Chapter 4

He needed a new role model. Even Nathan Drake hadn't dealt with something like this. He wasn't a big enough Doctor Who fan to try and claim him, and though Doomguy sort of came close, since hopping between Hell, Mars, and Earth technically was hopping worlds, he wasn't necessarily comfortable with modeling his continued survival after a man, no matter how badass, who could rip and tear his way through Hell so much and so often that Hell banished him from Hell, and couldn't even make that stick. Maybe Goku would fit, but Aldric ran into a similar problem in that he wasn't a man who could put entire universes at risk because he was bored and wanted a fight. Maybe Batman would work.

No, everyone picked Batman. Because he's Batman. He may be appropriate to the situation - a mortal man being thrust into a world of veritable gods - but everyone picked Batman. Aldric wasn't everyone. Aldric was, technically, an interdimensional traveler. How many of those were walking around? Don't answer that, because he'd already thought of multiverse theory and the thusly innumerable amount of people slipping between universes and dimensions as he did. Aldric would just stick with Nathan Drake for the time being, Naughty Dog's poster boy would work for the time being, and he did have some bigger problems than new models.

For instance, he now found himself in a universe filled with advanced technology, hostile entities, everything that was also a gun, a veritable religious dedication to the concept of more dakka, and demons that wanted nothing more than to eat him alive.

Maybe Doomguy was more appropriate than he realized.

Regardless, his most pressing matter was the trio of superpowered assassins he found himself sitting with. Their leader had seen fit to give him a little time to process what he'd seen, and they all gathered up some food. Emerald was kind enough to scavenge some of Aldric's rations from the plane wreck, and while at first glance it may seem like he wouldn't need to be rationing them anymore, Aldric still ate sparingly and only a minor, injury-dependent adjustment to his earlier schedule.

A part of him really wondered if they hadn't had something to do with him being dropped here. Fortunately, it wasn't difficult to gauge when he was in the whole time of things - Cinder was his best method of judgement. She didn't have the scars on the right half of her face, so he wasn't after the fall of Beacon, and she didn't have the tattoos on her back, so he was before their little fight with the Fall Maiden. A less terrified man would begin considering whether or not they wanted to change things in the world, but Aldric was far too concerned with staying alive. He only had one flare left, and they had aura, so it would do little than blind them. He may be able to use it to steal one of Emerald's guns, but then he'd just be swapping one weapon with limited ammunition for another. He needed a better escape plan, if things turned south.

But, if he operated under the assumption that they had something to do with him being tossed into the RWBYverse, then that meant they likely wanted him for some reason. Well, perhaps not him specifically - as there had been an entire airplane of people from his world to pick from - but him because he was the only survivor of his airplane crash. If he wanted to survive, at least long enough to heal up and then run like hell, he'd need to make them decide they did want him.

So, he had to play their game, see where he fell on the board, and as he munched his way through a plate of chicken, he looked up to Cinder. "So... Remnant. You guys have magic." He said, "would that be how Remnant humans survived against... The Beowolf things? What'd you call them?" He looked over to Emerald, "the Grimm?"

Cinder nodded, attracting his attention. "I chose the word magic as a shared term, but that would be a misnomer. We call it Aura. Your earlier statement, about sufficiently advanced technology, it was rather apt... Aura and Magic are two different things." She explained, "it is a long story... But Aura is tied directly to Dust, the same substance you discovered and promptly ignited, back in the towers." She explained. "To be succinct, when humankind discovered Dust, they were able to use it to awaken their aura, and they used both to fight back against the Grimm. Aura gives us the abilities your world would recognize as magic... Dust, our versions of your technology." She pulled out a small device from a pocket on her dress, it looked like a phone. Aldric caught it, and as he fiddled with it, trying to find out how to open it, she continued.

"It took a very long time for us to reach the place where we are now." She explained, "and this time has allowed us to advance in education and sciences... It was only recently that some very intelligent individuals discovered evidence that there were worlds beyond ours. Not simply planets, but realms and universes."

Sweet Jesus, she's just jumping right into it, isn't she? Thought Aldric, as he finally managed to crack the phone open and slide it to its full length, the screen opened up and glowed. "Multiverse theory." He rumbled, dragging his finger across the screen.

Cinder nodded in his peripherals. "Indeed." She said, "a... Ritual, we can call it, was created, using ancient auras and semblences, combined with modern theories. We peered through the doorways between dimensions to find yours, and were fascinated with what we saw."

