I Am Dark Matter | I'm Your Undoing

"State your name for the record."

"Morgan Oak." Said a portly old man, who stood on a podium in the center of a large courtroom. In front of him, elevated above, were three men - three judges, the highest ranking tribunals in the Atlesian military, and the only people even remotely qualified to preside over the trial of the century - if not of all history.

Behind him were rows upon rows of seats, filled with any number of people, all of whom had converged on Atlas from all corners of the world to testify against the man seated to his right. Surrounded by the most elite Huntsmen in Atlas, the man who had single-handedly dictated the fate of the planet - two planets, even! Nebo Aldric - believed by the strongest people alive to be the strongest person alive.

Haggard, reduced to rags and chains in a metal chair. Oak pitied him - hard though it was to believe, this man was being treated even more harshly and carefully than Adam Taurus, though granted Taurus was physically incapable of fighting anyone anymore - all thanks to that man. Aldric, meanwhile, was at least strong enough to keep up with the most powerful players on Remnant and defeat them all in turn - so it was no wonder he was so heavily bound and carefully regarded. Exactly what he was capable of, exactly what many thought of him - well...

That was what they were here to learn.

The poor man probably already knew there was no real 'guilty or not guilty' here - all that would happen would be anyone willing to testify would, and their testimonies would only influence the severity of his sentencing. For all his supposed power, for all his wit and skill, he'd been defeated - and now all that was left was for him to pay the price.

"And your role here, today?"

"I've been chosen to lead the prosecution in Remnant v Nebo Aldric." The old man turned back to the tribunal in front of him.

"Begin when you're ready." Said the man at the center of the three judges - a heavily scarred, growly man with a salt and pepper flat-top cut and a military uniform decorated with enough medals that if the light caught them wrong, they could probably blind someone.

Oak nodded, "To begin sirs, Nebo Aldric's guilt is a matter of public record. Many investigations have been launched in the six months between the publishing of his manifesto - the eponymous 'Record' - his capture, and today. The surviving parties implicated in his manifesto have been interviewed and many of them are here today to provide their testimonies - but determining guilt is not the order of the day, for the man himself has confessed twice. First to the woman who revealed his story to the world, of which we have audio evidence, and secondly, in far more detail, in his manifesto.

"Nebo Aldric stands today, an alien invader who came into possession of foreknowledge of our world, and chose to play god. He thought he had the right to - in his own words - 'Work in the dark, to serve the light.' He thought this foreknowledge, when combined with the factors immediately following his entrance to our world, granted him the right to kill as many and as wantonly as he felt necessary - necessary, I should add, as defined by him. Nothing was sacred - no borders, no lives, nothing. He has confessed to directly being the cause of, or directly involved with the death of men, women, even children in numbers we cannot accurately quantify and that he himself claims to have lost count of - and that's just those who died directly as a result of him. Indirectly, those who died or were injured as a result of his influence and the consequences of his actions, the numbers grow in exponents - and one can even attribute the casualties of the second Faunus Rebellion even before his intervention, to him, because of his influence regarding Adam Taurus.

"To summarize, dear tribunal: He is responsible for enough deaths one could - however briefly - attribute a leading cause of death in our world to a name. His name.

"Why?" He asked, shuffling the sheaf of papers he'd written this speech onto. "Why? Because - however it came into being, he nevertheless possessed foreknowledge of our world, and decided that he knew better. That he should intervene in our world's affairs to achieve some 'better future' - better, I would again stress, as defined by him. He did this not even knowing how what he had initially believed to be a 'story' would end in the first place - thus knowingly running the risk of causing things to turn out worse not only than the possible reality he knew, but also worse than he intended.

"He was, in a word: Arrogant." He said, pausing to look each of the judges in the eye. "He believed that he alone had the ability and the power to shift the fate of an entire planet on its axis - and he believed that his vision of the future was the correct one. He believed that he had the right to steal from every man, woman, and child alive their right to choose their fate - because he had seen it and decided it wasn't good enough. This is the same man who himself said - I quote - 'A thing isn't beautiful because it lasts' - end quote. So not only arrogant, but hypocritical. He chose to preserve something that he had no stake in, despite claiming that he believed it is universally better to let things die than to keep them on life support, or to force them to go on. He chose to do this because he thought he knew better than all of us - who were born and raised on this planet, who lived this reality every day, and understood it far more intimately than he did - than he still does!

"And all of this!" Oak raised a finger, "all of it... Before he even awoke his aura. Before he even gained any modicum of strength with which to act. He made this arrogant, hypocritical decision, before he even knew it was possible for him to carry it out - meaning that for all he had goals, for all he wanted to do and knew where he wanted to be, he clearly didn't truly plan things out." He paused, shifting papers again, and began the end. "Let me reword this in a much more simple way. Let me summarize:

"Nebo Aldric before he even acquired his aura, showed a clear proclivity to blatantly disregard the norms and laws of the world he had been brought to. He showed an immediate willingness to lie and deceive absolutely everyone he interacted with - be it his 'allies' in what he called the 'Legion of Doom' - defined as those who supported the Grimm Queen, Salem - or his 'Allies' in what he called the Watchmen or the Justice League - defined in turn as his personal inner circle on both sides, and those who worked with the man who was once Headmaster Ozpin, and is now Headmaster Ozma. He showed a blatant disregard or inability to even plan out how he would reach his goals, he showed a clear willingness and proclivity towards aggression and causing physical harm - up to and including murder. He knew the existential risk this posed to his life and didn't care, and showed a clear lack of regret or remorse for the things he had decided to do..." He took a sip of water, and said, "ladies and gentlemen, that is six of the seven traits of sociopathy - only three of which are required for a diagnosis.

"So this arrogant... Hypocritical... Sociopath, took it upon himself to save our planet - and I ask you this: Was he even successful?" He folded his hands on top of each other, "Salem may be dead - though the veracity of that claim is wholly reliant upon his word - but the Grimm still wander Remnant. They may breed slower, but they breed all the same - and given their raw numbers, a slowed breeding rate is not as great a boon as it sounds. There is no great peace to bring prosperity to us - Adam Taurus showed us that, and for all that war may be over, we have effectively been promised generations of hatred and violence because of it. He may have prevented Salem from using the relics of the Brother Gods - but he was responsible for her gaining possession of them in the first place. He may have stopped the war between Earth and Remnant, but he was directly responsible for starting it again. And given the frankly miraculous things that happened at the end of the War of the White Witch - all attributed to him and his use of the Relics - it is clear beyond any shadow of a doubt that he could have done exactly what he said he wanted to do... But didn't.

"So I ask again: Did he save our world? Did he create a 'better' future than the one he didn't even know the end of?" He asked, "did he even have any positive effect?

"I intend to provide the answers to those questions. I have assembled all of the evidence of my investigation into Nebo Aldric as well as key witnesses, all of whom will paint a far more accurate picture of the man himself and the damage he caused, and the benefit or lack thereof his presence on our world and interaction with it has had, and I will end it with he himself." He nodded, "thank you."

"I call first to stand, General James Ironwood."

Ironwood, garbed in his dress uniform, stood from his position at the front of the assembled witnesses to the trial, and approached the podium, as Oak stepped aside. When Ironwood took his position at the stand, Oak stood in front of him - cameras flashed, microphones adjusted themselves, and a small holo-table was rolled out for Oak to connect his scroll to.

"General, would you please, in your own words, describe Nebo Aldric as you knew him before reading his manifesto?"

The gray-haired man nodded once, and held his hands behind his back, squaring his shoulders and speaking with the confidence and authority of a man who had spent his entire life fighting in the military. "Nebo Aldric was first introduced to me by then-Ozpin. I was the newest addition to Ozpin's 'faction' of Headmasters and agents against Salem - the faction Mister Aldric calls 'The Justice League.' He was introduced to me as 'Nathan Drake' - and I first met him not long after the Terrans launched their sun bomb in Anima, and afterwards conducted an aerial battle over Atlas. Aldric was sent inside to question prisoners we had detained from said battle, and though he had intelligence that could have saved lives, better prepared us for the war we feared could be on the way, he refused to share it. Instead he antagonized me - threatened me, once, when I demanded he share the intel they had on us - the foreknowledge Mister Oak referred to earlier.

"If I pushed things I would not only have had to fight him, but also Ozpin - and we couldn't afford that, not with what was coming from the Terrans, not with what was coming from Salem. So I apologized to Aldric, and then and only then did he calm down and begin to meet me halfway, but by then I had already learned everything I needed about him. He was a manipulative spy - a boy playing at an adult's game and thriving under his own self-importance. He'd forcibly wedged his way into a delicate situation, given himself a critical position, and knew there was nothing we could do about it, or about him.

"He was, in a word, dangerous. I know the type - the type that can easily slide into an undercover, false identity. They straddle a thin line between order and chaos, and many so prefer to live their dark life that they crave a return to it even when their mission is over. Aldric checked all of those boxes and I truly feared what he would be capable of if given half the chance.

