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

108. TLI2 - Quiet War

Quiet War

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First, identify the problem:

Her father simply wouldn't come back to the world.

This was obviously incompatible with Ashley Lilly's stated goal of bringing him back so he could heal in a way that exile wasn't allowing for.

So what was the solution?

Well, it lay where it always lay: The one mistake he made. Unlike everyone he'd ever gone up against, Ashley effectively had everything on him, information wise. Unlike all of his foes and enemies, Ashley understood him - she had his deepest, most intimate thoughts during his greatest trials. So where everyone else was present for the mistakes he made and even witnessed him make them, few understood what they were seeing, or how to capitalize on it. Ashley was different: She had everything she needed, and when he'd made his mistake, she'd recognized it, and instantly known how to use it.

His mistake was one, small, verbal slip-up:

He'd told her he'd get drawn out if she were in danger.

He hadn't said it, but he hadn't needed to - the second she'd suggested something that involved her self, he'd interpreted it as her going out to meet these people who scared the man that scared them. He'd seen all the ways that could go poorly, and fiercely shut down the idea, and everything he said afterwards only confirmed her hypothesis.

Once upon a time, there had been a list of three people he'd come back for. He dealt with one, and then there had only been two.

Then Ashley had been born, and in secret, that list went back to three.

So the solution to her problem was simple!

She just had to put herself in mortal danger!

Throughout the end of her day at Aldric's ranch, she slowly formulated exactly how she could go about this. She figured just showing up in between Torchwick and Ruby would probably not put her in as much danger as one would think - the former would see who she was, and probably put the stop on everything because he was savvy enough to know how bad a call it was to put a gun to her head, while the latter would likely throw everything she had at keeping Ashley safe. With some thought, she realized she had all the pieces she needed to run a convincing con - Schwarz's illusions could convince Torchwick that Ashley was her father, Sylvie's aural abilities could make her voice into Aldric's, and Dusty's semblance could allow her to quite literally punch above her weight long enough for Torchwick to get serious. Aldric would realize what was going on and intervene!

It seemed foolproof, and that more than anything was why she knew it wouldn't work. She wasn't her father, playing fourth dimensional hyper chess with power houses and national leaders wasn't something she could just do through sheer audacity and genre savviness. But, as she'd long since learned, she had something Aldric didn't: A complete willingness to outsource her success to her allies.

Those three traitorous bastards immediately started poking holes in the plan.

How would she prevent Aldric from killing Torchwick?

How would she prevent Ozma and Cinder from not thinking he'd gone off the deep end?

Had she even thought about James Ironwood and the man's hatred for all three of them?

Had she considered that even if all went flawlessly, Ironwood would still be a problem when he realized that not only was Aldric back, but he'd bred, with Cinder, and said child seemingly had both of their powers?

What would she do if Ironwood then learned she couldn't use those powers yet?

Those questions and more were all things she not only hadn't considered, but also just couldn't answer. Fortunately, between the four of them, they were able to come up with a plan she was actually a little proud of.

After all, what did Aldric like to say? Theatricality and deception are powerful agents?

Ashley just needed to put on a show for him.

Before that though, she needed her stage, she needed her actors, and she needed her support crew.

Enter: Pyrrha and Jaune.

While the latter was well known for his wartime deeds and his peacetime quests, he had decidedly never acquired the same political clout that the former had. Despite this, and despite his continued dislike for her father, Jaune at least seemed willing to play along, albeit because he knew Ruby's veritable war on crime would only have ended poorly under the best circumstances, and was going to be disastrous here and now given that Torchwick thought Aldric might be involved in some way. So while he may not necessarily be a decision maker, he was fully willing to be a mover and a shaker, to do whatever grunt work was necessary to get everything done. He was, in effect, the support crew, and when Ashley found her stage, he could build it.

Pyrrha, meanwhile - she was the key that would fully unlock Ashley's plan. She knew people, she knew decision makers, people in power and people with power. All of the actors Ashley needed, Pyrrha could get them in the same room and talking. Since she knew Ashley's goal, she was willing to help, and so while they returned to the Kingdoms, the two of them worked together on hashing out those details and plugging up the holes.

Ironically, the most difficult part of the entire plan seemed to be the simplest part: Getting back to civilization. The truck Jaune and Pyrrha had rented was clearly only meant for two passengers and their equipment, and no amount of 'my whip and my semblance're better than any ol' seatbelt!' really changed the fact that four of them had to hold on for dear life to the bed of the truck for a trip over half a continent.

That last part was one of Ashley's greatest concerns - they were going to be off-roading a trip that had taken Pyrrha and Jaune months to do on their own. Granted, most of that time had been spent finding the Grimm herd's trail and then following them surreptitiously, and bee-lining right for home was going to be significantly faster, but it would still take a week at the least. All of her planning with SSAD, Pyrrha, and Jaune, could end up being for nothing just because it was going to take them time to get home and get everything rolling. Time during which Ruby Rose would continue her war against a kingpin whom Ashley had terrified so much that he might be willing to start pulling out all the stops to fight her for real.

Ashley wished she could say this was where she proved she really was her father's daughter, and had stolen the scroll he had that was a direct line to the heroine, but she couldn't. The idea only occurred to her that it had been an option a day into their trip when she voiced her concerns to Pyrrha, and Pyrrha outright asked if she'd taken it.

At this point, Ashley realized she'd fucked up - but not in the obvious way.

She patted herself down at Pyrrha's words, hoping against hope that she might magically pull something out of her pocket. As it turns out, there was something in her pocket! Something she'd not only forgotten she'd been given, but had utterly forgotten to give back. Something that was amusingly macabre:

Aldric's hand.

The one with the god rock.

Upon receiving it, Ashley had slipped so willingly back into comforting familiarity that she'd not only not thought to give it back at the end of the night, she'd completely forgotten she'd had it at all. To the credit of both her and her aunts, her first instinct wasn't how she could immediately take advantage of this, which was good, because the damn thing was locked in there tight. She was pretty sure even Pyrrha couldn't pry the plates apart, although Ashley suspected that was primarily because Pyrrha, if she learned what was inside, would be in the same camp as her: They didn't understand this thing, not like its creator, so it was best to just leave it alone.

And Ashley did!

For all of a day.

Her reasoning for what she did next felt sound: Aldric said that as long as the rock was in the hand, she'd be safe from it. Why? Because magic. By both his story and corroborated facts from Pyrrha and Jaune, Ashley knew he'd pulled a similar trick to end the War of the White Witch, just with six god rocks. She reasoned therefore that these things were harmful if interacted with directly - her evidence here coming from Aldric's spasms of pain each time he handled it in her presence. But, if one had something that could filter and channel their power - like the gauntlet he'd used in the war - then one could make use of it safely.

The problem?

Aldric's hand obviously wasn't designed to do that.

But it didn't matter.

Because magic.

Ashley theorized he'd Monkey's Paw'ed himself by invoking his powers on this thing to ensure it didn't hurt her. Supposedly, magic was what one thought it was - and he specifically said he thought that keeping the rock in the hand would keep her safe from it. The fact that she'd directly handled the severed appendage multiple times since then lent credence to this theory. Even if it shouldn't be, this was the same man who had overwritten artifacts made by gods based solely on the strength of his own perception.

Magic.

Her conclusion, one night after realizing she still had it, was that it should therefore be safe for her to interact with the rock, using the hand as a medium. Quite possibly safer for her than it would be for Aldric, because Aldric knew more about this thing than she did, and had more preconceptions about it. He thought it should hurt - but she thought she would be safe.

So, after everyone collapsed around a campfire, Ashley pulled the hand from her pocket and examined it again. By firelight, she frowned at the dark hunk of metal, and brought to mind her father's story as regarded his first use and eventual mastery of his powers. He hadn't really done anything specific, and they had seemingly always been there. Over time, he just became aware that he was channeling it unconsciously.

Just like her.

Supposedly.

This all left her with two questions: How would she link up to the rock, and what could she do with it? It was, after all, an artifact that controlled souls. Aldric had ostensibly kept it around as an ultimate deterrent, secret weapon, and answer to that last lesson he'd learned in his journey. With this, if anyone stepped out of line, he could 'just kill the batman' and turn the metaphorical lights off. That wasn't necessarily something she wanted to do, but she was pretty sure this thing had functions far beyond just insta-killing things.

She just had to access it.

And she had no idea how.

As the night progressed, she tried everything she could think of. She stuck the hand in the fire, but it came out cold. She tried prying its plates apart, but they were stuck fast. She smacked it onto various things around her, but that didn't change anything. She twisted and pulled every individual digit, pressed every plate hoping for a secret button, she held it like she was shaking a hand, locked her fingers to it, she even wrapped its fingers around her wrist, but nothing.

