll help too? More hands and easier work and all that." He squeezed her closer, whispering now: "I gotta admit, bad at farming as he is, I kinda wanna figure out what these alien beans are. They're weird, don't eat more than one if he offers 'em to ya - found that out the hard way - but they're cool! I wanna see what their roots is like!"

He dropped her down with a good facsimile of a big dumb smile on his face, before patting her down, smoothing out her clothes, and marching inside, the door shutting behind him. Ashley watched it happen, trying to process it, only to have her attention drawn by Schwarz as he made his approach.

Her fright began to blossom into full blown terror as she realized that like Sylvie and Dusty, Schwarz looked wrong too! She felt herself going light headed, feeling like she was surrounded by a bunch of statues wearing rubber people masks. What was going on?!

"What just -" Ashley suddenly wished she'd listened to Sylvie and gotten some coffee, or better yet - just gone back to sleep. "What is - what?"

"I never thought I'd see it." Said their shell shocked team leader. "Everyone else that thinks they'll let Dusty talk himself out fail, but him?" He swept his hands through his hair, "Brothers above, Ashley. Two hours - two actual hours. Nikos and Arc gave up after ten minutes, Sylvie abandoned us after thirty and turned on a movie, but he just sat there and was talked at for two hours before Dusty realized these were out here, then boom!" He clapped his hands together, "Dusty's just been out here yelling about his crops!" He looked past Ashley's shoulder, at the house, then whipped around. "Wait, where'd he go?"

A second later, the door to the house banged open again. "- and if we work fast enough, even without aura we'll have the tomatoes moved half the field over before lu -" He stopped on a vocal dime, eyes going wide as he looked out to the shed. Ashley felt her pulse quicken as the look of terror and concern on Dusty's face was just made worse by how wrong he looked.

"Don't drop a man's tools, don't drop a man's tools, don't drop a man's tools -" Dusty rocketed back towards the shed and the pile of tools he left in front of it.

Wait… Is he slower than - Ashley's thoughts were interrupted by Schwarz.

"Is this what his parents are like? Is this how he lives?"

"The farms have to feed the entire kingdom. It is likely wor-"

"Guys, what the fuck?" Ashley had gone far past her ability to process all of this.

"You -" Sylvie's laconic explanation was interrupted by the distant son of a farmer.

"Don't you two go ruinin' daddy daughter time! Get out here, we've done gone and burned too much daylight already!"

"He will not let us say no." Sylvie murmured, giving Schwarz a look, before walking out into the field.

Schwarz and Ashley watched her venture out towards the shed. They remained silent, the former in continued shock, the latter in shock and confusion, until the subject of all of the commotion thundered back into the shed. Schwarz let out a long sigh, and turned to Ashley as he set off. Ashley, however, was growing too numb to respond. Schwarz seemed to notice her distress, and stepped forward to put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey. Remember what I said." He gave her a pat, "and we'll be right out here. Just a holler away."

This all just didn't feel real. Ashley could scarcely process any of this, she was growing so overwhelmed by the strangeness. It was made all the worse when she limply lumbered back inside the house and found herself alone inside it. Looking around the dull, muted place, she did the first thing she could think of - she pinched herself. When it did indeed hurt, she wondered if this was just an intense dream, or if it was actually real?

That thought slowly kicked everything loose that she needed it to: The muted colors, the dull lights, the weird, stiff expressions on everyone's faces, the way none of this felt real, and - perhaps most importantly - how she had compared their faces to Ozma's.

Did… She felt her heart thudding in her chest. Oh gods.

This wasn't real.

This had all started feeling strange right after she ran into Ozma - had he and her mother actually gotten into a fight? Was she stuck inside of some kind of illusion? Why?

Gasping for air, Ashley looked around the empty house. There was no one else, she stumbled forward, going for the first thing she could see - the front door. She needed some air, she needed to think, she needed anything! She crashed into the door and threw it open, only to be stunned still by the people she saw just past the house's threshold. Everything looked so strange and so odd that she initially didn't recognize them, until she saw the shield on one of their backs - the unmistakable disc painted red, white, and blue.

Pyrrha Nikos and Jaune Arc halted mid-conversation, and turned to look at her. The latter's head recoiled, while the former's eyes grew wide. Ashley felt her entire body begin to shake as she shook her head and tried to clear this falsehood from her vision, but no - when she opened her eyes, they were still there.

And they looked just as wrong as everyone else had. Their faces just as stiff, the colors just as muted, what little of their voices she'd gotten just as muffled and weird.

Nikos lifted her hands slowly, as she turned to face her. "Ash - Ashley, step outside, I know what's happening to you, you just need to -"

The only way she could describe what she felt hearing the woman speak was a terrified 'Nope!'. She lunged back and slammed the door shut, before she noticed a wooden slab and threw that too, feeling a cold sweat break out.

What was happening?!

She stumbled back into the house, her instinct was to go out back and seek comfort and safety from her team, but she didn't want to see those faces. She then thought to return to bed, that maybe she could go to sleep and when she woke up, her brain would be right, or Ozma would release her from this, but that just felt wrong - perhaps because of the Headmaster's influence, or maybe just intuition, she had no idea.

She stumbled down the hallway, opening the first door she saw - to be greeted with the bathroom. The next door was her room, the door at the end of the hall was the master bedroom, where -

"Keep trying those doors, kiddo. You'll find me eventually."

The voice, of course, came from the one door she hadn't gotten to yet. She threw the door open, revealing an office. A simple desk held two computers - one a large holographic screen, one plastic and glass. A man sat behind them, shielded by the screens, while off to his right was a mannequin. It wore a black mail suit, a white mail shirt, had a utility belt slung around its waist, a gun and a metal stick hanging from the belt. Ashley's head snapped towards the only other person in the house when she heard a groan. A click later, the holographic screen faded away, and then with a swing, the plastic and glass screen folded down, revealing him.

A farmer's tan replaced the pale skin, a worn T-shirt and jeans replaced the armor to his right, his face was hidden behind hands that came up to rub at it. He looked older than he should, not helped by some of the hair on the burned side of his head having turned gray, while on the healthier side she saw streaks of sun-bleached blonde.

Nebo Aldric groaned into his hands, "I thought Ruby knew he threw the fight, last time." He dropped them, revealing his face - the burns and scars on its left side, the frown lines and bags under his eyes that aged him past his years, and the metal eyes that locked onto hers. "Jesus Christ kiddo, did you sleep at all?"

And on his face was the exact same uncanniness as her friends.

No, no - this wasn't right. "What's going on?" Aldric arced an eyebrow in that stiff way that was growing as infuriating as it was terrifying in its implication. "What have you done to me? Where are my friends? Where's Cinder?"

Aldric's brow dropped, the other joining it in a frown that somehow looked like it belonged on his face, but unnatural all the same. "Cinder?" He repeated, before sighing. "She did keep it." And groaned, before grabbing a mug of coffee Ashley had never noticed, and taking a long sip from it.

It was rash, but Ashley was freaked out that Ozma wasn't giving up the game: She slapped the mug out of his hand. "What's going on!?"

'Aldric' eyed her a moment, before wiping the coffee off of his face, and then his hand on his shirt. "What do you think is happening?" He asked, carefully.

"I know you're Ozma, you look just like him - stop playing and tell me what happened!" She could guess that there must have been a fight, Ozma won, took SSAD and probably Cinder, but why was he going through this song and dance?

"I look like him?" Aldric parroted back, head recoiling a bit, a bemused grin splitting his face. "Come again?"

"You - your face! Their faces! The colors - nothing looks right! And - and the two outside, and - none of this is real - let me wake up!"

'Aldric' tilted his head, frowning at her. "What about my face?" He asked, voice low and rumbly. "And what do the colors have to do with this?" A blink, "oh. Hold on." He said, before getting to his feet. "You know, your farmer buddy loves to talk, kiddo, I say - I say." He drawled in a mockery of Dusty's accent, as he walked around the desk, past Ashley, and into the living room, right towards the television and the fireplace beneath it. Ashley followed as far as the frame of the office's door. "I have met honest-to-god rednecks who wouldn't have been able to keep up with him. I might've stopped him, if, one: He wasn't saying things I actually wanted to hear, and two: It wasn't so funny watching the other guy try not to freak out." He paused, then turned back to look at her, one of his hands resting on an ornamental shotgun. "Is that guy really thirty?"

Ashley didn't respond, not wanting to entertain Ozma's game.

'Aldric' gave her a few more moments, before shrugging, "suppose I've seen dumber. You ever want to kill an afternoon, go find Jaune's forged transcripts. I can only imagine the Wonderful Wizard took one look at that, thought 'this'll be good,' and let him in to see what happened." He pulled the shotgun off of the wall, followed by the plaque it had been hanging from. "Lord knows I've done dumber." The plaque had been hiding a hole in the wall, into which he reached with his cybernetic hand. "Point is, Foghorn Leghorn loves to talk, and one of the things he mentioned…" He grimaced, entire body seizing up right after a flash of orange light. "Is how of all of you, only Gorgo had a semblance suited for heavy duty combat. To the point where he thinks you probably would have died if those two hadn't been there." His body relaxed after a moment, and he pulled the arm out of the wall, something clenched in his metal hand. "Foghorn's not worth much as a TK, he said…" He briefly dipped into the kitchen, and then out, now holding the pot of coffee in one hand, a second mug dangling from a finger, and the unknown thing in his other. "Your fearless leader's an illusionist, but is no Mysterio, and you, kiddo…" He sat down, and as he did, Ashley would swear every color in the world became more vivid. "He thinks you got eyesight."

He deposited before them an orange rock that glowed like a field of stars was trapped within it. She beheld it with wonder, distracted both by it, and by the effect it seemed to have on the world around her. She completely missed him sitting, just as she missed him retrieving his mug from the floor and filling it back up with coffee.

She didn't miss him grab the stone - with another hiss - and promptly drop it into the coffee.

The suddenness of the action snapped her out of it. "What - what was -"

"Don't worry, that's just me being petty." He said, swirling the mug with the coffee and the rock. "Anyways, tell me about your semblance."