"I was only proven right with every thing he did. I suspected, but could not prove, that he was the 'sailor' who led a one-man assault on Atlas during Earth's assault on our kingdom - for everything I saw in that 'sailor' I had seen in him during our encounter. Worse was that I saw more - he so easily and so willingly killed his way through some of my best, and then left anyone he didn't kill to die under their penetrative munitions. I knew then that if this sailor was indeed the same agent Ozpin had introduced me to, that I'd only seen the barest tip of the iceberg - that he would do absolutely anything he deemed necessary to continue forward with his self-proclaimed mission, regardless of the cost or consequence. Furthermore I feared that he was the type to go for the very first solution to any problem he could find, and pursue that solution to the exclusion of any others - even if they were brought to his attention before the point of no return. Those added on to the power that man wields as a Master is a terrifying prospect - and I will say that again if it needs saying:

"He scared me. And believe me, that doesn't happen often."

Oak nodded, "General, you're a military man. You have a unique viewpoint to many who will be examining this problem - be it today, tomorrow, or a century from now. You understand that, in war, sometimes tough calls need to be made, and that no situation has a simple solution. From that perspective - the perspective of a warfighter, and a General on top of that - what is your opinion of Aldric's actions?" He asked, "to wit... Are they in any way justified?"

"Absolutely not." Ironwood responded, "in war, you're required to do terrible things. You have to send people to their deaths, you have to kill people, and all things in between - but there are rules, and those rules have dire consequences when broken. Everyone has to face them - Aldric, however, only held himself accountable to his own ideals, and he showed a clear and consistent willingness to break his own rules. He only 'drew a line,' as it were, at the very end - when it arguably didn't even matter anymore.

"While it is true that to do what he wanted in the way he wanted to do it - that is to say, to serve as a spy, one has to do things that would cost them a piece of their soul, and if exposed to the public would be considered so heinous that the people who ordered them to do it would have to deny the order ever existing, what Aldric did went so far beyond anything one has done in the pursuit of a war, the prevention of one, or even the defense of their kingdom. In normal circumstances, one may be required to set a fire - Aldric would set off bombs.

"He will claim that he was in the moment, that he had no time to think - only time to act. While there is truth to that statement too, and indeed he never received any of the extensive training any soldier or Huntsman would receive to be able to think clearly and quickly in stressful situations, such a thing would only have applied to him at the beginning - and as his manifesto shows, by the time he began ending lives as a matter of convenience, he was already at a place, experientally, where one could expect him to have the skill and knowledge necessary to break down a situation and see more solutions than just the one right in front of him. This is what is expected of any good soldier - lethal force should always be the last resort. All other options should be exercised before ending a life - always. Even spies need to understand this - but to Aldric, killing people, sending dozens to hundreds to their deaths, ending and starting wars, propping up terrorists as heroes, that was all his first option - and as he himself said, a grand majority of those came by happenstance. By chance. A vast majority of them could have been avoided and the end result - the plan he created, the 'Big One' - wouldn't have changed, conceptually or realistically.

"As he outright admitted, his plan from the very beginning was to put himself next to Salem and then use the Relics instead of her. I would thus argue that almost everything he did in the pursuit of that goal was not necessary or justified in any way, because all he had to do was wait after his initial ambush of the Fall Maiden. That one attack was the most crucial to the entire ordeal - because that was what resulted in the Terrans bringing the Relic of Choice out into the open, and Salem being put into a position to retrieve it. After that, all of the others could have been reasonably acquired by her without any of the heinous actions and manipulations performed by him, and he could have put himself next to her and still executed his 'Big One.'"

"Would you therefore argue that Aldric was, in many ways, self-sabotaging?" Oak asked, "that his universal lack of experience and training in this 'game' as he called it, served only to his detriment? Gave him tunnel vision, as it were?"

"Absolutely." Ironwood nodded. "It was his actions and the way they were intepreted by the other Masters that led them to not trust him at all. It was because of his paranoia that he couldn't realize they were extending him an olive branch, at the end. If he had instead just tread water and offered himself up as a resource to Ozpin, to be more expertly maneuvered by someone who understood the 'game' far better than he did, a great deal of his greatest challenges would have been avoided, and just as many of the allies he cost himself would instead have been present to fight by his side. Not the least of which being his father and the two other Masters - all of whom died at his hand because of his intransigent nature."

"Does any of this excuse his actions?"

"Not in the slightest. He's made it clear beyond any possible doubt that he understood everything he was doing - and that he was intelligent enough to think of alternate possibilities... And even if he wasn't - even if somehow he was simply incapable of finding any solution but the one right in front of him, his abilities granted him the chance to change his own answers."

"Is that to say you think he could travel through time, as he claimed?"

"No, absolutely not. I have it on good authority that, magic or not, such a thing is impossible. I think his claims of time travel were added to his manifesto after the fact, either to provide justification to himself for the things he did, or in an attempt to cover his bases should the possibility his journal get leaked to the public come to pass." Ironwood explained, "no, I was instead referring to his ability to alter memories."

Oak nodded, and pulled his scroll from his pocket. "I present Object Aircel-Nineteen Ninety. Called a 'Neuralyzer' by Aldric, it was one of many artifacts recovered from the aftermath of the battle at Salem's castle." A hologram appeared over the table, showing a single silver cylinder. Many of those assembled leaned forward to get a better look at the hologram, and even Aldric himself tilted his head at the sight of it, one of his eyebrows curving upward.

"That would be it." Ironwood nodded, "that and a plethora of other artifacts, weapons, and so on, were recovered from a belt discovered at the battlefield. This belt matched descriptions of both Goud Etiolate and Aldric in their various battles and appearances - his manifesto made repeated reference to things he called 'nuclear options' contained therein. That item specifically was determined to be a device that could remove and alter memories in individuals it was used on." He explained, "this ability was confirmed by our own testing, his manifesto, and those he had used it on before it was recovered by us.

"Aldric is clearly smart enough to know the versatility of such an instrument in an espionage setting - he is smart enough to know how he could have used it to his immediate and universal advantage, perhaps up to and including using it on Salem herself. He is smart enough to know how many situations he could have avoided, turned around, or straight-up altered after the fact, by using it - and yet he rarely, if ever, did. There is only one explanation for why this is:

"He chose not to."

"Thank you, General."

"Next to stand, Qrow Branwen."

As Ironwood stepped off of the podium and returned to his seat, a shaggy-looking man with graying hair and poor posture stood up. Unlike Ironwood's formal wear, Qrow wore casual clothes - without the sword typically strapped to his back or the flask usually fastened to his hip, he almost looked off balance. His expression was neutral, and he took the podium silently.

"Now, Mister Branwen, as I understand your relationship to the war against Salem - even before the general public were aware of it - you were then-Ozpin's ground level agent, yes?"

Qrow nodded, "I did the things and talked to the people Beacon's Headmaster couldn't, or was too busy to."

"Thank you - were you aware of Mister Aldric's foreknowledge of our world?"

"Not at first. I think I learned after Oz, and even then all he really told me was that he theorized someone on Earth had awoken their aura, gotten some minor foresight semblance, and had either mistook what he saw, or used it to warn everyone as best he could - and that Aldric was one of the people who had the information."

"What did you think when you learned that Aldric, on some level, knew about everything that was coming? At least up until the Fall of Beacon and a little after?"

"Didn't really care." Qrow grunted, "it didn't change anything. If the kid was a part of those visions he would have been acting differently - probably freaking out. Since he wasn't, that meant that information was either wrong, out of date, or could be changed - so it didn't matter really to any of us. He used it the best he could: To know who was on what side, and what the sides even were. That was really the only way it could be used."

"I see. Tell me - what is your opinion on Aldric?"

"Might disappoint you pal, but as much and as frequently as he's pissed me off -"

"Language."

"- I'm a results guy. More than that, I'm an Oz guy. Ozpin, Ozma, whatever name he uses, he believes in the kid - well." He smirked with a huff, "- he ain't a kid anymore, but still. For all the bad he did, Oz never stopped believing in him. He never stopped trusting him - and in the end that paid off, didn't it?"

"Could you clarify?"

"Sure." He grunted, "way Oz explained it to me, Aldric had unlimited power when he gathered the relics. Could do literally anything he wanted - if he was as bad as everyone thought, wouldn't he have abused it? Thrown in with Salem, or taken her place? Sure he didn't make everything all sunshine and rainbows, but he did what he set out to - killed her, ended that threat, and hung up the proverbial hat. He didn't so much as make a peep until the White Fang - and he only showed up then because he caused the problem to begin with."

"So are you saying you support his actions?"

Qrow looked down a moment, frowning, before saying, "not entirely. He went a little overboard more than once, and there were more than a few points where he could've just drawn his line and the outcome wouldn't have changed, but in the end - Salem's gone. No greater threat to Remnant than she was, and Aldric got rid of her. So as long as he never caused trouble, I didn't really care."

"You would agree that he did cause trouble, though."

"Sure, in so much that giving us a chance to discredit Adam Taurus and getting robbed by a reporter is 'causing trouble.'..." Qrow responded. "Here's the thing you and Ironwood don't really seem to get - yeah the world's dark and you have to do bad things, but you live in the world people understand. War, peace, good, bad, even that gray area in between - you all understand that. But what you don't really understand is that that little gray area is much bigger than anyone could possibly imagine - even Oz.

"What Salem wanted to do courted something bad, Oak." He looked up to the judges beyond the prosecutor, "existentially bad. If she was wrong and couldn't kill the Brother Gods, it was a coin flip whether or not they'd let everyone live - and if she was right and actually did have a way to kill the Brother Gods, that would leave her in their place. Sometimes bad has to be met with bad - sometimes it has to be met with worse."

"Implying you think Aldric is worse?" Oak jumped in.

