Winter Schnee, specialist of Atlas, has been assigned a new mission, one to a remote Atlas research facility studying exotic energy, one with quite a few more inherent risks to it than most energy sources. Now she must serve Atlas' best interests, whether those involve continuing to harness the hellish energies for the betterment of mankind, or shutting the project down, regardless of the desires of her commanding officer. Rip and tear, until it is done. But do try to show some class with the whole thing, would you? Obviously, warnings for violence, blood, gore, and some discussion of social issues.
Quite Doomed (RWBY/Doom)
Summary
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 233
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 10
-
Statistics (8 threadmarks, 51k words)
User Total Sir Bill 8 Threadmarks Reader mode -
Loading…
Arrival
The Bullhead's engines were quiet as we made our approach.
I passed my time by reading the news. There was nothing terribly interesting at first glance, though there was a small article speaking of the odd movement of Atlas troops and highly trained personnel to obscure postings, along with some possibly conspiratorial musings on what purpose those postings might be.
I raised an eyebrow at that. It wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to assume that that was my destination, considering the secrecy of this operation. Even when he had assigned me the task, General Ironwood had told me very little, except that I should trust in my own judgment, a somewhat concerning phrase to send me off with. And then he'd given me special procedures to report that judgment.
I sat there, continuing to read and reread updates and reports, until the radio came on, "We're approaching the site now, ma'am, if you wanted to take a look."
"I shall," I acknowledged, and glimpsed out the window. Judging by the snow, this was still Atlas, which I had almost began to doubt, considering how long the flight had been.
The area was cleared, and while we were still high, I could see trees that had been cut down- shot down, really, with a number of them simply being left in the mud and snow, and long patches of melted snow. Artillery, perhaps? One of the cruisers? No, the soot patterns seemed to indicate a lower angle of attack. Turrets, more like, and heavy ones.
The Bullhead began shifting, preparing for landing.
It was clear why the trees had been taken down. They'd want wide, open firing ranges, minimizing any chance of the Grimm (or potentially other foes) sneaking up on them. They'd cleared a radius of at least a few miles, judging by the window.
I frowned. That seemed almost- excessive? Especially when they failed to even collect the trees, which might have served to improve the barricades or, in an Atlas winter, even served as firewood. What exactly was this project they were working on?
There was a soft, settling noise as the ship landed.
I stood, and the various Knights I shared this flight with readied themselves. We walked down the ramp together, and greeting me at the landing pad with an easy smile was Specialist Ash Lavender. "Winter!" He gave a casual salute, which I returned. It wasn't too common for me to meet people who were taller than myself, but Lavender was on the border of seven feet tall, and was built wide as well. "I'm glad to see you. Having another specialist who can keep up with me in a fight would be pretty nice."
I nodded my agreement. I had enjoyed my spars with him, I can admit, though we were never too close. It had taken me some time to reach the point where I could reliably best him in a fight, but that was largely because his semblance was difficult to adapt to. After losing quite a few spars, I'd learned the trick of it. If we were fighting each other with no knowledge of the other's techniques- well, there was a fair chance I'd still lose, even with the versatility of my own semblance.
"Anyway, we should probably get going. I'd tell you what's going on, but the base commander wanted to brief you personally. Fair warning: things are getting a bit political here."
I grimaced at that, Ash being polite enough to turn away and not notice my look of disdain. Ironwood respected and acknowledged my- distancing myself from my father, but others were often much less understanding, either not agreeing with it or still assuming that we regularly spoke with each other with anything approaching warmth. Political conversations with people who refused to understand that tended to be tedious.
I followed Ash as we walked towards a large, three story building, noting several large turrets as I did so. Interestingly enough, those turrets had large wires connecting them to the base, wasn't quite standard design, while also possessing large additions to their ammunition boxes, which seemed to be crudely welded on. The base itself was one of the more elaborate prefab structures I'd seen, which made me wonder why so much effort was being put into this project so far away from civilization.
Distracting myself from pointless musings, I glanced at the handle sticking over his shoulder. "You're carrying a rifle, I see."
"Hah, yeah, the Momentum Mori," he shifted his shoulder to show off his ridiculously named hammer, "Is a pretty good weapon, but even its gun is awful at facing ranged opponents. I had a flock of tiny Nevermore playing keep-away for about thirty minutes once. Then I got angry enough to attract some Beowolves, and a couple Ursa, all the while they were blasting feathers at me. I ended up throwing the wolves at the Nevermore, that annoyed them enough to get in close enough to hit."
I resisted the urge to smile at that, "Did you have Knights available?"
"Hah, yeah," He sheepishly rubbed the back of his head, "They- kind of got broken up already. Couldn't even scavenge their guns to shoot the Nevermore with."
"Have you ever had a mission where your Knights survived?" I couldn't help my curiosity.
"Hey, I've gotten a lot better at that, recently. I've had plenty of missions where all of my little rustbuckets survived with no casualties."
"Really? And how many of those missions happened to involve combat?"
He simply grinned at me, "That's classified."
At that, I did give a slight smile as I shook my head.
"You do know that Knights aren't cheap, do you not?"
"Eh, cheaper than grunts, cheaper than farmers, a bit easier on the conscience, too. I'm not gonna get people killed because I put my effort into keeping the tinker toys safe." He shrugged as we entered through the doors of the building, giving an idle, "At ease," to the various troopers who had stood at attention as soon as we walked in.
"Do you know how long this facility has been here?"
"It's actually been here a couple years now, I think. About eight months ago was when things starting kicking into gear, and it was only last month we started pulling out all the stops. Mind, I only came in a couple weeks after the second wave started, so I don't know too many of the details of how everything went down."
"It certainly seems a large project."
"Ah, yeah, if everything they say-" He winced, "I'm not going to violate confidentiality if the commander wanted to brief you in person, but- well, if even half the things they say about this project's potential are true- well, maybe it'll- ah, I'll just shut up now."
We'd been ascending the stairs, and he awkwardly paused. I decided to try helping him, "Have you read any interesting historical books, lately?"
"Oh, yeah, there's a decent one about the Great War that came out recently. I like it, but it's a bit more focused on the broader perspective than I normally enjoy. Which is fair enough, and the author does make some interesting points, but I admit that from the discussion I'd heard about it beforehand, I was expecting something a bit more focused on the faunas perspective, considering the author, which really hasn't had that much written on it, and reading a story from the faunas perspective that had actually been written by a faunas seemed interesting. Unfortunately, it's more of a general account where the author tries to be as objective as possible. It's a good read when the author slips out of that character, but pretty dry otherwise, and doesn't really have any major new insights. Honestly I was expecting it to be a lot more controversial than it was, considering some of the reviews."
I shook my head at that. I tended to trust his literary judgment, at the least. It wouldn't surprise me if a book that had any notable coverage of the faunas perspective was considered a ranting screed by certain circles.
"Would you recommend it?"
He winced, "I enjoyed it, and I definitely think I'll look into any later works by the author, but you can see a lot of inexperience in how it was written, hell, I think she's younger than I am, and this is her first published work. She's also one of those authors who tends to mistake neutrality for objectivity in her analysis. Bit frustrating, since she did have an interesting voice whenever she allowed herself to express it, but, well," he shrugged. "As it is, while I liked it well enough, I still wouldn't recommend it to others."
"Anyway, we're here." He gestured to a nondescript door beside him. "I've got an assignment I need to head out for, so I'll leave you to it." He walked off with a casual wave, and I entered the door.
Within the door was a tall, willowy man in the neatly pressed military uniform. "Ah, Specialist Schnee," I withheld a scowl at the way he said that name as I saluted. Enthused and just a tad condescending, though I wasn't sure if that was response to my rank or my family. One of those sorts. "I am Colonel Moss Grant. It's a pleasure to have you on base, Specialist. We needed another solid combatant, and our head scientist was just a bit curious as to how your semblance might interact with, well, I'll be getting to that in a moment." He began pacing about the stark room. I suppose he did it for effect, but to me that sort of excited pacing seemed as if it should be beneath a man of his position.
"Truthfully, for now I was more interested in the extra security, but that research could have value."
"This base seems as if its fairly secure already, sir." Two specialists, for an entrenched position, with multiple heavy turrets and a significant number of trained soldiers? What could they be guarding that needed this degree of anonymity and firepower?
Moss smiled at me. "Of course, of course. But for a facility such as this, absolute security is required. What we have here is quite possibly the most important structure in all of Remnant."
I raised an eyebrow at that. While I was trying to suppress my initial negative impression, a single raised eyebrow was well within acceptable parameters.
"Hah, well, I suppose I wouldn't believe a statement like that either. You see-"
At that, an alarm on his desk quietly blared, and he glanced at a monitor on his desk.
"Ah. Grimm." He quietly said, before shrugging his shoulders. "I suppose a partial demonstration wouldn't be out of order. Seems to be a small group of young Grimm. The older ones in the area seem to have learned better. Or died, one of the two."
He turned around, and clicked a button on the viewscreen, which briefly flickered on. Six beowolves were gathered around a fallen tree, seeming to watch the direction of the camera. And then-
Four massive bolts of energy slammed into the group, each one seemingly quite capable of wiping out the entire group.
"I understand that some of the men have taken up betting on how close the Grimm can get before being wiped out." He shook his head. "So, Specialist Schnee, your thoughts on what just happened?"
A standard enough power play. Give a question with an obvious answer, hide the context that would prove that answer to be wrong, and then condescend to the listener. It could be used as an educational tool or for a learning experience. Theoretically. I had learned to see through that one before I even left home. Still, there was no real polite method within military hierarchy to avoid falling into the particular trap, and so I simply answered, "It seemed wasteful, sir, that number of Grimm could have easily been stopped by a simple firing line of soldiers, or even militiamen with low quality guns."
"Ah, but here, at least, energy is no longer a concern."
This facility certainly didn't look like a mine, so it couldn't be an unusually large dust deposit.
"You see, what we have here, is quite possibly the greatest scientific achievement since the discovery of Dust itself." Seeming to enjoy my skepticism, he simply smiled. "What we have here is infinite energy."
"Infinite energy?" I repeated, both eyebrows raised in curiosity. Even a man like him likely wouldn't make a claim like that without at least something to back it up.
"The only limit, for now, is extraction, but this energy is clean, efficient, and seemingly limitless. If you ignored the possibility of the components overheating, you could have those turrets fire constantly for days without ever running out of charge on a single battery the size of a car engine, right until the barrel melted, at least."
At that, my eyes did widen, I admit , and this information was rather more important than just maintaining my dignity. "How?"
He chuckled. "Well, it's simple enough. Specialist Schnee, are you a religious person?"
I did scowl at his showmanship. "Not particularly. Are you trying to lead into saying that you, what, stuck a power cord to a god?"
"Hah!" He said, arrogant pride on his face. "No, not a god. Hell itself."
"Hell itself." I repeated, flatly.
"Well, it's a bit different than any single religion's portrayal, I admit, but at this point, that's what people began calling it during the first few expeditions, though I suspect when this place is declassified, we'll try to find some more politically palatable name. We've found and rebuilt a portal to another world, filled with horrible malice filled creatures that are rather similar to old mythological depictions of demons. Fortunately, the base was still well fortified enough even when we first made the discovery, we were able to fend off their first incursion without much difficulty. If we hadn't, well, we might not have discovered the more fascinating aspects of Hell."