She looked back up to him, and the uncanniness was gone. He was actually emoting properly, she could look into his eyes and tell what he was thinking properly. She could hear the emotion in his voice - the long present, but long cooled hatred in it as he referred to what he'd done with the rock, and the curiosity as he asked about her semblance. She could see in his eyes that he already seemed to have a theory, and it ran contrary to what Dusty had already told him. More than that, she could see exhaustion - not the physical kind, but the mental kind, and more than that she could tell it was fresh, like someone who had gotten all the sleep and all the rest they could ever want, and then went right back to being tired.

"What did -"

"Semblance, kiddo." He said, a gentle fondness in his voice, a slight smile playing at the corners of his lips.

She regarded him for a moment, taking in the details she hadn't noticed before - the freshly shaven lack of hair on his face, the longing simmering beneath everything else in his synthetic eyes. She noticed too the muscle tone in his remaining organic arm, and how the burns on the worse side of his face coiled all the way down his throat and beneath the shirt, all seeming to branch out from his metal arm. The arm itself also looked like it had been melted and let set, the more damaged areas also covered in scuffs and dirt, while the less damaged areas looked like they could never be touched by grime.

"I… Observation." She said, dragging her eyes back up to his. "I can see well."

"Really." He nodded, his lips pursed, completely unconvinced. "Discount Sharingan. You're sure about that. Then what convinced you I was Ozma a second ago?"

"How did you know I thought you were Ozma?"

"You mean besides the fact that you said his name?" He winked, "only one guy in the world besides me that might be able to take on Cinder."

"Didn't she kill him once?" She asked, her brain feeling less and less foggy with each passing second.

"Yeah, but there was no you back then and she was an angry teenager with a god complex, nowadays she'd hold back."

"No - what? No, no she wouldn't."

But Aldric nodded, "She liked to pretend she's a momma bear, but she's also terrified of scaring you. That's why I didn't call her an idiot just now, although it crossed the mind."

Ashley frowned at him, "you… Looked weird. Your face was stiff, I couldn't tell what you were thinking. So did everyone else's. Of everyone I've ever met, he's the only one that's ever looked so… Weird. Uncanny. Like a claymation doll."

Aldric grinned, continuing to roll the coffee in his hand, the rock making light clink noises as it hit the edges of the mug. "Gotta love how often we know the answer and don't realize it." He said, before reaching back, setting the cup on the window behind him, and pushing it flush against the glass.

The color drained out of the world again, and when Aldric turned back, his face looked wrong again. He smiled that wrong, fake smile, waited a moment, and then retrieved the cup, whereupon all looked right again, and she could see the patience in his expression, the curiosity, as though he knew she could get it, and was just waiting on it to happen. But she just stared at him blankly, figuring this stunt was only really proving her right. Every time he moved the cup and the rock away, the world looked worse and he looked off. When he brought it back, she saw more.

Seeming to realize she was digging her feet in, Aldric tried a different tactic: "Alright, try this: If Ozma were here right now, what do you think he'd do?"

She blinked, "I… Don't know?"

"How about your aunts?"

"I think Auntie Ec would punch you, Srebro would be worried, but she'd be a little happy someone else had done it."

He slid the cup away, the world went dimmer.

"Now if I grabbed that gun and emptied the magazine into the ceiling, what would your team do?"

"Run inside?"

"Specifically. What would Foghorn Leghorn do?"

"I -" Ashley shook her head, "he -" Color returned as Aldric brought the cup back, and Ashley felt the answer come to her. "He'd have to figure out who to tackle… Me out of your way, or you to the ground."

"And what about Gorgo?"

"Sylvie?"

"The fact that you knew who I was referring to despite not even knowing what Sparta is should tell you everything, kiddo." There was a beat of silence, before he groaned. "Yes, the little one."

"She wouldn't do anything until she saw what was going on."

"Last but not -"

"He'd have his gun out, but past that, nothing."

Aldric waved at her with his hand, "again. You're answering your own question, kiddo, you just don't realize it. Did you ever get a read on Jaune and Pyrrha? What would they do?"

"I have no idea." She hadn't even come to terms with the fact that they actually were real and here, and she was now deliberately trying not to think about that, because while she hadn't been as much of a fan of the Invincible Girl as she had been of Ruby Rose, what kid didn't idolize Pyrrha Nikos to some extent?

Aldric lifted the mug, as though to toast. "Your Ma and I wondered if you'd get the fun bits or just your bog standard semblance. I figured you'd probably rock like I did, get yourself a semblance and the magic leaks into it, and it seems I was right. Kiddo, you are as dumb as I am. You didn't just get eyesight, you got friggin' telepathy. You can read minds, you can read people. Probably need eye contact is the deal. Ozma looked weird because he's one of the rare few that can protect against that, and does as a matter of course. Everyone here looked weird because I put up an anti-magic field a long time ago." He indicated the mug, "and the funky little god rock turns that off in the immediate vicinity."

Ashley watched as he returned to swirling the cup, before looking back up to his face. She noticed the angry hitch in his voice when he mentioned the rock again, equal parts guilty and ashamed, but she focused more on what he said to her. He couldn't be right, could he? She was a telepath? She was a magic telepath?

"How could you just tell?"

"A father knows?"

She glared at him, unamused.

He grinned, "way my powers worked, I got my semblance - I'm a TK. But before I figured out how to go deeper on purpose, I would unwittingly tap into the magic to do things. I'd rip lightning out of the sky, I'd make hardlight nanites work better than they should, I'd make indestructible shields, all that jazz. I just thought it worked like that, everyone else was crazy and didn't notice the potential. Wasn't until I was shown otherwise that I realized I was wrong - I was altering reality.

"Cinder and I figured something similar may happen to you. You'd get your semblance - in this case, enhanced eyesight - and something would branch off of it - in this case, you're pretty good at reading people. Magic kicks in and fills in the blanks, the more you roll with it, and you just think you're getting better. You're probably reading surface level thoughts, building pictures of folks in your mind." He let out a long, wistful sigh, and leaned his head back. "God, what I would've given for that."

"So… This is real?" Ashley clarified, "I thought -" No, wait, what had Sylvie said to her aunts? The onus should be on him. "Prove it to me. Prove to me this is real. Prove to me you're not Ozma, or - or…"

Aldric gave her a knowing, but tired look. "That this isn't a thought experiment brought to life?" He shrugged, "fresh off the plane, when I realized I knew where I was, I asked myself the same thing. Is this real? Am I in a coma? Eventually I realized it didn't matter - either it's real, and I need to be careful, or it isn't, and I'll have a hell of a story when I wake up." The scarred half of his face wrinkled in a soft, leathery grin. "Take your pick, kiddo. The moment she stole the Record, I could only predict so far before things just became unpredictable. Maybe this is real, maybe the Doomsday Clock is real and everybody took her seriously. Maybe we haven't opened Schrodinger's box yet and neither of the wave functions have collapsed." He leaned forward, flicking the mug. "What'll really bake your noodle is when you realize there was also a chance the reporter chick didn't survive the trip back to Vale." He nodded over Ashley's shoulder, "those Grimm started showing up not long before she did. I did clean things up a couple days before she got here, but they're stubborn demons and I tend to miss a couple." He lifted a hand, guiltily. "I'll admit, I actually didn't consider that one until after I set everything up in the bunker, but I figured it wouldn't change anything. The end result though, is simple. You and I ask the universe what's real?

"Well, does it matter in the end if we're still here in the morning?"

Ashley regarded Aldric for a long breath, before her eyes fell and she saw a chair in front of his desk. It was a cheap foldout, but it was on its own a show that age hadn't slowed him down one bit: He knew she'd get here, and their talk would be a long one. She sat in front of her father, and passed her hand through her hair, both to straighten herself up, and buy her another few seconds to calm herself down.

She decided to ask the question that had dominated everyone's minds, from Ozma and Cinder to the entirety of SSAD: "Did you know all of this would happen?"

Aldric tilted his head back and forth, "right idea, wrong question. I don't know anything that will happen, I can only make predictions and plan for them. The exact details never line up - not once. But the overall idea usually matches, and I make a plan for that." He explained, still leaning over the mug, and clutching it so tight that Ashley was a little surprised it hadn't broken. "But to tell you what you wanted to know: Of course. I knew that if nobody believed the reporter chick, I'd survive that little encounter. From there, you'd eventually figure out who I was and who you were, so you would seek me out. The question was just how it would happen." He grinned, humorously. "I have to admit, the way you ended up doing it was so far out of left field it might as well have come in from orbit. Finding the bunker, tripping the alarm, getting me to leave the ranch, ding dong ditching me and coming here while I was en route…" He tilted his head back and forth with each summation, "flying over the null zone, killing your airship, crashing, and somehow managing to do it while Pyrrha and Jaune were just leaving - I - I couldn't have called that ever." He laughed in that breathy, 'how the hell am I alive?' way, "I'm still trying to figure that one out. I'm pretty sure it's evidence that the universe never forgot its grudge against me, it's just been building up since I've been hiding where it couldn't touch me.

"No, no - I figured it would either be you'd grow up, all nice and Kara Kenty, get told by Ecru and Srebro, and come look for me… Or you'd enter Beacon, get found by Ozma, trained by him the same way I was, and -"

"Wait, you intended that?!" Ashley shrieked, eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to process the bomb he so casually dropped.

Then, out of nowhere: "Oh cool, you two joinin' us? I've always wanted to say this - GITTAWORK!"

Father and daughter briefly looked at the window, which Dusty's voice had managed to thunder through, before they turned back to each other and shared a shrug.

"You wanted me to go to Ozma?" Ashley reiterated.

"Yeah." Was his blunt response. "I figured out when you were three that he and the others were looking for the new Maidens, but given I can account for literally every one of their souls, I knew they wouldn't find them. Later, when I was faced with giving you up, among all the other reasons I did so, I put you with them because if you decided to do what every kid wants to do and become a Huntress, you'd eventually end up right in front of him. Ignoring that your very existence was a secret, there's no way I'd intentionally give my flesh and blood child to someone who is ostensibly a mortal enemy, so he'd see you, see your potential, and would likely conclude exactly what I would have wanted him to: That when I killed my Cinder, the four souls she took stayed together, and eventually found a new host."