"Implying he's capable of being worse - everything we've seen is proof that if he decides something has to happen, it will happen, no matter what he has to do to ensure it." Qrow elaborated, a downward twitch of his lips the only indication that he knew he'd unintentionally given the prosecutor ammunition. "What you're trying not to admit is that, though he is evil, he's a necessary one. If it wasn't him, it would have had to be someone else - and as evidenced by the fact that he stepped down once it was all done, he had a level of self control someone else may not have.

"It all comes back to the fact that Salem wasn't playing a game anyone alive could recognize. She wasn't playing by rules anyone even knew about - except Oz, me and my old team to a much lesser extent, and him." He nodded to Aldric. "And she went and did something none of us could predict by stealing the Maidens' souls - so we needed as many options open to us as possible to ensure she didn't take that to victory. Aldric was to her what her stealing souls was to us - a game changer. You asked if he actually had a positive effect, but you're asking that in a world that he saved. You're able to ask it in the first place because of what he did - and if he hadn't done it, if he was anything like the man you would rather he be, we'd all either be dead or fighting for our lives. Then you'd be begging for his help, and lamenting that he was probably the first to lay down his life.

"The unfortunate truth is that the world sometimes needs people like him because it's a dark, dirty, and evil place - and as much as I personally worship people like my niece, who try to light it up, sometimes the best person qualified to improve it is one who not only understands that darkness, filth, and evil, but who embraces it and reflects it so everyone else doesn't have to."

Oak was about to open his mouth, but Aldric cut him off from the stands. "And that, dear friends, was without even a single drop of rum!" With a snide grin wrinkling the unburned half of his face.

One of the judges leaned forward, "Mister Aldric, this is your only warning. Do not speak out of turn." He indicated everyone present, "believe it or don't, this is for your benefit. Sabotaging it will only hurt you."

Aldric leaned back in his chair, grin still plastered on his face, and as his guards sheathed their weapons, he nodded down at Qrow, as though to give his permission to continue. Qrow, meanwhile, just closed his eyes and sighed - an expression on his face that said he hadn't missed this particular facet of Aldric's personality.

Oak sighed as well, and looked to Qrow. "Thank you, Mister Branwen... I think that will be all."

Next to be called up was Yang. Unlike her uncle, she was actually dressed for the occasion - a dress shirt and pants, her hair tied back, she'd even gone without a drink as long as her uncle had.

Once the pleasantries were had, Oak began with, "Miss Xiao Long, you were one of the people interviewed by Rosemary Ashmore - the woman who revealed to the world Aldric's existence. During that interview, you claimed that the next time you saw him, all bets were off - referring to the fact that you would kill him. Is it safe, therefore, to say your opinion of him is rather negative?"

"To say the least." She grunted, leaning against the podium.

"Can we ask why?"

"After Beacon - when Goud Etiolate 'died' - Salem asked him to abduct my sister to appease Cinder -"

"Cinder Fall."

"Yes - she was pissed -"

"Language, please."

Yang frowned, took in a deep breath, and continued, "she was furious about how badly Ruby had hurt her under Beacon - she awoke some power she had that specifically required emotional trauma to light off. So right off the bat, Aldric traumatized my little sister - fifteen at the time - for his own gains, and he didn't stop there. Salem asked him to abduct her - and after reading his journal, it's clear he didn't have to. He had a lot of other solutions to that problem, which he even listed out right there, but he still just went to take her." As she spoke, Oak pulled up the pages of the Record she was referring to, and each of the three judges moved their eyes down to their scrolls to read them. "In order to do this, he dropped a Grimm at our house. I don't know what you all know of Apathy, but they're bad. Just the one he left next to us just..." She shook her head. "Sapped us of everything. Energy, will to live - it was draining all of it. I've heard stories of people who couldn't summon up the drive to breathe because of them, and he dropped that thing next to our house to make taking my sister easier." As she spoke, Ruby, in the crowd, shuddered and looked away; her uncle put his hand on her shoulder. "And that's not all he did.

"Blake - Belladonna, yes - managed to get away from it for a bit and get her senses back. She saw him taking Ruby and fought him. For her trouble, Aldric threw her off the top of an airship, mid-flight." As she said this, Oak queued up Blake's medical reports of the incident. "If Aldric had killed her, that would be one thing, but he made sure she lived out of some misplaced guilt. She would wake up every night afterwards, screaming, thinking she was falling again, and I saw under her mask after we fought Adam a few months ago - she still doesn't look like she sleeps much.

"And even that's not the end - because the idea he had to avoid killing my sister? It wasn't some magic spell or stupid comic book teleporter, no - he grabbed his old teammate from Beacon, and an assassin, and told them to save Ruby for him - and if that hadn't worked, he would have killed all three of them just to stay in Salem's good graces. He said it himself." She gritted her teeth, took another breath, and continued. "He himself didn't know if that would work. Instead of trying to find a simple solution - again, which he had ideas he blatantly listed out, and even more he either didn't list out or deleted after the fact - he just added more moving parts to the thing.

"It was a miracle it worked in the first place - but then? We're not even done - because he was worried his old teammate might not be trustworthy once the job was done. He was worried she'd go out and grab the rest of GEMS and tell them that their leader wasn't dead, then they'd come to us and tell us Ruby isn't dead, and that would jeopardize his oh-so-precious position. So how does he solve that? Does he give the assassin the memory-thing and spare her life? No - he tells the assassin to kill her. He murders someone who trusted him with her life, in effect leaving my sister on a ship full of aliens with only an assassin to keep her company and keep her safe - and I haven't even mentioned the fact that Ruby trusted him too, and thought he was just going to watch her die, nor have I mentioned the fact that even if we didn't like each other, he still murdered my mother and tried to make me feel sorry for her after the fact, or the fact that he cut off my arm because it would buy him his home planet's alliance faster than if he'd done it any other way.

"So no. I don't fucking like him."

"Language." This time it was the judge, "or you'll be removed. Final warning."

Yang rolled her eyes.

"I don't think much of that needs elaboration. Do you share your uncle's opinion that, in some way, what he did was warranted? That bad needs to be met with bad?"

"No." She said, "I don't need to reiterate how often Aldric himself presented better solutions to the problems he was facing - or how, as you and Ironwood already brought up, he had the ability to just change his answers after the fact. Aldric knew everything he was doing and knew all the ways he could have done it better, but he was too consumed by his own fear and paranoia to even try those better ways. Reread his journal, count how many times he said something like he was too scared of something to try it, or how he didn't trust an option he'd just listed. Even more - he claimed that, after he did what he did to me, Earth gave him a hard drive filled with more of those fiction things he kept pulling from. A literal encyclopedia full of ideas, and he clearly has a good enough memory for them. He absolutely had the opportunity, chance, and ability to find something that could have let him avoid half of the things he did, but he didn't. He chose not to.

"I don't know if it's because he liked killing people, because it was easier or needed less effort, because he developed a god complex by suddenly obtaining his aura despite no one on his planet having it, or what, but the fact remains that he didn't need to 'meet bad with bad.'... He chose to do it - he wanted to." She scathed, "and like you said, he's a hypocrite. How many times did he talk about things being beautiful because they didn't last forever? Shouldn't that mean the better option is to meet bad with good? To use his own words, to do the right thing instead of the correct thing? Shouldn't that mean if he tried and failed to do things the right way, then it's alright? If he really believed all that, then he wouldn't have done the things he did.

"So no, it wasn't necessary, it wasn't warranted, it wasn't any of that! He chose to do all of it and pretended it was because he had to!" She glared at him when she said this, he just stared back at her, a slight frown on his face, one that almost approached being apologetic.

"One last question, Miss Xiao Long... Were you ever aware that Aldric had knowledge of our world before he even came to it?"

"No." She said, "and that he had it just makes everything he did worse, honestly. The second he recognized our world, the second he was given his aura, he could have made a run for Ozpin, or set a huge fire and just ran until Ozpin and Beacon's staff arrived and fought off Cinder. Again: He chose not to. As a matter of fact that was his first decision, and doesn't it say a lot about him?"

"Thank you."

Next to step up was Roman Torchwick.

"Mister Torchwick, you're unique among everyone here today, even from Mister Aldric himself: You initially worked for Salem, did you not?"

"Only in so much that I work for anyone." Said the man in a sing-song voice, as he smoothed a wrinkle in his coat. "I was much like Aldric, my dear Oak. A good man doing bad things for good reasons. The only difference between he and I was in who legitimized us. He had Ozpin, I had..." He nodded to the side. "Well, others who would rather not be named."

"Mister Torchwick, you've already been pardoned because of your involvement in the war, not only do you not have to lie, you're under oath."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Torchwick smiled, coyly.

Oak sighed, skillfully hiding his personal feelings on the man - who knew well and good that he wasn't wanted here, and that he was only here at all because of how often he came up in Aldric's Record.

"Is it accurate to say that if Salem been the victor-apparent, your loyalties would have lain with her?"

"Oh my dear Oak, you're not nearly as good at this as you think you are. Of course not, I simply would have gone deeper undercover, so to speak. Ingratiated myself with her inner circle and sent what information I could to those who could use it the best." He said, "something he and I share is that we always have a plan. Mine in particular had been in betting that Human extinction wasn't her endgoal - and thus, when she inevitably began a move on the world-stage, the various kingdoms and governments would need a man on the inside. I intended to be that man."

