Chapter 70

Cinder Fall awoke under water. Or rather, this wasn't water - it was too thick, and it has a consistency of oil. Opening her eyes, she found that fastened to her face was a mask that was providing her with oxygen, and attached to her temples, her arms, and her back were small wires leading to the walls of the chamber she was floating in. She was still clothed, and the warm liquid that surrounded her was of a teal blue, and it made her feel strange - her entire body buzzed like she'd just gotten a massage, but also numbed her, making her feel like she was experiencing everything from behind several layers of clothing. Even stranger was that it wasn't even remotely uncomfortable to open her eyes, and right in front of her was a single great window, through which she could see a wide space filled with hospital beds, other chambers like hers, and crates stacked up to the ceiling.

She frowned, where the hell was she? Why wasn't she tied up? Hanging from the ceiling? Why wasn't the Grimm keeping watch over her? Where was Salem? What was this? What was happening? Why?

As she asked herself these questions, she heard a loud, familiar voice, but it was muffled through the liquid in the chamber, to the point where she couldn't tell what the speaker was saying.

She could see the effect of it, though: Before they were even done, another person, so far away that through the liquid Cinder couldn't identify their features, rolled across the floor on an office chair, fast enough that Cinder figured they'd kicked off of the wall. They peered down the aisle, right at Cinder, before they twisted themselves around and kicked at the floor, rolling towards Cinder. She watched it happen, the nonchalance of it setting her off.

Right up until the person arrived and turned back around, peering right into the window, placing his hand out of sight and leaning in close.

Cinder's eyes went wide, and her jaw slackened, as, without fanfare or celebration, Nebo Aldric revealed himself, alive and well, not showing even the barest hint of the corruption that had been thrust upon him by Salem.

"Don't!" He called out, his voice just barely passing through the liquid and into her ears. "Fucking! Move!" He said, before slapping a piece of paper onto the window.

On it, was written: This is a healing pod! As the name suggests, it poisons you until you're dead and gone, so don't do anything until it's done!

Aldric waited a minute for Cinder to read it, before he peeled the paper off of the glass. He pointed at a part of the pod Cinder couldn't see, then tapped his wrist like one would when indicating a wrist watch, and then pinching two of his mechanical fingers together, squinting one of his eyes at it.

Cinder got the message: Whatever was happening, it was almost done. The fact barely registered to her, as she just tried to figure out what the hell was happening right now. How did Aldric look so healthy? Was he alive? How? Where was the Grimm?

No answers were offered for the next half hour, only a vision of Aldric's legs, as he sat out of Cinder's view, and the corner of some device he was watching intently, it appearing to be displaying a video of some sort. Cinder could do nothing but watch and wait in this strange, oily liquid, until she noticed Aldric twitch, and then turn. She saw him lean over and hit a button on the machine with the side of his fist, the muffled 'thump' barely making it to her ears.

Immediately after this, the chamber began draining itself of liquid. Cinder felt more and more freezing cold as more and more of it washed away, to the point where she began shivering once it was all gone and the machinery that had been attached to her popped off. The window cracked open with a loud hiss, and Cinder, shakily, grabbed the sides of the pod and pulled herself up and out.

She found Aldric waiting there, whipping a towel back and forth, unfurling it, and holding it open for Cinder, who couldn't tear her eyes away from the Master. One small part, ever present, but so tiny as to be a whisper in a thunderstorm, tried unconvincingly to make her think that perhaps this was a trick of Salem's. But every other part of her rejected this, at first on account of why would Salem even want or need to deceive her.

But then simply because she didn't want to believe that what she was seeing wasn't real.

Aldric stared back at her, an eyebrow arced. "Uh -"

Cinder threw herself at Aldric, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding him tight, clenching her eyes shut and trying to keep the tears from flowing, even as she felt her chest quiver and something she hadn't felt since she was a child work its way back up her throat: A sob.

"Whoa!" Aldric grunted, as Cinder tried her best to crush him. "Uh..." He wrapped the towel around her as best he could from his awkward position, before he finally rested his mechanical hand on her back and gave her a pat. "There there... Big Nasty's gone, now."

That did it.