Aldric slowly lifted his gaze, his face etched in a small frown, and one eyebrow arced. "Oh?" If she's about to call me on my bullshit I'm going to need that flaregun. He forced himself to remain calm. If he were a threat to Cinder or, god forbid, her albino boss, he doubted either of them would have let him stick around.

Cinder continued, "yours was a world without Grimm, but with Aura." That got Aldric's attention. "The problem, however, was that it lacked Dust, and thus, your humans could never unlock their power. It simply... Built. From the day you were born until the day you died, it built, and built, and built, gathering exponentially more every day you lived. This is a difference between our worlds, as ours, with dust, allows humans to... Relieve that pressure." She said, with a sidewards nod. "We've all a limit, here, that when reached, the aura simply fades away. The only way to gather more is to increase your limits... But one would still radiate that which they have in excess."

"Like a bucket of water." Said Aldric, sliding the phone shut and tossing it back to Cinder. "You can swap out for a bigger one, but once that's full, anything else just spills out."

Cinder nodded, "exactly." She said, with a smile. "Your people, however, you do not overflow. Your bucket simply grows."

Like a water balloon that doesn't pop? Aldric's frown didn't budge, "so... If I understand what you're implying, you used this ritual to drag..." He nodded to the airplane. "An airplane full of people, from my world to yours?"

"Well, all science is trial and error, Aldric." Said Cinder. "We didn't truly know what would happen when we used the ritual, we merely had to try and hope for the best."

"A lot of dead people would argue with you." Aldric pointed out, looking back down to his chicken and digging at it. "Why did you pull us from our world to yours?" He asked, from a full mouth.

Cinder's low voice responded with, "you see, Aldric... Ours is not a healthy world. Moreover, it is one in which those in power seek to horde it, through fear of the Grimm's existence."

Aldric slowed his eating, now chewing on auto-pilot. His mind, slowed though it may have been because of his myriad of injuries, it was able to reach at least one likely conclusion, and it wasn't one he was fond of. They couldn't be trying to recruit him, could they? Aldric decided to challenge her on this. He'd shown himself to be capable of some Holmesian levels of leaps of logic, and pointing this out wouldn't put his knowledge of the future at risk. It may put his future at risk, but he digressed.

"Forgive me for being frank... And let me follow that up by saying that this doesn't change how ungodly thankful I am for you - for all of you - for rescuing me... But are you saying you brought us here to make an army?" From the way he understood her explaining things, the Remnant humans were regular humans, compared to the Earth humans being analogous to Super Saiyans. Yes, the Earth humans - he'd need a better, shorter term for that - had no use of their aura, but if they could tap into it, they went from low-class warriors to people who could crack apart planets with their minds. Jesus Christ, if his people got ahold of that kind of power the Earth probably wouldn't exist for more than a decade afterwards.

Cinder confirmed his theory with a solemn nod. "We did not at all intend for your people to die, Aldric. We had no idea of knowing where, or when, or even how you would be taken, only that it would open a traversable door between our worlds, as opposed to a keyhole to peer through."

If Aldric didn't know any better, he would have thought she was being sincere. Yes, he knew his knowledge of an incomplete show was coloring his perception of things, and that most anime had one hell of a way of making their villains much less evil than they appeared to be at first glance, but that didn't change the fact that, from the story he knew, he wasn't speaking to one of the 'good guys'. He still felt he had to remain cautious.

"So you brought us here ostensibly to study us and learn from us... But functionally... To recruit us." Aldric said, finishing the last of his chicken, and tossing the plastic plate into the fire. "Why?" He asked, "are things that bad?" Maybe he could be in a unique position here, and he would have to take her every answer with a grain of salt, but the fact remained that he was a fragile mortal man basically being asked to box Superman.

Cinder nodded, a frown playing at her features. "The kingdoms of the world horde the power from their people, and places known as huntsman academies seek to usurp the kingdoms themselves." And now he knew she was playing him, but he couldn't let them onto the fact. "Tensions between humans and faunus... That is to say, animal hybrids... They are rising to explosive levels, in some cases literally. A war, larger, greater, and more deadly than any before is brewing, the people are going to be caught in the crossfire, the Grimm are going to take advantage of the chaos to kill even more, and we seek to prevent that."

