Chapter 64
With all of the shit going through her mind right now, the three minutes that Cinder fell felt like three years.
She'd honestly expected one of them to turn coat. Which one, she hadn't ever been completely sure about, but ever since Aldric Sr, she just knew that one of them would turn on them. She just hadn't thought that both of them would. And after she righted herself and slowed her descent so she could come for a landing, she found her legs weak, knees shaking. She needed a moment to collect herself, to force herself to walk forward.
All of them... She gasped, short of breath. All of them... All of them but Aldric. Betrayed us... All of them. Her lip quivered, and her jaw creaked from how hard she was clenching it. How? She wondered. Why?
The question echoed around in her head, bouncing back and forth, endlessly repeating until it almost became physically painful. She barely made it two steps before she had to stop, collapsing against the wall and forcing herself to steady her breaths, to calm her heart.
Why?
Why was Aldric the only one to believe in Salem? That woman had given them all power beyond imagination, and she herself was equally powerful - perhaps more! And yet of all of them, Aldric had been the only one smart enough to realize the folly of declaring war on the Grimm Lady. Salem, and through her their handlers, had given these people everything. Power, influence, freedom. They could have literally anything they wanted, could do literally anything they wanted, could be literally anything they wanted!
And yet they all betrayed Salem in the end.
Why?!
Cinder pushed herself off of the wall and ventured further into the vault, where it opened up into a huge cavern and its walls began to glow. Thousands of tiny crystals embedded in the walls dully radiating brilliant white light, giving the place an ethereal feel to it.
They had no reason... She thought, pursing her lips, eyes locking onto a giant wall at the end of a long stone pathway. They had no knowledge. All they knew was what we told them. How could they decide to betray us? How could all three of them decide to betray us? To betray her? To earn her wrath? To lose their power? Their lives?She practically begged herself. They were nothing before Remnant... Nothing before Salem. Just two old men waiting to die, one middle-aged man with nothing more to his life than the bills that took care of his family... A teenager who knew not what he wanted with his future. None of them were anything before us... We gave them everything!
"So why?" She asked aloud, as her feet thudded against the ground.
But deep inside of her, an answer appeared, spawned by the thought that all three hadn't actually been 'nothing'.
All of them were random people plucked out of an airship from Earth. Earth, a planet whose people were so like Remnant's own that they were functionally the same. And if she picked four random people from Remnant, who knew just as much about Salem and Ozpin's war as someone on Earth did, would she expect them to just drop everything they knew, pick up arms and start slaughtering people left and right to serve a woman who allied herself with the very embodiment of all that was evil and wrong?
The answer was obvious, so god damn obvious that it was practically impossible to see, like Aldric liked to say: The best way to hide a secret was to shove it under someone's nose and -
Cinder stopped dead.
Her jaw slowly fell slack, bright orange eyes growing wide.
'All' three of the Masters actually weren't all of them.
There was a fourth.
And he, like all of them, was just a random person from Earth.
The ground above her shook, and Cinder turned around, looking back at the elevator shaft and up to the stalactites hanging from the roof of the cavern, only fuzzily trying to envision the battle raging up above, as the pieces - as all of the pieces - began to fall into place.
His interactions with Ozpin, his desire to tell them who he worked for, his disappearing act with Neo - Was Torchwick involved too? - his complete willingness to accept the darker sides of this life, the fact that he had weapons in space despite never having been out of someone's eye, and perhaps most damning of all, his constant spouting and diatribes about his beliefs in hope, in the greater good. In the way secrets should best be kept.
He'd kept his hand so close to the chest by outright showing it to everyone involved.
"Oh gods..." Not a single one of the Masters had been loyal to Salem.
Not even Aldric.
Like father like son... But unlike the father, Aldric had played his cards so close to his chest that he'd convinced everyone that his loyalties lay on the side he fought against.
And this led her to the next thought: What was she even doing? If so many people, with no exposure to this world whatsoever, when exposed to only one side of the conflict and when argued of its best parts and when its worst were masked, all, independently, had the same thought, did that mean they were right? Was Salem, were her goals, were they wrong?
Evil, even?
