I Am Dark Matter | Your Road to Ruin
Blake Belladonna was reticent about her involvement in her involvement in the War of the White Witch for one major reason: She, unlike all of her friends, had been forced to live with its aftermath every single day after it.
The way the doctors said it, nothing they could have done could save her - only numb the pain, though that had been a platitude for her friends: She'd been so deeply unconscious that she couldn't have even felt the pain anymore. Every one of her ribs had been broken, some more than once, one of her lungs had been perforated, her spine had been severed from the chest down and cracked right at the base of her neck, one femur had suffered an open fracture while the other had somehow been twisted around a full three hundred and sixty degrees. Her liver had practically burst open, and she'd managed to lose so much blood that her heart couldn't beat properly, and her blood pressure was so low she literally could not regain consciousness.
It was an absolute miracle she'd survived as long as she had, and the Doctors had outright told her and her friends that she could have died any minute. Them operating on her would only have killed her faster.
Then Qrow came in, and Yang, Weiss, Yang's father, and JNPR somehow managed to get into a brawl with the doctors, nurses, and security staff as Qrow tried to feed her the medicine the Terran had left behind to undo the damage. Said doctors, nurses, and security staff then witnessed a miracle, as two seconds later, Blake was cured of all ailments and already waking up - as it turned out, whatever medicine the Terran had left behind also purged toxins and foreign chemicals from the system, of which other medicines technically counted.
The problem?
The problem was that she was only cured of physical maladies. Physical injuries.
Not a damn thing had been done to the mental scars left behind.
Even if it had turned out she was wrong, that the Terran's Hail-Mary worked, she had still believed at the time she'd failed to protect her partner, her leader, and her friend. Besides that, she still viscerally remembered the battle and the fall - she relived it every night she went to bed.
Maybe if that was all, she could have recovered. Maybe she could have healed after seeing it all work out.
But it wasn't all - then the Terran did what he did, and left everyone else to suffer the aftermath.
Blake also remembered the times she'd witnessed the Terran meet Adam, and those meetings took on such a different undertone now. When he'd shaken Adam's hand, had he given him something? When he knighted the man, was that some kind of message? She didn't know - and that tortured her as much as the nightmares of falling forever and hitting everything on the way down did. Worse was that when Adam clearly began to grab power in Menagerie, Blake had to put herself next to him, constantly, to try and reign him in - to try and counterbalance him.
Everyone else got to run away - everyone else got to go and separate themselves from the aftermath of the Terran. To bury it, to deal with it, to heal from it, whatever they did.
But Blake had to live with it every single day, when all she wanted to do was to not think about it.
This weighed on her, it drained her, it dragged on her, constantly, every day - and she had to balance this titanic load with also trying to be the voice of reason to a Faunus whose hatred of humans was matched only by his cunning in pursuing a war with them. She knew what Adam was doing - she knew how he was portraying himself to their people worldwide, how he was going about galvanizing them. She knew that every word she said against him was alienating her in their eyes, and there was nothing she could do about it! She was forced to watch and preside over his ascent to global power and inevitable declaration of war - and he was so cunning that when he finally did declare war, not only was he nearly universally supported by their people, but even many Humans supported him! They saw him as in the right, but they had no idea that he'd been playing the world like chess pieces! He was moving everything into place just to feed the ravenous hunger his hatred had created.
Worse, was that when she broke off from him, because of how messianic he was to their people, the number of people she was able to convince of his lunacy, of his evil nature, was hardly enough to make a difference, and as such all she could do was struggle and watch as the war he wanted happened, and her people and the humans just murdered each other in droves.
Her only ray of hope, Ruby's call to action, she seized immediately.
But Adam was just too strong - too prepared. He'd gone into that battle ready to face the Terran, the eight of them were nothing in comparison.
Worst of all, was that the Terran did show up, and he didn't just stop Adam.
He killed.
Everyone.
Humans, Faunus, Grimm - everyone fighting at Mistral, no one was safe. She knew and understood the twisted logic he was operating under - if he just killed enough people, neither side could keep fighting and a ceasefire would have to be pushed through. So he just killed, and killed, and killed, until he couldn't swing the hammer anymore - and then he killed some more!
And it worked!
And again - unlike her friends, who could return to their old lives, she had to live in the immediate aftermath and direct shadow of all of it! She couldn't just leave her people to fend for themselves - she had to help them! She had to take her old place in the Fang and play Adam's game - manipulate her people with her image of being sympathetic to Humans! She had to use that image and her reputation with them to convince her people there was no one better to debate the terms of the end of the war!
Everyone else - even the damn Terran - got to end things after Salem, but she had to keep playing the game! She could never stop!
And somehow, someway, it managed to get even. Fucking. Worse.