Or they might have suffered a demonic invasion, I thought,, but I could admit that I had no idea how to properly respond to the concept.
"There is a certain- energy field, in Hell, and with a few customized pylons, our base on the other side of the portal has been able to process this energy, and condense it into these." From his desk, he pulled out a single glass sphere, easily held in the palm of his hand, as it swirled with a strange red glow. "Chief Scientist Ron Blaine, who you will be working for directly, called it Argent Energy. This single prototype containment device, one of the first generation versions and far less efficient than the ones we've developed since, possesses enough energy to power an entire city block for a year. And when it's finished, we could just bring it back here and recharge it in a matter of minutes. That- is provable, demonstrated fact, that could upset the fabric of the four kingdoms."
That was- well, bluntly speaking, if true, that was almost as shocking as the fact that Atlas was tapping Hell for energy in the first place.
Grant gave me an amused look. "Well, you seem to be a bit shocked by the whole thing, I'll allow you to process it all. Make sure to speak with Blaine in the morning, however, he'll be the one handling your immediate assignments."
I left with a nod and a cursory farewell.
____
I've never had a particularly difficult time sleeping. It did take some time to adjust to the cots at the Academy, and even with that experience, military cots were an unpleasant surprise. The first time I killed a man, even if he had been a terrorist, my sleep had been poor then.
This, however? This made me sleep uneasily, the prospect of sleeping next to a portal to a place that actual military officials were referring to as Hell, and not in a metaphorical fashion.
Still, I had slept in areas filled with Grimm, and I knew of several meditative practices that could calm me down enough to evade detection long enough to get some sleep, so this wasn't something I was entirely unused to. I did sleep, in the end, and woke up reasonably well rested.
___
I knocked on the door to the science labs, and a voice shouted from within, "C-come in!"
Had I interrupted something? This was a laboratory used for… demonic research, I presumed, there were quite a few things I could imagine being distracting.
I entered the room, filled with wide empty tables and a great deal of medical equipment, and looked at the man standing by the computers. "Ah! Sp-sp-sp-specialist Schnee." He reached out his hand, and I shook it. His grip was shaky and unsteady. "A p-p-pleasure to meet you." He stepped back, and the Knight stationed right behind him gave him a steadying hand.
I raised an eyebrow at him, and he looked at me with all four of his spider-like eyes, and he sighed, carefully reaching to a wrist device that he had and pressed several buttons, until his voice came out, far more steady. "I am Doctor Ronald Blaine, and I do indeed have a stutter and occasional muscle spasms, both of which I've had since birth." Truthfully, while I was somewhat curious, the major thing that I had noticed was that he seemed awfully young for his position as chief scientist, seemingly quite close to my own age. There was also an odd look to his eyes I wasn't sure if I appreciated, both judging and expectant.
I raised my eyebrow further, and he pressed another button, causing the recorded voice to emerge. "Even I grow tired of listening to myself stammer in conversation, so I have prepared a number of pre-recorded messages, and several programs to help splice together my voice clips to clear up any stammering within those messages. This allows me to more conveniently answer a variety of questions and take far less time to do so than I would normally, in a fashion that is far less annoying to both myself and to my conversation partner."
I nodded. That was reasonable enough, however… "While it might be tiresome to speak, if you ever need to say anything with nuance, I am willing to wait."
He nodded, and gave another shaky nod. "Ack-ack-acknowledged, Sp-specialist Schnee."
"I understand that you had particular assignment for me?"
"Y-y-yes, I did, f-fact." He pressed another set of buttons on his wrist.
"I feel that it is important that, before we engage in conventional operations, you take a moment to understand exactly what we have encountered. The demons are unlike the Grimm, in that they are intelligent, capable of conversation, even. That changes the dynamics of interacting with them, though, I wouldn't expect, shall we say, a complex discourse. And we'll be sending you on a quick patrol, easy patrol route as an introduction of sorts. Before that, however, I'll need to give you a basic primer of the distinct species of demons that we've seen…"
___
The portal chamber- strange, almost. A series of ancient stone columns, with crude wiring spread between them and each was covered in metal plates with parts that were clearly electronic but served no obvious purpose.
The portal itself- was simply a large, red hole in the world, in a simple stone archway, with several massive steel rods emerging from it. Those, from what I'd been told, were the devices that extracted Argent and brought it into this world, where it could be purified and processed.
The stone columns were from some ancient ruins, from some civilization that had previously managed to access Hell, and in fact whose work we were largely copying. Truthfully, while it was a bit concerning that the civilization that originally built these columns was long gone, well, the world was filled with an abundance of long dead civilizations, and there was no actual evidence that their civilization's fall had been caused by demons. Grimm or fellow people was always a possibility.
I simply stood there, arms behind my back as I watched the various technicians casually walk around the portal, watching readouts and displays and making their own adjustments whose purpose was entirely opaque to me.
I suppose one could adapt to anything, given time, including actively working next to a portal to hell.
"I simply walk in?" I asked the technician who brought me here, and he nodded.
"Yes, ma'am."
I nodded and acknowledged him and, making utterly certain that my bearing didn't show any hesitation, I turned and walked through the hole in the world.
Walking through the portal was- strangely normal really, there was no period of being between worlds, one moment I was there, I stepped, and I went through, though in truth, I couldn't remember the actual moment that I had one foot on Remnant and one foot in Hell.
Hell itself. I noted as I walked through the portal. With the twisted light in the air, the ground that was formed of dark rocks when it didn't seem to almost look like flesh and bone. The winds that sounded far too much like wailing for me to feel comfortable with. There was a slight pressure on my aura, an oddly grating sensation like a wind that was noticeably just a little too hot or a little too cold, a sensation that only went away when I actively focused on it, but the moment my attention slipped it returned creeping up on me. The unprocessed Argent energy in the air, I presumed, eager to corrupt me and only rebuffed by the light of my soul.
Yes, I could see why this place would be called Hell.
"Ma'am." One of the soldiers approached me. "I'm Sergeant Redford. I'll be accompanying you on this mission."
"Will we have any Knight support?"
"For this mission, a quick recon, Knights tend to be destroyed far too easily. Without an established base and specialized targeting parameters, the target acquisition and dodging functions of the Knights are too sluggish to deal with those Imps. Blaine is trying to work out a patch for them, but Knights are basically useless side of the portal."
"I see. You know our destination?"
"Yes, the arena. I imagine we'll find at least a few of them." Site Gamma was a nearby section of structures that almost seemed to be shaped like an arena. A relatively small arena, but so far the demons seem to be intent on having at least a few demons present there at all times. And so the Hell base regularly sent out their specialists or Argent-Augmented Paladins to clear it out, let the demons repopulate the area, then clear it out again, in the hopes of making sure that they didn't establish some sort of staging ground in the area. Standard Grimm clearing strategies were apparently at least somewhat effective against the demons.
"When we get there, do not engage until I begin the hostilities. Even when I do, I am quite likely to survive far easier if you focus on your own survival instead of assisting myself. Darting shield formation." Which essentially meant, "The Specialist accompanying you would protect you by attacking any target that tried to focus its attention on you, have half the squad concentrate fire on people trying to shoot the Specialist while the rest of the squad and the Specialist attacks people trying to shoot the grunts." It was mostly used when attacking human enemies, but with the teleportation of these demons, Darting Shield seemed the best way to address that mobility.
"Of course, ma'am."
I began marching out, six troopers behind me.
_____
The terrain was difficult and rough, even with some of the cliffs having had ropes and ladders attached to them to make traversal easier. I, however, could easily jump these cliffs, and I did, so that I could observe from the higher vantage point and ensure that none of these demons could ambush climbing soldiers.
It was all quite inconvenient, and the way that things were built made little sense to me, though I suppose it made sense that Hell wouldn't be wheelchair accessible.
"Your men are keeping up fairly well, Sergeant."
"Most of the troops that get sent this side have stronger auras than most people of our rank. Which is good, because even more than it is with a horde of Grimm, losing your aura is a death sentence in these parts. So, we're all playing it safe."
Ah. The 'zombies', as they were called. The Hell Energy, before its conversion into Argent, was malign enough to turn anyone it infected into mindless monsters.
Some of which were hostile, some of which didn't even seem to have the awareness necessary to attack. Preliminary testing of some of the recovered soldiers indicated that there wasn't enough left of their minds left for any level of medicine to heal, and so-
They were to be killed on sight, which was probably a mercy. It was something I wasn't entirely comfortable with, but I couldn't disagree with the logic. Best to treat them like corpses possessed by Geist.
It wasn't long before we reached the large, spiked arena. Groups of demons, from the small red Imps to the floating Cacodemon, things that were almost nothing but a floating mouth with eyes, were around the arena.
In the center of it all was a single demon. Tall, with an odd curved head, purple body, and a red glow around it, an almost regal air to it. One of the Summoners, as I understood it.
"Hold your position," I said to my escorts as I approached the thing. It turned to look at me, and it was almost disturbing to see the light in its eyes.
It spoke, and this demon spoke slowly, with a deep voice, one that didn't fit its appearance, one that didn't even feel as though it came from the demon in front of me. "Ah, the Schnee."
I froze at that, it knew my name? However, I refused to let it show on my face.
"You know me?"
"Of course. The soldiers we've taken, we have their memories, their knowledge, their sentiments, and they think a great deal on the Schnee corporation. Many, ah, strong opinions are held on your company. Saviors, villains, morally gray, even. For a Schnee to approach us, well, this is an excellent opportunity."
"What sort of opportunity?" I asked, keeping all doubt from my voice as I walked towards the demon.
It descended from its levitation to greet me, arm outstretched. "Power. Wealth. Influence. Security. Allow us into your world. Open the boundaries between our realms. Grant us full reign of those lands, and we shall grant you power. The power to force the world to serve Atlas, the power to butcher these Grimm, all of the- recognition and independence that you desire. A thousand supplicants, screaming your name in unison."
"Really?" I asked, voice still neutral.
"Atlas shall be preserved, a land free of Grimm, but grant us leave to consume these other lands, these lands that would defy you. Even your father would be forced to bend his knee in recognition of your power. Grant us-"
My sword exited the back of the demon's throat. "The Doctor's information was correct; you truly are idiots." Truthfully, he'd framed it as them seemingly being incapable of understanding more altruistic, noble motivations, and thus were entirely open about their malicious intentions towards Remnant, but I felt my summary was sufficient.
Any moral qualms I might have had about invading their home and taking their energy were quite quashed.
With a twist and a flick of my sword, I simply sliced through the rest of the demon's head, and it dissolved into red flames, which is when the rest of the demons decided to attack.
"Get the Imps!" Redford said, his gun firing. It seemed like a dozen fireballs of green and red flames flew towards me, but that was simple enough to deal with. I leapt into directly into the air, looking for the largest demon I could find, before noticing a single Cacodemon floating by itself, apparently surprised by my dodging. I summoned a rune behind me, and used it as a stepping stone to leap towards the floating thing, and it turned to face me, far too slowly. As I nearly reached it, I briefly summoned a runic circle beneath me, allowing me to quickly knee my platform, changing my angle just slightly to soar above the demon instead of directly into its open mouth. As I flew over it, I stabbed my sword downward, penetrating oversized eye deeply, to the point where my momentum twisted both it and my own body in the air. I smoothly landed directly behind it, in the same motion I pulled my blade from the eye, and seeing the geyser of-
Blood-
I shook my head of the approaching encroaching flashback, ignoring it as best I could, before looking back to the battlefield. Most of the demons seemed to still be distracted by myself, but at least one group of Imps had shifted their focus to the soldiers. I manifested my semblance, and summoned a flock of ghostly Nevermore, the ethereal raven-like Grimm swarming to the Imps.
