A/N:
I like how everyone instantly concluded that Vale's been obliterated, Aldric betrayed the terrans, and that I've completely forgotten about the in-medias-res part of the prologue.
See, that's what happens when we shift the point of view from our favorite neurotic anti-villain for even a chapter. No one knows what the fuck's going on, and I learn (and teach) a valuable and %99 intentional lesson.
And yes, anti-villain. Because a lot of people have pointed out (perhaps rightfully so) that with the horrid shit Aldric's been getting up to, especially as of late, it's getting harder and harder to call him a hero by any astronomical stretch of the definition.
To the point that were I to tell this story from anyone else's point of view [like, say, two or three chapters done primarily from Ruby Rose's perspective. As a totally random example. ;)], he'd seem chaotic-evil with little to no allegiances to anyone but his psychotic and questionable visions of a greater good.
But that's all I have to say about that.
Also: Major brownie points to the reviewers (Read: Pretty fucking much everyone) who caught on to the fact that I was setting up an Alucard Entrance. I was so amused that everyone figured it out that I didn't even bother to hide it, and even put the damn thing in last chapter's title.
Anyways, let's get back into the madness!
Chapter 42
They were, summarily, rounded up, chained up tight, and thrown in half-toppled brick buildings. For the rookie huntsmen, they were thrown no more than two to a room, with two guards for every one rookie, which Aldric would count as something of a blessing, when compared to the White Fang. The Fang, or at least all the ones without aura, were all cuffed, stripped, and thrown in huge communal cells that were ten times too small for the numbers of people they were being stuffed with, with tanks keeping them docile.
Aldric had, perhaps in a supreme display of irony, been locked up with Ruby, and not but the sounds of her quietly sobbing, and his every ailing, aching, wheezing breath to remind him that he and her were still alive. He could see with his barely-functioning radar that the others were still in the same building, some fire station it looked like, but there weren't any close by. He could see Pyrrha and Weiss locked up in a bathroom, Ren and Coco had literally been shoved in a linen closet, Nora and Ecru had been locked in an office, and on and on it went. He couldn't see Blake or Myrtle anywhere, which worried him, but he had little time to try and reflect on those worries -as approaching was another posse of soldiers, and one man in a distinctly American uniform.
That got him to focus on the here and now, he tapped on the ground with the heel of his foot, attracting the crimson-haired rookie's attention, her eyes red from the tears. "Someone's coming." He rasped, turning his gaze to the door.
A second later, he was proven right, as the American spouted off orders to the four heavily armed guards, and they stepped aside, one undoing the ten padlocks and door guards they had put on the door to keep the two of them inside. When they opened the door, no light shone in - as there was no light to spill inside, not after what happened. But Aldric could still see the American clearly enough; the man looked from side to side, first at Ruby, whose knees were curled up to her chest, her eyes wide with fear, then at Aldric, taking in his comparatively dull, however bloody countenance.
"Goud Etiolate." The man nodded to Aldric.
Aldric was about to say 'No, this is Patrick', but Ruby ruined it by gasping, "what do you want with him?" She struggled a bit, slowly hauling herself to her feet - and earning half a dozen guns on her before she was even halfway up. "You can't take him!"
Aldric grunted, as he hauled his aching body up, blood smearing the wall he was leaning on. "It's okay, Ruby."
"No!" She shook her head, "no! They can't - don't go with them, Ash!"
"Ruby, calm down -" But he was interrupted by her trying to dash towards him, which prompted a guard to dart forward and slam the butt of his shotgun into her head.
She hit the ground with a grunt of pain and the sound of plastic smacking flesh, and then the ground quaked.
"Hey!" Aldric barked, attracting every gun to him. "My going quietly is dependent on the unspoken agreement that doing so means you won't hurt people I care about to get me to do so. But so help me, you touch her again, I will not stop until you, your friends, or I am dead! And in case you think I'm bluffing, the first time I destroyed a warship. The second time I carved through a few hundred of you. The third time I didn't even have any weapons and I both of those at the same time! Do you want to see what I can do now that I'm armed?!" He held his hands up, straightening the chain binding them as though it were a garrot wire. "Well do ya, punk?!" He gritted his teeth, as Ruby recovered, turning around and now laying supine, wide, wet eyes darting back and forth between the man who'd hit her, and Aldric - whose voice, he realized belatedly, she'd never heard raised like that before.
There were a tense few seconds, before the ringleader of the pack held out his hand and forced one of the soldiers' weapons down, ordering them all to follow suit. When they did, Aldric lowered his own hands, and allowed them to escort him out. They grabbed him roughly by both arms and carried him outside, but the little rose was beside herself, screaming out a chorus of 'No!'s, and wailing 'Ash!' as he was literally dragged away. As she left radar range, Aldric could clearly sense a renewed deluge of tears streaming down her terror-stricken face, as she found herself helpless to do anything but scream in defiance and cry in fear and helplessness.
Aldric was dragged halfway through the fire station, until he was deposited in the crew room - in the one chair in the room that had a clear view of the now gray mushroom cloud outside. He turned away from it, pointedly ignoring it as the American picked up a small cinch-bag, and slid it across the ground to Aldric.
"Quick thinking, Mister Al -"
"No" Aldric interrupted, as the soldiers around him, with great hesitation, began unlocking his bindings.
The man let him have it, "well... Good job regardless. It was quick thinking, to wrap all of your tech in faraday cages. Not many would have done so, not as fast at least. You played your part..." He glanced over Aldric's injuries. "A little too well, it seems."
Aldric gave the man a look, his eyes half-lidded with a dry, neutral expression. "I'm tired... Whatever your name is. Coulson." He grunted, as he was freed. He leaned down and opened up the bag, pulling out the first and most important object: Almost the entirety of his cybernetic arm; that which was affixed to him at this moment merely being the outer shell he'd pried off of it, to spare its sensitive electronics the effects of the nuke. What he had in his hands, once retrieved from the several layers of tinfoil, looked almost like a terminator's skeleton. "We've got one final stretch before this is done, I just want it to be done."
"Coulson, eh?" The man nodded to the side, "should we call you Mister Stark, then?"
"I think more appropriate would be 'Fury', but I'm not that good. So considering I'd already used Nathan Drake... Why not go with Ryan?" Aldric asked, as he twisted off the outer shell of his arm and then affixed the skeletal limb to its socket. "Andrew Ryan." His backup had been demanding this guy call him Guilliman, but he'd hoped he wouldn't need it - he had no idea how to pronounce 'Roboute' as anything bot 'Robert'.
The man gave him a nod, "Ryan it is then." He straightened up, expression one of business. "You'll have seven days. That's all we can guarantee. We'll be telling them that we've got you sedated and in chains in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean." He then added dryly, "our reasoning being that you've racked up quite a body count. We're done taking chances."
Aldric frowned, "you seriously think it'll take you seven days to conquer Vale when you've pretty much gut-fucked its ability to fight back?" He deadpanned, sliding the outer shell of the arm back in place, and then flexing his metal digits.
"Oh, not at all. Last report I heard said they're already at Beacon's cliffside. They'll be done within the day." The man shook his head, "no, the other six are how long we're going to tell them it will take for word to get to the Captain of the sub you're on, for it to turn around, come back here, and resurface." The man trailed off, as he gave Aldric a look over. "We think we can get another forty eight hours... Say we're treating you. Considering your physical condition, that wouldn't even be a lie." He leaned forward, "did you do all of that to yourself?"