Ruby Rose didn't have many regrets in her life - but the ones she did have motivated her as much as they did eat away at her on the daily, and they all centered around one period of her life. Miniscule when compared to what came before and after, it still had the greatest impact on her and indeed the entire world - two of them, even! - and thus her thoughts and motivations always fell back to then. All of her 'what ifs' and 'if only's' really centered around that one period - the period everyone else had begun to call 'The War of the White Witch.'
What if she'd noticed the weight on Goud Etiolate's shoulders? What if she'd been able to bring him out of the dark before his path was irreversible? What if she'd had the mental fortitude to seek him out like Pyrrha and her sister had?
Endless questions, all centering around the greatest regret of her life: That she'd never even had the faintest whisper of an idea of what Nebo Aldric was putting himself through for sake of literally everyone. It was these regrets that pushed her to live the life she was after the war had ended and Aldric had burned himself with the Relics. He sought solitude, so she picked up his torch - trying, in her own way, to make the world so bright that maybe some of it would find its way to him.
For almost a decade, she thought she'd done well - and in a way, she had. Every single person she helped was one life improved, one person made happier - and the value of that couldn't be understated! All of that was worth it - but it either hadn't been enough, or it had been too much effort focused on the wrong problems, and when other, bigger problems finally reared their head, she, her team, her friends - the world, even - had found themselves inadequate to face it.
So she made the hardest choice of her life - a choice she knew paled in comparison to any of the ones her friend had made - and called him, in effect: Adding to the list of her regrets what she thought at the time was possibly the greatest of them all.
She knew now that it wasn't just possible - it outright was her greatest regret. If she could change absolutely anything in her life, she never would have made that call.
She wasn't conscious for when that tortured soul made landfall, when he saved RWBY and JNPR alike from Adam's blade, nor was she conscious for his intervention at Mistral.
For the briefest of times after she woke up and left the hospital, when nothing had happened and instead the war was over, Ruby thought that maybe things would turn out okay. Maybe nothing bad would happen - maybe she could even go out and find her friend and apologize to him herself!
But that wouldn't be - she would learn that this 'peace' wasn't an omen of good fortune, but rather just the calm before the storm. The first hint that something bad may be coming was when Pyrrha started refusing her calls, and Yang said something about running into a reporter while she'd been on a bender in Vale. For the former, Ruby had rationalized it as Pyrrha being the only one of them to actually see their old friend in action - and if the sound of his voice on that phone call had been any indication, she knew he couldn't have looked good, so she gave Pyrrha her space. Yang was even easier - she was a quarter of the famous Team RWBY, and was now being hailed as one of the most vital parts in the defeat of Adam Taurus! Of course reporters would start hunting her down - Ruby actually attributed a good portion of her mastery of her semblance in casual situations to dodging reporters!
But then, a couple months after one of Remnant's greatest heroes made his brief return to the world stage, Ruby got a text from Weiss in RWBY's group chat.
"All of you go home. Don't talk to anyone. I'm hiring lawyers for all of us."
She didn't understand it at first, until Yang responded with a succinct, "Holy shit she did it!" And a link to a news article from VNN.
The headline: Blogger finds evidence of Hero of Vale's survival, sheds light on worldwide conspiracy.
She didn't even need to read the article to know what it was talking about, which was good, because her hands had begun to shake so bad that she couldn't even read the scroll to begin with. Someone, somehow, had exposed his entire story, all the lies that all of them had told to keep him a secret, it was all out there - and if the Vale News Network had reported it, that meant people were believing it, had found ways to determine its legitimacy.
She tried calling him - she did! She wanted to warn him about the storm coming his way, but the calls never went through. Either he'd turned it off, or he'd broken it, or he'd stopped charging it. She'd even tried calling Pyrrha to get his location so she could find him herself, but Pyrrha still wouldn't answer - and it didn't take Ruby long to learn why. The Invincible Girl had been blackmailed into talking about him - she felt responsible for this! The only other soul sympathetic to his was Ozma, but he was already in damage control, unable to give her any time to say what she already knew: The masquerade had been broken and he was now a known quantity to the world.
All they could do was bunker down.
So that was what Ruby did - for four days she stayed with her father and sister - the latter of whom had been literally dragged home by their uncle, before the man summarily left again under the auspices of 'Ozma's orders.'
The only word she got in the form of any kind of update was just another text from Weiss - though it was nothing but an apology.
For what, Ruby didn't learn until the end of the fifth day, while watching the news.
Lie and Nora Ren had done a remarkable job of avoiding their fame over the last near-decade. After the celebrations at Beacon and their brief stint operating with their team before everyone broke apart, the two of them were nomadic for a time - they let their feet decide where they were going. They did this both to get some distance and privacy to define terms between themselves over their growing attraction with each other, but also to separate themselves from the pit RWBY and JNPR had sunken into - all surrounding one man, whose name was mud between them.
Though he was never really spoken about, the shadow of 'that man' hung over both teams constantly. Every single one of them had, in some way, been affected by them - from the subtle, like Weiss' growing need for structure, to the obvious, like Jaune's identity crisis and Blake's intimate brush with death. It had just become too much, and the two had decided they wanted to get away from that - so, when the time came, they took to wandering, to spending time with each other.