Ashley was caught between being impressed at the fact that he was right, and shocked at not just seeing 'under your nose' be described right in front of her, but also having actively lived it out her entire life. "Is that why we lived in Atlas, before?" She asked, a little hollowly.

"Yeah." Aldric said, just as bluntly as before. "Who in their right mind would actively live directly underneath the man that wants them dead and has an unlimited military budget to see it happen?"

"But why would you trust me to Ozma if you hate him so much?"

"Eh…" Aldric tilted his hand back and forth, "I don't hate Ozma. I didn't even distrust him - not in the way that implies. I just… Didn't… Trust him." He winced at how stupid that sounded, but continued on: "I would say I'm Lex Luthor and he's Superman, but you couldn't understand that." True, even if the context gave her a hint, those just sounded like words to her. "Point is, I could never figure him out - he portrayed himself as a benevolent king, a teacher that wanted to guide Remnant to a brighter future. Salem described him as a control freak no different from the Gods. I was more on the latter's side than the former - he did, after all, open up our relationship by lying about his being from Earth - but the fact is I didn't know." He paused a beat, then waved his hand dismissively. "Except for the couple minutes I was omnipotent, but I digress. I left him alive to see what he does. If he proved untrustworthy, I had checks and balances in place. If he proved trustworthy, or at the very least worthy to be left to his own devices, then all the better."

"And how did I plug into that?" Ashley had a little difficulty understanding the minutiae here, but she got the idea. That still didn't explain why he was willing to give her right to Ozma, if he was so uncertain where Ozma fell on the line between acceptable and unacceptable evil.

Aldric just grinned, and let out a long, heavy sigh. "I may not necessarily trust him. I definitely don't know him. But I do know your aunts. They knew Goud. I gave you to them because they would raise you the right way, teach you the right things. If Ozma then tried to corrupt you, your foundations would be so strong that you would resist him. Cinder or Ruby, maybe even both, would have eventually gotten involved in that scenario, whereupon you would learn either through them or your aunts about me, and then here we would be."

"And if I wasn't - uh, that?" She felt alarmingly concerned at the prospect that she could have easily fallen under Ozma's sway by way of thinking she could stand next to giants and legends like her heroes.

"Then Ozma proves what he is in the dark with what he does with you afterwards. If he doesn't wield you like a tool, and lets you just help, he is who he says he is. If he used you like he uses Qrow, or on an even grander scale, then it's time to invoke checks and balances, and…" He reached into the desk, and pulled out a small silver cylinder, which snapped open with the press of a button. "Give you another zap to set you straight, as a worst case scenario."

"Did you just pull all of that out of thin air or did you actually come up with that ahead of time?"

"Yes." Aldric grinned, cheekily.

Ashley rolled her eyes, and gave it to him, she'd walked right into that one. Worse was that for all these scenarios he thought through, as he said, he planned for certain inevitabilities as opposed to strict pictures. So even though what had actually happened was likely outside of his scope, they all nevertheless were playing to his tune.

She wanted to test this, but bringing up her aunts gave her something that felt a bit more prudent: "Did you… Really kill one of your teammates?" She kind of already knew the answer, it wasn't hard to put together, but she didn't know, and she also wanted to see exactly how he answered.

He regarded her for a long time, his previously mirthful expression slowly settling down into a tired, guilty frown. "How are they?"

"My aunts?" 'Fine' was the answer that came to her, but she knew that wasn't what he was looking for. She could see the regret in his eyes, hear it in his voice. "They… Are kind of why I'm here." The DNA for the idea of everyone having healed with time came from their story about hating Goud for dying, and later regretting that hate.

She realized how that sounded just before his frown deepened with concern, and she hastily waved her hands. "I mean - they're fine! They're fine! I just - uh, I meant…" She shook her head, and just dove right in, figuring that telling him the story would explain her mistake just now, and set the foundations for later, just as it had for her.

She had wondered, on the way here, if she would feel any different to him than she had to her mother. She remembered feeling so neutral when she'd met Cinder - not positive or negative, just as neutral as she would feel about running into some random person on the street. She thought that, maybe, since her entire quest had been to find him and bring him back, she would feel something more?

When they'd begun, she had found she was in the exact same position as she'd been in Ashmore's house.

Now, seeing his reaction to Ecru's story, seeing him learn that someone he had personally wronged had, if not forgiven him, then at least processed it enough to move past it, it tore at her heart. She watched every muscle in his face twitch as he tried to control himself, his metal eyes glaze over as he looked away, she could see the conflict in him, as he tried to reconcile this with his genuine belief that he was a bad person.

"Ecru's a good woman. So is Srebro." He muttered, seemingly for the both of them. "And… So was Myrtle. I… Didn't kill her." He said, after taking a few moments to compose himself. "Personally." He took in a deep, shaky breath. "But I was in a bad spot, in a tough situation, with a terrible problem to solve. I wasn't in a position to ensure that she lived. Neo was unique, in that she was - and might still be - the only person on Remnant who knew how I played the game, so I trusted her to do what I would do. If it was at all possible to bring Myrtle out of that alive, Neo would have done it. I do, in spite of it all, genuinely believe that.

"I didn't know how that had hit Ecru and Srebro until I went to Ecru's house that day. I wish I'd given them that closure earlier. Myrtle died because she was a good woman that wanted to save lives and help her friends, and even if I didn't shoot her myself, that good woman died because of me. Because I valued the strategic importance of Ruby's eyes over her life." Aldric looked up to Ashley, with eyes that held no soul. "And to this day, I really don't know if that's why I did it, or if I did it because I knew Ruby from the cartoon I liked as a kid, and had never taken the time to reconcile that with reality."

The honesty he displayed stunned her just as much as Ecru had when she'd told her what she now recognized to have been an allegory for Aldric. Everything she'd heard up until now had all been tinged with guilt, but it had felt like an old friend, something he'd grown accustomed to. This sounded more raw, like it was a loop he'd never closed, or - perhaps even moreso - that he regretted hurting GEMS like he had, and then promptly hurting them again just so they could take care of a problem for him.

Before she could come up with something to say, he asked her a question - how had she gotten here? She could tell this was equally from a desire to change subjects, genuine curiosity, and what she could only describe as a professional interest in seeing how well or poorly things had gone to plan. She wanted to ask more about Myrtle, but given she was beginning to suspect that killing her was one of his greatest regrets, she decided it best to spare him that, and instead told him the story. She started with how she'd bashed her head against the wall at Signal for years, all the way to here. It concerned her how he remained silent throughout the entire proceeding, but she could see - or, maybe the more accurate term really was read? - that it was because he was taking everything in that she told him. She honestly wasn't sure if she'd ever, in her entire life, had this much undivided attention settled upon her.

When it was all over, he was silent for a few more moments, before he resumed rolling the mug in his hands. "If nothing else… You had a good childhood." He said, just loud enough to be heard by her. "I'm glad that worked, at least. You got what you deserved." He then shook his head, and scoffed. "Your Mom told me it would be one thing that fell this house of cards." He said, nodding to himself. "Of course, I told her that that was how it always happened, and that was what the plans were for." He let his head hang over the back of his chair and let out a long, tired groan, "fuckin' Torchwick. Gotta love how him trying not to start a fire is… What starts the fire."

"Didn't you know?" Ashley asked, tilting her head.

Aldric's shook his head, "no. Torchwick was always the guy to just collect cards to keep in his back pocket, and like me, he rarely told people what was in his deck. Frankly, if I had known that he'd known, I might have done something about it." She could see in his frown that he genuinely hadn't known, and could see in his eyes a hundred different plans and scenarios were playing out in his head even as he continued speaking.

Realizing that just a few words and a frown had given her so much, Ashley shuddered. Maybe he is right, and I'm some kind of telepath? "You talk about Cinder fondly." She pointed out.

His expression did the oddest thing then - it warmed, right up until his eyes slid down to the glowing rock in the mug, where it darkened with hate, before it finally settled into a neutral smile when his eyes came back to meet hers.

"No kid ever wants to hear this, but it is the truth and I won't lie to you. I still don't care overmuch for your mother. Don't like her, I certainly don't love her. The reason she's alive is because I was convinced she genuinely had done a heel-face. But despite my continued…" He paused a moment, searching for the right word. "Distaste, for her, she was a woman of her goddamn word, and every year we were with you, she tried her best. My fondness primarily comes from the association with memories with you." He rolled the mug again, "ask me what I think of her staying near you all these years, you'll get a different tone." He wasn't lying, either - the last words were spoken with an intense combination of frustration, anger, and annoyance, the tone of a person who genuinely would punch the subject of their ire if they shared a room.

Ashley had briefly gotten her hopes up as he spoke just then, that he might have done exactly what she thought the others had done: Healed through sheer time passed. She had almost convinced herself that, though he was still rough around the edges, bringing him back might very well be easier than she imagined. Then he promptly threw that back into doubt.

Ashley's eyes darted down to the mug, long since having made a connection between it and his wildly shifting opinion on Cinder. "What is that?"

"Your mother was Solidus Cinder. A perfect replica, one-to-one, brought from another timeline and kept here because God did it." He lifted the mug, "this is Cinder Fall. Lady who fashioned herself a goddess, and was directly responsible for everything I hate about myself. Fuck this lady - hence, the pettiness."

"That's what?" Ashley's eyes snapped from Aldric, to the rock, back to him.

"I used her soul - and those she grafted onto it - to effect an artifact that controlled souls. Since she grafted four immortal, reincarnating souls onto hers, hers was, in effect, undying. So when everything else ran out of fuel, this one didn't." Aldric's eyes drifted down to the rock, and again filled with the darkness of hate, but this one was as much directed inward as it was to the supposed prison. "In a moment of weakness, I kept it, instead of destroying it. Which works out, because I'm pretty sure being stuck in a rock, in a wall, forever, until someone remembers to get rid of you counts as a definition of hell." He looked back up, "and because before I knew I'd get to keep one, I made it such that this null zone shuts off in the immediate vicinity of one of these. Thus - anyone comes here, I keep my power, they lose theirs. It works out."