And then: Am I? She wondered. Am I... Any different from those bandits? A tear collected in her eye as the implications dawned on her.
Much like them, she murdered, killed, fought, dealt, lied, and destroyed anything that disagreed with her, or got in the way of what she wanted. Anything and everything, without remorse, simply because they were in her way. All in the pursuit of some ancient power, whose secrets she would be given by the woman who lived in a dark castle, surrounded by actual demons, who were the very embodiment of actual evil.
No... She gulped. No... No, no, no... He - the Grimm, he confirmed it. Aldric was loyal, he believed. But she knew she was lying to herself - all the Grimm had access to were memories, not thoughts. It saw only what Aldric did, and what he did was play an act in such a way that anyone who saw it from the outside would think him the aggressor, think him completely and utterly loyal to Salem.
And now she found herself questioning what it was that Salem wanted. The woman hadn't even spared Cinder of her lies, resurrecting Aldric and keeping secrets had taught her this. Was she even pursuing the goal she'd advertised? Or was there something she had hidden, so dark and so deep that she would do anything to get there, including lying to and defiling those who trusted her.
And again: Did Aldric trust her?
Gods... That one question... Its answer determined everything, and the tiniest sliver of doubt was what kept it from her.
But... She turned from the now still ground, facing the magical wall, behind which was the Relic of Knowledge. The answer is right there... She realized.
Shakily, Cinder pushed herself forward again, reaching the wall. Its dark surface began to illuminate a golden-white hue as she approached. She raised her hand and planted it on the wall, and with a flash of light, it vanished, revealing a doorway - a portal - beyond which was another land entirely. A giant, expansive desert of golden sands. Immediately in front of her, suspended in the air, was a pathway of stones leading directly to the Relic of Knowledge, a lantern as big as her head, itself too floating right there, ready for her to take.
Cinder, hesitantly, stepped forward, suddenly feeling the oppressive heat of the desert, and then again, forcing her legs to move again, and again, and again, until she was there. The object of her desire - no, she forcibly reminded herself. Not her desire, Her desire. The lantern, now within reach, beckoned to her, feeling familiar, like home.
She picked up the lantern, and it shrank down to a more manageable size within her hands.
She even doubted herself as she called the words to activate it to mind. Had She lied about this?
Aldric... Once again, she felt her heart rate grow. All of her fears, all of her doubts, everything would be answered by this. She had to know.
She had to know.
She had to.
She just needed to say its name:
"Jinn."
Jaune Arc was suddenly faced with the realization that the world may be ending.
The evacuation of Mistral was a blur. When he, Weiss, Blake, and that Mistrali woman had fled Haven, they had found Mistral to be half flattened and the other half on fire. Grimm were everywhere in an invasion worse than Vale's - because at least Vale's attack had happened at a time of titanic tension with Earth and equally titanic readiness for battle. Here in Mistral, however, the attack had come out of nowhere, and nobody had been ready for an entire kingdom to be invaded. Tens of thousands of people were running scared in mass chaos, Grimm bunkers weren't deploying, and the Huntsmen had been severely depopulated, both by the initial attack that had flattened half of the city, and by Ash just cutting right through them all in Haven.
Jaune didn't know how the decision was made, or even when it was made, but during the flurry of frantic combat and terror, eventually the idea had propagated amongst several thousand Mistrali: To just run. To leave the kingdom and take their chances in the wilderness. Thousands of men and women grabbed everything they could and did exactly that: They ran.
When they stopped running late that night, Jaune learned that he was one amongst ten - TEN! - Huntsmen who had survived the battle for Mistral and who had guided the few thousand people out of its walls and away from the chaos. Yes, there were a little over a thousand soldiers scattered about, but they had their hands full keeping order with the survivors and dolling out supplies so everyone could survive the night. The ten - again, ten! - Huntsmen, of which Jaune, that little boy, Weiss, and Blake, and the woman from Haven, made up half, thusly found themselves having to patrol the campsite they had set up for the night once everyone was too exhausted and too scared to keep going.
It wasn't until very late, well past midnight according to his scroll, that enough people had gone to sleep that the soldiers could take over and keep the perimeter safe so the Huntsmen could get some sleep.
