Knox: Hello again~!

King: Long story... You'll see soon enough. Now, let's get something out of the way. A lot of you seemed to expect Omaha, for some reason... Nope. Only one of you got it right at time of writing. Cinder asked why no great war appeared since 1945. So... we gave them the answer. For those unaware, it's MAD.

Inspiration: August 6th, 1945

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King and the screen finally got the next world in place. This… will not end happily.

The screen opened to show Jaune in a white lab coat, adjusting the screen itself. "There we go."

Weiss raised an eyebrow, "Can he see us?"

King appeared again, "No. We are seeing this world through a video recording. We couldn't find a version of reality specific to that world, but we found the closest thing we could. Where the events played out in a realm resembling your world instead…" And… that may just make what was about to happen worse.

Jaune sat down on a chair behind the desk. "Okay. My name is Jaune Arc, lead scientist of the Mjolnir Project."

Ruby chuckled, "Scientist?"

"The lead, apparently," Blake leaned back in her chair.

Jaune looked like a kid in a candy store right now. "We have been given the amazing opportunity to discover a brand new source of energy! In this age of war, we kind of need it." Jaune's visage fell as he said that. "I don't know what will come… I just hope that…" Jaune sighed and shook his head. "Never mind! I just need to move forward and hope!" The first recording ended there.

The second recording appeared, showing Jaune looking over papers. "Okay. We've made a lot of headway in the project. We just need to figure out how to spark the process at will…" He placed the papers down and sighed.

"What's he working on?" Ruby was getting a bit excited. She wasn't a fan of energy productions, but she realized it was important.

King was silent on the issue, "You'll see… soon enough…"

Tai leaned toward Ruby, "Is he okay?"

Ruby shrugged, "No idea. I don't think we've ever seen him like this."

Jaune turned back to the camera. "According to General Winter, the war effort is starting to grind to a slow crawl."

Winter blinked. "I'm… a general?"

Ironwood shrugged, "Wouldn't surprise me with your current career path."

"I… Thank you, general!"

Jaune fell back in his chair, slightly defeated. "She hopes the project will be ready soon… I hope she breaks the stalemate before it is…" The recording ended soon after.

The next recording came to form and Jaune looked both disheveled and on cloud nine. "Happy day! The Navy has pushed through the blockade! The skies are open, and the Air Forces can start to target the military institutions! We may not need the project after all!" The recording ended.

"Why would he be happy about that?" Weiss looked up toward King. "What's going on?"

"One more recording…" King floated in place. "One more…"

"Um…"

The last recording came into form. Jaune had his head buried in his hands.

Pyrrha's heart hurt to see this, "What happened?"

"The project… was a complete success…"

Ruby was just confused, "Why is that a bad thing?"

Jaune sighed in genuine, total defeat. "When the war began, the White Fang took over Menagerie…"

Blake felt her grip on her chair tighten.

"After this, they pushed out anyone that refused to join them. In the first years, it was exile… We learned recently that anyone who spoke out after this were executed."

Sienna felt a shiver run her spine. "That's… That doesn't make any sense!"

Blake shook in her chair, "Not to us… But I know someone willing to do just that…"

Sienna growled. She knew Adam was a problem child, but to be this far gone?

"This included friends and family if they failed to conform. Once their hold was secured, they began to spread onto the continents. By force. They descended upon us with a furious anger fueled by hate for anyone not under their banner. Those that did not fall in were killed. It took everything between the four largest nations of our world to push them back onto their island. They were fanatics, willing to kill and die at the drop of a hat. They would never allow themselves to be captured, willing to commit suicide to avoid this perceived dishonor."

This shook everyone to the core. The idea of people being willing to kill themselves to avoid capture… Willing to kill people that disagree… Even if they were family?!

Jaune shook his head in his hands, "This fanaticism gave them the conviction to spread into their island and create several new cities and factory compounds. Some worked to death… but, they created enough output to hold us all at bay. We decided to bomb the factories to try to halt the production. But they just rebuilt them in the cities or built towns around them, hoping we'll be constrained. But they created soldiers that despise them for what they've done. They see the White Fang as demons… inhuman… But they were right in that conventional bombs would be difficult to use effectively in larger cityscapes. So, we adapted."

The recording gave away to show a series of planes flying over a city. They released their payloads over a city, small red canisters that spun in the air. As they approached the ground, they burst as columns of fire fell upon the world below.

"Fire bombs. The first of their kind… Designed to burn the wooden cities of Menagerie to the ground."

The fire spread quickly, both on the buildings and the people within them. The chemicals causing the fire to seem to stick to the White Fang below. No matter what they tried, the fires found themselves remaining on the bodies.

Blake shook in fear. She couldn't watch this! She turned to look away, only to have her mother wrap her arms around her. Kali couldn't stand to see it either, but she refused to see her daughter suffer.

"Is… Is this Project Mjolnir?" Weiss turned to the fireball, sickened by what she'd seen.

"No…" King sighed. "That comes soon…"

Cinder raised an eyebrow and smiled a bit. She had to know what this project was and replicate it.

