AN:

Some of you pegged it the moment I laid the groundworks, and I'll give you a cookie for that.

But you may not be glad you were right.

Chapter 61

"And then he just started freaking out! Told me to come get you guys and to pack our bags!" Ruby finished, after being surrounded by the two globe-trotting teams.

"How does he know that Ozpin's coming back?" Jaune asked, as he and the others followed Ruby and Yang to their tents, "he said it usually takes... Like... A year or two, right?"

Pyrrha nodded, a troubled expression painting her face. "Once he said it took him fifty years. That his allies back then thought he was gone forever... But it's been months, barely."

"Guys." Weiss spoke up, "is it really not that obvious? He's desperate." Everyone stared at her. "Salem has outmaneuvered us at every turn, and Atlas appears to be deliberately making the situation worse... He's not acting erratically, he's desperate. He's trying to take control of even just one variable in a gigantic problem." She sighed, "and not for no reason, I'd say."

Reaching their two tents, Ruby turned to her teammate, an earnest look in her wide eyes. "Please don't say that, Weiss!" She begged, "it's not over until it's over! Just because it looks bad doesn't mean that it can't get better!" She cast a quick glance to Pyrrha, no doubt looking for help.

Pyrrha pitched in, "we've dug our way out of worse situations, as a species." She explained, "and truly all we must do to keep Salem from total victory is keep one Maiden from her. One Relic." A beat, "surely we can save one woman, yes?" She gave everyone a look.

No one disagreed, determined expressions settled on everyone's faces, and soon they all disappeared into their tents, readying their things and packing up. Ruby, however, couldn't get that look on Qrow's face out of her mind. Weiss wasn't wrong when she'd said he was acting desperate, but Ruby had seen something else there, in his pale face, his wide, stern eyes. It was as though him learning the Masters were on their side, as though he'd thought that a bad thing.

But... She wondered, as it occured to her that this all had happened before Blake had even come back, boy would she be confused. What could make us getting two Ozpins a bad thing? Ozpin alone had managed to beat and wound Salem so bad that she'd needed thousands of years to recover and strategize again, and now they'd have two more people just like him! Add on the support they'd have from the kingdoms and the Terrans, Ruby actually thought they could win this, even if they lost the last two Maidens.

So what did Qrow know that he wasn't telling them?

And why wasn't he telling them in the first place?

As the days grew on and the day Atlas had said they would attack the Terrans grew closer, a dense cloud appeared to hang over RWBY, JNPR, and their 'escort'. They had left Raven's camp less than an hour after being ordered to pack their things, with their Faunus companion barely managing to catch up to them in time and throw everything she owned haphazardly into a bag. She, much like everyone else, expressed great confusion when told of the massive change of plan and the secrets Ruby had been made privy to, but her attempts to question Qrow had been met with reactions much the same as when his family had tried to do so: Barely contained fear, and more than a few hearty swigs from his seemingly endless flask. He wouldn't tell them how he knew Ozpin would be returning so soon, he wouldn't tell them how he knew where to find Ozpin, he wouldn't tell them why he was clearly so scared, it was as though Ruby telling him what she had had caused him to completely shut down.

This left the two teams to their own devices, as they followed Qrow from a respectable distance away. Ruby found herself silently distraught, her face set into a frown as she tried to make some kind of sense of what was wrong with her uncle, why he was acting this way. Ruby felt a hand on her shoulder jarring her from her thoughts; she turned to see Pyrrha, who wore a frown of her own. "Are you okay?" She asked, softly, over the sounds of the others speaking.

Ruby looked back ahead to Qrow, whose eyes were on the ground ahead of him.

Ruby's lip quivered once, and she shook her head. "Pyrrha... There's two worlds now. We're both at war, and the people who should know about the bigger picture don't seem to care about it... And whatever I said to Uncle Qrow has him scared, and I don't know why." She turned back to her friend, "I'm worried that he thinks we've already lost." She cast a brief glance at the shield on Pyrrha's back, a reminder of better days.