For all her years spent creating emotional walls after her village was destroyed, for all the things she'd learned from Salem of shielding her emotions, for all the things she'd seen that had deadened her to everything around her, Aldric's one-liner broke her, and Cinder let the floodgates out, crying into his shoulder. She let out everything she'd felt since Mistral, every second of doubt, every instance of regret, every moment of sorrow, it all came screaming out as she practically fell limp against him, forcing him to hold her up as she cried. She didn't care if this was some kind of trick from Salem, or perhaps some hallucination right before her death, Aldric was back - her friend was here - and that was enough.

They stayed like this for so long Cinder didn't even bother trying to count it. Aldric merely held her and let her let it all out, and she soaked his shirt through to the bone. When she finally calmed down, when she finally regained herself and took a step back, actually properly tying the blanket around her.

Aldric, his hands on her shoulders, looked Cinder up and down before finally frowning, "hot damn, Hot Stuff." He said, a concerned look in his eyes. "What happened?"

One arm bundling the towel up and running it over the other, Cinder, shakily, said, "I... I could ask you the same thing." She said, turning her amber eyes up to Aldric's gunmetal gray. "How are you alive?"

Aldric grunted, "hm... Well that actually answers a couple things on my end... Though it does cause more questions." He said, calling his chair back to him and falling down into it. "Simple explanation: That car was a time machine."

Cinder stopped, and stared at Aldric, eyes wide and unblinking.

Aldric challenged her with an arced eyebrow, "I know you're not really that surprised, look around you."

"No..." Cinder caught herself, and brought the towel up to her hair. "I just..." How to put this? "Your hologram mentioned something about things in your bunker being able to alter time... But if I'm in the past..." She said, "presumably when you built this place... Then why did you heal me? Why am I not chained up, with a gun to my head?"

From its place, resting atop her healing pod, Aldric called the tablet he'd been watching while she recovered, and displayed it to her. She saw a still image of her battle with the Grimm.

"See, I don't play fair. I figured it may be useful to put a dash-cam in the car." He shrugged, "admittedly it was to have a literal picture to judge how badly I'm fucking up the timeline, but I digress. I watched the footage, Hot Stuff. I may not know everything that happened, but I have a basic idea." He leaned forward in his chair, "now, my turn. When I built Doc Brown, I set its time circuits to five minutes after I was done. The idea was if nothing showed up, I'd never use it... The keyword being I." He said, "I never intended - and I still don't intend - to let anyone in there but me, because of how dangerous it is. So, story time - how'd you get into it?" He asked, a frown forming on his face.

Cinder slowly lowered herself to a crate and sat down on it. "I had to activate Sephiroth." She said, causing Aldric to wince. "And that Grimm, he got in."

Aldric blinked, "Grimm?" He repeated, "fucking thing was a Grimm?"

She nodded, "could you not tell?"

"Lady, it's a dash-cam, not a multi-thousand dollar studio camera. I told you I have an idea of what was happening... If I knew everything, this encounter here would be going differently, I assure you." He deadpanned, "so keep going. He got in?"

Cinder nodded, "I needed a place to contain it, and more or less forced FILS to let us in."

Aldric grinned, "oh, Sheila, betraying me in the future, I see?" He asked, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling.

To which, the AI responded, "I can assure you, Mister Aldric, they must have been extenuating circumstances for me to have ignored your explicit instructions."

Aldric chuckled, "or you pulled a Hal Nine-thousand and found a loophole. Congratulations, bitch, I'm turning you into a can opener when we're done here."

"I'm sorry Aldric, I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

Aldric rolled his eyes and leaned back forward, "cheeky bot." He said, nodding to Cinder. "You were wearing an octo-camo mask that made you look like me. My best guess is she recognized the situation and used a few logic loopholes to let you in... And then you literally stumbled into a winning hand." He explained, "but let's step back a bit. If that thing really was a Grimm, then that Grimm looked human, but it clearly wasn't Salem, seemed more masculine."

Cinder nodded, and bit the bullet: "Salem realized that a human body without a soul results in an extremely powerful Grimm, after I stole the Winter Maiden's powers. So she located your corpse and returned you to life."

Aldric nodded, pursing his lips. "Not bad." He briefly looked away, narrow eyes glazing over for a moment, before he turned back to Cinder. "I die in the tower?"