It was as the moon was high in the sky, and she was going over every single word she and her father had exchanged, that she had her epiphany. The way her father's magic expressed itself when 'at idle' was through his semblance - he'd wanted telekinesis, and had gotten it. He theorized the same thing had happened to her, although perhaps not as driven by intent as his was. She found she was able to read people well, mistook it as something mundane as enhanced eyesight, and any telepathic powers she had were reliant upon eye contact.

That sounded useless, until one remembered that there was, ostensibly, a person in there. Maybe even several!

So, Ashley stared at the detached hand. She frowned at it, and recalled each and every single instance of her intuition telling her things she mistakenly attributed to just good people-reading skills. There was a person in there, an entire soul alongside several more fragments. She just needed to feel it - the tiniest thread to pull on.

Nothing happened.

For several long minutes, nothing happened.

Ashley got increasingly fed up as time went on, soon beginning to mentally rant and rave that she was supposed to be the child of the two strongest wizards to ever live. Stronger than gods, even! She should be able to do something as small as link her mind to a pet rock! Frustrated, she let out a heavy sigh and gazed around at her surroundings, just to take her mind off of this for a few moments. Everybody was dead asleep, wrapped up in sleeping bags, watching the fire next to her, or - in Schwarz's case - on Grimm watch. Ashley brought her eyes back to the deep orange blaze, wondering where she'd made her mistake. Had her base assumption - that her powers should work at all - been it? Or had Aldric been very literal when saying the hand would protect her - in that she wouldn't access it at all because -

Wait a second.

Ashley blinked, and swept her head back over the fire and her companions. Full sleeping bags, an arm hanging outside the window of the truck, a young, raven-haired woman staring into the fire alongside her, grassy plains -

Ashley's eyes locked onto the newcomer. Where the hell had she come from?! Ashley blinked, and focused on them, only to see something that actually was macabre, not amusingly so, like Aldric's 'severed hand'. She saw, sitting before the fire, something she could only describe as a mutilated ghost. The woman sat there, gazing into the fire, her arms wrapped around her knees, but neither her arms nor her legs were connected to her body - all of them were severed at the base and were leaking orange smoke right in the space between the limb and the stump. She wore a long, elegant, red dress, whose back was stained in a large, deep pool of crimson blood.

On its own, Ashley might not have recognized this person.

But it was her eyes that brought it all home - eyes she had seen before in only one person: Two bright orange orbs, dully reflecting the fire before her. The look in the eyes was hollow, devoid of emotion, and almost even devoid of any presence of mind at all. Looking into those eyes, Ashley saw none of the maternal love or simmering guilt she had instinctually expected, and of course she wouldn't: This woman was decades younger than the one she'd met, and was not the one that had redeemed themself.

And yet was the same person regardless.

"Oh… My… Gods." Ashley breathed, looking down at Aldric's hand, and then back up to a much younger Cinder Fall. "You're actually in there!" She breathed.

Fall remained completely silent, not even acknowledging Ashley with a glance. For a moment, Ashley wondered if this connection was one-way, until she realized she could feel Cinder's presence as much as see her. More than that, she could feel everyone around her! All of SSAD, Pyrrha, Jaune, the small animals at the edge of the plains, it was like little fires, all sharing their heat with her. It didn't burn, not like the campfire in front of her, but there was an energy to them like fire.

A literal spark of life? Ashley wondered, as she regarded young Cinder.

It was, indeed, the younger Fall - the one Aldric had killed to create the rock. But strangely, she seemed older regardless - her eyes were duller than her mother, Solidus'. Whether it was her semblance, or her rock-born connection to Fall's soul, it made Ashley realize that she had been aware this entire time. Stuck in a rock, in a wall. Unable to move, unable to fight, to feel, to scream, unable to do anything but exist. How far did that extend, she wondered? The thought of whether or not Cinder was even capable of sleeping in there brought a chill to Ashley's chest.

Looking closer, Ashley realized too that Cinder's fire burned a lot brighter than those around her, but interestingly, she didn't sense the same life from the added heat of Cinder's soul. She could sense the presence of those other souls she'd grafted onto hers, adding layers to her own, but she couldn't sense life from them. It wasn't four innocent souls grafted onto her own, it was four sources of energy and power layered on top of hers. Space heaters surrounding a fireplace. Layers that Ashley somehow, intrinsically, knew she could peel apart until only that base blaze remained, but also knew that doing so would break the perpetual engine that made the rock what it was.

It gave her as much an appreciation for her father's power - and his understanding of it - as much as it did a sense of horror for Fall's fate. Aldric had placed her into a personal hell, turned her into a superweapon, and then left her utterly alone for twenty years. Looking at her, seeing how she just stared into the fire, face blank, expression haunted and exhausted, and so unresponsive as to be catatonic, Ashley couldn't see anything but a broken, tortured woman.

Before her, Ashley didn't see the towering, evil titan that the world knew, and like when she met her father and mother, she didn't feel what she expected to feel. She didn't feel the fear and revulsion everybody described when talking about her, she just felt remorse and pity. She didn't see the woman who fashioned herself a goddess, she saw a thin, hollowed out shell of a person. She didn't feel the anger and fury Aldric had literally kept so close, just the distant, rattling melancholy that came from looking at someone who had been broken on the most fundamental of levels. Fall, kept alive and aware in a real life hell, just wasn't any of those things anymore, didn't engender any of those feelings, and didn't look like any of those things. She was as her mother described: A dumb, angry, scared, kid, barely younger than Ashley herself.

One who had been completely written off by her only friend.

Did Aldric know? Worse - would he care if he did? For all the things he struggled against, all the people he fought, there was only one person he seemed to out and out hate. If he did know that Fall was aware of everything, would he have done anything? Ashley thought back to him dropping the rock in the coffee, but she had gotten the impression that it had been more of a comedic, self-soothing act than it was something he did out of genuine loathing. He'd even claimed to have lost sleep over the possibility that the four Maidens still lived in Cinder, and were trapped alongside her in the rock. From that perspective, Ashley wanted to believe Aldric might have done something decisive and put Fall out of her misery, if he knew. But on the other side of the coin, Aldric was living in a self-imposed exile both in order to protect the peace he fought for, and because he felt it akin to a prison sentence. It was quite possible he might leave Cinder to suffer this fate for as long as he was around, and only release her when he was on his own way out.

Lost for answers, Ashley could only settle on one thing for certain: Much like Aldric and Solidus Cinder, for all of the verifiable evil Fall had done, Ashley felt terrible for her. 'A fate worse than death' was something thrown about in books, television, and melodramatic CCT posters, but Ashley couldn't help but believe this was genuinely something worse than just dying. She wished she knew what to say to Fall, or even how to start a conversation with her. She wished she could do something for her - but even beginning at what that something was, Ashley couldn't grasp. As she struggled with this, a part of her hoped that Fall would solve the problem for her and start talking on her own, but she never did. Even when Ashley moved closer and sat next to her to try and prompt some kind of reaction, the mutilated, broken Ghost didn't so much as blink. Her bright orange eyes stayed locked onto the fire before them.

In the end, Ashley decided to just be there for her, and hope that it would help somehow. She stayed awake, through each changing of the Grimm Watch, just sitting next to the mutilated, broken spirit until the sun rose and everyone began to stir.

"Um…" She blinked, and turned to see Jaune Arc standing above her, a look of concern on his face. "Were you awake all night?"

Ashley turned to Cinder, only to find she had gone. Worse was that in her place there was just nothing. No emotion left behind, no lingering presence, nothing but air, and the vague feeling of her existence in the rock.

"Yeah." It was going to be one hell of an uphill battle, but she was either going to get Aldric to break this rock, or she would do it herself.

"Are you okay?" Jaune asked, kneeling next to her.

Ashley frowned down at Aldric's hand, then looked up to Jaune, and smiled, appreciating the gesture. "I will be." She really didn't know what to think about tonight, and it left her feeling melancholic, which Jaune didn't need a telepathy semblance to pick up on.

Nor, it seemed, did the rest of her team, because she was placed on the bed of the truck alongside the entirety of SSAD, who took it upon themselves to start playing some of Dusty's 'truck bed games' in an attempt to help her out of it. It didn't fix everything, a small corner of her mind would never forget the hollow look on Fall's face, or the unnatural silence that came from her, but the gesture did at least make her smile.

That day they made it to the plains areas of Sanus, and their speed picked up tremendously. Unfortunately, even with everyone driving in shifts to maximise drive time, it still took almost a week to get back to Vale proper. During this time, Ashley played off and on with the god rock, but found that it really wasn't a tool she would get any use out of. It commanded life and death, and she had no desire to end the latter, and felt unqualified to interact with the former on this fundamental of a level. She succeeded a few times in coaxing Fall out of her literal shell, but the effect was like bringing a mannequin on a road trip: There was just nothing there. Fall just stared out into the distance, completely hollow, utterly silent. It left Ashley just feeling worse about the woman's fate, and soon she decided that, assuming there was anything left in there at all, it might be for the best to stop coaxing her out and adding to her torture. At least until she could consult with Aldric to just end it for good.