This period lasted for about a year, until they found they'd returned to a home they had used to share a lifetime ago. Excising those demons together had both cemented their fondness for each other and, both metaphorically and literally, opened themselves up to the possibility of healing. They each found their wanderlust had been sated - that with the burying of their shared traumas, they were no longer weighed down by their pasts. It affected them, it influenced them, but it didn't control them.
Their decision was unique among their friends. Where Ruby (and, later, her sister) became a nomadic Huntress, they settled down in Mistral. Where Blake, Weiss, and Pyrrha found themselves places in which they could influence the world and protect the people in their own ways, Ren took up a teaching position in Haven, and Nora put her particularly explosive talents and tendencies to work clearing out the Grimm hordes surrounding the mountainous kingdom alongside Mistral's other aura-using populace.
Where everyone else was still haunted by that man and everything he'd done, the two of them helped each other to heal and to move on.
For a time, it was perfect.
Then Blake's efforts to 'tame' Adam Taurus failed, and he began his war.
The two had actually had a long discussion about whether or not they would fight in this war, and it was one of the only times in their shared life where his name was spoken freely - for this war was, though perhaps not directly, his doing. Did they, in effect, want to risk and potentially spend their lives putting out his fires? Did they want to fix his mistakes, suffer his consequences, and pay for his decisions?
They ended up deciding that, no - they didn't. To be specific, they didn't want to go and seek out these things - if it came to them, if it directly became their problem, then they would defend their new home, their new friends, and Ren's students, but otherwise they'd refuse the fighting.
Theirs wasn't a popular choice, and in the end it was rendered moot when the White Fang made it to Mistral and began fighting to tear it apart. The two had reunited with their old teammates for the first time in many years during this period of battle - out of chance, pragmatism, and the effect on morale that would be had when people saw the Team JNPR reunite for war.
Fighting Grimm hordes under Salem's castle was one thing, but fighting intelligent people was a completely different one, and neither of them were fully proud of all the things they'd seen and done during this time. Worse was that the pit they had specifically left their team to avoid, hadn't been erased in their absence - both Jaune and Pyrrha both still carried that man's ghost with them. Jaune in a metaphorical sense, with how hard he fought and how often he threw himself into danger - ever trying to prove to himself that his strength was his and not what that man had imparted onto him during Beacon; and Pyrrha in a rather literal sense - the shield, Old Glory, meticulously cleaned and constantly maintained, used with as much if not more skill than its original owner had displayed.
But Lie and Nora Ren did as they'd always done - and when he was brought up, they didn't join the conversation. Where, years ago, it had been out of denial, now it was out of exhaustion - let those ghosts rest. The only way to heal was to move on, and they'd done so.
The closest they came to dying in that war was when Ruby had sounded her clarion and assembled RWBY and JNPR together for the first time in over a half decade. Ren was suspicious of the timing and the location - and his suspicions were confirmed twice, once when Adam Taurus arrived, and later, after waking up in the hospital with his stomach stitched together and some of his intestines more mechanical than he'd remembered, after seeing on the news how lightning-fast the situation had changed in Mistral.
But, as Ren confessed to his wife on the airship home, he couldn't say he was surprised. That man's return was as explosive as it was inevitable - the only thing that could be done was to do as they'd done before: Pick up the pieces, and fix how he'd fixed the problem.
That was what they'd done after returning home - and so focused on it were they that they didn't even really pay attention to the initial news cycles. Ren had never been one to care about public opinion, and Nora had always been the type that others opinions would just bounce off of her, so the dirty and sometimes even outright accusatory looks they got just went unnoticed as they helped in the rebuilding and occasional Grimm slaying.
It was only when they settled in for lunch one day at their home, and turned on the news, did they learn what had happened - and the results of said happening.
As the local news displayed the feed from Atlas, Nora looked to her husband as she always did.
He turned the television off.
Jaune Arc had actually been a follower of Rosemary Ashmore - for a while, at least. Once she'd gone from her quaint scroll-camera picture of old abandoned Human settlements to high-tech drones she couldn't afford, he'd stopped reading her week to week, she'd just lost something in that transition. But he still got emails whenever she published things, and so when he got a notification one day that read, in all caps, 'THE PEN AND THE SWORD - AN ALIEN'S RECORD,' he got a little curious and opened it up, wondering if she'd gone so far as to give up the journalism game and going into writing. There he became the first of his friends - indeed one of the first on Remnant - to discover that the game was up, and the whole ruse they'd created was going to come crashing down.
Reading it, he realized he'd never really had words for what he thought about himself after the 'War of the White Witch.' Not until, ironically, the very source of his own self doubt provided them to him.