One of the larger demons simply leapt in my direction, a bulky figure with massive muscles and a face that looked more like chitin than flesh. One of the hell knights. It roared at me, readying its bare hand to strike at me, and was promptly shredded by rifle fire. A second Hell Knight noticed the fate of its companion and turned to avenge it, and I leapt in its direction. It raised its fist to me, and I dove under it, splitting my sword into two as I did so. The shorter blade found the back heel of the demon and it roared, before it was interrupted by the longer blade slashing into its back.
I frowned as the second wound barely penetrated the thing- its skin was tougher than expected. It was more like Grimm than unprotected human flesh.
I simply leapt back as it turned around swinging its fists, and it awkwardly stood up, even with the severed hamstring, readying itself for a brawl. Instead, I leapt over the thing's shoulder before it could react, my sword just slightly to the side where it could find the demon's throat as I passed. It gurgled and collapsed on the ground, as I searched for my next target.
The imps that had been aiming at the soldiers were- well. Having my ghostly ravens peck at the eyes of their targets was far less clean a diversion when applied to targets without aura to protect them, even if the results couldn't quite be argued with, the ravens even managing to outright kill several of them.
I distracted myself from the sight, and found the next batch of imps beginning to target the troops.
Charge in, kill, dart away, flee, keep everyone focused on the self while the soldiers killed anything that failed to take the bait or was sufficiently distracted.
Simple, efficient, and direct.
It wasn't long before the guards stopped firing.
The near silence of the battlefield almost took me back, to when-
I shook my head. Hardly relevant.
I took a deep breath, and- strange, there was still blood on my sword. My aura would usually keep it clean. I shook my head, more forcefully this time, and flicked the sword, pulsing my aura at the same time, simply tossing the blood away where it burned in the air, and I watched the burning blood for several seconds.
""Uh, ma'am?" A voice spoke, and my head jerked in that direction. "Uh, looks like we got them all, ma'am." Redford said, and he and his men seemed- unharmed. Good. I nodded, and walked towards one of the walls.
Carvings.
It was- peculiar, for a group as apparently overtly hostile as these demons to be, to create art. Though, they had built these structures, the arena, so they clearly had- culture, traditions, something of a personality to their people, and even then, they refused to consider anything other than conquest and slaughter.
I looked at the carvings. They seemed to feature, well, violence, savage violence, and even with the slaughter behind me, I felt vaguely thankful that they hadn't seen fit to color these images. And further along the wall-
"Curious." I said.
There was a figure on the wall, one that seemed to be fighting these demons. It- almost looked like one of our helmets, an Atlas trooper, but- no, we'd hadn't been here for nearly long enough to for them to begin making carvings of us.
For a moment, I wondered if they had mistaken us for whoever they were fighting, that perhaps their willingness to fight us was due to a misunderstanding, before I shook my head.
They- had known enough about us to recognize myself as a Schnee. They clearly knew who we were, or at least, that we weren't- whatever peoples had fought them hard enough to be memorialized like this.
"Ma'am?" Redford asked, and I turned to look at him. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes, one moment and we'll be returning to base." I pulled my scroll from my pocket and took several pictures of this set of carvings. I glanced around.
This entire arena was- covered in them. It would likely be an absolutely fascinating find for any archaeologist- I shook my head. Did archeology apply here, or did that term only apply to dead cultures? Anthropology seemed more appropriate, even though having archaeologists study rocks would be likely get more results than just asking these demons for explanations.
I shook my head, and in my firmest voice, I informed the squad that we would be returning to base.
——
We were roughly halfway there when he spoke to me. "You know, back when we first started doing, all this," he made a vague gesture to the blasted hellscape around us, "there were a lot of people who, uh, found fighting these demons to be troubling."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, the Atlesian military, well, most troops have never been in a fight with actual people or intended to kill them, you know? It's mostly just Grimm, or occasionally, shooting criminals long enough to break their aura."
I remained silent, trusting that he'd reach his point soon. "So, fighting these, uh, demons, things that bleed, things that react to pain, things that can talk back? A lot of people have had trouble dealing with that sort of thing. Ah, stress, you understand. People don't like hurting people, or things that seem like people, you know? I've- well, a lot of people have seen the counselors on base. Nothing wrong with that."
I gave him a look, and he just shrugged. "Of course, short term, a person could just speak to Blaine. He's got a pretty useful semblance for calming people down, or, less calming them down, more giving them control of their emotions, as I've heard it described. It's not good to use long term, apparently, but just having a good night's sleep is pretty useful."
"That is- interesting information," I allowed myself to acknowledge.
I hardly considered therapy to be necessary for myself, but I was curious about that semblance.
The rest of the trip continued in silence.
__
As we returned, I saw Ash coming along with a large escort of troops, with his hand in a rather long, covered and wheeled crate, which he was just pushing along.
"Specialist," he acknowledged, a slight sheen of sweat on his brow, "Just finished my own mission. I can tell you about it later, but for now, I need to to get to Blaine's lab with this."
"My own assignment involves speaking to him."
"Ah- fair enough, we can walk together but what I'd doing involves a lot of concentration, so don't expect me to talk much."
"Understood," I said, and faced Redford. "Sergeant, you and your men preformed well. Return to your duties."
"Right, ma'am."
He gave me another of those looks, but I simply turned around and walked back through the portal, the process as anticlimactic as it had been when the other way around (though I still failed to notice the actual moment of transition, and I resisted the urge to simply stick my arm through the portal and hold it there as a form of crude experimentation.)
We stood there for a moment, back on Remnant- a curious thought, to be back on the planet.
He walked towards the lab, pushing the cart along with his hand still remaining inside it, and I followed. I admit, I had questions, but there was no need to ask yet, and he did have a faint sheen of sweat on his face.
It wasn't long before we entered the lab, and Lavender yelled out, "Hey, Blaine! You have the chamber ready?"
Blaine limped towards us, the Knight at his side steadying his steps. "Y-y-yes, bring it h-here." He pointed his finger to a large set of doors, and he quickly rolled the cart into the room.
"G-G-Good that you're h-h-here, Winter, you should s-see this as well." As the cart entered the door, he continued, "N-now, hook it up t-to the chamber. T-there's a slot i-in the wall."
It was a rather large hole, along with a series of other gaps, and the crate shifted neatly into the indentation with a soft chime.
My eyes narrowed slightly at that. Both the cart and whatever these slots were didn't seem to be at all standard. This was entirely custom scientific equipment. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, considering the nature of the project, but- my combined military and… familial background gave me some grounding in just how expensive such equipment could be.
"N-now release your hand, it should be s-s-s-ecure now."
With a minor gasp of relief, Lavender removed his hand from the hole, and the crate sealed with a pneumatic hiss. A number of small lights on a console lit up, a spinning hourglass the universal sign that something was happening.
"Th-th-the p-process should not h-have been that st-straining." Blaine noted, curiosity evident on his face.
"I rushed the beginning of it, and it wasn't exactly easy getting the sample in the first place, so a lot of my strain comes from there. Besides, you try spreading your aura over so large an- ah, well, object, for a couple hours."
"O-oh I d-don't doubt it was diffic-cult, I knew th-that much, but p-perhaps the sc-scale of it escaped me. Regardless, w-well done."
"Right," Ash leaned against one of the walls casually, "I'll, probably need to rest a bit after all this."
"What exactly are these?" I asked, looking over the machines.
"A-aura is-is-isolation ch-chambers. The design was im-improvised from sp-specialized medical e-e-equipment, even if I needed to make some ch-changes, I admit." He scowled, "This would b-be a lot e-easier if-" he frowned, scowl deepening, before hitting several buttons on his armband, which spoke for him, "Professor Polendina," and he continued with his natural voice, "c—c-could collaborate on the p-p-project, but the m-man is st-strangely p-protective of his artificial aura res-search, wh-whatever it is. I t-tried ex-explaining what I wanted, and h-he t-told me to g-go to hell. He didn't q-quite know wh-why I found th-that amusing, though. B-bloody c-c-classi-clas- secrets," he growled. "R-regardless, I m-managed to imp-improvise this." He vaguely waved his arm around the room.
"These," Lavender spoke up, possibly due to impatience, he did seem quite tired, "are used to store demons. You saw they- break up when killed, like the Grimm. Fortunately, however, there are ways of slowing or preventing the process, no idea how they discovered that, but apparently, grabbing the corpse quickly enough and charging it with aura the same way I might charge up a weapon ensures that it still thinks its alive. Then these things sort of stabilize the aura, or trick it into thinking that aura is pumping through it or, something, I've already been lectured on oversimplifying it, but while it is a major energy hog, these do help to keep the corpse intact."
I'm not ashamed to say that my nose wrinkled in slight distaste at that statement. Wrapping a corpse, especially a corpse of one of these creatures, in aura seemed- disgusting, to be entirely blunt about it.
He seemed to register the look on my face, "Yeah, it wasn't exactly fun for me either, but we managed to capture a specific type of demon to-" he glanced at Lavender, "well, confirm some suspicions. It's… probably pretty important to know this for sure, though, I think I can wait on that. See you two later, I'm going to go sleep now."
He walked out with a wave of his hand, leaving myself alone with the scientists.
"What are you attempting to confirm?"
"S-simple, really. We're t-testing the DNA of the de-demons that look like humans, m-mostly the ones f-f-found further out, a-as well as- well…"
He paused, and walked to the crate, where he slowly input some sort of code into the machine, and the top opened, revealing a glass case. Within was-
A demon that looked much like a human stripped to the bone, but more notable than that was the strange armor.
The design almost seemed more in the Atlas style, but-
"This wasn't made by Atlas." The lettering was strange, the script similar in style to the modern common script, almost enough that she felt that she could read it.
"C-c-c-correct. And p-p-possibly not even Remnant."
That was-
What could I even say about that?
Right.
"Are you saying that Hell connects to other worlds, worlds with- humans?"
"P-p-possibly even faunas as well." He said with a wry smile, and shook his head. "Entire w-w-worlds out there, f-filled with people to meet?"
The possibilities were- overwhelming, I could admit. I prided myself on trying to understand the world around me, I wasn't just a brute with a sword as some Specialists were accused of being, possessing a high ranks entirely by virtue of their skill at arms, I could understand the political concerns of whatever mission I was assigned, I could grasp strategy.
And yet-
Seemingly infinite energy, other worlds filled with people-
"T-trade would be ideal, but we'd n-need to, mind the c-commute."
I gave a huff of amusement at that, turning away from the demon corpse. "Yes, I suppose reaching these other humans might be difficult. Still, this does explain something I found while on my mission."
"Oh?" He asked, intrigued.
I pulled out my scroll and handed it to him. The particular image that was highlighted was of the demons swarming one figure standing before a portal much like the one that he had emerged from, clad in Atlas styled armor. The details were vague, the carving crude, but it was still a fully covered figure with a gun.