She just found herself continuously surprised at the sheer depths to which he created his plans, and the fact that the more she learned about him, the wilder things sounded. He transformed a demi-goddess into a rock. Past that was the fact that he was keeping, depending on one's definition, anywhere from one to five souls imprisoned in said rock, and he dropped it in a hot cup of coffee just because he didn't like the one that had stolen the others.

"Do you even know if she can feel that?"

"Nope."

And because he was, indeed, petty.

'I'm torturing a rock.' How the hell was she supposed to follow that up?

She was inclined to care about it - or, her, it seemed - but at the same time, that was and also was not her mother. Between Solidus Cinder and that Cinder, it was her mother, the one who hadn't been transformed into a rock, that had turned herself around. That one had been given opportunities, and had squandered them before being pseudo-murdered by the man currently rocking the mug back and forth and watching the rock clink against its edges. What little she understood about the Maidens was that it wasn't those four girls plus Cinder anymore, but was rather four sources of magic Cinder had stolen.

The question that raised was what she decided to voice: "Is that - what Cinder did to steal the souls." A statement which she deliberately avoided thinking about the ridiculousness of. "Are the four Maidens still there? Or is it just her soul times four magic?"

"Good question. One I've lost sleep over." He raised the mug as though to toast.

Every. Single. Time. Every time he looked like he might be receptive to coming back, this guy was set to show her he was still wallowing in all the things he did wrong.

There were other questions she kind of wanted to ask, but they were ones she already had the answers to, and they both knew it. She knew he wouldn't have changed anything because he had a computer filled with his musings on what would have happened. She knew he stayed here because he felt it was the only thing he could do, and on and on it went. She decided it was now or never, to start pushing things in her intended direction. "You stayed away for the entire second half of my life to protect me. Why did you come to meet me down there? Why are you so… Okay with me invalidating all of that?"

"You haven't invalidated anything, kiddo." Aldric set the mug back down, "if anything, you've proven right why I did what I set out to do. No matter how much they rightfully didn't like me, your aunts raised you on right versus wrong, not correct versus incorrect. And I'm open to you being here because I had some time with you too - I knew how stubborn you were, both genetically and personally. The second you learned about everything, I knew you'd seek me out." The ghost of a smile played his features as he said this, and he let out a long sigh. "And because I've seen this movie. If I kept this a secret forever, it only would have hurt you. Better to guide you to me, on a journey that would introduce you to everything, than risk it all falling apart because I'm not comfortable telling my daughter I saved the world - two of them! - by killing a lot of people in it.".

Of everything, that actually gave her genuine hope this might work. He was, indeed, still rough around the edges, but be it because he made it a life goal to be genre savvy or because he'd spent her entire life preparing for this, he genuinely seemed to be ready and able to make the next step. He just needed someone to help him.

"You mentioned Ruby, a while ago, when I came in here. So… You know?"

"Kiddo, I dropped an AI onto the CCT to keep an eye on things so I could dick around and fail at farming all day. I could read to you the text messages between Ozma and Ironwood when she started this little fight just as easily as I could tell you what Ozma's doing right now."

"He's currently having tea with Miss Fall, Mister Aldric!" Suddenly came a shrill voice from the holographic computer. "They are watching the news, discussing where Ruby Rose will strike next!"

"Cheeky bot." Aldric lightly pounded his fist against the supposedly inactive screen.

Whatever the hell it was that just happened, and that he'd just revealed to her was so out-of-nowhere and overwhelming that Ashley decided it would be best to just move right past it. "Did - wait, do you know that Neo's helping them?"

Aldric frowned at that, but after a moment shrugged. "Shouldn't surprise me, I guess. Although the fact that Ruby kept contact with her always entertained me."

"You were watching the whole time and didn't do anything?"

"No, I only checked and learned a couple hours ago."

It was stupid, but this might very well be the only chance she could bring it up organically: "Would you? Help them?"

Aldric raised an eyebrow, "go kick Torchwick's ass? Why would I? Ruby picked that fight."

"Because -"

"Yes, because Ecru and Srebro convinced her he was going to hurt you." He leaned forward, "kiddo, Neo put it best. Torchwick can play the game with the best of them - maybe even better. But he'll always stay in his lane. If he ever touched you, he suspects I'd be there in a heartbeat. I guarantee what happened was Ecru and Srebro overreacted to him calling his guys off, not to him making plans for you. Past that, if I came in, guns-a-blazing, because Ruby was going to get herself killed, I'd not just be informing him that our old deals are null and void, but I'd also be attracting Ozma and Cinder's attention." A beat, "and… Ironwood's, I guess. A wildcard, that one. Anyways - I'd be implying to them that I had either changed my mind, or was lying when I said it was only Ozma, Cinder, and Adam that would bring me back. That wouldn't end well.

"So…" He sighed, and sank back into his seat. "She picked this fight. She's not fifteen anymore, she's a big girl, and as good as she is, well -" He indicated her with the mug, "if Neo's paving the way, all the better. I'd say between the two of them… If they move fast, they very well could take him down."

Ashley blinked, "and if they don't move fast?"

"Torchwick's the kingpin the planet over, Kiddo. If he could still access Earth I guarantee he'd already be spreading out that way too." He looked up towards the ceiling, eyes growing distant. "God, I'd pay to see that." Before he shook his head and returned his gaze to Ashley, "point is, I'm pretty sure if they haven't already, they're going to hit something soon that will prompt him to start exercising that power. Hell, Adam just by himself was able to find a Silver-Eyed Faunus, imagine what Torchwick could accomplish with a planet's worth of above and below-board resources."

And there was the heartlessness that allowed him to do everything he did. The less literal shield he used to protect himself until it was over. Ashley knew about it, she'd been told about it, but it still stunned her cold to see it right in front of her.

"And you'll just let that happen?"

There was a long, heavy sigh. It rattled in his chest like someone who had known something terrible was going to happen for a very long time, and it had finally come. He kept his eyes locked onto hers, but she could see the life drain out of them, she could see fade away that intangible thing that turned them from windows to the soul to hunks of metal connected to his brain.

All the hope that she had that she could bring him back faded with his response: "Yes."

She felt her arms go limp, her heart grow heavy, and her head go light. She wanted to ask why, but not only did she already know why, he'd even said it himself just now. Everything she could have ever said or brought up failed her as she realized that Schwarz had been right. She hadn't tempered her expectations at all, coming here so confident in her belief that she could bring this man back to the world that she failed to consider the most obvious flaw in that plan: He was firm enough in his convictions that he'd been able to take himself all the way to hell to save the world, and had since turned that power of will towards the belief that the world could end if he left his house.

"Al - uh…" She stumbled a moment, but shook her head and just went for the throat: "Dad." It worked, instantly causing his head to raise until his cold eyes met hers. "You're not at war anymore. You don't have to carry this by yourself. It's been twenty years, even if everyone hasn't forgiven you, they've at least moved on!"

"No they haven't. Ruby and, evidently, Neo - are proof of that."

"They're the ones who believed in you!" She pointed out, angrily. "Of course they'd fight in your name! They've been holding your torch this entire time! Neo's kept an eye on the Garden this whole time and Ruby - I bet you anything she has that scroll on her right now!"

"I can turn that right around and use that against you." Aldric pointed out. "This house of cards is extremely fragile, kiddo. Just my name being invoked - a stiff breeze, nothing more. That's been enough to shake the whole thing. Torchwick saw you beat up some thugs, realized who you were, freaked out and called his guys off. Your aunts thought he knew - which they were right about - and thought he was going to use that in some way. So they call Ruby and say my name. They tell her about you, and she - believing in me, like you just said - decides to solve the problem. She talks to Neo, Neo mentions she knew all along, and decides to help because she's a monster and she thinks it's fun when I'm involved.

"Meanwhile, you - just hearing my name - decide to go into a worldwide den of assassins, thieves, and supervillains to figure things out, and in the most literal example yet, just saying my name freaks out everyone in the entire Garden. Just. My. Name, scares Torchwick and Ozma - I would point out, you told me that was a few days ago. That might have been the point of no return for Torchwick to start escalating against Ruby, we'll likely see soon. Meanwhile, because of all of this shit getting stirred in my name, Solidus Cinder does what I wanted her to, peeks her head out to see if I'm starting shit, sees Baby Bear in trouble, tries to put out the fire, and now she and Ozma are in a Mexican Standoff - effectively meaning that Torchwick is now alone to solve his problems. Again: That point of no return I mentioned might very well have already been passed.

"All of this is proof positive why what I'm doing is the correct thing. The world was not stable in the continued aftermath of my war, it was quiet. A stiff breeze. Just my name has escalated to the point where everything is a powder keg soaked in gasoline, it's just waiting for a spark. If I break my word and come back for something so minor, come back for something I implicitly said I didn't care about, that's a spark."

"But what if you don't do anything and then it still sparks?" Ashley demanded, "then you could have prevented it and you didn't. Then it's on you! You did all of this to protect this world, didn't you?"

"Oh, I know that one!" Aldric pointed at her, an ironic smile on his face. "Great power and great responsibility. Check this, kiddo - I have great power. Hell, I might very well have the greatest power available. That means my responsibility must also be equally as great. I need to know when to use my power and when not to, and I've already defined those circumstances."

"Fine - fine!" Ashley huffed, looking away as she tried to keep her composure. "Fine, then don't come back to help them, just come with me at all." She saw books lining the bookshelves in the office, many with alien script on them, while some actually seemed to be from Remnant. "Everyone who knows is supposed to know there's only so many things you'll return for, right? Shouldn't that extend - like it did when I was a baby - to just being out and about at all? If you're in public, but none of those circumstances apply, shouldn't they trust you to act as you said you would?"

"Maybe that flew back when you were a kid, kiddo. But then I proved that not only am I still out there and watching, but that I can end an entire war in a day if I'm determined… And when wars end, politics start. Simply because of what I did to Salem, and then later Taurus, I am a political creature. Because of my reputation, I'm even more of one. Even just showing up can cause problems - see, the Garden."