Jaune hated the fact that at least half of what he was - half of his skill in combat, his instincts, everything - was him. Jaune loathed that his 'legend' had grown from a magical sword that he had given to him for use in case he failed. Worse was that there was nothing he could ever do about it - all the training in the world from all the other Huntsmen and Huntresses wouldn't get rid of the fact that they were building on foundations he had lain. He couldn't get rid of that, he couldn't undo it, the only way he could defy it was to retire - and he couldn't do that either because that would make him no better than the person he hated so much. So, unable to act without the memory of that man guiding his arms, unable to sit down for fear of just washing his hands of everything like that man had done, and even unable to be with his friends for the memories they stirred up in him, Jaune was forced to just keep stumbling forward through life, aimlessly wandering, killing Grimm, saving lives, and shrugging off their praise - for they weren't praising him, not really. If he'd saved their lives, they were in reality praising that man's training of Jaune. If they were praising his actions during the War of the White Witch, they were praising the lie they'd built to cover up the reality of said war.
Jaune's life was, effectively: Not. His.
That man had masterfully stolen it without even doing him the courtesy of ending it.
And Jaune hated that.
So, when everything hit the mainstream news and everyone really started picking up on it, he initially chose to retreat to his old home - he'd even called his mother and arranged things. They were out of the way enough that people would have to really work to find him.
This changed, when, as he was finishing packing his things, he saw the news on the television - more specifically, who was on the news, and what was being said about them.
He had been waiting for this day to come - ever since Rosemary Ashmore's investigation began to take off, to hit the news, the Man of Many Lives had been waiting for what was about to happen.
Standing in his office at the top of the rebuilt and repaired Beacon Tower, the man who answered to a name he hadn't used in thousands of lifetimes, stood in front of one of the great looming windows that encircled the entire floor, peering out - seeing the Atlesian Flagship parked in Valean airspace, and the bullheads and shuttlecraft descending out of it. He knew who was in it, who was coming, and he knew what the man would want. He knew how he would go about demanding it, he knew all these things because he'd prepared for this eventuality the moment Nebo Aldric had let him live, and had known for certain this day would come ever since that foolish woman pulled the rabbit out of the hat for nothing but vanity.
Beacon's headmaster, a man who was effectively immortal, felt morose, eyes trailing the shuttlecraft as they landed on Beacon's docks - and before the engines had even cooled down, General James Ironwood stormed out of his personal shuttle, flanked on both sides by several Atlesian Huntsmen, all walking in formation and moving as quickly as they could to keep up with the irate General.
All that work. Ozma sighed, all those lies... Undone by one woman's search for fame and fortune. For pride and vanity.
The world's reaction had been expected: In the first few days, there was nothing. But as those few people that actually subscribed to that foolish woman's website read her work and shared it, its exposure grew until it was exponential. News agencies began reporting on it, initially from the stance of skepticism - after all, everything she wrote, everything she recorded, and especially everything Aldric wrote, seemed like fiction! Like the entertained ravings of a madman!
But then the investigations started. The footage and pictures were independently verified as genuine, not doctored. The audio recordings were matched to the huntresses - and the Master - they were purported to have been sourced from. When they were confronted, Yang Xiao Long enthusiastically confirmed what she'd said, whereas Pyrrha Nikos damned herself though refusal to comment, and though he was in intensive care, it was only a matter of time before Adam Taurus was interrogated over this. Obviously, Aldric himself couldn't be reached - though Ozma had no idea how Ashmore had even found him, he was certain that of everyone alive on Remnant today, only he, Nikos, and Ashmore knew where he was. It was a worrying prospect that Ashmore may reveal his location - especially with how much she was drinking up public exposure, like a parched man would take water - but Ozma was reasonably confident she wouldn't. He had untold millennia of learning how to read people, and he could tell that she was simultaneously enjoying the public exposure because she wanted it, but also because she was scared of Aldric and those he was connected to, and believed that public exposure was her best defense against being abducted in the night.
Not like that would stop Torchwick. Ozma thought, as he lost sight of Ironwood, the latter reaching the base of the tower and stomping inside. Ozma thought he could almost feel the man's footsteps from several dozen stories down. I wonder if he's already secured himself a lifeline? Aldric's 'Record' had fingered him just as much as it had the then-Ozpin and now-Ozma. It wouldn't surprise Ozma if he'd somehow bought and sold Ashmore already - she seemed greedy enough to take that devil's bargain.
"Professor -"
"Send him in." Ozma interrupted the secretary, and a moment later he could hear the elevator begin to whine.
That Aldric himself had allowed Ashmore to do what she'd done, and had even helped her, actually surprised Ozma. For all he truly believed in the genuity of Aldric, had Ozma been asked, he would have said he'd expect Aldric to just kill Ashmore, or do something to eliminate her as a threat. But to hear Aldric answer her questions, to hear him say he was going to 'let the world happen to him,' it tore at Ozma's heart. All that he and his former wife had done to that boy, he wished he had taken what Nikos had no doubt offered him as much as he wished Nikos would have refused to accept 'no' as an answer.