She blinked, "how -"

"Not hard to guess." He said, "when the Vytal festival comes around you and I will need a way to kill Goud in a way that won't make Ozpin and everyone else come looking. But something will clearly go wrong..." He said, waving his hand in a 'go on' motion.

Cinder picked up, "our plan had been for Nikos to witness Goud's death... But it was Ruby instead." She said, causing Aldric to straighten up, a look of realization dawning on his face as he 'ah'ed. "She unlocked her powers, crippled me, and killed you."

Aldric hummed, "well, as I died there, let's say that's the start and go on from there. What happened between then and now? What made you turn against Salem so fucking bad that she sent Aldric Black after you?"

Cinder nodded, and cleared her throat. "After you died, Salem tasked the others to use information gathered after the Terran invasion to locate the other Maidens. After the Winter Maiden was found in Vacuo, I was sent to take her powers, as Salem believed such a thing would accelerate the healing process of the damage Ruby Rose had done to my soul." She explained, "I did so, but... Something happened. Winter began to turn into a Grimm, and she screamed, like nothing I've ever heard before. Salem killed her before anything could be done, and instructed me to move to Atlas, while the Master and his handler moved to Mistral to assist in the hunt for the final Maiden... We later theorized that what happened was, because I stole her powers, and because her powers were linked to her aura, and one's aura is intrinsically linked to their soul -"

Aldric snorted, stumbling Cinder. "You're an evil soul-stealing succubus." He shook his head, and waved her off. "So, you steal a human's soul, but leave the body biologically alive, and they become a Grimm."

Cinder nodded, hesitantly continuing. "The time it took me to journey to Atlas was time enough for Salem to find your corpse and revive you. She then sent your Grimm Self -"

"Aldric Black, please." Aldric stressed, "the 'my Grimm self' nonsense will get old fast."

Cinder would be lying if she said she didn't feel the tiniest bit of warmth in her chest, she didn't know just how much she'd missed him until she'd realized he was gone, and was having trouble accepting that it was back, even as she simultaneously also sank into the familiar sensation of being exasperated at Aldric's ceaseless interjections and referential humor.

"She... Then sent Aldric Black to Atlas, where he dealt with the Summer Maiden and her protector in short order." She began, "he used his lightsaber to decapitate the protector, and to cut off the limbs of the Maiden."

Aldric hummed, nodding. "Damn... Dude just killed the Batman." And at Cinder's confused expression, he elaborated. "There's a movie, where I'm from. The villain came up to a bunch of thugs and said he knew how to beat the hero, Batman. They asked how, and he said it's simple - you just kill him. They thought, and the movie implied, he was boasting, but he wasn't really." He nodded to the side, "to plug it into this situation, what do you think is easier? To fight a full-fledged Maiden in hand-to-hand combat, or to use a weapon that has consistently been proven to be so blisteringly powerful that it overwhelms and destroys aura with no trouble, to cut off her limbs and cripple her?"

Cinder let out a soft sigh of realization, nodding. "It's easier to kill someone than it is to fight them."

"It's why Neo scares the shit out of me, bitch learned that lesson a while ago. As much as I may technically be stronger than her, I genuinely wonder if I'd ever really win against her if we were trying to kill each other." He continued, before waving his hand at her. "So, he crippled a Maiden and you took her powers."

"Yes... After that, it, the Master, Arthur, and I all made for Mistral, and the final Maiden. It knew the final Maiden's identity, citing that Ozpin had told you, and it could remember." She saw the question forming behind Aldric's cybernetic eyes, and headed him off. "It explained that it could only remember the things you had done and said, but not your thoughts or intentions." She explained, "and... Everything you'd ever done painted one picture."

Aldric looked torn between sighing and laughing. "By all accounts, I appear completely loyal to Salem." He shook his head, "well I'll be go to hell." He murmured, looking away.

Cinder gave him a moment, before she went on. "Our encounter with the Spring Maiden went the same as the first... But it attracted her to us by breaking the necks of everyone in her camp. It explained that the most efficient way to defeat her was to make her angry, and sloppy. I took her powers and, now possessing all four Maidens' abilities, we continued to Mistral. There, Aldric Black interrupted my initial plan of starting a great fire to distract the local forces, instead using something it called the Hammer of Dawn to flatten half the city and blow open its defensive walls. Grimm came pouring in, and all of us assaulted Haven Academy... But their headmaster, Professor Dorn had set up a trap: Almost every single Huntsman in Mistral, as well as Qrow Branwen, Ruby Rose and her team, and Pyrrha Nikos and her team, were all there, waiting to ambush us.