When they made it back within CCT range, Ruby didn't answer her scroll at all, and while this was concerning, the lack of any major attacks making the news mollified the group somewhat. This changed when they finally made it back to Vale. After passing through the walls, Jaune took the final leg of the trip, volunteering to return the truck in a way that made it clear he wasn't asking, and he wanted some personal time. As much as he'd moved on from Aldric, it was clear that being press-ganged into acting in his interests wasn't sitting well with him, no matter how much he'd agreed to do it in the end.

Ashley felt bad about it as she watched him drive off, but then Pyrrha's scroll lit up, showing Ruby's face. Before she was able to get a word in edgewise, Ruby had already motor-mouthed through half of the story so fast that all of SSAD gave Dusty a look, only to shift their attention back when his only comment was a simple 'Hi'. When Pyrrha gave Ruby the quick and dirty version of the goings on, Ashley was ready to swear she heard Ruby's shrieking 'What?!' even without the scroll.

As it turned out, Ruby had adopted one of Aldric's tricks, and had deigned to hide in plain sight in between each hit on Torchwick. She was, at that moment, in Vale, hiding out and planning the next one. Ashley would have been frustrated at having suffered this 'under your nose' trick again, if she wasn't instead impressed at the fact that Ruby had gotten herself a room in the Garden. Or, to be more accurate, that Neo had forced her to take one.

Because of course she had: If Torchwick ever found out where she was, he would promptly be unable to do anything lest he invite the wrath of the one criminal organization he was unallowed to touch. After some brief discussion, Ashley decided the best place to meet Ruby was the Garden, especially given that the other actors would likely only allow a personal meeting in such a place.

So SSAD and Pyrrha split apart, the latter going to acquire two more of the actors, which in turn would allow them the weight necessary to bring the final two to the metaphorical, and literal, table. The former made their third return to the Garden, being guided to its main entrance by Neo. SSAD found themselves more impressed by the main, grandiose entrance than they had been the secondary one, but didn't have much time to appreciate it, as the mute assassin was there to greet them and bring them to Ruby's apartment-sized room.

Ruby was promptly brought up to speed on both SSAD's quest, and Neo's involvement in it. To say she was appalled would be an understatement - much unlike Pyrrha, she treated Aldric's exile as sacred. She'd regretted invoking him to fight Adam Taurus from the absolute instant she'd done it, considered it a miracle that nobody had escalated from there or from Rosemary Ashmore's followup, and here Ashley had gone right up to poke the Beowolf. Meanwhile, to her intense frustration, Neo had more or less gone behind Ruby's back to ensure it happened, in effect putting Ashley and her team in dangers whose extremity they only barely comprehended.

Being dressed down by her hero was humbling, feeling like she was being hit all the way back in her childhood, but either Ruby wasn't nearly as angry as she seemed, or she recognized the effect she was having, because after a calming breath, she then asked Ashley what her plan was. When she finished with this, the sun had long since begun to set - although one wouldn't be able to tell, this far underground. From the look on Ruby's face, Ashley was pretty sure the only reason she wasn't dressed down again was because when she and her team finished explaining it, her scroll started ringing.

As did Neo's.

And Ruby's.

On Ashley's scroll was Pyrrha, who was calling to report 'mission accomplished'. Ashley might have been unable to believe Pyrrha had gotten through to that many people in that many high places so quickly, but then Neo proudly displayed her own scroll, upon which was a text message from one of the last two actors:

I'm on my way, be a dear and don't change your number again. - RT

On Ruby's end was Weiss Schnee, extremely confused as to why she was being told by her boss that she needed to pack her bags and be ready to leave for Vale in two hours, and suspecting her and her escapades had something to do with it.

Even seeing the evidence in front of her, Ashley had the hardest time believing that the hardest part of her plan really had just been waiting until she could light a fire under everyone.

Pyrrha was the first to arrive at the Garden, having decided to go straight there and not wait for everyone else's arrival. Upon arrival, she spent the night filling Ruby in on how she ended up running into Aldric again. Ashley was tempted to watch the growing debate over whether or not they should have left Aldric alone or given him this kick in the pants, but Dusty made the choice for her: Now that they were 'kinda sorta supposed to be here', he wanted to go see what kind of food real life supervillains made.

Ashley wasn't sure what impressed and surprised her more: That despite being taken by Neo to one of the fanciest restaurants she'd ever seen, Dusty ordered 'A never ending plate of your hottest wings', or the fact that the kitchen staff actually had hot wings and didn't question his order.

The next morning, Pyrrha received updates from the other actors, and informed of their arrival, Neo went to secure a suitably sized meeting room. After they prepared, everyone waited in the meeting room. Jaune arrived before everyone else, and when Ruby expressed some light surprise at seeing him, he just shrugged and said he felt he had to see this through. Neo tried poking fun at how he seemed to be a little familiar with the Vale Garden, but was cut off by the arrival of the next two people and her need to go get them. Heralded by Neo, they were also the two actors Ashley had the least concerns over.

Solidus Cinder had long since proven she was no longer an enemy of Aldric, or of Remnant, and was fully willing to stay in her lane and keep her head down so long as there weren't any fires to fight. If today went well, Ashley had the utmost confidence that the only thing that would change on that front would simply be the fact that their relation to eachother was now open knowledge, and Cinder would try interacting with her more frequently. She entered the room and the only reason she didn't bee-line for Ashley was because all of the seats around her were taken by the rest of her team; she nevertheless looked relieved that Ashley was okay, and Ashley could tell from one look in her eyes that she knew she'd found Aldric.

Following Cinder was Ozma, who was slightly more of a concern, but only because of how everyone else acted around him. He wasn't a wildcard as much as his mere existence made everyone else a little jumpy and unpredictable. From every story she'd heard about the never-dying man, as well as her own experience with him, Ashley couldn't decide anything about his personal moralities. Instead, she could only judge the one thing she knew for a fact: For all everyone seemed to distrust him, he never seemed to stray from the path. If his act really was an act, then he was one of those villains that did good for wrong reasons. All things considered, she'd take that. This in mind, Ashley was certain that, much like Cinder, if everything stayed calm, he'd have no problem with how things played out. Ashley even went so far as to suspect a fire could actively start, and even if it caused damage, if it was put out in the end, he'd be willing to move forward. When he entered the room, he individually smiled at every one of his students - former and current - before taking a seat.

They all engaged in idle chit-chat while waiting for the next of the actors to arrive. Ozma was glad Ruby was okay despite her war, and was amenable to discussing later Schwarz's inquiries about how schooling would play out, given the time they were missing. Cinder was curious about how Aldric was holding up, unsurprised that his crops hadn't improved at all, and was mortified about how SSAD had nearly died by flying over the null-zone. Ashley considered, but deciding against telling Cinder about the god rock with her soul in it, both out of prudence and because she felt it would be a bad idea with so many ears around. Pyrrha thought it was endearing that Cinder had kept a close eye on Ashley all these years, Ruby wanted more stories on what it had been like growing up with Ecru and Srebro, Jaune and Schwarz struck up a conversation about how similar their entries into Beacon had been, Dusty started trying to annoy Sylvie, and on it went until their next arrival.

Roman Torchwick marched through the doors, a silver-eyed bodyguard behind him, cane in front of him, head held high and his chin held out. The only reason Ashley didn't feel a chill run down her spine was because almost every person in this room would side against him in any kind of confrontation, if not every single person. He was a bit of a wildcard in all of this - Ashley recognized that he'd known who she was almost since day one, and had sat on that information. That told her he wasn't the type to start fires, even if he had everything he needed ready to go at a moment's notice. But she also knew from reputation and from the Record that he hadn't done that out of the kindness of his heart - if using Ashley's identity would benefit him more than it would have been detrimental to him, he would have used it without hesitation. Fortunately for Ashley, she was here mitigating that exact advantage - far more people knew who she was now, making that information less valuable, and in effect, making it more likely that Torchwick would take a seat at this table, and accept a ceasefire, if not an outright end to this conflict and a return to the status quo.

Of course, being who he was, he couldn't just walk in, exchange greetings, and sit down, he had to own the room. So when he entered, he grinned smugly, nodded at his guard to stay outside, swept his thin eyes over the room, saw Ashley, and bowed.

"So nice to finally make your acquaintance, young lady!" He tittered in a sing-song voice. "I must admit, a part of me knew something was going to happen when the first time your name crossed my desk was when you dismantled several of my boys. Although frankly, your aunts going Terran on me and calling in Ruby surprised even me." He grinned, pulling out a chair at the head of the table and sitting down.

Ashley immediately felt the urge to poke the Beowolf on this, just to knock him down a peg. She was pretty sure mentioning that she wasn't just in the Garden the night he freaked out, but had witnessed him, might cause him to stumble. In the end she let it go, knowing it probably wasn't a good idea to antagonize one of the people she was going to be negotiating with.