He understood, of course, but now they were all reaping what they'd sown - Aldric included.
Ozma couldn't even ask if Aldric had known what would happen as a result of his actions - Aldric had outright predicted everything that had happened thus far and Ozma had no reason to assume that which had not yet come to pass, wouldn't. Aldric had known exactly what he was doing - and that was what his guest was going to levy against him.
But unlike Ironwood, Ozma didn't see it as malicious - he saw it as dolorous. He saw a broken man - a broken boy! All this had happened to Aldric before he'd even turned twenty! - who just couldn't summon the energy to care anymore. There remained only three people alive who could ignite that fire back in him before he could tend it himself - one of whom he'd dealt with the absolute instant he'd been asked to. That Ruby Rose had a means of contacting him didn't fully surprise Ozma, but it did -
He was pulled from his thoughts by the light 'ding' of his elevator, and he turned to see Ironwood stomping over towards him, arms swinging, face set in fury. The years in between Salem and now had not been kind to him - he looked like he'd aged decades, even with the advanced cybernetics that accounted for nearly three quarters of his body.
"Did you read it?!" Ironwood demanded, shouting across the office as his boots hammered on the ground.
"I did." Ozma said, neutrally, turning to face Ironwood and allowing the General to come to him. "And I disagree with your assessment -"
"How can you?!" Ironwood cut him off, "He said it to you - he said he'd give you, and by proxy all of us, a chance to do things ourselves! And then when that damned Faunus starts a war that wouldn't look out of place on his world, he comes back and ends it on his terms - he damn near kills Taurus and just slaughters everyone he can find on both sides!" Ironwood reached Ozma's desk and tossed his scroll onto it, the device immediately interfacing with the computers in Ozma's desk and projecting several holograms - one of Aldric as he was at Beacon, one as captured by Ashmore's drone, one of him standing over Taurus with the hammer, one grainy frame from footage of him slaughtering both sides at Mistral, and then finally his book - his Record. "Then he lets some random woman he could have killed or mind wiped or anything a thousand times over publish his accounts, written and spoken!
"It's a damn manifesto, Ozma!" Ironwood pounded on the desk, "he's telling the world he's judged us wanting! It's only a matter of time before he makes his next move - if he hasn't already!"
Ozma shook his head, "he's just a boy, Ironwood - a broken, healing boy. All he charged himself with doing was ending Salem as a threat - everything else he would leave to us, and with Adam Taurus dealt with, unless I or 'Solidus Cinder' go rogue, he will remain in his exile."
Ironwood sighed, shoving off of the desk and beginning to pace back and forth. "I would believe that Ozma if he didn't publish a damn manifesto afterwards. He said it himself, Ozma - he knew what would happen if Ashmore published it and he let it happen anyway!" He paused a moment and glared at the reincarnating man, "have you paid attention at all? Do you know what the sentiment is in Atlas alone?"
Ozma nodded, "they want him to speak for himself - to lend credence and proof to his words."
"They want more than that Ozma - they want him to stand trial!" Ironwood urged, "that Xiao Long woman is corroborating everything he said he did to her, and Torchwick has already released a statement doing the same." Ozma blinked - and Ironwood latched onto that. "You didn't hear, did you? Just a few hours ago, Torchwick made his statement - under the auspices of his previous pardon. He's already been pardoned for his crimes so he can't be tried for them, and Ashmore's already started singing his praises on the CCT, talking about how brave he is to be open with it all.
"The point is that enough people that he's implicated have come out and acknowledged that he's told the truth that at least Atlas is calling for him to stand trial! I'm here because this is the only way I can keep people from calling for your head! We have to get ahead of this, we have to find him and eliminate him as a threat -"
"As a threat?" Ozma repeated, "James, listen to yourself. As strong as he is, Nebo Aldric will not take action unless it is taken against him! He is no threat to anyone but Cinder, me, and himself, and of those three he poses the greatest danger to himself due to the trauma of the things he's done. I swear to you all that this is, is an arrogant, vain woman seeking a fortune. We do not need to bring him in - of everyone on Remnant, only three people even know where he is, and of those three, only two of them are known to possess that information." He said, and Ironwood turned away from him, continuing to pace. "Now I can guarantee Nikos will not speak, and I have it on good authority that Ashmore will not either. My possession of that knowledge is yet unknown, and as such what we have is a golden opportunity to let this fire burn itself out:
"Out of a stark inability to find the man who possesses all of the answers the people want, they will have to turn to us - and we can control the narrative."
"And you think gaslighting Nebo Aldric and convincing the world he's a madman is a better option?"
"Because he clearly won't care? Yes." Ozma nodded, "we can cast doubt on everything he says. We can cast him as an unreliable narrator - an alien who was faced with the challenges of a vastly more brutal world and who cracked under pressure. With enough effort we can replace his truth with ours, James - and he won't do anything because he doesn't care enough to." He said, "if you want to eliminate him as a threat that is the best way to do it."