"And they, alongside the two surviving Masters, all attacked us as one."

Aldric blinked, "two?"

Right... She nodded, "the third... You called him Thor." She explained, "he betrayed us prematurely. After the conflict between Earth and Remnant, the Terrans demanded either the names and locations of the Maidens, or the Relics they were linked to. Ozpin was forced to give up Fall's relic, due to she herself being..." She trailed off.

"Wait, Thor? As in -"

"Yes." Cinder nodded, "he had the hammer. He killed Mercury with it, and nearly killed us too, but the two of us took him down, after you used all of your magic to replicate some titanic attack... So large and so powerful that it gave you a heart attack..." She felt her heart skip a beat, as she wondered if she should tell him the truth.

But she realized that she was too scared to - losing him again, she couldn't risk it. "I revived you, and we finished him off, and obtained the Relic."

Aldric leaned back, "shit." He grunted, with a deep sigh.

Ignoring the sinking feeling in her chest, Cinder moved on. "Moving back to Mistral..." Cinder took a steadying breath, "the Masters killed Hazel, Arthur, and Tyrian, and then attacked Aldric Black. It blasted me into Haven's vault and kept anyone from following me. I don't know how the battle went... But I do know that of everyone there, the only one I ever saw afterwards was Jaune Arc." She said, dropping the hammer.

It had the expected effect, Aldric's eyes went wide, and his shoulders slack, as he let out a long, hollow breath. "Oh." He murmured, "oh..." A brief frown, as a thought flickered to the surface. "Jaune?"

"You gave him a sword that could smite Grimm... And he rose to the occasion."

Aldric nodded, but that didn't change his stunned, defeated expression. "Fuck." He breathed, digesting this for several moments, "he killed... Everyone?" He said, "including the two Masters? How the hell does one Grimm do that?"

Cinder gulped, "it had all of your power, Aldric, and none of your reservations."

Aldric frowned, "how?" He asked, "what power? My magic? My semblance?" She nodded, "my semblance? How?! Aren't semblances tied to our souls? How can it have a semblance - my semblance - if it didn't have my soul?" He demanded, briefly looking away as he tried to piece the puzzle together.

Cinder shrugged, "all Salem said to me was that she found your soul, and tore it apart, fragmenting it, taking only your power and none of your humanity."

Aldric snorted, "that makes no fucking sense..."

Cinder was about to move on, but she realized she recognized the look in Aldric's eye: He had his own idea.

"As opposed to?" Cinder prodded, wondering what conclusion he would reach.

But Aldric shook his head, "it's the problem with magic. Literally any explanation can be true... Because magic. I have my own fears for how it worked, but..." He sighed, "Ozpin put it best: Magic works the way you think it does. So for someone like him, magic is an elemental force of nature. For someone like you, it's a ticket to raw power. For someone like me, it's a doorway to scientific theory... Aaaaand worlds that exist only in fiction. That's because, in order, Ozpin grew up and was trained in an age long before science existed, so his instinct is to go back to mimicking what he sees in front of him, you want power over everything in front of you, so you use it to empower yourself and create weapons with which to fight, and I think of things with a post-enlightenment approach, and because I'm a god damn geek who, let's face it, probably has an unhealthy obsession with stories and shit." He shrugged, "but Salem... She lives in a different world. One of Grimm, of demons, of dark secrets and ancient wars. Who knows what she thinks magic is?" He asked, "so what she told you could just as easily be exactly what she did, or just a simplified explanation of it." He sighed, "I'll worry about it later, you have a story to finish."

Cinder gave him a look, she could see a well hidden sliver of fear in his eyes, but she knew him well enough now to know that if he didn't want her to know something, he wouldn't tell her.

