A/N:
So, as it turns out, I've come to learn I seem to just despise 'breather arcs' with a passion, and can't help but follow one pile of shit up with an even bigger one.
Yeah, that bodes well for this chapter, doesn't it?
But, to give you this brief little spot of not-fuckawful-terror before we get going:
You guys remember that Deviant Artist I linked to awhile back?
Yeah, he hasn't fucking stopped, and it's awesome.
Seriously, check him out. He's ̶f̶o̶o̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶a̶n̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶i̶t̶ a great guy and I love everything he puts out.
many9919{dot}deviantart{dot}com

But wait, there's more!
Now another ̶d̶u̶m̶b̶ ̶m̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶f̶u̶c̶k̶e̶r̶ incredible fan came out of the woodwork, and he's put pen to paper too!
maybezyroaria{dot}deviantart{dot}com/art/Nebo-Aldric-744919029

I love getting stuff like this, it always makes my damn day when they make their rounds my way.

Anyways, on with the show!

Chapter 46

For the Record

Something occurred to me this morning. Sitting in the darkness, candles out, seeing Deer's coat swishing in the door, Neo trying to pretend she was asleep:

I'm an Ork.

No, seriously, think about it:
If an Ork in 40K duct-taped nothing but a couple rocks and a piece of rebar together in the vague shape of a rifle, looked away for a week, and then looked back and went, 'Holy shit, a rifle!', it would work based solely on the fact that the Ork believed it was a fucking rifle. It would shoot people, and it would work, where anyone else would pick it up and it wouldn't work at all, returning back to a chunk of iron, a few rocks, and some duct tape, literally because the Ork would look at it, think, 'This is a rifle!', and it would be.

Does that sound familiar?
Let me swap out a few words for you:If I took nothing but a couple nanites and hardlight generators and made them up in the vague shape of a multicolored shield, it would work. It would deflect shit, and it would bounce off walls, and it would work, where anyone else would pick it up and it wouldn't work at all, returning back to a battery-operated chunk of very fragile light, literally because the I would look at it, think, 'This is vibranium!', and it would be.
Replace with the relevant words for lightsaber and it would only continue to work. See my point?

I'm a goddamn Ork.
Why?
Because Ozpin convinced me that's how my fucking powers work.
No, no, think about it - before I had my little 'Wham' session with him, the shield was always just a chunk of light and colors to me. I'd always pull it up and wipe it away through function of the nanites. But ever since then, I've had trouble making another one. That's not an issue that existed before - I remember pretty clearly having two shields when I fought Adam, him having stolen one and I having made a second one.
But after I talked to Ozpin, all of a sudden I have trouble making more than one of anything.
But that could be anything.
So here's some more proof: Before that heart to heart, all I had and all I ever did was color my shields and a few little odds and ends I used from time to time.
After that, I was making simple machines, light sabers, I have a bolter, I had a neuralizer... All from a bunch of nanites that only make physical light.

And, Ozpin himself literally said he tried making the same things I did (though at the time it was just the shield), with the same nanites I used. The batteries ran out, the shield was destructible, and it didn't bounce. All things that don't happen to me.

And if we're going to ask why his don't work the same way mine do - they do! But he was from ancient Rome, and as a result he thought in simple terms, like fire, water, and so on. His multiple lifetimes were completely colored and influenced by that fact, so by the time machines and things of that nature entered the playing field, he couldn't change his way of thinking in a meaningful enough way.
So when I came around, instead he told me straight up that I could 'will the universe', and essentially have or do anything I wanted, as long as I 'understood the concept' behind it.

Conclusion?
I'm a fucking Ork, because Ozpin realized the nature of Magic and specifically wanted to make sure my powers wouldn't function the same way his did.
Alright?
Alright.

Now say it with me:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

(I didn't sleep at all I thought too much about Salem and Earth's long term plans and I'm very fucking tired.)
(Seriously. There's something I'm missing on both ends, and it's keeping me up.)

Aldric was becoming aware that, though the hospital had most of its critical-care equipment up and running, little to nothing else had power. No lights, no computers, no scrolls, nothing. Neopolitan - or Yuno, depending on who was asked - was the only one in the hospital with something more advanced than could be found in the iron age. Efforts were being made to fix everything else up, but Aldric had learned through his Radar Pulse that the terrans had been occupying and instilling Martial Law ever since they'd launched the nuke and sacked Beacon. Until Ozpin signed and the surrender went through yesterday afternoon, the curfew had been just after mealtime in the afternoon and any delivery larger than a basket of milk was searched and often seized by the terrans. Considering that they were trying not to let anything even remotely subversive go through and start another fight, they definitely weren't letting electrical engineers run around with their tools, and they certainly weren't going to help while they were still the enemy, so if the hospital didn't have them on-hand, they wouldn't be able to get the tools or supplies they would need to fix anything that wasn't immediately required for the most critical patients, such as professor Raiden, who would not be alive without some kind of life support system, or Jaune, who had wires sticking out of his chest and directly powering his otherwise nonfunctional replacement lung.