"I beg to differ, Ozma." Ironwood retorted, "Ashmore's reports say he lives on an area of Remnant where magic does not work. With your help, with your understanding of him, we could find this place and attack him at his weakest - we could capture him, put him in chains and aura locks and then try him in court. We could convince the world that we have control - that there isn't some enigmatic man behind the scenes that could end our world with a snap of his fingers!" He shouted, "threat - eliminated. People - calmed."
"Finding and attacking him will only cause your prophecy to fulfil itself. He will assume this effort to be concerted on all of our ends and will take the appropriate actions. You will cause him to do what you fear he may do on his own, and that will cause untold numbers of people to die. He will engage me and use some esoteric means to ensure that I do not return, and then Cinder will attack him, and either he will kill her, she will kill him, or the both of them will kill each other - and in the battle an unpredictable number of people will die! Either during their fight or in the fallout!" He shook his head and sat down, "you're emotional, James - you're anxious and you're panicking. But if you calm down and think this through you will realize I'm right."
Ironwood stopped pacing, his back to Ozma, as he sighed.
"I think instead that you've blinded yourself, Ozma. Either through fear, or sympathy, or both - you're either terrified of him knowing he's stronger than you, overly sympathetic towards someone that you yourself broke, or you're both at the same time." He said, growing so still that Ozma felt a chill grip his heart.
"Ironwood what did you do?" He breathed.
"I had thought the fact that you'd dragged him into your war would mean you would understand that tough calls had to be made. That you would help me."
"Oh dear gods you didn't." Ozma breathed, eyes wide and locked onto the back of Ironwood's gray head. "James you didn't!"
Ironwood about-faced, "I sent the order six hours ago. We've known where he is for years."
One could have heard a pin drop after Ironwood had finished speaking.
"James are you out of your mind?!" Ozma shouted, leaping up from his chair and sending it scattering behind him. "James if you do this you're just fulfilling your own prophecy!"
"No, Ozma. What I'm doing is making the same decision you would laud him for making, and for the same reason." Ironwood said, expression of steel and eyes locked onto Ozma's own. "As we speak they're setting up their assault. And with what we know about his home from Ashmore's information, we know we can defeat him and catch him off guard. He has no power, at best he has weapons - but against she sheer numbers he'll be facing, all that will amount to is a delaying action. Cornered and with no options, he'll submit - quickly, or tired. And if he escapes, you'll have to help us - because he'll come for you, for everyone involved, and he will not stop gunning for us and killing until either he's dead, or we are - I understand that Ozpin, and so do you. The difference is I'm acting on it instead of you - who has the benefits of immortality." He spat the word, "- who are just waiting on it, hoping the problem would solve itself."
"James this isn't me being apathetic or scared to act - it's me trying to give a man peace! To give the world the same! If you provoke him you will deprive both!" Ozma rounded the desk, approaching Ironwood - who fell back a step, expression now guarded, and what muscles he had tensing, revealing to Ozma his fatal flaw: The rampant paranoia a lifetime of military service at the highest level created and engendered in a mind. Ironwood even considered Ozma a threat.
One part of Ozma, that which had played the game with his wife for thousands upon thousands of years, wondered if this couldn't inform him as to Ironwood's own endgame - if Ironwood's goal here was to sic Aldric and Ozma against each other and eliminate them both, to finally break the chokehold that Masters and Maidens had over this world.
"James -"
"Ozma." Ironwood interrupted. "This is happening. It has to. We either attack him now, or we provide him with his greatest strength, his greatest weapon: Time." He said. "You know as well as I that if he's given even a second to think, he'll win! We cannot give him that!
"We have to hit him hard, and fast, and keep him off balance!"
"James if you do not think he's prepared for his house to be attacked then you're naive!" Ozma called back, "even if we want to ignore the sheer number of things he could have prepared in a property he built, the last time he was in a situation similar to this, when he was exhausted or depleted of his power, when he was attacked by a force of superior numbers and strength, he was ready!" Ozma bellowed, waving his hand behind him, "you know this! I gave you the data from the machine he threw at us, and that was the machine he chose so as to not kill me or his allies!
"What do you think he'll use to protect himself against a world of enemies?!"
"Ozma, we have a fleet parked in the air around him, and enough firepower in the air and on the ground to level a country! All he can do is stall for time, all he can do is tire himself out! He cannot escape and he cannot win - we will take him!"
"Your men will die trying!" Ozma now hollered, "he will kill every last one of them! There is no way - absolutely no way he has not planned for this possibility! You are attacking a man who thrives on planning and controlling variables in his own home! You must pull them out before it's too -"
Speak of the devil, and he shall appear: For the moment Ozma tempted fate, Ironwood's scroll lit up and began singing a simple, trumpet-led military tune. Both Ironwood and Ozma's heads snapped over to Ozma's desk, where the holograms dutifully informed them of the incoming call, from one of Ironwood's fleet admirals.