Schwarz, on the other hand: "Dusty, Bad Cop."

"Oh, okay - uh, Mister Torchwick? Hi, I'm Dusty, my friend told me to call you an asshole." A beat, "you're an asshole. Stop robbin' farms, what do you really think you'll get done but just making everyone's lives miserable? My uncle's buddy's daughter's boyfriend's daddy got robbed by one of your guys a couple years ago and man, he had to sell his truck to get everything back in order! We were all pullin' double duty for months until he could get a loan for a new one! That's how I found my semblance was by pulling a sleigh halfway across the fields!"

"Oh my word, the brute can speak." Torchwick murmured, still having to look up to meet Dusty's eyes, despite the fact that Dusty was sitting down, and halfway across the room. "If I had walked over to shake the young Lilly's hand, would you have tried to eat me, or punch me into a different room?"

"Yes sir." Dusty grinned an open-mouth smile.

"Charming." Torchwick turned back to Ashley, then over to Cinder. "It's been… What, twenty years now? You haven't aged a day. No hard feelings, I hope?" He winked, while reaching into his coat and retrieving a cigar. "So why do I get the strangest feeling we're still waiting on someone?"

"We are." Ozma said, leaning forward. "I suspect you're only a part of why we're here."

"Well I would certainly hope I'm a bit more than a part. I did kick things off to begin with, after all." He looked down to Ruby, "I would hope you count yourself lucky our second round got interrupted when it did, little red. I was having a wonderful time preparing a gift." He winked, but before Ruby could speak, he turned to Neo.

The two stared at each other for several long moments.

"How's the boy?" Neo smirked, then signed something in response that Ashley didn't understand, to which Torchwick shrugged his head. "Oh, fair enough." He turned back to Ashley, seeming to decide to skip the rest of the people in the room. "So, Miss Ringleader. Who else are we waiting for?"

On cue, Neo's scroll lit up, and she exited the room. Torchwick cooed with interest, and leaned back in his chair. A few minutes later, their final guest arrived, heralded first by Neo, then by Weiss Schnee, clad in her military-style combat uniform and an ostentatious hat. Her eyes swept over the room, and briefly lingered on Ruby and Pyrrha. Whatever was silently communicated between them stayed that way, and she stepped to the side.

The last actor, James Ironwood, entered the room. Much like Weiss' uniform, his practically shined a bright white. He nodded to Weiss, then to Ozma, before examining the rest of the people in the room. Cinder got an outright scowl and a twitch of the hand, but nothing else. Ruby, Jaune, and Pyrrha got a moment each of eye contact, Torchwick got a frown, Neo got nothing at all, and SSAD got a tilt of the head that said 'who are these people?' He took a seat at the corner of the table closest to the door, which Weiss shut behind him before she and Neo took their own seats at the table.

"I don't understand why you would need a mediator in a place like this." Ironwood said, plainly. "Why am I here? Why did you -" He frowned over to Pyrrha, "call in favors with my Lieutenant to get me here?" He shifted over to Ruby, then to Torchwick. "What does it have to do with you two…" He gave Cinder a look, "why the hell are you here, and who -" He turned to SSAD, "are you?"

"Got to love military intelligence at work." Torchwick intoned, puffing on his cigar.

Ashley wished she could have just jumped right into it, but frankly, she was hit by a wave of anxiety, as it fully settled on her the meeting of the minds she'd managed to pull together. She was pretty sure she had assembled every living member of Aldric's Justice League and his Watchmen, sans only Adam Taurus and Ruby's uncle. It was humbling, considering that a year ago she'd just been some kid trying to brute-force her way through a combat school.

As always, in these moments of weakness, her team picked up her slack, in their characteristic fashion.

In this case, Sylvie cut to the chase: "She's Ashley Aldric."

Dusty pointed across the room, "that's her momma."

And Schwarz buried his head in his hands like an exasperated father. "There was a better way to do that." He actually got a pat on the back from Jaune at that, which brought a grin out of Ashley.

Of everyone in the room, the only two that didn't know this were Schnee and Ironwood. Of those two, astonishingly, neither even gave Ashley a second glance at the declaration. The former blinked, and snapped her head over to Ruby, understanding dawning behind her controlled expression and widening eyes. The latter swept his gaze right past Ashley to land on Torchwick, a scowl forming on his face as his hand twitched again.

"How long…" He rumbled through clenched teeth. "Did you know."

Flippant as always, Torchwick rolled his head over to Ashley, "how old are you?"

Ironwood's face fell into his hand and he groaned.

"For what it's worth, James, the only two people in this room that didn't learn this fact recently are him and her mother." Came Ozma, giving Ironwood a sympathetic frown. "And those two facts -"

"How long did you know?!" Ironwood snapped, before turning his heavy glare on Ashley. "Did you set this up? Or did he? Where is he?! Where's your father?!"

Ashley opened her mouth, but Cinder verbally stepped in. "He's keeping to his word, General. As he always has."

Ironwood shoved a finger in Cinder's direction, "you aren't wearing cuffs because you've been hiding out down here. But that doesn't mean you get to talk." He gave Ashley another look, now appraising her. "You I want to talk." He demanded, as fiercely as a career military man could.

Ashley took in a deep breath, and just jumped right into it. As best she understood, the only people present that actually had the whole story, start to finish, were her and her team. So, to ensure everyone was on the same page, she laid it all out for them, starting from the beginning, when she cleaned the clocks of several of Torchwick's goons, all the way to now. Everything she knew, everything she learned, exactly as she had come to know and learn it.

At the end, she decided to get the easiest thing out of the way: "I wanted to solve this problem - Ruby and Torchwick - the only way I figured I could. By sitting you two down, explaining that it was a misunderstanding, and begging you two to stop."

Torchwick immediately burst out into laughter. "You poor, sweet child. I admire your little attempt, but you are neither of your parents." Ashley noticed Cinder close her eyes and take a calming breath. "Little Red is your excuse, a problem that was effectively solved the moment you called this little ceasefire and made public all the information that caused the conflict in the first place." He casually flicked his cigar, maintaining eye contact with Ashley as he did so, before shifting over to Ruby. "Little Red -"

"I'm not going to give you favors, Torchwick." Ruby cut in, fiercely.

"Ironically, you are going to be giving me a lot of favors. Just not the ones you expect, because I know I'd only be bringing myself more trouble if I ever tried such a thing with you. No, I'm pretty sure our collective source of anxiety gave her aunts a significant portion of Marcus Black's life savings, and since they were the ones that got you to start this, get me half of whatever they have and we'll call it even. You're on the honor system, but I'll be sorely disappointed if you give me less than five coins."

From behind a raised eyebrow, Ruby gave Ashley a look, silently asking permission. Ashley just shrugged, figuring half of more money than she knew how to spend was still more money than she knew how to spend, and at the end of the day, she didn't really intend or want to interact with the Garden enough for it to be a concern. After a few moment's consideration, Ruby turned back to Torchwick with a sigh and a nod.

"Oh, and an apology too!"

"Don't push it, Roman." Cinder snapped, causing Torchwick to grin and raise his hands in surrender.

The entire time, Ironwood's eyes never left Ashley. She could see gears turning in his head, could practically hear him wrestling with the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, innocent and uninvolved with things he hated, and yet was also, paradoxically, the exact opposite due to her lineage. Although he didn't seem yet to decide whether to visit the sins of her parents upon her, he seemed to be realizing what Torchwick had implied moments ago, as evidenced by his next attempt to cut to the chase:

"You went directly from your father to here, and brought us all together. Rose and Torchwick's conflict was a pretense, it didn't need me here, or even your mother and Ozma. You had everything you needed to end that without bringing us here." From the way he looked at her, he clearly didn't fall in line with Torchwick's opinion that Ashley wasn't as skilled at this game as her parents. After pausing, he took a moment to take in a deep breath, and then let it out. "Forgive me. I don't have good memories about your father, and this is dragging them up. Please - what are we all really here for?"

Aside from the god rock, it had been the only part of the story she'd avoided telling, but when she swept her eyes over the room, she realized that everybody seemed to have realized where the wind was blowing, and were gearing up for her to say it.

So, with a deep breath, she went for it. The world had moved forward, but Aldric had anchored himself in one place. She couldn't fix the problems he created because he'd tied off all of his loose ends, and so she wanted to save the man who saved the world. She, like him, understood the precarious balance he'd left in his wake, and how his return could upset that balance, but she, unlike him, was willing to put faith in others. She was willing to explore that most obvious of solutions:

Just straight-up asking.

She left the fact that Ironwood was her biggest concern go unspoken - primarily because almost every pair of eyes in the room ended up on him after a while. She did her best to not join them all, but she couldn't resist giving him a look every now and then as she continued laying down her reasoning.

