Chapter 5

If he survived his little adventure long enough to achieve victory, and hopefully be vindicated for the Ozzymandias-level of bad things he would have to do, Aldric fully intended to force whoever was in charge of the proceedings to allow him to choose his own epitaph. He already had it picked out, too: "Died as he lived. Like Nathan Drake."

One would only have to see his accounts of his first week in remnant to be given proof. Survived things he shouldn't have? Check. Fought supernatural demons? Check. Found ancient ruins? Check. Treasure hunted through said ruins? The 'treasure' part was arguable, but on the whole, check. Blown up those ruins, whether or not he was done with them? Double check. Really, the only thing he hadn't been able to do was get involved with the mystic magical shenanigans that always seemed to follow Drake around near the tail end of his adventures. Well, once he awoke his Aura, he could put a check on that too.

It was official.

There was no denying it.

Nebo Aldric was Nathan Drake.

If he ever had to choose an assumed name, one could bet their ass he'd choose that.

His most recent extended comatic nap had only lasted twenty four hours, though fortunately this time, when he woke up, he actually felt rested. He and his new group - a thought that would take him some time to get used to - decided it prudent to set up camp to deal with some priorities. The first being Aldric's injuries, they checked under the bandages and found, to his delight, that aside from the scars they were all gone. There was still some stiffness to his joints, and he wondered if his arm would ever stop clicking when he raised it above his head, but aside from that, nothing. He had been healed.

The second priority had been his things from the airplane. Poor Emerald hadn't known what all he considered his own, versus what he'd appropriated for his use, so she'd been forced to lug everything he'd stashed in the cockpit and on his lucky chair across the how many miles they had traveled in the twenty four hour interim. Cinder explained, as Aldric opened up the stash, that he could only keep what he could carry - the rest had to be burned, with her explanation being that since, technically, they were going against many multiple governments, they needed to keep stealth, maneuverability, and anonymity paramount above all else, so they couldn't carry much beyond the necessities. Though she assured him that once they reached their makeshift base of operations, he would have a place to let off his weight and store his personal items. It made sense to Aldric, so he spent the next hour sorting through everything.

After some debates, he decided to keep all of the tablets and cords he'd looted, however from the laptops, he kept one of each brand, and the rest, he simply gutted, taking out hard-drives, spare parts, and any essential electronics he would need for repairs. He wanted to keep what little data and evidence of Earth he could, and fortunately, his galvanizing of what would have been a minor fortune's worth of electronics saved him a lot of weight and room. He wrapped the sensitive electronics and spare parts in shirts to keep them from being damaged. With access to electricity, Aldric prayed he'd be able to put his aptitude for engineering to work and be able to actually access these hard drives, in a way that wouldn't last only until they ran out of their charge.

After securing his effects, he turned to his clothes, swapped into a set less bloodstained, stashed some jeans, underwear, and T-shirts from home and, after a few minutes' consideration, two of his fathers' Oktoberfest and Concert shirts. Then he grabbed his father's wallet, and phone too. He made sure those were on his person, along with his own wallet and his own phone. He missed the fat man. He kept the drugs and most of the medical supplies, as well as the maps, flight manifest, and of course he kept his Gerber knife, though he conceded and didn't bother keeping the fire axe. Finally, he grabbed some of the physical books he'd appropriated, and once he had it all packed and distributed that the weight wouldn't kill him during their travels, he set everything else aside and watched as Cinder used her aura to set fire to the rest.

He cracked a grin, and, watching the fire dart from Cinder's outstretched hands, nodded. "Damn, Hot Stuff. I'm supposed to be able to do that?" He said, with an impressed tone.

Emerald turned to stare at him with eyes as wide as dinner plates, Mercury about collapsed from laughter once it dawned on him what Aldric had said. Cinder, likely hoping her lack of a reaction would mean he'd give it up, as was often the case with Mercury and his chastising of Emerald, ignored it, and turned to Aldric, one hand on her hip.

"Perhaps not that specifically." She hummed, "I assume you paid attention to that?" She asked, to Aldric's nod. "Good. As I said at the crash sight, you've a major abundance of aura within you. Equivalent to a huntsman many times your age and skill. However, you've no control over it whatsoever." She said, bluntly. "And that means, to anyone with even a minor sensory ability, you are like a walking bonfire of aura. I would not be surprised if the staff at the local huntsman academy could feel the fringes of your energy, and we've been actively fleeing in the opposite direction since yesterday."

"I assume you intend to solve that?" Aldric concluded.

Cinder nodded, "your training will begin now. I'll instruct you for an hour, after which, the best means of education would be a trial by fire."

Aldric blinked, "wait, what do you mean 'trial by fire?'..." If she was going to set his ass on fire, he had a healthy body to run with, superpowers to defend himself with, and a certain Academy that functioned damn well as a backup option. The Shadow Broker contingency was still more than possible, at this juncture!

