AN
And here you people thought I was kidding.
Enjoy your fucking land invasion! Courtesy of the planet Earth!
Chapter 35
A dozen missiles just to start, only ever more were being added to the pile, and the best he was capable of was slowing them down - and not nearly enough to buy all of the students time to run. People would die, and the force struggling against him was enough to slowly push him back towards the locker room. All of his muscles clenched, his legs were braced behind him, but with every jet that passed only more were revealed on the approach, or others arcing back around, and only added more missiles for him to struggle against. He was losing this battle.
Until the force lightened, and the weight he struggled against was lifted - not removed, but lifted as though someone were helping him.
Aldric's eyes snapped open and he saw Pyrrha standing next to him, in a similar stance, arms held out and body alight with the black glow of her semblance, as she grabbed ahold of the missiles streaming towards them, and with her help, they didn't stop, but they were slowed to a crawl, and fewer came to join them - the pilots soaring by overhead no-doubt realizing the futility of throwing metal at Magneto and regrouping for a different strategy. Aldric feared this strategy would involve a hail of bullets to join the bombs, but another student rushed by him and into the locker room.
"Buy me one minute!" He heard her shout, as others followed her lead and sprinted inside, be it to help her or to take the chance offered to them by Aldric and Pyrrha to grab their weapons and escape.
That one, single minute, felt like an eternity, and Aldric and Pyrrha were both pushed into the wall of the locker room - the latter bracing his foot against the wall as he pushed harder, his voice and his body both shaking with the effort, and both he and Pyrrha slowly being covered in sweat as they struggled against the missiles.
Aldric looked up and over the rim of his shield, seeing the missiles suspended in mid-air, all spread about and angled right at him and the other students, their engines blasting fire as they struggled to crawl closer and closer to the ground, their determination the result of the cold, ceaseless efforts of their design. But beyond them, he saw as other jets were buzzing Beacon Tower with their guns, and blasting at Ozpin's office with their missiles, and he could just barely see other students fleeing the tower, in varying states of physical health.
Teeth clenched, Aldric vowed to have words with Cinder, if he made it out of this.
And as he and Pyrrha were pushed tighter against the wall, and more students streamed in and out of the locker room, the one who had spoken before strolled out of the locker room, the students parting around her like the red sea, as she hefted an enormous, silver and gold, multibarreled minigun to bear. She glared up at the sky and the barrels started rotating with blinding speed, before a storm of bullets began blasting out of each barrel, hundreds each second. She angled the barrels upwards and drew her metaphorical line in the sand with a literal line through the sky, the rounds from her minigun tearing through the air and slamming into the missiles, each one causing a detonation and each detonation lessening the force Aldric and Pyrrha were struggling against. After they all were gone, both of them dropped to the ground, as the student's minigun's rotations slowed down, the barrels glowing white hot and the air radiating around them.
"That's a one off!" Aldric grunted, over the sounds of cheering. "I can't do that -" But he was interrupted by the cheers being drowned out by a rising chorus of yells and screams.
When Aldric looked up, he saw why: A jet had seen all the missiles get destroyed, and decided to try its luck with its guns. The ground and the walls around them was chewed apart, but the closer the jet grew, the more accurate the gunfire became. With a pained grunt, Aldric lunged over to Pyrrha, grabbing her by her vest, and then whirled around, throwing her into the locker room and using his semblance to slide his shield onto his back, and just he braced his hands on the frame of the door, the gunfire became pinpoint accurate, it hit not the student, or Pyrrha, or the people inside the doorway, but Aldric.
Specifically, the shield on Aldric's back, the air briefly filled with the banging sounds of the rounds slamming into it.
Despite everything, Aldric couldn't help a grin stretching across his face, in stark contrast to the looks of horror and concern on the faces of the students in front of him. Not a smile of excitement or energy, but of the fact that the bullets hitting the shield and it rattling against his back actually felt a little ticklish. The smile was wiped away when the bullets stopped and the jet banked upwards and passed on overhead, and, panting, Aldric looked at the assembled students.
"Is everyone armed?!" He called out, to a wave of nods and a thunder of affirmatives. "Then what're you waiting for!?" He let go of the doorframe and waved everyone out, "come on!" And with that, a horde of Beacon's huntsmen and huntresses of all years, shapes, and sizes, burst out from the locker rooms, a small partition breaking off and rushing for the academy's main hall, while the rest ran for the cafeteria.
"Ash!" Aldric heard, after reaching the main hall and as the trickle of students began to slow. He whipped around and saw Pyrrha, decked out in her combat gear.
They each seemed to have the same thought, saying simultaneously, "why are you in here?"
"I can fly!" Was Aldric's answer.
"I can hit the ships with projectiles!" Pyrrha responded, nodding.
Aldric pointed at her, as Ozpin, a firm frown on his face, took the stage. "You need to stick with me, I have a dumb damn idea!"
"I saw your team, they're in the cafeteria!" She nodded.
Aldric sighed, "phew, good." And with that, Ozpin's voice filled the main hall.
"As I said before, Vale is under attack." To accentuate this, the ground briefly quaked from the force of a distant explosion, "their intent is to cripple our ability to fight back and to destroy the CCT Tower to remove our capacity to call for help." Aldric noticed how quick and harshly he was speaking, his voice deeper and words sharper. "As of this moment we have confirmed that no troops have landed, and their air-to-ground strikes have been limited to military targets in the coastline and the industrial district. However this is likely not the case forever, because we have received reports from Patch that the airships are being launched from offshore sea-ships and boats, and that these ships are also launching other air and sea craft, all filled with soldiers equipped for ground assaults.
"We cannot let that happen, we will not let Vale fall." Ozpin declared, firmly, to the brief cheers of the students in the hall. "Right now our priority is towofold: Your fellow students in the cafeteria will assist in the evacuation of the civilians in the city below, and those of you here will attract the attention of the enemy air forces to buy the Vale military stations in the other districts the time and breathing room they sorely need to scramble their own defenses."