It was only here and now, looking at him, that Ashley gained a true appreciation for just what Ironwood was, with regard to her father. He was perhaps the only person left on Remnant that actively considered him a threat that needed to be dealt with and prepared for. He'd spent years putting together military units, spy drone programs, and contingency plans for Aldric's fall. He was the only person on Remnant that just couldn't bring himself to think of him in any other terms but adversarial.

Didn't that sound familiar?

Even more than Torchwick, who played the game so much like Aldric that the man himself was worried he'd never respected him enough, Ironwood thought like him. It made her wonder: Did Ironwood rage against and despise Aldric so much because of the things Aldric had done, or because he saw pieces of himself in him? Or, worse, was it because how much like Aldric had been simply unable to conceive of Fall's turn to the light, Ironwood was simply unable to see Aldric as anything but this terrifying, literally alien force of nature that had dominated a planet in two years? This thought slowly caused a pit to open up in her stomach, a dark sense of foreboding filling her mind as Ironwood looked her in the eyes. She saw in his a frown, a look of determination that said he'd made a decision, and was going to see it through.

Just as Ashley felt the pricklings of despair, Ironwood turned to Ozma. "Would you let him?" His voice was as steely as his gaze, just as determined.

Ozma, meanwhile, remained the picture of uncanniness, as he smiled stiffly. "Of course, James." He said, frankly. "As much as I respect why he chose to do it, I've lamented his exile from the moment he chose to enter it. Once with Miss Nikos, and now with Miss Lilly, I've tried to bring him back for precisely the reasons she voiced." He indicated the two of them in turn. "He is not the devil you believe him to be. He is a man suffering the guilt of decisions made -"

"During a war you brought him into." Ironwood pointed out, with a scowl. "Don't think I've forgotten that, Ozma."

"I would point out…" Ruby raised a hand, "he's stuck to his word this entire time. How many crises have we had since Salem? He only ever came back -"

"Again, when you called him." Ironwood leveled his gaze onto Ruby.

"To do something he specifically said he would do." Cinder stepped in. "Three people he would come back for. Just that. No matter what has happened before or since, he only came back for one of those three people."

"Then we're going to address how you broke your word?" Ironwood turned to her, "you and he 'swore' you would stay away from your daughter, and yet there you were. You stayed near her and kept an eye on her for every one of those ten years."

"I would argue that's a point for us, Ironwood." Cinder crossed her arms, orange eyes boring into his. "Neither of us have made any noise in twenty years but for Taurus. We even lived right under your nose for a decade and you didn't know until we left."

"James, you're speaking to a woman who perhaps more than anyone has proven her loyalties now lie in the light. Across from her is a daughter who wants to do for her parents what they did for her. Prisoners who have shown good behavior for this long are typically allowed relaxed security, why not extend that allowance to him?"

"I certainly hate to side with the General, but I wouldn't think it unreasonable to point out that the deck certainly has been stacked against him. Of everyone in this room, he's the only one that holds his particular opinion." Torchwick took a drag from his cigar, before flicking it in Weiss' direction. "Even the heiress-in-waiting privately likes to admit he had a point." He turned over his shoulder to look at her directly, grinning smugly at her.

"Do I not count?" Jaune challenged.

"Not since you lost your holy sword, no." Torchwick gave him a look that said he was valued below even the farmer. "Especially not since I think your opinion is the most neutral of us all, or have you soured on our alien in the intervening decades?"

Jaune scowled at Torchwick, before sighing. "I haven't soured on him, but I still don't like him."

"And yet…?" Torchwick rolled his hand.

"I honestly was surprised to learn he'd sat in a corner of the world for all this time." Jaune admitted, "I actually felt a little bad for him, and realized he might not have been lying about feeling guilty about it all. Sure, he did a lot of bad things, but… Well, it's an open secret that every country has spies and agents that do a lot of the same things, and they're allowed to come home. And then -" He nodded to Pyrrha and Ruby, "- we sometimes have to kill people. Some of us specialize in fighting people specifically, and Grimm as an afterthought." He nodded to Ironwood, "you turned your entire country's Huntsmen into soldiers. But we're judging Aldric for doing the same things we'd expect all of them to do? We're expecting him to just go away forever? It doesn't really seem fair."

Ever the one to poke the beowolf, Torchwick spoke up, "I notice you don't mention Cinder, there."

Jaune rolled his eyes and huffed. "She's even more complicated. Look - I don't like Aldric. Or Cinder. But I realized when I saw him again that I was just wasting energy hating him. So fine, if he came back and never made noise, I wouldn't care anymore."

Torchwick grinned and raised his cigar as though to toast, before turning around to Weiss. "Your turn! Are you going to contribute at all?" He stuck the cigar back in his mouth.

"I didn't plan to." Said Weiss, before she gave Ashley a brief, but sympathetic glance. "But if I'm going to be forced to, I would admit that they all have a point. No one he worked with or against has changed their opinion about him, but by this point it's not like we would actively seek out and resist his return if it remained as quiet as he's always been. The only exceptions to that would be Yang and General Ironwood, the former of whom would probably never know unless she was told, and the latter of whom is the second reason this meeting was called." She then nodded to Ruby and Pyrrha, "They also have a point in that he has stuck to his word and remained quiet but for one time. After Taurus, he went right back to exile. Then Ashmore showed up, and he could have done what he would have done once: Killed her to protect his work, and nobody would have ever known… But he didn't, because he said he wouldn't. Even after Ashmore fizzled out, he ostensibly could have returned, taken Ashley back, wiped his team's memories, and resumed their lives. Literally no one would have ever known but him and Cinder. But he didn't, because he said he wouldn't. Under that auspice, what does it matter if he's at his ranch or living on Patch?

"But… On the other hand." She turned to Ozma, "Torchwick and Ironwood also have a point, in that few people here who outright despise him are here to speak to Ironwood's case. If we had Yang, Blake, or Qrow in here, the air would feel different. Aldric is a threat, that only holds himself accountable to himself. He had zero stake in our world but the vaguest notions of what he had initially believed to be a cartoon, and yet he took it upon himself to join our war and win it by any means. He may have been ashamed of it every time, but he still killed anyone and everyone in between him and victory, and has implied more than once that he even had trouble seeing us as people due to the aforementioned cartoon. He has said and has thus far kept to his vow to not return unless certain circumstances were met, but those are all regarding threats he is aware of. What would happen if a new threat arose? Would he still stay away? Or would he join in to resist it utilizing his old methods? Ironically, keeping him separated from Humanity may protect it better than allowing him to return to it. "

Ozma gave Weiss a piteous look, "you speak as though you've put much thought into this, Miss Schnee."

"She's the head of a task force whose purpose is to be ready if he steps out of line." Ironwood responded, "we've spoken of these possibilities for years, and what she hasn't mentioned is the fact that for all his similarities to us, he is a literal alien. A fact of which you all have either forgotten, or never truly considered. Whether we share a universe or not, if his people came first or we did, his species evolved on a planet and under circumstances that are alien to ours. Everything we've scavenged from our conflicts with the Terrans has shown us that they've evolved on a world that offered them no favors, no help, nothing.

"In Aldric and in the other Masters, we saw what happened when you gave people who evolved like that power beyond their ken. Every single one of them acted like he did - they all chose to work alongside Salem to deceive her. Every. Single. One. If they did that, then it stands to reason that the only reason they didn't go as far as he did is because he cut them off at the pass.

"All told, what does that say about his species? They're a people whose sole, overriding, imperative is to survive in a universe that they have evolved to be biologically hard-wired into believing is utterly indifferent to them. That shaped everything about them, from their biology, to their psychology, to their sociology." He finally settled his gaze on Ozma, "so no, Ozma. I don't view him as a demon. I view him as something worse: An alien. A creature whom by definition cannot be understood by us. Worse than that, an alien that so convincingly looks and acts like us that he's convinced every single person who knows that basic fact that it doesn't matter - that he's no different from us.

"A fact which should terrify you."

"James." Ozma said, softly. "I cannot claim to have ever truly considered this perspective. Frankly, if anyone in this room says the opposite, I wouldn't believe them. From that perspective, he is a great unknown, yes, but I believe it prudent to point out how every lie he ever told served the purpose he fulfilled, and when speaking plainly of that purpose, he never lied. He said he would retire somewhere he could watch the sun rise, and he did. He said he would put down his sword when Salem was ended, he did. He said he would not return but for three variables. You fear an unknown he has worked to dispel. If you fall on that fear and act on it, it could very well turn you into him." Ironwood gave him an exasperated look, one that spoke of annoyance at hearing an age-old argument.

"I will acknowledge that he's been quiet ever since Salem, and that he has kept to his word and only returned for one of those things he said would bring him back. If he sees fit to stay on his ranch until he grows old and dies, I would prefer that over everything else. But there's an old Atlesian adage that says if you have a room with ten men discussing the snow, and nine of them agree it will be clear through the week, then the tenth must be strong and disagree to ensure all options are considered. This way, if the storm comes, the tenth man has a plan that can guide his people home to survive it.