So, she continued, "it killed everyone in Haven." She explained, "and, while that happened, I had my epiphany. I realized that Salem had plucked four random people from another world, and we had expected them all to have such evil in their hearts as to be willing to commit borderline genocide... I realized that such a thing would be equivalent to dropping four Humans from Remnant, onto Earth, and expecting them to work to destroy the world. I realized that if three Masters had betrayed us by playing a role, by pretending to be on our side, to play their cards to the chest until they felt they could no longer... Then that meant the fourth could as well." She said, causing the fear in Aldric's eyes to melt away, being replaced with curiosity, as a stern frown settled on his face, and a single eyebrow creased his forehead. "And thinking that, suddenly everything, from the moment we picked you up in the forest, to your supposed sojourn with Neo, to your intention to reveal yourself to Ozpin, to your very mannerisms, they all made sense, when viewed from one important angle: The best way to hide a secret -"

"Is to shove it under someone's nose and wait." Aldric sighed, "my literal worst fear is playing out before my eyes."

Cinder gulped, "I swear to you, Aldric, I'm not against you now." She pleaded, "when all the pieces fell into place, when all of my doubts in Salem ever since Winter turned into a Grimm found solid footing... I changed, Aldric - you changed me." She urged, "I realized that what I was doing... Who I was doing it for was wrong. If you truly were working subversively against us, I knew that I couldn't continue doing it any more... That I'd have to change."

"You're talking future-tense, there."

Cinder nodded, "I just needed proof, beyond the shadow of a doubt... And that came from the Relic of Knowledge." She almost instinctively reached for her hip, before realizing that very relic was in her coat, in the future. "I summoned the spirit within the relic - Jinn - by speaking her name... She is capable of answering three questions every hundred years, and she told me she had two remaining."

"A genie in a bottle." Aldric nodded, pursing his lips. "Okay."

"I asked her if you were truly loyal to Salem, and she said no... That you were loyal to no one - not Salem, or Ozpin, or Earth, or even yourself... That you were only loyal to an idea... To a goal, to -"

"Okay!" Aldric cut her off, suddenly. "You don't need to finish that."

Cinder blinked, briefly taken aback, until she realized that Aldric was pale. It dawned on her that Jinn may have known things that he himself didn't - that even the half of the answer Cinder had just given him had rocked him to the core with information he either didn't have or didn't want to have. She was, of all things, reminded of when she asked if he would try to take his father's hammer with them, and he'd simply said he didn't want 'that question' answered.

"After that... I asked her what your contingency plans were after death... And her answer brought me here, and led to the final days." Cinder explained, "I activated Sephiroth, and everyone answered."

Aldric gulped, "where was Ozpin during this?" He asked, "had he even come back, yet?"

She nodded, "he... I encountered him when I went to recover your things. The shield that Aldric Black had broken, and your lightsaber - the blue one." She said, deciding to drop this hammer next. "Aldric, you can't trust him."

Aldric stared at her.

"Yeah?" He grunted, "and?"

She blinked.

"You're not surprised?"

Aldric scoffed, "hell no!" He declared, "lady, I've been worried about what he hasn't been telling me since day-damn-one. He mentioned once that he can read minds, and ever since then -" He pulled out a small silver cylinder from his belt, and hit a button, it extending to half a foot in length with a light 'click' and the sound of metal sliding against metal. "- I've been wiping my mind of the real bad stuff. For fuck's sake, I literally intend to wipe my mind of everything I've seen and done in here after I'm done, because I don't want him to know about any of it. At this point it's a game between him and I - if he mentions it, he reveals he's been reading my mind against my will, and I have reason not to trust him. If he doesn't, we keep playing under the understanding that I'm not working against him, I'm just scared of him." He shrank down and stuffed the cylinder back in his belt. "I genuinely worry sometimes about if he's not just feeding me bullshit because he's read my mind and knows what to say, and how to say it, such that I'll believe it... To the point where I'd only be marginally surprised if his story about being from Earth wasn't even true to begin with."

Cinder found herself stunned into silence at the sheer scope of Aldric's operation. Every time she thought she had seen his limits, he showed her the ceiling was much higher than she realized.

"So what did he say to you?" Aldric asked, steering things back on track.

But Cinder had a more pressing question, "why are you being so open?" She asked, "your life is based on your secrets, and here I show up half dead in your most secret place and you're just... Telling me things. Why?" She asked, before she realized she knew why: "Don't tell me it was your plan." She leaned back, shaking her head. "That you knew you'd die at Beacon, that you knew someone would come back and -"

Aldric burst out laughing, silencing the multi-Maiden.