Now, where Aldric was lamenting the fact that he had absolutely no idea how to fix such a problem beyond literal magic, Neo appeared to just be enjoying the fact, flaunting her functional technology whenever she wasn't pretending to be asleep. Deer or a nurse would come in to check Aldric's IV and take vital signs, and Neo would just happen to be pulling her scroll out or putting it away as they walked in. One technician had had the courage to ask her if he could borrow it to help him measure voltage in the fried wires, and to her credit, she'd given it to him.

He promptly gave it back after getting one look at some of the foulest smut he'd ever beheld before. No one asked for it, since, and Neo promptly killed what she called the 'Mine' app. The way she described it, if they wanted it bad enough, they'd brave whatever the app put on the screen.

Around the time Aldric could just barely see the outside getting light from outside his radar range, Aldric finally gave up on trying to get anything more than fifteen or twenty minutes of sleep here and there. Deer seemed to have predicted the exact time he'd do so, and even already had an answer as to whether or not Aldric could walk around. He and Neo even had a bet going, and considering that Neo tossed him a coin and not the other way around, he was pretty sure he could gauge who won.

Regardless, exhausted and stir-crazy, Aldric grabbed his IV tower, threw on a pair of paper pants underneath his gown, and got out of bed. He gave a long, tired yawn as he stretched; he sensed Neo giving him an appraising look, her disguised blue eyes running over the myriad of old and new bullet, bomb, and knife injuries running up and down his back. As he straightened up, Aldric wondered if she wasn't trying to figure out which ones she'd given him as opposed to which ones had come afterwards.

"Ugh." He said, swiping his hand through his hair, and approaching the corner of the room with his weapons. "My kingdom for some clothes." As much as he appreciated having something to cover up with, everything he wore was disposable paper hospital clothes, and they came as close to chafing and itchy as they could without actually itching or chafing.

"You'll be out of here in a day. Two tops." Neo said through her scroll's text-to-speech. "Do me a favor and suffer in silence, less-than-three." She frowned at the device after it finished speaking, not at all satisfied that her final teasing gesture had been mangled by its reading of it.

That got a grin from Aldric, as he knelt down and retrieved his bolter, figuring it the best option of everything he had - if his arm had power, people would question it. The shield would be a little too much to be walking around with, and he hadn't had Luke Skywalker's blue lightsaber since his first fight with the terrans, so he couldn't be walking around with Vader's - especially not when he visited Yang, because his luck would have her see it and undo what he'd done with the neuralizer. "Why don't you start there, eh?" He said, "what's that sign?"

Neo's smile turned a bit more genuine and less sociopathic at that, as she took one hand and tapped her chest.

"Is that going to be the trend?" He asked, as he slowly raised his ailing and sore body to a standing position, and tenderly touched his face, trying to judge how much the swelling and bruising had gone down. "The signs for things are just... Far less difficult than you'd think?"

She flipped him off, before curling two fingers on each hand, and then spreading them out to each side. She did it twice, then set her hands down, arcing an eyebrow and returning her grin to its usual teasing, slasher-smile, as Aldric pulled the belt out of his cinch-bag. Aldric frowned at that, vaguely sure she wasn't calling him an asshole, as that wasn't her style.

Aldric shrugged, "I got nothing." He grunted, sliding the belt around his waist and clicking it in place, briefly finding himself surprised when it automatically adjusted and conformed to his width.

"Fuck you, slut."

Aldric blinked, and then it dawned on him. "Make legs with your hands and then open them." He didn't even try not to smile, he just snorted and hooked the pistol to the belt, "that was good." He said, throwing the gown back over the gun and the belt.

"Just wait until you see bullshit, Ash."

Aldric rolled his eyes, "so, 'caretaker', got a long, probably teary day ahead of us. Think you can get through it without stabbing someone?"

Neo rolled her eyes, daintily getting to her feet and circling around Aldric's bed. She straightened up his gown then reached up to swat him on the forehead, before spinning on her heel and guiding him to the door. Outside the room, Aldric found the rest of the hospital only a few shades brighter than his room thanks to candles hung every few feet, and saw a lot of Huntsmen and Huntresses in similar states of minor to moderate injury similar to Aldric's, all with the same cabin fever, wandering the halls, avoiding nurses, and congregating around eachother.

Aldric had a few major goals, this morning. He needed to see Yang and figure out how she was holding up, he needed to gauge how badly Ruby was holding up, and he needed to figure out what had happened to Myrtle to get her eyes bandaged like they were. Of course he was worried about the others, even Jaune, who was probably terribly out of date and beside himself with worry, but he felt the three of them had some small priority over the others. Yang he'd personally wronged, Ruby he knew had to be horribly traumatized by both her failure to rescue him and Yang, and in the manner in which he'd been taken from her after they'd been imprisoned, and Myrtle, he was desperately worried might have looked at the nuke.

So, first on his list was the first stop he made. He strolled up to the once-fiery blonde's room and saw her in a similar state to him: Restless and unable to sleep. But, unlike him, she had a more major injury than his partially healed gunshots and stabs: The doctors had had to deal with her newly lost limb. Plasma burns couldn't be fun, so the Doctors weren't going to be nearly as lenient as Deer and were forcing her to stay in bed, alone with her thoughts.

Knowing how that was never a good thing, after knocking, Aldric slowly undid the lock and slid into the room. "Knock knock, lady."