"She means..." Said Mercury, who was a meters away and was gathering dead wood for use as kindling. "That the fastest way to teach someone is to put them in a position where they damn well need to use the skill they're being taught. You need to know how to hide your aura, so we're going to play hide and seek for keeps."

Aldric's shoulders slumped, but his face remained blank, and his eyes wide. "Oh, okay... I'm not going to be maimed, am I?"

Cinder responded with, "that is up to you. Now focus, here." She gestured for him to sit, and when he joined her, he felt the fiery heat from before suddenly perk its head up. Now that he could conclude that it was her aura, he supposed it made a little sense. "Shutting your eyes may help. Now, I want you to feel within yourself. Feel for the energy we have awoken."

"Interesting choice of words... Considering you're basically telling me to use a limb I never knew I had." Aldric deadpanned, as he looked down at his hands and his stomach, shutting his eyes. He wasn't being entirely snide, as her words did help out a bit. That the aura had never been there in the first place, it helped in him searching for it. After a few minutes of veritable, and perhaps literal, soul-searching, he was able to isolate it. Describing the search, it was akin to not noticing how many times a day one swallowed their own saliva out of reflex, until they had a sore throat. Feeling the aura inside of him, it was as if someone had placed a ball of fire in his stomach, and finding it and focusing on it, it left him with a partially intoxicating feeling, setting his blood ablaze. It was a feeling akin to that same sense of ecstatic satisfaction one got after having overcome a great physical challenge.

Opening his eyes, Aldric saw, radiating off of him, golden, raging flames, not at all doing anything to convince him he was anything but a super saiyan. Looking up, he saw Cinder nodding. "Good." She said, "tell me what you're doing right now. Describe to me how you are calling to your aura."

His hands were shaking, as he splayed out his fingers and looked over them. "It feels like a... Ball of fire in my stomach. I'm just... Grabbing it. Feeling it." He muttered, from behind a frown of concentration.

Cinder regarded him a moment, "then I want you to let go of this fire. I want you to place it back where you found it, and then isolate yourself from it. Do not think of it, do not touch it, move closer to it... Do not acknowledge it in any way. Smother it, like a flame you must put out. Cover it, like a fire you must lower the intensity of."

That ended up being what took up the most time. Every time he made a step forward, there was a slipup that sent him two steps back. To visualize the metaphor, if his aura was indeed the ball of fire he described, touching it was intoxicating, it made him feel warm, and set his blood ablaze. Letting it go, it brought a chill to his bones, as if his body alone wasn't warm enough to sustain him. He felt initially as if he were freezing, as if he couldn't survive without that warmth. It took far more than the hour given to him, and more hints and instructions from Cinder, and indeed her traveling companions, before Aldric finally nailed down a method.

He thought it akin to a cold pool. The worst part was the anticipation - one knew it was cold, and anticipating and agonizing over it, slipping in an inch at a time, it only made the ordeal all the worse. However, if they simply dove in and submerged themselves completely, held their breath and just waited as long as they could, it would shock the body into a brief fight or flight. They would adapt far quicker and far easier just by diving headfirst, than they would if they waited and agonized over it. In order to suppress his bonfire, he couldn't just slowly edge away from the fireball, he had to drop the sucker and run, effectively diving into the pool the moment he got his swimwear on. Once he got that down, he tried adding on another layer to it. To keep with the visual metaphor, before he booked it from the fireball, he dropped a huge, thick thermal blanket on it to smother the flames, and then he ran.

It worked, but it was clear it didn't work nearly as well as Cinder and her group. When Cinder 'smothered' her 'flame', so to speak, Aldric couldn't feel a damn thing. When he tried, however, Emerald - from several meters away on the other side of the camp - called out and said she could still feel him. Mercury even popped up from right behind him, from out of nowhere, scared the hell out of him, and said he had a long way to go. Then they decided to stop giving him extra time and told him the rules of their little training exercise.

Mercury's description had been apt. It was hide and seek for keeps. Aldric had to run and hide, and suppress his aura. He had to remain hidden for an hour, and if they found him, that was the hour reset for the next round. If he couldn't make the cut before dark, Cinder promised him only half of a meal - as incentive. Aldric would call it torture, but fortunately he'd eaten his fill of lunch. If it came by dark and he still hadn't gotten it, they'd call it quits and try again in the morning, though then he would have the added challenge of keeping on the move, so they wouldn't be bogged down in one spot for too long.

Then, Cinders words had been, "Dust help you if you don't get it by tomorrow night.", and the tone with which she had spoke set Aldric's teeth on edge.

He was given a sixty second head start.

He booked it, running for forty five seconds, before he found a small pile of rocks, branches and dirt, hid behind it, and tried smothering his aura.

It took then three minutes to find him. Searching in a wide line, with their senses just overlapping with the edge of the others', finding him had been child's play. His second try lasted even less long, as he had been winded from the dead sprint from the first one. On the third attempt, he ran for half of the time limit and then tried obeying every single one of his simian instincts and climbed a tree. It took them four minutes to find him. Progress, but at this rate he clearly wouldn't be eating a full dinner tonight.