"An advantage of having X-raydar vision is being able to see where your major blood vessels and arteries are." Aldric reached back into the bag.
"Then let me rephrase: Will seven days be enough? Frankly, you look like hammered shit."
Aldric's response was to dig around at the bottom of the bag, and pull out one single bean, barely the size of the pad of his thumb. He held it out for the man to inspect, before leaning back and popping it in his mouth. He bit down with a loud 'crunch', like someone taking a bite out of celery, and then swallowed the bean. A moment passed, and then he felt awash with energy, and the pain flood from his body as his wounds sealed themselves and faded away.
"There is a literal list of things I've not pulled from, for fear of becoming over-reliant upon them, among others." Aldric explained, "but this was one hell of a unique case." He leaned back, grunting.
"The things we could do if we had ten of you." The man shook his head. "But I'll settle for one."
"I fear the day that changes." Aldric admitted, rubbing his eyes. "When people don't need nukes to obliterate cities."
"Or when people can literally walk to other planets?"
"Or when people can destroy those planets."
"And fix them."
"Last person who debated philosophy with me got her arm chopped off."
"Fair point." The man held his hands up in a conciliatory fashion. "Will you need transport?"
"Dude, I can fucking fly." Aldric shook his head, "you're giving me seven days. God willing, I won't even need that long. How is it, over there?"
"Hell." The man nodded, "they're fighting building to building. Room to room. Inch by bloody inch. Only kingdom on the planet that had any preparation. So far as we can tell, our first strike on Salem and then the aerial battle with them was all they needed to mobilize. Where Mistral and Vacuo fell in days, and Vale here took a little under two weeks... Thank you, by the way... We're projecting we could still be struggling against Atlas well into next month, unless reinforcements from the other countries come in. They were just ready."
Aldric grunted, "entire world bearing down on one tiny-ass kingdom. I'd be surprised if they lasted a week." He sighed, "I should be there by tomorrow." He said, groaning as he hauled himself to his feet. "Pray my little bag of tricks I have prepared will end the war." One way or another, he didn't add.
"How do you want to meet, going forward?"
Aldric nodded, "there's a bar, not too far from where we maimed you-know-who. Folks there owe me a favor. I'll stop by on my way back. Ring you on the satellite phone if I need you between then and now."
"Alright." The man got to his feet as well, and extended a hand. "Your world appreciates your efforts, Mister Ryan."
"Just keep this in mind while I'm gone." Aldric deadpanned, grabbing the man's hand with his metal one and practically crushing it. "I wasn't kidding, back there. I will not tolerate any mistreatment of my friends in there. Yeah?" The man made a valiant effort of keeping his face straight, up until the first bone audibly cracked. "God help you if I figure out you did something to them... 'Cause he'll be the only one that could stop me, and you know this."
The man nodded, and Aldric lessened his grip. "Message received." He grunted, before nodding to the soldiers in the room. "We'll have to escort you out, to maintain the illusion."
"I figured." Aldric grunted, as he was flanked by the soldiers, who grabbed his arms, one of whom slid his bag around his shoulder - grunting, and shifting from foot to foot as he felt the deceptively large amount of weight inside. "Alright, let's go." Aldric said, pretending to slump over, unconscious.
With his wounds healed and energy refreshed thanks to his chosen method of what basically equated to makeup remover, Aldric was able to make full use of his Radar, going out. He found that the docks weren't as empty as one would have expected - there were entire legions of soldiers streaming in from out at sea, all of whom were loading into vehicles and charging towards Vale proper. Jets and helicopters were flying in from overhead and providing air support, the entire war machine of several countries being brought to bear against a country that, now, was completely without electricity, and subsequently any means of fighting back more advanced than a conventional rifle. The humans had no air support, no mechanized backup, no vehicles or advanced weaponry - and many of the Huntsmen likely had found the electronic components of their weapons fried and damaged to the point that they were all useless as anything but an expensive club.
Aldric couldn't see far enough into Vale to watch the fighting himself, but he didn't need to, to know that the terrans were kicking their asses to the moon and back. The humans were practically children flailing about against grown adults: At best, they would give their aggressor a black eye, but at worst, their resistance here would be so negligible as to practically be nonexistent.
Aldric was brought to the coastline and loaded into a small speedboat; he pretended to remain unconscious the entire way out, until they were so far out at sea that even Patch was a distant blob on the horizon. He only 'awoke' once the gigantic submarine surfaced, and he was manhandled inside, at which point, now far from prying eyes, he could open his eyes and move around again.
Aldric was given a small office to himself, and some food to chow down on during their trip further out to sea. He didn't even bother to take in the fact that this had been the first time he'd ever been on a submarine. He didn't care for the tight, compact corridors or low ceilings, he didn't even twitch at the sound of the pressures of Remnant's ocean pressing at the metal tube's hull and the groans that followed.
All he did was eat, and pull out a tinfoil wrapped tablet from his bag.
For the Record.
Ho-lee-Jesus.
Last time I saw you, my biggest worry was fucking up the meeting with the Watchmen.
That actually went as close to 'perfect' as I'm willing to classify it - perhaps that was an omen.
To summarize the last nine... Or, fuck, ten, I don't know - the last week and a half in as few words as possible:
World War Goddamn 3.
Or, Worlds War One, if you'd rather.
That crazy bitch opened up four wormholes - apparently stable, permanent ones - connecting Earth to Remnant, and the former promptly rallied its entire fucking military industrial complex to come in and shitstomp the latter.
Remember all of that shit I was spewing about worst case scenarios, and what would happen if Earth and Remnant ever went to war?
About how Remnant wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning?!
Guess fucking what.
Mistral and Vacuo fell in days, Vale would have fallen just as fast as well, if I hadn't intervened, gotten the Navy to flatten half the city, and halted their advance.
Though, that was a delaying action at the absolute best, and I knew that even then, but let me get there first.
The initial fights can be summarized as thus: I made a human railgun with Pyrrha, ate a motherfucking aircraft carrier, then pulled a Vader Down to keep the entire invasion force distracted long enough for their advance to be halted and for VAF and the Huntsmen to retreat and rally.
After I recovered from the obscene amount of brass that got shot through me, I talked to Cinder, and basically had it confirmed for me that everything about this whole Master Plan (pun intended) of Salem's has been changed from what we know from the show, primarily in that it's been compartmentalized to hell and back and that there are four (not five) living Masters on Remnant, Ozpin excluded. Cinder had and still has no fucking idea why the UN is invading Remnant, only that it's 'all according to plan'.
After her, I would have gone to Ozpin... Had Yang not found my effects and pieced together that I knew something about the invasion. She confronted me, and a group of Spec Ops (I think they were SAS? They had English accents.) passing by, ostensibly on their way to abduct Ozpin (good luck with that, Gents. I'll see you again when you're smears in the wall.), heard her and realized I was a 636 survivor.
So they shot me and her, and took us to this Russian Carrier.
Then I parleyed with the Captain (whose name I can barely pronounce, let alone spell), pulled a Commander Shepard, and managed to win the support and alliance of Earth.
All of it.
One problem, though: Doing so basically proved Yang right. She was on a warpath, was ready to kill anyone she saw - me chief among them.