Yang's expression brightened, the dull glaze to her eyes fading away after a blink. She looked up as he entered the room, then shook her head, "oh, no - anyone but you, Beebee."

"Oh?" Aldric countered, a grin stretching across his face as he pushed the door open wider, revealing first his IV tower, then Ash's girlfriend. "How 'bout a combat stripper?" He asked, as 'Yuno' was revealed, and an expression wholly foreign to Neo's usual slasher smile grew across her face: One of a genuine, kind smile - almost good enough to convince Aldric, who knew better, that this wasn't a woman who killed as easy as she breathed.

The brawler snorted, covering her face with her one good hand as the one-armed spy strolled inside, the only one of the three with all of her limbs staying in the doorway. "You're just going to take that from him?"

Neo's shoulders quivered in a silent giggle, before she retrieved her scroll and it barked out, "oh, he'll regret it later." And out from her baggy sleeve came a switchblade, eliciting a flinch from Aldric.

Yang started guffawing, "oh, I like you." She said, "you're Yuno, right?" She nodded to Aldric, "one of the other numerous women in his life told us that you existed. Had a picture and everything." She whistled, "you're too good for him, you know?"

"Oh, I know." Neo responded, as Aldric collapsed into his chair with a muted groan. "But I figured I'd take pity on him. He needed it." She gave the two a nod, "but, I won't steal too much time. I can see why he's cheating on me with you, I might as well let him."

Yang rolled her eyes, "Beebee couldn't handle me, Yuno. I don't know how he handles you."

Neo grinned, her last words being, "he doesn't.", before she shut the door.

The room fell to silence, as Yang's smile slowly descended to one that didn't reach her eyes. Aldric let her have it for a few moments, before saying, "you know... It wasn't a bomb blast, but mine happened about just as fast." She blinked, turning to him with an inquisitive frown on her face. "My arm." She nodded in understanding.

"I..." She began, "I can't remember... Did you ever tell me how you lost it?"

Your fucking uncle. Aldric shrugged, "probably? But it's been a hell of a month." He shook his head, "long and short of it was Grimm. After my fight with you, I was out with my sugar momma walking the roads. Some Grimm came along. Lot of 'em. Hardest fight I'd ever been in, and while I was focusing on this big hoss, a smaller one came in out of nowhere, just..." He shook his head and chopped at his stump. "Gone. Time it took to blink I'd gone from kicking ass to getting ass kicked. Managed to get Miss Ember out, but man oh man, she didn't want that to happen again. So she rented a room here in Vale, bought me a new arm, and paid for my getting into Beacon."

"I just..." A long sigh. "Do you keep going over it?" She asked. "The moment you lost it."

Aldric nodded, "every day." The shield struggle, the lightning shot to the eyes, Qrow coming in, the cold burn of steel cutting flesh. "How about you?"

"It's all I've thought about." She said. "I - at the time I thought I hadn't seen the guy, but now..." She shook her head. "Now I'm not sure. I think I might have actually seen him throwing the bomb, but I didn't do anything. I just watched it, like it was happening in slow-motion."

"You couldn't have done better, Yang. I mean, for fuck's sake - you punched a goddamn grenade out of the air. Not many can claim they could do that."

"Yeah, but then after that my aura was shot, I was unconscious, and you had to fight through the rest of that ship alone." She stressed, tightly pursing her lips in an effort to not have her expression crack. "None of them even had aura, Ash. Aside from Pyyrha, we're the best fighters in the school. How'd they get us so easily? How'd they hurt us so bad?"

To which, Aldric shrugged. "Quantity is a quality of its own, Yang. And the terrans have quantity in spades. You and I can hammer on eachother for a half hour well and good, but get a few thousand of them, in tight corridors, with all the explosives they have? Our aura'll go faster than we can blink and then they'll have us in a bad way."

She nodded, "I know, it's just..." She looked down at her arm. "I know. And I know that I know, but I still just... I've never been in a position like that before." She said, "I've never killed before... And then you've got what Ruby did, she hasn't ever either and she's younger than me." She turned to Aldric, though she didn't make eye contact. "I don't like that, Ash. I don't like that I'm not strong enough to fight through one group of soldiers, or one measly ship of 'em. I don't like that my little sister got hurt trying to come rescue me... I don't like that all of them just... Showed up and wrecked all of Vale, and I don't like that they somehow did the same thing to the rest of the world in a month." She finally looked up, but only barely, frowning at him from under her brow. "I thought we were all stronger than that, Ash."

Aldric sighed, leaning back in his chair. "That night." He said, lifting his hand and idly tangling it in his hair. "I told you about Steve?" She nodded. "I ever tell you I haven't seen anyone go through Grimm like he did? And I've seen Huntsmen fight Grimm since then. I've seen dozens of Grimm fall in seconds, I've seen Huntsmen fight eachother and scar the land... Hell, I saw Ozpin taking on the terrans... But I've never seen anything quite like Steve, that day. He just..." Aldric held up his hand in a boxer's stance and started bobbing and weaving, left to right. "Moved. Faster than anyone I've ever seen. He hit harder than anything I've ever felt - even you." He indicated Yang, before dropping his hand. "But there was a... Flow to everything he did." He said, waving his fingers. "Like he was dancing. Like it was all choreographed ahead of time and he was just going through the motions. I've taken to calling him a super-Huntsmen, 'cause I've never seen anyone fight like that. Grimm went down in singular blows, they would swing at him and his shield would just be there... On his own he managed to turn the tide of the Grimm, for a moment I thought we'd win. I'm certain that the only reason he ran was because the hit he took to the gut was just a bit too deep. Like, if it had been just a centimeter more shallow, he could have and would have kept going.