Blaine stared at it for several seconds. "F-f-f-f-fu- bloody hell," he said, shaking his head, "All this f-f-fucking effort to prove this and you j-j-just f-f- happened to stumble on ev-ev-ev-evidence right there-"
He growled, and stumbled slightly, his accompanying Knight grabbing his arms and holding him up, as he shook slightly, gently held by his modified knight.
I stood frozen in a moment of pure indecision, but he eventually stopped, slowly wobbling to support himself, as he lifted a shaky finger to his armband. A single button push was all it took to trigger the voice this time, it was likely a priority for him. "I have had a minor attack, though it is nothing to be too concerned over. My condition is aggravated by stress, and I admit that circumstances here have been somewhat stressful. Please give me a moment to gather myself."
Now, seemingly to have taken that speech as an opportunity to rally himself, he spoke, "w-we can continue our t-t-talk, but let's s-sit down first."
"I can let you rest, if you need such."
"T-t-take me to the tables." He spoke to his attendant Knight, and I followed him, slightly awkwardly, I could confess, as this wasn't a situation I had any experience in.
I sat down, and he was gently sat down. "I w-w-will not be able t-to rest until I can speak. P-p-pill three, if you would." The knight reached into a pouch, and pulled out a pill and a small flask, gently placing the pill in Blaine's mouth, and then put the flask to his lips. Blaine swallowed, and seemed to collapse in on himself, his four eyes blinking.
"That should s-s-stabilize me, f-f-for a moment. It will be un-unpleasant tomorrow, but…" he shrugged, dismissing it.
"If you were interested in the rest of the pictures, nothing else I saw seemed terribly interesting, though I could still forward them to you."
He smiled, and leaned back in his chair. "Th-that would be appreciated, thank you." He shook his head. "I do a-apologize."
"I won't fault you for a medical condition." I know I can be severe, but I would hope I didn't come across as cruel or callous.
He chuckled and shook his head, "No, n-no, I meant my anger, not my att-attack. You h-h-had done nothing to warrant such. B-besides, even with your p-picture, it might have pr-proven my theory earlier if I had seen it before, I would have n-needed to do continue all of my other p-p-procedures. It is simply s-slightly annoying, and I d-d-dislike how much we st-still don't know ab-about Hell."
"I see." I nodded, glancing at the Knight hovering at his shoulder.
The fact that he was here…
"I've heard some soldiers mentioning your semblance?"
"Ah, y-yes, I suspect my s-semblance is the only reason I b-became project head." I tilted an eyebrow at him, and he waved it off, "Oh, I'm q-quite good at what I do, really, but my semblance is ex-extremely helpful for th-these projects."
"And what is your semblance?"
He paused, before touching a few buttons on his armband, "My semblance isn't, as some might describe it, any sort of emotional control or mental manipulation. What it does is perhaps best described as a steadying hand. I can simply impose the semblance on someone, and they will find it much easier to control their own emotions, to push them aside or even to embrace them. The process has been vetted and analyzed by several psychologists specializing in semblances that manipulate the mind, and they have ruled that it is fundamentally not an unethical thing to impose on someone, so long as permission is acquired beforehand. The semblance has made me quite useful for various projects far from civilization, as I can assist in keeping emotions in check, limiting the number of Grimm attacks, though again I stress that allowing me to use my semblance on a person is in no way mandatory, even if they are in severe mental distress."
"It's not common for non-combat personnel to have managed to unlock their semblances." It often involves severe physical activity, desperate struggle, or extreme discipline in meditation. For someone who hadn't been on the battlefield…
He continued speaking in his own voice. "My-my doctors suspected that my semblance, or even un-unlocking my aura, might help with my c-c-condition. This t-turned out not to be the case."
Ah. Developing ones aura and semblance could help with quite a few physical conditions, but- "If I may ask, what exactly is your condition?"
He shook his head with a frown, seemingly thinking it through. He raised his arm to the armband, before letting it fall. "Odd c-circumstances, I'm afraid. Tech-technically a m-mix of several sp-specific conditions, the sp-pecific condition I h-have something I c-can't pronounce, a-m-m-musingly. M-my mother inhaled a g-g-great deal of lightning d-dust while pregnant, and that harmed my bodies neural d-d-develop-d- growth. F-fortunately, m-my mind remained largely intact, even as m-my physical c-c-condition worsened."
"How did she-" I glanced at his eyes, before realizing the likely answer.
"Yes, it-it was in the Sch-Sch-Schnee dust mines."
"She was mining while pregnant?"
"Th-there are, safety reg-regulations preventing such, but she w-was eating f-for two at the t-t-time, and only working for one. She w-was always working for those few d-days longer, to make sure she c-could afford to stop working, and n-never quite reached that p-point."
Yes, that did seem to be how the mines were often run. Quite a few nominal protections, employees quietly discouraged from ever using those protections, and no one ever being punished for working beyond the safe limits. And naturally the company could never be blamed for workers feeling excessively productive while they had clear regulations posted on the walls for any regulator to see.
"I see." There wasn't much else that I could honestly say. Openly state my disapproval for the man in charge of the Schnee Dust company? That wasn't the sort of thing that one safely did in uncertain company. Or when uncertain company might be listening in. Disavow responsibility? I was in the military. I had already put some measure of moral distance between myself and my father, and while Blaine had revealed some rather personal parts of his life story, I hardly felt obligated to return the favor. And so I simply remained silent, continuing to listen to his story.
"For wh-whatever reason, this o-one accident m-made the news, and of c-c-course the overseers were q-quite sympathetic, despite my mo-mother's lack of ad-adherence to regulation. O-of course, they p-paid for medical a-attention, sh-showing off their c-compassion- for th-their workers, and the p-papers wrote g-glowingly of their k-kindness, with q-quotes from my mother, m-m-mentioning that i-it had been her fault for n-not reporting the p-pregnancy. They e-e-even paid for my sch-sch-schooling. A f-f-free ride, th-though it proved red-redundant w-with my military contract."
My face was a mask of careful neutrality, and I quite suspected the other parts of the story.
I knew my father, and the company he ran.
Of course this would make a fine news story. A poor woman, a presumably single mother suffering a marketably tragic accident that had already been revealed to the public, and so she would be given plenty of medical attention. And her son was in dire medical straits. Provide them healthcare, help the son get through life with his terrible difficulties where he can be a rousing success story for the Schnee company, a faunas child of the company growing up despite his physical disabilities to be a highly placed scientist.
Of course, if his mother ever stopped praising the company, or openly condemned their role in her accident, well, the medical and schooling bills might no longer be paid. And that uplifting story would quietly be forgotten.
"It sounds as if your mother was in a difficult situation." A simple, objectively true statement, with other parts left unsaid.
He simply gave a shaky smile, "Ind-indeed." He shook his head, "She p-passed, before I f-finished my schooling and could take my m-military contract. A shame, for m-many reasons, she h-had been q-quite looking forward to, well," his voice trailed off ambiguously.
Oh, she'd likely have had quite a lot to say, if she was no longer beholden to the company for her son's well being. If he wanted financial security, to quickly avoid becoming dependent on his mother's allotments, and leave her free to make public statements, well, a career with the military was one of the better ways to do it, I imagine. And while the company could pressure Blaine if he personally made public statements against them, but potentially trying to get them to fire him because his mother had made statements against them would hardly go over well, even with my father's level of influence over the military. The best they might be able to do would be to imply some sort of White Fang connection, but at that point, but that could easily lead to a situation where spiting him was more trouble than it was worth.
"A shame." I nodded. Though, his personally making statements against the company would likely be a bit more easy to punish.
I suspected, at this point, we mutually understood where the other was coming from, and that saying more would enter risky territory. "If I may ask, what field did you study in college?"
"Ah," he said, recognizing the change in topic, "R-robotics and programming, m-mostly. Th-that was one of the more," he paused, considering his next words, "d-desired degrees by the military. And, w-well," he paused, an expectant smirk on his face, "There was a certain ap-appeal to working with getting b-bodies to function as c-commanded. It has m-made my life quite easier, as you can see with G-Gregory, here." He gestured to the Knight standing behind him, the machine standing further at attention at the mention of his name. "I've g-grown quite fond of s-such work, the ch-challenge of it, and Atlas is p-preparing a line of nurse variant Knights b-based on my work. They c-can't replace regular nurses, but they can prove an able sup-supplement."
I was watching his face as he talked. There was a slight undertone of anticipation in his voice, almost an eagerness, as if he expected-
Ah. His semblance.
His semblance, the expression of his soul, involved control over the self, of being able to reign in emotions. The idea of control was so key to his sense of self that his soul expressed itself in a manner that granted that control, even to others. And yet, he couldn't apply that control to his own body, or even to his life, considering all of the influences on his life, with the closest thing to control he could achieve being his programmed robots.
Phrased like that, his life seemed pitiable-
And that was the trap.
He was a bitter, angry man, for reasons I could understand entirely, but that statement remained true. He hadn't simply been testing my opinion of the Company, he had been testing to see if I pitied him. Pitied the poor, inspirational story of a faunas surrounded on all sides, where most every tragedy he suffered and every hurdle he overcame was used to reinforce the reputation of a group that he likely hated.
Pity would likely feel toxic to him, and he was a man quite used to burying and controlling his anger. If I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of being able to hate me for being a loyal child of my father's, or for being stupid enough to openly state my distaste for the company, perhaps he could hate me for pitying him.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
I didn't appreciate being tested like that.
"While impressive, none of that seems to qualify you for the position of chief scientist of a project like this. I could see you as support, the new environment and differing target behaviors would justify having a specialist in robotics on staff, but this seems more a job for a physicist or some biologist project lead than some programmer."
His eyes widened slightly at that, more surprise at my change in tack than anything else as he considered where how to respond. Yes, let's see how you handle an attack from an entirely different angle than the one you were attempting to set me up with.
"As I m-mentioned, it was largely due to the usefulness of my s-semblance that I received this p-position, and much of my job simp-p-ply involves c-coordinating other scientists, more m-managerial than sc-scientific. And that I c-can do."
"So, politics and luck, essentially." Briefly, I wished I could take the comment back, since considering his history with politics that comment could easily be more- dramatically hurtful than I had intended, but he responded in a way that I didn't expect-
He laughed. It was loud, only lasting a few seconds, but there wasn't as much bitterness as I might have expected. "Ind-indeed. Politics." He smirked, and though the smile twitched it seemed sincere enough as he shook his head. "While it has been p-pleasant to speak with you, I'm af-afraid that I need to return t-to work. While I n-no longer need the c-corpse for my intended research, there is s-still quite a b-b-bit to research, and I'll n-need to prep-prepare a report while my p-pills are still in my system."
"Of course. I have my own report to write." I gave a nod to the man, and walked away.
More than the one, really, but that second report didn't need to be spoken of out loud.
——
Writing the first report was slightly more difficult than I had anticipated.
With Grimm, I had some baseline of information, on what was relevant, what I should spent particular detail on, and what would be a waste of time for the people who needed to read it.
In the end, it was quick enough to write, though, I could sit down and write the- second report.
General Ironwood: While there is still a great deal that we don't know about Hell or its inhabitants, and the near certainty of additional dangers that we haven't seen yet, I believe that, for now, the potential benefits outweigh the risks. Morale seems high under the circumstances. Moss seems political. Concerning, but not active risk. Will send further assessments as the situation develops. -SWS
With that report written (most of the time spent writing it was in trying to determine just what was necessary to communicate my actual opinions while still keeping the message short enough for the type of encryption I would run it through) I ran it through the encryption key that Ironwood had given me, and would send it with the next transmission from the facility.