Aldric felt light headed; this was growing larger by the second. The only way they could stage an assault - an invasion! - of this magnitude was if they had the numbers and hardware to back it up; Aldric was willing to bet a lot of money that there were drones in the air too, but an even surer - and more terrifying - bet was that these 'ships' Patch was reporting sightings of were actual naval vessels. Aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers, frigates, the entire fucking world's Navy showed up for this. But Aldric knew that the United Nations wouldn't risk their naval forces on a one-way trip, so there had to be a stable wormhole somewhere out there, one that wasn't going to open and shut as the earlier ones had, and one that the UN had watched long enough to declare safe enough to travel both ways.
This month of silence hadn't been Salem being inactive - it was the entire planet Earth planning how to secure their beachhead on an alien planet.
"Now because they have specifically targeted areas with aircraft, we cannot stage this counter offensive from Beacon's landing pads. As a result, we must do from the academy itself. Find high ground wherever you can and use it to launch counter attacks at these airships. Take them down but do not risk your safety to do so, if you find yourself targeted by them, remember that they have the advantage in speed, height, and destructive power and they will not hesitate to use it." There was a pause, before Ozpin's voice grew lighter, "We can rebuild Beacon and we can retake Vale, but we cannot replace you.
"If you have them, assemble your teams. If you do not, pair up, and go." He said, over another distant explosion and quake of the ground.
Aldric turned to Pyrrha, "come on!"
She followed behind him, "where are we going?" She shouted over the sounds of explosions, roaring jet engines, sonic booms, and bullets strafing across the ground, the both of them had their shields up.
"Back to the locker rooms!" Aldric shouted, "we need a lot of metal!" He roared, as the teams from the cafeteria streamed out as well, rushing like a tidal wave towards the landing platforms, no doubt to take the 'express' route down to the city. "Have you ever -" Aldric's next words were silenced when the two had to defend against another strafing run, their shields holding up but Pyrrha's quickly went from golden-orange to gunmetal gray, the bullets having flayed most of the paint from its surface. "-heard of a railgun?!"
Pyrrha shook her head, as they reached the locker room. Aldric leapt up to the roof and Pyrrha followed him, the two of them taking up position next to the slots in the roof, under which the undeployed rocket lockers sat.
"Alright!" Aldric called out, sliding his shield off of his arm, letting it hit the ground, and then holding both arms out, perpendicular to his chest, level with eachother, hands open. "Do this with your arms!" He then pointed away from her, "make it so all of that energy is pushing away from you, and only use the slightest amount of energy at this moment!"
Pyrrha frowned, appearing lost, but she nodded nonetheless, doing as he instructed. When her arms were aglow with her magnetic energy, Aldric snatched his shield up and held it above her arms, "brace, this might hit you."
"What?!" And he dropped the shield.
Thank god it shot away from her and not towards her; Aldric caught it with his semblance and snatched it back, nodding to himself. "Alright, here's the short version: What we're doing is using your semblance to skip all of the steps of a railgun and go straight to obscene magnetic force! So I need you to put your ALL into this!" He shouted, "everything you can summon up! All of your power, focused right here in your arms!" He tapped both arms, and stomped on the roof, wrenching two of the metal plates off of it that kept the locker sealed underneath it. "You have to do the aiming and the power supply! Find an airship and tell me when you've got it! If this works we can blast them right out of the sky!" Railguns were supposed to shoot projectiles fast enough that they could act as anti-missile weapons, provided a good enough computer to aim it; Aldric was hoping and praying Pyrrha could get them going fast enough that she could eyeball it and shoot down planes.
She seemed to understand his instructions and his explanation well enough, and nodded, frowning as she clenched her jaw and her muscles, the dark glow around her arms growing more powerful, enough so that Aldric felt what little metal he had on him being attracted to her. When she felt she was ready, she looked up into the sky, before shifting her arms up and acquiring her target, as Aldric pulled up the metal plates he'd torn from the roof and crushing them together, creating a vaguely bullet-shaped projectile.
"Ready!"
"Dropping!" And Aldric dropped the projectile between Pyrrha's arms.
It shot forward with a deafening thunderclap, and Pyrrha shot backwards. Sir Isaac Newton, it seemed, would not be ignored: Every action had an equal and opposite reaction, and that meant that all the power that shot the projectile forward shot Pyrrha back. Aldric almost wasn't able to catch her before she flew off of the roof, but when he pulled her back to him, she, rubbing her chest, pointed up. "Look!"
Aldric looked in the direction she was pointing, and saw that his half-baked plan worked: A jet had been hit by their improvised rail slug and was tumbling out of the sky, the pilot ejecting. Aldric gave Pyrrha a clap on the back, "damn good!" He said, sliding his shield onto his back, as he tore up more metal from the roof and began making more slugs, "new plan!" He planted his shield on Pyrrha's back and braced them both against her, "alright, get a target!" He called out, hoping his strength and the shield's nature would be enough to keep Newton's third law from biting them in the ass again.
"Got one!"
"Dropping!" And Aldric dropped the second projectile into Pyrrha's arms; it blasted away with another clap of thunder, making Aldric's ears ring and pushing Pyrrha into him.
Aldric looked over her shoulder just in time to see the slug clip a jet, not with the brilliant explosion of the first, but enough to make its pilot lose control and plummet towards the ground, and as Pyrrha acquired her next target, Aldric saw more anti-air students taking position around the school, finding rooftops, pillars, and large, open windows - some even in the heavily damaged Beacon Tower itself - and beginning to tear apart at the jets filling the air; he was pretty sure he saw Minigun Chick's bullets streaming about, taking care of missiles and planes alike. This continued in for several minutes, the airspace above Beacon becoming choked by smoke, fire, and falling debris. Aldric had no shortage of metal detritus to loot from, be it the metal plates on the roof, the lockers in the building below, or various bits of jet falling to the ground around him.