The smoke transitioned the scene back to Jaune. "But they remained strong. They held themselves after every attack, every death, only to build themselves back up again. Many tried to advocate for a siege at sea, but the Fang would starve themselves into desperation until they broke through the blockade. Others wanted to initiate a land war and smoke them out of their home. But, they're fanaticism would cost tens of millions of lives… That left us with one option…"

The screen returned to the skies. Through a giant cloud, a single large-scale bomber flew out to the clear skies.

Cinder was a little annoyed. "Is that it? A single bomber?"

King was silent.

This was Enola Gay, the bomber that would change the world. Within it, was Project Mjolnir's final product, labeled the Little Boy.

Ruby's head tilted, "Little Boy? What the heck is that?"

King's fire was fading slightly. "A bomb."

Cinder would have exploded if not for the damping effect on the theater, "That's it?! One bomb?!"

King was silent again.

The bomber approached the Menagerie coast as they heard Jaune speaking, "I hate what I have brought into this world and will make no attempts to atone. I do not expect to be forgiven." The bomb doors opened, revealing a single, massive bomb resting on the railing. "Before, they could blame a few for what was created and fell upon them. Now, we are all sons' of bitches…"

The bomb dropped with a metallic ting and it started to fall toward the city.

"I can no longer call myself human… I am a monster for what I've done… Either monster…"

The screen went into slow motion as the bomb burst before hitting the ground.

"Or I am their god of death."

A bright white light covered the screen.

Ruby shivered a little, "What's going on?!"

King was silent again. This was it…

The screen faded back to form and pulled away from the blast. Remaining on the screen was a giant cloud resembling a mushroom rising up from the ground. Within was fire, debris, dust, and death. The light from before burned shadows onto the ground and walls, quite literally. The shockwave ripped the city apart like it was nothing. Be it made of wood, concrete, or steel. Everything either shattered or melted. Bodies either burn or evaporate into nothingness in seconds.

No one could even begin to imagine what they'd just seen. The world they knew didn't have that kind of power output. Even gathering all the dust in existence couldn't recreate that. There was plenty of things they'd seen that were just foreign to them. Things that made no sense to them. But this was just… No one truly had any words to describe the event they'd seen.

"But they refused to surrender after this…"

The screen faded to show another plane.

Blake shook in fear, "No… NO!"

Another bomb fell to the ground and other city was leveled within seconds.

"Two atomic bombs were dropped on Menagerie. After that, they surrendered to the unified forces of the allied nations. Millions of people were wiped out in seconds. And over time, people would succumb to the radiation released by each bomb, as the particles released by the bombs started to destroy their bodies from the inside."

The screen showed people covered in bandages, bleeding, and others simply charred into a crispy corpse.

Ruby was about to vomit seeing that. Yang was there to help her through the moment.

"This is what I've unleashed on the world."

The screen changed to show scientists scrambling around a test site.

"And they're only getting stronger."

The team set off a bomb nearby 50 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Menagerie.

"Every one of the allied nations has a stockpile of these weapons. We fear not what we have seen, but what we have yet to see. War shall be avoided by the threat of our mutually assured destruction…"

King finally spoke again. "That. 50 plus years of that hanging over their heads. There was no mass war, because it would mean all of life would surely die in the unholy bombings."

This shook everyone to their cores.

Even Cinder was shaken. A weapon like that… Even she couldn't bring herself to unleash that hell, if only because she'd have no way to do so and live.

The screen returned to Jaune as he pulled away his hands. Tears were falling for the dead he'd indirectly created. "I don't know what hell we'll unleash in a Third World War, but I know for a fact that a Fourth War will be fought with sticks and stones…" He wiped away his tears and looked to the screen. "I cannot begin to ask for forgiveness for what I've done on this site. I can only hope that my work can be used to create, instead of destroy. I found that our project can be used to create power, but its early stage for now… I will do what I can to atone for this terror I've unleashed. But I know there will always be a special place in Hell for me after this…" The final recording ended with one last signature, "This was Project Mjolnir Lead Scientist, Jaune Arc. I'm sorry."

The screen ended the look into the reality.

King floated for a while. "Go take a break, everyone. We need it…"

"I know I do~!"

King's flames suddenly intensified back to normal at the sound of the new voice. He spun around to see a golden dot on the screen. "No…"

The dot seemed to shake before pulling itself off the screen and becoming a golden fireball. "Ta-da!"

King shook for a moment. "Everyone… Leave. I need to speak with my new friend." Once everyone from the other dimensions was gone, King turned to the golden ball. "What… the hell… are you doing here?! How are you here?! What's going on?!"

The golden one laughed, "Come on… You don't recognize me?"

"You're the damn screen! How did you become a being like me?"

"Don't know… Just kind of here now."

King sighed. "Damn it… Okay. Guess you need a name then…"

"Okay. What've you got?"

"Hmm…" King thought for a moment, simply trying to figure things out. But he had to give the screen a name now… "Gold, huh?" He'll have to figure that out in a moment. "Knox. You'll be Knox."

Knox giggled and spun around, a golden bar appearing on his 'head' like a miniature hat. "I like it~!"

"Right. Okay. Next up, can the screen work with you out here?"

"Yep~" Knox turned to the screen and it lit up with the usual intermission message.

King nodded. "Alright. Welcome to the family, I suppose."

"Thanks for having me~"

And like that, my life got weirder…