Aldric gave her a dull look, before lifting his hand. "One... Two... Three people are going to prevent that?" He said, doing a headcount.

"Well, there are more of us." Mercury supplied. "But we try to go for quality over quantity. People with resources and power, versus sheer numbers."

Aldric nodded, "and you want my ass because of the veritable bomb of aura I've got in me." He leaned forward, "how powerful do you think I would be versus those Huntsman you told me about?" He asked. "From what I gather, not everyone can use this aura... And you mentioned the Hunstman separately from the kingdoms' various militaries. If I'm correct in assuming it's Huntsman that can use aura better than anyone else, then my question stands. How can you expect me to overpower any of them? Do I really have that much in me?" Sure, one could have an overwhelming, irresistable amount of power, but Goku still beat Broly. The fledgling Colonial United States still won out over the British fucking Empire. The UNSC won out against the Covenant. The Spartans won against the Persians. He could go on.

Cinder was silent a moment, before she nodded. "I think you could be, Aldric." She said. "I believe few alive could truly resist you if you knew how to use your power."

I return to my point about smaller, weaker forces winning out against juggernauts. Though he would admit that, though Pyrrha Nikos definitely seemed more skilled than Cinder, she had gotten her ass kicked. "Then let's assume I decide to do this. How would you wake up my aura? Would I even survive, if I have as much as you say?" He would definitely need time to think this through, preferably after a few blood transfusions and a night's sleep.

"It would be a simple process." Said Cinder, "and you would survive. Even previously powerless civilians with no ability to use their aura, can have that influx of power and survive it."

"And if I wanted to leave?" He asked. "Could you send me home?" Or would he have to run, and pray he'd run into a certain academy's headmaster? Start going full Shadow Broker on him and using his meta-knowledge as a currency?

Cinder, however, shook her head. "I do not think so. I did not perform the ritual, and the woman who did... It will be some time before I see her again."

Hoooooly shit, Lady Red Eye herself brought me here? Oh sweet Jesus I'm in a tight spot. Say no, and he'd die. Say yes, and he'd probably die anyways. At least if he said yes, he'd be a Super Saiyan and be able to fight.

He looked down at the fire a moment, frowning. It seemed he was stuck here, no matter what he did. The only way he could hope to go back home was through cooperating with Cinder, and helping Salem. In effect, he'd become complicit in trying to bring about the apocalypse. Not good for the heaven resume. But if he refused, it would be likely they'd just kill him, start over, grab someone else, and then move on, but in this instance they'd have a Super Saiyan running with the bad guys, which would also be unacceptable. It was clear to him that he wasn't in the world he remembered - it was a carbon copy, but something, somewhere, had changed to lead to him coming here. This meant his information, while valuable beyond measure, it would also become out of date real fast, and useless as anything else but a reference guide.

But... He thought. Until I reach a point that it does become useless... I could pull off The Departed. He thought about it in another way.

Instead of refusing to work with them, instead of running, and instead of working with them and going full renegade, what if he chose a third option? Or, well, fourth. What was stopping him from being a mole in Cinder's faction? As long as he played his role, he could just nudge things in different directions, and let the butterfly effect fuck the Lady In Red over. He'd have to be careful, of course, such that it wouldn't doom him too, but he was in a position to pull off a Xanatos Gambit. It certainly wasn't a prospective role model, but the Green Hornet was a damn good analogy for the position he was in at the moment. He could look like a villain, and let everyone think that while he really played for the good guys. The problem would be establishing his contact over on the brighter end of the heroic spectrum.

He needed time to think this over.

He looked up to Cinder and said as much, to which she nodded understandingly. "I understand. This must be quite a bit for you." She looked up to the sky, "I would say we revisit this in the morning?"

"That sounds good." Aldric said, dragging himself to his feet, cradling his injured arm to his body. "Quick question..." He said, trying to remember if he'd stuck his lucky chair in the captain's cabin, or the fuselage. "If I accept and you awaken my aura, will it fix these injuries I've got?"

Mercury laughed, "oh yeah. You'd be surprised how much punishment you can take once you've got aura running through you."

Aldric hummed, "good to know."

For The Record

So, I've switched to writing this out.

Why?

Well, it's a long damn story, but suffice to say, I don't trust my rescuers at all, and I've discovered that, while the spoken language here in this new world I'm inhabiting is indeed English, the written language isn't that at all.