I managed to curtail that by confronting her directly. She now holds a title that, surprisingly, even Ozpin doesn't possess: The first, and so far only, person to challenge me on my philosophies around this whole Green Hornet plan.
The problem, however, was that even if I managed to convince her I was right (which even I don't believe at this point), if we went back to Vale after being abducted for multiple hours, without any injuries whatsoever to show for it, far more than just her suspicion would be piqued. I mean, how would we explain it? "They just abducted us, let us sweat it out with one gunshot each, and then gave us a boat and said 'Thanks for staying over! Bye!'..."
No, we needed to look like we'd been through absolute hell to escape from them. And it couldn't be superficial hell, either - I mean we needed to look like we'd been through the god damn meat grinder. That we'd fought and bled and sacrificed to escape.
For me, it was easy: I just had to reopen old bullet wounds and cover myself in a fresh coat of blood. (Jesus, Neo's looking more right for me with each passing day. I haven't thought about her in forever.)
For Yang, though, tensions were a bit higher and I had to both 'put on the makeup', as it were, and fix the whole - her not trusting me at all thing.
So I cut off her arm with a lightsaber, and shot the hell out of her.
Something weird happened after that, though: Since I didn't have my usual, Anakin Skywalker blue lightsaber with me, and I'd already given Kylo Ren's saber to Cinder (that plan's in motion), I had to go with my last backup: Luke Skywaker's green saber.
But after I cut her arm off, the blade turned red, now it looks more like Darth Vader's lightsaber, and... God damn it, nothing I do can get rid of it. I try deactivating the nanites, I try straight-up using my magic to 'delete' it, but nothing. I can't get rid of it - and I can't just throw it away, either. God help us if someone else, outside of my sphere of influence, started running around with a stick of plasma.
I don't know what this means - but this tells me I don't have as much control over my powers as I initially thought... To the point that I'm pretty sure I couldn't wipe away Captain America's shield anymore, if I tried. Not good. I don't like not understanding or controlling my powers.
Anyways, after that, I neuralized Yang (yes, Neuralize. Men In Black saved my ass. My backup option had been an amnestic from the SCP foundation, and if neither of those worked, straight-up magic, but I didn't trust or understand either of those things enough to be confident in relying on them... So I'm damn glad the neuralizer seems to have worked.), and gave her to the Russians to stitch up. Now she looks like she went through the grinder, and that I put her back together as best I could.
But then was the problem of how to get back.
Luckily, that solution was easy: In the one and only confrontation between the UN's Navy and Vale's Navy, the latter made the genius move to beat feet for a guided missile destroyer. The destroyer promptly shoved its missile-shaped foot up Vale's ass and took down dozens of ships before it wasn't destroyed, but rather crippled. The UN didn't know what to do with it with the invasion on, so it left the ship there. I appropriated it, fired it up again, pointed it at Vale, and let it coast to the coast.
The initial idea had been to drive (so to speak) this thing up the central river that runs through Vale. It'd be a pretty big fucking sign, what with the holes in its side, that something wasn't quite right with it. I'd expected some VAF soldiers and a huntsman or two to board the ship, find me and Yang half dead, all the bodies that had been left behind, conclude we'd done the damage, and then take us back home.
After that, the terrans would have given me a week to recover and prepare for their coup de grace. Their 'Red folder': A high altitude nuclear strike, meant to take advantage of the EMP to knock out, in short order, everything that used electricity in the kingdom. Zero property damage and minimal, if any, radiation fallout or loss of life, but total destruction of any technology more advanced than a pocket watch, not specifically shielded from an EMP (which little if anything on Remnant even is). They'd been preparing for this, actually, constructing fucktons of faraday cages at the docks, to protect their vehicles from the EMP.
The idea was that if they did this, the defenders would essentially be neutered and any resistance they put up would be laughable at best. Vale would fall the day they dropped the bomb.
See, that had been the plan.
But RWBY, GEMS, JNPR, and (of all people), CFVY, had a different one, and it ran long the lines of, 'Holy fucking shit, Ash and Yang are gone, let's go ATTACK THE MEGA-POWERFUL ARMY HEAD ON to try and find them!'
I mean, for fuck's sake - It's Russia, China, and the UK up here! That's three great powers! Three nations with permanent UN-Security Council seats! Three of literally the strongest nations on Earth! Who steamrolled through half of Vale in a day! And these crazy fuckers thought they'd fight them head on, and that they'd all survive to see the end of it! That's me levels of stupid!
Thank God Adam Taurus chose then to launch his PR 'The White Fang totally aren't just terrorists, guys!' attack, else they'd all be dead, instead of injured.
The Russian Captain Guy called me on my shiny new satellite phone (confirming they do, indeed, have them in orbit) and told me what was going on. The collective White Fang/Huntsmen rookie attack was kicking fucking ass, and he told me on no uncertain terms that, if he were the only one making the decision, he would have opened the Red Folder then and there as a matter of course, lest risking the stability of the invasion, but since I was the only guy on the inside, he wanted to know my stance on it.
I promptly proved that I am entirely too fucking powerful. No, not Saitama powerful - or, actually, I do have a theory on that, but I'll save that for another Record - but Lex Luthor powerful: Merely telling him to do it, got him to accelerate our initial plan from a week to... An hour. Ish. My mere word got a nuke launched and a kingdom killed.
Jesus Fuck.
I got a little fun out of it: I pulled an Alucard and rode in on a warship with 'Ready to Die' blasting out of the speakers. Freaked a lot of people out.
Then barely two minutes later, they launched the bomb from a local nuke-sub, and now, as they were the only fighting force with advanced technology, ground and air vehicles on their side, the terrans promptly turned around and tore the ever-living-shit out of everyone audacious enough to shoot at them. White Fang? De-fanged. Huntsmen? Hunted. Vale Armed Forces? Disarmed. It was rifles and swords against tanks, humvees, and jets. Basically World War 1 versus the 21st century.
Now, Goud Etiolate, along with the Beacon students and Adam Taurus, are all being held prisoner while the UN finishes fucking Vale.
And since he alone did so much damage to them - killing more than a hundred soldiers on their first encounter, eating an entire aircraft carrier with his nanites, then destroying a GMD and killing its crew on his own - the UN isn't fucking around in regards to what they're doing to keep Goud out of the picture.
I've ostensibly been sedated with enough drugs to knock out fifteen elephants, been bound head to toe in a straight jacket and chains, been blindfolded with three folds and a pair of welder's goggles, gagged with one of those Silence of the Lambs muzzles, thrown in a submarine, parked on the bottom of the ocean, and have no fewer than fifteen guards armed with anti-tank rifles on me at all times.
Once again: They're not fucking around.
They're basically the Reapers abandoning a plan that's worked for millions of years and bum-rushing to Earth through the galaxy, dedicating a majority of their galaxy-conquering siege engine solely to Earth, just to find and kill Shepard.
The demons dropping a motherfucking mountain on Doomguy and chaining him up in a coffin.
The goddamn Covenant sending literally their entire Reach invasion force to kill Noble Six.
They're scared to death of me and just want me to not be a problem anymore.
At least, that's what it needs to look like.
What's really going on is that this whole stunt is buying me the one and only stretch of time in the last eight or nine months in which no one will be observing my every movement. Not Cinder, not Ozpin, not even them really. For the next week I'm operating solo.