"You may not agree with me, but I would ask you all if this is something you've truly considered, or if your emotions are getting in the way. I don't care if I stand alone on this, I will gladly continue to do so no matter how much I'm hated for it. I will be that tenth man, because the subject you all agree on is. Literally. Alien."

"Is that to say, then, that I'm alien too?" Ashley asked, doing her best to meet Ironwood's glare with one of her own.

Ironwood regarded her for a long moment, "I frankly don't know what you are. But that you're so ardently using our methods and not his would convince me that his gamble worked: You've been raised to be one of us."

"She, specifically, is Human." Said a grinning Ozma, as he lowered his eyes and looked off into memory.

That got a harsh glare from Ironwood, until Schwarz spoke up. "Will you at least acknowledge that you might be the tenth man in a room of people saying the sky is blue?" Ashley thought it might not be the best example, but she figured it would get the point across, and she did notice a twitch in behind his beard she was pretty sure was pensive.

Dusty picked up after him, "you did just admit he's been nice and quiet all this time. Is there really any harm in just… Doing what you've always been doing? Just that he wouldn't be in his ranch? Better to take care of a problem at home, and all that. And you know, here we've got therapists and stuff, and I'm willin' to bet he's the type that won't care if you got a spy therapist to just go back and report everything he says back to you, as long as it actually does help him in the end." He seemed like he was ready as always to keep speaking, but a light rapping of Sylvie's knuckles on his arm got him to quit while he was ahead.

"Send him to Menagerie." Was Sylvie's suggestion. "Blake Belladonna would appreciate his presence as a deterrent, but give him no favors. She would judge him as harshly as we all would want her to. He might even outright give her tools to keep him honest."

Ruby cringed, "I… Really don't think she'd appreciate not being a part of that decision."

"Perhaps, but it might be an idea worth exploring?" Ozma posed, "not now, but when we succeed in convincing him he would be accepted."

Ashley could see something growing in Ironwood's eyes, it seemed like equal parts surrender and resolve. What he offered as his next riposte seemed less like he was trying to continue to debate, and was more just offering his last struggle: "Even if you ignore all of this, there's still the fact that he has refused this exact thing twice. One of those requests literally came from his flesh and blood."

"To be fair, I was left with the impression that a small push would have done it." Pyrrha intoned.

Cinder indicated Ashley with, "I proved exactly that."

And Ashley finished with, "I had an idea as to how I could get it to happen. A way to push him back this way, and then show him that it wouldn't start any fires."

Slowly, her words dawned on everyone at the table, and all eyes settled on hers. Those on Ozma's side did so with curiosity, those on hers, with confidence, and on Ironwood's side, with equal parts trepidation and concern. She found those last feelings reflected in herself, a growing sense of unease filling her as Ironwood frowned and asked, "what idea?"

Despite the foreboding feeling growing inside her, Ashley responded: "Theatricality and deception." Of everyone, Torchwick was the only one who needed only that to realize where she was going, and he just leaned back and smiled. "Pull the same tricks on him that he's pulled on everyone else… And put on a show."

The next few hours consisted of SSAD going over everything they'd discussed and planned at Aldric's ranch. As she'd thought, Torchwick grinned the whole way through, imagining all the ways he would benefit from it in the end. Ironwood tried to strike at the plan's weaknesses, at the places and points SSAD had never considered, but the rest of the room came to their rescue. By the time it was all over, they had successfully created and ironed out a plan to trick the man who tricked the world.

Ironwood, after a time, stood up. "I'm alone in this. I can see that." The dark look of surrender and determination still filled his eyes, and left Ashley anxious. "I won't stop you from doing this, but I hope you'll pay me that same respect in return."

"James, if ever it became necessary, I'm certain all of us in this room would help you."

Ironwood didn't respond, instead turning on his heel and leaving. Weiss only lagged behind just long enough to nod her farewell to Ruby and Pyrrha, and soon the door closed.

Ashley couldn't hold it in a second longer, "I've got a bad feeling about him."

Ozma frowned at the door Ironwood had left through, even as he said: "I do too… But James is a man of his word. He said he will not prevent us from doing this. From a man in his position, that is about as open a declaration of support as he can give."

Torchwick laughed, as he flicked the last of his cigar, and put it out in a tray. "Oh, wonderful." He pushed the chair out and got to his feet, fetching his hat and slotting it on his head with a flourish. "Give me a few days, I'll be able to set up our stage." He chuckled, "I think you and he might appreciate it."

With that, Torchwick too made his departure, and Ashley suddenly found herself realizing that it was back to hurry up and wait. The plan was in motion, but there was nothing she could do about it but wait. Jaune left next, stating that he'd seen everything through that he needed to, but wasn't going to go this far to bring Aldric back. Ozma then had to make his departure to return to his duties at Beacon, with Cinder feeling obligated to keep an eye on him until this was all finished, at which point - assuming success - the three of them could discuss how to stand down the standoff. Ruby, Neo, and Pyrrha left next, each needing to be seen to some degree as per the plan, and while Ashley was left with her team, she found that instead of spending time with them, she just wanted to go home and see her aunts.

So she did exactly that, with SSAD splitting up until they heard from Torchwick and the time came to finish everything.

It felt much better than she thought it would to return home. For as much as this quest of hers had become about finding her parents and bringing them back into the light, they weren't who she thought of when she brought home to mind. Instead it was her loud auntie, the fastest thing on three legs who never seemed to truly slow down no matter how often she called herself a cripple. It was her gentle giant aunt, who was just as willing to obliterate a monster as she was to sit down with a blanket and coffee and watch TV.

Despite feeling like an eternity since she'd seen them last, she was hit with the reality that it had really only been a few weeks when she returned home and, after a round of back-breaking hugs, learned that the only noteworthy thing that happened on their end was that Srebro had begun finalizing her retirement. Signal had accepted her appointment as a teacher, and in a year she'd begin shifting away from the field and closer to preparing others for the field. It was a little melancholic for the Lillies, but they were all just happy that Srebro had beaten the odds and survived an entire career as a Huntress, with her health intact on top of that!

The goliath in the room came up that night at dinner, and Ashley could see those final dregs of the memory of Goud finally compel them to ask how her father was. She answered them honestly and told them he seemed to be the exact picture of the man and situation he'd been when Ashmore had found him a decade ago: Tired, filled with guilt, but not necessarily regret. They then asked her if she genuinely thought that her plan would work, and if it would help him in the end.

And Ashley could say nothing but yes.

She knew there was a long road ahead of her after this, just as there would be for Aldric and Cinder. The Schwarz in her helped to steady her expectations and remind her that things wouldn't be sunshine and rainbows when this was all done, but all she needed was to take the first step, and then everything after was just taking one more step after that.

When the time came, SSAD was summoned by Torchwick to scope out their stage and make their preparations for the show. She wasn't sure what Torchwick found so entertaining about some random warehouse in the Industrial sector, but he was convinced that eventually, Aldric would get it, and when he did, he would certainly hear about it.

Despite all the moving parts, the plan was deceptively simple.

They just had to get Ashley killed!

Or at least, they had to convince Aldric - who was most assuredly keeping up to date now - that she was about to die.

The catch was that they had to do so in a way that he would believe. She couldn't just toss herself out a window and hope he would fly in to catch her. First, they needed to attract his attention. That was where Ruby and Pyrrha came in - a big, knockdown, drag-out brawl between them and Torchwick's forces in the middle of Vale would gain a lot of attention. As this would ostensibly appear to be a continuation of Ruby's private war against Torchwick, the addition of Pyrrha to her roster would no doubt start attracting a lot of eyes and news cameras once the news finally broke. From there, Ashley would have to pull a stunt right out of Aldric's playbook - something both incredibly smart, and extremely stupid:

She would directly invoke Aldric.

This had been the earliest idea she had - to use the semblances of everyone in SSAD to effectively transform her into Aldric. Before she'd had the idea to get Torchwick and then everyone else in on the con, the idea had been to convince him that she was Aldric, and throw down as best she could before the illusion broke. From there, with Torchwick ostensibly threatening her life, she figured Aldric would arrive and either prevent Torchwick from pulling the trigger, or just outright ask him not to. This still technically was the plan, but now Torchwick was a part of it, and she didn't have to figure out how or even if she could be a puppet being controlled by three puppeteers. It had gone from having to actually fight for her life, to just having to make it look good.

From there, when Torchwick broke the illusion and 'revealed' that it was Ashley fighting him, Aldric would either intervene then and there through some esoteric method, or begin his approach. If the former, they had nothing to worry about, and if the latter, they had the rest of SSAD to buy them some extra time. In an absolute worst case, Cinder could 'arrive' and start throwing down, which would absolutely attract Aldric's attention and force him to show up.