Ironwood pushed past Ozma - bumping his shoulder, and then pressing his hand into the desk.
"Report." He said, as Ozma closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and waited for the news.
What the Admiral told them, was somehow, even scarier than he'd expected.
"Nebo Aldric!"
The man in question stretched languidly, the sound from outside leaking through the walls and into his ears at just enough volume to bring him out of a deep sleep.
"We have you surrounded!" Shouted the speaker, whose voice carried with it that synthetic quality that came with being broadcast through a speaker at high volumes.
Aldric swung his legs out of his bed, rubbing his face and pushing himself to his feet as he yawned deeply, the cold of his metal hand providing just enough of a sensory shock to accelerate his awakening, but not enough to completely eliminate his drowsiness.
"Come out now, with your hands up!"
Aldric did just that - slowly, drowsily stumbling through his house and to the front door. He made a pit-stop at the shotgun that had given him his newest scars, which shown boldly as several pale divots on his bare chest, and stuffed it barrel-first down the back of his pants. Scratching his head with one hand, and opening the door with the other, Aldric was greeted with an actually familiar site: An entire military industrial complex staring him down from behind the barrels of their weapons. In addition to the thousands of armed and armored soldiers all with their weapons raised on him, there were hundreds of Huntsmen and Huntresses that even his drowsy brain could recognize as Atlesians, given that they, unlike every other Huntsman he had ever met, were wearing standardized uniforms. Past them were hundreds of fighting vehicles and mechs, scores of aircraft hovering in the air around his house - and just past the lip of his roof he could even see airships - the big official Navy ships, and they, too, had their weapons squared on him.
Idly, as Aldric itched at his scalp, he wondered when he'd had more guns on him: Now, or at Vale's docks.
His attention was grabbed by an important-looking-man at the center of the assembled army at his house - the one speaking into something that was broadcasting his voice from every available speaker present.
"I said with your hands up! Both of them!"
Aldric stared at him blankly, and then raised his off-hand, its fingers just brushing his door.
"You are under arrest!" The man declared, "for crimes against Humanity, for treason, for hundreds of confirmed acts of murder, for -"
Aldric closed the door, it shut with a soft 'thud'.
"Wait, can he do that?" Aldric heard, as he lazily stepped back inside, yawning again, pulling his shotgun out of his pants, and tossing it to the side with the clatter of metal on wood.
He approached the mantle, where the pictures that had given Ashmore the impetus to do what she did had once been, but were now scorched to ash - leaving nothing but empty picture frames, and a gun rack now missing its gun.
He pried the gun rack off of the wall, as outside, the soldiers assembled did their best Three Stooges routine in the face of him decidedly not doing what they'd prepared for. They'd likely been ready for him to run, to fight, to shoot, maybe even walk out and surrender - but to close his door on their faces? Their confused tones and loud bickering were evidence of how ill prepared they truly were to face him.
Even more evidence, was what lay in the tiny nook in the wall behind the gun rack: His great shame, but also his best way to get out of this. The greatest weapon on Remnant, and whose continued existence had actually fueled a few of the 'perfect world' scenarios he'd gone into detail about with Ashmore. He honestly hadn't expected it to stick around - he'd thought it, as would the others, would vanish, drained of power and gone forever after his endgame. Instead, its particular fuel source had turned out to be much heartier than he'd predicted, and where all the others had either vanished to who-knows-where or had simply run out of gas, it persisted.
He'd wrestled for almost the entire walk from Vale to the Null Zone about whether he should destroy it, but in the end had fallen to temptation for one major reason: If Ozma ever turned on him, their species, or both, this would be his greatest weapon against him. His only guarantee of success - for Ozma would either conclude that Aldric couldn't possibly have kept it, or would instead inevitably conclude that Aldric would want to rid himself of this for the temptation it could present him. A not unfounded conclusion, as Aldric had indeed used that exact reasoning when debating himself over its continued existence - keeping it would present a major temptation to use it, to step back into the game at an even higher level of play than he'd been at before.
But if Ozma expected him to be rid of it, then that meant he couldn't possibly be prepared for him to have this particular weapon when and if he turned on Aldric. If all else failed, Aldric could return here, obtain this weapon, and end things once and for all.
So he kept it.
A glowing orange stone, inside of which was trapped four souls stitched onto and stolen by a fifth - and next to it, a dull, black one. One, a weapon that controlled souls - on a planet where metaphysical power was tied to the soul! If one controlled the source they controlled the result - Aldric could steal it, make it his own, alter it, copy it, snuff it out, anything he wanted. The other, a cage built to contain Human souls - a perfect prison to effectively kill a being whose immortality worked by way of soul transference. If Ozma ever turned against him, absolutely nothing the immortal could come up with could possibly compare.
And would you look at that?
Ozma had turned against him.
He'd declared war, so Aldric would respond in kind.