"But it wasn't raw power that let him do it, Yang." Aldric explained, "if raw power determined dominance, humanity would've lost this fight a long time ago. It's skill that means everything. You can be as strong as you want, but that won't mean anything if you can't touch the opponent you're trying to beat." He explained, "so... Yeah, our world is strong, but they just have more skill and experience in fighting and war. Besides his aura, which none of them seem to use, I think Steve's a perfect example of them. He combines power and skill, and in the end it was just dumb luck that did him in.

"So when the terrans came here and picked a fight with us, we thought like you are: We thought that our power would bring us through. They, however, figured out our weaknesses and hammered them relentlessly." He indicated the dark ceiling. "Knock out our electricity, and all of a sudden the only way we can fight is like them: Conventionally. And they've more skill with that, so they won wholesale."

Yang nodded, picking up on his line of thought. "Instead of carpet-bombing an entire area to kill a handful of people, they fire one bullet into a car's fuel-tank."

"Aim small, miss small." Aldric affirmed. "Put it in more personal terms: Can you think of a single fight you've won without your semblance? A single serious fight?" Yang blinked.

"Well..." She trailed off. "No."

"Now think about what happened during our fight. You unleashed that raw power, and were indeed stronger than me... But then you punched my shield and nothing happened, and you couldn't adapt fast enough. You didn't know what to do." He explained, "it's the same thing. Instead of being a mallet smashing a wall, be a screwdriver taking apart its weak point."

"With us being the mallet, and the terrans being the screwdriver."

Aldric nodded, humming. "If it came down to raw power, the two of us could've steamrolled through that entire ship. Fuck - you could've led the way and I could've just sat there dancing, and it still would've worked." The two shared a grin, "but the terrans knew how to fight us. They kept us at range and kept us from moving. Their skill beat out our strength... So instead of beating yourself up over your lost arm, take it as a learning experience, yeah?"

Yang let out a long sigh that sounded almost as tired as Aldric felt. "I don't know if it'll be that easy, Beebee."

Aldric nodded to the side, "it never is, Yang." He waved his arm over his stump, "when I'm not wearing thew new one, sometimes I still feel it."

Yang nodded, turning to her own, and the fresh bandages on it. "I swear if I wasn't looking... I'd say I'm clenching it right now." She said, "I swear I can feel the air, and the sheets, my nails digging into my palm..." She turned to him, "how do you deal with it?" She asked, "this whole week I haven't been able to stop looking at it."

At that, Aldric shrugged. "I can't go back in time, Yang. So when I make mistakes, I just pick myself up, bandage myself up... And put one foot in front of the other." He responded. "Learn from it, Yang. You do that and you'll never make the same mistake again."

She nodded, bringing her hand up to brush it through her golden hair. "I'll keep that in mind, Beebee... And - I'm sorry."

Aldric blinked.

"For what?"

"If I'd have trusted you -"

"Oh, God, Yang - no." He shook his head.

"No, Goud, listen." Aldric shut up, "I'm sorry I put us in that situation. None of this would've happened if I hadn't done that. We wouldn't have been shot, we wouldn't have been taken, you wouldn't be..." Aldric thought he saw the ghost of a joke in her expression, but it died with her next words. "So hurt. I wouldn't have lost my arm, Ruby and Weiss and Blake... Your team, Pyrrha's, CFVY's, none of them would've almost died..." She fell back into her bed. "I'm sorry, dude." He saw a tear forming in one of her eyes, that she tried to blink away.

Damn if that ain't a punch to the gut. Aldric thought, trying to put on a better face for her. "Yang, you may not believe it, but you have nothing to be sorry about, so don't be." He said, getting to his feet and leaning over her bed. "If only because if the bloody red head out there thinks I made you sad she'll fuckin' kill me, yeah?" He whispered conspiratorially.

It got the desired effect, Yang blinked once and let out a sigh, as she tried to suppress a grin. Then, in the time it took Aldric to blink, she adopted an evil expression and looked up at him, violet eyes ablaze with mischief. Aldric's own grin vanished as he realized what she was going to do.

"Oh Ash, what would Yuno think?!" She called out in a scandalized tone, "here? In public?!"

Then, Neo, in her endless quest to fuck with him, and having clearly heard the blonde in the bed, chose that moment to walk in. She shared one look with Aldric, and for a moment he feared who he'd be dealing with: The assassin who loved to scare him, or whatever character she'd crafted Yuno into. Given how her smile was far from the slasher grin he'd grown used to, he was willing to hope for the latter. Right up until she pointed at all three of them and made her intentions clear with an unmistakably lewd sign, an arced eyebrow, and an innocent smile.

Yang immediately picked up on it, "ooh! Beebee, she seems willing, c'mon -" Yang reached up and wrapped her arm around Aldric's neck, dragging the laughing spy down such that his ear was inches from her mouth. "I'm not on a heart-monitor, no one will know!" She faux-whispered.