The most difficult parts of the plan were pieces that had only shown up once she'd gotten everyone else involved. Torchwick mentioned that the best way to ensure Aldric's eyes hit Vale was to ensure that the battle was big enough to attract news drones. Ruby and Pyrrha needed to be seen together, acting casual, but with purpose, to lend legitimacy to their upcoming campaign. Ashley asked where Torchwick would get so many people willing to be beaten to a pulp just for a performance act, to which he just laughed. Ozma vehemently wanted to ensure no civilian casualties occurred as a result of the battle, and on and on it went, all the little things and moving parts to ensure that this battle to attract the eye of a god wouldn't start a fire none of them could control.

As Ashley and her team practiced maneuvers and readied themselves for the show at Beacon, Ashley felt a confident smile grow across her face. Theatricality and deception, Aldric said, were powerful agents to the uninitiated. Put on a show, be larger than life, attract attention, and anybody who didn't know the trick would be enthralled. Aldric, under this auspice, was initiated, and so it stood to reason this wouldn't work. But that was exactly why it would work - for the same reason his favorite way to hide secrets and lies always worked. He knew the trick, so he wouldn't be expecting it to be used on him. Given who he was and how he did things, the 'throw it back in his face' method would likely only ever work once, so Ashley was glad no one else had tried pulling this particular stunt on him.

It felt like she hadn't so much as blinked, and the day came. Heralded by something as inane as a group text message from Torchwick giving them a time and a place, it was officially time to pull the dumbest stunt of her life. SSAD assembled in the cleared out area of the Industrial Sector, and went right back to hurrying up and waiting.

Ashley had no dust damn idea how her father did this for two years. It took two hours from their assembly to the first sign that Ruby, Neo, and Pyrrha were causing trouble, and then another after that for the first of many explosions to start ringing out. That wait had been agonizing, and yet Aldric had played Goud and spun his wheels for months.

As was the plan, her team got ready to move at a moment's notice when the fires finally started spreading. By that point, the afternoon had begun to bleed into the night, and just as news drones began to swarm the area, the warehouse just fell. The entire thing, brought to the ground in a giant plume of smoke and fire, only to then moments later be shot back into the air by Pyrrha's semblance, revealing her, Ruby, Torchwick's Gardener, and the man himself in a mech suit the size of her aunts' house.

Checking her scroll, Ashley found that, indeed, the Vale News Network was having a field day with this - seemingly having had the 'good fortune' to be the first ones to get direct footage of Ruby Rose's war on crime. The battle continued, with Ruby and Pyrrha putting on a damn good show of managing to take out Torchwick's Gardener, despite him 'nullifying' their powers in a display that few but those in the know would recognize. Going directly from him to Torchwick's mech would have challenged them under normal circumstances, and that believability lent itself to their performance, as Torchwick threw down so viciously that Ashley briefly wondered if it actually was a show he was putting on, or if it was in part him working out the frustrations Ruby had been giving him the past year.

Soon, the time came for SSAD's big entrance, when Pyrrha allowed herself to get shot out of the arena and Ruby started flagging by herself. The question had arisen how exactly their false Aldric would make his appearance - after all, it had to be believable enough to ostensibly fool Roman Torchwick, who had worked with him.

The answer, was of course: Just make it as big as possible. This was the same guy who had done 'Fear and Dead Men' and had crashed a warship into a dockyard while blasting alien rock music. As Torchwick loomed over the 'injured' and 'defeated' Ruby, they made their move. Each of them was a piece of the overall puzzle. Schwarz's semblance burned on all cylinders to make something big and visible to anyone that was watching, creating an illusion of an enormous stormcloud filling the sky, while transforming Ashley into her father. Dusty's semblance carried Ashley into the stormcloud and moved her like a puppet on strings. Sylvie's semblance turned her voice into Aldric's, and projected it loud enough that it sounded like it was coming from everywhere. Ashley's semblance, her reading and her understanding of Aldric, gave her the script she needed to read from, and feed to Sylvie to project outwards.

Like the Brother Gods themselves, she descended from the sky, calling out Torchwick and demanding a ceasefire. Torchwick, laughing both in-character and, Ashley suspected, a little out of it as well, faced 'Aldric' and greeted him, before demanding to know just what the hell he was doing here.

Ashley's response, before their 'battle' began: "Putting on a show."

SSAD's teamwork became essential to keeping up the ruse. Schwarz's focus had to remain unimpeachable to ensure 'Aldric' didn't vanish before the time was right. Dusty continued to puppeteer Ashley, using his semblance to add some punch to her attacks and speed her up when it came time to dodge and maneuver. Sylvie had to send small whispers of sonic blasts at the right times to ensure Ashley's attacks actually looked like they were hitting as hard as they should. They did their best, but Ashley was damn glad Torchwick was in on the con, because more than once something, somewhere slipped up. Dusty might lose his grip on his 'puppet', and Ashley would have to actually fight and react for real. Schwarz might blink at the wrong moment, and Torchwick would have to take a fall and send debris into the air to mask the wavering illusion. Sylvie would miss one of her sonic shots, and Ashley and Dusty would have to improvise to make the sudden shockwave seem intentional.

It didn't last the epic length she would have wanted it to, but she was honestly impressed they lasted the ten minutes they did, given the amount of moving parts going into their act. Unfortunately, when they made one slip-up too many, Torchwick got a good shot in on her and 'hit' her hard enough to send her flying into one of the toppled walls. The rest of SSAD deployed at this point, but he dealt with them in short order, both as part of the show, and because he figured they needed to give Aldric a bit more time before they played the Cinder card. Pyrrha had her second wind after this, while Ashley - able to play the 'injured' card pretty well thanks to what she was pretty sure was a broken rib - hoped she hadn't made a bad bet.

Pyrrha injured the mech, ripping off one of its limbs, but was taken back out of the fight by the limb detonating in her face. With Aldric still MIA, the last card they had played itself and Cinder arrived in time to give some of the injured an opportunity to regroup. Torchwick, as was his wont, didn't even try to throw down so far above his weight - he called for his recovered Gardener, who used his nullifying powers to even the playing field between the two of them and Cinder. Despite this, Cinder showed her vast skill in using her only remaining weapon - a brightly burning amethyst blade - to fight the two of them to a standstill.

As this occurred, the less injured members of SSAD, alongside Pyrrha, took the time to regroup, to prepare a second stand, but also to privately convene over whether or not this was working at all. They each had come to the conclusion that Aldric would have had some means of rapid-response, and he still wasn't here. Ashley felt her scroll vibrate in her pocket, but only had enough time to see that it had been a message sent by Ozma, and then another by Ruby, before things with Cinder began to 'deteriorate'.

As the 'script' demanded, and additionally as Aldric himself had hinted at believing, as skilled as Cinder was, being stripped of the power she used to define herself meant that skill and her weapon were all she had against two aura-users, one of whom was in an advanced mech and had planned for this possibility for years, and the other was a career, huntsman-killing assassin. Slowly but surely, she made it appear as though she were finding herself overwhelmed, until reinforcements were necessary.

Pyrrha leapt in first, gunning right for the Gardener, while Ashley and Dusty joined Cinder in fighting Torchwick, and Sylvie and Schwarz broke off to figure out where Ruby had vanished to. Ashley hadn't had an appreciation for just how fast and just how strong everyone else had been fighting until she realized that Cinder and Torchwick were having to slow themselves down when they re-entered the fray, and what was more: How fluidly they did so. Torchwick had to fake problems with his mech to make it believable, while Cinder instantly switched to a defensive form and began intercepting attacks thrown at her daughter.

Unfortunately, as much as they wanted to drag this out, the only ones among them good enough to fake fighting at a level that would convince Aldric were not the Rookies. It barely felt like they'd waded back into battle before they were stacking new injuries, and before Ashley knew it, for the first time since she'd met him - she heard one of Dusty's bones break. The giant, normally indestructible oaf let out such a holler of pain that it distracted everyone for a moment, before he threw caution to the wind and tackled the mech. Despite everything suggesting such a thing should be impossible, he managed to not only force Torchwick to divert all attention towards him, but even managed to push the mech back a full meter before things went from bad to worse. Torchwick's Gardener let out several low-strength but rapid-fire nullifying pulses, stunning everyone but his boss long enough to shove Pyrrha back, and then let out a much larger blast - this one enough to cause debilitating pain. This brought Ashley to her knees, caused Cinder to drop her weapon and grab one side of her face, and just put Dusty on the ground.

Ashley thought she heard a groan from Torchwick that spoke less of 'I'm angry' and more of 'that was too much', but before her 'allies' could recover or her 'enemies' could advance, things began to happen fast. Torchwick rounded on her and he started ranting about how she was the worst secret he'd ever bought though, but only got halfway through before his mech began to fall apart. Not due to the damage it had sustained, but it literally began to melt.