He could only imagine the hell inside there - if there even was one - and if its sole inhabitant was even sapient enough to experience it. He was tempted to just glare at it, but he had no time - so, using a loophole in the null zone that he himself designed, he grabbed the stones with his returned semblance, them levitating in the air as, outside, he heard the sounds of mass movement. After this, with a thought, he detached his cybernetic arm from his shoulder, and left only the 'cap' at his shoulder that it attached to.
The next part would hurt, but he had to endure the pain - it would be the only way he could get out of this. So, he turned to his kitchen, moving with haste, grabbing a towel, a butcher's knife, and two senzu beans out of a bowl. With a grimace, he raised the knife and, in one smooth motion, stabbed himself in the abdomen, burying it to the hilt. It had been a long time since he'd felt this kind of pain, yet his relationship with it had been so intimate once upon a time that it was less agony and more like seeing an old friend. He pulled the knife out of his stomach and dropped it on the counter, and promptly shoved the stones into the wound, before swallowing one of the beans. The wound sealed up - hiding his chosen implements inside of him, while he stowed the second bean in between the cap and his stump. When the still empowered stone made contact with him, it did as the others did when they lacked a certain golden gauntlet to filter the power through: It tried its damnedest to make him pay the price of holding infinite power.
With teeth clenched, Aldric kicked his cybernetic arm from one side of the room to the other, fought through the pain and did as he'd done before: Asserted his will over the stone, refused to allow it to consume him. He then used the towel to wipe the blood off of his stomach and off of the knife, and just as the stone relented and ceased its attempts to kill him from the inside out, he tossed the towel away, returned to and plopped down on his couch - right in time for the front and back doors of his home to burst open, for a giant fist to crash through the wall right in front of him, and he even heard distantly behind him the sound of another wall being blasted in, as soldiers and Huntsmen no-doubt made the most dynamic of entries into his bedroom.
In front of him, the fist that had destroyed the wall to his home pulled out, revealing a giant suit of plate armor. Walking in front of it, was a woman he actually recognized - and the sheer audacity of her presence actually made him crack a silent smile.
Weiss Schnee, in a military uniform - the spitting image of her deceased older sister, if not for an ostentatious hat that had to be some kind of symbol of office. In her hand was a sword that had clearly gone through a few upgrades and revisions since he'd last seen it - trying to cut him to pieces in Haven. She wore a stern expression that masked her internal conflict over what she was doing well. Her brow was furrowed into a frown, and her fist was tightly clenching her rapier, and as she came to a halt in front of him, Aldric sensed and heard dozens of Huntsmen surrounding him.
"Et tu, Weiss?" Was all Aldric asked, as he idly wondered whether or not she'd read the Record the reporter had stolen, and if his murder of her sister had been confessed in it.
She didn't say anything - not to him, at least. Instead she huffed, turned to someone over his shoulder, and nodded. Aldric had summarily been bound in chains, had a mechanical muzzle wrapped around his mouth and compressed around his neck, some kind of collar that he was pretty sure sealed away his aura, given a few subtle clues, like how colors looked dimmer after they turned it on, the world felt a little colder - save for the burning in his unmolested stump - and the fact that the soldier who'd put it on him had said 'Aura sealed!' upon activation. Then they chained his feet together, put some kind of brace on his remaining arm cuffed to his opposite thigh to restrict its motion as much as they could, and for good measure bound his arm to several belts tied around his torso. Finally, they manually went in and removed Aldric's prosthetic eyes, put blinders over the now dark pits, and put thick earmuffs over his ears - rendering the Master blind, deaf, and all but helpless and immobile. With several large iron rods he was pretty sure was almost exactly the same as an animal control officer would use to catch a rapid dog locked onto his own collar, he was both kept at arm's length to anyone around him, and forced to rely upon them to guide him locomotively.
They'd really gone all out - he would have been touched, if he wasn't instead puzzling through what Ozma and likely Ironwood had in store for him. He was guided by several Huntsmen and escorted by several more - and he was pretty sure several mechs were among the retinue, given how the ground regularly shook - for several short minutes, until his bare foot hit a metal ramp. He was then led up said ramp and into what he was pretty sure was a bullhead - and he felt through the iron rods pressing into his neck that he was secured to the walls of the bullhead.
His only thoughts in the intervening minutes were of his daughter, and how he hoped she would never have to understand either what he did, or what he would soon do.
As the bullhead took off, Aldric let out a slow sigh.
The game had begun.
All around the world, every Human and every Faunus, all eyes were glued to anything that could display news from the CCT Network, as a single video screen was mirrored everywhere for all to see. A scarred, burned man, bound in chains, blindfolded, gagged, and deafened, with a collar around his neck and rods shoved into it to both guide him and ensure a minimum distance between him and his captors at all times, was being led down the ramp of an Atlesian bullhead.
On the screens of every television, computer, and scroll, was this image, and a single headline underneath is:
GOUD ETIOLATE - AKA: NEBO ALDRIC
SURRENDERED TO ATLESIAN CUSTODY