Aldric, still chuckling, patted Yang on her cheek. "Wait 'till I fix my arm, Yang, it doubles as something I never thought I'd get a use out of." And Neo attested to it with a nod, her grin turning wistful, as she looked past the two and stared off into space.

Yang gasped, letting go of Aldric and putting on a scandalous look as she covered her mouth. "Why Beebee! You certainly think ahead!" She laughed, unable to keep it going. "Thanks for the visit, Beebee. It really helped."

Aldric blew her a kiss, as Neo approached him. "Anytime." He said, grabbing his IV tower. "The real question, though, is do you think Jaune can perform with one lung?" He gave her a serious look, as Yang lost it. "I'm fuckin' telling you, Yang! Second sexiest man alive! I shove it in him, he shoves it in her." He nodded to Neo, who slowly raised a knife to him, wild look in her eyes.

"All these women and one with a knife and you keep trying to convince us you want a man in your life." Yang scoffed, as she calmed down and the spy and the assassin reached the door.

"Life is long, hard, and sometimes painful - sometimes I want something similar!"

"See ya!" She called back, as Aldric shut the door.

As he turned around, Aldric felt Neo's hand on his shoulder, and the tensity of her grip let him know this was less her teasing him than it was something somewhat serious. As he turned, he expanded his radar, and -

Oh. Well, that happened faster than I expected. Aldric thought, turning to face an irate Qrow approaching him.

With the sheer amount of paranoia Aldric experienced every day of his life, Aldric's first instinct wasn't to question what pissed Qrow off, but rather to question whether it was him in the first place. He'd done a lot of public actions in stopping the war, and as evidenced by Roman motherfucking Torchwick, it wasn't hard to pin it all on him. Subsequently, a determined and skilled enough Master wouldn't find it impossible to use their abilities to take on someone's appearance and try to get him to lower his guard.

Fortunately, Aldric had a trick to figure out if any of the Watchmen had been swapped out, be it with a Body Snatcher, a Kree, or just a good, boring illusionist. So Aldric searched over the man, top to bottom, from the furious expression on his red face, to his hunched back, down his chest and, most importantly, to the man's weapon. Anyone trying to make an illusory copy of Qrow, anyone trying to probe his mind for secrets only he or Aldric could know, or anyone savvy enough to realize Goud Etiolate spent a lot of time with Qrow's extended family, and that Qrow was in direct contact with Ozpin, wouldn't be able to copy two important facts: The scars from Emerald's sickles on his back, and the nanites Aldric had hid inside his scythe weeks ago. When he confirmed both of their presences, then Aldric turned his attention to the why of why the fuck he was so brazenly walking up to him in broad daylight.

But he barely got even a single word in before Qrow shook his head, clearly not having it.

"Cut the shit, and come with me." He rasped, roughly grabbing Aldric's limbless shoulder.

Aldric sucked in a breath through his teeth, "Oh." Aldric pursed his lips and shut his eyes, preparing for the inevitable. "Bad move." He whispered through clenched teeth, as Qrow turned to him, about to issue a retort.

He found a huge pistol pressed to the side of his abdomen, and a terribly innocent smile on the disguised assassin's face, as she looked up to him. Aldric, however, found his eyes traveling down to the gun in her hands, as it looked rather familiar, in that it was his. It was his bolter. She'd taken his gun off of his belt, without him knowing, despite it being fastened and clipped to it, and being so close to him that even without him stretching his radar like he usually did, he should have seen it.

"Is that mine?" He grunted, to which Neo nodded, still smiling.

"And who's this?" Qrow grunted, not even phased by the gun.

"She doesn't talk much, but apparently she's got a boner for murder." Aldric responded, to which Neo's shoulders quivered in a silent laugh. "And she -" Aldric nodded into Yang's room, "may see you if you so much as twitch another inch to the left, now I can already think of a story as to why you'd be manhandling her friend and companion in some serious mental trauma but can you? And before you answer that, also consider, first and foremost, she's freaked out about all the shit that went down on that ship." He added, talking fast and keeping his momentum, "imagine what more will happen if she came out here and saw this. So how about we all cut the shit, and go all adult-like to wherever it is you want to talk?"

Qrow glared at him, and Aldric was pretty certain he knew what was going on: Qrow might not fully expect Aldric of having played a hand in the nuke, but he sure as hell blamed him for what had happened to Yang and, to a lesser extent, Ruby as well. Neo wasn't exactly helping the innocent routine, not since her natural instinct was to threaten lives, but Aldric was hoping he could spin that as him making contact with his less scrupulous allies. After a moment of indistinct rage, Qrow shoved off of Aldric's shoulder; Neo almost instantly removed the gun and had it clipped back on Aldric's belt, an innocent smile and an equally innocent curtsy following the disarmament.

"Come on." Qrow scowled at Neo for a moment, before nodding over his shoulder.

He guided them through the hospital and to a stairwell; there were a few candles mounted on dishes on the wall next to the door, and he took one. Opening the door with a metal squeak, the inside of the stairwell was pitch black except for the candle in Qrow's hands, and once it closed with a loud thunk, he rounded on Aldric, his expression unchanged.