But, of course, they wouldn't be. The surviving Huntsmen had been called by the boy, and while initially hardly anyone that hadn't been in Haven listened to him, their tunes turned quick when he started performing actual magic. One of the Huntsmen had tried to walk away, but found himself looping through the same five feet until he stopped walking. A second one tried to push the boy away and tell him to let the grownups handle it, but found his mouth briefly fused together in one solid mass of flesh. The others didn't bother trying to call the kid's bluff after that, they all found a fire, sat down, and shut up so he could speak.
It was only now, once everything was calm and he was able to sit his sore, aching body down on the dirt, that he noticed the boy was carrying Professor Ozpin's cane. Said cane was folded up and resting on the boy's lap, as he folded his hands in front of him and stared into the fire, eyes reflecting its bright orange flames, appearing hollow and distant for a while, before:
"My name used to be Ozpin." He said, causing frowns and exchanged glances to pass through the group, the only exceptions being those who had traveled with Qrow, who all realized what was happening the moment he said it. "This will be quite a bit to take in... But the shortest possible version is that The Brother Gods... The four Maidens... They all exist, as does the Wizard who created the latter. Said wizard and myself are the same person. I have been alive for a very long time. A wayward soul cursed to return to life and steal the bodies of those whom share ideals similar to mine." He let out a long, shaky, hollow breath, "and I can only think of one time things have ever been as bad as they are right now."
One of the Mistrali, an older man whose salt-and-pepper hair was whiter than it was gray, spoke up, "let's... Assume you're telling the truth, and use the blatant wizardry you just used on us as proof." He began, "what happened to the boy whose body you took?" He pointed at Ozpin.
Ozpin broke contact with the fire, giving the Huntsman an annoyed glance. "Of all the questions right now you deem that the most prudent?"
The man nodded resolutely. "If the world is ending we need to make the smallest parts of it make some amount of sense before it does. Our morals may soon be all we have left."
Ozpin nodded to the side, "fair enough... The boy whose body I inhabit... He and I spoke a long time after he told me what news he had heard from Vale, and Vacuo. We..." He hesitated, briefly looking away, before turning back. "Came to an agreement, and I expedited the process by which we will bond significantly. He still exists, but I shall be piloting our body until such a time as things become safe enough for him to do so."
The man frowned, and looked at one of his companions, who didn't react. He turned back to Ozpin, "so then what are our options?" He asked, "Vale functionally useless. Vacuo is enemy territory. Mistral is burning as we speak, and I honestly would not believe you if you told me there weren't Grimm on their way right now, with how terrible everyone feels about all this. How scared they are."
Ozpin nodded, not even denying what the man was saying. "With... With how bad things are, there is one shining light. One chance. Just one." He said, holding up a finger. "And it comes from the fact that... Unlike the first time I lost, this time we've a militarized nation wielding the most advanced technology our world has ever seen... And I may - just may - be able to stop the war between us and Earth."
"Oh, are we going to talk about that now?" Asked another Mistrali, "I was there in Vale when that video played. You knew it was coming and let it happen. Why?" She demanded, while peeking under one of her bandages, checking the still bleeding wound and grimacing at it.
Ozpin sighed, "we... Used to have a man on the inside." He explained. "A man who had entrenched himself so deeply with Salem that she trusted him implicitly... Completely unaware that his loyalties..." He paused, "while complicated, as I learned by peering into his mind after forcibly ejecting his consciousness from his body, were nonetheless not with her. He came to me and we came up with a plan that would have allowed us to end the war. Allowing Earth and Remnant to fight again was a part of said plan."
Jaune cleared his throat, "what kind of madman would suggest allowing two planets to go to war with each other?"
Ozpin was silent for several long moments, eyes falling to the fire again, before he shook his head. "I don't see any point in keeping it secret any longer." He looked into Jaune's eyes. "His name was Nebo Aldric. But he went by a different name while under cover at Beacon.
"While there, he went by Goud Etiolate."