Pyrrha gave the young Rose a one-armed hug, "I... Don't think that's quite it, Ruby." She began, "if what you learned is true... I think it just changed his entire outlook. Rather than fighting against an enemy with no support structure, suddenly we have allies in her group. I don't think he was quite ready for that, and he just doesn't know how to react to it. His few decades versus Ozpin's thousands of years, you see."

But Ruby shook her head, "I know that... But what I don't know is why he's panicking." She explained, "it's like he knows something he's not telling us... And I don't like thinking he's keeping secrets." Not from her and Yang.

Pyrrha nodded to the side, "I understand, Ruby... But also try to realize where he's coming from. Perhaps more than anyone else, he has the secrets of the universe. Things he can't tell us, not that he doesn't want to. Perhaps it's one of these things that is making him take this road."

Ruby was silent for a while, and then, "Pyrrha... Do you think we'll win?"

Pyrrha gave her a genuine smile, "even before we had two Masters fighting for us, Ruby... Yes." She nodded. "Of course we will."

Human Grimm.

To Cinder Fall, and rightly to anyone alive, such a thing sounded like an oxymoron. A human was alive, a human had a soul, therefore, by definition, one could not be a Grimm. At all. It was impossible. But, she realized, as she sat down in the pilot's seat of the Pelican ship, a human losing its soul, wasn't. Cinder was living proof that one could steal a human soul, and Atlas had created a machine that had very nearly transferred the soul of one into another. Both would mean that someone in that equation wouldn't be in possession of a soul. While their bodies may still function, they wouldn't reach that abstract level at which they could be considered 'alive'.

That was the definition of a Grimm.

Cinder, after punching Atlas' coordinates into the autopilot, sat back in the chair, eyes wide and blankly staring ahead as the ship rose into the sky. She'd just seen something that should be impossible - she'd seen it happen to a little girl no less! She'd just seen a Human become Grimm. Such a thing would sound trivial at first glance. Humans were weak, frail creatures that could be killed remarkably easily, but Cinder, as did many elder Huntsmen, knew that one thing determined exactly how dangerous a Grimm could be: Its intelligence. Contrary to popular belief, Grimm were intelligent, the question was how intelligent. Young Beowolves were much less smart than ancient Goliaths, after all. The older a Grimm became, the smarter they became, the stronger and more dangerous they became.

And there was no species on Earth or on Remnant as intelligent as a human, or a faunus. The prospect of turning one of them Grimm, it brought back that empty, cold feeling in her chest, because of one major question it prompted in her mind:

Was Salem a Grimm? And if so, was she the standard to which all Human Grimm should be judged? She had fought Ozpin to a standstill more than once and had nearly killed him when he was at the height of his power. Would any human who cast aside their soul possess that kind of strength? Was that what one could expect if a human became a Grimm?

Was such strength worth it?

At least some part of her could take solace in that Salem was intelligent enough to not let another Human Grimm exist in the first place. She who saw in another an equal would rule over nothing; if Salem allowed another Human Grimm to exist, they would come into conflict inevitably and that new Grimm would threaten everything she had worked so many thousands of years towards. And she seemed surprised to have seen it happen in the first place, after all, so she couldn't have been planning on it, right? She couldn't actually be intending to make more of her.

Right?

Cinder looked down to her newly healed hand, seeing it shaking. She clenched her fist and felt the warmth of the two Maidens' power coursing through her. IT appeared that every time she gained new power she only found herself dwarfed by something else. Aldric always liked to say that there was always a bigger fish, but only now was Cinder beginning to understand exactly how true that was.

A part of her actually wished he were here. He'd be able to make sense of all of this, be able to take her mind off of what she'd done to that child, of what she'd so briefly become. He'd probably make some stupid joke and refer to something he'd read on his world, defuse the situation and help level her out; and she'd smile and let him think he'd made her laugh.

Without thinking, her hand began to run over the scorched hilt of the blade he'd given her. It felt like it had been years since she'd first held it, first beheld its serrated red energy. Since she'd first descended to the Garden's weapons range and had cleaved a dummy made out of airship armor in two, as though it were protected by wet tissue paper. Their weaponsmith had begged her for weeks to just be allowed to look at it, if even only for an hour.

