Chapter 65
Remnant was no stranger to mountains, large and small. Many nations, the most notable being Vale, specifically used them to defend themselves against Grimm invasions, owing to their immense size and innate defendability and inhospitableness. Truly, once humanity had taken to the air and had earned the ability to map their world, one of the first things they had set their scouting fleets to do was find mountains, in the hopes of finding a second ring of mountains like that which protected Vale. None were, unfortunately, but one was found unlike the rest. So far to the south that walking anywhere from it would be to go north, and towering high enough that some explorers required pressurized suits to reach its peak, Mount Cerise was the single tallest mountain in the world.
Cinder Fall couldn't say she knew it as well as some of its explorers and geologists, but she did know it, and she had to acknowledge Aldric's wisdom in choosing it. It was cold, meaning few if any humans would voluntarily stay here, it was remote, so the Grimm population was high, and it was flanked on both sides by gigantic glaciers, meaning the only easy way to it was to be funneled to its front-face.
These thoughts were in Cinder's mind as she touched down at a familiar location. Swarming with Grimm, scarred and damaged by battle, completely devoid of life, and in the shadow of a gigantic petrified dragon, the grounds of Beacon were bitter cold so late at night, but there was something here she wanted to recover, that would help her out a bit in her search for the bunker.
She dipped into the student dorms from its roof, carefully creeping through its dark halls, long having since lost their power. She wondered what the city looked like down below, if there were still people or if relentless attacks from the Grimm at Beacon had killed them all, or, better, made them evacuate, though that was as good as a death sentence. With Vacuo under Terran control, Mistral likely destroyed, the only place that could remotely support them would be Atlas, and the trip up there would probably kill half of them through Grimm attacks, and a quarter of them through starvation.
Though... Thinking about it, that may end up happening anyways. She thought, reaching a corner and peering around it. She didn't really expect to see any Grimm in here, as there weren't many small enough to fit in these halls, but she figured it would be better to be safe than sorry. Atlas... May be the world's last bastion, really. If there hasn't been a mass exodus there yet, there will be soon. The only nation on Remnant truly capable of fighting Earth, the most militarized one on Remnant, and isolated practically from the entire world, Atlas would be the most defensible location on the planet, and while they may not like having so many mouths to feed, they would surely accept as many bodies as they could get, if only to put guns in their hands and tell them to fight Grimm, Terrans, or both.
She continued sneaking through the dorms until she found the one she was looking for, having read so many reports about it.
I wonder... If any of those were even true? She asked herself. Was he truly reporting on everyone's strengths and weaknesses? Or could he have been deliberately obscuring or falsifying some things, to help them in the inevitable confrontation?
She entered the door upon which had, in giant faded letters that no doubt had once been bright and sparkly, GEMS.
She saw four beds stuffed into the four corners of the room, a dust-covered red rug, a misty window leading outside.
And enough dried blood splattered across the floor that she wondered if someone had been stuck and left to dry.
Damn it... She thought, frowning at the blood stain. He must have been here... Perhaps before ever coming to me.
She took it all in for a moment, and got to work. The room was, aside from the blood, surprisingly unmolested. There would be two places she may find something - anything - of Aldric's that he didn't carry on him, that may give her a hint as to what to expect under the mountain. Knowing Aldric, she spared no expense, searching every inch of space, upturning every bed, opening every drawer, even running her hands along the walls and ceilings just to make sure. When she found the bed with the drawer that had the only male clothing in the room, she focused her efforts there.
The first thing she found was one of Aldric's coats. The sight of it, a little dusty but otherwise pristine, gave her pause. Its smooth fabric and comfortable weight stood in stark contrast to the rotten, weathered, dirt-stained coat that the Grimm Aldric wore, and somehow, despite the months that had passed, it still smelled like him. Faint sweat, an abundance of generic deodorant, and unscented body wash, it brought her back to the last time she'd seen him. That wide smile on his face as they'd locked blades in Beacon Tower.
She slid the coat around her arms. She didn't know why, but it felt comfortable. There was a warmth to it. Once it was on right, she went back to searching. His drawers produced nothing; the notebooks in his backpack were useless, all pertaining to the academy's curriculum. Even checking under his bed produced nothing.
Sighing, Cinder stepped back, hands pressed to her hips and lips pursed in a tight frown. Did he really hide nothing in his dorm? There was always the aviator - if that was even still there after all this time - but had he really had nothing here?
She blinked.
Wait... This is Aldric. The man who convinced everyone he wasn't spying on them by telling them he was spying on them.