By the time he had wasted an hour of cat and mouse hide and seek, he tried a different method to suppress his aura. Instead of smothering it with a blanket, he tried burying it, visualizing him just locking it into an Acme safe and shoving that safe as far down as he could, effectively burying it. That bought him a ten minute glimmer of hope, until he slipped in his concentration and was found mere seconds later. Subsequent attempts got him up to fifteen minutes, but as the sun grew higher, he knew that this method wasn't working.

With smothering and burying it out of the question, but each one better than the last, Aldric figured the next logical step would be crushing it. So this time he pictured a vice grip, enveloping the fireball and pressing down as hard as it could. It got him to twenty minutes, but now the sun was growing dangerously low in the sky. He only had one more chance at this. This last time, he tried moving to the next logical step and compressing it as far as it could go. He visualized the fireball going from the size of a softball, to that of an atom. It worked for thirty minutes, but then he stumbled forward, Mercury heard the noise and zeroed in on him.

Aldric didn't even realize he'd been knocked out until he woke up hours later, with a start, and the smell of food.

He shot up, and shook his head. "Ow!" He gave Mercury a look.

The assassin's son shrugged. "We never said we wouldn't attack." Was all he gave, as he filled his plate.

Aldric felt for the welt on the back of his head, slightly surprised with how small it was. When he was given his food, it was a pitiful portion when compared to the full helpings of his new comrades. Regardless, he was hungry, and he ate ravenously.

"So, Aldric." Mercury spoke up, attracting Aldric's arced eyebrow. "What's your world like?"

Aldric swallowed a mass of potatoes and thought a moment. "Loud, scary, big, and small." He said, with a shrug.

"Enlightening." Mercury deadpanned.

"Care to elaborate?" Emerald asked, as Cinder silently listened to the exchange.

"Well..." He felt he had to choose his words carefully, considering he didn't know if they had any plans for his world, once their time here was said and done. Though, that being said, they'd implied to him that they had watched it, so he knew he couldn't lie to them, either. "The cities are big, and the people don't shut up. They'll yell and scream about anything that pisses them off, and God help you if you piss the wrong person or the wrong group of people off. It's a massive place and few ever see the whole of it, but it's also so inter-connected that a person on one end of the planet could get an accurate feel for the other end by talking to the other people." He explained, scooping up what little food was still on his plate, and, after catching the wash cloth thrown by Mercury, he began wiping it down.

"But... While I may be biased, I'd still say it's a good place, at heart. The leaders suck, but the people... Well, it's kind of a mixed bag. Problem is the smart people don't talk enough, and the stupid ones can't shut up." He'd keep to himself the fact that he never shut up either, and how indicative it was of what half of the spectrum he fell on. He willingly joined what equated to a doomsday terrorist cult, for chrissakes, that should say enough.

But he continued nonetheless, "despite this, if you need help, like really need it, you'd be surprised what people are capable of... Just as you'd be surprised how common common sense really is, under the surface. Folks know what the problems are and are willing to do a lot more than they're given credit for, to fix it." He explained, "and when we band together, we get shit done."

Emerald hummed, "what do you mean by that?"

"Well, one time, one of our leaders decided that we would go to moon. Within nine years. Despite the fact that hardly any of the technology and science we'd need to do such a thing even existed at that point. Eight years later..." He nodded up to their shattered stellar satellite. "We fuckin' did it. Put it in other words, two hundred years ago we didn't have railroads. One hundred years ago, we didn't have airplanes. Fifty, we didn't have spaceflight, and twenty five years ago we didn't have the Internet. Our entire existence is owed to persistence, endurance, and determination. When we put ourselves to a task, it gets done, period." He paused, thoughtfully. "Kind of like your people, I think. You were beset upon on all sides by the Grimm, but instead of lying down, you banded together, found Dust, and pushed them back. Made civilization out of Hell." He explained.

"Wait -" Emerald pointed at him, "your people have been to the moon?" She asked. "I thought you said you burn hydrogen and gas to fuel your machines, since you don't have Dust. How did you not die?"

"Our space agencies are some of the most careful people on the planet, Emerald. They'll convene entire boards and have six hour meetings and eight hour test and retest runs just to tell their astronauts which button to hit on a keyboard if their computers don't work. They don't do anything unless they know it's as safe as it can possibly be... And, yeah, we use gas to get places." Aldric shrugged, as he checked his plate. "But you're not doing science right if something isn't exploding." He lowered it, "your people don't have spaceflight?"

Mercury shook his head, "we tried, but everything we have is powered by Dust, and that stops working once we leave Remnant's atmosphere."

Aldric hummed, "tough luck."

"It's still more reliable than burning things to get places."

Aldric gave him an agreeing nod, "I'll give you that. We've been burning shit so long that we're screwing up our atmosphere. Whole planet's warming up, icecaps are melting, oceans are rising..." He shook his head.

"So, if your people don't have Dust, how do you fight?" Emerald asked.