With a light sigh, Cinder brushed her hair out of her face and leaned her head back to the chair. This ship Aldric had gifted her was fast, she'd be in Atlas in hours, so she needed to get what rest she could. A battle was coming, and this would be her one and only chance to acclimate her body to a meteoric rise in strength, before stressing it again by adding even more on top of it. By her math, she was approaching forty percent of what Ozpin had been at his height. Forty percent remained in the form of the final two Maidens, and maybe, just maybe, if Ozpin returned during their crusade for the relics, she could entertain the thought of stealing his power, too.

Cinder let her eyes grow heavy, and she drifted to sleep, her inactive blade clenched lightly in her hands.

She awoke again far too soon, to the sound of an alarm going off in her ship, alerting her to its landing procedures. A quick look at its clock told her that an entire day had passed, and she cursed herself for not setting it for a faster speed. Regardless, she stowed her hilt on the small of her back and got to her feet, red dress flowing around her as she about-faced and exited the ship. Its ramp grinded loudly as it opened and grinded even louder when it shut behind her.

Now in the arctic wasteland of Atlas' far north, just off in the distance she could barely see the tip of a mountain through a wildly blazing snowstorm. In front of her were two men, one she'd met, and another she hadn't. The taller of the two held himself with a regal countenance, garbed in fancy attire and with a well-kept mustache framing his upper lip, while beside him, standing with the air and stance of a lifetime of military service was a man of far greater age, and unlike his fellow shipmate, he had become completely bald through age, the wrinkles visible all over his face and head, his skin practically hanging from his skull. The Master, Helmut, and his partner, Arthur, were both clothed in thick, heavy winter garbs, whereas Cinder had taken a page out of Aldric's book and was merely willing herself to remain warm in this subzero tundra.

Arthur gave Cinder a polite bow, and shouted over the howling winds and the whine of her ship's engines spinning down. "I am glad to see how well you've healed, young ma'am!"

Cinder let the slight roll off of her with a nod. "You've found Summer?"

To which he nodded, "we have!" He indicated the mountain in the distance.

"As befitting of its reputation, Atlas has an entire fleet here in secret." Spoke Helmut, in a thick accent no doubt coming from his homeland on Earth. "Some hundred ships, on high alert ever since my world began streaming in." He shuffled uncomfortably in his thick coat, eyeing Cinder jealously.

I wonder if he hasn't taken to his powers as well as Aldric's father and the other old man did. Cinder glanced over his shoulder, then back at him. "And?" She prodded, as she approached the two.

"This morning, the main Atlesian Fleet started some sort of major attack on the Earth's ships out at sea, so unfortunately there's nothing I can do to convince them to send people here."

Cinder frowned, "how could they attack the Terrans?" She eyed Helmut suspiciously, "it is clear who holds the power between them."

He conceded with a nod, "yes, but the Atlesians figured out something I've been saying for decades. Advancing technology and abandoning the old ways merely leaves one vulnerable to less advanced means of combat."

"Explain."

"The Atlesians figured out from the first battles that our ships are invulnerable to frontal assaults, their weapons, missiles, technology... We'd see any attack coming from miles away and just shoot it down... But they don't have a single defense against more archaic attacks. So what they've done is parked their own ships on the coast lines and are using their kinetic weapons like artillery cannons, shooting over the horizon at the Terran ships. All the we can do to retaliate at those ranges is launch missiles, and since the Atlesians are so far away and their laser technology is far beyond ours, they'll see the missiles coming and take them down before they can get hit."

Cinder frowned, and Arthur rounded on her. "Forgive him." He picked up. "He likes the sound of his own voice, and doesn't appear to realize how loud this storm is. Simply put: The Atlesians gave up on fighting the Terrans face to face, and are lobbing artillery shells at them from extreme ranges."

There was a lot Cinder felt she could say to this, not the least of which being that Aldric had told her how far out Terran ships liked to park, so how could the Atlesians see so far out to sea. However, she felt such questions to be irrelevant when compared to their end result: "So neither the Terrans nor the Atlesians can come to help the mountain."

Arthur nodded, "correct, but there's something you should know before we head in."

Cinder closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. "Okay?"

"Don't give me that." Arthur rolled his eyes, "it's from Salem. Her seers are rallying a massive wave of Grimm to launch an attack to cover ours, but she wanted to let us know that she has something else coming in to assist."