She checked under the bed again, but this time actually climbed underneath it, feeling around for -
Bingo.
A loose board. She pried it open and reached inside, and found exactly what she was looking for. She pulled out a cinch-bag and, after sitting on the edge of his bed, pulled it open. Inside she saw a small vial, inside of which was a colony of his Power Glove, which she pocketed, a Terran pistol and some ammunition, his wallet - which, after looking through, produced nothing - a tablet computer, a smart phone, and a large, bulky cell phone.
But, she had no idea how to operate Terran technology, to say nothing of charging them, as she was certain their batteries were dead, so they both were useless to her.
Okay... She sighed, dropping the bag on the bed. I guess I'll try the aviator again.
Sneaking out of Beacon's dorms, Cinder descended to the ground floor, wise enough to know that her method of flying would attract too much attention, be it from the Grimm or from any Vale citizens still down in the city. She crept out of the dorms and slowly sneaked her way through the deathly silent grounds of Beacon Academy. The grounds were crawling with Grimm, forcing Cinder to adopt a 'slow is fast' mentality, keeping her pace steady and sticking to cover and concealment, never leaving except to find something else to hide her.
It took her close to an hour to make a walk that had once taken five minutes, but regardless she soon found herself in the emergency stairwells that led down to Vale, from Beacon. These were, blessedly, clear of Grimm, allowing her to pick up the pace. Reaching Vale, she found it just as eerily silent as Beacon, now above her. It made her wonder if they had truly evacuated. IT made some amount of sense to her - one of the reasons they had been able to hold it in the first place was because of the immense amounts of military and Huntsmen personnel and equipment present, but once the other countries left to protect their homelands, and the Terrans no doubt started fighting to establish a beachhead on the planet, she found herself wondering if Vale's people, on the whole, had just cut and run.
The fact that she saw Grimm openly wandering about Vale's streets, completely unrestricted, lent credence to that theory.
It took her until nightfall to reach the Aviator, during which she didn't find hide nor tail of anything alive in the city. No people, no animals, no Terrans, nothing but Grimm. Vale was, well and truly, empty.
And Cinder couldn't help but think that it was her fault.
But, shaking these thoughts from her head, Cinder dashed inside the aviator, its doors and motors grinding from age and disuse as they slowly opened.
It was dark inside, the air, having been stirred for the first time in a year, blew out, circulating all of the dust on the ground and causing it to fill Cinder's lungs. She sneezed, rubbing at her nose, and pushed through. She didn't bother trying to find anything in her room - she'd long since emptied that of her essentials - but Aldric's room was the mystery. He hadn't been there since before Beacon, and that was where he'd kept everything. So what could be hidden inside?
She found out upon opening the door. She lit her hand aglow to act as a light source, and frowned at the state of it. His bed shoved in the corner, blankets and sheets crumpled up, a desk leaned against the wall and with random odds and ends scattered about it, a suitcase at the foot of his bed, and a messenger's bag hanging from a hook on the wall.
She stepped inside, her feet leaving footprints on the dusty ground. She pulled the bag off of the wall, the fabric creaking from having been moved for the first time in months. The multi-Maiden slowly lowered herself to Aldric's bed and opened the bag. Inside she saw a multitude of books, whose text she couldn't read, but seemed to range from the practical - one cover depicting a man starting a fire, with diagrams floating next to him - to entertainment - one picture book whose cover depicted a man in a gaudy orange and blue outfit. She meticulously rifled through all of the books, hoping to find something stuffed between the pages, but found nothing.
Checking some of the bags pockets, she found dozens of wires, cables, and batteries, and one hand-crank machine. She tried cranking the handle of the device, but it snapped in two when she tried pushing the wrong way. She stared at its pieces a moment, both frustrated and exasperated, before she put it back in the bag.
Next, remembering how she'd found his go-bag in Beacon, Cinder checked Aldric's bed, and immediately found something, while not entirely useful, at least somewhat entertaining underneath his pillow: The flare gun, still loaded. She couldn't help but let out an airy snort, shake her head, and continue searching. Underneath his bed was a knife almost as big as his head, but nothing else. Next she started rifling through the suitcase at the foot of his bed, finding inside of it all kinds of laptop computers, tablets, and phones he'd recovered from his plane, as well as more books and more spare wires and batteries. Underneath all of that were clothes, but beyond that, nothing. She checked everything, from the pockets of his pants to the spaces between the screens and keyboards of the computers, but nothing.
He'd either kept all of his major effects on his person at all times, or relied upon the idea that she had no idea how to operate Terran machinery. Either way, it wasn't a terrible idea, but it was frustrating in the here and now, when she wouldn't actually kill him for learning his secrets.