But as with all things, especially those in battle, it didn't last forever, as though the planes did retreat after a few dozen had been taken out, Aldric learned that it was because of two specific reasons: Beacon tower was heavily listing to one side, and there was something far worse brewing far above even the jets.
Something he wouldn't have been able to see without his new eyes.
A lot of somethings, in fact.
Far smaller than a full-fledged fighter jet, too small to carry a person, but large enough to carry a suite of missiles.
The drones were here, and they'd already found two targets of great opportunity: Minigun chick, operating off of the dorm rooms' rooftop, and the two assholes who had improvised a deadly railgun in a world where they did not exist. Fortunately, one missile was far easier to deal with than dozens, and because Aldric saw it arcing down from the clouds, he had just enough time to switch places with Pyrrha, twisting around and then using his semblance to thrust his shield forward. The missile slammed into it and left the two unharmed, but the same effect couldn't be said for the building: The explosion enough to buckle the roof beneath them and send them tumbling to the ground.
"Ah!" Aldric grunted, as he pushed some rubble off of his leg, feeling a bruise welling up. "Pyrrha! You okay?" He called out, using his radar to find and scramble over to her.
"Yes!" The rubble covering her was blasted away with her semblance, "I didn't see what hit us." She breathed, covered in a thin film of sweat from the focus and power she had to summon up for their little trick.
"It was too high up, almost in the clouds." Aldric gasped, brushing some rubble from her shoulder, and noting a bad gash on her right arm. "I think we might be in more trouble than that."
"Why?"
"Back west, while we were falling. The airships were pulling back, but I saw more approaching from the coast." The two limped outside, and looked up at Beacon Tower; the top missing. "And that means..." Aldric gasped, pulling out his scroll and seeing it without a signal; Vale was disconnected, the world didn't know what was happening. "Soldiers are coming." He flicked his hand at the tower, "cut off communications..." He looked out west, seeing the few Vale fighter-ships tangling with the terran jets, while off in the distance he could see Vale naval vessels hurtling towards the city to assist, but were also under heavy attack by jets, helicopters, and drones alike. "Cripple the enemy's ability to fight you back in the air." He indicated the largest pillars of smoke. "Then you bring in the soldiers." He looked over at Pyrrha; the way she was gasping for air and streaming sweat told him that, if they could again, they couldn't use their railgun trick for long.
"We have to help, them." Pyrrha nodded, firmly.
"No." Aldric shook his head, "well - yes, but we go down there, we get torn the hell apart. Whoever these people are, they own the air, and now we can't communicate with our own forces." He gave the tower another look; maybe if they could push the terrans back, they could fix the CCT tower, but it would take time, weeks - months, even. "And look." He looked back down to the horizon, "a lot of the airships are fleeing, and even more are coming back."
Pyrrha frowned, "they're staging their attack somewhere. Those ships aren't new, they're just rearmed."
Sometimes throughout their interactions, Aldric forgot Pyrrha was supposed to be a prodigy. "Exactly." He nodded, "so long as they can keep doing that, we can't do a damn thing but hold them off." He popped his back. "Their airships can just keep coming, leaving, and coming back, and as long as they have air superiority, their ground forces will take losses, yes, but they won't lose."
"But how would we find the airships they're rearming at?" Pyrrha asked, "how would we get to them?"
Aldric turned back to the partially flattened locker room; Pyrrha could feasibly be able to follow him if she used one of the lockers as a means of propelling herself, but he could tell just by looking at her that she was exhausted. The kind of power she'd needed to bring up, and how long she'd had to do it, and how many times, it took its toll on her. It could very well be all she had just to get to the carriers, let alone help him attack them. He could haul her along with him, but that didn't eliminate her exhaustion, only meant she would be less so when they got there.
Aldric frowned, and began making a few assumptions.
One: That the US, or the UN, or whoever's navy had been donated for this assault, absolutely would not donate too many ships to it.
Two: That an aerial assault of this magnitude couldn't possibly be done by one carrier, but with One in mind, there had to be enough carriers to be able to lead the attack, whilst also having more than enough at home - or defending the wormhole here - to defend against counter attacks.
Three: The Earth may be at war, yes, but it was shifting to a war footing from a little over seventy years of relative peacetime, so there wasn't a titanic number of aircraft carriers in the world, as opposed to other sorts of ships.
Based on these facts alone, Aldric would high-ball it and say Earth had twenty five aircraft carriers, with twenty being a more reasonable assumption.
That led him to four: That the number here had to be anywhere from three to five, plus their escort vessels. The likely number would be three - enough to stage this kind of aerial assault, but not even remotely enough to put the Earth's security in danger if they were lost or stranded here on Remnant.
And finally, five: That the loss of one of the vessels in this invasion fleet, especially a carrier, would be catastrophic, as it would severely lessen their ability to stage an assault on the city, by means of cutting down on the number of aircraft and drones they could launch, refuel, and rearm.
If Aldric could locate and somehow destroy one, Vale would at least be able to push the terran soldiers back. Two, and they would be in full retreat, likely by using missile strikes from the other ships as cover. If by some miracle he could wreck all three, they'd high-tail it back to wherever the wormhole was and flee back to Earth. He highly doubted he could do two or three without quick and sustained access to his magic, but if he could just find a way to destroy one carrier's bridge, they'd lose their ability to communicate and coordinate with the other ships, and, while not scuttled or even truly incapable of operating, it would be damaged enough that it would negatively effect the terrans' ability to fight.
One major problem, though: Aldric only had a passing knowledge of the history of naval warfare, and that was only because his parents had been in the Navy. So it was very possible - perhaps even likely - that he was wrong on each and every single count. So that meant he had to ask himself: What was more important, here and now? Crippling the enemy's ability to fight? Or saving lives here on the homefront? Or, more accurately, what would save more lives? Abandoning the defensive line here to try and shred the enemy fleet? Or Sticking back to assist the citizens of Vale in evacuating to their fallout shelters?