"How fucking Batman do you think I am, Hot Stuff?" Aldric guffawed, "hell no! I'm not that good! I can tell you right now I didn't plan any of this! You showing up here was an absolute surprise, completely out of left field. I'm pretty sure I told you, I set up the time machine to show up five minutes after I finished putting everything in it - my idea was, IF I used it in the future, then the best place to come back would be right here, right now, but the operative word is If! I didn't expect to see anything, let alone you, one foot in the grave, screaming like you're goddamn X-Twenty Three!

"And as for why I'm trusting you, well, I'll put it to you this way -" And Cinder felt something dig against her back; she whirled around and saw one of Aldric's bolters, hovering in midair, pointed right at her. "- my little stunt in the Garden, when I dug your lightsaber against your back? That was me testing if a surprise decapitating strike would work in the first place, and then, like now, you had no fucking idea I had a weapon on you... And since by this point it's probably obvious to you, this isn't the only one I have at this very moment."

Cinder frowned, and turned back to him, "the Maiden Contingency?" What had FILS said it was? "The... Life Eater virus?"

"Among other things." Aldric responded, "unlike you, I know what to expect, and unlike you, I know how to survive whatever it is I've got cooked up." He leaned forward, "I'm being so open because you haven't convinced me not to kill you when this is all done... And either A: I'll kill you when it's done, so why bother keeping everything to my chest? Or B: I'll believe you, and by necessity we'll have to exchange information to make sure the last leg of our game goes in our favor. " He finally revealed, causing Cinder's throat to go dry, and her heart to speed up.

Right... She thought, knowing she'd let her hopes go up too soon. Of course Aldric was just testing her, he had no reason beyond her word to trust her. "Then why heal me?" She prodded.

"Pragmatism." Aldric responded, "I'd get the same information, faster, if I don't have to deal with you coughing and wheezing every few seconds due to pain. Now talk."He demanded, "what did Ozpin say?"

Cinder gulped, "he tried to convince me that you were still alive... In the same way that he remains alive after death. That Salem was able to pluck your soul from the in-between and steal from it everything but its basest instincts to create Aldric Black." She explained, feeling the hairs on her neck stand up now that she knew there was a gun to it. "He tried to convince me that you had tried rebuilding yourself a body, from the atomic level, before she had torn your soul apart, and that, lacking the strength to do anything else, you then passed on, obeyed the rules like he did... And transferred yourself to the last person in your thoughts." She nodded her head to the side, an apologetic grin on her face.

Aldric's face tensed up, Cinder realizing that he was trying to suppress a grin. "You think it was you?" He waved his hand at her, "you're -"

"He said that the gender requirement was something he himself created... That you and he had no such limitations."

"And you still think you were the last person in my thoughts?"

She blinked, "do you think otherwise?"

Aldric nodded, "I know otherwise. You gave me the piece I need to know so confidently - Jaune." He said, "you told me that I gave him a sword that could smite Grimm... I literally intend to give out the Master Sword after I go back to Vale, and just see who can wield it. Two and two together, it chose him, and works like I'd hoped it will. That means he would be my Plan B, and if I was dying underneath Beacon, I wouldn't be thinking about you, I'd be praying that Plan B would pan out... That he'd find and would get one shot at Salem, so he could kill her, or seal her up in the sword, or something." He explained, "I can't guarantee it, of course, but I hate to break it to you, I'm almost certain you weren't the last person in my thoughts."

Cinder briefly broke eye contact, humming in thought, and trying to identify the stabbing feeling she felt in her chest. "I see..." She murmured, "well... I didn't believe him anyways. The things he used as proof, I realized could be rationalized away remarkably easy. When he told me he intended to merge our souls, I realized what he was after: He wanted his power back, so he could fight Aldric Black."

Aldric's frown deepened, and he sighed. "Okay." He said, "then?"

"I put the mask on... The idea being that people would trust your face before they would mine... And armed with your sword and your shield, I went to Cerise to face Aldric Black... The battle of which, led to here."

"Did Jaune survive?"

"No." She responded, "when we realized we had an advantage over it when we used numerical superiority to keep it off balance and to wreck its focus, it pulled fragments of the moon out of orbit and killed Jaune and Adam Taurus... It nearly killed me, and went on to kill Ozpin, before entering Cerise - thinking I was inside." She explained, "then I... Hallucinated, my unconscious mind trying to wake me up before I burned to death in the fires. Then I engaged it one last time, and... Now I am here." She finished.