Swiping her gloved hand through her hair, Cinder leaned her back against the wall and scanned over Aldric's room. She remembered how often he woke up looking exhausted in the beginning, at the time she thought he'd just been coping with things and was adapting to his training, but now she found herself wondering if it hadn't been him simply being unable to sleep out of fear that she, or anyone else on the ship, knew. She also found herself thinking back to some of the peculiarities she'd ran into during their time together; had Rayne really had a heart attack? Or had Aldric shown just the briefest hints of his 'Grimm-side', as it were, and stopped her heart from beating in bed? Had Adam Taurus really seen the light, or had Aldric found some way to get him to stop fighting?
Hell... She thought. Had he really made it through Beacon's exams, or had he made contact with Ozpin beforehand? It was so strange to her. All the things Aldric had outright told her painted a decent picture, but the timeline for the truth was what she found herself questioning so heavily.
Sitting in the darkness of Aldric's room, lit only by the soft orange glow of her hand, Cinder briefly looked down at the shrunken lamp hanging from her hip. This fount of infinite knowledge, rendered inert through over use, it made her a target, and she knew this. But, she rationalized, whatever Aldric put in that bunker, he trusted with his death, so whatever was inside, it had to be able to protect this, to help her finish his mission.
With a frown, she forced herself to her feet and exited the aviator, likely for the last time. Outside, she leaped into the air and blasted off with a soft clap of thunder.
All told, her trip to the northernmost landmass in Remnant took her seven days.
She missed her Pelican.
It took her another full day to locate the mountain, and, landing at its base, she sank ankle-deep into the snow and looked up, marveling at its sheer size, how it grew past the clouds.
So... She thought, tearing her gaze away from the sky, and instead looking at the mountain's base, at the gigantic glaciers flanking each side. Where would Aldric hide an entrance to his greatest kept secret, and what he intended to be the last, best hope for humankind?
The first thought that came to mind was 'under a welcome mat'.
She threw that thought aside instantly, that was too wild, even for Aldric. Her next thought was more sensible, he'd use whatever cave systems already existed, go as deep down as he could, and build upon, or under, rather, that. So, after wrapping herself up in Aldric's coat, she set to work, just able to ignore the biting chill of Remnant's far north.
After twelve hours of searching half as many caves to their dead ends, she found herself wishing she had Aldric's radar sense. Such a thing would make this entire search trivial. She ended up adopting one of the caves closer to the ground to sleep in, but sleep, she found, wasn't easy to get. She found herself haunted by all the 'what-ifs' that came with all of the things she'd learned and all of the pieces that had fallen into place, and a deep sense of regret, a growing sense of shame. Those feelings festered within her for hours, long enough that her eyes began to hurt, she was so tired. After awhile, she finally gave up, angrily killing the fire she'd built and throwing Aldric's coat back over her, before wading back out into the snow and ice.
Under the night sky, the frozen wasteland that surrounded Cerise was only colder. Aldric's coat was practically paper in this environment, Cinder found herself having to use her powers to keep herself from freezing. Minutes turned to hours, and hours to days. What little sleep she did get was when consciousness could no longer continue to grace her and she would just collapse in a cave, completely unable to keep pushing herself. Aldric had chosen his mountain well, this damn thing was so big that sometimes she would enter a cave, search it for hours, find nothing, and leave, only to find herself having left a completely different cave.
Days turned to a week. Cinder was thankful for the beans Aldric had left her, without those she questioned her ability to search as consistently as she was.
A week turned into two. Cinder started marking every cave she searched after realizing she'd searched the same one three times over the course of five days.
Two weeks turned into a month, Cinder found herself fucking hating the cold. Hating Aldric's choice of location. Hating his wisdom. Loathing his morals. Despising her own.
Hating herself, for having deceived herself into thinking the path she had walked for so long was the right one.
So of course, when the second day of the month came around, Cinder, in all of this hate, this anger, lashed out. Blasting the mountain with a giant ball of fire, it as big as a house.
She realized her mistake the moment she saw some of the gigantic masses of snow begin to shift, a substantial weight suddenly missing from underneath them. In the blink of an eye, an avalanche had formed and was bearing down on her at hundreds of kilometers an hour. It slammed into her before she could react, and took her with it. She was surrounded by snow, buried inside of it. She tried to fight it, but she was fighting against nature, the might of a planet - its strength, its speed, they all outweighed hers. Another obstacle, another thing that would always be stronger than her, that she could never defeat.