Wait... Aldric blinked, as he realized: He could destroy the enemy ships. Even without his powers.
Very easily.
Because he'd had a trick up his sleeve that he'd never used, deeming its use too dangerous, too unstable, and limiting it only to a single emergency.
So he frowned, and reached out with his semblance, grabbing his shield and summoning it back to him. "This is what we're going to do." He said, as the shield slid into place. "You're going to link up with the ground forces. Find your team if you can, find my team or RWBY if you can't... Or just find a team if you can't get any of those three, but find someone who can watch your back."
She slowly turned to him, very aware that he hadn't mentioned himself at all. "And you?"
"There's ship out there." Aldric said, clenching the shield strap tightly. "I'm going to sink it."
Pyrrha blinked, "Ash, that could kill you!" She gasped, "we could barely stop a few rockets, working together! You can't tear an airship out of the sky!" She shook her head, "take - take me with you!" She grabbed a shoulder, "I can help you!"
Aldric blinked, and gave her an incredulous look. "Lady, you're thinking too big." He spread out his arms, as the ground shook from a distant explosion. "Gotta think smaller." He brought his hands together, "I don't have to tear the ship out of the sky, I just have to break its engines, and... I'm pretty confident in my ability to do that." He displayed a palm, and the air around it froze. "Even the most durable metal gets brittle when you freeze it." He neglected to explain to her that freezing an entire aircraft carrier wasn't even remotely his idea.
She shook her head, "don't, Ash. Don't throw yourself into the meat grinder."
"And let potentially thousands of people die just because I'm not willing to risk my life?" Aldric asked, shaking his head. "That's not what I believe in." He slid her hand off of his shoulder, and placed his on hers. "I'm a huntsman. I'm here to save lives, at the cost of my own if need be. And besides..." He lowered his gaze, revealing his new eyes. "If the fire and the ice aren't any indication, I've got tricks up my sleeve."
But she didn't look convinced, and Aldric wasn't liking how much time this was taking.
So, he took a slightly drastic measure, "tell you what." He gave Pyrrha a pat on her shoulder, "when this is over, and the teachers are trying to figure out what the hell's going on, there are going to be a lot of hungry Huntsman. So you and me..." He said, backing up. "We'll chow down and I'll tell you exactly how it was I broke apart an airship without dying." He grinned, "sound good?" And before she could answer, he launched into the sky.
With the air mostly clear around Beacon, Aldric was free to climb higher and higher without trouble, until he hit the cloud barrier and burst through, leaving a small but visible break in the overcast sky. With a firm frown and a clenched gut, Aldric then rocketed forward, unable to resist the urge and throwing a hand forward in a Superman pose, as he left a sonic boom and some thin contrails behind him. He passed over the city and heard the sounds of warfare, muffled by the distance and the clouds, and once they grew distant, he dipped down below the clouds, again soaking himself and chilling him to the bone, but his semblance was able to take care of that.
He cast a look over his shoulder; he saw landing craft at Vale's docks, and intense gunfights raging all across the city, even a few tanks making their way through the streets.
What happened? Aldric frowned. I understand the 'we thought it was them' angle... But you can't honestly tell me that they thought it a good idea to act like this, with what they have to know - no, they do know. Evans recognized the footage on the tablet, and they knew where the locker rooms and everything were in Beacon, so they're operating on RWBY's intelligence, probably what they could coax or torture out of the Roosterteeth staff. He turned back forward, using his radar pulse and his new eyes to scan the oceans; he saw a huge island in the distance, and figured that had to be Patch. Evans said 'their war went bad'. What did that mean? Do they think we lost a kingdom or two to Grimm? But that doesn't make sense, one surveillance flight, or one pass-over from satellites, would tell them otherwise. So what changed?
It did occur to him that this could, in a roundabout way, service as some sort of evidence for the thoughts he'd written down after his episode on Earth. Thinking like that, perhaps they were launching this war - in this way specifically - because they knew Ozpin to not nearly be the white knight he tried to show himself off as?
But killing him... Thought Aldric, as he passed over Patch, noticing that there weren't any battles raging down there; the Navy had bypassed that island completely in favor of Vale. That doesn't do anything... And I don't want to believe he's some kind of evil in disguise. No, there has to be something else going on... It wasn't impossible that, much like how Salem was able to build and launch an attack on Earth and frame Atlas, that she had been able to do the same here. He could prove that if he ever - wait, no, that couldn't be it either, because there weren't machines piloting the jets, but squishy organic terrans.
So what am I missing? He absolutely refused to believe that they had been swindled into thinking Remnant had declared war on them, that was entirely too simple and entirely too easy to pick apart. Even his people weren't that stupid.
Aldric shook these thoughts from his head when he noticed, in the distance, a pair of jets rapidly approaching him. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, Aldric climbed again through the clouds, and they passed right by eachother. Aldric followed the direction they had been flying from, and was able to use their heading to trace down the ship they'd launched from.
Never had he thought seeing a United States warship would actually fill him with dread, and not hope. But dread it was, as he knew everyone there was there to war, and right now they were attacking innocent people in Vale.
Okay... He thought, from behind a frown, as he scooped some of the Power Glove from his off hand, and clenched them in his fist. Oh... Fuck I hope this works.
And he dropped through the crowds, falling through the air and hurtling towards the carrier like an arrow. There were dozens of helicopters and jets being filled with soldiers and refueled and reloaded, respectively. Aldric kept picking up speed and fell faster and faster, and some on the flight deck actually noticed him as he grew closer to the ground. The soldiers and marines loading up into the helicopter dismounted and brought their rifles to bear, letting off a few rounds before deciding it better to wait for him to either flatten himself, or land. Aldric did the latter, slowing down almost to a halt as he reached the carrier deck, shield in one hand, and the small ball of nanites in the other. It didn't even take a second for him to be surrounded by armed soldiers, all of whom were barking orders, one who seemed to recognize the shield on his arm.