"Hm..." Aldric grunted, his eyes locked to her, but glazed over in thought.

Cinder waited, her breath catching in her chest as she knew Aldric was judging her life.

Aldric was silent for a long time, staring at her, before he finally grunted. "And then you just... Happened... To give away those forks." He said. "Just... Happened to hop in the car in the middle of combat... All conveniently after making a giant change of heart you've almost literally told and showed me you're incapable of." Cinder's blood began to run even colder than it already was. "You're good, Cinder. Real good." Aldric said, "but as long as I'm around, you'll always be second best, see?" He leaned forward, face melting into one of cold fury. "You can improvise about as well as I can, but you failed to account for one... Critical fucking detail." He said, pulling a small wooden box out of his coat, and cracking it open.

Cinder frowned in confusion as she saw seven ancient-looking, two-pronged forks sitting nestled atop a felt cover, she looked up from them to Aldric, confused.

"You know what these are." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. "To make a long explanation shorter, these make people immune to changes in time." Aldric explained, "and I specifically chose the DeLorean because, when time is changed using it as a vector, the timeline it's changing ceases to exist, instead replaced by the new one the time traveler is creating... To wit: It obliterates timelines, and if you don't have this, when changes are made, you cease to exist too.

"There are supposed to be twelve of them." Aldric growled.

Cinder began to grow pale, as the implication dawned on her, but before she could speak, Aldric continued.

"You know what I think?" He asked, his voice thundering in her ears, despite how quiet he was growing. "I think we were in the endgame. I think that you and I were fighting in Salem's Domain. I think we won, that Salem died, and you, in desperation, found a way to undo it... Because to make me hurt like I no doubt hurt you, you decided to hunt down my mother, and kill her before she could pull out the little bag of tricks I'm going to give her. You got curious and looked at it yourself, and saw the breadcrumb trail I left in your timeline, and will leave in mine, and saw dollar signs.

"Then, after you went looking, someone informed me of my mother's death. Knowing what you're capable of when you're determined, I realized what could happen and rushed here. I found you breaking into the Batcave and we fought. That fight spilled out into Doc Brown's vault... And then, into the past." Aldric threw one of the forks to her, and she caught it, briefly looking at it, before looking up to him, and realizing it had been a distraction - as now a small device was nestled into his palm. "And I'm willing to bet that those forks... That you didn't know what they were. That you threw them at me to distract me for that second you'd need to break the clamps, hit the gas, and shoot yourself back into time..." She felt his grip tighten. "And I'm willing to bet I'm still standing there, literally waiting for me to do this -" And he clenched his hand, pressing down on the lever with a metallic 'click'.

The floor beneath them briefly trembled, and the lights flickered, a distant clap of thunder rolled through the walls, and Cinder realized just what he'd done.

Face draining of all color, eyes growing wide, and heart beginning to hammer in her chest, Cinder realized that Aldric was under the impression that he was still standing there in the future, the forks she'd thrown recovered and protecting him from changes to time. That all he had to do to not only get backup, but what in his eyes was a more reliable source of information, was to force a change so drastic that it would obliterate the timeline she'd come from, and force that future Aldric to come back.

Like, by blowing up the time machine before it could ever be used.

But he didn't know - or rather, as Ozpin had said, he so fervently disbelieved the mere notion that Cinder could have truly changed, that he didn't believe her. He didn't believe that he'd been brought back to life, he didn't believe that this Grimm Aldric, the creature he'd dubbed 'Aldric Black', that it even existed in the first place - or, would exist, as the case may be, and perhaps worst of all, because of this, he didn't believe that it would be it that was brought back, and not him.

But, somewhere in those gunmetal grey eyes, Cinder thought she could see something. As Aldric looked into her amber orbs and beheld the fear and terror that filled them, she thought that, just at the edge, she could see some small hesitation, the tiniest whisper of a doubt, a question entering his mind, a prayer, a hope, that he was right, buried underneath a mask of tranquil fury.

But he wasn't.

"Alarm!" Came a shrill female voice, broadcasting throughout the bunker. "Grimm presence detected! This is not a drill!"

And with it, the ground shook.

Aldric blinked.