"Same way we get anywhere. Blowin' shit up." He handed the plate to Cinder, who stuffed it in Mercury's bag. "We shove a bunch of highly combustible materials inside the casing of a bullet, ignite them, and then the bullet goes its merry way."

"And... Cars, and airships?"

"Gas. Light it on fire, let it explode, catch the energy, turn it into electricity."

"Do your people blow everything up?!" Mercury laughed.

Aldric nodded emphatically, "actually it's one of my favorite things about my species. We've literally got a holiday where I come from, dedicated to launching miniature rockets and watching them explode in pretty colors. Shit, We sent a robot out into space, to land on one of the other planets in our solar system. Want to know what it does, while it's up there? It shoots the shit out of the planet with lasers to get samples of soil and rock deeper than it can scoop." He held up his thumb, "I mean, the lasers are hardly bigger than my thumb, but it's the thought that counts." He chuckled, "we've even got a space station, out in orbit. Since we couldn't launch the thing from the earth to space, we launched it in parts and built it up there." He nodded to the sky. "And to make sure it was livable, we literally caught air in a can, compressed it down, sent it up, and let it loose. But since its orbit is constantly decaying, every now and then it has to - and I swear I'm not making this up - shoot out the very atmosphere it uses to keep its occupants alive, to generate the thrust to keep it afloat." Well, sure, it came from sources beyond the life support systems, and he'd skipped a lot of details, but he didn't feel like explaining that part. He much preferred to make his people seem like they were insane.

And from the looks on his new companions, it was working. Even Cinder was giving him funny looks.

"Do I even want to know how you treat people with medicine?" Mercury asked.

Aldric grinned - they'd love this. "Well, to treat cancer, we actively poison people with sub-lethal doses." Though that would be as far as he went in relation to that - he wasn't sure if Remnant even had access to nuclear technology, so he wanted to at least keep Earth studies on radiation and nuclear physics a secret. That way, worst case scenario, Salem won, and turned her eyes to Earth, they'd always have the nuclear option. "Then we literally cut it out. With knives." Very small knives, but the point was still valid. "Oh yeah - and people can elect to have corrective eye surgery, so they don't need to wear glasses. They do this by shooting their eyes with lasers and burning off parts of their eye until they can see better."

Mercury leaned over to Emerald, "remind me to never piss him off." He leaned back, "now I'm starting to understand why you exploded when we woke up your aura."

Aldric leaned back and laughed, "I'll take that as a compliment." He chuckled. "So... How about you guys tell me a few things?" He asked, "I know we're on the move... But to where? Who's door are we going to knock on?" Or down, as the case may be.

Mercury exchanged a brief glance with Cinder, who nodded her head, as she wiped off her own plate. "There's a pretty powerful gang leader I convinced Cinder here she needs to get in touch with. I've got a few connections that are going to set up a meeting with him, but we've been waiting on you. Since you're up, we're going to head to Vale proper to meet up with him."

Aldric nodded. "And after him?" It occured to him now, as the moon climbed higher in the sky, that he wouldn't be sleeping on his Magic Chair. After this, he vowed that, if he ever returned to this area, the first thing he would do would be to find his chair. It deserved better than to be left to rot in the woods.

"The leader of a major Faunus rights faction." Cinder responded, "we are hoping both of them can provide resources to make something of an armed forces, when the need arises."

I wonder if they'll ever trust me to give me the full story. He reasoned that it would probably be if he stuck with them through the events of Volume Three and beyond. Until then, they would probably stick to their whole 'freedom fighters' shtick. "I notice you say when." He said, leaning back and planting his hands on the small of his back, stretching.

"As do your people seem, so are ours a violent kind." Said Cinder.

"I'll give you that." Aldric leaned back forward with a quick exhale. "Humans and violence are like moths to a flame." Sometimes it was a good thing, others? Not so much.

The night didn't last long after that. They quickly broke up to assemble tents and sleeping bags, Aldric was given a spare. Though he noted with some amusement that each of them gave him impressed looks when he assembled his without any need for assistance - he would be forever thankful for his hunting trips with his grandfather.

However, "why the hell does your tent look like that?" Mercury asked, standing next to Aldric and cupping his chin with his hand.

Aldric gave him a confused frown, and then looked back to his tent. He'd set it up in the classic A-frame pitch, and though it wasn't a good pitch and his grandfather probably would have had him tear it down if he'd seen it, there still wasn't anything wrong with it, it was classic because it worked. "What do you mean?" He turned around, and saw the problem.

Everyone else's tents were square, like small cubes. They reminded Aldric of prefabricated structures, back home.

"Well... Shit." And that was why there had been so much excess cloth and spare parts. That had confused the hell out of him, though he'd thought it was there in case there was damage to the tent.

He heard Mercury chuckle, "you know, you've got a mouth on you."

Aldric looked up at the assassin's son. "My parents were sailors." A beat, "they, traditionally, swear like nobody's business. The phrase being curse like a sailor." He provided the fighter, who nodded in gratitude.