Obviously, the priority is to go to Atlas (who's been going toe to toe with the United States and has been giving just as good as it gets), find some way to get them to stop fighting, and end the war between Earth and Remnant.
But with seven whole days to myself, I'm hoping I'll be able to eek out a little time to make something I've been kicking around for a while now.
I'd say what it is, but that Russian Captain found and read this journal. If that ever happens again, and they know what it is I hope to build... God damn, they'd start another war just to try and find it. So I'm keeping it to me, and to me alone, I won't mention it by name or location unless I have to crack it open and turn it on.
And yes, I specifically chose words that may more may not contradict eachother, and improperly describe what I intend to program.
Or maybe I didn't.
You don't know.
Fuck you.
Give me my journal back.
So... Yeah.
It's been a hell of a week.
Formed the Watchmen, fought in World War 3, maimed someone I consider a friend, stole her memories, convinced a man to launch a nuke, and I intend to end World War 3, and build a huge and likely literal deus ex machina.
And it's only been two or three months since the school year started. What the fuck's going to happen next?
Seriously: I have no fucking idea what Earth is going to do once Atlas falls. Occupation? Annexation? A sudden case of 'holy shit, these guys can't have done what we thought they would'... Pseudo-alliance?
And beyond them is Salem. What's her play in all this? I mean, fuck - Cinder seems to think things will still go 'according to plan' and there won't be any major anythings until around about the time of the Vytal , that's not the case. I still stand by what I said: It's absolutely ridiculous to think that, once this war ends, the entire planet of Remnant will basically go, 'That sucked... Let's party!', and then do it. I'd lose faith in this entire species if they did, plain and simple.
I mean, mine are barely any better - but that's a topic for another record.
Unless, of course, this is another product of Salem compartmentalizing. That the plan really has changed, and she simply hasn't appraised Cinder of it, and as such Cinder is still working under the auspices that it's 'Vytal or bust'.
If that's the case, though, exactly how much of RWBY can I still use? How much is still applicable, and how much is straight-up reference material?
Fuck me, I need sleep. I need a lot of sleep.
I'd say I need painkillers too, but the senzu bean I used to 'remove' the 'makeup' kind of solved that problem for me.
So, sleep, and a shower.
That sounds nice.
A shower, a change of clothes into something much more distinctly terran, and two more meals later, Aldric found that all the time between his 'incarcaration' and the sub reaching its destination had evaporated. No time for sleep, Aldric, now clad in a set of Navy fatigues he'd kindly asked for - and hadn't at all stared at the man responsible for with a blank 'obey me' expression until the man pissed himself and threw a pile of clothes at him - didn't even need a guide to get out of the ship. His Radar told him where to go, as well as letting him in on the fact that the submarine he was on was missing one nuclear missile: He was on the ship that had nuked Vale. Pointedly not thinking about that, and with little more than an acknowledging nod to the Captain as he passed by, Aldric surfaced from the submarine, swiped a hand through his shaggy hair, and took a deep breath of the salty ocean air.
"Okay." He murmured. "Atlas." And he launched himself into the sky.
With half of a planet to fly over, Aldric knew this wouldn't be a short trip, and during their planning phase, him and the Captain of the Kuznetsov had agreed as much. But, they realized while trying to figure out the logistics of getting some sort of jet from Earth to here, and how Aldric could feasibly catch up to it when he felt iffy about flying any faster than mach 3, was that Aldric didn't need to fly over half of a planet at all: He just had to hop back and forth between two of them.
The wormhole connecting Vale to Earth was within eyesight, and as described to him by Ilyich, they were all clustered together on Earth, barely miles apart, dead center of the Pacific Ocean. Using them, Aldric was about to cross millions, or even billions or trillions - as no one yet had any idea where Earth and Remnant were in relation to eachother - of light years, twice, and cover the distances of two planets, in ten minutes. Because physics rocked, and he wanted to be known as the guy who literally flew from one planet to another, and back, without an airplane or even a wingsuit or a paraglider.
The wormhole hung in the air like a giant disco ball, a huge globe-like sphere of refracting light. It looked like a giant funhouse mirror, reflecting everything around it with exaggerated proportions - the ocean right beneath it almost looking like it stretched on for miles, despite only a few dozen meters being reflected by its bottom. Aldric slowed down as he approached it, finding himself reflected and similarly exaggerated as he came within inches of it. He let his hand run over its surface, but found that he felt nothing but more air - which he supposed made sense. This wasn't a physical object, floating here in front of him, but rather a connecting place between two different points in space time. Touching it wouldn't be like touching the mirror it looked like, but rather would just send his fingertips to Earth.
Aldric lowered his hand, stowing it in the pocket of his appropriated fatigues. He shook his head once and let out a brief breath of air. "Tell the world." He said, before going home.
The transition was instantaneous. One moment, he was facing the wormhole, the next it was at his back - and the bright afternoon sky was replaced with a dark and cold night air. The moon above was fixed and shining with a bright pale white light, and was just strong enough to illuminate the other wormholes surrounding him, all tightly packed together in a ring, each only a mile or two apart. Four wormholes for four kingdoms, it almost physically pained him to not go so quickly from his home to the place that had brought him so much pain and anguish. He wanted little more than to have just disappeared, stayed on Earth, under the radar, but if for nothing else he knew he was too deep into this game now to abandon it. So, Aldric picked the one he'd been instructed to, and just as quickly as before, went through another transition - from night to day, and from cold to even colder.
Aldric picked a vaguely northern direction and began flying again, pushing himself to fly as fast as he'd ever, knowing that he was on the clock, that both Atlas and his secret projects would take time, and all the time he had equated to only seven days. Seven days, one hundred and sixty eight hours, ten thousand minutes, that was all the time he'd have without anyone directly watching him. The first week he'd have to himself since he'd arrived on Remnant - and he couldn't count the week he'd spent fighting Cubone and Mothra, as Cinder had been keeping watch over him during that time. The very first he'd had, and perhaps only week he'd ever have, to use everything he'd learned thus far and to try and make good on the promise he'd made to himself a long time ago about preventative measures, about proper planning and contingencies, and even about regrets.
But to do all of that, he first had to make sure his job was done, and that required ending the war with Atlas, in one way or another.
And damn was it a war.
After thirty minutes of flying so far he started getting tunnel vision, Aldric got the first inklings on the sights and sounds of war, as the distant horizon turned red from fire, and a squadron of jets flew above him in the opposite direction, in a strict formation. His second inkling came ten minutes later when he got the first sights of land in the distance, accompanied by huge plumes of smoke and an orange glow in the air, both made by the same fires of war consuming the kingdom. Aldric saw beached Atlesian sea-ships, horrifically damaged Atlesian airships, bullets and bombs spraying up into the air and down towards the ground, Atlesian and American jets engaging in intense dogfights, American helicopters rampaging through the skies, skimming the tops of buildings and blasting apart the grounds, and that was just while he was on approach, once he actually found a place to land, a place inland so he could make use of his radar, he got an even closer picture of what it looked like, and Aldric wasn't quite sure who to feel more pride in.