Another example of the futility of her chosen path.
Cinder eventually stopped resisting, just allowing it to happen, allowing the avalanche to carry her until she finally felt herself stop moving. Her head hurt and she could feel a small chunk of aura missing, but she pushed all of that aside and started digging, turning up the heat in her hands to make the process easier, until she was practically sliding through the snow as fast as it melted.
She found herself unceremoniously dropping into a cave, pitch black from the mass of snow blocking it off.
She hit her head on the ground, and groaned as she stood up. She turned to the snow behind her, squinting her eyes and trying to find out how digging up had sent her down here.
Shaking her head, she decided it didn't matter, and started walking towards the tightly packed snow.
She stopped, however, when she saw something red reflected in it.
She blinked, rubbed at the welt forming on her head, and leaned forward. Her arm was glowing orange, but what she was seeing here was clearly red, and what was more, it wasn't coming from inside the snow, but rather behind her?
Turning around, she saw a few meters away a pedestal. Upon it was a single, large red button, and in front of it was a small carpet made of twine, upon which said 'WELCOME!', written in both Remnant and Terran English.
Cinder stared at it for a long time, expression settled into a frustrated, unamused frown.
"Gods... Damn it, Aldric." She shook her head, and approached the mat.
Looking on the pedestal, she saw white text pasted across the big, red, button.
'EASY', written both in Remnant and Terran English.
She blinked.
"Is... This... A joke?" She wondered, slowly lowering her hand down until it rested on the button.
She pressed it.
There was a loud 'click', and then the button spoke. "That was easy!" Echoed throughout the cave.
Cinder waited.
Nothing.
She waited longer, hoping that this was a part of the joke, that perhaps Aldric was testing whoever would find his cave, trying to see how patient they were.
But still, nothing.
She hit the button again.
Click! "That was easy!"
"You've got to be kidding me." She breathed, swiping her hand through her hair.
She hit the button again, harder this time.
Click! "That was easy!"
Again.
Click! "That was easy!"
Was he fucking with her?
She grabbed both side of the button and lifted, hoping that perhaps there was something underneath it that could give her a clue to the method behind his madness. She almost stumbled forward when said button offered no resistance to being lifted into the air, as though it hadn't been fastened to the pedestal at all. Of course the pedestal was completely blank, to boot.
She held the Easy Button in front of her, looking at it with an outraged, confused expression.
Beneath it, and subsequently, her, was the welcome mat.
She knelt down and lifted the mat, underneath which was something carved into the stone ground:
No cheating!
( ͡° ل͟ ͡° )╭∩╮
The multi-maiden closed her eyes and took in a long, deep breath.
Right... She sighed. "Right." She whispered, dropping the welcome mat back on the ground, and standing up. "Okay, Aldric. Fine."
In all honesty, she figured this was his 'big hint' that whoever was looking was on the right path. Considering how he liked to hide things, she figured this was his way of telling the 'treasure hunter' they were on the right path: By specifically not telling them. By giving them the keys to the castle and then trying like hell to make them think it was an elaborate joke. The button in hand, she ventured deeper into the cave, idly wondering how he would expect someone who didn't know him to be able to figure all of this out.
And also trying to ignore that small part of her that was saying this was all stupid, that there was no way a welcome mat, a middle finger, and a literal easy button were in any way related to finding his doomsday bunker.
Continuing deeper into the caves, Cinder eventually found herself confronted with a dead end, however there was something about it. Looking at it, it raised every red flag in her mind, it looked wrong. Its raised, bumpy surface, its rough texture, its dark coloring, none of it looked right. Holding her glowing hand up to it, lighting it up, she realized why:
It was all flat.
It was easy to confuse it at first, but the closer she brought the light source to it, the more she realized she wasn't generating any shadows on the surface. It looked rough and uneven, it looked like rocks were jutting out, but once she brought her glowing hand to a scant few inches from its surface, she realized that everything she was looking at, this entire dead end, it was all flat. It was all a projected image.
It was a hologram.
Cinder backed away, killing the glow to her hand, frowning at the wall.
Now what am I supposed to do? She wondered, leaning forward and poking at the wall with a finger.
In the blink of an eye, the wall evaporated, revealing a huge, looming, flat steel blast door.
With room in its center for a single button.
The puzzle revealed to her, Cinder's exasperated sigh turned amused, she shook her head, and stuffed the button in the space on the blast door.
Click!
With a loud bang, the wall split open instantly and the button dropped to the ground with a light clatter.
"That was easy!"
Silence.
Cinder stared at the once shut blast door in dead, shocked silence.