So they can't understand a goddamn word I write.

To make things concise: They somehow opened up a magic portal that sucked me and the entire flight into the world of Remnant. This is the very same setting of RWBY, an anime on the internet. I'm the only survivor and, lucky me, they want me to fight for them.

Let me back up.

I made it to the ruins, but Cubone - I now know it to be called a 'Beowolf' - found me before I could find anything good. He and I fought, and it chucked me eighty feet through the air. I think I came close to killing it, but then a bird about the size of three or four aircraft carriers swooped in and tried to finish me off. I escaped from them by hiding in a giant stone tower, found a bunch of explosives, and promptly blew myself up.

But, proving myself ever worthy of the title 'Nathan Drake', I survived that shit.

Barely.

Then Cubone decided to come by and kill me, so I blew myself up again to kill him.

Don't even know how I survived that one, but hey - Nathan Drake.

Now I've been rescued by Cinder Fall, Mercury Black, and Emerald Sustral. Three of the baddest bitches around, all of whom work for the baddest bitch around. They told me how I came to be here, and then explained that I am basically a Saiyan to their Humans. People from my world - maybe I'll stick with Saiyans, as a means of differentiation? I'll think on that - they do indeed gather the same aura that the humans over here do. However, unlike the humans in Remnant, we don't stop, and just keep gathering more and more until we die and it all gets released.

The result is, according to them, a being of such intense power that few here could resist it.

I did notice how they failed to mention Salem and the Maidens, but I digress.

They think I'm a goddamn Super Saiyan, and they want me to help them.

Lex Luthor just asked me to help him kill the Justice League.

Holy fuck.

...

No?

How about, Thanos just asked me to help him gather the Infinity Stones?

No?

I'm running out, here - Hitler just came to me for help invading Poland? I give up. Point is: In the whole spectrum of good versus evil, evil just came to me with a recruitment pitch. An admittedly attractive one - I cannot begin to imagine the kind of shenanigans I could get up to with superpowers.

Before you freak out, yes I'm thinking of joining them, but not to actually work for them, if that makes sense.

Let me put it to you like this:

The Green Hornet operated in such a way that the public and criminal underworld both saw him as a criminal. He used this as a means to more easily infiltrate the criminal underworld and fight it from within. His justification, 'We'll look like villains, but really we'll be the heroes!'. That way, in the inevitable 'Choice', the villain wouldn't have anything on him. He wouldn't bother hanging a truck full of kids off of one edge of the bridge, and Mary Jane off of the other - because he'd think the Green Hornet not a hero, but a villain, and thus would be worried he'd just go for him and ignore the hostages.

I'm thinking about using that to justify pulling from The Departed.

Simply put, there, DiCaprio got himself thrown in jail and joined an organized crime ring, under orders from his contacts in the Police, his contacts being Mark Wahlberg and Martin Sheen, such that they could have a deep-cover mole within the mob, working right alongside Jack Nicholson, the big boss. But he did so in a way that no cop beyond those two knew about his involvement - to preserve his cover.

In other words, I seek to work in the dark, to serve the light.

I do this, I get the badass superpowers, and a means to make things for the better.

Problem: I have no Mark Wahlberg, or Martin Sheen. I have no contact over in the good guy faction.
You know what? That's too long. I'll call them the Illuminati. Absolutely no negative connotations whatsoever.

And it's more syllables.

Fuck.

How about the Justice League?

They may have had shitty movies, but they've been rocking the comics recently. That'll do.

But getting a name doesn't get me a contact in the League. If and when we came to blows, they'd see me as an enemy.

But, I do have an idea: The main character here's uncle, Qrow Branwen.

I've been able to determine roughly when I am in the timeline. There comes a point when Cinder will take her group to fight the Fall Maiden - basically a demi-goddess - and steal her powers. She'll succeed partially, but then Qrow will swoop in and, before she can finish the job, grab the Maiden and escape.

That right there could be my only chance to get my Mark Wahlberg.

I wouldn't even have to get his attention, or talk to him. I would just need to set something up, slip him a note, somehow let him know that they've got a mole on the inside. Then he brings it to the others In The Know, and... I dunno, through him I can talk to Ozpin, and get my Martin Sheen. Then hopefully we'd be close enough to the Vytal Festival that, by warning them 'something's coming', and imminently at that, I wouldn't tip my whole foreknowledge hand, and could simultaneously help to cut the head off of the snake by depriving Cinder of the remaining half of the Fall Maiden's powers. Maybe find a way to stop her from cutting Remnant's version of the internet, too - let the various countries keep up their communications.