Aldric decided he would at least try, and turned to face one of them. "Parley?"
Safeties were removed and rounds were chambered.
"Can't say I didn't try." And with the nanites in his hand, Aldric made one, single, damning mental command, and then let them flow from his hand like sand.
Aldric's plan hadn't been to destroy an airship's engines, or try to fight an aircraft carrier head on. As strong as he was, he needed all of his power for a stunt like that, and he just didn't have that kind of power available to him, not in combat. But what he did have, was a clever, creative mind.
And nanites that were capable of self replication.
Each single nanomachine hit the flight deck and ate away a piece of it, to create a second one of its exact image and function. Those two would then eat one more each, to double their number. Those four would then make eight, would grow to sixteen, to thirty two, and the numbers would continuously double, with Aldric's only caveat to their replication being organic matter, and water.
No, he wouldn't fight the ship.
But he'd sure as hell eat it.
The soldiers only realized that he'd done something crafty when they realized that the crater he was standing in wasn't one made on landing, but one that was growing - its growth heralded by the outward spread of squirming, growing, multiplying machines. Before they could pull their triggers and fire on him, however, Aldric thrust a hand forward, grabbing each rifle with his semblance, and then wrenching his hand back, all of them flying to his grasp, as the ground was eaten out from under him. He remained standing in the air, as the soldiers started backing up, their gazes shifting from him, to the ground beneath him, as alarms began sounding on the ship.
Aldric frowned, dropping the rifles in the ever-expanding and ever-deepening pile of nanites. He then thrust both hands out and grabbed everything he could - Airplanes, wheel carts, missiles, ammunition boxes.
"COME ON!" And he threw both hands downward, yanking everything he'd grabbed ahold of and plunging them into the still growing pool of nanites, watching with satisfaction as they began to sink into them and get disassembled into more, and more, and more.
Then he thrust his hand again, and created a veritable tidal wave of his Power Glove, letting it wash over the flight deck and spreading the destruction. A few marines stormed into view and raised their rifles, but Aldric didn't even need his shield, merely clenching a fist and wrenching upwards, creating a wall of nanites for the bullets to pass through, and while they did part this wall like a stone parting a waterfall, the bullets failed to reach him before being disassembled and falling right back to the deck.
Aldric then heard a loud grinding sound, and with his radar, sensed an AA gun turning to face him. This one he afforded his shield, and had it up and ready just as the loud cannon started singing him its song, but it, as did all things, failed to overcome his shield, and the bullets merely bounced off of it in a shower of sparks and light, falling back down and only adding more fuel to the gray goop below. Aldric could actually see inside the ship, now - they were streaming into the halls like water, and eating everything they came into contact with. Some marines tried firing at it as it reached them, but found their efforts to be fruitless, only able to hasten what they thought to be their demise.
Aldric used his semblance to take control of the AA gun and forcibly turn it to the ship's bridge, the sheer number of bullets blasting out of its multiple barrels cutting straight through it, until whoever was manning it had the common sense to kill the trigger. Then Aldric used his semblance to splash some of his now exponentially expanding gray goop onto it, and it was eaten in seconds.
Aldric sensed a rocket launcher being aimed at him, and quickly ducked behind his shield as it shot across the flight deck. It didn't hurt him, but the impact against the shield sent him sailing over the rapidly deteriorating edge of the flight deck. He noted, however, that with the still increasing speed at with the Power Glove spread, Rocket Launcher didn't get a chance to grab another one - he was submerged by the gray goop and had his weapon, ammunition, and clothes eaten in seconds, the speed only growing the further he was submerged.
Aldric sensed a few jets returning from the mainland, and upon seeing him and the chaos he had wrought, they began arming what weapons they hadn't emptied upon Vale. Aldric wouldn't have it, and scooped up two beachball-sized spheres of Power Glove, and chucked them at the jets - instantly coating them and eating through them in seconds; the pilots screamed and flailed about as they fell through the cloud and hurtled towards the water. Aldric used the new nanites made by this to increase the devastation on the carrier; by now, the soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen on the ship were all but ignoring him, unable - or unwilling - to fight, as they fled his gray goop, some even jumping off the edge of the ship while they still had ship to jump off of.
As the rate of expansion grew exponential, Aldric could literally see the ship melting before his eyes, appearing like an avalanche of cold, molten metal, and squirming, spreading sand. The nanites stained the water below black, and the people they enveloped dived underneath the surface to be rid of them. Aldric took whatever wasn't eating the carrier and scooped it out of the water - making extra sure to take back whatever was caking the terrans, so they couldn't try to take it for themselves - and then threw it right back at whatever parts of the carrier remained.
All in all, it took ten minutes, and once it was done, Aldric had an aircraft carrier sized ball of nanites, hovering over his head, his arm and his muscles straining with the strength he needed to keep it telekinetically held aloft like some kind of Dragonball Z attack.
So what do I - But his question was answered for him when he sensed two missiles come screeching through the air, one angled towards him and one for the dormant nanites.
Aldric dropped the nanites and ducked down behind his shield; the missile hit him and sent him careening into the sea, as the second missile hit the falling nanites, obliterating a sizable portion of them in the blast alone, and burning countless more with a combination of the heat generated and their small size being unable to cope with it. Aldric hit the water with his back, but as he recovered, he found himself immediately accosted by the sailors he landed near. Some grabbed at his shield and started wrenching it this way and that, others lunged on top of him and used their weight to counteract his buoyancy and shove him back under the water before he could catch his breath. He did respect the attempt, especially as he felt some punching and kicking at him, but he was dealing with thousands of sailors, airmen, soldiers and marines, none of whom had anything beyond their bodies to fight him with - their weapons, the detritus from the ship, and even their clothes, having been consumed by his Power Glove.