Here were two military superpowers, both unequaled in almost all ways on their respective planets, both with the largest and most advanced militaries of their respective histories, at the absolute height of their power and only ever growing stronger, and unlike every other kingdom on the planet: This one had been prepared, leading less to a brushfire war that would start and end inside of a week, and more of a protracted struggle for every inch taken and lost. Each nation locked in this struggle was bringing to bear any and all of its indomitable, incomparable power, making this battle one of giants, one that shook the earth and split the sky.
In that sky, the terran air was met by the slower but more powerful Atlesian airships and fighter craft. What the terran fighter jets completely outclassed the Atlesian ships in speed and maneuverability, often able to swoop in, blast apart an airship, and zoom off before that ship could even reorient itself, but woe betide any terran jet that actually attempted to fight an Atlesian ship head on - as what they lacked in firepower they made up for in a single weapon that gave them their advantage. With their laser weaponry far outclassing anything ever made on Earth, all an Atlesian ship needed was a line of sight on a terran jet and that jet would fall to the ground in a pile of slag. However, more often than not the more powerful lasers on the Atlesian ships were being dedicated almost entirely to taking down missiles being lobbed at them from sea, to either defend themselves or those on the ground.
On this ground, the fighting was, if it were even possible, more intense than it was in the sky. Without even resorting to his radar, Aldric could see gigantic Atlesian Paladins charging into battle, shouldering aside crippled cars and blasting apart mortal terran soldiers, before finding and being engaged by terran tanks - those battles often being decided purely by who saw who first. If the tank got the first shot off and could destroy a limb, the Paladin wouldn't have nearly enough time or firepower to retaliate. However, if the bipedal tanks saw the wheeled tank before their crew saw it, they would blast it apart with rocket and machine gun fire, some even charging them wholesale and using their superior strength to tip them over, or at least snap the barrels off and cripple the war machine. But it wouldn't be long before those very Paladins' victory would be taken from them when another vehicle - be it another powerful tank with its indomitable main cannon, a fast-moving humvee with its even faster-firing turret, or any combination of air vehicles sighting and blasting them apart as they passed by.
A level below the mighty ground attack vehicles would be the people themselves, and it was with those people that the brunt of the battles were fought. The Atlesians were fighting the terrans exactly as had been described: Street to street, building to building, room to room, inch to bloody inch. They held the line where they could and made the terrans pay where they couldn't, and wherever the terrans would gain ground, the Atlesians would be hot on their trail to make them suffer to keep it - it not being uncommon for them to push the terrans out of whatever rooms or buildings they had taken mere moments earlier, with this being perhaps the only country on Remnant able to match the terrans for manpower, due to the heavy presence of mechs. Aldric saw men in uniform and body armor throwing bullets and bombs at robots and soldiers in hardsuits, the former almost always surging forward in suicide attacks as a means to break the terran defensive line, whilst the latter would take down anyone who retreated, and keep the rest suppressed, such that the final leg of Atlas' ground forces could go in for the kill: The Huntsmen.
Whereas in Vale, Vacuo, and Mistral, terran numbers almost always prevailed over the raw power and skill of a huntsman, here the story was different. The combination of the machines routing them and the soldiers suppressing them meant that they rarely, if ever, had the time or the wherewithal to bring their numbers or firepower to bear against an Atlesian Huntsman. What's more, because of the kingdom's integration of their Huntsmen and their military, an unseen advantage was found by way of a synergy that no other country had - leading to tactical actions and operations the likes of which no other kingdom had been capable of, primarily in the form of lightning-fast hit and run attacks that took advantage of the terrans being so heavily suppressed, but kept in mind that even a second of presenting their backs to them could court death. Many often still did regardless - often buying the proverbial farm when a soldier in an adjacent building, fighting a completely unrelated battle, managed to get a shot on them by coincidence.
Altogether, the result was a picture representing the epitome of absolute chaos. People were perforated by gunfire, blasted apart by explosives and mortars, carved or smashed into pieces by melee weapons, and all manner of things in between. The streets somehow managed to simultaneously be awash with blood, scorched by flame, filled with people and inundated by bodies. It was constantly alight and aglow with the fires and flashes of battle, but was choked almost into darkness by smoke, soot, and debris, and was circulated by bullets. There was so little space between each person that no one had room to breathe, despite there being ample amounts of standing room - so long as one was willing to brave all of the projectiles filling the air. Even the city, and the kingdom itself became something of a symbol of chaotic contradiction: It was a symbol of of peace and prosperity in a world that seem perpetually dedicated to eradicating the people that lived in it, and yet it was consumed by war and death. It was representative of life, and yet people were dying left and right. It was meant to be a beacon, a defense for humanity - and yet those very same humans, no matter from what planet, were killing eachother in droves.
Even having been there for the opening shots and the first day of fighting in Vale, Aldric could say he'd never seen a maelstrom of death and battle like this. Anywhere he looked, he could see people fighting and killing eachother. One group of terrans were being charged by a group of machines, another group was calling down mortar fire from the ocean. Helicopters skimmed over the ground and chewed apart Atlesians and Paladins alike, only to get blown apart and torn out of the sky. Aldric even saw some terran mortars hitting other terrans, be it through some sort of monumental mistake or because they were about to be overrun and chose to die on their own terms. It was death and destruction, blood and violence, it was everywhere, filling and flooding, drowning the kingdom in all of its fury and all of its squalor. Every building, every room, every street, every bloody inch.
And somehow... Thought Aldric, from his position atop a half-destroyed brick building. I have to stop all of this on a dime. He didn't quite like his prospects, considering that, A: America was fucking pissed and that kind of rage took a lot more than just a night to wipe away, and B: Since America, and soon with them all of Earth, had not only attacked Atlas before, but had ostensibly started the entire conflict, the Atlesian public would also be infuriated - but doubly moreso when they inevitably tried to stay and occupy, even if the best case happened and such an turned out only to be temporary.
He had basically been charged with ending a blood feud between two people who had every right to hate eachother with everything they had, and the way he saw it, he had three options. The first was the easiet: Bye bye Atlas. Just obliterate the whole kingdom. Of course he was kidding, but it was still a valid option, technically - as it would end the war. But if he didn't want to call on his inner Neo, he'd have to find a way to open up a dialogue, first with Ironwood, then with whoever was the Admiral, or the General, or whoever it was that was leading the invasion for Atlas, like Ilyich was for Vale. The problem with that option was that there would be no ceasefire option - it would either have to be total surrender from Atlas, or universal retreat from America, they wouldn't accept anything else. Atlas had, after all, been 'responsible' for them nuking Los Angeles, and America had spent the last week and a half flattening Atlas.
The second option he saw was what he was tentatively calling his Godzilla Threshold: He'd have to find a way to so severely deplete the manpower of each army that they would be logistically unable to continue fighting eachother. That one was tricky, as America had the rest of its military from Earth, and literally everything else the United Nations had brought to bear on Remnant, as well as whatever they'd held back to keep watch over Earth, to fall back on, so this solution would require speed and finesse, and would need to have a lasting impact. As well as, of course, a lot of fucking bodies, but he'd made so many of those as of late, with so little time to dwell on it, that he'd become somewhat numb to the idea. Fortunately, this option was, ironically, the easiest one, as all it required was him breaching Atlas' defensive perimeter and letting the Grimm spill in. They would promptly start thrashing Atlas and America, and they'd each have to pool together to contain the threat, or they'd all die.