"I know I fucked that up!" Ashley snapped, eyes darting back to his. "But I just… What if you - what if I took you back to Beacon? What if you didn't just show up, you showed up to Ozma?"

"Ironwood would love that."

"Then go to him!"

"Torchwick would love that!" Aldric laughed. "See how fun this is, kiddo? What next?"

"Then - then the Garden! If that's supposed to be neutral territory, then go there, call all of them, and they'll at least hesitate before thinking the worst, won't they?" She slackened in her seat, heart thudding in her chest. "Politically, wouldn't that be… 'I'm in a neutral place and staying here because it represents my… Continued… Neutrality'?"

"I think that's more English class than politics, kiddo. And while that's not a bad idea - really! - it still returns to the fact that I'm showing up at all to interfere in something I both ostensibly am not invested in, and have specifically cut a deal to not involve myself with." Aldric pointed out.

"Then -" Ashley huffed, "you used to have allies, Dad. You spent half of your time making them, why are you against using them now?"

"Because I burned almost every single one of those bridges just to get next to Salem. Then, to ensure I don't turn into her, I explicitly placed limits upon myself and laid those out to the few bridges I didn't burn. The risks involved with doing this are just too great."

Ashley felt a pit beginning to open up in her chest, all possibilities rapidly evaporating before her very eyes, before a new idea occurred to her: "Then what about your time machine? You blew up the first one and that's how Aldric Black happened, but there's no way you wouldn't replace it. Why not just… Skip ahead? Go a few decades, maybe a hundred years into the future? Everyone who knew you would be dead or dying, you wouldn't need this exile anymore, you could come back!"

Aldric nodded to the side, a little impressed. "There's a simple answer to that, and a less simple one. The simple one is the fact that time travel scares me about as much as all of my powers do. There's a reason I tried to set things up such that that, and that alone, was locked away completely if I ever died… And subsequently why I went back and added a literal hundred extra safeguards on it so a certain cheeky bot -" He smacked the holo-screen again, "- doesn't try to loophole her way into opening it up again.

"The less simple one is that an option like that should only, ever, be a backup. An absolute, last resort, everything's gone to pot and there's no fixing it but by obliterating reality option. To give you an idea of how much I believe that, if Solidus Cinder and I swapped places, I wouldn't have used it. I would have launched the ship and burned the bunker, whether or not I was able to escape. I genuinely would have rather unleashed hilariously advanced super-tech on Earth - up to and including interstellar flight - and made them fight the war conventionally… Than travel through time. I specifically chose a time machine that caused incompatible realities to fade away completely - when Cinder used it, she deleted that timeline. An entire universe ceased to exist, with all that that implies. You can argue that that's not how that works, but that's the fun part: Magic.

"So I could absolutely just… Skip it all. But not only would I not, I should not." He said, before letting out a long, tired sigh, and returning to rolling the mug in his hand. "I did not miss this part, let me tell you."

Recognizing the lull for what it was - a point for them both to decompress and gather their wits for the next round - Ashley let out a sigh and bit the bait: "Implying there were parts you did miss?"

"Oh, sure. Leaving my house, for one. Past decade it's been here or the bunker, with the occasional break to break out the BFG and mow the lawn." He nodded over Ashley's shoulder, in the vague direction of the ranch's front door, where the Grimm had stood sentry.

"Why are they even here?" She'd been much too distracted to even think about it earlier, what with her first nearly dying, and then her blossoming existential crisis.

Which, she noted, technically was still ongoing - the solution Aldric provided only being a rug to sweep it under.

"The Grimm, or Jaune and Pyrrha?" Aldric grinned, before waving the joke away. "For the former, I could not tell you." Aldric responded, his voice falling into a groan. "Common knowledge holds that they're supposed to get smarter the older they grow. Maybe on some level they knew she was their queen, and they know I killed her. Now if that means they think I'm their king, or they want revenge…" He shrugged again. "They can't get in either way. I have a pet dragon in a jar."

She was starting to get a good read on him now - specifically, how he seemed to like to say wild things just to prompt people into asking him for the story, or to prompt them into thinking there's a story, only for it to just be a punchline. In this case, she genuinely suspected it to be both. It also gave her an appreciation for how he was able to pull off his crusade - by playing this role in both parts of his life, everyone involved grew to expect the clown, never considering that every joke was a confession.

As a result, she didn't take this bait, and just waited for him to continue.

"As to the latter… I got to talk to them yesterday night, after I finished beaning you all." This was so obvious she began to suspect he knew she was on to his game, his continuing on before even giving her a chance to react sealed it. "And it turns out, they're related. It took ten plus years, but someone finally noticed that the older Grimm have started moving en-masse. Eventually that made its way to the Justice League, who pissed their pants thinking Salem might have had a backup plan, failed to understand that Jaune doesn't have the magic sword anymore, and sent him and Pyrrha to go scout things out.

"Then Pyrrha realized where she was, they realized that the Grimm were just here to mean mug me, and figured it would be best to just let this one be." He then leaned forward, resting his chin on his knuckles, and grinning at her. "Then this pack of rookies comes flying in."

Another bait she decided not to take, although it was feeling more like a game than anything, and she had to admit it was a little fun. Still, she steered things back to where she wanted.

"What if I -"

"No." Was so sudden, and backed by such a heretofore unseen energy, that Ashley started.

Not because she was startled, or scared by him, but because that reaction made something click, and gave her an idea. While she didn't want to call it a 'big one', it was nevertheless in keeping with her family: It was big, it was stupid, it was dangerous - and it would probably work because of all three of those things. Schwarz was, indeed, right: She had made her damn decision. She was going to bring this idiot back and show him the world would spin on even if he started interacting with it again.

She just had to make sure she was right, and so, she poked the bear: "Why not?"

"Kid, you go out and offer up your identity to the people in the know before you're capable of punching above your weight, there's a lot of ways that goes poorly."

Oh gods, she was right! She gulped through a dry throat, hoping she could keep her cool, even as the gears in her head began to turn. "Then… Why am I here?" As she understood, his plan had been for her to get here after being trained by Ozma, and while she knew the answer, she also knew he wanted her to keep going. If she gave up too quickly, he'd know something was up.

"Because, kiddo. There's always one thing that goes wrong that screws up a perfectly good plan. What separates the good from the bad is whether or not you can outrun or outwit your own mistakes. In this case, it was you being made before Ozma would have taught you how to use your powers, but you still ended up here."

"And you won't? Teach me?"

"I wouldn't even know how beyond just repeating what I was told: Magic is what you think it is."

"How did you even access it?" She asked, genuinely curious about the answer. "Consciously, I mean."

Aldric grinned, and shrugged. "I think, by definition, I was drugged. Cinder - this one, that is." He shook the mug so the rock would clink inside it. "- noticed I had it in me, spiked it with her own power so I would know what it feels like, and from there I just kept playing. First I made a lightsaber -" He nodded to the mannequin, "and kept building up from there until I didn't need the nanites as a focus anymore. I could not tell you when exactly that was, just all of a sudden I realized I was on my own."

She wished she had expected more, but that really had been it - if he'd known how to teach her himself, she was willing to bet he wouldn't have made Ozma a part of his plan. But, this was a good place to start backing away from her goal, so she let out a long, defeated sigh, and let the silence grow between them for a few moments.

Surprising her, he was the one to break it. "I'm sorry, Kiddo." And she believed it - she could hear it in how his voice dropped, the energy he had been pushing into it thus far evaporating, leaving behind a gravelly tone of guilt and regret.

'Not sorry enough' played through her mind in a flash of petulance, but she pushed it down as quickly as it came, that was just her emotions trying to talk. As frustrating as it was to not get what she wanted, his reasoning did at least make sense. If he did literally anything - anything at all - people would notice. As he said, even just showing up would be questioned heavily, because even if he wasn't as smart as people believed, people nevertheless believed he was critically intelligent, and he was smart enough to recognize that. Therefore, he knew that just being seen somewhere while all this was going down was, when combined with his name blowing around, enough to outright terrify people.

This made her idea significantly more complicated - or at least, the second half of it. The first half would be child's play by comparison, she'd already worked most of it out, the rest was details. What came after would be the difficult part, especially given that - as he pointed out - her two best resources were currently locked in a standoff. But there was something she could use, she knew it, she just needed more time to think.

And, privately, she admitted that for all the progress she wasn't making, talking to her actual flesh-and-blood father was just as exhilarating as speaking with her living mother.

She didn't want it to end.

This brought a different question to mind, one she'd asked Cinder, but she hadn't been able to answer: "The memories I have." Aldric's eyebrow quirked, "of my parents… Are they real? Or were they made by the… Flashy thing?"

She didn't expect Aldric to burst out laughing at Ecru's name for the memory eraser, but she didn't stop him or protest. There was something rejuvenative about seeing him laugh - she could almost literally see him reverse age right in front of her eyes as he let go of the mug and clapped his hands.

"Oh, god, that was good. Next you'll tell me you said 'surely' to the hologram." His expression didn't change even when Ashley admitted she hadn't, he just shrugged. "Well, one for two ain't bad." He resumed rolling the mug in his hand. "Suffice to say, kiddo… I just don't know." The energy began rapidly fading from his voice then, as he explained himself. "I barely know how that thing works to begin with, and usually it's not a good idea to over-program things. So I just set it up, wiped your memory, and told you what every kid needs to know: Your parents loved you, and did their best." He nodded to her, "give me a memory, let's test it."

Ashley leaned back, looking off into the distance as she tried to recall something specific. Perhaps due simply to growing up, or perhaps due to his design, she didn't really remember much about her pre-Patch childhood. She became a little worried when she couldn't pull up anything, but rationalized it as trying to remember a dream - forcing it always failed, it was better to let things happen naturally.

So, of course, her stomach rumbled then to tell her she hadn't eaten or drank anything today, and that jogged her memory: Dusty had mentioned that beans were the only thing on Aldric's farm that grew properly.

Crunchy beans.