So while he did find himself stunned and briefly drowning, all Aldric needed was a single, powerful telekinetic push, and the terrans and even the water around him were all blasted away, leaving a huge, crater-like depression in the water, that soon began collapsing back in on itself and filling back up. Aldric blasted back into the sky and followed the contrails left by the missiles, water streaming off of him.
Drones! He frowned, adjusting the grip on his shield, as he saw another flash of light, and with his enhanced eyes and his radar pulse, was able to see that the drone had launched another missile. They'll pull back on the jets if they have to, but the drones are expendable! He shot upwards and the missile, unable to compensate fast enough, sailed right by him.
Aldric brought his shield to bear as he took in a deep breath and roared, and when he reached the drone, he didn't stop - he kept going. Aldric used the shield as a battering ram as he tackled into it and blasted through it in a shower of seawater and electronics. He felt more than a few wounds pass through his barriers as a result of this stunt, but the drone dropped to the sea like a rock. Aldric turned back to the east and then blasted off again, hurtling towards Vale and leaving a single thin contrail in his wake. Aldric frowned, stretching his radar out as far as he could so he could locate the drones, as Vale's ports grew closer.
You'd think... He thought, that considering the unknown nature of this shit - and the fact that it wasn't Vale who attacked them, but Atlas - that they'd try to open a fucking dialogue first before lobbing - BOMBS! He banked hard to the left as a cruise missile caught up to him and coming within inches of hitting him. Shit! Aldric thrust his hand forward and used his semblance to catch the missile, but he was not strong enough to stop it, or even noticeably slow it down, so the effect was as if he'd thrown a lasso around a rampaging horse: It took him for a ride.
Aldric used his telekinetic grip on the missile to haul himself closer as fast as he could, because it moved far faster than he had - and would reach Vale in less than a minute, he could already see it on the horizon.
Did they already land troops?! Aldric demanded of himself, as he landed on the missile. Or was it the drones? No - He shook his head, activating his chainsaw with a loud roar that was completely overwhelmed by the sound of the missile's engine burning, and the wind howling in Aldric's ears. Special forces! Fuck I didn't think about that!
His father always liked to say that the SEALs were the first guys to get sent into enemy lands, they were the ones who scouted out the targets for air strikes and missile runs. Even in the age of drones, having eyes on the ground to throw lasers around and tell the pilots where to shoot were still as invaluable as they were necessary. So while the Marines were just getting there, trashing the ports and securing them for their own staging grounds, the special forces were already there. They were already inside Vale.
Perhaps already fighting Vale and Beacon's forces.
"Not -" Aldric hopped up, and as he came down, he swung his saw, "- good!" And cleaved through the missile's midsection, immediately causing it to break apart and tumble to the ground.
Aldric wasn't quite sure if it was a good or a bad thing that he saw it slam into the ports and send a lot of terrans scattering, but he shoved those thoughts aside as he saw more missiles arcing down from far higher than where the fighter jets were, now engaged by the Vale forces that had been able to scatter, though those battles were almost all completely clustered around Vale's naval ships, and while they were putting up a far better fight than Aldric expected them to, the sheer weight the terrans were bringing to bear was pushing them back. Where they would destroy one jet, a helicopter would swoop overhead and buzz their hulls. Where their AA defenses would take down the helicopter, a drone strike would blow open a section of the hull, and where their main cannons were able to locate and lock onto a drone, the forces on the ground not engaging with Vale defenders were shouldering rockets and AA turrets and tearing into naval and fighter ships alike, and if none of that worked - terran ships were out at sea, just waiting to launch more cruise missiles into the fray.
Take out the drones... Aldric looked up to the sky, tracing all of the smoke trails left by the multitude of drones' missiles. Free up the ships to start shooting at the ground... Maybe be able to keep the terrans from pushing into Vale proper. With a tight frown, he rocketed higher into the sky.
Aldric weaved in and out of air combat, climbing higher and higher until they were all down below him. One drone seemed to realize that something new had come and tried firing on him, but Aldric reached forward with his semblance, grabbing ahold of the missile, but not trying to stop it. Instead he changed its trajectory, spinning in a round circle and then throwing it right back at the drone, and allowing himself a moment to grin when he saw the drone explode. He followed this up with several more over the course of the next half hour, but the strain and his accruing injuries began to take their toll, and as the sun hung high in the sky, he found himself having to strain harder and harder to keep himself aloft.
And down below, it didn't look like his efforts were bearing much fruit. Vale airships were being torn apart by any combination of air, ground, and sea fire, and where the battle had begun with at least a dozen of them, now he saw five. Terran Marines were also taking up positions in the buildings that lined the docks and were using them to keep Vale forces from pushing against their landing craft, and their air dominance - from the helicopters all the way up to the drones skimming the clouds - meant that they had all the time and support they needed to entrench themselves. In the fewer than two hours since the fighting had began, Aldric saw that the terran forces had pushed through nearly half of the industrial district, a huge swath of the agricultural district, and were isolating the commercial and residential districts, the very definition of a blitzkrieg.
The only good news was that Vale's military was giving as good as it was getting, he saw dozens of destroyed jets and helicopters littering the ground and setting buildings ablaze in their wreckages, and the huntsmen seemed to have become aware that the terrans' greatest strength was in their numbers and air dominance - just as Aldric predicted, the very moment a huntsman or a huntress got within fighting range, they tore through the terran forces like a natural disaster. The terrans weren't being pushed back, but their initial progress had been slowed considerably.
The problem was that this had all been done solely with ground and air forces. Aldric could see giant seacraft streaming towards the ports, loaded down with ground vehicles. APC's, tanks, humvees, artillery trucks, the whole nine yards. The terrans had been fighting with one hand behind their back all day, and now that they had their beachhead secured, they were rolling out the literal heavy artillery.
What momentum they had lost, they were going to get back, and damn soon; there was no way Vale was going to push them out, not tonight, and not with the naval and air forces they had already lost.
How can we fix this? Aldric frowned.