Obviously, he didn't like that option: That one basically did Salem's job for her, and could potentially result in her deciding Atlas may be the more prudent target over Vale, assuming of course that she still didn't try for the 'coup de grace' plan Cinder had said she wanted to do. Since the point of ending the wars as fast as possible was removing that as an option, making it all that much easier for her wasn't attractive, which led to Aldric's final idea: Practically exactly what had happened in Vale.
There, they'd crippled almost all of Vale's military advantages and sent them back to the stone age by frying all of their electronics. This made the UN titanically stronger than them and allowed - or, to be more correct, was allowing - them to steamroll over Vale and blitzkrieg their way to Beacon, and force the kingdom to surrender with minimal casualties, or fight it out and suffer total destruction. The easiest path here would be to just get another nuclear sub to launch another nuke and have it detonate in the upper atmosphere, just like Vale, and have the problem solve itself, but Aldric had the fuzziest idea that a military man like Ironwood may just be genre savvy enough to realize that a lack of electricity was a severe weakness on his end, and plan for it accordingly. As a result, Aldric had to assume the EMP plan would only work once, and they'd already played that card.
So how could he accelerate Atlas' destruction and force its surrender, whilst killing as few of its defenders as possible, and doing so in such a way that anyone from the Legion watching wouldn't instantly start suspecting Aldric? Well, the answer was simple: Each and every single terran was supposed to be a Master. Everyone who had the need to know did know this, so all Aldric had to do was convince Atlas that Earth had done it, and had woken up a Master, and directly imply that there were going to be steadily and increasingly more, and more, and more, until Atlas surrendered or was wiped out.
Thus: The reason he'd stolen a uniform. He had to look the part if he were going to pretend to be someone from the UN's collective armed forces. All that was missing was something to mask his face - and wouldn't you know it, a little spark of magic from before he'd even gotten back to Vale had set that one up for him. There existed countless methods of disguising one's face and voice in fiction, ranging from simple plastics to eldritch potions. Aldric went with something easy and simply pulled out the face camo from Metal Gear Solid 4, and had himself done up as the one and only Solid Snake.
So with his identity secured, and no fewer than three backup plans in mind in case his 'everybody hug it out' option didn't pan out, now Aldric had to do was cross through an entire warzone to get to the one and only place in the Kingdom that still was firmly and completely under Atlas' control: Atlas Academy.
Fortunately, Aldric subscribed to the 'work smarter, not harder' methodology, and instead of trying to map out a way of flying through the city and dodging the hell it had become, he simply launched himself in the air, ascending as fast as he could until the air grew thin and frigid. He flew higher than the helicopters, past the jets and the airships, above the gunships and beyond the drones. He flew higher than the clouds and for a moment was so high, and the air so thin, that he could almost see the stars in broad daylight.
Then, he let himself fall, and fall he did - picking up speed until he hit terminal velocity. He hurtled towards the ground at dozens of meters per second, aimed directly at the academy, freefalling through the sky, a lone human missile amidst an airborne sea of metal and fire. Once he speared through the clouds he found himself right on course for the academy, and he continued on, the ground and the high towers and spires of the academy, once far away, growing closer and closer until Aldric's hand skimmed across one of them as he came in. A pulse of his semblance slowed his descent, and upon landing, he discovered something he hadn't predicted:
There was no one here.
Aldric frowned, but it was wiped away with a knowing nod and an 'ah' of understanding: Underneath the academy, he'd discovered, was a huge series of bunkers and safehouses, practically an entire city, no doubt meant as a last resort in case of a catastrophic Grimm invasion, though now being used to house civilians such that the Atlesian military could fight unabated. There were soldiers on patrol, but far fewer than there were out beyond the defensive line, fighting for their home.
One of these soldiers was staring at him, slackjawed, and for good reason: Not a single terran had shown use of aura during the entire invasion. To this one lone Atlesian soldier, Aldric had unintentionally told him that this 'secret kingdom' had, from the word 'Go', been holding back its most powerful card. And in a way, he was right - America hadn't tried nuking Atlas yet, so far as he knew, though he did wonder if they'd pulled out any of those Davy Crockett nuke-launchers he'd read about. If anywhere, they'd use them here: Where they had little to no reason to care about fallout.
Regardless, Aldric grinned and raised his hands, them both covered by the sleeves of his stolen uniform and his Power Glove, such that they wouldn't be able to tell he only really had one arm. "Parley." He called out, voice being filtered by the mask and coming out as the oh-so-familiar growl.
The soldier, to his credit, snapped out of it at once, and impressed Aldric by firing first. Aldric's response was to hold out his hand and halt all the bullets, as though he'd just stepped out of the Matrix. A telekinetic backhand knocked out the armored soldier, sent him flying into a close by wall, and freed Aldric up to probe the Academy for Ironwood. He wasn't in his office, which made sense - while there wasn't any fighting going on in the academy, it had been beaten to hell and back by air strikes. Ironwood probably knew better than to run the risk of getting a missile-shaped hat, and was probably down in the bunkers.
Leaning against the wall, next to the unconscious soldier, Aldric focused his radar downwards and started searching the massive underground bunkers for the General. The first thing he found was that, unless the terrans wanted to bomb their way in, there was only one entrance: A deep elevator shaft, and a long one-way corridor leading to a heavily fortified blast door. Going down there and having to break in would require going through that killzone, and Aldric pitied the poor soul who'd have to go through it - instantly aware of the fact that that single thought probably doomed him to having to go through it, and imminently at that.
Putting those thoughts aside, Aldric probed further into the bunker, and after a few minutes, found two things: The General's command center, filled to the brim with him and several similarly-high ranking officials, and Winter Schnee, as well as two other huntsmen, sprinting out at a break-neck pace. It didn't take long to figure out why: One of the monitors Ironwood was glaring at had his new face on it, and using that monitor, Aldric was able to locate and look directly at the security camera he'd barely even thought to avoid. He gave it a wink and a gun, then tapped on his wrist, attempting to imply that he knew Ironwood had sent some folks to fight, but that he didn't have much time.
Ironwood's response came audibly, as his voice was broadcast all over the loudspeakers in the Academy: "All hands, intruder alert. The enemy is confirmed to have Huntsmen, and he is at our gates. Lock down sector two-one Alpha with any and all available mechanized and powered-infantry units. Use of danger-close deadly force is authorized. Eliminate the enemy." And as he spoke, Aldric could see a few officers speaking into radios, their computer screens showing images of Atlesian naval ships, prompting Aldric to realize that the ballsy motherfucker was calling in Naval support to boot.
Guy's not fucking around. And it made sense to him: Earth's Red Folder plan was a warning shot, and failing that, liberal usage of nuclear force if it turned out that coordinated military efforts against Huntsmen were ineffective; Aldric had learned that if someone had followed his little 'Vader Down' moment up with another devastating attack, after the naval bombardment, Ilyich would have opened the Red Folder then and there, potentially going so far as to skip the warning shot. Atlas had none of those things and was expecting Masters - if they could, they probably wouldn't have hesitated to just abandon the entire area, pull an Imperium of Man and exterminatus the planet just to not have to deal with one.
And considering the bag of tricks Aldric had cooked up for the inevitable confrontation with Atlesian huntsmen, Aldric wouldn't fault them for such a drastic measure.