"Well, none of us really have a problem with it... But I hope you can switch it off, considering some others may." Mercury gave Aldric a pat on the back.

Aldric shrugged, "I survived a plane crash, a demon attack, and multiple explosions with nothing but a flare gun, an axe, and a knife. I think I have the right to a few bad words." Though, he would admit, he saw Mercury's point, as well as the olive branch - Mercury was trying to give him some advice.

That advice being: Shut the hell up, or clean your mouth.

For The Record

Captain's Log. Stardate... I don't know. Believe it or not, I wasn't much of a Star Trek fan back home.

Anyways, spent the day today figuring out how to access my aura. According to Cinder and Co., I am the sensory equivalent to a giant gout of fire in a pitch black clearing. Anyone worth their salt, or anyone with a cheap-ass mechanical Aura sensor, would be able to locate me. It'd be like finding a person screaming into a megaphone in the middle of a dead silent library.

So I spent most of the day trying to figure out how to mask my energy. Unfortunately, Krillin, I am not (at least according to them), and a 'Stealth Mode', I don't have.

Problem: It's really goddamn hard to use a limb I never even knew existed before today. The best comparison I can draw is wiggling your ears. Some can do it, but unless you know how, all the teaching in the world won't magically grant you the stupid human trick. For some, it comes naturally - they've done it forever, so it's just natural to them. For others, it's a limb, or a group of muscles, they have not once ever used, and as such it's all but impossible for them to do so.

Fortunately I'm making progress. I made it halfway to their 'hide for an hour' rule, before I fucked up and got caught. I'm hoping I'll get better tomorrow, but the problem there will be we'll be on the move.

Now, since you're reading this, I doubt you can tell, but I'm one scrawny bastard, and I wasn't in too good shape back home. I wasn't necessarily weak, but pretty much all of my friends could outrun me, or outbench me. I don't even lift, bro. So crossing god-knows-how many miles to get back to civilization is going to be one hell of a Spartan initiation trial.

Hopefully my newfound superpowers will help me adapt quicker, but considering right now all I'm working on is actively not using them, I'm not too keen on my chances.

Also, good news for any Earth-Humans (still working on a better name) out there. In case you do go to war with Remnant under Salem, and win, and discover my little record:

If everyone from Remnant was utterly terrified of your guts, that was my doing. I made a few jokes and suddenly found myself having entirely too much fun making Cinder and Co. think we're all fucking insane. Told them about how we powered machines (burning gas... Controlled explosions), how we fly to space (burning oxygen... A much more powerful controlled explosion), how we study mars (shooting the shit out of it with lasers), how we fight wars (micro-explosions to propel projectiles at kill-velocities), and how we treat Cancer (we actively poison our sick so we can have a chance to cut that shit out of them.)

It's working.

As an aside, I'll be diligent in skipping any mentions of nuclear physics and WMD's. I've got something of a reason to suspect that the folks here in Remnant don't have nukes, or anything even approaching the like, so in the interests of preserving some kind of tangible advantage over them, I'll keep it to myself. It makes me wonder if they even have the concept of WMD's themselves, but I digress.

Also: I still don't know how to read Remnant English.

I hope to fix this soon.

Anyways, to wrap things up, our first stop seems to be heading to find Roman Torchwick's ass and recruit him for our little Totally-Not-A-Terrorist-Army. Hopefully that'll go well.

If I had to guess, we're rapidly drawing up on the whole Fall Maiden fight, and if that's the case, I understand why they're hounding my ass with this aura control stuff. I guarantee you they'll actively start trying to kill me once it's time to learn to use it to fight.

I still don't know what powers I've gotten, and without their instruction I can't try experimenting on my own to figure out. This also means I can't even start to think about what weapons or equipment I should consider, because I don't know what my abilities are and what kind of anything will compliment them. For all I know I can make stuff explode with my mind, so I should probably get a flak jacket. But I may very well also be able to freeze things solid, so I'd probably want... Well, funny as it may be:A chisel.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I've ruled out the Saitama option, as I got knocked out earlier today, and there ain't nothing that can knock that bastard out.
And I still have my hair, so, you know. There's that.

But I still may have the Super Saiyan thing going for me, and if that's the case, while not as easily solved as the One Punch Man route, things will still look good for my survival prospects. I'm all but certain Krillin could kick ass here in Remnant, let alone someone like Goku. Folks here just don't have that kind of destructive capability.

And it may be I'll get something completely out of left field, and I'll have to get creative with it.

But I swear to god, if I get Heart, I'll shoot myself.
What kind of lame power is Heart, anyway?

Actually, wait, couldn't Ma-Ti mind control people? He just... Didn't?
Shit.
I take it back: Give me heart, and I'll solve all of the world's problems in... Like... A day.
A week tops.

'Till next time.