"Gods... Damn it, Aldric." Cinder cursed, finding herself sighing out of amusement and exasperation, as she shook her head and buried her face in her hand.
She pushed forward, walking inside. Bright LED lights began turning on in sequence with loud bangs and clicks, gradually revealing more and more of the bunker. It was enormous, sloping downwards further under ground, with a ceiling several meters high. There were huge blast doors lining the walls at regular intervals and, when Cinder passed the crest of the downward slope, she saw at its end a huge array of computers and screens, something that, to her, just screamed 'I'm what you should see first!'. She deduced this by their large size, central positioning, the way the screens lit up after all the ceiling lights, and the words that appeared on them saying 'I'm what you should see first!'
She approached the computer, but before reaching it, a small, translucent disk laying on the ground in front of the central terminal sparked to life. A hologram projected above it, flickering for a moment as it focused, but once it did, it showed Cinder a face she hadn't seen in too long:
Nebo Aldric.
He looked just as he had been before he'd died: The fire in his eyes, the color in his skin, the general lack of dried dirt, blood, and viscera. He stood with his customary slouch, hands stowed in his coat, eyes staring straight ahead - right at Cinder.
"Now before you freak out! I'mma say this here and now, and you may hear it a lot, so get used to it." He cleared his throat, and Cinder could tell he'd done so to fight back a grin. "I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions." He gulped, trying to keep his grin from stretching too far, one corner of his mouth twitching from the effort.
Right... Cinder thought, having just briefly convinced herself that perhaps he had indeed planned a way to return after death. Before she could speak, holo-Aldric continued.
"Now that that's out of the way..." He held his hands up. "This is the bunker... And considering that you've no doubt followed the clues I left in my journal, you probably at least concluded that, if nothing else. For clarity's sake, though, I'm calling it the Batcave. Because fuck you -" He pointed at Cinder, "- it's my doomsday bunker armory vault lonely mountain teasure horde, I'll call it what I want... But, for those of you who may have gotten here through more duplicitous means -" He coughed, masking the words 'Ozpin!' and 'mind reader!', "- who have no fucking idea what's in here and-or have no instructions on how to be walked through some of its... Finer things... I'm here to help get you started, and to provide any answers I couldn't leave in the journal or with my Mother..." A beat, "or that I specifically wiped from my mind because you're a dirty rotten asshole and I knew I shouldn't have trusted you." He gave Cinder the finger, "you know who you are." Before he stowed it away. "So... Ask and you shall receive." He grew completely, unnaturally still, waiting for a question to respond to.
Cinder gulped, briefly looking down, frowning in thought, before looking back up. "What is the most important thing to know about this place?"
Aldric blinked.
"Oh fuck." He said, a frown gracing his long dead face and his gunmetal gray eyes narrowing. "I know that voice..." He sighed, long. "Fuck." Before he turned around, "alright FILS. Voice verification 'It's me you asshole.'"
Cinder blinked, her heart dropping out of her chest as suddenly, a loud, however pleasant and enthusiastic, female voice filled the air, appearing to echo out from all directions. "Voice authorization confirmed: How may I help you, Mister Aldric?"
"We have an uninvited guest. Initiate -" Cinder, thinking fast, thrust her hand forward, her power surging through her and surrounding the hologram, enveloping and silencing it. Holo-Aldric, however, had no idea, and kept speaking as though the computer could hear him.
Cinder, her heart hammering, let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding, not wanting to know what Aldric had had planned for -
"Mister Aldric?" The voice questioned. "Mister Aldric, your silence concerns me." She said, as holo-Aldric turned back to Cinder and became unnaturally still once again.
Cinder gulped, what could she do?
"Mister Aldric, persuant to previously discussed security protocols, if I do not hear your voice in the next fifteen seconds, I will be forced to enact your Maiden Contingency." FILS warned.
Damn it... She cleared her throat and ran her fingers up and down her trachea a few times, coursing magical power through it, before saying, "It's okay... FILS." In her dead friend's voice. "False alarm... Everything's okay, now. "
She held her breath consciously now, grimacing and waiting.
The computer didn't disappoint: "Mister Aldric, considering what you and I have discussed about the enemies you face and the abilities they possess, I am afraid I must ask you for the authorization code, or else I will still be forced to enact the Maiden Contingency." She said, "you have ten seconds to comply, or: Die." And a navy blue countdown appeared on the main computer screen looming above them.
Gods... Cinder bit her tongue. There was no way she could guess this, Aldric had literally endless things he would have picked from as a means of telling this FILS to not kill everyone. Could she escape in time? What was the 'Maiden Contingency'? Could she feasibly counter it?