Ashley didn't understand how or why, but it looked like his ever-present cane just dissolved into goo inside the mech's cockpit, and the goo it turned into ate the mech right alongside it. As well as Torchwick's jacket, an act that seemed to frustrate and anger him in an 'I should have seen this coming' sort of way. As Torchwick got to his feet and his Gardener whipped around, Aldric, clad in his old armor, just appeared behind them, an enormous pistol in hand one hand, a lazy wave of the other sending the Gardener flying, and a simple warning on his lips: Torchwick hadn't done anything irrecoverably bad yet. If he stopped, no one would be crossing any lines tonight.

Ashley felt enormous relief flood her as both her gamble paid off, and Aldric didn't just go for the throat right out of the gate. The odds of him just executing Torchwick had been low, but given the circumstances, Ashley had privately worried it might be possible. As she tried to shake off the effects of the Gardener's power, Torchwick began whipping up a tete-a-tete with Aldric, and Ashley noticed Cinder's dropped weapon began to snake across the ground. It didn't, however, go to Cinder's hand, but rather it raised into the air behind her back. Ashley blinked at it, before realizing what this was a sign of. But then, before she could even think of something to do, Ashley's scroll began vibrating non-stop, and the sky lit up.

Everyone present flinched at the development, and the smoke and dust filling the air began to be cleared away by the rapid arrival of so many airships that Ashley couldn't count them all. Ashley beheld the veritable fleet roaring into position above them as her father turned about and raised his gaze skyward. From the way Aldric's shoulders didn't move an inch, he seemed unsurprised where even Torchwick, stumbling back a step, seemed genuinely taken aback. Ashley meanwhile was so stunned by the turn of events that the reality of the situation - of what had gone wrong and where - simply couldn't dawn on her.

Not until Aldric rested his fists on his hips, Cinder's sword quietly fell away from its place behind her back, and he glared up at one ship in particular. "Et Tu, Ironwood?" Cinder whipped around as Aldric called out, her bright orange eyes locked right onto Ashley's, silently conveying both that she figured out what was happening, and that she genuinely felt Ashley's life was in danger. "Which of my names are on the bombs you're about to drop?"

Aldric's words served as Torchwick's cue to get the hell out of dodge, and the impetus to kick Ashley's brain back into gear, and onto the same track as her mother's.

They'd been betrayed.

Ironwood had betrayed them!

He was gambling everything on taking out his two archenemies in one strike!

In seconds, it all fell into place in Ashley's mind - how she'd been right, and had seen every single piece on the board, but had put together the wrong puzzle. She had been right about every single person Aldric had affected during his war. They might not have forgiven or forgotten, but they had at least left it all behind. She had known Ironwood was the one notable exception to that rule, but her confidence and her string of successes thus far had blinded her to the fact that he might not be willing to hear her out and change the status quo. This despite having even noticed this exact fact about the man in question. Her desire to trust had born fruit so much and so often that she hadn't considered what might happen if it failed.

Worse was that Ironwood had all but spelled it out: He viewed Aldric as an existential, alien threat. The only way he would accept his postwar presence on Remnant was in exile. He wouldn't stop them from bringing him back, and had promised to do what he had always done in scenario. Ashley - everyone, it seemed - had believed this to mean he would stand by, be ready to act should Aldric ever break his word.

He had, instead, been warning them that he would do now as he'd always done: Defended his world.

Even, as he'd said, if it meant they all hated him for it.

The show ruined, everything thrown out the window, Ashley forced her aching body to her feet and tried sprinting for her father. To his credit and her heartbreak, Aldric broke eye contact with the fleet to look at her, the brief flash-in-the-pan return to form fading away as his scowl turned to a genuinely pained frown at the sound of Ashley screaming his name. The pain on his face deepened as he held up his flesh hand and halted her in place, while Cinder just as quickly grabbed her hand, and squeezed tight. As the ships above began to whir louder and glow brighter, their weapons spinning up, their bomb bays and missile tubes opening wide, Ashley desperately pulled against her mother and pushed against the barrier he'd summoned between them.

"Not yet, Snake." She saw more than heard him say, as he smiled and winked at Ashley in that 'everything will be okay' way. "It's not over yet."

Then, in the blink of an eye and a flash of rose petals, Ashley was a mile away, right alongside the rest of her 'actors', sans Aldric and Cinder. Ruby was on the ground, gasping for air and looking just as shaken as everyone else. Despite her exhaustion from both the show and the frantic, improvised rescue, she tried to stop her, but Ashley broke free from her grip and tried running back towards the arena, towards her parents. She knew it was futile - if Ruby had thought it could be done, she would have done it a hundred times in the breaths between Ashley's rescue and her realizing what had happened. But she didn't care, and tried anyways, screaming out to the heavens as though that would salvage something out of this.

A heartbeat later, Ironwood's fleet opened fire, and Ashley could only watch the area get annihilated. Cannon shells, lasers, missiles, they all ripped apart the ground, throwing fire, debris, and smoke into the sky before being pounded back down to the Earth in the longest staccato she'd ever seen.

Jaw slack, eyes red, mind numb, Ashley just couldn't process how quickly, and how disastrously things had gone wrong. An hour ago she'd been planning success, and now that elusive 'one thing' had not just stolen it away from her, but had caused her to fail so spectacularly that the woman she'd pulled out of the shadows and the man she'd forcibly dragged back into the world were promptly erased from it. She looked to her team for support, but they too were stunned. Cradling a limply swinging arm, Dusty had a look of confusion and betrayal on his soot-streaked face, as though the concept of betrayal had never entered his mind, and he'd lost something by being introduced to it. Schwarz was frowning, looking from the air squadron to Ashley, his lips pursed as he tried to mask frustration and sadness with anger at the world. Sylvie was the only one of them that looked no different, but for a downward twitch to the corner of her lip and a wet streak running down from her eyes.

Ashley fell to her knees as the ships ceased fire, and then blanketed the area with searchlights. Tears fell freely from her eyes as, in addition to the anger and frustration of failure, guilt began to join in and settle on her soul. Ironwood might have pulled the trigger, but she'd put the gun in his hand by giving him everything he needed to know. She'd gotten a good man and a redeemed woman killed.

She didn't know when she passed out, only that one moment, she was looking at her father's gravesite, and the next, she was waking up in Beacon's infirmary. Around her was her team, all of whom were woken up by Dusty the second he saw she'd awoken. It actually took her a few minutes, and a few gentle prods from her team, to even remember what had happened, and then the shock began to settle in.

Numbly, Ashley listened to SSAD explain to her that she'd been out for the rest of the day, and that Ironwood and Ozma had just finished their shouting match over the events. They confirmed that Aldric was dead - most of his body had been kept safe from the bombardment by his armor - but that Cinder was technically MIA - lacking the armor Aldric covered himself with, it was believed there wasn't anything left behind but her sword. Ironwood was leaving Vale now, with Aldric's corpse, apparently having avoided a full-blown conflict solely because doing so would risk ruining the fiction they'd crafted, although Ozma was furious, enough so that everyone on campus could supposedly hear him shouting, even from the top of his tower.

With every word spoken, Ashley just felt the numbness grow, until their voices just faded away under the crushing weight of her new reality. The guilt eating away at her was so much that she couldn't even bring herself to feel bad that she was only half listening to her team. She loved them, but that deep, wounded-animal instinct in her said that there was only one place she could go to, only two people she could turn to for help right now.

So, when the medics came and cleared her, and gave her a bag with her belongings, she just told them she needed time, and started walking. She didn't walk very fast, seeming so drained that just walking at all felt like it took everything she had, but she didn't stop, either. Her mind was so completely occupied by what she'd done wrong, by where she might have been able to do better or differently, that she didn't even realize she'd booked a flight back to Patch until it landed and she could smell the island air. The comfort that engendered within her brought a bit of color back to the world, but it was drained back out as she grew closer to her home. Thoughts of home led to thoughts of how it hadn't been her only home, led to her thinking of the secrets she'd learned, and the arrogance in thinking she could have her cake and eat it too, with zero consequences.

She stopped at the threshold to her home, the door just in front of her. She didn't know what she would say to them, but as she dug through the bag for her keys, she knew they would give her what she needed: A place to hide from the world, a rock to lean on, shoulders to cry on, and -

She stopped cold, seeing something in the bag that managed to send such a jolt through her that it cleared the fog.

Something she had initially written off as useless to her.

Something she hadn't even intended to acquire in the first place.

That never factored into her plans.

That taught her, with its mere presence in this moment, one of the most crucial secrets behind her father's success: To take advantage of anything, and everything.

Even the absolute coincidence of forgetting to return a super weapon.

One that nobody knew existed.

Pulling the metal hand from the bag, sensing the presence of the stone inside, ideas began to form in her head as Ashley realized that she still had one card to play.

She was still in the game.