She let out a long, breathy laugh. "I remember… More, the look on my aunt's face one day, not long after I went to her house." Aldric fixed her with his undivided attention, a soft smile on his scarred face. "She asked me what I wanted for dinner. I said I wanted burritos. She made them for me, and I was confused why they weren't crunchy. She thought I meant tacos, and made those next, but those weren't right either. I told her the beans didn't taste right. They were hot, and spicy, and they weren't bland and crunchy." Aldric's smile just grew wider and wider with every word. "I told her that my Dad made them crunchy. She told me he must have had a special way… And then for a year afterwards, we'd have burritos every month. She tried over-cooking the beans, she tried frying them, she tried everything, but they never had that crunch I was looking for." She looked up at him, expectantly.

Aldric nodded, "I. Can. Not. Farm. Worth shit." He explained, fondly. "As Foghorn Leghorn out there was quick to point out. The only damn thing I can keep alive are the magical beans that literally just need water and that's it." A beat, "I'm not kidding - I grew some in the pitch black mag-lev tunnel downstairs." He stamped the floor, "water. That's all. So when you came around, until we moved to Atlas to get you a proper schooling, that's pretty much what we survived on. I'd cook 'em, I'd spice 'em up, cover 'em in hot sauce, but your breakfast, lunch, and dinner was senzu beans until we moved."

"You fed me nothing but beans?"

"Do you really want me to answer that question?"

Ashley laughed too. It felt good to do that, here and with this person. It also made her realize that things were winding down - things were going to end, very soon. A little desperate to stave off the end, she threw out the only question she could think of: "What was Earth like?" A beat, "and was it really called Earth?"

Aldric rolled his eyes in an amused way. "You know - the one sci-fi trope I was always sick of was the whole 'ha-ha, you named your planet dirt' thing. I always thought calling Earth… Earth, was charming. Simple. That's here, that's home, that's us. There might be many planets with earth, but there's only one Earth. All that to say - yes, our goddamn planet was called planet dirt. We also called our moon 'Luna' - which means moon - and our sun 'Sol' - which…" He leaned in, with a smirk on his face. "Care to guess?"

"Sun?"

"Ten points to SSAD." He leaned back, "as to what Earth was like… It was remarkably like Remnant in pretty much every way. Beautiful, quaint, deadly, complicated. Perfect habitat for neurotic monkeys that like blowing stuff up. It's…" He patted one of the computers on his desk. "Only gotten more complicated the last few decades. What with multiple alien and demonic invasions, a major city being vaporized, and my country going five for five on uses of WMD's in warfare." He had a distant look on his face, even though he smiled. "But, well… It's still here. It's still home. It's still us. As shitty as things are, as shitty as they have been, and as shitty as they will get…" He frowned, then smiled again as a different way of voicing his thought flashed through his mind.

"I'll put it to you this way. There was a film, a whole…" He blinked, "fuck, seventy years ago now." He shook his head, and Ashley could practically see him fighting off an 'oh my god I'm old' crisis. "About one of our all time greatest heroes. He was the survivor of the destruction of his planet, and his father sent him to Earth to escape that and be raised. He did it because he believed Humanity would raise him right… 'They can be a great people, Kal-el, they wish to be. They lack only the light to guide them the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I send unto them: You. My only son.'..." She saw a fleck of warmth in his thin smile as he laid down his quote, just as she felt something in her chest as the words settled in. "And I think that about sums it up."

Right there. That told her everything. One way or another, this man would follow her back into the light. She wondered if he knew how relevant that was to him. He was the person that wanted to be great, but just lacked something to guide him. Maybe it was because he was scared of it, or of himself. Maybe it was because he didn't know how to do what he needed to do, or because he thought he wasn't worthy. He may not do it himself, but if he had that guide - or, to be less poetic, if he got a good kick in the pants - she knew now more than ever he'd be able to do it.

She just had to help him take that first step.

Unfortunately, they both knew that there was no real way to keep things going naturally after this. So, Aldric rapped his hands on the desk, "going back a bit to food, I ate a week ago, so I'm still good for a few days, but I bet you could eat." He said, nodding to the door. "I've had a hell of a lot more time to come to terms with this madness than you have, so go grab a bean from out back. Take some time to process things while I finish up in here. Sound good?"

Remembering what his game was, and now wanting to play it, she humored him while got to her feet. He promptly told her that said beans take care of 'all' of one's nutrition for ten days, and for all she knew he was telling the truth, she honestly couldn't decide if she believed him. There was 'I'm the daughter of an alien wizard terrorist' and then there was 'He's literally been subsisting on magic beans three times a month for two decades'. Made all the more bizarre when he told her that Dusty had eaten 'a fistful' earlier that morning and had literally blown up like a balloon until Aldric righted it.

She also made a personal request, which he acquiesced to. She did not want to live with that uncanniness for however long she was going to be here, so she wanted the rock. He was willing to let her do it, but not before he slotted it into a receptacle inside his metal hand, and then popped said hand off of his arm. She was, he told her on no uncertain terms, not going to touch the rock - it would kill her.

His answer to why the rock being in the hand would be safer just made her actually want the time to herself: "Because I think it will."

With the detached hand in one of her pockets, Ashley left his office. She cast one last glance over her shoulder, and briefly found herself fascinated at the sight of him turning on the computers again. His transition from conversational to his 'work face' was like watching a dog go from the family pup to angry, snarling attack dog - it was like she was looking at a completely different person.

Yeah, she may not necessarily have daddy issues, but she definitely needed a bit of time to decompress after this. Both to process what was one of the most significant conversations of her life, and to dwell on the idea it had given her.

Ashley left his office and took a few minutes to explore the house, now that it didn't feel like up was down and colors could smell. She suspected the room she'd woken up in might very well have been her childhood room, due in part to how it seemed like the one and only actual addition to the house, how it didn't seem proportioned for an adult, and the box of toys she found in the closet labeled 'Ashley's Things'. The part of her that had grown up on cartoons and movies had thought there might be something significant in there, but besides a small pile of toys she suspected had come from Earth, nothing really jumped out at her.

Next, she returned to the living room. The film Sylvie had been watching had been left on and paused, the blue man on the screen holding his arms out wide in an ostentatious manner. The couch looked like it had seen some heavy use in its time, and she didn't even need to sit down on it to know it was comfortable. She could hear outside the sound of Dusty simultaneously managing to sing farm music, and bark orders at everyone in earshot. This attracted her attention, and when her head swung around -

Oh, wow.

Something that she hadn't noticed before, or had changed since she'd first torn through the house: A pile of weapons leaning against the wall. She saw Sylvie's decidedly unnamed amplifier, still damaged from the crash, Schwarz's pistol, Dusty's whip, and - most shocking of all:

Old Glory.

It had been so meticulously cleaned and maintained over the years that it didn't look at all like the main defensive implement of a living legend. Ashley was ready to swear she could hear an ethereal thrum as she approached it and ran her fingers across its warm, multicolored surface. When she was a kid, she'd always thought it was kind of neat how her aunts' old leader had had his main weapon adopted by Pyrrha Nikos, but now knowing the whole story behind it, it left her both in awe, and a little melancholic. This thing had become exactly what Aldric wanted it to be: A symbol of hope, recognized the world over. But it had also been an emotional crutch for him during his darkest days, something he'd seen as so pure and good that he'd never taken it up again, even when presented with the opportunity.

She wondered what it had seen since being taken up by Nikos. She wondered what lives it had saved before, during, and after Salem. Knowing its origins were not only alien, but also fictional, Ashley also wondered what stories it had told, what myths it built, to leave such an effect on her father.

It probably wasn't polite to do, given it wasn't hers, but she couldn't help but pick it up. The light reflecting off of it painted her face, and she found herself smiling faintly at it - at both the memories of watching TV, seeing Nikos wield it to heroic effect, and at even her basic understanding of its deeper meaning.

"It's lighter than it looks… And heavier than it feels, isn't it?"

Ashley had been so absorbed in her thoughts that she never noticed the door opening, or the person entering the ranch. She was embarrassed to admit, but she started at the sudden intrusion on her thoughts, and dropped the shield. It bounced off the ground as though made of rubber, and rolled right towards its owner. Pyrrha Nikos caught it, and picked it up herself. Ashley found herself a little in awe, as both the fact that Pyrrha Nikos was standing in front of her - with the shield and everything! - and the fact that she'd managed to meet both of her childhood heroes now, crashed right into her.

She looked like she'd been doing exactly what she'd been doing: Forced labor under a farm boy in his element. Despite the thin film of sweat, the specks and stains of dirt on her armor, and the general situation, she had a wide, warm smile on her face, as her bright green eyes took Ashley in.

Pyrrha spoke again before Ashley could collect herself, "you look much better than yesterday. I'm glad to see you've recovered well." Her smile grew wide enough to wrinkle her eyes. "Dusty told me your name was Ashley?"

Rapidly forcing her brain to reboot, Ashley nodded. "Uh… Yeah. Sorry, I -" As much as she'd been more of a Ruby Rose fan growing up, she like every kid had still idolized Nikos as well, and now she was standing right in front of the woman.

She had to admit, for all she was pretty sure she would have to deal with now that she knew she was an Aldric, just the fact that she may very well have a personal 'in' with her two biggest childhood heroines may make it all worth it.

Nikos waved it off, "don't be. I knew the moment your father told me who you were that you had to have gone through a lot." She paused a beat, then held the shield out. "Would you like to?"

'Yes' was the automatic, joyful, child-like answer that immediately leapt to her mouth, but Ashley swallowed it down with a smile, and shook her head.

Nikos seemed to realize Ashley was mostly just trying to save face and recover in front of her, but was graceful enough to not push. She set the shield back where Ashley had found it, and nodded to the table. "I can't imagine how you've managed to handle it thus far."

Ashley was about to correct Nikos and tell her right now, she was just brain-fried and star struck, but she stopped herself from doing so. While Ruby Rose was the type to be immune to their own fame, Ashley knew even before being in the same room with her that Nikos was more the type who understood their fame and just preferred modesty. She'd given Ashley an out, and Ashley would do well to take it.

"Will Dusty be fine with you slacking off?" Ashley grinned, as the two sat down.