"So you had already set yourself up to be this inside man... Meaning that had Aldric failed, or never intervened at all, there still would have been one?"

Torchwick's eyebrow curved up, "or maybe you are good? But!" He raised a finger, "the difference between he and I is in ability. If Salem had learned what I was doing, there wouldn't have been a thing I could do to resist her - he could have and did fight against her. Or... At least -" He waved his hand, "an equivalent. Regardless, he is very much a front-line man, I am not - and that is not even mentioning his powers. I never could have used the Relics like he did - had I been in his position instead of him, the fight against Salem would have taken a very, very long time, and the chance of my being discovered would have only grown higher with every passing day.

"So while I may have been setting myself up just as he was, he was still the better equipped of the two of us to play the role." He then leaned in, covered his face so Aldric couldn't see it, and faux-whispered, "but don't let him know I said that!"

"What was your initial opinion of Aldric when you met him the first time?"

"That he was a sad, pathetic little child pretending he was something much more." Torchwick responded quickly. "Fortunately my lovely assistant saw quicker than I did how wrong I was... Though 'quicker' than I did is only in a matter of minutes - the stunt he pulled with the pistol, where he ruined my coat? That taught me that this kid may have more than a little potential in him.

"Then he pulled an entire warehouse down on us and I had to spend all, night, clearing that one with the police. As I understand their yearly dances are still funded by the money I gave them that night." He then widened his eyes and covered his mouth, "oh, did I say that? My apologies, would you please strike that from the record?"

"And when you and he had your meeting in the alley? When you cemented an alliance?"

"Oh then I knew he was much more than I suspected that night. Trust me, my dear Oak, it takes quite a lot to pull one over on me - and the transformation from that scared, goofy kid in the warehouse, to the cold manipulator in the alley? That was something to behold. But what it also taught me was that he was certainly capable of some rather epic mistakes, of how inexperienced he was in this game - no one, absolutely no one in his position with more experience would have tried what he did... But then again, isn't that possibly why he won in the first place? Because he so boldly did what no sane man would even consider? He was playing against people who were expecting experienced spies, who had planned for them - so him constantly acting like an inexperienced buffoon was a boon, in that respect. When he dropped Neo and clued me in to his game, I played along because I would either gain an ally on the inside, or have a chance to get information out of him and sell it to Cinder to cement my own position."

"Was there ever a point where you almost did give him up?"

"No, actually." Torchwick's grin widened, "after that clandestine little meeting in the alley, I decided I'd let him run free and play, to see what he brought me. He brought me his 'Watchmen.' I never so much as thought of doubting him afterwards. Though that was primarily because I could tell he was burning on all cylinders - so I figured at some point he would stumble and fall, and so instead of planning to sell him out, I planned for that failure. Do you know how many Atlesian warships are available on the black market? You'd be surprised at the number."

"So given what you said about setting yourself up inside Salem's circle, why did you brazenly betray her?"

Torchwick's grin turned to a sneer, "but I didn't, my dear Oak. My people did, because they were offered more pay from Adam Taurus, who promised them that if they betrayed me - and in so doing, Salem - he'd let them loot the Dust warehouses while Vale was in chaos." A beat, "of course, I never had to use that story. Nor did I have to kill the ones I'd singled out as sacrificial lambs to lend credence to said story - as Salem never sought vengeance against me, or even tried to come and even just speak to me afterwards."

"Do you think she would have believed that?"

He chuckled, "given what he got away with? Yes! I'm almost willing to guarantee I'd have at least gotten back inside with that story, though perhaps not as deep as him. Maybe I'd have been put on the Ruby mission instead of him, or maybe I'd have been put on tracking down one of the Maidens with a guard-dog on me to nip at my tail if I stepped out of line... Likely she'd have thrown me at Adam just to keep me out of her way and distract him. Maybe this, maybe that, it doesn't matter in the end, because Aldric did his job." He said, "although it is worth it to note that, as he said there at the end of his journal, he got away with so much because Salem knew from the very beginning. That no matter what he did, she was at least tangentially aware of it, and had planned for it from the beginning - because he was her weapon against the Brother Gods. So it stands then to reason that I certainly wouldn't have made it back in with that little stunt - but if she even so much as suspected that I was a resource to him? I likely would have - and she would have put us together on top of it!

"But asking 'what if' leads one nowhere, as 'what if' can only be asked when one is in a safe enough position to ask it in the first place." He sneered.

"I'd like to ask you about that, actually." Oak locked on, "Aldric claimed Salem knew about him from the beginning. That she possessed the same foreknowledge as he did - or at the very least she knew it existed in general, and that he had it. Under that auspices, do you think he could have been capable of staying as deep undercover as he did, without her allowing him to do so?"

"Yes and no." Said Torchwick, "yes, because if he'd ever blatantly screwed up, then she would have killed him without a second thought. Everything - every single thing - between him coming to Remnant to him standing next to her at the end was a test, the only thing she couldn't account for would be his answer choice at the end. But if he ever made an apocalyptic mistake and was found on it? Then he would have failed that test." He said, "but, in all likelihood, he was able to get as far as he did because she 'went to bat' for him, as it were, and gave him just enough of an adjustment period to get him moving and playing on his own. So if she didn't have that knowledge, if he wasn't an active pawn in her game, and she was looking more closely, it is very possible he wouldn't have gotten as far as he did. The only question then would be if he would have survived the aftermath, and honestly?" He looked to Aldric, "I think he would have." He looked back to Oak, then the judges. "And then I would have taken his place on the inside, and he would have been fighting from the 'Justice League's' side, and the ending would have been the same: I would have enabled her to acquire the Relics, he would have acquired the pieces he was missing, and... Well -" He snapped his fingers.

"Anything else?" He said with a smile.

"Miss Nikos, how did you meet Aldric?"

To the world that had grown used to her in her armor, with Aldric's old shield on her back, Pyrrha looked almost alien to her usual self - wearing a formal, tasteful dress and without so much as a holdout pistol on her in terms of weaponry.

"I met him at the Beacon entrance exam, when he was using the name Goud Etiolate. He hadn't yet received his new eyes, and despite this he was handily making his way through the local tournament. I noticed his fighting style had similarities to my own, and given that much of the reason I had left my country to study at a foreign Huntsman Academy was to meet people and make friends who wouldn't recognize me from Mistral, I approached him to talk about the fighting that day."

"How different is Nebo Aldric to Goud Etiolate?"

Pyrrha took in a steadying breath, and then answered with, "much like how night shares the sky with day, and yet they could not be more different, Ash and Aldric share many traits - their DNA, if you will forgive a poor choice of words - but are alien to each other."

"How so? Specifically."

"To use his own words... Ash was the man who would make the right decision. Aldric, the correct one." Pyrrha responded, "Ash was a hero, an idealist. Aldric, a realist."

"Would you say a pessimist?"

"I would not."

"I see - you've been very open about the idea behind his shield. What Goud Etiolate had to say about it - what it represented. Could you summarize that for me?"

"Goud said that the shield had been given to him by a man who rescued him from the death of his village. That the man died in defending him, gave him his shield and a coin for the Garden, and sent him to find the woman who paid for his Beacon attendance. He said the shield represented heroism, that it was a symbol of good... Ash gave it to me because he knew he would die in Beacon the night of the fall, and because he believed in the power of symbols. That people could die, or be corrupted, but their symbols - the things they stood for, those were immortal, and incorruptible. Furthermore he understood how powerful symbols could be for people, how much they would need them in the dark times. He believed I embodied what the shield did, so he gave it to me to keep the fire alive." She explained, "and he'd already done a great job forging a legend for it. Before I'd ever even touched it, everyone at school talked about it - if you put five people in a room and asked how the shield worked, you would have ten answers. The only commonality is that it would never break, it would never yield. They associated it with him - Fear and Dead Men is still referenced to this day, even after Ashmore."

"Did you share those beliefs?" Oak asked, "specifically about Goud Etiolate.

"Yes."

"And after learning about the truth about Aldric, after that battle in Haven Academy, that didn't change?"

"No." Said Pyrrha, "for exactly why I said it wouldn't: A person may change, a person may be corrupted or otherwise have their perception altered, but an idea can still be believed in independent of that person. A symbol can be a rallying cry - and even if Goud Etiolate was a lie, I didn't then and I still don't think that Aldric himself was lying about how highly he valued the things Goud espoused."

"Ashmore mentioned to Aldric in her interview with him a theory that you and Ruby Rose share, about the origins of Goud Etiolate. Could you elaborate on that?"

"We believe that Goud Etiolate is a picture of Nebo Aldric from before he came to Remnant. That the Aldric we know - the man who works in the dark, who makes the correct decisions - is a victim of circumstance. Goud is who he wanted to be, Aldric is who he was forced to become."

"Do you still believe that?" Asked Oak, who had realized by now that Pyrrha wasn't like the ones who had come before her: She wasn't going to give up anything not directly asked of her.

"Yes. In any other circumstance - that is to say, had anyone but Cinder found him at his airship's crash site - I believe that the Aldric we might have met would be much closer to the Goud we knew." She said, "I still think that, deep down inside, that is who he would rather be. My evidence would be found when he was interviewed by Ashmore - and in his 'perfect world' scenario, there were no deaths save only Ozpin's, and dying is only an inconvenience to him."