The relic in her hands began to shake and vibrate out of control, but Cinder knew to expect this. She let go of it, the act almost providing painful to do so, and allowed it to levitate and hover several feet away from her, as bright blue, cyan smoke, began to pour out of it, quickly surrounding it and encapsulating it, growing thicker and thicker with each passing second, until, with a long, satisfied sigh, a figure emerged from the smoke. It towered over Cinder, appearing to grow out from the smoke of the Relic, its skin a cerulean blue, its feminine body adorned in golden jewelry.
It looked down at Cinder, a warm smile gracing its face as it brushed a hand through its cobalt hair.
"Wonderful." It said, "tell me... What knowledge do you seek?" It folded its arms in front of its chest, waiting for Cinder's response.
Cinder swallowed through a dry throat, forcing her heart to slow and steeling herself, and tried to come up with the words she would need to get the answer she sought.
"To..." She began. "Whom... Was Nebo Aldric loyal?" She asked, briefly breaking eye contact with the mystical creature, before looking back at it with some minute modicum of confidence.
Jinn smiled, "Nebo Aldric pledged himself to a great many people of a great many factions, all of whom believe to their bitter end that he fought for them." She explained, "Salem saw his actions, the bodies he made and the labors he performed, and truly thought that he may be of the few she could truly confide in her goals. Ozma searched his thoughts, memories, and soul, and found his dedication and reliance upon ideals beset upon him by circumstance, nurture, and nature, and believes him to be one amongst so precious few he could trust to do the right thing, always. The Nations of Earth through their agents have seen his history, read his words, and spoken with him, and believe his thoughts and origins to be proof positive that he will always think of the Earth first, and all else second. All believed that when the time came, he would fight for them against all others.
"The truth, however, is a different matter. Not Salem, not Ozpin, nor even the Earth or Remnant, held his loyalty. He was beholden only to a goal, to eliminate existential threats to the Earth and Remnant. To protect the common man, to give mankind the agency to decide their own fates. Believing Salem to be the most prominent of these threats, it was she who he fought, and the others to whom he accepted help... But there is not a single person he would be unwilling to fight, betray, or kill, if they used their power for unrighteous means. If they threatened lives on a macro scale, worked with or for those who did, or were necessary steps on the path to his endgoal, they were nothing to him but obstacles. Problems, waiting to be solved. Aside from his goal, his idea, Nebo Aldric was loyal to nothing and no one.
"Including himself."
Cinder felt her heart drop out of her chest, as her whole world came crashing down around her. She had been right.
And she didn't know if that was a good thing.
Jaune couldn't believe it.
"What?" Blake snapped, "w - what?!"
"It is as I said, Miss Belladonna." Ozpin responded, running his small, tanned hands through his dark hair. "Ash was not who he said he was. He was, in reality, a Terran with... Shall I simplify it to say a minor gift of foresight. He -"
"Lied to us?" Weiss interrupted, eyes wide, but brow furrowed, in equal parts shock and anger. "You mean to tell me he was... A spy. Working for Salem?"
To which, Ozpin shook his head. "Only insomuch that double agents work for the criminals they report on, Miss Schnee." He said. "Aldric's reach was far, his power vast, and his plan... Would have given us a chance we've never had before." He looked to Jaune, a small smile gracing his features.
Jaune blinked. "Why... Are... You looking at me like that?"
"Aldric was not particularly well versed in keeping secrets from me. In our final interactions before Beacon fell, I peered into his mind and saw what it was he gave you." He nodded to Jaune's sword, lying sheathed on the ground. "Do you know what that is?"
Jaune hadn't even really realized that, if Ash had been lying to him the entire time, that meant the story he gave him about the sword was false too. "Uh..."
"It is a blade that comes from a series of stories from his world. In which, it was blessed with the power to repel evil. To seal it away and banish it from the world. His hope was that it would work here... Would work against the Grimm. Because if it did, that would mean there was a chance, no matter how slim, that even the worst case scenarios could be turned around."
Jaune shook his head, the world suddenly seeming way too big. "But... But I'm just one guy! Not even that strong!" He sputtered, "and it didn't even work on him at Haven!"
To which, Ozpin said, "his response would be apropos, I think: The right man in the wrong mace would make all the difference in the world." He said, "and it didn't work because it didn't even injure him."