Or... Wait.
She remembered the button, she remembered how she'd hit the nail on the head for that little 'test' of his specifically because of how well she'd known Aldric. In any other situation, where she would be here to loot the place - or, fine, that's why she was here now, but in other situations she'd be here as an enemy rather than a friend - she would be on her guard, may panic and leave. But the level headedness of coming under peaceful intentions led her to ask herself: Since Aldric actually had hidden his key under a welcome mat, and that the Easy Button had been the veritable key to his castle, what would his authorization code be? What would no one in their right mind actually try to use?
"Authorization code?" She gritted her teeth.
The countdown froze at three.
"Authorization code accepted! I'm sorry for the trouble. Have a nice day!" And the number vanished, leaving only a silent, brightly lit Batcave in its wake, and an oblivious hologram in front of her.
Cinder let out a long, shaky breath.
Okay... So this thing recognizes my voice. She thought, holding her hand to her chest. And I can mimic others' voices... He doesn't trust Ozpin overmuch, Neo obviously wouldn't work... And I don't know Ruby Rose or anyone from Beacon well enough to mimic theirs, even with magic... She frowned, letting her heart slow. Maybe... She looked back to the hologram, and let the bubble of silence pop.
She cleared her throat again, and the voice of Adam Taurus spilled out of her throat. "Aldric... What is the most important thing to know about this place?"
Aldric blinked, almost giving her an attack. "Aw fuck." He groaned. "I recognize that voice..." He sighed, jerking his head back and forth. "Fuck!" He whispered, "listen Taurus... Remember you're the enemy of my enemy... And please respect this place. I beg of you." He begged. "Now..." He twitched, no doubt the program continuing on to a different recording. "The most important thing to know about this place is that, as far as I'm aware, there is perhaps nothing like it on Earth or Remnant... And I'd go so far as to say in the entire universe, as well. The things in here can give one man the strength of a thousand - a million! Can destroy planets. Alter. Time. So the most important thing is to know this. To understand it, and to weigh the potential risks of using even the most harmless of weapons in here, for fear of their consequences." He said, earnestly, before returning to his static position.
Cinder frowned, "Alter time?" She questioned.
Holo-Aldric shook his head. "I'm going to veto any details on that one. In all honesty I should fucking not have made it, and if you're here viewing this, that means the one person alive who understands its implications is dead. The moment you walked in here and started talking, FILS locked that room down. On the list of the most terrifying fucking things imaginable in this place, that's number two, but I would trust folks with number one before I did that."
Cinder put that away for later, instead asking, "who is FILS?"
"Uh... Short version? Aside from EDI, she's probably the only genuinely good artificial intelligence I know about, and I put her in charge of this base because she's wholly reliant upon human interaction to do anything outside of her pre-programmed instructions. So no Skynet rewriting itself on the fly, no HAL Nine-thousand finding eight million logic errors in its orders... No none of that. She's a Narrow-AI."
"Is she the program in charge of your contingency plans?" 'Taurus' asked.
"All of them except Sephiroth. I chose a different, albeit similarly limited, one for that."
Cinder figured now was as good a time as any to ask, "what is Sephiroth?"
Aldric let out a long sigh, ending it with an airy laugh. "It's the single most weaponized lifeboat-slash-escape pod-slash-armory-slash-vault-slash-you get the fucking point in human history. Which is ironic, as the ship I chose was originally designed to perform exactly that function." He nodded at the computer behind him, "ask it if you want the finer details, and where to find it in the cave, but to give you the short version: I chose the UNSC Infinity because I felt, aside from maybe a few technologies, it would be something that would be easily replicable by Earth or Remnant, and would be something that on its own would revolutionize so many areas of science and technology that just the ship itself would be an immeasurable boon to the war against the White Witch. But with all of the goodies I added into it? Fucking Iron Man suits, Nanosuits, Fallout Power Armor, MJOLNIR armor, Vibranium... Super soldier serums, SPARTAN augments, Metal Gear Nanomachines Son!, cloning facilities... lightsabers, BFG's, high frequency blades, fuck tons of medicines, Senzu Beans, Star Trek replicators, GECKS, Star Wars blasters... God I put so many things into that thing that it in and of itself probably accounts for half of the cave's danger, and I haven't even mentioned the bigger scale technology, like the UNSC, covenant, and Star Wars Naval weaponry I left on it, any number of FTL drives, and the schematics for all of that... And so much more.