The next morning, hardly minutes after he finished tearing apart his tent, he was appraised of the new rules of their little training game. He was given a few maps, shown where they were on the local one, and had a few close by landmarks pointed out, and then he had a location near its edge marked as their end destination. The goal, he was told, was to get there within seven days. Being told it was one hundred and fifty miles away dampened his spirits a bit. The rules of the game were simple: The route they would take would be marked by these landmarks, he had to make it to them before the rest of them did, hide, and once they arrived and signaled the start of the clock, pray they took longer than an hour to find him. If they did, he'd have to run to the next landmark - none of them closer than five miles apart - and hide there.

When they said trial by fire, they weren't kidding. They were going as Spartan as they could with all of this. Now, even though he had no conscious control over it whatsoever, there were passive effects to having aura flowing through him as freely as it was now. He equated it to him going from Steve Rogers to Captain America. Even without using the aura consciously to amplify his strength, speed, stamina, and whathaveyou, the passive effects were enough to make him superhuman to Earth standards. He desperately wished he had a way to chart these with numbers, and also wondered what was the difference between him and Jaune Arc, since he didn't remember him getting any passive buffs, but he digressed, simply attributing it to the difference between Pyrrah's opening Jaune's aura, and Cinder doing the same. Besides, now wasn't the time for study. That comes later.

Regardless of these passive enhancements, however, he still had physical limits. His body may be enhanced, but it still wasn't used to the strenuous work he was putting it through, and it was made even worse since his incredibly intelligent self had weighed himself down with all of the stuff he wouldn't give up from the plane crash. He still was able to run far longer and far faster than he'd ever been able to before, but that didn't change the fact that his body needed to acclimate to the stress he was putting it through. The first landmark they had designated was about fifteen miles away, and through a combination of not knowing how to navigate very well in the woods, not being given anything but emergency help from his new 'friends', and his body still needing to adapt to both his aura and the physical exertion he was putting it through, it took him a few hours. It was a small, grassy green mountain, only about a mile high at its peak, but its distinguishing factor was the complete lack of trees, and a clear view of the plateaus to the east - the opposite direction they were headed.

They were waiting on him when he showed up, none of them were even winded, and he was panting and covered in a thin film of sweat.

Because he was late, they hardly gave him thirty seconds.

On the upside, however, he lasted thirty minutes. Considering how exhausted he was now compared to the day previous, he felt that a significant improvement, despite no empirical advancement.

The next landmark was only ten miles away. He was able to make it there in a little over ninety minutes, though he felt that perhaps he could have shortened that time, had he not accidentally started walking circles for a good twenty minutes. The problem was everything looked the same, and the trees were so massive that it was hard to see the sky from underneath the thick, vibrant green leaves. He'd only managed to get out of it by carving up trees with his knife. Again, however, they were waiting for him, and Mercury wore a smug look the entire hunt, this time. Aldric knew it was to piss him off and make him slip up, he knew it was to get him used to suppressing his aura in any situation. He knew this, and it still worked. He didn't last longer than twenty minutes before Cinder scared the hell out of him by planting an arrow not two inches from his ear. His hands were in the air in a surrendering pose so fast that he nearly popped one of his arms out of its socket. Cinder had a grin half as smug as Mercury's, once Aldric got to his feet.

If he didn't know that these people were the ones that would give the wrong answer to 'save or destroy the planet', he might actually have started to like them. Hell, even knowing that, it was hard to not have just a little fun, doing all of this. Unfortunately, this fun ran out when Cinder revealed to him she wasn't bluffing, in that he really didn't want to reach the third day without having gotten aura suppression down pat.

When he woke up the third day, and packed up his tent, he turned around to see Emerald standing less than a few feet away from him, her gun pointed right at his head, and an amused grin on her face. He was pretty sure he was supposed to have heard her approach, but given the smile on her face, she may have just been having fun.

He didn't get out anything more than a weak sounding "Uh." Before she pulled the trigger.

And that was how he was introduced to aura shields. Functionally the same thing as energy shields from any sci-fi video game ever, they worked by protecting the aura user from damage. However, there was a threshold, both of the sudden damage and of the sustained battle variety. The way he understood it, if he was hit with - say - anything stronger than a MOAB, his shields would break due to the sudden instant force. However, they would also be broken if he was punched in the face constantly for an hour. It was like the difference between the death of a thousand cuts, and being impaled through the chest with a spear as big as a tree trunk.

His shields managed to survive Emerald's stress test, and when an arrow was buried next to his head, Cinder explained to him that since he was moving so slow, they would put the 'fire' in trial by fire. He barely managed to roll out of the way of Mercury's downward kick, which did get him some props from the assassin's son. Even they would give credit where it was due, Aldric was all but certain that he'd dodged it because Mercury had let him. If this guy was capable of fighting and killing his assassin father, and then holding his own against Yang later on - with the argument being possible that he could have won, had that been his intention - Aldric held no reservations that he'd avoided the kick on his own skill. Mercury had been holding back.

The next landmark was another dozen miles away, but remarkably, he managed to make it there before everyone else. He thought he faintly heard gunshots in the distance, once he made it to the steep cliffside, making him wonder if they'd run into any Grimm while he was beating feet. Regardless of the reality, he took his time finding a place to hide, and ten minutes later, once he heard their voices, he capped his aura and started praying. They had known he'd made it, and as such simply fired off their weapons a few times to mark the timer's start.