Jaune blinked, "but Pyrrha -"
"Tore open but one layer of his armor. However resigned he was to the inevitability, Aldric was nothing if not terrified of the prospect that he may die, and he sought to make it as difficult on his attackers as possible. Underneath the suit he adopted was another one, not nearly as strong, but thin and maneuverable, lightweight and durable enough to keep act as a last-ditch-effort to protect his core... It wasn't nearly magnetic enough for Pyrrha to sense it, and you weren't nearly strong enough to cut through it, leading to him being mostly unharmed -"
Blake cut in with, "would you stop talking about him like he's some kind of genius!?" She demanded, fists clenched. "He spent a year lying to everyone! And if he was a Terran, a Master, who could use his powers, how do you even know he didn't have some kind of trick up his sleeve that could fool you?" She asked, "and even if he didn't, he was complicit in the fall of Vale and everyone who died there! And that's just what we know of, and that's if we want to do him the favor of ignoring what he did after he turned into a Grimm!" She nearly shouted, barely able to keep her volume low enough that it wouldn't go too much further past the fire.
One of the Mistrali blinked, raising his hand, but the Mistrali who fought at Haven shook her head, signalling that she'd explain it later.
"And even if we do that, even if we ignore what he's done in the last few weeks alone, that doesn't mean he's still not responsible! All of this - everything that's happening - it's because of you and him playing Gods! And you're sitting there all but complimenting him!" She pointed an accusatory finger at Ozpin, "why should we even trust you?" She demanded, managing to get a few agreeing nods and angry frowns on the others around her.
Weiss even chimed in with, "she has a point, Professor. It takes a... I hesitate to say the word 'evil' considering your end goal, but certainly a good man cannot even consider doing what he suggested, let alone going through with it."
Ozpin nodded, "I won't argue that... But nor would I call him a bad man, you two. Not good, but not bad. He is merely willing to do what he feels must be done to assure victory."
"And we can see how well that turned out." Salt-and-Pepper huffed, shaking his head. "I don't know who this kid is but it sounds like he should be charged for war crimes."
"I would instead point you to the actions you are unaware of. He managed to unite in secret two planets against one woman. Extreme though his methods may be... They may bare fruit yet... Leading me to our next topic, actually -"
"Uh-uh." A Mistrali cut in, "you can't just drop that and walk away. The things this guy did... The things you did... Why the hell should we listen to you? Why should we follow you?" She demanded, "as far as I can tell, every time a..." She turned to the Beacon survivors, "what'd you call them? Masters?" Back to Ozpin, "every time one of you 'Masters' takes charge, things go bad, and right now they're looking irreversable. So what actual reason could we possibly have to keep listening to you?"
Ozpin sighed, scratching at his scalp as he thought a moment. "Because as much as your faith in me may have been lost, that does not diminish the fact that I still hold influence with others whose faith in me has had time to cement. I believe I can use that influence to at least buy us the ability to weather this storm... To create a solution to this problem. Things may seem bleak but we have something we certainly didn't have the last time we were this close to the edge: Atlas. Earth. The most militarized nation on our world and a planet whose industry, numbers, and technology can allow us to fight the Grimm like we never have before.
"We can survive this. It is not impossible. We just need to get to Atlas, get in touch with Earth... The moment we do that the road ahead is much less dark." He paused, and, with conviction, added, "this is not our darkest hour. Much the opposite... The following days and weeks will be that which precedes an age of prosperity and peace the likes of which we have never seen. Nothing is impossible. We will pull through."
And it appeared that he'd swayed people, too, until Jaune spoke up, "but what about Ash?" He shook his head. "Er... Aldric? He's... He's a game changer, Professor... And what if Salem does to the other Masters what she did to him?" He asked.
Ozpin broke eye contact a moment, frowning, before he looked back up. "He... And they, if the case becomes... Will be our greatest hurdle. But he bleeds, Jaune... No one is infallible. No one is... Unkillable." He said, a look of conviction on his face, lips pursed and a tear falling from his eye. "No one. We can survive. We can pull through.
"All is not lost. I promise you."