Another wide, warm smile. "Frankly, I think he's having so much fun he won't even notice I've gone." She let out a fond sigh, "I've spent some time near farmers over the years, but I don't think I'll ever get used to how happy they get over the simple things."

"That's Dusty." Ashley soon took on a fond smile of her own. "So, he told me you two just… Happened to be up here?"

Pyrrha nodded, "Ozma heard about the abnormal migrations right around the time the semester started. We were having a small reunion with our old team and their kids, so when we were finished, Jaune and I decided to check it out together." She said, her gaze growing distant, but in a happy way, as she spoke of her team. "I didn't realize where we were going until we got here - the last time… I came from the air, and from the south. This time we came by land, and from the east." A poor memory seemed to haunt her features the further into the story she got, but when she looked up at Ashley, it faded away into a contented smile. "We had put it all together and turned around for our truck not an hour before we saw you. Then you hit the null-zone, and…" She nodded to the side. "You seem to be adapting very well to the anti-magic."

"Uh…" Suddenly Ashley realized that not only did she not know if Pyrrha knew about Aldric's local loophole, but she didn't know if she should let that out. "I was… Mostly just waking up."

Befitting of her experience, Nikos saw right through Ashley's awful lie, but also befitting of who she was talking to and who her father was, she seemed to understand that the answer was complicated, and likely need-to-know. Instead, she moved on to something else: "Ashley, if I had known - if any of us had." She faltered a bit, searching for the right words.

Ashley was so close to waving it off that she could feel the words just about leave her mouth, but she paused as the initial shock of meeting the Invincible Woman began to wear off, she remembered where she was, what her goal was, and what idea her father had unwittingly given her. She fully recognized that her 'plan' wasn't so much a 'plan' as it was in the same neighborhood as an idea, but she also knew well enough by now that for everything she'd inherited from her parents, complete self-reliance wasn't one of those things. Every single one of her recent successes had come with the help of her friends and allies - both witting and unwitting. So while she may only have an idea, she had at minimum three people to act as sounding board for it.

And might now get herself a fourth, if she played her cards right: "I read Ashmore's accounts. Heard her interviews… Whose idea was it to sue her?"

Pyrrha's smile became a little shameful, as her bright green eyes darted down a bit, flooding with memory. "Torchwick suggested it to Ironwood, who fed it to Weiss. Despite many of their opinions on -" She nodded down the hall, "not many of us actually supported it. But in the end, Weiss agreed that the more natural reaction to what we were claiming to have happened would be to press charges. For what it's worth, I actually tried to get the money back to Miss Ashmore, although I don't know if she ever actually received it."

Estimating the amount of damages money SDC lawyers could probably drag out of a person, and the giant cannon Ashmore somehow owned, Ashley suspected it actually had made its way back, but chose to push on instead of speculate. "Was it true, the story you told? You actually found him, and tried to get him to come back?"

Another nod, as Pyrrha looked over to the shotgun hung up on the wall. "I found him dead drunk, sleeping, with that gun in his hand. As time went on, I think I may have overreacted a bit, I don't think even in his darkest moments he was ever the type for suicide, but… Finding him again, and in that state, after all he did for us, I was a bit emotional."

A part of Ashley wondered if she shouldn't hold off, but she could see old, familiar-feeling emotions welling up in Pyrrha's eyes. She suspected that, for all the moving forward Pyrrha had done since they'd last met, Aldric was still someone she thought of frequently. As a final stepping stone to her main question, she decided to ask that exact question.

Pyrrha surprised her with her honesty: "He gave me that shield, Ashley. I think of him, in some form or another, literally every day. More than once, even long after Salem and Taurus, I've considered coming back to try again."

Ashley felt her heart slow down, as she realized Pyrrha was going to do her work for her. "Really?"

"Given the effect he had on us, it's easy to forget how he was scarcely a part of our lives for two years, if that. Everyone who fought in that war bears its scars, Ashley. Everyone he fought with, against, or used in some way, does as well. Some, like Yang, are deep and physical. Some, like Blake and Jaune, are deeper, and less physical. But… When Jaune and I were with Ren and Nora, he didn't come up once, not even in passing - and believe you me, we talked a lot about old times. It wasn't until we happened here that I realized that I genuinely couldn't remember the last time anyone but Ruby had spoken about him. Even Yang - I ran into her just last year, she was in a village bar, drunk, and yet…" Her smile wavered and twitched, her eyes seemed to sparkle a bit, the barest hint of distant tears welling up before she blinked them away and looked back to Ashley. "Nothing. Not a word about him. Gods - she even seemed happy to see me, and my views in our inner circles are still pretty clear. Considering that Jaune was willing to stay here at all, I have to wonder if that silence is simply them learning to live with it, or having put it behind them."

Ashley remembered Ashmore's accounts had mentioned that Aldric had called Pyrrha out on some sort of romantic attraction towards him. Looking at her now, the look in her eyes, and the melancholic but hopeful smile on her face reminded her of that bit, but the way she spoke gave Ashley the feeling that she, too, had moved forward. There was still love there - if that was an appropriate word - but it seemed much less romantic and much more that of a close, but lost friend. It really gave her a new appreciation for his two torchbearers. Ruby, whom had dropped absolutely everything and then gone to war just because his name had been invoked, and Pyrrha, who literally carried his symbol every single day.

Pyrrha's words also told her something that steeled her resolve more than anything else:

She was right.

Whether or not people had actually healed, whether or not they had even moved on, they had at least moved forward with their lives. Even those most directly affected by him had moved forward, everyone had put his war and their part in it behind them.

Everyone but him.

So, with the confidence of a person who was going to act no matter what, Ashley asked her biggest question:

"Do you think they'd be alright if he did come back?"

Pyrrha's mouth seemed a half second faster than her brain. Her mouth opened, and Ashley could see the answer form on her lips, but then something stopped her, and then Ashley saw something else: Realization. That one question set everything in motion in the Huntress' mind, and in a heartbeat, she knew and understood everything.

Ashley really, really wished she could have started talking things out then and there, because alongside the realization, she saw a simple, but powerful determination. Pyrrha didn't know what Ashley's plan was, but she knew the young woman's intent, and had aligned with it instantly. Unfortunately, before Ashley could even try to hash things out, they heard a door open down the hall, and a moment later, the man himself came strolling out, leaving them with little but a silent acknowledgement that they saw each other.

"Oh cool, you're still here. Convinced him not to leave?"

Pyrrha's smile became fond as she nodded, "I got him to acknowledge that, given the state of their ship, they'd need a ride back to civilization."

"I appreciate it." Aldric nodded, before pausing, and giving her a look stuck halfway between sheepish and sly. "On the down-low…" He said, quietly enough that the words barely made it past the three of them. "If I walk out there, how will he react, on a scale of Big Sexy to Yang?"

Despite herself, Pyrrha snorted, and she covered her mouth, trying not to smile. Ashley stayed silent as Pyrrha collected herself, and Aldric allowed himself a smug, victorious grin. When Pyrrha was ready, she shook her head, "not quite as dully as Ren would react, but I don't think it would be a good idea to speak to him alone."

"Fair enough." He nodded, before turning to Ashley. "Gotta admit kiddo, you telling me Neo was involved answered a lot of questions as to how Ruby's been so successful at her little war. She's good, don't get me wrong, but the things she's pulled off that haven't made the news are a little surprising."

Ashley blinked, glad for the moment she needed to mentally switch tracks again. "I'm more surprised there are things she'd done that haven't made the news in the first place." Just how fast was that woman moving? Ashley figured she might take out something like six or seven strongholds in the time she'd had so far, but now she was beginning to wonder if significant portions of the criminal underworld were on fire because of the most bizarre team up in the world.

And that just made Aldric's portent that Torchwick may have already passed the point of no return, all the more dire.

"Well take your pick, anyone from Torchwick to Ironwood want to keep as much of this as quiet as they can. The fact that it's leaking at all is just evidence of how big a fire she's setting." He looked between the two of them, then settled on Ashley. "You still a fan?" He nodded to Pyrrha, a grin stretching across his face that just radiated pure 'Dad's about to embarrass you' energy.

Pyrrha cut him off before he could get going, "she's actually been rather calm, Aldric. She must get that from her aunts." She turned to Ashley, "do you think it would be appropriate for me to meet them? I must admit, we weren't very close in school, but… I feel they would appreciate someone to talk to."

"They're great." Ashley said, both happy for the easy topic, and happy that Pyrrha seemed to have a hell of a lot more experience with these games than she did. "And you'd probably have to get in line, Ruby's already promised to come back when she's done." Ashley decided against saying that Ecru might find she's got just a little bit of genuine fight in her if she was reminded of one of her crowning achievements.

The idle chit-chat continued for a few minutes, until Dusty suddenly - and very loudly - realized that Pyrrha had 'done a runner'. This prompted her to get to her feet, and she, alongside Aldric and Ashley, followed her outside. The father and daughter both froze at the sight that greeted them.

Without a semblance, without any enhanced strength or abilities, without any tools heavier than what could be found in a shed and carried with two hands, the boys, Sylvie, Jaune, and Pyrrha had done exactly what Dusty had set out to do: They'd ripped up literally everything that wasn't the beans. It was like watching a machine - Dusty was busy tilling the field, with Schwarz following right behind him spreading fertilizer, while Sylvie was working in the areas that had already been cared for, re-planting crops at exact intervals, and Jaune seemed to be alternating between ripping up his own crops and sorting the piles that were generated every few seconds by the boys.

Ashley couldn't believe how much progress they'd made in an afternoon, and was pretty sure the only reason Pyrrha hadn't been caught flat-footed was because she'd been out here working it earlier. Even Aldric was stunned.

"How long were we in there?" Ashley breathed, numbly.

"Good fuckin' question."

"Oh good, you're out here!" Dusty hollered back after finishing a row and straightening his back. Next to him, Schwarz collapsed to his knees, covered in streaming sweat, as opposed to the giant above him, who didn't even seem to have broken out yet. "That means you're here to work, right?" Ashley didn't so much as blink and suddenly a hoe was flying through the air like a missile.