In a surprising turn of fate, he actually almost went the distance, this time. He'd had ten minutes left, before Cinder picked up a small boulder and chucked it away, revealing him to the world at large. She had an impressed look etched across her face, but a failure was still a failure, and now he was in deep shit. He barely was able to scramble to his feet before she blasted the place he'd been hiding with fire, and the moment the cracks of thunder and the girlish screams of fright filled the air, Mercury and Emerald were hot on his heels. His shields were stressed and indeed broken on more than one occasion as he fled from Cinder and her crew, he got more than his fair share of bruises before he got the memo, capped his aura, and then kept running. This managed to do the trick, as he was able to put enough distance between him and them that his severely lessened presence stayed just outside of their sensory range just long enough for them to lose him, and for them all to make way for the next landmark.

Unfortunately, in his mad dash, he got hopelessly lost, and ended up being more than three hours late in finding their next landmark. They were all pissed, and he had little more than seconds to run and hide. This time, however, he decided it was time to play it like a crafty human instead of an idiotic demigod. He dropped his bag in a surreptitious hiding spot, but in such a way that he knew they could find it, before he found himself a cave running alongside the large stone cliffsides. There, he abandoned his boots, backtracked to cover whatever tracks he may have left, and found a tree trunk to hide in, and capped his aura as best he possibly could.

One may expect the details of another failure, but by no small miracle, there wasn't one. Cinder herself - Cinder, for Christ's Sake! - came within a couple feet of his tree trunk and didn't sense him. It was only after ninety minutes, did Mercury swing by and see him. As it turned out, he hadn't covered his tracks well, and once the hour had passed, they took off the training wheels and started using other methods to find him. But, the fact of the matter was still - he'd won!

He may have been happy about this, but then Merceury kicked the tree so hard it exploded and he was shot away like a cannonball. Since his instincts were still decidedly human and not huntsman, he screamed like a terrified animal as he flew through the air, fully convinced he was going to die, before instincts hit him about as hard as he hit one of the trees behind him. That is to say, he blasted straight through it as if he were in Dragonball Z, and was promptly buried by the falling tree trunk.

Not being flattened by that did wonders for his confidence, and after he recovered his bag and his boots, they all took a break to discuss where he stood.

Mercury spoke up first, "I'll give you credit there, Aldric. It was a good idea to double back like you did. You covered your tracks decently, but once we found them it didn't take long for us to see what you'd done. I'll give you an 'A' for effort, at least."

Eating his first full meal in days, Aldric didn't even spare the assassin's son a glance. "But?" He grunted, his mouth full.

"But it took guts to try what you did, abandoning your effects like that." Emerald picked up. "Most wouldn't have, and finding your shoes actually convinced Cinder for a little while you'd been attacked."

This made Aldric pause, he gave Cinder a curious look, which Cinder returned with a challenging glare. "Aw, I didn't think you cared, Hot Stuff." He grinned, she rolled her eyes, and he continued. "So how did you think I did?"

It occured to him now that he was actively trying to get under the skin of a woman who was capable of fighting and defeating a demi-goddess, and stealing her powers to boot. But he had an act to play, and making them think he felt comfortable around them only helped it. It made him feel like TeamFourStar's Alucard, actually - doing these things and getting away with them because he knew he could. Granted, with Alucard, it was because he knew there was nothing they could do to kill him, or even slow him down, whereas Aldric would probably be flayed alive in a second, but the point still remained. Aldric was, ostensibly, too useful to them to be killed.

For now, at least. He'd have to tone it down to make sure this ruse kept up.

"You've still a lot to learn, but you're on the right track." She said, "it's becoming clear to me that you are at your best when your life is in danger."

Aldric was about to argue that point, when he realized that she actually had a point. A lot of the stuff he'd gotten done had been spurred on by his life being threatened - first by Cubone, then by Mothra, now by Cinder and her group. Hell, if he hadn't been so afraid of dying by their hands, he may never have come up with his Green Hornet plan. So he shrugged, "I see your point." Though now he feared that she would make good on the implication that, in order for them to get him to do anything, they'd have to actively kill him.

That method may have worked in turning Gohan into a Super Saiyan, but sweet Jesus that was not the trend Aldric wanted to set. Yes, he may be a man after Nathan Drake's heart, in how much stuff he's survived, but that didn't mean he wanted to be tempting fate with a carrot on the end of a stick. That was when fate started pulling out Murphy's Law, and that was how people died.

"So..." He said, after wiping his plate clean. "How close are we to your safehouse?" He asked, tossing the plate back to Mercury, who stuffed it in his bag.

"Well..." Mercury said, swapping the plate for a map. "We're actually making decent time. You can really cover some ground when people are trying to kill you there." He gave it a brief look, "even counting for us slowing down, should only be another day or two before we get where we're going. Then we can make it to Vale, get you kitted out." He folded the map back up.