Truthfully, if we were at the point where we actively suspected that my messages to Ironwood regarding the viability and safety of the project would be intercepted by people at the base, well, I'd have advocated a more aggressive course of action than simply adding a few extra security measures.
Though, it did occur to me that this might be preparation for future projects. The General had hinted that I was being considered for being read into more classified information, and this could partially be a form of training, to make sure that I was capable of adhering to certain standards of classification. Or the extra secrecy was in and of itself a trap, to bait any spies into exposing themselves as they tried to uncover the secret communications.
Or it might be entirely sincere. He had wanted someone he knew personally to assess the project, and that implied that he might not trust the project heads. Or he wanted trusted professional eyes to assess the risk. He had been rather more cryptic than I was used to him being, and that did make me a bit uneasy, I could admit, though there had been operations where I had been trusted to make decisions on my own initiative and preformed quite well, rarely had those decisions been… social.
Of course, I could fret over each and every word General Ironwood both said and didn't say for hours in the hopes of understanding his precise intent here, but under the circumstances, I believe it would likely be best to simply use my own judgment and to keep an eye out, which was- actually what he had ordered me to do.
I shook my head, looking at my scroll even as I shut it off.
At this point, I could recognize when my thoughts began to move in circles or unhealthy patterns of thought.
As it stood, I simply didn't know enough; about Ironwood's intent, about the reliability of the people I was working with, and, of course, Hell itself, to properly make any decisions. And the only way to solve that particular problem was to wait and see, which admittedly wasn't something that I was terribly comfortable with.
It took somewhat more aggressive meditative practice than usual, but eventually, I was able to fall asleep, with lightly troubled dreams that I would fail to remember in the morning.
I passed my time by reading the news. There was nothing terribly interesting at first glance, though there was a small article speaking of the odd movement of Atlas troops and highly trained personnel to obscure postings, along with some possibly conspiratorial musings on what purpose those postings might be.
I raised an eyebrow at that. It wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to assume that that was my destination, considering the secrecy of this operation. Even when he had assigned me the task, General Ironwood had told me very little, except that I should trust in my own judgment, a somewhat concerning phrase to send me off with. And then he'd given me special procedures to report that judgment.
I sat there, continuing to read and reread updates and reports, until the radio came on, "We're approaching the site now, ma'am, if you wanted to take a look."
"I shall," I acknowledged, and glimpsed out the window. Judging by the snow, this was still Atlas, which I had almost began to doubt, considering how long the flight had been.
The area was cleared, and while we were still high, I could see trees that had been cut down- shot down, really, with a number of them simply being left in the mud and snow, and long patches of melted snow. Artillery, perhaps? One of the cruisers? No, the soot patterns seemed to indicate a lower angle of attack. Turrets, more like, and heavy ones.
The Bullhead began shifting, preparing for landing.
It was clear why the trees had been taken down. They'd want wide, open firing ranges, minimizing any chance of the Grimm (or potentially other foes) sneaking up on them. They'd cleared a radius of at least a few miles, judging by the window.
I frowned. That seemed almost- excessive? Especially when they failed to even collect the trees, which might have served to improve the barricades or, in an Atlas winter, even served as firewood. What exactly was this project they were working on?
There was a soft, settling noise as the ship landed.
I stood, and the various Knights I shared this flight with readied themselves. We walked down the ramp together, and greeting me at the landing pad with an easy smile was Specialist Ash Lavender. "Winter!" He gave a casual salute, which I returned. It wasn't too common for me to meet people who were taller than myself, but Lavender was on the border of seven feet tall, and was built wide as well. "I'm glad to see you. Having another specialist who can keep up with me in a fight would be pretty nice."
I nodded my agreement. I had enjoyed my spars with him, I can admit, though we were never too close. It had taken me some time to reach the point where I could reliably best him in a fight, but that was largely because his semblance was difficult to adapt to. After losing quite a few spars, I'd learned the trick of it. If we were fighting each other with no knowledge of the other's techniques- well, there was a fair chance I'd still lose, even with the versatility of my own semblance.
"Anyway, we should probably get going. I'd tell you what's going on, but the base commander wanted to brief you personally. Fair warning: things are getting a bit political here."
I grimaced at that, Ash being polite enough to turn away and not notice my look of disdain. Ironwood respected and acknowledged my- distancing myself from my father, but others were often much less understanding, either not agreeing with it or still assuming that we regularly spoke with each other with anything approaching warmth. Political conversations with people who refused to understand that tended to be tedious.
I followed Ash as we walked towards a large, three story building, noting several large turrets as I did so. Interestingly enough, those turrets had large wires connecting them to the base, wasn't quite standard design, while also possessing large additions to their ammunition boxes, which seemed to be crudely welded on. The base itself was one of the more elaborate prefab structures I'd seen, which made me wonder why so much effort was being put into this project so far away from civilization.
Distracting myself from pointless musings, I glanced at the handle sticking over his shoulder. "You're carrying a rifle, I see."
"Hah, yeah, the Momentum Mori," he shifted his shoulder to show off his ridiculously named hammer, "Is a pretty good weapon, but even its gun is awful at facing ranged opponents. I had a flock of tiny Nevermore playing keep-away for about thirty minutes once. Then I got angry enough to attract some Beowolves, and a couple Ursa, all the while they were blasting feathers at me. I ended up throwing the wolves at the Nevermore, that annoyed them enough to get in close enough to hit."
I resisted the urge to smile at that, "Did you have Knights available?"
"Hah, yeah," He sheepishly rubbed the back of his head, "They- kind of got broken up already. Couldn't even scavenge their guns to shoot the Nevermore with."
"Have you ever had a mission where your Knights survived?" I couldn't help my curiosity.
"Hey, I've gotten a lot better at that, recently. I've had plenty of missions where all of my little rustbuckets survived with no casualties."
"Really? And how many of those missions happened to involve combat?"
He simply grinned at me, "That's classified."
At that, I did give a slight smile as I shook my head.
"You do know that Knights aren't cheap, do you not?"
"Eh, cheaper than grunts, cheaper than farmers, a bit easier on the conscience, too. I'm not gonna get people killed because I put my effort into keeping the tinker toys safe." He shrugged as we entered through the doors of the building, giving an idle, "At ease," to the various troopers who had stood at attention as soon as we walked in.
"Do you know how long this facility has been here?"
"It's actually been here a couple years now, I think. About eight months ago was when things starting kicking into gear, and it was only last month we started pulling out all the stops. Mind, I only came in a couple weeks after the second wave started, so I don't know too many of the details of how everything went down."
"It certainly seems a large project."
"Ah, yeah, if everything they say-" He winced, "I'm not going to violate confidentiality if the commander wanted to brief you in person, but- well, if even half the things they say about this project's potential are true- well, maybe it'll- ah, I'll just shut up now."
We'd been ascending the stairs, and he awkwardly paused. I decided to try helping him, "Have you read any interesting historical books, lately?"
"Oh, yeah, there's a decent one about the Great War that came out recently. I like it, but it's a bit more focused on the broader perspective than I normally enjoy. Which is fair enough, and the author does make some interesting points, but I admit that from the discussion I'd heard about it beforehand, I was expecting something a bit more focused on the faunas perspective, considering the author, which really hasn't had that much written on it, and reading a story from the faunas perspective that had actually been written by a faunas seemed interesting. Unfortunately, it's more of a general account where the author tries to be as objective as possible. It's a good read when the author slips out of that character, but pretty dry otherwise, and doesn't really have any major new insights. Honestly I was expecting it to be a lot more controversial than it was, considering some of the reviews."
I shook my head at that. I tended to trust his literary judgment, at the least. It wouldn't surprise me if a book that had any notable coverage of the faunas perspective was considered a ranting screed by certain circles.
"Would you recommend it?"
He winced, "I enjoyed it, and I definitely think I'll look into any later works by the author, but you can see a lot of inexperience in how it was written, hell, I think she's younger than I am, and this is her first published work. She's also one of those authors who tends to mistake neutrality for objectivity in her analysis. Bit frustrating, since she did have an interesting voice whenever she allowed herself to express it, but, well," he shrugged. "As it is, while I liked it well enough, I still wouldn't recommend it to others."
"Anyway, we're here." He gestured to a nondescript door beside him. "I've got an assignment I need to head out for, so I'll leave you to it." He walked off with a casual wave, and I entered the door.
Within the door was a tall, willowy man in the neatly pressed military uniform. "Ah, Specialist Schnee," I withheld a scowl at the way he said that name as I saluted. Enthused and just a tad condescending, though I wasn't sure if that was response to my rank or my family. One of those sorts. "I am Colonel Moss Grant. It's a pleasure to have you on base, Specialist. We needed another solid combatant, and our head scientist was just a bit curious as to how your semblance might interact with, well, I'll be getting to that in a moment." He began pacing about the stark room. I suppose he did it for effect, but to me that sort of excited pacing seemed as if it should be beneath a man of his position.
"Truthfully, for now I was more interested in the extra security, but that research could have value."
"This base seems as if its fairly secure already, sir." Two specialists, for an entrenched position, with multiple heavy turrets and a significant number of trained soldiers? What could they be guarding that needed this degree of anonymity and firepower?
Moss smiled at me. "Of course, of course. But for a facility such as this, absolute security is required. What we have here is quite possibly the most important structure in all of Remnant."
I raised an eyebrow at that. While I was trying to suppress my initial negative impression, a single raised eyebrow was well within acceptable parameters.
"Hah, well, I suppose I wouldn't believe a statement like that either. You see-"
At that, an alarm on his desk quietly blared, and he glanced at a monitor on his desk.
"Ah. Grimm." He quietly said, before shrugging his shoulders. "I suppose a partial demonstration wouldn't be out of order. Seems to be a small group of young Grimm. The older ones in the area seem to have learned better. Or died, one of the two."
He turned around, and clicked a button on the viewscreen, which briefly flickered on. Six beowolves were gathered around a fallen tree, seeming to watch the direction of the camera. And then-
Four massive bolts of energy slammed into the group, each one seemingly quite capable of wiping out the entire group.
"I understand that some of the men have taken up betting on how close the Grimm can get before being wiped out." He shook his head. "So, Specialist Schnee, your thoughts on what just happened?"
A standard enough power play. Give a question with an obvious answer, hide the context that would prove that answer to be wrong, and then condescend to the listener. It could be used as an educational tool or for a learning experience. Theoretically. I had learned to see through that one before I even left home. Still, there was no real polite method within military hierarchy to avoid falling into the particular trap, and so I simply answered, "It seemed wasteful, sir, that number of Grimm could have easily been stopped by a simple firing line of soldiers, or even militiamen with low quality guns."
"Ah, but here, at least, energy is no longer a concern."
This facility certainly didn't look like a mine, so it couldn't be an unusually large dust deposit.
"You see, what we have here, is quite possibly the greatest scientific achievement since the discovery of Dust itself." Seeming to enjoy my skepticism, he simply smiled. "What we have here is infinite energy."
"Infinite energy?" I repeated, both eyebrows raised in curiosity. Even a man like him likely wouldn't make a claim like that without at least something to back it up.
"The only limit, for now, is extraction, but this energy is clean, efficient, and seemingly limitless. If you ignored the possibility of the components overheating, you could have those turrets fire constantly for days without ever running out of charge on a single battery the size of a car engine, right until the barrel melted, at least."