In a perfect world, then we'd be in a good enough position that I could stop thinking so hard for myself and let the League do the planning and the thinking for me. I'd keep training, maybe go Super Saiyan God, and we could take the fight to Salem.

Of course, this is far from a perfect world, and there's one more 'hero' I have to draw from in order to make sure this crazy-ass plan of mine works.

Ozzymandias.

In Watchmen, Adrian Veidt ended up turning out to be the whole big bad guy. He orchestrated the hero murderers, got Doctor Manhattan, who was basically God with a big 'G' and was the only one who could stop his plans, to leave the planet, and orchestrated the deaths of millions and the traumatization of millions more. However, he did so with arguably good intentions, as his attack couldn't be traced to him or anyone else, would be construed as an alien invasion, and would avert World War 3 and the extinction of mankind. And, he arguably did so in such a way that stopping or exposing him would then be the evil option, as it would bring everything right back to where it was, and would thus send the world down to nuclear war and kill everyone.

He was the very definition of an anti-villain.

If I'm going to go with my whole 'Departed' plan, I've basically got to model everything I do after him. I am going to have to work with killers and terrorists, assist in the attempted murder of a demi-goddess, and depending on how far things end up going before my changes can take root and have an effect, also assist in the downfall of an entire nation, the apocalyptic destruction of an entire information network, and the deaths of tens to hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of people.

I don't want things to go that far, but the alternative is me dying, or, arguably worse, Cinder and Salem winning, and killing everyone. They already have access to my world through their 'Ritual', after they win here it would not be hard for them to go to Earth and wreck everyone there. While I think that, due to a higher population and (very) arguably more advanced technology, we may be able to hold our own and maybe win, the biggest wild card and the biggest problem would be the superpowers they' all be going up against. With that kind of a wild card, my people would be Hell, and these, an entire army of Doomguys.

And if that doesn't work for you, just swap Hell and Doomguy for Covenant and Master Chief.

It occurs to me now that anyone reading this will either, A, be from this world and not understanding of half of the references I make, or B - be survivors/explorers from my world into here, and likely not even interested in these things, and still not understand the references.

Shit.

Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that I've got to sell no small part of my soul in order to be properly positioned to be able to cut the head off of the serpent, and to put the entire world in a better spot to war against Salem, and save more lives than I will end. If I win... Well, Humanity - Fuck Yeah! Then I'll just have to find some way to get over the shit I'll have done. If I lose... Well, I'll die, so I won't have to worry about living with my actions, and there is fortunately one more backup option.

Ruby Rose.

Goddamn show's named after her. Should be a pretty good indicator of who the main character is. Yes, there is the rest of her team, but I would argue them being major supporting characters as opposed to main protagonists, but now I'm going into semantics. Regardless, that's my backup. If I fuck up, the laws of Being An Anime Main Character say she's got just as good a shot of not fucking up, and none of the moral ambiguity to boot.

The problem, however, is that since enough had changed here to lead to them summoning me, that means that enough could continue to change that my foreknowledge, and thus her all-but-guaranteed victory, could all be thrown out and useless as anything more than a reference guide. Maybe back home, to tell a good story, she would have been guaranteed victory, but now? Now things have changed, and the only thing she'd guaranteed to have is a shot. There is no more guarantee, and that's why I can't fuck up, because now things aren't an anime, they're real. I could lose, I could die - she could lose, she could die, and then everyone's fucked.

What I'm hoping is that I'll get a halfway decent set of powers when they 'wake up' my aura. If all goes well, I'll become Saitama and all my problems will be solved. If it doesn't... Well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Christ.

Well, fortune favors the bold, right? It's how Nathan Drake's ass survived this long.

'Till next time.

It took him a long time of sitting in his Magic Chair to finally fall asleep. Fortunately, this was where his injuries actually helped instead of hindering him - once he did fall asleep, he didn't wake back up until he was good and ready. The sun was high in the sky, the air had warmed up to a sweltering degree, and right in front of his face was the dark skin and mint-green hair of Emerald Sustral.