"So do you mind telling me -"

"I did it." Aldric said, point blank.

Qrow blinked, mouth agape.

"We were fighting our way through the ship. A guy threw a grenade, it would've taken out both of us. She punched it, protected me, but it took her arm." Aldric explained, "there was barely anything left but dangling hunks of meat and flesh. I couldn't fix it then and there, and it was bleeding like mad. If I left it alone she would have bled out, so I spawned the same sword I fought at the docks with to cut it all off and cauterize it." He held up both of his arms in a 'come at me' expression. "I fuckin' did it. No sense in lying."

Neo turned her openly amused expression from Aldric to Qrow, as the latter tried to comprehend the fact that the biggest liar in the Watchmen hadn't even bothered trying to hide something that they both knew he could be killed for, as agreed by everyone. Even Qrow's expression melted away from fury to shock.

He blinked again, "and what about you two being on their ship in the first place?" He rasped, the anger gone from his voice, as he simply tried to regain his mental balance.

"Yang's a smart woman, Qrow. Her Dad should be proud." Aldric responded, "while they were moving our stuff out of our dorm, she found the cinch-bag I keep on me, with my Earth tech in it. She thought I was a spy for them. A group of Earth soldiers were sneaking in to try and nab Ozpin at the time, they heard the argument and her accusations and changed their goal. Shot the two of us and brought us to the ship." Aldric explained, "and, yes, I convinced her otherwise."

"Then how'd you get off the ship if you were down one fighter?"

"I cut a deal with the Captain." Aldric responded. "I barricaded the two of us in a conference room. They had soldiers ready to kill us, but the Captain, after he read a journal I keep, figured out who I was and what I was doing. So I cut a deal... For all of the ten minutes I needed to get close to him. Then -" He pantomimed a punch. "Captain down, I used my semblance to detonate the ship's missiles. Crew dead, Yang and I unharmed... And Earth is not happy."

"You had a chance to get their resources and instead you killed your countrymen."

"That's some stuff needs Earth context, Qrow. Up until thirty years ago my country hated theirs with a passion. Most of us still do. And now that the war is over I guarantee you they're already squabbling over who gets what country and which slices of land." He explained, leaning against the cold wall. "If we don't direct their fury to Salem, another war's going to come, only they'll be fighting eachother over Remnant and its resources, and they'll be launching an arms race over who can wake up more Masters than the other." Aldric shook his head, "and don't act high and mighty. If I worked with them and you figured out, you'd say the exact same thing: That I sold you all out to Earth. No, I barely trust this world but I trust mine even less - if I worked with them, that war I told you about would only come all the faster. At least this way we can delay it... Perhaps indefinitely, but at least long enough for Remnant to rebuild itself."

Qrow didn't seem like he was getting any less angry. "No... You know what?" He shook his head. "No."

Aw fuck. Thought Aldric, as he felt Neo's hand sliding down his back, towards his gun.

"Oz ain't here to defend you, kid." Qrow said, advancing one step on Aldric, who sensed Neo's hands close around the gun. "And even if he were, I don't think I'd let him. You know he bends over backwards for you? Every time you do something stupid and I point it out, he steps in and cools me down, and I'll be the first to admit he makes good points - but now?" He shook his head, taking another step to Aldric, who stood his ground, his gaze remaining level, frown remaining still. "Now it wouldn't work - because I've figured you out, kid. You lie with the truth." Another step, Qrow now less than a foot from Aldric.

Neo tried to pull the gun, but found it stuck fast to Aldric's belt - the spy holding it there with his semblance, and placing a phantom hand on her shoulder, to try and tell her he had this. She took the hint, and though she let go of his gun, he did notice her cupping her free hand, a knife sliding through her sleeve and coming to rest in her palm. She gave him a brief, curious glance, but otherwise didn't act.

"Qrow, you know that sounds -"

"Right!" Qrow rested his hand on the hilt of his blade, face aglow with fury. "You and my niece vanish for a fuckin' week, the war all but ends, Vale gets hit with the biggest warning shot in human history, and she comes back with no arm?! No, kid." He shook his head, sliding the blade off of his back. "No - that's too many coincidences, especially for you. You took her arm off to get her to stop fighting, you told the terrans what they'd need to finish off Atlas, you convinced them to knock out Vale's electricity. You sold us out the moment you realized you could have your world over ours!"

Aldric took in a long breath, trying to stay calm - and it was because of this, and the much more enclosed space they found themselves in, that he smelled more clearly the copious amounts of alcohol radiating off of Qrow.

This guy was plastered, even more than usual.

Aldric frowned, "what happened, Qrow?"

Qrow blinked, "no, don't you -"

"Qrow what the fuck happened?" Aldric advanced on Qrow, first swiping his hand through the air and tossing Qrow's scythe from his back, and then reaching up to plant it on the man's shoulder, the smell growing worse the closer he got; and it was once he got so close that Aldric felt the man's skin was hot, and there was a tinge to his cheeks. Considering how much alcohol this man operated on, he'd had to have taken a lot to get here, and to Aldric, that meant something had to have happened - and he was taking out this bender-fueled rage on him. "You're so drunk I'm surprised you can stand, and if you were here for Ozpin you would have brought me to him, or given me his message immediately." He was also willing to place a small bet on Qrow not having been drunk yesterday, when they had been given back to Remnant, which meant this was a recent development. "What happened?"