At that, my eyes did widen, I admit , and this information was rather more important than just maintaining my dignity. "How?"
He chuckled. "Well, it's simple enough. Specialist Schnee, are you a religious person?"
I did scowl at his showmanship. "Not particularly. Are you trying to lead into saying that you, what, stuck a power cord to a god?"
"Hah!" He said, arrogant pride on his face. "No, not a god. Hell itself."
"Hell itself." I repeated, flatly.
"Well, it's a bit different than any single religion's portrayal, I admit, but at this point, that's what people began calling it during the first few expeditions, though I suspect when this place is declassified, we'll try to find some more politically palatable name. We've found and rebuilt a portal to another world, filled with horrible malice filled creatures that are rather similar to old mythological depictions of demons. Fortunately, the base was still well fortified enough even when we first made the discovery, we were able to fend off their first incursion without much difficulty. If we hadn't, well, we might not have discovered the more fascinating aspects of Hell."
Or they might have suffered a demonic invasion, I thought,, but I could admit that I had no idea how to properly respond to the concept.
"There is a certain- energy field, in Hell, and with a few customized pylons, our base on the other side of the portal has been able to process this energy, and condense it into these." From his desk, he pulled out a single glass sphere, easily held in the palm of his hand, as it swirled with a strange red glow. "Chief Scientist Ron Blaine, who you will be working for directly, called it Argent Energy. This single prototype containment device, one of the first generation versions and far less efficient than the ones we've developed since, possesses enough energy to power an entire city block for a year. And when it's finished, we could just bring it back here and recharge it in a matter of minutes. That- is provable, demonstrated fact, that could upset the fabric of the four kingdoms."
That was- well, bluntly speaking, if true, that was almost as shocking as the fact that Atlas was tapping Hell for energy in the first place.
Grant gave me an amused look. "Well, you seem to be a bit shocked by the whole thing, I'll allow you to process it all. Make sure to speak with Blaine in the morning, however, he'll be the one handling your immediate assignments."
I left with a nod and a cursory farewell.
____
I've never had a particularly difficult time sleeping. It did take some time to adjust to the cots at the Academy, and even with that experience, military cots were an unpleasant surprise. The first time I killed a man, even if he had been a terrorist, my sleep had been poor then.
This, however? This made me sleep uneasily, the prospect of sleeping next to a portal to a place that actual military officials were referring to as Hell, and not in a metaphorical fashion.
Still, I had slept in areas filled with Grimm, and I knew of several meditative practices that could calm me down enough to evade detection long enough to get some sleep, so this wasn't something I was entirely unused to. I did sleep, in the end, and woke up reasonably well rested.
___
I knocked on the door to the science labs, and a voice shouted from within, "C-come in!"
Had I interrupted something? This was a laboratory used for… demonic research, I presumed, there were quite a few things I could imagine being distracting.
I entered the room, filled with wide empty tables and a great deal of medical equipment, and looked at the man standing by the computers. "Ah! Sp-sp-sp-specialist Schnee." He reached out his hand, and I shook it. His grip was shaky and unsteady. "A p-p-pleasure to meet you." He stepped back, and the Knight stationed right behind him gave him a steadying hand.
I raised an eyebrow at him, and he looked at me with all four of his spider-like eyes, and he sighed, carefully reaching to a wrist device that he had and pressed several buttons, until his voice came out, far more steady. "I am Doctor Ronald Blaine, and I do indeed have a stutter and occasional muscle spasms, both of which I've had since birth." Truthfully, while I was somewhat curious, the major thing that I had noticed was that he seemed awfully young for his position as chief scientist, seemingly quite close to my own age. There was also an odd look to his eyes I wasn't sure if I appreciated, both judging and expectant.
I raised my eyebrow further, and he pressed another button, causing the recorded voice to emerge. "Even I grow tired of listening to myself stammer in conversation, so I have prepared a number of pre-recorded messages, and several programs to help splice together my voice clips to clear up any stammering within those messages. This allows me to more conveniently answer a variety of questions and take far less time to do so than I would normally, in a fashion that is far less annoying to both myself and to my conversation partner."
I nodded. That was reasonable enough, however… "While it might be tiresome to speak, if you ever need to say anything with nuance, I am willing to wait."
He nodded, and gave another shaky nod. "Ack-ack-acknowledged, Sp-specialist Schnee."
"I understand that you had particular assignment for me?"
"Y-y-yes, I did, f-fact." He pressed another set of buttons on his wrist.
"I feel that it is important that, before we engage in conventional operations, you take a moment to understand exactly what we have encountered. The demons are unlike the Grimm, in that they are intelligent, capable of conversation, even. That changes the dynamics of interacting with them, though, I wouldn't expect, shall we say, a complex discourse. And we'll be sending you on a quick patrol, easy patrol route as an introduction of sorts. Before that, however, I'll need to give you a basic primer of the distinct species of demons that we've seen…"
___
The portal chamber- strange, almost. A series of ancient stone columns, with crude wiring spread between them and each was covered in metal plates with parts that were clearly electronic but served no obvious purpose.
The portal itself- was simply a large, red hole in the world, in a simple stone archway, with several massive steel rods emerging from it. Those, from what I'd been told, were the devices that extracted Argent and brought it into this world, where it could be purified and processed.
The stone columns were from some ancient ruins, from some civilization that had previously managed to access Hell, and in fact whose work we were largely copying. Truthfully, while it was a bit concerning that the civilization that originally built these columns was long gone, well, the world was filled with an abundance of long dead civilizations, and there was no actual evidence that their civilization's fall had been caused by demons. Grimm or fellow people was always a possibility.
I simply stood there, arms behind my back as I watched the various technicians casually walk around the portal, watching readouts and displays and making their own adjustments whose purpose was entirely opaque to me.
I suppose one could adapt to anything, given time, including actively working next to a portal to hell.
"I simply walk in?" I asked the technician who brought me here, and he nodded.
"Yes, ma'am."
I nodded and acknowledged him and, making utterly certain that my bearing didn't show any hesitation, I turned and walked through the hole in the world.
Walking through the portal was- strangely normal really, there was no period of being between worlds, one moment I was there, I stepped, and I went through, though in truth, I couldn't remember the actual moment that I had one foot on Remnant and one foot in Hell.
Hell itself. I noted as I walked through the portal. With the twisted light in the air, the ground that was formed of dark rocks when it didn't seem to almost look like flesh and bone. The winds that sounded far too much like wailing for me to feel comfortable with. There was a slight pressure on my aura, an oddly grating sensation like a wind that was noticeably just a little too hot or a little too cold, a sensation that only went away when I actively focused on it, but the moment my attention slipped it returned creeping up on me. The unprocessed Argent energy in the air, I presumed, eager to corrupt me and only rebuffed by the light of my soul.
Yes, I could see why this place would be called Hell.
"Ma'am." One of the soldiers approached me. "I'm Sergeant Redford. I'll be accompanying you on this mission."
"Will we have any Knight support?"
"For this mission, a quick recon, Knights tend to be destroyed far too easily. Without an established base and specialized targeting parameters, the target acquisition and dodging functions of the Knights are too sluggish to deal with those Imps. Blaine is trying to work out a patch for them, but Knights are basically useless side of the portal."
"I see. You know our destination?"
"Yes, the arena. I imagine we'll find at least a few of them." Site Gamma was a nearby section of structures that almost seemed to be shaped like an arena. A relatively small arena, but so far the demons seem to be intent on having at least a few demons present there at all times. And so the Hell base regularly sent out their specialists or Argent-Augmented Paladins to clear it out, let the demons repopulate the area, then clear it out again, in the hopes of making sure that they didn't establish some sort of staging ground in the area. Standard Grimm clearing strategies were apparently at least somewhat effective against the demons.
"When we get there, do not engage until I begin the hostilities. Even when I do, I am quite likely to survive far easier if you focus on your own survival instead of assisting myself. Darting shield formation." Which essentially meant, "The Specialist accompanying you would protect you by attacking any target that tried to focus its attention on you, have half the squad concentrate fire on people trying to shoot the Specialist while the rest of the squad and the Specialist attacks people trying to shoot the grunts." It was mostly used when attacking human enemies, but with the teleportation of these demons, Darting Shield seemed the best way to address that mobility.
"Of course, ma'am."
I began marching out, six troopers behind me.
_____
The terrain was difficult and rough, even with some of the cliffs having had ropes and ladders attached to them to make traversal easier. I, however, could easily jump these cliffs, and I did, so that I could observe from the higher vantage point and ensure that none of these demons could ambush climbing soldiers.
It was all quite inconvenient, and the way that things were built made little sense to me, though I suppose it made sense that Hell wouldn't be wheelchair accessible.
"Your men are keeping up fairly well, Sergeant."
"Most of the troops that get sent this side have stronger auras than most people of our rank. Which is good, because even more than it is with a horde of Grimm, losing your aura is a death sentence in these parts. So, we're all playing it safe."
Ah. The 'zombies', as they were called. The Hell Energy, before its conversion into Argent, was malign enough to turn anyone it infected into mindless monsters.
Some of which were hostile, some of which didn't even seem to have the awareness necessary to attack. Preliminary testing of some of the recovered soldiers indicated that there wasn't enough left of their minds left for any level of medicine to heal, and so-
They were to be killed on sight, which was probably a mercy. It was something I wasn't entirely comfortable with, but I couldn't disagree with the logic. Best to treat them like corpses possessed by Geist.
It wasn't long before we reached the large, spiked arena. Groups of demons, from the small red Imps to the floating Cacodemon, things that were almost nothing but a floating mouth with eyes, were around the arena.
In the center of it all was a single demon. Tall, with an odd curved head, purple body, and a red glow around it, an almost regal air to it. One of the Summoners, as I understood it.
"Hold your position," I said to my escorts as I approached the thing. It turned to look at me, and it was almost disturbing to see the light in its eyes.
It spoke, and this demon spoke slowly, with a deep voice, one that didn't fit its appearance, one that didn't even feel as though it came from the demon in front of me. "Ah, the Schnee."
I froze at that, it knew my name? However, I refused to let it show on my face.
"You know me?"
"Of course. The soldiers we've taken, we have their memories, their knowledge, their sentiments, and they think a great deal on the Schnee corporation. Many, ah, strong opinions are held on your company. Saviors, villains, morally gray, even. For a Schnee to approach us, well, this is an excellent opportunity."
"What sort of opportunity?" I asked, keeping all doubt from my voice as I walked towards the demon.
It descended from its levitation to greet me, arm outstretched. "Power. Wealth. Influence. Security. Allow us into your world. Open the boundaries between our realms. Grant us full reign of those lands, and we shall grant you power. The power to force the world to serve Atlas, the power to butcher these Grimm, all of the- recognition and independence that you desire. A thousand supplicants, screaming your name in unison."
"Really?" I asked, voice still neutral.
"Atlas shall be preserved, a land free of Grimm, but grant us leave to consume these other lands, these lands that would defy you. Even your father would be forced to bend his knee in recognition of your power. Grant us-"
My sword exited the back of the demon's throat. "The Doctor's information was correct; you truly are idiots." Truthfully, he'd framed it as them seemingly being incapable of understanding more altruistic, noble motivations, and thus were entirely open about their malicious intentions towards Remnant, but I felt my summary was sufficient.