"What is it?" Cinder arced an eyebrow at Arthur, curious as to what the ancient woman would deem important enough to send personally.

"She said she had, and I quote, a 'force multiplier' on its way. It was delayed a bit, but it should be here by the time Summer and her guardian decide to come out." He nodded at Helmut, "on that note, he figured out that Miss Summer is, appropriately, something of a hothead. They've been under a steady stream of assault for twenty four hours by Grimm, when this next wave, bigger than the others, comes, her and her guardian will no doubt enter the field, making our job all the easier."

Helmut picked up, "so he will keep the Grimm and the Atlesians away from you while you fight them. I shall deal with their fleet."

A part of Cinder, perhaps the part that had spent too much time with Aldric, wanted to make a retort about Helmut's age and its bearing on his ability to fight a fleet of one hundred airships, but she knew better, so she nodded. "When shall we expect the Grimm to arrive, then?" She asked, giving Arthur and Helmut each a raised eyebrow.

"Any minute." Arthur turned to the north and squinted, "or... Perhaps they already have." He hummed.

Cinder followed his gaze, and through the dense snowstorm she was just able to see the distant flashes of light that were no doubt heralding weaponsfire from Atlas' airships.

She heard Helmut begin, "after you, ma'am."

Biting back another remark, Cinder's eyes glowed with vibrant orange flames, and she launched herself forward, covering thousands of meters in a second. She sensed the Master joining her, his bounds taking him higher and higher into the air with each leap until he was practically flying. Arthur lagged behind, leisurely jogging, albeit still at a pace that would shred the muscles of a normal human. They each reached Atlas' mountain base in but a few minutes and practically crashed into the bedlam; Cinder could see Grimm of all shapes, sizes, ages, and species viciously tearing into the Atlesian forces, from the weakest Beowolf to the mightiest Goliath and beyond.

She hit the ground running, blasting apart a guard tower with a white-hot fireball and sprinting past it fast enough that she hardly felt its heat. It didn't take long before bullets fired by all of the defending Atlesians began whizzing past her, both fired right at her and happening to pass her by from crossfire. Cinder paid the men and machines without aura no mind, tearing through them as easily as she would rip a piece of paper in half, while Arthur joined her, attacking positions of strength, and Helmut, above, systematically brought down every airship he could get his hands on. She obliterated soldiers, destroyed mechs, and blasted apart battle suits with ease, causing as much rampant chaos as she could, in a way that would make it clear to anyone who would bother to pay attention that something that wasn't Grimm had entered the playing field.

Fortunately for her, someone was paying attention, and it was exactly who she had hoped would be. After an hour of her, Arthur, and Helmut pushing Atlas' defensive lines back, Cinder sensed something coming - and was forced to shoot herself out of the way to avoid a powerful bolt of lightning, which hit the snow-covered ground she had just been standing in, leaving a deep, scorched crater.

Cinder turned to the newcomers, barely having worked up a sweat, as she sensed Arthur disengage, and instead begin working on clearing them an arena of sorts, he and the Grimm keeping anyone untoward out of the battlefield. Cinder found, several feet away, a duo glaring at her. There was a tall man with a practically Olympian physique, clad in a suit of armor no-doubt tailor made for his massive frame, his head and face shielded in a knight's helmet and mask. Next to him was Cinder's target, practically diminutive compared to her massive guardian, her eyes were aglow with otherworldly fire, and were locked onto Cinder's.

The Maiden appeared as though she had something to say, Cinder could see it trying to burst out from her throat, but after a moment, the Maiden just shook her head, sighing, and letting her shoulders slump.

"Let's just get this over with." The Maiden sighed, raising her thin fists.

Cinder shrugged, almost disappointed, as she pulled the hilt of her blade from her back. "As you -" But she would find herself interrupted before she could even finish speaking. Not by an attack, but rather by the howling sound of something huge and massive falling from the sky, from the light of fires blooming in great detonations, and of an entire Atlesian airship streaming through the air and towards the ground. It speared itself in the area between Cinder, the Maiden, and her guardian, tearing up the ground and sending huge clouds of dirt and plumes of smoke into the air as it ground to a halt, the sound of groaning metal and muffled explosions following it.