"Sephiroth could either jump Earth up a level or two on the Kardashev scale, or provide Remnant the ability to find a different world and settle there, and have enough stasis pods to house a completely viable population three times over. Fuck, or both." He explained, "and whatever it was used for, building more Infinities and replicating the things in its armory would give whoever used it an honest-to-god fighting chance at destroying the Grimm and killing Salem." He shook his head, "damn near gave me a heart attack summoning the magic to pull some of those rabbits out of the hat."
Cinder looked at the computer behind Aldric, frowning at it a moment, before turning back to him. "What is Genova?"
"Oh that one's easy. There's ten thousand satellite lasers in orbit of Earth and Remnant. The Hammer of Dawn burned the living shit out of the surface of its planet, and they only fired it for a few hours. I've set these ones to fire until they can't anymore, if they're automatically activated. So I'm hoping that, if it won't kill Salem, it will at least severely hamper or even ruin her ability to fight at least long enough for Earth to launch a counter attack, or for Aerith to get working."
And that led her to, "what is Aerith?"
"Two stage process. First FILS sends out androids equipped with GECKS - the Garden of Eden Creation Kit - which will unfuck the environment and terraform it back to something humans can live in, again. Then those same androids split up. Half of them return to the cave, while the other half start building a place for Humans to live and defend. The half that returned to the Cave go down to another section to activate SCP Two Thousand... And if you want details on that, go to the fucking computer, I'm not explaining it. Just know that it can return humanity from literal extinction, if need be." He snorted, "that one almost killed me, lemme tell you. But they activate that, cultivate a couple dozen-thousand humans and faunus, raise them up, send them out, cultivate another population, and then if all goes well they'll be able to go on their own from there, use the Batcave as a crutch, a shield, and a sword, depending on the needs."
Cinder nodded, leaning back and looking up at the blank monitors, thoughts swimming.
"So... How... Do I use any of this?" She asked.
But: "I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions."
Right... She remembered the AI had responded to him, she'd just have to move forward from there. "What do we do about Salem?"
"Even I don't fucking know... But Earth might." He responded. "My best efforts were Ruby Rose and Jaune Arc. The former may be able to neutralize her, and the latter has a weapon I created as something of a hail mary, if it turns out Salem's the same kind of immortal as Ozpin and the Maidens."
Cinder frowned, "what do you mean?" Before she blinked, and sighed.
"I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions."
Biting her tongue, Cinder asked, "is Salem immortal?"
To which he responded, "I don't know." In a hollow voice. "Maybe? Or maybe when she dies, she takes control of the person who killed her. Steals their body and their power, adds it to hers while she wrests control away from them. Maybe that's why Ozpin can't, or won't, kill her... Or maybe she's indestructible... Or maybe something about what made her the way she is changed the means required to kill her, or precluded the idea entirely. I'm at such a loss for a solution to that problem that if what few ones I've come up with don't work, and if Earth doesn't know any better... I honestly have no idea what to do."
"Why would Earth know anything?"
"I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions."
"What does Earth know about Remnant?"
"I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions."
Getting frustrated, Cinder growled, and tried one last time. "How does Earth know anything about Remnant?"
But: "I'm sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions."
Cinder let out an angry sigh, shaking her head, and looking away, thinking. "How much of what's in the cave isn't in Sephiroth?" She wondered.
"Only." Aldric stressed, "the four most dangerous things. Galactus, Doc Brown, Nova, and B.R. Bill... And if I'm dead, and you're speaking to me, FILS would have locked those things off. I barely trust myself with them, and they're all for specific circumstances."
Of course... She huffed, but then, a thought occured to her.
"What do we do about Cinder Fall?"
He didn't even hesitate. "Send Ruby Rose, or anyone with Silver Eyes, or any Master in charge of his faculties, against her. Lacking that, don't even bother throwing bodies at her. Take the nearest nuclear submarine and empty all of its missile pods. Failing any of those, break open Sephiroth's armory and look for two things specifically: The Staff of Magnus, which can absorb magic, and take your fucking pick of powered armor. My personal choice would be an Iron Man suit, preferably the Mark Fifty. Fucking thing fought Thanos, so it should protect you well enough to fight her alongside the staff, but a Hulkbuster could give you an extra edge, or the Nanosuit would hopefully do the job as well. Just be aware: She won't hesitate, she won't negotiate, and she won't back down, so you can't either."
She felt a sting in her heart at that, and she gritted her teeth. "Can you come back to life?"
Aldric shook his head. "I had one idea. One. But I threw it away because of how terrified Warhammer Forty-Kay makes me. Next question."