Aldric watched it sail towards him before it landed perfectly at his feet.

"I think I pissed him off." Aldric knelt down and grunted while he retrieved the hoe.

Not wanting to know what Dusty did when he was angry, Ashley quietly agreed, and volunteered for work. Dusty promptly put her and Aldric together further afield doing the same thing he and Schwarz were doing, while Pyrrha returned to assist Jaune, and before she knew it, her quest to find a god-slaying, world-manipulating, war criminal, super terrorist, alien wizard… Had her briefly arguing whether she or her dad should be the ones shoveling desiccated shit. The debate ended with an, 'Oh right!' and Dusty promptly stealing the trowel from Aldric, declaring he wasn't good enough for his own tools.

He had hands, and today he would use them.

Ashley could have tools though! She would respect them!

Thus, the alien wizard that terrified a planet was bullied by a farm boy into shoveling shit with his bare hands.

It had been a while since Ashley had asked what her life had turned into, and judging by the bemused expression on Aldric's face, she suspected he was thinking the exact same thing.

The rest of the day went by so peacefully that, for the first time since they had met, Ashley actually understood Dusty on every level. Before today, she had always thought farm life was one of those things you only loved if you were born into it, or you wanted to get into it. She'd always thought the 'retiring to a farm' thing was just a cliche in movies. Now however, Ashley could see the charm in it - a good, honest, simple day's work. It also made her suspect that this as much as wanting to live where no one's aura worked was why Aldric stayed here: It was therapeutic, in its own way. Although, she wasn't sure how much healing Aldric had gotten done just digging in the dirt and planting crops; especially given how many of them failed and how he seemed dead set on doing it 'the right way', even if it took him his entire life to figure out what the right way was.

What followed seven people ripping apart a small farm was those same seven people piling into a house that had needed extensions to fit three. Dusty had a small meltdown as he tried to figure out where Aldric got his hands on actual food, given how much of his crops seemed to be in sorry states, and he also had no livestock from which to harvest meat.

'I used to be God.' was all Aldric gave in response.

Ashley had kind of been hoping for some kind of exotic alien meal, but those hopes were dashed the second she recognized all the fixings for bog-standard spaghetti. Nevertheless, it was better than she'd expected - owing either to Aldric being a good cook in disguise, or because of how much work she'd done in the day. It wasn't the first time she'd eaten at a table surrounded by people, and she knew it wouldn't be the last, but there was something nice about seeing smiles on her friends' faces, as they indulged in the fact that they were sitting in front of an alien willing to answer their questions, ranging from Sylvie's mundane 'can you really go to space', to Dusty excitedly interrogating the man about the various conspiracies he was aware of and whether or not they were true.

Notably, Pyrrha and Jaune stayed quiet throughout the proceedings, unless spoken to, and Pyrrha was the one that spoke the most between the two of them. Jaune, from the look of him, clearly didn't like that he was where he was, but the look in his eye made Ashley suspect that he was confronting something he'd never expected to, and that alone was throwing him deep into contemplation.

Eventually they were led outside where Aldric proved to 'The uppity farmboy' that he did, indeed, have control of a network of satellite lasers, as he used four to incinerate what Grimm had survived his rampage the day previous.

And then used a final one to carve 'Eat shit' into the ground at Dusty's feet.

The farmboy's immediate 'Do it again!' was ignored.

It gave Ashley some pause to see how casually he wielded power of this scale, especially for how it implied he had much more in reserve. It also gave her a little more respect for why he operated as stubbornly as he did, but even then she couldn't help but get swept up in the excitement of seeing something few - if any - on Remnant ever had. It was lasers being shot from space, that was cool.

When this was over and the air outside was choked by rapidly clearing grimm smoke, they retreated back indoors and began gearing up for bed. Everyone cycled through showers, Aldric showed as deep an understanding of team dynamics as Ashley's aunts by not questioning SSAD all piling into the living room, Pyrrha and Jaune left to retrieve their truck, and slowly, the house began quieting down.

Although none of SSAD did any sleeping, as when Aldric retired to his room, each member of her team turned to her, all with an unspoken question on their lips: How did it go? Ashley told them, from her brief existential crisis - and the explanation for why she was sleeping with what technically counted as a severed hand in her pocket - all the way to her realizing that, for all she'd psyched herself up, there simply wasn't a way she could convince Aldric to leave.

Of course, the first to pick up on the fact that she had an idea was Sylvie, with a laconic: "But?"

Ashley turned her gaze down the hallway, then back to her team. "But… The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." She had a fond edge to her voice as she spoke, even as she leaned in closer and dropped her voice. "I have a plan."

What followed were several hours of talking things back and forth, as she explained her idea, and the extremely rough outline of a plan she'd come up with between then and now.

This eventually led to Schwarz cutting through it all with: "Ashley… Do you realize the reasoning for your plan boils down to you saying your father is old and just doesn't understand?"

Those words echoed through Ashley Lilly's head, stunning her silent. It wasn't so much that they had humbled her with their blunt honesty, as much as it was that they were right and wrong for reasons she just couldn't put to words. While they had debated, she had honestly agreed with Schwarz - and Aldric, for that matter. She hadn't lived his life, hadn't interacted with the worlds he had, hadn't done the things he'd done, or developed the skills he had. It was a simple fact: Now, as was often the case, Daddy just did indeed know better, and it was the young kid without experience that didn't understand. Aldric's opinion was that the safest course of action was for him to stay right the hell here and let the fire burn itself out.

To Ashley's credit, she agreed with him to an extent, and even understood why he thought this way. It was, in a way, the first major test of Aldric's neutrality: It was easy to just let the world spin on when nothing happened to the people he knew. It was easy to come in and smash shit when he was asked because he didn't like that person to begin with. But when Ruby Rose - the person he'd moved heaven and earth to save once - was starting a war against crime? Suddenly it became more difficult to sit back and let things happen, and if he did that, people would much more readily believe that there was only a few things he would ever come back for on a global scale. Letting Ruby do her thing, whether or not she burned out in so doing, might very well stabilize the situation he'd only described as 'quiet' up until now. Ashley didn't fault this logic, and even agreed with it!

But that was where Schwarz's statement came in, because as much as she agreed with it, she still thought he was wrong. Schwarz, ever the 'hold on a second and think' guy, seemed to believe that this was because she was like any kid with their own ideas. She had her own way of thinking, her parents weren't lining up with that, and oh my god, don't they understand anything, why don't they just agree with her? Sylvie and Dusty seemed too stoic and too kind respectively to admit it, but Ashley suspected they had similar reservations, even if all three of them were still fully willing to follow her to the end of this path.

She wished she knew the words, because it made sense in her head. It wasn't so much that Aldric was old, stuck in his ways, and just didn't understand - although she had to admit, everything but the age comment had crossed her mind at some point today. It wasn't that as much as it was that she just couldn't accept his way of thinking. It might be correct, but damn it, it wasn't right! He was a man who had pretty much been forced onto a very dark path that only got darker with each step he took down it. More than that, he'd been a mortal man from a mundane world where things like Aura and Semblances had been the realm of fiction and mythology, and then hadn't just been given those powers, but had been given so much of it that he thought - and proved - he could become a literal god.

This colored his way of thinking - he was utterly, hopelessly terrified of himself because of how readily and instantly he did the things he did, and because of how easily he feared he could go right back to those habits if he so much as thought about it. He believed that everyone else in the world was just as terrified of him for those same reasons. He'd made endless plans and contingencies to ensure that he could succeed in his quest, and had then crafted just as many to ensure the world could defend itself against him, and seemed to be of the opinion that everyone was so damn scared that they were literally waiting with baited breath for him to slip up, so they could finally simplify this equation. Therefore, he wanted to assume the worst, and always go for the safest, surest option, with zero room for error.

In this case: If he so much as opened his front door, the world would fall apart.

So: Even if it meant someone he cared about died fighting a war she might not be able to win, he had to stay in exile.

She didn't even need to turn her head and squint - there was some logic there!

But she absolutely could not accept it. She just could not find it in herself to have so little faith in everyone else. She understood why her father thought that way, but just couldn't bring herself to do the same. Both because of everything she'd seen thus far and because of the way the people he'd chosen to raise her had done so, she just couldn't believe what he did.

She genuinely believed that if he tried to come back, even now, he'd be allowed to do so. Even if the people he used to know didn't accept him with open arms, even if his enemies would always remain suspicious, and even if the effects of his crusade never truly healed for him or for anyone else, Ashley truly believed that if he showed just that small amount of faith in others, they'd surprise him. She believed that he was just in too much pain, felt too guilty, and was just too scared to try, and since he hadn't accepted her gently trying to help, she wanted to give him a kick in the pants.

But she had no idea how to say that, not without it sounding like an endless jumble of words, a stream of consciousness so long in the making that she'd only been able to make sense of it herself in the last few hours.

And so, when Schwarz said that to her, she could only hesitate for a moment, look away to try and figure out what she could say, and then, finally, just turn back and shrug. "It's not that, I just… Have hope that he's wrong. Everyone else just… Kept moving forward, after Salem. I have hope that they'd let him too, if he tried."

And to prove her point, she put that out there, and her team - her wonderful, amazing team made up of her wonderful, amazing friends - accepted it. Sure, they seemed to still be a little cautious, but they were willing to follow her, and help. Together, they ironed out the kinks, they smoothed out the rough edges of her plan, filled in the planks, came up with backup options, and other ways to get this particular ball rolling and in the right direction. They argued - quietly, of course - and debated, but despite it all, they were going to help her.

She'd genuinely believed her plan would work, their support just reinforced that belief beyond all reason, and left a smile on her face, just as Pyrrha and Jaune returned with their truck.

By the time the morning came, the house would be empty but for its original occupant. It hurt to leave him behind, but Ashley did so knowing that it would be temporary. Still, out of a desire to not stick a knife in his heart, alongside the metal hand and the magic rock, she left a message, just a small thing to establish between them that they both knew where things were about to go.

Left on the opposite side of the old slip of paper Cinder had given her, Ashley wrote: "I'm sorry too."