Two words were stuck in Cinder Fall's head, above all else that Jinn had just told her.
Including himself.
Cinder, as she recovered from the revelations, wondered what this could mean. She knew Aldric, he wasn't the type to do anything without a plan, and he tried to plan for anything. Was Jinn implying that Aldric had forseen his own death? Or was this more meant along the lines that Aldric, in his ever-consuming fear of his own power, was worried one day he may abuse it, and created plans wholly dedicated to instructing those who would resist him on how to defeat him?
She looked up to Jinn, who tilted its head, warm, expectant smile still painted across its face. "What..." She broke off, all the energy washing away from her in one sudden sigh. She took a moment, before, "What was his contingency plan in the event of his death?"
Jinn giggled musically. "Before I answer... I should warn you that this would be the last question I can answer until the clock resets..." It looked up, past Cinder, past the portal leading back to Mistral. "And it seems your situation is desperate. You may find a question more pressing than that, one day..." It looked back down to Cinder, an eyebrow raised. "Are you certain?"
Cinder gulped, and nodded.
Jinn acquiesced. "Very well... Nebo Aldric feared his death, most assuredly. Once the armor he had adopted from this world failed him too many times, he took up many layers of armor from fiction. Vibranium suits, senzu beans, mithril shirts... But he realized one day that no matter what he did, his death wasn't just possible, it could very well be inevitable, and he feared perhaps above all his death coming at a time where he could no longer influence the worlds from within all of their major factions, and control the damage they were capable of. So, following the invasion of Vale and the cessation of hostilities in Atlas, Nebo found himself with a span of time during which he would be completely unsupervised. No one, be they from those he called the Legion of Doom, the Justice League, the Watchmen, or, as had now been revealed to be a player, the United Nations, would be able to monitor his activities during this time. So... He spent it creating three contingencies to be enacted in the event of his death, all designed to be adaptable, malleable, able to be applied to any permutation of three major predictable outcomes. Deciding that the event of his death was significant enough grounds, he utilized all of his power and knowledge to create them, including that of his 'nuclear options'.
"The first plan, Contingency Sephiroth, was created in the event that Remnant was deemed lost, but there was still a sizable and serviceable population of humans and faunus. His intent therefore was to gather as many of these people as possible and bring them to the tallest mountain on Remnant, underneath which would be a means to take them offworld. His original idea had been merely to ferry them away and to set their arc to search for a new planet, however long that would take... But when Earth came into play, his plan changed instead to ferrying them to Earth, and for them to use the advanced technologies stored upon the arc as a bargaining chip for asylum. The Terrans, Humans, and Faunus would, he hoped, be able to hold off further Grimm invasion whilst studying and replicating the technologies on the arc, with the endgoal being to use said technologies to exponentially amplify the Earth's already titanic capacity for warfare, and eventually retake Remnant. However, then he was faced with the very real possibility that evacuating said people could be impossible... Or that there would be none left. Or perhaps Earth would be no longer reachable, or it too would be inhospitable... Or that the closest habitable planet would be so far away that the ship's reactors would fail and all of the survivors would die in stasis. In the event that Sephiroth was simply untenable, he created Contingency Jenova.
"Intended for use in the event that Remnant was totally lost, but theoretically recoverable, Jenova's purpose was to utilize advanced facilities he constructed underneath the tallest mountain on Remnant to create an army as unbeatable as he could imagine it, adaptable to fight in any possible environment, and with weapons and technologies beyond that of anything on Earth or Remnant. However, he found many problems he had to overcome in the formation of this army. First and foremost being how to ensure they would not be, or turn, hostile to any future attempts at repopulation, such as through the third contingency. His first idea had been to create machines. Easily replaceable, cheap, and able to fight forever. However, he cast this idea aside after finding so few examples of machines in fiction that did not, eventually, turn against their creators, and what few examples that did exist, could not serve his goal effectively. He then thought of creating facilities capable of cloning human beings, and then arming and training them to take back the world... But he worried then about their loyalty in the long term, and the implications of creating a race solely meant to fight on as many as two dead worlds for as many as two societies that no longer existed. Dozens of solutions were created and discarded, until the realization came to him that, should all life on Remnant be truly gone, then there was no reason to actually fight the forces that would have brought about said apocalypse. With this in mind, sought out weapons of mass destruction, specifically those that would leave the planet intact, and would not spread to the Earth in the event that it still had life.