Now with a small valley of freshly churned dirt separating them, and the ship just past them, the Cinder, the Maiden, and her Guardian, all found themselves staring at the ship. The Maiden and her Guardian exchanged glances, while Cinder, exasperated, briefly cast her eyes skyward, expecting to see Helmut on his way to another ship, unapologetic about having nearly killed her.

But she found that he wasn't anywhere even close to her, the next explosion she could see through the snowstorm was more than a mile away, and in the opposite direction from where the ship had come in from. Cinder turned her gaze straight up now, looking for which Grimm had taken it down, when she felt something soft on her shoulder. Her blade was ignited and at its throat in an instant, but she stood down after finding it to be a Seer, with Salem's face looking back at her.

"I know you want to test out your abilities, Cinder..." She said from so far away, as suddenly the winds stopped howling and the snow began hanging in air, the storm having been frozen in place. "But there will be all the time in the world for that..." The Seer turned towards the fallen airship. "After."

Frowning, Cinder spared the Seer a second glance, "after what?"

But to answer her question was first the sound of steel rending and bending. Cinder's head, and that of her opponents, all snapped over to the ship, as whatever had taken it down was now on its way out. What was inside tore a hole in the ship's hull with its bare hands, and stepped out of it, smoke swelling behind it and masking its entrance. Aside from two big, glowing red eyes that cut through the haze of the smoke like spotlights, Cinder could only barely see the outline of this figure, a person by the looks of it. Thin, with what looked like a cape, or a coat billowing in the air flowing back into the ship to feed its growing flames.

Still walking towards the Maiden and her Guardian, both of whom were falling back to defensive stances, it reached for something unseen on its hip, and then held it out to the side. Then, finally, it stepped out of the cloud of smoke. Its overcoat was shredded and in tatters, and its clothes were no better, having been both scorched by fires and weathered by exposure to the elements, its pants held up by a thick belt bleached white through ill repair and burned black by the flames and smoke it had just walked out of. It wasn't even wearing a shirt, but rather some suit of black mail. As it continued stalking forward, almost in a daze, Cinder felt her heart stop, her eyes growing wide, spine straightening up, and her face adopting an expression of shock and confusion as she realized she recognized all of these things, including the weapon in its hands, long and cylindrical, with a single port at its end and what had once been a red button to activate it, held tightly in a cybernetic arm, albeit one different than what she'd grown used to seeing.

But, once he finally stepped out of the smoke, Cinder realized that was all she recognized. The equipment, the belt, the armor, the lack of a left arm, all of that was familiar, but what was decidedly not familiar were his demonic red eyes, the bleached-white skin, the deathly pallor, the deep, dark veins hiding under his flesh, the hair that was in places actively on fire, and the dull, vacant expression on his face.

"Forgive his agency... Or lack thereof, rather. He is young." Cinder heard Salem speak, before, "Aldric!"

Cinder felt her breath catch and her heart slow as he briefly swept over his battlefield, looking around the frozen snowstorm. When his eyes met hers, she realized that she had been both right, and wrong. She did, indeed, know who this was, just as she knew it wasn't him.

She was staring at Nebo Aldric.

The Terran Grimm.

His eyes lazily, slowly swept over her with barely any pause of recognition. They passed over to the Seer and stopped once they beheld Salem within its depths.

"Kill the Huntsman, spare the Maiden."

And like a switch had flipped, the vacant, dull expression, the glazed over eyes, the slouched back and relaxed muscles, all vanished. Here in their place was a murderous expression, narrow, sharp eyes, a thin frown, a straight back, and tightly clenched muscles. The eyes, those two glowing red orbs, snapped over to the Maiden and her Guardian, both of whom were nervously conversing from behind their defensive stances, the Maiden's eyes wide in fear, shock, and revulsion at the should-not-be now glaring at them.

With one purposeful motion, Aldric turned to the Maiden and her Guardian, both the hand clenching his sword and his free fist closing tight, and with the sound of a guitar's strum, he was bathed in deep, vibrant, red, light.

Zhoom!