The terran assault was focused primarily on the docks near the industrial area. While there were landings and beachheads being established along the entire coastline, the primary area of focus - where Aldric could see the most people and the most vehicles coming in for landing - were near Vale's industrial center. That made sense, considering that the best way to cripple an enemy's fighting capacity was to destroy or remove their access to their industry. He could see gunfights in the buildings and the streets surrounding the ports, and soldiers and marines were streaming into and out of the city, but they weren't moving an inch without air support.
Again... Makes sense... Aldric's new eyes gave him the ability to clearly perceive what was going on down below, and any fights not being fought with air support had huntsman charging them and tearing through the terran soldiers, so they had no small amount of abject terror in regards to fighting without heavy support.
Now, Aldric may not be able to destroy all of it, but he did have an idea: If he could get the jets to focus elsewhere, all that would remain would be the helicopters as a means of close air support, and while not advantageous, such a thing could be manageable. The question of how to remove the jets, however, was a bit more complicated, but Aldric had an idea: Since the Vale air force and their naval ships were capable of holding their own, if Aldric could find a way to get their remaining ships to start climbing, perhaps even above the clouds, the terran jets would either have to follow or risk being blown out of the sky by an enemy they weren't engaging. That would move the jets, and ensure the Vale navy wasn't being accosted by all kinds of fire, only air to air - and that was something they could manage.
The biggest problem with that, however, was the question of if the airships he could see now were it, or if there were others, perhaps out on patrol, cruising around, coming to help. If yes, the initial tactical retreat by the navy would remove the jets from play and the Vale defenders would only have ground forces and helicopters to deal with. Again, not advantageous, but more manageable, and if they could hold off the terran forces either long enough for Vale reinforcements to arrive, or for the rapidly approaching nightfall, they could either bomb the shit out of their offensive line and force a lull in the combat, or force the terrans to bunker down for the night so everyone could regroup. But if there wasn't anything left - if these rapidly shrinking naval numbers were it, then their prospects for holding the line shrank, to the point that Aldric wondered if they wouldn't have to either make a tactical retreat from the coast, or abandon Vale entirely and stage a counter-offensive from Beacon.
Fortunately, Aldric knew exactly who to ask to figure out, and this person made his location abundantly clear when an enormous tidal wave of fire swept across an entire street and incinerated an entire attack force. Aldric rocketed back down to the ground and landed alongside Professor Ozpin, who was hurriedly helping an evacuating family to their feet and ushering them to the east, where Vale's military and the rookie huntsman had established a safe zone.
"Ozpin!" Aldric called out, looking down the eastern side of the street, which was smouldering and radiating heat from the headmaster's devastating attack.
"Mister Etiolate!" Ozpin shouted back, as the family ran for their lives. "I sincerely hope you have good news!"
"Uh -" Aldric shrugged, "I ate an aircraft carrier, but without time we don't have, I don't know how to find the others." He called out, over the sounds of explosions and distant war. "That might slow down the enemy air assaults -" He pointed up, "once those jets run out of fuel and ammo. They'll need more time to rearm and refuel, but we've got bigger problems -" He pointed down the street, "they've got tanks ready to roll! We've slowed them down but unless we do something drastic and hit them hard that will only be temporary!"
"I am open to ideas." Ozpin huffed, "at the moment your fellow students are focused on evacuating -" He ushered Aldric into a nearby building for cover, pulled out a scroll, and opened up a heavily marked map, "everything behind this line -" He indicated a bright orange line a few miles past a red line indicating where the terrans were attacking. "- to behind this line!" He indicated a green line, halfway in the map.
"I'd make a joke about you trusting a goddamn eighteen year old with tactical information and decisions, but now isn't the time!" Aldric indicated the map, "you're telling me this area in here is going to be depopulated, yeah?!"
Ozpin nodded, "we're holding the line here at orange, the noncombatants are being evacuated behind green."
"And how about Vale's forces?" Aldric asked, before they were hit with a powerful shockwave, and they were briefly deafened by a thunderous explosion; they both looked up and saw one of the five remaining massive naval airships engulfed in flame and falling to the ground. "Please tell me that the four fucking ships up there aren't it!" Christ, the terrans were moving fast, Vale probably had an hour - maybe less - to pull a rabbit out of its hat before the entire situation deteriorated so much so that only Beacon and the immediate surrounding area would still be under their control.
Ozpin shook his head, "that's just the home fleet. Vale is not Atlas' near thousand airships, but we've a respectable number." He said, "others were out on patrol, out at sea or further in Sanus - our continent. We were able to get the word out before they crippled the CCT, and they are coming."
"Good." Aldric nodded, "how long?"
"By nightfall."
"Alright -" He indicated the sky, choked by the number of jets and aircraft zooming about. "I know the CCT is out, but does that cripple communications? Can the other ships still speak to eachother?"
Ozpin nodded, "short range. We can't get messages past our walls but the four ships we've left and our forces on the ground can still speak to eachother."
Aldric nodded, "then this is my idea -" He out and up to the sky. "Get those four ships and tell them to abandon the ground. They're getting torn the fuck apart by air ground and sea fire. Tell them to -" He made a shoving motion, "- climb. However high they can get - they need to take the jets with them, or escape them entirely, and they need to broadcast on all channels for any ships that get here to do the same."
Ozpin frowned, nodding. "We remove their fightercraft and all they've left is the close-ground hovercraft. We escape their fightercraft, we have limited fleet support."
"Yeah." Aldric nodded, "not good, but it's more manageable."
"But what of the ground forces you mentioned? With their jets or without them, they are moving too swiftly and are too powerful for us to defend against without the main fleet and our army."
"I was thinking a tactical retreat, followed by us flattening -" He chose a point halfway between the orange and red lines, "everything in between the red line and this one here."
"And what if the terran air does not follow them above the clouds, Mister Etiolate?" Ozpin demanded.