Qrow, breathing heavily, leered into Aldric's cybernetic eyes a few seconds, before the tension seemed to melt out of him. His shoulders slumped, he let out a long, smelly breath, and he fell back a few steps, back hitting the wall with a thump, the anger that had been fueling him vanishing like an improperly fed fire.

"Met 'em in Mountain Glenn. They're..." He gasped, "they were gonna occupy, kid. It didn't matter that they'd agreed to spin the story like it was a plot from... 'Non-governmental agencies' they called it... They said they were gonna occupy. Had to, they said."

Aldric frowned, "you're speaking in past tense." He said, as the drunken huntsman slid down the wall.

"They said they'd only bring back their soldiers for one thing, kid. They threatened to leave us to do all the rebuilding ourselves unless we gave it to them. That... Those damn people, who knew about our world, told 'em, they said. Couldn't get Amber, they knew, but they also knew they didn't need her for ours." Qrow rasped, the rage that had fueled his previous lucidity having vanished, and his words now beginning to slur.

Though Aldric feared he knew, he still knelt down and asked, "told them about what, Qrow? What is 'ours'? What did the terrans want?"

"The Relic of Choice." Qrow buried his head in his hand, holding it tightly. "Oh... They said it was to make sure Salem wouldn't get all four. Said that the safest place for it would be on Earth, with them. Told us that it was to have a get out of jail free card... But you don't just ask for that. They wanted it. Insurance, in case the portals close again. Something they could study, unlock Masters even if they can't trade for Dust."

And there was the final piece. The last thing Aldric needed to make some kind of sense of the White Witch's plans: She was pulling a Thanos. She wanted to uncover and locate every one of the relics, such that she could come in and swipe all of them in one fell swoop. Aldric was willing to put anything on the bet that the terrans negotiating in other countries were making similar deals: Give us your relic, or you'll be on your own. Failing that, though, the next most surefire bet was to obtain the identities of the final two Maidens not confirmed by material written by Roosterteeth before Aldric and the plane had been taken from Earth. Doing either of these would give Salem everything she'd need for the coup-de-grace mentioned by Cinder, and if he applied this puzzle piece into his own machinations, then it all fit as close to perfectly as he was willing to attribute.

Salem sparked the war between Earth and Remnant to piss the two planets off, and let Earth believe that it held military superiority. Remnant, shaken and, in places, practically destroyed by the United Nations' planetary blitzkrieg, would have to capitulate to any of the Earth's demands and gain their resources, infrastructure, and perhaps some defensive supplements, or reject them and face having to rebuild by themselves - and the subsequent risk of a major Grimm attack due to the negative emotions that would be flying about in the postwar kingdoms. To say nothing of the risk of having Earth roll in and occupy the planet. Be it by willingly giving up their relics or revealing the identities and locations of the relevant Maidens, all of the pieces Salem would need to zerg-rush and subsequently claim all four relics would be out in the open and in place for her to claim them. This would be where the Vytal festival came into play: Whatever she ended up doing, tensions would already be high between the two planets by sheer virtue of the recent war, and if she sparked another, and added the Grimm into the mix, both worlds would be in chaos and falling to pieces fighting eachother and staving off the Grimm. This would allow her to claim the relics freely given, or abduct the Maidens and allow Cinder to absorb their powers - or, more terrifying, both. Then, with all four relics, the power of all four Maidens in one woman, plus four Masters, Aldric included, Salem could do whatever it was the relics would allow her to do in the pursuit of her endgame. Snap her fingers and wipe out half the universe, create a thousand Grimm Dragons, understand the anti-life equation, wish on the dragon balls, whatever - the point being: Bad juju on an apocalyptic scale.

Worse, was that her planning for this meant one of two things, neither good. The best of the bad options was that the other three Masters were actually back on Earth, and that Aldric was the only one on Remnant. They had been given all of the necessary knowledge by Salem, and they were leaking that information to Earth such that the UN would know it and could leverage it over Remnant. Aldric liked this option because it explained how Earth would know about these things without foreknowledge, but didn't like it because that meant there were as many as three subversive elements at potentially the highest levels of government in the United Nations. The worst option, however, was that somehow Salem already knew about RWBY, the show, knew that Earth had that knowledge, and had planned accordingly. Aldric liked this option because it was the easiest, it explained a lot of Salem's master strokes, and meant that all four Masters were still operating solely on Remnant, but abhorred it because that meant Salem knew as much as he did - and worse, because he was the only one on the manifest under the age of forty, and because he'd shown he'd had his finger firmly on the pulse of Earth's pop culture, that meant she may suspect him of knowing about RWBY himself, perhaps even from day one.