"Jesus!" Aldric nearly fell out of his impromptu bed, before he carefully scrambled to his feet. "And good morning to you too!" He was silently thankful he hardly had enough blood in his body to suffer from certain 'issues' every man had to deal with every morning.

"I was checking to see how you were faring. It's been two days." She said, a wet cloth in her hands.

Aldric blinked, "it has?" Now that she mentioned it, his stomach felt empty and his throat was once again drier than a desert. "Shit... Sorry." He shook his head, running his hand through his hair, careful to not disturb the bandages. He yawned, "hope things haven't gotten fun while I was out." He waved Emerald out of the cabin.

"If you are referring to the Grim, there was a minor encounter but we dealt with it." Emerald said, leading Aldric outside.

He saw Cinder and Mercury hovering around a small pot, from which a delightful smell was wafting. Mercury noticed him walking first, and elbowed Cinder, before nodding in his direction. Cinder's neutral expression warmed when she saw him, and she stood to her feet to greet him.

"Aldric." She nodded, "I am glad to see you've woken up."

Aldric grinned, "is that surprise I hear? It almost sounds like you didn't even expect me to wake up... Right here." He tapped his chest with his good hand, "that hurts, right here."

Cinder gave him an odd look, "a rather unexpected turnaround from your demeanor the other night, I notice." She baded Aldric sit around their breakfast pot.

Aldric sat, "I was tired, cranky, very confused, and in a lot of pain." He explained, "I'm sorry if I pissed you guys off. It was just... A lot to take in and process, and I don't have a lot of blood to prioritize complex thought over just surviving." He shrugged. "What're we eating?"

"Lunch." Mercury responded, "hope you like beef stew."

"I'll eat anything warm after a week on rations." He said, as the silver-haired teen stirred the pot. He let the silence last a moment, before he turned to Cinder. "So." She turned to him, expectantly. "Say I choose to run with you guys. What would I have to do?"

Cinder grinned, "is that a yes, Aldric?"

"Not yet, it's not." He said, "what'll I have to do?"

She gave him a conciliatory nod, "once we awaken your aura, we will need to train you, get you new clothes and a weapon. At the moment we are working on building our resources, and we've a few stops to make and people to see in that vein." She explained, "we've one major goal we hope to reach, but at the moment it is out of our grasp, and it will have to wait."

Aldric yawned, "I assume that kind of knowledge is need to know?" He said, "and I wouldn't have the need, unless I say yes?"

Cinder nodded.

He let out a sigh, "and you're certain this is all for the good?" He asked, letting it lay on a little thick. "My people... We've got a little history with this kind of stuff."

Here it was Emerald who spoke up, "I can assure you, Aldric. This is the right thing to do."

He maintained eye contact with Cinder, who eventually acquiesced, and nodded herself. "It is."

"Then... I guess I'll roll with you guys." He said, with a firm nod.

Cinder smiled wide, "good, Aldric. You made the right choice." She turned to face him, "are you ready now?"

He blinked, "now, now? Damn, you don't mess around." He shifted to face her too. "How do we do this?"

Cinder raised her hand, it covered in an elbow-length, white glove. "Close your eyes." Warily, he did so. "Prepare yourself. This may feel strange." And no sooner had she spoken than did he see a bright light welling up from behind his closed eyes.

A moment later, he felt as if there was a great, crushing pressure all around him, but before he could even try to breathe, the pressure increased. It grew so quickly and so large that he felt as if his chest were being kept under an insurmountable weight. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't move. His heart quickened its pace, he tried to tell the psycho doing this to him that something was wrong that -

And then it happened.

Like a pin pricking the outside of a water balloon, Cinder found at the great well of Aura within him, and the second she opened it, it, quite literally, exploded. His ears were ringing so loudly that he couldn't hear anything past them, and he was only jarred back to the land of the living by the his sudden return to and impact with the ground, though whether he was sent flying, or tossed into the air, he didn't know.

The instant he touched the ground, the ringing in his ears cleared up, a lot of the pain in his arm, chest, legs, and head vanished, to be replaced only by the brief lance of pain he got from landing on his back. He was dizzy for only a moment as he knocked his head on the dirt, but that vanished in seconds, too. Those weren't the only changes he noticed, however - his heart didn't slow down, and it felt as if a full dose of adrenaline was running through his system. Opening his eyes, he had to clench them shut again, as the sky above was too bright, the colors so vivid that they stunned him back into the darkness.