"What do we do about Ozpin?"
"If he's why you're here, then you're in trouble... But his strength has been waning. A similar all-or-nothing strategy to combating Cinder Fall, or any Maiden, could be used here. Send as many silver-eyes as you can, but avoid Ruby Rose... I fear she would hesitate at the moment of truth, fighting someone she recognizes, and that would kill her. Lacking those, don't even bother trying anything else - just call up a local nuclear submarine and get it to launch. Without those, I would suggest again the Staff of Magnus, for its nullifying abilities... But don't kill him. In his case, considering his immortality, your best bet would be to try and imprison him. Try amnestics to wipe his memory, and even if those don't work, keep him sedated and on life support. As long as you don't fuck up, you can effectively neutralize him as a threat for that entire life."
She nodded, "and..." She hesitated. "What do we do about you?"
"Run." Aldric growled.
Cinder blinked.
Aldric burst out into laughter. "I'm kidding!" He waved his hands, "I'm kidding!" He wiped a tear from his eye, and then brushed his hair back with his hand. "Oh... Fuck, I wish I could've seen your face." He chuckled. "No... If I'm the problem, unique solutions will be required. Once I've finished here I will wipe my mind with a neuralyzer so I don't know everything that's in here, for this scenario and in case Ozpin's an asshole... But I may very well recognize some of the rabbits you'll pull out to fight me, and have means to counter them. The most important thing is to get rid of my utility belt -" He indicated the yellow belt around his waist. "- I've got all kinds of goodies in here... Up to and including a goddamn Metal Gear and the Blade of Olympus. So you'll want to get the fuck rid of that, or else it'll be far easier for me to fight you... I would recommend someone distracting me so someone else can take it away from me with hit-and-run tactics, but that person has to be fast, or I'll literally see them coming and stop them. Once you've done that, take away my lightsaber, that one will be easy. After that... If you've got that thing from my Mom, that will help immensely. If not, then you shouldn't be here Ozpin, fuck you, I'd always wondered if you weren't hiding something...
"Or she's dead and it was used up, in which case fuck. Regardless... You can use a combination of Genova and Sephiroth to great effect. Genova will be able to keep me in one place, and may kill me if you're lucky... But at the very least it should take out my armor." He patted his dark mail. "And then the weapons and equipment in Sephiroth's armory will even the odds. I would recommend donning Batman's Fenrir suit - fucking thing could systematically take on and take down the entire Justice League, the real one, so it should be effective against me.
"But..." He sighed, "if something has happened to me... And I just don't care anymore... Or maybe Cinder, or Salem corrupted me, and I'm using my powers to bypass everything. If I'm just using nuclear option after nuclear option... If it's the worst case scenario... Then I'm trusting one nuclear option to you." Cinder's eyes widened. "I call it Contingency Galactus. You'll find instructions next to it... But there's a catch: Anyone could be in here for any reason, and what's in that room... It's number one. It is without a doubt the most dangerous thing in the Cave. So if you can't answer the question right, it won't let you in. And you won't answer the question right if you somehow skipped your way in here or stumbled across the place... You'd need the Record to get in. It has the key. If you have it, then you'll have a chance... But with how dangerous Galactus is, a chance is all you'll have. So don't fuck it up."
Cinder felt as though she'd been handed the keys to the world, and then had them stolen from her in an instant. Hope had bloomed and died right in front of her.
But maybe... "What is the Record?"
Aldric rolled his eyes. "How the fuck did you get in here?"
Cinder bit back a retort, knowing full well and good she'd actually managed to circumvent Aldric's plans with how she was here. "Is there a way to bring everyone here?" She asked.
"As long as Ozpin, Adam Taurus, Roman Torchwick, or my contact in the UN is alive, then yes, it is." He nodded behind him. "Go to that console and type 'Avengers Assemble'. Anyone still alive will get the message, and this base's coordinates. The smart ones will realize that something has gone wrong, and they'll start sending folks and soldiers. The dumb ones will come themselves and only bring a few bodyguards... Hopefully Ozpin's alive, though. If you're here, and that message gets sent, he'll know enough to appreciate the gravity of the situation, and he'll bring everyone he can, civilian or otherwise."
Cinder nodded, wondering what her next question should be, or if she should get to work.
Throwing caution to the wind, she asked, "now that I'm here... Can we win?"
Aldric sighed, a morose smile on her face. "That detective, is the right question." He gave her a casual salute, two fingers hovering just in front of his head. "Program terminate." And he vanished, leaving the multi-Maiden alone in his bunker.