"Then... Given everything you've seen him do. Everything he's done to you and the people you care about... Everything you read in his journal, and all the arguments you've heard today. Are you going to tell me you think he's a good man? That everything he did was for the better?" He asked, trying to catch her.

"For the former, yes. For the latter, it is difficult." She said, "I think the dividing line, the delineation, between a good person that does bad things, and a bad person, is their intent, and whether or not they regret what they've done, whether they recognize their actions as evil - and Aldric intended for good ends, he does regret and recognize what he did. He may say he doesn't regret what he did, only that it had to be done, but that still means he both regrets what happened, and understands that what he did was immoral... And I saw him torturing himself over that knowledge. I..." She hesitated, breath briefly catching in her throat, before she pushed on. "I saw him sleeping with a shotgun aimed at his head."

"He could have prepared that, knowing you were on your way. Ruby Rose warned him that both you and Yang were looking for him. He may have done that to draw sympathy."

"Why?" Pyrrha asked, "why would he want sympathy from people he intended to isolate himself from? Especially as he sent me away, that Yang intended to murder him, and he intended to let her. What good would sympathy do? Besides that, he was under the assumption that I wouldn't arrive for a very long time. Years, owing to what he remembered saying while under the sway of the Relics. So what I saw was genuine, not an act."

"So you believe what he did was justified then?" Oak returned.

"That is difficult to say, because we do not - we can not - know how things would have turned out without him, or had he acted differently." She said, "all we know is that in either scenario, a great deal of people would have died. Had he not worked with Salem, the four Relics may not have been revealed, and he may not have been able to use his powers to overwrite them and snap his fingers."

"Miss Nikos, part of his foreknowledge was your very death. Did you know that?"

"I... No." She blinked.

"You never went to Ozma after it was proven he had this data? Asked to see it?"

"N - no, I didn't."

"And as far as we can tell from his Record, intervening in your death, preventing it, was a coincidence, not his plan. Did you know that?"

"No."

"What do you think of that?"

"I... Think a great deal of his journal looked as though it was written under the assumption that those reading it would have a similar amount of knowledge that he did - including that of Earth, including that of the 'show' he kept referring to. It is thus possible, even likely, that he never mentioned it because it simply was just a given fact. That of everything one could be expected to know, my supposed death was among it. Had I gone to fight Cinder that night instead of him, I think he always would have intervened - that avoiding it altogether was the coincidence, not the act itself."

"This referring to the same man who said, I quote: If there's no other option, I have to, so I will. I will kill Ruby Rose.' Endquote."

"Yes. The man sitting right there." She nodded in his direction.

"You don't think it's even possible he would have let you die?"

"What point would my death have served?" She asked, "I do believe I recall the Record mentioning once or twice that the plan was to kill Goud. Even if we ignore that that may imply a desire to rescue me from my prophesied fate, wouldn't killing Goud, and then later revealing him to be alive and a traitor, have more effect than just killing me? Wouldn't it allow him to control more variables in his battle with Cinder - up to and including unleashing Ruby's powers on her - than if he were to leave it all up to chance with me?

"Doesn't that sound closer to him?"

"Miss Schnee."

"Mister Oak." Weiss, unlike the others who had spoken so far, was in her combat gear - befitting of her position at Aldric's back, she had to be ready to fight at a moment's notice.

"Why did you join the Atlesian Military?"

"That was always the plan. Go to Beacon, network for my father and our company, join Atlas' military, provide a sterling image for the Schnee family, and then take my position as head of the Schnee Dust Company."

"That's all?" Oak pressed, "no other reason?"

"No."

"I was under the impression that you wished to follow in your elder sister's footsteps. Your respect and high regard for her is well known, after all."

"You are correct in the latter, but as to the former, my answer would still be no. She may have influenced my general direction, but not my end-decision."

"Are you aware that Aldric killed her?"

"I am aware that he was the cause of her death, but he did not directly end her life." She corrected.

"What did you think when you read that?" Oak asked, "when you read that, through his direct actions, the Terrans were not only able to finish conquering Vale, but were able to force Atlas into a surrender?"

"I understood there was a twisted logic in it, though I didn't like it." She said, ever the diplomat. "On the one hand, he had the ability and the power to force a worldwide conflict to end much earlier and with fewer deaths than it would have been otherwise. But on the other, it was both my native home and my new one that suffered under his hand - not to mention the people that still died because of him, or the amount of damage actions undertaken on his word caused. It was an idea that made structural, pragmatic sense, but was nevertheless immoral.

"I remember being heartbroken when I received word of my sister's death, and he was there to comfort me over it. I remember thinking, after learning about his betrayal, that I would get over it and it would be settled. I remember feeling betrayed a second time when I learned that not only had he caused my sister's death, but he was right next to me when I learned, and he comforted me about it. That was perhaps the first time I truly understood what Yang felt - that utter betrayal."

"Building off of that, when Ruby Rose was abducted, you were effectively what was holding your team together. How did you manage it?"

"To be blunt sir, I didn't. Yang was a drunk wreck and Blake hadn't mentally recovered from what he had done to her. Ruby was always the heart and soul of our team. For all I knew about the theory of leadership, she knew much more about the practice of it."

Oak didn't seem happy about Weiss' general neutrality, but he masked it behind a sip of water to wet his throat after hours of talking and veritable debate. "And when you learned of Ruby Rose's fate, of what happened to Blake -"

"I was furious, but I kept it together. It was the only time in my life I wanted to kill someone." Weiss responded, "but I wanted to keep my friends together more. I still don't like to think about how I failed in doing that - how it took Aldric unmasking himself and throwing Yang into a rage state I to this day haven't seen replicated, to get her out of her funk, and how it took him attacking us all to give Blake the push she would need to get going on pure momentum, long enough to run into Ruby again."

"Let's talk about that - his fight with all of you in Haven. He abused his face - a face you trusted, and thus the trust you all had in him - to fight you and buy time for Cinder to murder your friend's mother, and steal an artifact left behind by the gods themselves. What went through your mind when then-Oscar told you that wasn't the result of mind control, but conscious, directed thought?"

"Again... I saw a twisted amount of sense in it, but I didn't like it." She said, "I understood how it made sense, on some level. That someone doing what Aldric did had to do awful things to make it work, but that goes out the window when it's you who is being affected by it. I didn't like how he was hurting all of us in doing this, toying with us, abusing the trust we once had in him. I didn't like seeing Pyrrha tear herself apart trying to reconcile Aldric with Ash, seeing Yang accept fury as her resting state... I didn't like any of it.

"What should be noted, however, is that he absolutely could have killed us in Haven... Or at least a few of us before we stopped holding back out of sheer necessity. Instead he just fought us - and when his allies arrived, I do genuinely believe that our escape was in part due to him facilitating it. So on the one hand, we made it out because of him... On the other hand, what he spared us in physical wounds and scars, he made up for in mental anguish."

"And do you agree that the way he went about things was his choice?"

Weiss sighed, "yes. Even accounting for the stress of battle, there were numerous ways in numerous situations he could have used the resources he had on hand to achieve superior outcomes. That he didn't isn't due to a lack of foresight or intelligence - it was due to a lack of effort. It was well within his power to have effectively solved everything as far back as his discovery of the true nature of his powers - right around the time he started rationalizing everything through the lens of fear and paranoia of the self. I think it is possible, bordering on likely, that when he realized he could solve things in a much better way, even if he didn't realize he was doing it, he rationalized everything he needed to to keep abusing his power in any way he saw fit."

"Thank you, Miss Schnee."

Ruby Rose practically felt naked, wearing a dress instead of combat gear, and without her scythe hanging from her back. This feeling was exacerbated when, upon stepping up to the podium, it occurred to her that not only were all eyes in the room - all eyes of the most powerful people on Remnant - squarely on her, but thanks to all the cameras and microphones about, all eyes on Remnant were on her. She'd never been like Pyrrha, able to soak up the limelight or maneuver through those games - she could do it, one didn't reach her status and fame and not learn how, but she never liked it, and much preferred her days of solitude, roaming the countryside, killing Grimm, finding villages, all that.

But that had to change for today - she was one of the only people alive who actually supported Aldric, and given how Oak had structured everything thus far, she feared she knew who would be speaking after her.

So as always, she had to do her best, and hope for the same.

"Miss Rose, forgive the obvious nature of this question, but do you remember the day you were taken to Salem's castle?" Oak asked, seeming a giant despite Ruby standing over him on the podium.

She cleared her throat, "I don't remember when Aldric took me, but I remember waking up there." She said as carefully as she could - Weiss and Pyrrha both had warned her how her every word could be twisted by people as skilled as Oak in the courtroom, she had to choose when to speak at length and when to just provide answers.

"Allow me to be blunt and ask: Did you think you were going to die, when Cinder revealed herself?"

"Yes." She admitted, just able to repress a shiver at the memory.

"And what did you think when she revealed Aldric's identity to you?" Oak asked, "how did that even happen?"

"Cinder... Tried to drag it out. She used those beans of Aldric's to heal me and keep going, but Aldric convinced her to just get it over with. She made him take that mask off so I could see him before she did it. I remember when I saw him, thinking that everything would be okay." She saw out of the corner of her eye, Aldric look away. "That Ash was here, so he'd be able to save me - that he was just waiting for the right moment. I was... Scared, and hopeful at the same time.

"And then she did it... And the next thing I knew I was waking up on one of the Terran ships. Neo was there, and she explained that she and Myrtle had saved me. Then the Terran agent, Bubbles, he gave me Aldric's journal, and..." She shrugged.