Emerald piped in, "you been thinking about what kind of weapon you'd like?"

Aldric leaned back, "uh, no. Been kind of pumping all of my brain power into not dying and figuring out how to kick down my aura." He was also pretty certain their next step would be making the suppression instinctual, that would be fun.

Mercury gave him a smug grin, "considering where you come from, I would have thought that would be the first thing you thought of." He chuckled.

Aldric, with the sound of metal scraping against leather, drew the knife he'd looted from the airplane, giving the assassin's son little more than an arced eyebrow.

Mercury nodded, "good point." He conceded.

Aldric slid the knife back into its sheathe, and turned to Cinder. "What's bitin' you?"

"I was merely thinking what weapon would match a person such as you."

Aldric grinned, "a badass?"

"A survivor."

"That works too." It was a good question, though. What the hell kind of weapon should he get? Actually, considering he didn't know what kinds of weapons Remnant had beyond standard swords and guns, and the weapons used by the main cast, it became a much more relevant question. "What kind of weapons do you people even have to begin with?" He nodded to Emerald, "I've seen her pistols... I've seen his legs, and I've seen your bow, but aside from that... Nothing." Though he was curious as to how Emerald's guns even worked, considering he never saw her load them.

"I'm afraid that's a bad question, Aldric. Could you name off every weapon your people fight with?"

Aldric thought a moment, before he deadpanned, "well... Most of 'em." What self respecting Call of Duty player couldn't? Unless she was talking about specific model firearms, in which case, he saw her point.

Cinder gave a sidewards nod, "regardless, the point remains. Vale is a capital city of a major kingdom. Before our meeting we should be able to reach several weapons stores, and find one that suits you."

"Stores, huh? That reminds me - what the hell's our budget?"

Mercury grinned, "don't worry about it. That bit's covered."

Considering that this was coming from the son of a man who killed people for a living, Aldric decided to heed his advice. "So you mention one that suits me. What's that supposed to mean?"

"Weapons are meant to cater to their wielders." Said Cinder, "when we awake tomorrow, and begin our travels, I hope to at least be able to learn some small sliver of your semblance. From there we can make assumptions as to your capabilities and what weapons would best compliment them."

Aldric arced an eyebrow, "semblance?"

"Your powers." Emerald supplied.

He nodded, "ah, gotcha." Well, that was progress, he guessed.

For the Record

Going to be at Vale within the next day, according to Mercury.

And apparently, in regards to the money we'll be spending to get me all equipped, our budget is 'Don't Worry About It'.

I'm tempted to call his bluff, but I don't know if Don't Worry About It is daddy's blood money, his blood money, or - "You want that? Alright." And then they shoot the fucking shopkeep and give it to me.

I doubt that's what'll happen, but I also wouldn't put it past 'em, you know? We are actively planning to end the whole damn world, after all.

Anyways, I'm supposed to be learning what my powers are, tomorrow, and if I'm lucky, at least a little bit on how to use them.

Apparently that's as far as they want to go, however. They want to wait for the real combat training until I know what I've got, so then we can pick up the weapon that would fit me most, and then I can learn to fight with my powers and my weapon all at the same time. According to them, it'll save time.

But I saw Chronicle, I know that sitting on superpowers and not doing anything with them is a recipe for stupidity. If this universe is anything like that, then semblances are going to be like muscles, and the more I 'exercise' it, the stronger it will get.

Granted, I'm supposed to be a walking gigantic firebomb of aura, so my 'exercise' may unintentionally crack a continent in half... But that's what tomorrow's for. To see where I stand without any training.

I really hope I've got something along the lines of mass manipulation. That could verily solve all of my problems, and it all boils down to force and density.

Force is Mass multiplied by Acceleration, and density is the quantity of mass per unit volume.
F=MA and D=M/V

So I increase my mass, I hit harder, and get harder to hit. I can hurt people easier, and I become so dense that people can't damage me.

Basically, Superman.

Or Saitama, now that I think about it. Hm.

But then there's ice powers. I kind of hope I get something like that, failing mass manipulation. That way I can just 'kill the Batman', as it were, and freeze all my enemies to absolute zero (the point where all atomic movement ceases), and just walk up to 'em and smash 'em to pieces. Wouldn't even have to fight, then.

Fire may also be good, because that's just atoms moving around real fast. I could excite someone's atomic movement and disintegrate them, or even just boil the air around me to plasma and then shoot 'em with something hotter than the sun. Kamehameha!

Electricity would be fun too, if only because I was a pretty big inFamous fan, but I'd have to think a while as to some better applications to that.

And, yes, even Heart would have some uses.
Do you know how powerful Killgrave was, with just mind control?

I could literally just get my enemies to fight for me, or, better yet, make them knock themselves out.

Hell, I could get Salem's ass to send me home, and tell her to off herself once I leave. Problem solved.

But, thinking about what-ifs won't do me any good. I'll get the stuff tomorrow and see how things go.

'Till next time.