Any moral qualms I might have had about invading their home and taking their energy were quite quashed.
With a twist and a flick of my sword, I simply sliced through the rest of the demon's head, and it dissolved into red flames, which is when the rest of the demons decided to attack.
"Get the Imps!" Redford said, his gun firing. It seemed like a dozen fireballs of green and red flames flew towards me, but that was simple enough to deal with. I leapt into directly into the air, looking for the largest demon I could find, before noticing a single Cacodemon floating by itself, apparently surprised by my dodging. I summoned a rune behind me, and used it as a stepping stone to leap towards the floating thing, and it turned to face me, far too slowly. As I nearly reached it, I briefly summoned a runic circle beneath me, allowing me to quickly knee my platform, changing my angle just slightly to soar above the demon instead of directly into its open mouth. As I flew over it, I stabbed my sword downward, penetrating oversized eye deeply, to the point where my momentum twisted both it and my own body in the air. I smoothly landed directly behind it, in the same motion I pulled my blade from the eye, and seeing the geyser of-
Blood-
I shook my head of the approaching encroaching flashback, ignoring it as best I could, before looking back to the battlefield. Most of the demons seemed to still be distracted by myself, but at least one group of Imps had shifted their focus to the soldiers. I manifested my semblance, and summoned a flock of ghostly Nevermore, the ethereal raven-like Grimm swarming to the Imps.
One of the larger demons simply leapt in my direction, a bulky figure with massive muscles and a face that looked more like chitin than flesh. One of the hell knights. It roared at me, readying its bare hand to strike at me, and was promptly shredded by rifle fire. A second Hell Knight noticed the fate of its companion and turned to avenge it, and I leapt in its direction. It raised its fist to me, and I dove under it, splitting my sword into two as I did so. The shorter blade found the back heel of the demon and it roared, before it was interrupted by the longer blade slashing into its back.
I frowned as the second wound barely penetrated the thing- its skin was tougher than expected. It was more like Grimm than unprotected human flesh.
I simply leapt back as it turned around swinging its fists, and it awkwardly stood up, even with the severed hamstring, readying itself for a brawl. Instead, I leapt over the thing's shoulder before it could react, my sword just slightly to the side where it could find the demon's throat as I passed. It gurgled and collapsed on the ground, as I searched for my next target.
The imps that had been aiming at the soldiers were- well. Having my ghostly ravens peck at the eyes of their targets was far less clean a diversion when applied to targets without aura to protect them, even if the results couldn't quite be argued with, the ravens even managing to outright kill several of them.
I distracted myself from the sight, and found the next batch of imps beginning to target the troops.
Charge in, kill, dart away, flee, keep everyone focused on the self while the soldiers killed anything that failed to take the bait or was sufficiently distracted.
Simple, efficient, and direct.
It wasn't long before the guards stopped firing.
The near silence of the battlefield almost took me back, to when-
I shook my head. Hardly relevant.
I took a deep breath, and- strange, there was still blood on my sword. My aura would usually keep it clean. I shook my head, more forcefully this time, and flicked the sword, pulsing my aura at the same time, simply tossing the blood away where it burned in the air, and I watched the burning blood for several seconds.
""Uh, ma'am?" A voice spoke, and my head jerked in that direction. "Uh, looks like we got them all, ma'am." Redford said, and he and his men seemed- unharmed. Good. I nodded, and walked towards one of the walls.
Carvings.
It was- peculiar, for a group as apparently overtly hostile as these demons to be, to create art. Though, they had built these structures, the arena, so they clearly had- culture, traditions, something of a personality to their people, and even then, they refused to consider anything other than conquest and slaughter.
I looked at the carvings. They seemed to feature, well, violence, savage violence, and even with the slaughter behind me, I felt vaguely thankful that they hadn't seen fit to color these images. And further along the wall-
"Curious." I said.
There was a figure on the wall, one that seemed to be fighting these demons. It- almost looked like one of our helmets, an Atlas trooper, but- no, we'd hadn't been here for nearly long enough to for them to begin making carvings of us.
For a moment, I wondered if they had mistaken us for whoever they were fighting, that perhaps their willingness to fight us was due to a misunderstanding, before I shook my head.
They- had known enough about us to recognize myself as a Schnee. They clearly knew who we were, or at least, that we weren't- whatever peoples had fought them hard enough to be memorialized like this.
"Ma'am?" Redford asked, and I turned to look at him. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes, one moment and we'll be returning to base." I pulled my scroll from my pocket and took several pictures of this set of carvings. I glanced around.
This entire arena was- covered in them. It would likely be an absolutely fascinating find for any archaeologist- I shook my head. Did archeology apply here, or did that term only apply to dead cultures? Anthropology seemed more appropriate, even though having archaeologists study rocks would be likely get more results than just asking these demons for explanations.
I shook my head, and in my firmest voice, I informed the squad that we would be returning to base.
——
We were roughly halfway there when he spoke to me. "You know, back when we first started doing, all this," he made a vague gesture to the blasted hellscape around us, "there were a lot of people who, uh, found fighting these demons to be troubling."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, the Atlesian military, well, most troops have never been in a fight with actual people or intended to kill them, you know? It's mostly just Grimm, or occasionally, shooting criminals long enough to break their aura."
I remained silent, trusting that he'd reach his point soon. "So, fighting these, uh, demons, things that bleed, things that react to pain, things that can talk back? A lot of people have had trouble dealing with that sort of thing. Ah, stress, you understand. People don't like hurting people, or things that seem like people, you know? I've- well, a lot of people have seen the counselors on base. Nothing wrong with that."
I gave him a look, and he just shrugged. "Of course, short term, a person could just speak to Blaine. He's got a pretty useful semblance for calming people down, or, less calming them down, more giving them control of their emotions, as I've heard it described. It's not good to use long term, apparently, but just having a good night's sleep is pretty useful."
"That is- interesting information," I allowed myself to acknowledge.
I hardly considered therapy to be necessary for myself, but I was curious about that semblance.
The rest of the trip continued in silence.
__
As we returned, I saw Ash coming along with a large escort of troops, with his hand in a rather long, covered and wheeled crate, which he was just pushing along.
"Specialist," he acknowledged, a slight sheen of sweat on his brow, "Just finished my own mission. I can tell you about it later, but for now, I need to to get to Blaine's lab with this."
"My own assignment involves speaking to him."
"Ah- fair enough, we can walk together but what I'd doing involves a lot of concentration, so don't expect me to talk much."
"Understood," I said, and faced Redford. "Sergeant, you and your men preformed well. Return to your duties."
"Right, ma'am."
He gave me another of those looks, but I simply turned around and walked back through the portal, the process as anticlimactic as it had been when the other way around (though I still failed to notice the actual moment of transition, and I resisted the urge to simply stick my arm through the portal and hold it there as a form of crude experimentation.)
We stood there for a moment, back on Remnant- a curious thought, to be back on the planet.
He walked towards the lab, pushing the cart along with his hand still remaining inside it, and I followed. I admit, I had questions, but there was no need to ask yet, and he did have a faint sheen of sweat on his face.
It wasn't long before we entered the lab, and Lavender yelled out, "Hey, Blaine! You have the chamber ready?"
Blaine limped towards us, the Knight at his side steadying his steps. "Y-y-yes, bring it h-here." He pointed his finger to a large set of doors, and he quickly rolled the cart into the room.
"G-G-Good that you're h-h-here, Winter, you should s-see this as well." As the cart entered the door, he continued, "N-now, hook it up t-to the chamber. T-there's a slot i-in the wall."
It was a rather large hole, along with a series of other gaps, and the crate shifted neatly into the indentation with a soft chime.
My eyes narrowed slightly at that. Both the cart and whatever these slots were didn't seem to be at all standard. This was entirely custom scientific equipment. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, considering the nature of the project, but- my combined military and… familial background gave me some grounding in just how expensive such equipment could be.
"N-now release your hand, it should be s-s-s-ecure now."
With a minor gasp of relief, Lavender removed his hand from the hole, and the crate sealed with a pneumatic hiss. A number of small lights on a console lit up, a spinning hourglass the universal sign that something was happening.
"Th-th-the p-process should not h-have been that st-straining." Blaine noted, curiosity evident on his face.
"I rushed the beginning of it, and it wasn't exactly easy getting the sample in the first place, so a lot of my strain comes from there. Besides, you try spreading your aura over so large an- ah, well, object, for a couple hours."
"O-oh I d-don't doubt it was diffic-cult, I knew th-that much, but p-perhaps the sc-scale of it escaped me. Regardless, w-well done."
"Right," Ash leaned against one of the walls casually, "I'll, probably need to rest a bit after all this."
"What exactly are these?" I asked, looking over the machines.
"A-aura is-is-isolation ch-chambers. The design was im-improvised from sp-specialized medical e-e-equipment, even if I needed to make some ch-changes, I admit." He scowled, "This would b-be a lot e-easier if-" he frowned, scowl deepening, before hitting several buttons on his armband, which spoke for him, "Professor Polendina," and he continued with his natural voice, "c—c-could collaborate on the p-p-project, but the m-man is st-strangely p-protective of his artificial aura res-search, wh-whatever it is. I t-tried ex-explaining what I wanted, and h-he t-told me to g-go to hell. He didn't q-quite know wh-why I found th-that amusing, though. B-bloody c-c-classi-clas- secrets," he growled. "R-regardless, I m-managed to imp-improvise this." He vaguely waved his arm around the room.
"These," Lavender spoke up, possibly due to impatience, he did seem quite tired, "are used to store demons. You saw they- break up when killed, like the Grimm. Fortunately, however, there are ways of slowing or preventing the process, no idea how they discovered that, but apparently, grabbing the corpse quickly enough and charging it with aura the same way I might charge up a weapon ensures that it still thinks its alive. Then these things sort of stabilize the aura, or trick it into thinking that aura is pumping through it or, something, I've already been lectured on oversimplifying it, but while it is a major energy hog, these do help to keep the corpse intact."
I'm not ashamed to say that my nose wrinkled in slight distaste at that statement. Wrapping a corpse, especially a corpse of one of these creatures, in aura seemed- disgusting, to be entirely blunt about it.
He seemed to register the look on my face, "Yeah, it wasn't exactly fun for me either, but we managed to capture a specific type of demon to-" he glanced at Lavender, "well, confirm some suspicions. It's… probably pretty important to know this for sure, though, I think I can wait on that. See you two later, I'm going to go sleep now."
He walked out with a wave of his hand, leaving myself alone with the scientists.
"What are you attempting to confirm?"
"S-simple, really. We're t-testing the DNA of the de-demons that look like humans, m-mostly the ones f-f-found further out, a-as well as- well…"
He paused, and walked to the crate, where he slowly input some sort of code into the machine, and the top opened, revealing a glass case. Within was-
A demon that looked much like a human stripped to the bone, but more notable than that was the strange armor.
The design almost seemed more in the Atlas style, but-
"This wasn't made by Atlas." The lettering was strange, the script similar in style to the modern common script, almost enough that she felt that she could read it.
"C-c-c-correct. And p-p-possibly not even Remnant."
That was-
What could I even say about that?
Right.
"Are you saying that Hell connects to other worlds, worlds with- humans?"
"P-p-possibly even faunas as well." He said with a wry smile, and shook his head. "Entire w-w-worlds out there, f-filled with people to meet?"