"You're unique in that you may very well be the only person on Remnant who was able to read his manifesto before he even published it. What did you think?"

Ruby bashfully shrugged and said, "I thought he needed a hug. I read about all the awful things he'd done, about all the things he still had to do, and I knew what kind of torture he must be putting himself through. Because I knew - Ash was too real to be an act. So even if Aldric was the person we had now, I knew that everything in the journal was being written on the foundations of Goud Etiolate, and Goud would never - could never forgive himself for the things he was saying he'd done."

"So you too - you believe that Goud Etiolate, the heroic persona he adopted for his time at Beacon, is the core of Aldric's person? Despite it being built on foundation of lies?"

Ruby nodded, "Aldric is... A good liar, Mister Oak, but there are some things you can't fake. How he believed in the things he was saying, how he was genuinely smiling and laughing every day, how he threw himself at problems and into harm's way whenever he could - there was no way that was fake. I genuinely think that if you went back in time and found Nebo Aldric on Earth, the person you would speak to would be closer to Goud Etiolate than the one who wrote the Record. The same would go for if he were to have found a way to get out of Cinder's hands at the beginning. We would have had a more Goud-leaning Aldric protecting the world from the light, instead of working from the dark."

"Why, Miss Rose, do you think so highly of the man who blatantly admitted he was willing and ready to kill you?" Oak asked, "why do you think so highly of the man who brutalized your sister, and lied to and betrayed every single one of you who trusted him?"

"Because he regrets it." She said, "because at his core, he's a good man. A bad - an evil man, wouldn't regret the things he did."

"This referring to the man who, just months ago, slaughtered thousands of Four-Kingdom and White Fang forces ostensibly because it was easier than using any of his many and mighty powers to forcibly divide them?" Oak asked, "the man who held ultimate power in his hand, and chose only to kill one person, teleport a lot of people, and deprive two entire worlds of even the possibility of helping each other? The man who only avoided killing you, your friends, and allies, because he never felt the need to? I can go on, Miss Rose. You still think that is a good man?"

Ruby nodded, "if he was as bad as you keep trying to paint him as... Wouldn't that mean he would never have stopped? He wrote in the Record that he was able to use the Relics to extend how long they could feed him power - that means he could have done that indefinitely and just stayed God... But he didn't. He could have used that power to change things for the worse just as he did for the better, but he settled just for solving the problem he set out to, and then he willingly gave up that power - all of it. That says to me he is a good person, he just did bad things.

"Can anyone alive say they've never done something bad? Could we bring them here?"

"Let's focus on that then - his ultimate power. When he assembled the Relics, he claimed in his Record that he was omnipotent. That he was all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present. That he was, in his own word, 'a God with a big 'G'...'. Why do you think he didn't just fix everything when he snapped his fingers? Why do you think he just slowed down the breeding rate of Grimm, and didn't just wipe them all out? Why do you think he didn't wipe everyone's memories of the entire conflict and let us all live in ignorance? Why do you think he let us remember Earth, and thus live in fear of another Humanity - whose destructive power far outstrips our own, and who, unlike us, is at least able to conceptually leave their planet? Why do you think he just... Put a band-aid on all of it, as it were? He had the power to do literally anything, and yet he barely did anything.

"Wouldn't a good man try to use that power to fundamentally change things for the better?"

"Well... That's a bad question." Ruby responded, slowly. "Us being here today proves we barely understand him as a regular, ordinary, human. Could we even claim to understand him when he was like that? He knew so much more than all of us - like you said, he was all-knowing. He had to have known what would happen if he did that, and not liked what he'd seen, so he settled for a lower-impact solution. And -" A new thought occurred to her, "- and that's assuming he was in full control of himself when he had that power. When Pyrrha found him, he realized that he might have lied to himself while in that state... So it may not even have been Aldric who was there, when he assembled the Relics and got that power. We don't know how it works, how could we? Most of us didn't even know that part of our world existed until his Record was published a few months ago."

"So -" Oak said with a barely masked scoff, "- you're claiming that he works in mysterious ways."

"I guess?"

"I don't think I need to ask you anything else, Miss Rose, thank you."

"Last to stand before we end a very... Very long day. Mister Aldric himself."

All eyes shifted to him, as his guards undid the chains binding him to his chair. Despite being in such a relatively small space, they still went with the whole deal - put the guiding rods back in the collar on his neck, drew their weapons, everything as they walked him off of his stand, down the stairs, and to the podium, where they resecured him and backed off two steps. Unlike everyone present, Aldric looked awful - his hair was shaggy, his prison rags grayed out through being washed in giant, industrial machines alongside hundreds of pounds of other rags like it. Everyone else looked as formal and as beautiful as they could be, but Aldric looked like - well, he'd just stepped out of prison.

No doubt on purpose, he thought, as he straightened his back and looked right into the eyes of the judge who'd called him out earlier, a small smile on his face.

"Mister Aldric," said Oak, "you've spent the last... Twenty-odd hours being talked about and talked at. Every single thing you've done has been examined and analyzed, some people you once called friends revealed your true feelings, but aside from one outburst - which you used to make a quip - you've had no chance to speak for yourself. Is there anything you'd like to say before we really begin?"

Aldric remained silent, still just smiling at the judge.

"Mister Aldric?"

Still silence, the only change in Aldric's expression being him raising his eyebrows expectantly.

The judge caught on, and with a sigh, he said, "Mister Aldric, you can speak now."

"Oh good, I was wondering how long this would go on for -" He turned down to Oak, "before I say anything, can I ask a question?"

Oak blinked, regarded Aldric for a moment, then said, "I am not required to answer, but I will allow you to ask." He looked to the judges, who nodded.

"Where's Ozma?" Aldric asked.

Oak turned back to him, "I'm sorry?"

Aldric shifted his stance, turning to look over each shoulder - causing each of his guards to tighten their grips on their weapons, and even making Ironwood reflexively reach for the pistol that wasn't there.

"Ozma. The man who can die then come back and go, 'Please sir, can I have some more?'... He's not here." He back forward. "Now... The rest of Pyrrha's team, Blake, those guys? That makes some kind of sense why they wouldn't show up, what all would they really have to say except I almost killed them. But not Ozma, who would have volumes to say, good and bad? You dragged Roman Torchwick here, and he did exactly as you could expect and just played with you, but not him? Why? Where is he?"

"I fail to see the relevance of that question."

"Of course you do. Three wise monkeys." He said, leaning his head back and groaning like a man who had just sat down after a day's work outside. "Oh... That's six months I'm not getting back." He leaned back forward, "you know, I'm terribly tempted to just say 'The Aristocrats' and be done with it, but none of you would understand that joke, and the dichotomy between Earth and Remnant has been the source of quite a few questions today."

"Then enlighten us, please. You have the floor." Oak placed his hands behind his back.

Aldric scoffed, "okay, but you literally asked." He cleared his throat, "a family goes to see an agent about booking an act. He asks to see what they've got. They show him - what follows is such a profane mixture of sadism, incest, beastiality -" As he rattled things off people began to gasp, "- scatophilia, scato-whatever the word for eating shit is, rape, child abuse, cannibalism, murder, satanic rituals, you get the idea. The agent, horrified, asks them what the name of the act is. They respond: The Aristocrats!" He grinned.

"Order." One of the judges banged a gavel, calming everyone down. "Mister Aldric -" He said, a deep, livid frown on his face.

"Hey - he literally asked!" Aldric tried to raise his hand placatively, but it was still chained to him, and all he succeeded in doing was rattling his chains and causing his guards to partially draw their weapons. "He literally asked me to explain it!" He said, leaning back so his hand was just barely pointing at the prosecutor.

"Aldric, consider this your final warning -"

"Oh so my last final warning wasn't really the final one?"

"You will treat this courtroom with the decorum required, or we'll move on to the sentencing, am I understood?!" The judge demanded.

"As long as it's understood that this is a kangaroo court, and the Aristocrats joke wasn't what I actually intended to say. Saul Goodman there literally asked me to, and since this is a court of law and all, I was compelled to do so with the utmost of honesty." Aldric grinned, "can I get around to what I was actually going to say? I promise it was actually appropriate."

There was silence for several moments, as all eyes shifted to the judges. They exchanged looks, then turned to him, and nodded.

Aldric took in a deep breath, and tried to shake his hair out of his eyes. "Okay... You see -

"We live in a world that has rules - and those rules are protected by a giant wall. On one side of the wall is our nice little world, where things make sense and the worst thing we have to worry about is a barista spelling our name wrong. On the other side of that wall is absolute chaos and anarchy - the world of dark and evil things that only want to break down that wall and spread that darkness inside. To keep those dark and evil things from tearing down the wall, there are men on that wall - men who are willing to do whatever they have to, to guard that wall and protect their world.

"But me? I'm not one of the guys on the wall - you praise those guys. The ones that wear the gloves, that do what you want them to, and look good while they do it because they follow the rules. No, I'm the guy who takes the gloves off, who specifically goes out and breaks the rules to create opportunities for the guys on the wall to follow them. I'm the guy who jumps off of the wall and runs into that chaos because I understand it. Because I can be just as bad as all of that and there is no weapon as effective against people like them as someone like them - because for as much as they embrace and use that darkness, that evil, they are blinded by it and cannot understand or recognize when it's being used against them. They are not in any way prepared for their own tools to be used against them. The problem is that no one wants to use that evil against them - because by its very nature it is, evil. So sometimes you need people like me, who are willing to plunge into the filth and stain our souls so all of yours can remain clean.