"Finding his solution in orbital weaponry, he flooded Remnant and Earth's orbits with enough satellites to destroy both worlds inside twenty four hours, all of which utilized a series of narrow artificial intelligence, chosen from settings in which they had no capacity for rebellion and were applicable only on the micro-level. These intelligences would monitor the worlds, specifically searching for, Dust signatures, nuclear fallout... Any and all identifiable signs of human life, or the loss of it, that could be discerned from orbit, with a focus being on radio-waves, a commonality between Earth and Remnant. If these intelligences couldn't 'hear' anything for more than ten years, or if one or both of the planets were suddenly irradiated, or any other number of variables, the satellites would activate and burn the planets to ash, and would not stop until they were physically incapable of firing any longer, to ensure complete eradication of the enemy. However, then he came to the problem of what would come after. If one world or the other still had viable human populations, and they were still connected, he deemed it a non-issue, as inevitably those from one would spread to the other, but if they were both gone, there had to be a way to reintroduce life to one or both of the worlds, no matter what the cause of their extinction... So he created Contingency Aerith.
"Arguably the simplest of the three, in the event that any and all life was wiped away from one or both worlds, Aerith would be capable of terraforming Earth or Remnant to a state where humans could safely populate it. This would be accomplished by the bunker's narrow artificial intelligence first sending non-combat units out into the world to use the various technologies to terraform it. Then, once finished, they would return and begin the process of creating a population of humans and faunus large enough to be sustainable on their own, without further need of Aerith. These new people would be cared for by the AI and its units, would educate them to the levels that had been possible before the apocalypse, as well as teaching them of the world they lost and would be soon to inherit. Finally, after this, they would use the technologies and resources of the bunker to spread out, rebuild, and begin anew.
"While certainly not the limit to his plans for the bunker, Sephiroth, Jenova, and Aerith, were all what he created to be usable independent of him. The effect could potentially be greater were he to be alive, but their purpose was to be usable and tenable in the case of absolute annihilation."
Cinder's head was spinning. This was too much. Here she'd been thinking that Aldric had been so terrified of his power that he'd neutered himself, but now - now this creature was telling her that not only had he been completely aware of what he was capable of, but he'd used it to his advantage to try and create plans incapable of being resisted against. She'd seen some of Aldric's 'nuclear options', had seen some of the technologies he'd pulled from his stories, and apparently there was a bunker filled with them!
But... She frowned, wait... "How do I use... Any of them?" She asked.
Jinn adopted a piteous grin, and nodded again. "Farewell."
Cinder blinked, and felt dread grip her heart as Jinn shrank down until she vanished in the smoke, which reversed its flow, being absorbed into the golden lamp, which lowered itself to the ground and, once finished, became inert, its once ethereal glow dulling until it was gone and out.
Thousands of better questions flooded Cinder's mind as she, with a tight frown, bent down and picked up the lamp. Where this mountain was, how to make use of those plans, anything more than 'what they were'. On the one hand, she had denied anyone else the use of a fount of infinite knowledge for a century, but on the other, she may have just tricked herself out of the ability to make proper use out of Aldric's power, and that of the Earth's best imaginations and minds.
Damn it... She thought, standing back up, and turning back to the portal leading to Mistral.
She stared at the unnatural break in the air, looking from the huge desert into the cavern. She stared at it for what felt like hours, before she finally turned back to look out into the desert, and sighed, shaking her head. This decision would kill her, but of everyone, she was certain Aldric would have the best means of killing this Grimm, perhaps even of taking the fight to Salem. If he'd truly never even fought for Salem - as Jinn had confirmed - then Cinder felt she owed it to the man to take up his cause. She had been on the wrong side, fighting for the wrong reasons, and the wrong people, for too long.
She knew what she had to do.
Without looking back, Cinder stepped off the floating platform, falling down to the desert below.
She had to find Aldric's bunker.