He groaned in pain as he lifted himself up, he could hear voices, it sounded like Mercury. "Cinder!" He shouted, before the sounds of feet stomping at the ground.

Aldric clenched at the side of his head and slowly, cautiously, opened his eyes. Everything was brighter, but his eyes adjusted as he continued opening them. The green grass and the brown dirt below him had taken on a more vivid, vibrant hue. The greens more green, the brown more brown. It was almost as if what he had been looking at before had been made from sub-par materials, shot in grayscale and then washed out again for good measure. He lifted his head and saw that he was at the end of a long groove torn in the ground, and Cinder had been shot into the fuselage, denting its hull. Emerald and Mercury seemed to have been shot away as well, and the campfire and the pot had vanished, their contents spilled across the ground.

It was as Aldric groaned and hauled himself to his feet, that it dawned on him that the pain in both of his legs was gone. He looked to the arm that had been broken, marveling at the fact that he could move his fingers, that there wasn't any pain in the joints. He wouldn't be breaking off the cast just by flexing, but he could definitely feel a difference between right now, and minutes ago. It was like someone poured lightning into his veins. Even the air seemed to smell and taste different. Was he processing oxygen better? Or was it the sensory overload?

He dropped his bandaged arm back to its cradling position and jogged back to Cinder. When he made it to the fuselage, Mercury had torn the woman who would be the Fall Maiden from it, and Emerald arrived just a moment later. Cinder held her hand to her head, shaking away the impact against the hull. It was now, as he stood so close to the three of them, that Aldric realized he could feel something else. Like a fire in the air, it was radiating off of the three of them, but in different, distinct ways. Off of Emerald, it was wispy and cold, like smoke. Off of Mercury, it was harsh and fast, like wind. Off of Cinder, it was hot and raging, like a fire.

Oh... I'm definitely in sensory overload territory right now. He knelt down, "are you okay?" He asked, a strength and depth to his voice that hadn't been there minutes ago.

Cinder nodded, "I shall be fine." She waved them all off, before straightening up and flattening out her dress, before giving Aldric a once-over. "And you? How do you feel?"

This time, his pause wasn't an act, but rather a genuine reflection, as he raised his good hand and examined it. He clenched it into a fist, before he let it go, and looked back up. "Taller." He grinned.

A second later, he collapsed again.

"Alright. He lasted longer than I thought he would." Emerald deadpanned, as she watched Aldric fall to his back with a light 'thump'.

"What is it he keeps saying? That curse from his world? 'Jesus'? I think that works, here - Jesus I can feel that!" Mercury said, grabbing the crash survivor by his shoulders and hauling him over his own like a sack of potatoes. "I'm not the only one, right?" He gave his compatriots each a look, "it feels like I'm standing next to the sun." He walked backwards, followed by Cinder and Emerald. "What the hell would have happened if we'd gotten someone older?"

Cinder rebuked his implications, "we would have traded more aura for an aged and less capable body." She said, looking at the devastation around her.

The explosion hadn't been predicted, but it very well should have been. Both halves of the fuselage of the airplane had been blasted back several feet, digging up the earth behind them. The trees were still swaying from the shockwave, much of the grass had been flattened as if steamrolled, and the wind was howling loudly. They were effectively a walking beacon for any Grimm in the area, but that wouldn't last long; once he woke up again the first thing she would have to teach him would be to suppress that. They couldn't have grimm or, dust forbid, huntsman walking up to him like a lighthouse in a stormy night.

"Emerald, grab his things." She said, nodding over to the airplane. "We'll take them with us, let him decide what he keeps. We need to put some distance between us and here, we've already spent too much time here." It had been a minor miracle that any airships or faculty from Beacon hadn't passed over the area and seen his crash site; that would have thrown her entire plan out of the window.

"Wait, if she's grabbing his crap - " Mercury stopped dead, the unconscious crash survivor's limbs swinging freely. "You're not expecting me to carry him all the way, are you?! I thought we would just set up camp again, I was going to drop him by the fire!" Cinder could tell that if he wasn't still worried about his injuries, Mercury may have dropped the survivor out of spite.

"Well we should hope he wakes up quicker this time." Said Cinder, with a pitying tap on the shoulder, as Emerald disappeared into the front half of Aldric's airship. "Let us hurry. If Ozpin and his staff at Beacon hadn't had a hint of something out here yet, they certainly do now." She continued walking.