"Now all of you here - every single one of you - you're crying for the people I killed, the lives I've ruined, and the traumas I've inflicted. But as was said earlier, you're doing that because you have the luxury of being able to do so. You have the luxury of physically being unable to understand that everything I did, while evil, while immoral and heinous, it all saved lives - and that I, as gross, as vile, as incomprehensible as I am to all of you here, saved. Lives. And that concept is so alien, so repulsive to you, that you that you physically cannot understand it.

"Finally, I don't even have to do the whole 'put anyone in my shoes and they would have done the same' spiel, because that already happened. Three times. At once. Think about that - I'm not unique. There were three others, just like me, all of them older and wiser, two of which I'm pretty sure had military and combat experience, and that every one of them reached the same conclusion and same game plan that I did. Did that ever occur to you? No, you put me on trial because it's easier to call me evil and wash your hands of this nonsense.

"Now ask your damn questions before I get bored."

Oak nodded, "very good. First I'd like to ask - could you describe what you did with the Relics of the Brother Gods?"

"Magic is what you think it is. That's what Ozpin taught me - what that means is that whatever preconceptions you have when going into learning magic, that is what your powers will manifest as." He began, "so, for example, if I duct taped some rocks and rebar together, and genuinely convinced myself that it was a gun - it would fire, because that is what magic is. My father once said that computers do what a programmer tells them to, not what they want them to. The universe works the same way, but magic lets one make the universe do what they want them to. Ozpin caught me early enough that my understanding of my own powers hadn't cemented yet, and he was able to teach me that magic is what you think it is - and the result of that is that my powers are quite literally whatever I want them to be. I can say, with complete honesty and without a hint of irony, that a wizard did it, and it would be true in both that a wizard taught me how to do it, and that I am a wizard and I did it.

"This is the context required for the answer to your question." He looked over his shoulder to the door leading into the courtroom, frowning. "From day one -" He turned back forward, "- I equated the Relics of the Brother Gods to specific objects and ideas from a certain franchise I was rather fond of back home. Infinity Stones - defined as individual objects that hold absolute power over a specific element of the universe. Power, Space, Time, Mind, Reality, Soul. When one acquires all six, they become omnipotent - they become God. I equated the Relics to those, and specifically kept myself blind to their actual, true function - to this day I don't know how they actually work, and I did this such that I would genuinely believe, to my absolute core, that they would work like the Infinity Stones. The gamble - the 'Big One' - was that if I did this, my powers would make it so. I had no idea if it would, but I thought it could, and it did. Why? A wizard did it.

"So when it came time to fight Salem, Jaune Arc sealed her in the blade I gave him, and I placed the relics in an object - a gauntlet - meant to funnel and filter the energies of all six stones... And it worked. I placed all four relics in the gauntlet, and they took on the aspects of the Stones I thought they equated to. After that, I used the soul of the last living Master save for myself to substitute the Reality stone - done because he used his abilities like a reality bender - and the soul of Cinder Fall to substitute the Soul Stone - done because she got her powers by stealing others' souls. With all six stones I had absolute power.

"My will be done." Aldric cast another look over his shoulder, his expression slowly melting into a mixture of disappointment and frustration.

"I'll return to that in a moment, but the other two stones - the ones not made up by the Relics. Exactly how did you acquire those?"

"There's a series of fantasy video games where I come from. In that series you charge magical items with soul gems. Black soul gems can capture human souls. When the old men played their hands too early, I used that as a chance to test whether or not the Big One would work. I learned then that such a stunt was possible - that I could do things more powerful than I was, but it cost an entire soul to do. Since I obviously couldn't risk myself, and I didn't want to run the risk of creating another Human Grimm, I mortally wounded the old men and acquired their souls as they died. They were, effectively, spare tanks of gas that I could use on one thing a piece. The first one was to test the theory, the second one was for the real deal. All I did after that was just kill Cinder and use hers to fill up the spare gem."

"And what happened to them afterwards?"

"I sent the Relics forward through time. I don't know where they ended up, only that they'll come back when they're needed and present themselves to who would use them best." A beat, "yes, as defined by me, when I was literally all knowing and thus objectively incapable of morality, because I would know the outcome of every single possible decision."

"I see - that actually brings us well into my return to the previous topic. You claim that assembling the Relics and the two replacement stones made you omnipotent. Completely and utterly - you weren't just the most powerful being in the universe, you effectively were the universe. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"And we've discussed at length today that you clearly had the power, in that moment, to do absolutely anything you wanted."

"Yes."

"So why settle?" Oak asked, "why just send everyone home, send Salem to 'the edge of time,' and slow Grimm breeding? Why not..." He shrugged, "kill all the Grimm? Why not change Adam Taurus' mind and motives? Why not create everlasting peace? Why close off Earth and Remnant? Why not remove our memories of it? You could have done all that and more, but you didn't - and it's obvious you chose not to, so why?"

"I think if you said 'why' one more time you were entitled to a free large fry." Aldric deadpanned, "tell me, Phoenix Wright - you passed your world's equivalent to the BAR exam, right? You went through law school?"

"Yes -"

"Did you ever cheat? Ever cheat on your tests?"

"I fail -"

"Please, there's a point to this."

"Of course not."

"Why?"

"It would be wrong."

"Oh I know that, but assume it isn't wrong. Assume you would never get caught and all that morality was out the window - you just needed to get through this one test and then you'd catch up on your studies, and your teachers are too stupid to realize you're taking this test on a computer, so one alt-tab away and you have access to the entire internet. Why didn't you do that?"

Oak frowned at Aldric, tilting his head, before saying, "it wouldn't have helped me, not really."

Aldric grinned, "good - it wouldn't have helped you because you wouldn't have really learned the material. You would have robbed yourself of the knowledge. Look at it a different way - when you stick a fork in an electrical socket, you get zapped, and you learn real fast not only not to do that again, but why you shouldn't do that again. Now let's go back to before you stuck that fork in the outlet, and say someone came over and took the fork away from you and went all, 'Oh no Jimmy, don't do that or you'll hurt yourself!'... Sure you won't have done it and you'll have avoided the pain, but did you learn anything? Or let's say I'm in law school or medical school and I just skip to the end... What would that really give me besides a degree I don't know how to use? That's why I didn't do anything I could have done with the Gauntlet. If I solved every one of your problems... What, if anything, would you have learned?

"If I solved Earth's climate crisis, I would have robbed them of the chance to learn how to fix it themselves and of the chance to understand why they shouldn't have let it get that far. If I killed all the Grimm, I would have robbed you of the chance to intimately understand that there is no winning against them except together. If I changed Adam Taurus' mind, I would have prevented the whole damn planet from realizing that their treatment of the Faunus is going to have consequences - sooner rather than later. If I created everlasting peace, you wouldn't have earned it, you wouldn't value it or even understand why it's valuable.

"I would have robbed you all, of all the things you could have learned. By giving you the solution, by solving the problem for you, I may as well have poured sand in your hands. You can say until you're blue in the face you'd rather me have done X, Y, or Z, but you fail to truly consider the repercussions of actually receiving all of that. Some tests shouldn't be cheated on, Professor Oak."

"You're saying that, and yet in addition to what you did, you closed the wormholes leading to Earth, sent everyone home, and fixed the CCT Towers. Shouldn't, by your logic, you have left everyone at Salem's castle, kept open the connection, and left the towers broken?"

"Earth never should have been connected to Remnant in the first place - that it happened at all is why we're here today, and every species in the universe should figure out how to solve their own problems, their own way. There was a book I read once about First Contact - Humans made contact with a primitive race, and for various reasons couldn't leave their planet. So to avoid influencing them in any way possible - so as to avoid robbing them of their ability to come up with new, unique, alien solutions to their problems - they did extremely little in their few exchanges between them and the aliens. They just had conversations - but never about science, or culture, or ideas, or anything, because any kind of minute detail could inspire them from our ideas, and rob the universe of a different way of thinking, a different way of solving a problem. I disconnected Earth and Remnant under this idea - and if one or neither of you make it off your planets because you didn't have your cousin's help, then so be it."

"By that logic, you shouldn't have even stepped in to help at all."

"Am I not Human? Am I not part of my own species? Do I therefore not count when one talks about Humanity solving its own problems?"

"Then why not go further? You see the flaw in your logic, Aldric."

"No, you're looking for one, not realizing that one man solving every single possible problem for everyone only makes them reliant on that one man for help. Robs them of their independence and critical thinking skills. Why innovate a new technology when Aldric can just magic it up? Why learn science when Aldric's magic is just as good? It's why Lex Luthor hated Superman - for all the good he did, he was doing just as much bad on accident. Why figure out our own way to save the planet from the evil space god when Superman can punch it into the sun? So I set clear goals - clear problems I would solve, I solved them, and I left. I did my part, the rest is up to all of you - would you want me to get your law degree for you? By your logic, it seems you would even want me to step down there and prosecute myself.

"Hell -" He laughed, "uncuff me, I can do a better job than you, let's go!" He rattled his chains. "Why haven't you asked anyone why they were perfectly content with lying to the planet until Ashmore shot me in the chest and stole my journal? Why haven't you demanded Ozma's presence because of the role he played in this whole thing? Why haven't you pointed out that my presence on this planet to begin with is half because of him?"