In any case, Salem was ten steps ahead of everyone working against her, and Aldric had a bad choice to make. He could do absolutely nothing, let the UN take what relics and information they could, he could intervene himself and potentially secure and hide one of the Relics away, meaning Salem would only ever have three, or he could instead intervene ostensibly on Salem's behalf, and give her the opportunity to secure it well ahead of schedule. The first option was the safest of all of them - it kept the status quo, but that was as good a thing as it could be a bad thing, because if Salem knew about RWBY and suspected him of knowing as well, not doing anything would do nothing to change her opinions of his loyalty; and, sure, having anywhere from one to four relics on Earth under armed guard and probably with a nuclear warhead leaning up against them as a last resort, sounded nice, but without any Huntsmen to augment these defenders, Aldric feared that any attempt by Salem to recover these relics would succeed, period. The second option would allow him to know where one relic was at all times and would allow him to directly control its location and what did or didn't defend it, and he perhaps had the best opportunities of everyone to shore up its defenses, due to his powers and his understanding that it could augment them and allow for even more vast and varied options. But it ran the risk of anyone - Legion, League, Watchmen, UN - discovering that he'd taken it and him subsequently losing the army of soldiers, allies, and informants he'd built, sending him to a place even worse than he'd been when he'd first arrived on Remnant, as everyone would be hunting for him and looking for his head.

The third option sounded like suicide, plain and simple. It was willingly giving an infinity stone to Thanos, purposefully giving Sauron the One Ring, knowingly giving Darkseid the anti-life equation; this option had him giving one fourth of literal godlike power to the one woman in the world he desperately did not want to have it. It was stupid beyond description. It was tantamount to suicide. It was hastening the apocalypse. But it gave him one major advantage he potentially couldn't get at all in any other situation:

Salem's unquestioning faith in him.

Yes, he'd have to piss her and Cinder off with the whole 'better to beg forgiveness' thing, but in that situation he'd be giving a little bit of bad news before presenting what basically equated to a divine token. Whatever the case was with Salem's awareness of Earth - if she was using the Masters to influence it, or if she knew about RWBY already - and whatever her level of trust, or lackthereof, with Aldric, if he just up and handed her one of the four things she wanted more than anything else on a silver platter, any questions of his loyalty would be gone in an instant. She'd distrust Cinder before she did him, and that kind of faith, that kind of unflinching trust, was something he could desperately use. It afforded him an inordinate amount of breathing room in regards to other potentially subversive operations with the Watchmen, and when the time came for Vytal and for Torchwick, Taurus, and potentially even the United goddamn Nations to all openly betray and operate against her, the question of 'who could have done this' wouldn't, under any circumstance, be answered with: 'Nebo Aldric'.

There was, unfortunately, the factor of the more legitimate half of the Watchmen in all of this. Letting everything go as it would wouldn't do anything; taking it himself or letting Salem take it would put him in their crosshairs, especially if he walked up to the exchange like a jackass and started killing his way to it. If he took it himself or presented it to Salem, it would have to be done in a way that didn't compromise his standing with the Watchmen. He would, in other words, have to be literally anywhere else, with loads of witnesses and an ironclad alibi, when the theft went down. As well, considering the risk to UN/Remnant relations that this stunt would pose, it would have to be done when the Relic was completely in Earth's possession, and preferably when it wasn't even on Remnant anymore, meaning the attack would have to happen in the precious few hours right before it got to where it was going, such that the UN couldn't accuse Ozpin of trying to take it back.

The good news was that he had an idea for both scenarios. Were he to steal it himself, it wouldn't be difficult to fake a throat injury and have Neo take his place for the few days he'd need to track it down, take it, and hide it. Were he to allow it to be stolen, he'd just have to play Goud while it went down. The bad news was that it was the latter two scenarios that appeared far more attractive than the one where he let things handle themselves.

So the question... Thought Aldric, as he nodded to Qrow, who was rubbing at his eyes. Is what is the most important matter? Keeping it out of her hands and risking my cover, or giving it to her and securing my cover... Basically until I throw hands at her?

The thought did occur to him that he could combine options two and three. It wouldn't be impossible to try a Xanatos Gambit, where he won regardless of the outcome. He could tell Salem and Cinder the deal was going down, let whoever they chose recover the relic, secure his alibi in the eyes of the Justice League, and then use Neo to cover for him while he went out to track down the Master that took it, kill him, and then go hide it. In a perfect world, Salem would get royally pissed and think the Master had taken it for himself and gone to ground, but in a more realistic one she would likely blame Ozpin having sent some Huntsmen to track it down, and them having somehow succeeded in doing so. Of course, the worst case scenario was that she went right back to distrusting him, perhaps even moreso than before, even with an alibi, but he wasn't fond of that option, nor did he think that would actually happen - all of the variables considered, the likeliest conclusion Salem would make would be the Ozpin one.

So that added a fourth option, but said option was monumentally more difficult than the first three, bordering on impossible. Perhaps the worst development of all of them was that Aldric knew he had all of - right now! - to make that decision, because the moment he was done talking to Qrow, that was it: He was locked into indecision. In the end, Aldric boiled it down to what kind of difficulty he was willing to deal with: None at all, a significant amount, a terrible amount, or a fucking terrible amount? The status quo, a monumental amount of daily paranoia added onto what he already had to grin and bear, potentially the single most explosive decision he could ever make, or definitely the most explosive decision he could ever make? Fighting no one, fighting more soldiers he'd already proven he didn't have much trouble with, fighting no one again but still sentencing those soldiers to death, or fighting a fucking Master?

Aldric sighed.

Fuck.