"Then we'd get a much better chance to make our no man's land, wouldn't we?!" Aldric shot back. "But if we don't make a stand and form a solid defensive line, the moment those tanks show up they'll steamroll across the city and all of our evacuation efforts will have to start over - if we even can at that point!"
Ozpin was silent for a moment, before shaking his head. "It would take time, Goud."
"How much time?"
"Five minutes for the ships to reach the altitude you suggest... Another ten to give our ground forces sufficient time to evacuate and for our ships to acquire their targets, and we shall be safe and say another five to conduct the strike."
"Twenty minutes..." Aldric frowned at the map. "I can buy -"
"No!"
"- you twenty minutes." He nodded, ideas already zipping through his mind.
"Mist - Aldric, no!" Ozpin slid his scroll inside his coat and grasped Aldric's arms, "as powerful as you are -"
"Holy fuck, with you people AND POWER!" Aldric shoved Ozpin's hands off of his arms, "do you want to know how strong I was when I fought a fucking goddess?! Not even remotely where I am now!" He shouted, "and not even close to how strong she was at the time, and I still WON!" He shook his head, "Me and Pyrrha managed to turn her into a living railgun and we took down at least a dozen fighter jets with nothing but her semblance and some fucking scrap metal! For fuck's sake -" He threw his arm out in a wide arc, "- in ten minutes I destroyed the single most powerful kind of naval vessel on Earth! And right now I'm screaming at a man who knows how to kill me without any real struggle at all!" He poked Ozpin in the chest, "how do you think I did all those things? Trying to match them pound for pound?! Trying to fight a fire by setting off a bigger one?! Hell no - I used my mind! Raw power doesn't mean FUCK ALL when you can out think your opponent! If it did - not your species or mine would have left their caves!" Aldric roared.
"Al -"
"No - you got your chance to shout some sense into me, now here I'm doing the same damn thing. We cannot win a slug fest with these people - not right now! And I can cause a big enough distraction to keep them from advancing for twenty minutes! And it not because I'm stronger than you -" He pointed at Ozpin, "- or other huntsman, or Amber, or the US military - or the United fucking Nations! Because unlike everyone I've met on this goddamn planet, I don't value raw, overwhelming power, I value the skill required to use it!" He held his hand out, "you show me one goddamn person who realized that the 'average', 'not-noteworthy' telekinetic could do this -" And he sparked the air, "- and then turn right around - AND DO THIS!" Aldric then thrust his hand out, and the front door and the wall around it all froze solid, and it took only the lightest front kick from Aldric to send it scattering to the ground. "And that -" He ripped the lightsaber from his pants, "- is keeping in mind that I haven't outright killed a single fucking person today!" Though it wasn't something he was looking forward to.
"And then consider what the terrans have done in hardly even two hours! Not a single one of them has aura, but in less than two hours they've steamrolled across half of your fucking country! Power is only a part of it, Ozpin!" He chided, "so you can take the power you think that I need and shove it!" Aldric clipped the hilt back to his belt, "I haven't died yet and I have no intention of doing so any time soon! If we don't do something quick, fast, and in a hurry, they'll have made enough progress by nightfall that the fleet's arrival won't mean anything!
"If you need twenty minutes to save every single life still in Vale - I will buy it for you!" Aldric levitated into the air and leaned backward, floating out of the building he'd just made a hole in. "And yes, I'm forcing your hand!" And he blasted into the air.
The first and most important thing he had to do was attract the eyes - and the guns - of each and every single person sitting on these docks and getting ready to storm the city. He had to distract them for twenty minutes, and to do that, he needed to do what he did best: Create a spectacle.
So when he made it to the coastline and found Vale's ports, Aldric hung his shield on his back, and then thrust both hands out to his sides. With a loud, and mighty roar, Aldric threw all of his power into his telekinesis, grabbed as much of the air as he could, and set it all ablaze - the white hot flames jetting out for dozens of meters and creating a flash in the sky, almost as though a phoenix had been born and was stretching its wings. His little display could be seen clearly from the docks below and even all the way to the cliffside leading up to Beacon.
The second thing he had to do, was to provide a target, and play on the military's inclination to only shoot when shot at - as evidenced by the fact that they had tried to take him prisoner when he was in their home territory and on their own damn aircraft carrier.
So after he got everyone's attention, he dropped like a rock and landed right in the center of a huge gathering of soldiers, marines, tanks, and humvees, his shield in one hand, and his lightsaber in the other. There were people above in buildings, on his level on the ground, in stairwells and even below below in the speedboats and inside the safety of their tanks and vehicles, and when he landed after his display, in seconds he had hundreds of guns pointed at him from all directions, and could hear all of the safeties being removed and all of the rounds chambering. The hesitation of the soldiers was matched only by their confusion - why was he here? Why was he alone? What should they do? It took a solid minute of him scowling at the assembled soldiers, as more arrived and pointed even more weapons at him, before they received any orders, and someone began shouting out through a megaphone.
"We don't know why you are here, but if you're here to fight, you are outnumbered and outgunned!" He heard a harsh, experienced voice scream out. "Drop your weapons, place your hands on your head, and you will be treated fairly as a prisoner of war in accordance with our laws and yours!" A beat, "I say again: Drop your weapons and surrender! We have you surrounded!"
The third thing he had to do was create an opening, and he knew nothing would stun these people as much as seeing something from their world staring them down. Yes, his shield would give some pause, but only those closest to them would see it clearly, and it didn't command quite the same presence as the weapon he hadn't yet used this entire day.
So he let a few moments pass, stalling for as much time as he could, feeling out as far as he could with his radar as a grin slowly grew across his face, an idea formed in his mind, and he took in a deep breath to make his response. "All I am surrounded by..." Aldric shouted out, his voice echoing throughout the docks, and only fought by the sounds of war, muffled by their distance. "Is fear..." He raised the hand not holding the shield, but rather a more elegant weapon, for a more civilized age. "AND DEAD MEN!"
Zhoom!