The judge banged his gavel, Aldric rolled his eyes, and calmed down after taking another look over his shoulder.

"He's really not going to come." He whispered to himself.

"Who, Ozma?" Oak asked.

"No, the Muffin Man. Do you know him? The Muffin Man - the muffin man! Who lives on drury lane!"

"You're mocking this court, Aldric."

"The court is mocking itself, dude. Where's my lawyer?"

"This is a sentencing hearing, not a defense trial, and I'm willing to stake my life on things on our world not working the way they do on yours."

Aldric rolled his eyes again, but did nod to the side, acquiescing the lattermost point.

"Ozma isn't going to come, Aldric. We received his testimony yesterday, we feared your reaction if he was present."

"Oh I bet." Aldric growled.

"Let's continue please. I want to ask about your manifesto specifically - why did you write it?"

"Because I got into the habit when I thought it was just a plane crash and figured it wouldn't be the worst idea to have evidence I'd survived it."

"Why go through the trouble of editing it after the fact? Adding in all of that hogwash about time travel? Did you really expect people to believe in it?"

"I rewrote the function of four artifacts of infinite and divine power, created two by harvesting literal souls, frequently pulled fictional objects that clearly work on different physics models, created a sword that could smite Grimm, killed an immortal woman, and became God, and you don't think I'm capable of effecting time travel." Aldric gave him a look that said everything it need to: What, are you stupid?

"I would think some kind of evidence would be left behind if that were the case."

"Congratulations, did you actually read the Record? There's your evidence."

"So your evidence of time travel is the only written document that claims it happened. In effect, the evidence is itself."

"Yup!"

"Strange, I would have thought you would cite 'Solidus Cinder' as your evidence." Said Oak, who quickly followed it up with, "why did you let her live, Aldric? If there is one person on this world as heinous as you, it would be her, wouldn't it? You yourself shared that idea, and yet you let her live. Why?" Oak asked, "because some time travel, circular logic-version of yourself was convinced she had turned a new leaf, but you wiped your mind of the evidence of said convincing? Isn't it more believable that she did something to you to force you to believe she had turned to the light? You yourself have the ability to alter memories - how do you know she didn't acquire and use the same device that let you do it? Doesn't that make more sense than time travel?"

"Ironwood said he sent people back to scavenge the battlefield. Are you seriously saying you found my belt buried under how many tons of rubble, but not the corpse I left in her bed?"

"Ah - so there was a body." Oak pulled up the report of said body on the holo-table. "You admit this."

"Yes."

"So if you killed her... Then she couldn't still be alive for you to spare her afterwards."

"Also invalidating everything you just said about the neuralyzer." Aldric pointed out.

"But opening a much more different avenue. Mister Aldric you yourself have acknowledged the traumas you've inflicted on others - but what about those you both suffered and inflicted upon yourself?" Oak asked, "before you came to our planet, you were a random child on the cusp of adulthood. The worst thing you had to worry about was a barista getting your name wrong. Then you suffered a horrific plane crash, were hunted by wild animals, almost died multiple times, and then realized you'd been thrown into a world you believed to be a work of fiction, of magic and Grimm and all sorts of daily darkness. That would weigh on anyone - and that's before all the things you did after coming here."

"Son of a bitch, you're gaslighting me." Aldric laughed.

The judge banged his gavel again, "Lang -"

"What are you even here for?!" Aldric snapped, before turning back down to Oak, "what are you even here for?! What did they tell you, Oak? That this will be the trial of your life? You get to put away Space-Napoli-Hitler? This whole damn thing is a sham - it's a kangaroo court. All of us are here because you got caught in your own lie, and you're trying to cover your ass! I didn't pull one over on the world - you did! Ozma, Ironwood, it was all of you, not me, who lied to everyone! And if Ashmore hadn't gotten greedy and clever -" He looked over his shoulder to Ironwood, and then to one of the cameras closest to him, "- you would have been perfectly okay with continuing to lie to everyone because it was easier than telling people the truth! I came back because you were so happy to return to the status quo that you were willing to continue brushing aside an entire species, and that bomb finally went off! You couldn't solve your own problems - again! So I solved them for you - AGAIN! You couldn't live with your own failure, and where did that bring you?! Back to me!

"And my proving what I said to him - that I'd be watching - scared Ozma! It made him realize that what he was doing - maintaining a broken status quo - wouldn't work! That his wife was right - that the only way for our people to unite and stop killing each other was in the face of a greater threat! That he'd failed to maintain his promise of improving your world without Salem to stop him! That in ten fucking years he didn't do a damn thing but reopen his academy and take his old job! His first, best shot at proving to me he'd keep his word, he ignored! When I came back to fix it he got terrified!" He jerked from left to right, pulling his chains taut and causing his guards to take up combat stances. "So he protected his own ass and sicced Ironwood on me! He wanted to remove me from the board because that would mean all that was left is Cinder - and he'd had ten years to figure out how to deal with her! She's not like me, she just takes things as they are while I plan for how they're going to be!

"Like planning for when he tries to go back to the good old days - when he was on top, in denial about conquering a fucking planet!" As he ranted, a subtle light began to build - from within him, centered around his stomach.

Ironwood's reaction was immediate, "stop him!"

The guards at Aldric's sides rushed in, weapons going for him, while Weiss summoned a giant knight who made a grab for him. In the blink of an eye, the situation changed - instead of grabbing for him, the Knight drew its sword, kicked one guard away, and swung at the other, forcing him to dodge.

"Schnee!" Aldric heard Ironwood call out, enraged.

"I - it's not - I didn't -!" Weiss was stunned beyond sense, watching her spectral knight disobey her, watching it then take its blade and cleave through all of the chains immobilizing Aldric in one go, and then using its hand to free his arm.

"Guards - execute!" Ironwood, alongside everyone else in the room, leapt to his feet.

Weiss, to her credit, adapted quickly as the main doors to the room slammed open and several more Huntsmen flooded inside. When Aldric turned around to face her, she lunged forward with her rapier - but her summons got in the way, backhanding her with one hand and grabbing her blade with the other. She stopped herself from flying too far with a glyph, but wasn't fast enough to stop what happened next - the ghostly knight gave Aldric her sword, and he ran himself through with it, immediately opening up his stomach and spilling his own blood.

Even Ironwood was stunned at this, and this caused everyone flooding the room, ready to kill him, to pause - waiting for some kind of confirmation of what they were seeing, or orders for what to do, as it seemed their target had just done their job for them.

They watched, equal parts fascinated and horrified as Aldric widened the wound in his stomach, and then ripped the blade out of it. His wound was only able to bleed freely for a moment - as he shoved his hand inside, digging around until he found what he was looking for, and pulled it out.

Ironwood, befitting his station, snapped out of it first - recognizing what it was, glowing bright orange in Aldric's hand.

"Open fire!" He yelled out, drawing his pistol and centering it on Aldric's head.

"No." Was Aldric's calm response, as he held up the orange stone, which flashed with a blinding light.

He was then surrounded by more knights - more than Weiss had ever summoned before at one time! They all had shields and dropped to their knees around him, forming a pearlescent white shield wall that absorbed the gunfire and gave Aldric the time to retrieve the second and third parts to his plan: A jet black stone from the same pit the orange one had been hidden, and a bean, stuck in between his stump and the metal cap that served as the attachment point for his replacement limb. Upon ingesting the bean, His wound sealed up before everyone's eyes, and then the knights then vanished. Next, after another brief flash from the stone in his hand, Aldric was enveloped in an onyx glow - and his collar wrenched itself off of him with the sound of twisting and tearing metal.

In the heartbeat between the collar breaking and his aura returning, Ironwood fired, his revolver deafening the entire courtroom with it's thunderous boom.

His bullet stopped centimeters from Aldric's temple, spinning in place, the name 'Nathan Drake' carved into it's surface. With his aura returned, and Aldric making immediate use of it, he plucked the bullet put of the air while freezing everyone in place with his semblance.

He regarded the bullet, then Ironwood, a smirk on his face, before he pocketed the bullet, set the orange stone to levitating above his palm, and clutched the black.

"Let me explain to you what's happening." Aldric declared, the Soul Stone lazily hovering in the air. "You're all playing his game now." He looked directly at Ironwood as he said this, "he lied to you, as he always does - as he's always done. All of this - all of it - is his will! Any evidence to the contrary is his work!" He shifted his gaze over everyone else present, "He wanted me gone, because he thought I was going to judge him unworthy. He struck me first to remove me from the board so he could either keep doing what he was doing - nothing! - or take a more active role in achieving his peace - an active role I certainly wouldn't approve of. He bet the farm on my either letting this happen, or picking a fight at my ranch and dying. He didn't come here today because I broke the mold and he knew I'd kill him! He's hiding, using you all as shields!

"There are only two things left that would bring me back. One became a non-issue." He started walking out of the room, a livid expression on his face.

"And now I'll handle the other one."

He reached the end of the room and kicked the doors off of their hinges - the guards outside tried to open fire, but one flash of light from the Soul Stone had them all on the ground, like puppets whose strings had been cut.

He paused at the threshold of the courtroom, as though he'd just remembered something. "Oh..." He turned back inside, and with a grin, raised his hand and called out, "the aristocrats!" And snapped his fingers, releasing everyone.