I need a way to store this stuff. Aldric thought, as he watched the huntsmen rushing through the base and up to him, as well as the defensive forces thundering towards him to create their fighting ring. All of these little fiction artifact that I'm either not giving up or... His thoughts drifted to that damned, cursed blade he'd used to slice off Yang's arm. Not able to give up... As well as all of my personal effects. I leave them lying around, someone finds them like Yang did. I hide them, I'll be unable to access them if they're needed... But how would I store it all? Complete the Knightmare look and get a utility belt? The thought was tempting, but he had things like full-sized tablets, lightsabers, clothes, and whatnot, he couldn't store those in little yellow pouches on his waist, they were too big. Though, even as he thought that, a smile drifted across his face. Not at full-size, at least.
He wouldn't even need to think hard about how to fix that problem. How many fictional stories, from cheesy sci-fi to well-respected and thought-out examples, had shrink rays, or something similar? Captain Atom, Ant Man, Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Hell, all he had to do was magic up an Ant Man suit and steal the Pym Particles and the problem would solve itself.
Food for thought. Aldric thought, as he watched hundreds of man-sized robots and dozens of soldiers piloting gigantic mech suits surrounding him.
The 'ring' created, all Aldric had left was to wait for the huntsmen - who were already halfway up the elevator shaft. As he did so, he slid his bag off of his shoulder and started rifling through it. He knew going into this that he couldn't act as Nebo Aldric, who used the limitless weapons of the Power Glove with a preference for a certain star-spangled shield, Goud Etiolate, who solely used the shield and a lightsaber, or Nathan Drake, who also was known to at least have a lightsaber, as Ironwood would either recognize the lattermost, or be in a far better position to recognize him out on the street with the former two. This in mind, during his time sailing back to Vale, he'd cooked up a few new weapons to use when he'd come to Atlas. He'd intended to have a week to build up far more - perhaps even think up or purchase a new armor set for this 'Andrew Ryan' persona he'd now adopted, but those plans had been brought out back and shot by the Beacon students, in all their good intentions.
So instead of a minor arsenal and some good armor to complement it, all Aldric had was some thin, questionably stolen clothing, and a handful of weapons, all of which he pulled out of the bag. First to come was a bolt pistol, which he clipped to his belt and of which he had a few magazines lining his pockets. Considering the sheer size of the Imperium's go-to sidearm's rounds, he'd figured this could solve a number of problems before they became close-range problems. Should his John Wick with-a-grenade-launcher routine not be good enough, however, he had a few close-range implements to work with. The first, and simplest, was a tonfa he'd made from the Power Glove. It was absolutely boring, but simple to use and practical as a result, as he hadn't had the time to familiarize himself with his initial idea. After setting the tonfa down with a 'ting' of metal hitting stone, and noting that Atlas built elevators to work, as the huntsmen were at ground level and were already sprinting towards him, he pulled out his last few tricks tricks. The first was a pair of straps with dish-like plates, both of which he fastened around his hands, such that the dishes were each on his palms, and the last two were a completely inconspicuous radio beacon, and a small infrared strobe.
The pattern here had been established after he'd found himself unable to get rid of Vader's lightsaber: They were simple tools that didn't rely on magic to work, and were things he could feasibly support or recreate with technology either on Earth or on Remnant. With the question of why he couldn't 'despawn', as it were, the lightsaber that had de-limbed Yang, hanging over his head, Aldric had vowed to leave the construction of a fictional arsenal for later, as well as to try and stop relying on less conventional weapons and tactics. If he couldn't rely on his magic to always work as he expected and to remain under his control, he had to isolate and use it only in situations where it was needed, and in other circumstances only use it to create things that would have multiple uses in the long and short term. Aldric pressed a button on the radio beacon, and watched a dull red light begin flashing with a heartbeat rhythm, then he clipped the IR strobe to his belt. After this, he stood to his feet and grabbed the metallic tonfa in one hand, and drew the bolter with the other, turning to face the huntsmen as they arrived.
Winter stood at the center, and she was flanked by a man and a woman in similar uniforms. The woman had close-cropped, blood red hair, and coincidentally also wielded a pair of tonfas, though they were less a simple metal club like Aldric's, than they were two high-tech looking nightsticks, with Aldric suspecting, based on the inner components he could see with his radar, that they had to double as something else, perhaps as a laser or a firearm, or a staff. The man somehow managed to both look skinnier than Aldric had been before the plane crash, but also more intimidating than a pissed off Ozpin, though Aldric felt it made sense, as it appeared ninety percent of this man had been replaced by machines, giving Professor Raiden a good run for his money, and also meaning that Aldric couldn't discern any weapons. Considering Raiden had been taken - and, likely, was dead now after the EMP - Aldric decided to call him Iron Man, and the girl Redd.
Of course, here in a few seconds it wouldn't quite matter. Aldric spoke up, "I'm here to accept your surrender." He called out, his voice being caught by the mask and transformed into Solid Snake's growl, which spread through the air.
Winter had her hand resting threateningly on her white blade, a scowl painted on her face. "If you lay down your arms, we'll treat you fairly as a prisoner of war." She then drew the blade, and she and her two partners took up combat stances. "But if you fight us, we will kill you without any hesitation."
Aldric sucked in air between his teeth, grimacing. "Ah... Well. Problem with that." He said, idly twirling the bolter on his finger, before pointing it at Iron Man, deeming him the better use of the explosive bullets. "You can't surrender to me, if I'm dead." He said, stalling. "I have to be alive to accept it, you see." And as he spoke, he sensed a glyph spin to life several feet behind him, so silently and with such a dull glow that, had he not had his radar, he wouldn't have known it was there at all.
"If you think we'll surrender to you, you're sorely mistaken." Said Iron Man, his voice possessing a metallic rasp, like someone speaking through a radio.
Aldric pursed his lips, as he sensed a snow-white beowolf crawl out of the spinning glyph, and ever-so-slowly plod its way over to him. "Oh, please don't tell me that's a 'no'." He said, "none of us will like what happens if you say 'no'." He said, as Winter's summon grew within striking distance, and reared back, ready to pounce.
Redd picked up, "last chance, soldier."
Aldric grinned, "time's up." And barely a second later, a shower of high-caliber bullets rained down from above.
They carved into the ground around Winter and her allies, tearing Redd apart in a shower of viscera. These bullets were almost instantly joined by dozens of explosive rounds from the same gunship that had found and sighted him thanks to the radio beacon and the IR strobe, these explosions rocking the ground as they slammed into the Atlesian soldiers ringing him and the huntsmen in. Then, in the brief moment he had as the trio, now a duo, reacted to the sudden carnage, Aldric turned the duo into a solo, blasting Iron Man apart with the high-explosive rounds from the forty first millennium. Only the first round was absorbed by his aura, the second shattered his shields with its explosion. The third round missed as Aldric acclimated to the gun's recoil, but the fourth, fifth, and sixth all hit home as he used his semblance to steady his hand, quickly blowing Iron Man's chest wide open and shredding all of the sensitive electronics keeping him alive. Winter didn't escape the carnage unscathed either, as she found herself enveloped in the vicinity of Aldric's bolts while she dived away. She hit the ground and rolled to her feet, wincing in pain, as her summoned monster roared and leapt for Aldric.
Aldric's response to the charging beowolf was to turn to the side and moon-walk out of the way, distinctly making it look as though he were dancing dead-center in a ring of artillery practically coming down from orbit, the gunship was so high. The snow-white beowolf landed on the ground Aldric had been standing on, and as it recovered and its master charged, he dispatched the summoned monster with another shower of bolts, and shifted his aim to Winter. She, however, had learned that this 'terran huntsman's' weapon was something far more dangerous than what his aura-less kin used, and as a result she had several large glyphs layered in front of eachother, floating in front of her and moving with her as she sprinted forward. To her credit, they all worked wonderfully, with there still being two glyphs left by the time the bolter's magazine ran dry.
The glyphs vanished as she reached Aldric, her war-cry drowned out by the explosions and the screams of the dead and dying. She brought her sword up in a two-handed grip and chopped downwards, but Aldric quickly raised his forearm and caught the blade with his tonfa. The white blade stuck fast as Winter and he were locked in a contest of strength, and to Aldric's light surprise, he found her instantly pushing back against him, proving again that all of his improvements in the near-year he'd been struggling still meant little against someone who had been doing this their entire life.
So, eager to avoid another Pyrrha incident, Aldric tossed his gun and the magazine he'd pulled out to the side, and then thrust his now free metal hand forward, his palm hovering just an inch away from Winter's abdomen. Her head snapped down, eyes wide as she noticed the metal and glass dish light up with a loud whirring noise, and before she could react, she was blasted away, as though Aldric had smashed her gut with a piledriver. She flew so far back that she nearly fell into the artillery being rained down from above, one hand was pressed against her subtly smoldering stomach as her face contorted in pain.
"Ah shit, I didn't have a one-liner. Can we do that again?" Aldric asked, spinning the tonfa by its handle, and holding his free hand up just in front of his chest, fingers splayed out and the repulsor on his palm glowing brightly, "Answer fast - that AC-One Thirty sees you separated from me too long, you'll get shot down!" He warned, causing her eyes to widen and briefly zip upwards, before snapping back to him, before charging forward - her hand forced.
Aldric strafed around her, the artillery around him dying down as the gunship no doubt was reloading. She took the bait and followed him, and when she reached him she swung her sword faster than he'd ever seen before - not Weiss or even Pyrrha had ever attacked as fast as Winter was now. It was all Aldric could do to use his semblance to deflect her, and even then she seemed to catch on remarkably fast, breaking her secondary blade away and splitting his attention between the both of them. She jabbed, swung, and sliced so fast that his eyes could barely keep up, each arm seeming independent of the other, forcing him to use his semblance to defend against the main blade and his tonfa to defend against the sub-sword. His counters were few and infrequent, almost always following her blade scraping off of the back of his tonfa and her stumbling forward as a result.
She swung at his head with her left arm and stabbed at the area it occupied when he ducked with her right. He caught the right blade with his tonfa and slugged her in the chest with his metal fist, before spinning around her and blasting her in the back with his repulsor. She stumbled forward, but hopped into the air - planting both feet on a rapidly formed glyph, which catapulted her right towards him. Suspecting she was baiting him into revealing what exactly his semblance was beyond a defensive implement, Aldric leapt to the side. He didn't, however, dodge her - as another glyph appeared right where he had been, and she sprang off of it just as easily as the first, reaching him in the time it took to blink. Again she engaged, each swing coming faster and surer than the last, as she adapted to his fighting style.
Unfortunately, she'd fallen into his trap the moment she'd let him bait her around their fighting ring, and as they reached its edge, just where the dust and debris was billowing out, barely having cleared, he proved once again that sometimes the simplest, and oldest, tricks were the best kind. He waited for her feet to hit the ground, and once they did, he thrust his tonfa up - using it to catch a downward slice from her right blade - and then brought his metal arm up, catching a stab that would have slid in between his ribs, in the crook of his elbow, with the sound of steel sliding against steel. Now caught and stuck fast and in an awkward position, Aldric ended the fight by picking up the gun he'd thrown away with his semblance, turning it to her, and firing.
Unlike when he'd tried this on Neo, this time it actually worked. All the damage she'd accumulated from his opening artillery barrage, and the few hits he'd scored during their brief engagements, all meant that unlike Iron Man, she had only been able to take one bolt. Her shields faded away and she coughed from the residual impact slamming into her back. She stumbled forward - right into Aldric's head, which slammed into hers. Aldric hurt just as much as her from this, but the impact managed to get her to loose her grip on one of her blades. Aldric seized this opportunity and tore that blade out of her hands by clenching the elbow it was caught in, and then wrenching it backwards.
Now partially disarmed, Aldric swung that newly freed fist upwards, uppercutting her in the jaw and causing her to stumble back, her other blade woozily raised in front of her, swaying as she recovered from two instances of blunt force trauma to her head. But this too was apart of Aldric's plan, as he raised his palm and fired a repulsor beam at her, it streaking forward and slamming into her forehead, knocking her out cold and leaving a nasty purple welt in its place. She hit the ground with an unhealthy sounding 'thud', and Aldric straightened up, running his hand through the 'hair' made by his techno-mask.
All in all, it took ninety seconds. He had a few nasty stab wounds, but besides that, his decision to adopt terran strategy and just bomb the shit out of everything with overwhelming force, turned out to be sound.
Or maybe... Thought Aldric, as he pulled the bolter, his bag, and the radio beacon to him with his semblance. It's the Ork strategy. After all... He grinned, probing the surrounding area with his Radar. Whatever wasn't dead was dying - even the small army of Paladin mechs hadn't lasted against the sustained aerial bombing. There can never be enough dakka. He clipped the bolter to his belt, and raised a thumb to the sky, silently thanking the pilots and gunners that had spared him a long, drawn out, and potentially lethal battle.
He didn't, however, deactivate the radio beacon. Instead, after he slid his bag over his shoulder, he took the beacon in both hands, turned towards Atlas Academy, then reared it behind his head. He tensed his muscles and took in a deep breath, before pitching the beacon with all his strength, throwing it like a football. His strength and his semblance both ensured it landed exactly where he wanted it to: Dead center of Atlas Academy. Next, he pulled out a radio and a slip of paper from the bag. On the paper was a radio frequency, told to him to be the frequency he could contact the Admiral in charge of the fleet invading Atlas.
He tuned in and then hit the button. "Ocelot-one to Admiral West. Verification, CF-Six-Three-Six." He said into it, scanning his surroundings as he heard Ironwood go ballistic over the intercom.
A moment passed, "go ahead, Ocelot-one." Said the Admiral.
"Located Enemy General. Appears to be in a hardened underground structure. Placed radio beacon above only known entrance... Got anything that can bust this can wide open? Keep in mind - ah, be advised: Civilians present in structure."
"Affirmative. Retreat to minimum safe distance of one-point-one miles."
"Understood. Bring the rain." Aldric said, sliding the radio into his bag and then retreating.
Ten minutes later, as the Atlesian soldiers either failed to find him, or found themselves disassembled or knocked out cold when they did, Aldric noticed a huge bomber flying by overhead, flanked on all sides by several jets, no doubt protecting it from interference. What Aldric found strange, however, was that the bomber was long past the Academy, so what -
"Oh shit!" Aldric ducked, just in time for a bomb twice as big as he was to drop through the sky. What prompted him to duck, beyond common sense and the concept of self preservation, was what he saw on the side of this bomb. Technically not even a word, what he saw was four simple, damning letters:
MOAB.