The possibilities were- overwhelming, I could admit. I prided myself on trying to understand the world around me, I wasn't just a brute with a sword as some Specialists were accused of being, possessing a high ranks entirely by virtue of their skill at arms, I could understand the political concerns of whatever mission I was assigned, I could grasp strategy.
And yet-
Seemingly infinite energy, other worlds filled with people-
"T-trade would be ideal, but we'd n-need to, mind the c-commute."
I gave a huff of amusement at that, turning away from the demon corpse. "Yes, I suppose reaching these other humans might be difficult. Still, this does explain something I found while on my mission."
"Oh?" He asked, intrigued.
I pulled out my scroll and handed it to him. The particular image that was highlighted was of the demons swarming one figure standing before a portal much like the one that he had emerged from, clad in Atlas styled armor. The details were vague, the carving crude, but it was still a fully covered figure with a gun.
Blaine stared at it for several seconds. "F-f-f-f-fu- bloody hell," he said, shaking his head, "All this f-f-fucking effort to prove this and you j-j-just f-f- happened to stumble on ev-ev-ev-evidence right there-"
He growled, and stumbled slightly, his accompanying Knight grabbing his arms and holding him up, as he shook slightly, gently held by his modified knight.
I stood frozen in a moment of pure indecision, but he eventually stopped, slowly wobbling to support himself, as he lifted a shaky finger to his armband. A single button push was all it took to trigger the voice this time, it was likely a priority for him. "I have had a minor attack, though it is nothing to be too concerned over. My condition is aggravated by stress, and I admit that circumstances here have been somewhat stressful. Please give me a moment to gather myself."
Now, seemingly to have taken that speech as an opportunity to rally himself, he spoke, "w-we can continue our t-t-talk, but let's s-sit down first."
"I can let you rest, if you need such."
"T-t-take me to the tables." He spoke to his attendant Knight, and I followed him, slightly awkwardly, I could confess, as this wasn't a situation I had any experience in.
I sat down, and he was gently sat down. "I w-w-will not be able t-to rest until I can speak. P-p-pill three, if you would." The knight reached into a pouch, and pulled out a pill and a small flask, gently placing the pill in Blaine's mouth, and then put the flask to his lips. Blaine swallowed, and seemed to collapse in on himself, his four eyes blinking.
"That should s-s-stabilize me, f-f-for a moment. It will be un-unpleasant tomorrow, but…" he shrugged, dismissing it.
"If you were interested in the rest of the pictures, nothing else I saw seemed terribly interesting, though I could still forward them to you."
He smiled, and leaned back in his chair. "Th-that would be appreciated, thank you." He shook his head. "I do a-apologize."
"I won't fault you for a medical condition." I know I can be severe, but I would hope I didn't come across as cruel or callous.
He chuckled and shook his head, "No, n-no, I meant my anger, not my att-attack. You h-h-had done nothing to warrant such. B-besides, even with your p-picture, it might have pr-proven my theory earlier if I had seen it before, I would have n-needed to do continue all of my other p-p-procedures. It is simply s-slightly annoying, and I d-d-dislike how much we st-still don't know ab-about Hell."
"I see." I nodded, glancing at the Knight hovering at his shoulder.
The fact that he was here…
"I've heard some soldiers mentioning your semblance?"
"Ah, y-yes, I suspect my s-semblance is the only reason I b-became project head." I tilted an eyebrow at him, and he waved it off, "Oh, I'm q-quite good at what I do, really, but my semblance is ex-extremely helpful for th-these projects."
"And what is your semblance?"
He paused, before touching a few buttons on his armband, "My semblance isn't, as some might describe it, any sort of emotional control or mental manipulation. What it does is perhaps best described as a steadying hand. I can simply impose the semblance on someone, and they will find it much easier to control their own emotions, to push them aside or even to embrace them. The process has been vetted and analyzed by several psychologists specializing in semblances that manipulate the mind, and they have ruled that it is fundamentally not an unethical thing to impose on someone, so long as permission is acquired beforehand. The semblance has made me quite useful for various projects far from civilization, as I can assist in keeping emotions in check, limiting the number of Grimm attacks, though again I stress that allowing me to use my semblance on a person is in no way mandatory, even if they are in severe mental distress."
"It's not common for non-combat personnel to have managed to unlock their semblances." It often involves severe physical activity, desperate struggle, or extreme discipline in meditation. For someone who hadn't been on the battlefield…
He continued speaking in his own voice. "My-my doctors suspected that my semblance, or even un-unlocking my aura, might help with my c-c-condition. This t-turned out not to be the case."
Ah. Developing ones aura and semblance could help with quite a few physical conditions, but- "If I may ask, what exactly is your condition?"
He shook his head with a frown, seemingly thinking it through. He raised his arm to the armband, before letting it fall. "Odd c-circumstances, I'm afraid. Tech-technically a m-mix of several sp-specific conditions, the sp-pecific condition I h-have something I c-can't pronounce, a-m-m-musingly. M-my mother inhaled a g-g-great deal of lightning d-dust while pregnant, and that harmed my bodies neural d-d-develop-d- growth. F-fortunately, m-my mind remained largely intact, even as m-my physical c-c-condition worsened."
"How did she-" I glanced at his eyes, before realizing the likely answer.
"Yes, it-it was in the Sch-Sch-Schnee dust mines."
"She was mining while pregnant?"
"Th-there are, safety reg-regulations preventing such, but she w-was eating f-for two at the t-t-time, and only working for one. She w-was always working for those few d-days longer, to make sure she c-could afford to stop working, and n-never quite reached that p-point."
Yes, that did seem to be how the mines were often run. Quite a few nominal protections, employees quietly discouraged from ever using those protections, and no one ever being punished for working beyond the safe limits. And naturally the company could never be blamed for workers feeling excessively productive while they had clear regulations posted on the walls for any regulator to see.
"I see." There wasn't much else that I could honestly say. Openly state my disapproval for the man in charge of the Schnee Dust company? That wasn't the sort of thing that one safely did in uncertain company. Or when uncertain company might be listening in. Disavow responsibility? I was in the military. I had already put some measure of moral distance between myself and my father, and while Blaine had revealed some rather personal parts of his life story, I hardly felt obligated to return the favor. And so I simply remained silent, continuing to listen to his story.
"For wh-whatever reason, this o-one accident m-made the news, and of c-c-course the overseers were q-quite sympathetic, despite my mo-mother's lack of ad-adherence to regulation. O-of course, they p-paid for medical a-attention, sh-showing off their c-compassion- for th-their workers, and the p-papers wrote g-glowingly of their k-kindness, with q-quotes from my mother, m-m-mentioning that i-it had been her fault for n-not reporting the p-pregnancy. They e-e-even paid for my sch-sch-schooling. A f-f-free ride, th-though it proved red-redundant w-with my military contract."
My face was a mask of careful neutrality, and I quite suspected the other parts of the story.
I knew my father, and the company he ran.
Of course this would make a fine news story. A poor woman, a presumably single mother suffering a marketably tragic accident that had already been revealed to the public, and so she would be given plenty of medical attention. And her son was in dire medical straits. Provide them healthcare, help the son get through life with his terrible difficulties where he can be a rousing success story for the Schnee company, a faunas child of the company growing up despite his physical disabilities to be a highly placed scientist.
Of course, if his mother ever stopped praising the company, or openly condemned their role in her accident, well, the medical and schooling bills might no longer be paid. And that uplifting story would quietly be forgotten.
"It sounds as if your mother was in a difficult situation." A simple, objectively true statement, with other parts left unsaid.
He simply gave a shaky smile, "Ind-indeed." He shook his head, "She p-passed, before I f-finished my schooling and could take my m-military contract. A shame, for m-many reasons, she h-had been q-quite looking forward to, well," his voice trailed off ambiguously.
Oh, she'd likely have had quite a lot to say, if she was no longer beholden to the company for her son's well being. If he wanted financial security, to quickly avoid becoming dependent on his mother's allotments, and leave her free to make public statements, well, a career with the military was one of the better ways to do it, I imagine. And while the company could pressure Blaine if he personally made public statements against them, but potentially trying to get them to fire him because his mother had made statements against them would hardly go over well, even with my father's level of influence over the military. The best they might be able to do would be to imply some sort of White Fang connection, but at that point, but that could easily lead to a situation where spiting him was more trouble than it was worth.
"A shame." I nodded. Though, his personally making statements against the company would likely be a bit more easy to punish.
I suspected, at this point, we mutually understood where the other was coming from, and that saying more would enter risky territory. "If I may ask, what field did you study in college?"
"Ah," he said, recognizing the change in topic, "R-robotics and programming, m-mostly. Th-that was one of the more," he paused, considering his next words, "d-desired degrees by the military. And, w-well," he paused, an expectant smirk on his face, "There was a certain ap-appeal to working with getting b-bodies to function as c-commanded. It has m-made my life quite easier, as you can see with G-Gregory, here." He gestured to the Knight standing behind him, the machine standing further at attention at the mention of his name. "I've g-grown quite fond of s-such work, the ch-challenge of it, and Atlas is p-preparing a line of nurse variant Knights b-based on my work. They c-can't replace regular nurses, but they can prove an able sup-supplement."
I was watching his face as he talked. There was a slight undertone of anticipation in his voice, almost an eagerness, as if he expected-
Ah. His semblance.
His semblance, the expression of his soul, involved control over the self, of being able to reign in emotions. The idea of control was so key to his sense of self that his soul expressed itself in a manner that granted that control, even to others. And yet, he couldn't apply that control to his own body, or even to his life, considering all of the influences on his life, with the closest thing to control he could achieve being his programmed robots.
Phrased like that, his life seemed pitiable-
And that was the trap.
He was a bitter, angry man, for reasons I could understand entirely, but that statement remained true. He hadn't simply been testing my opinion of the Company, he had been testing to see if I pitied him. Pitied the poor, inspirational story of a faunas surrounded on all sides, where most every tragedy he suffered and every hurdle he overcame was used to reinforce the reputation of a group that he likely hated.
Pity would likely feel toxic to him, and he was a man quite used to burying and controlling his anger. If I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of being able to hate me for being a loyal child of my father's, or for being stupid enough to openly state my distaste for the company, perhaps he could hate me for pitying him.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
I didn't appreciate being tested like that.
"While impressive, none of that seems to qualify you for the position of chief scientist of a project like this. I could see you as support, the new environment and differing target behaviors would justify having a specialist in robotics on staff, but this seems more a job for a physicist or some biologist project lead than some programmer."
His eyes widened slightly at that, more surprise at my change in tack than anything else as he considered where how to respond. Yes, let's see how you handle an attack from an entirely different angle than the one you were attempting to set me up with.
"As I m-mentioned, it was largely due to the usefulness of my s-semblance that I received this p-position, and much of my job simp-p-ply involves c-coordinating other scientists, more m-managerial than sc-scientific. And that I c-can do."
"So, politics and luck, essentially." Briefly, I wished I could take the comment back, since considering his history with politics that comment could easily be more- dramatically hurtful than I had intended, but he responded in a way that I didn't expect-
He laughed. It was loud, only lasting a few seconds, but there wasn't as much bitterness as I might have expected. "Ind-indeed. Politics." He smirked, and though the smile twitched it seemed sincere enough as he shook his head. "While it has been p-pleasant to speak with you, I'm af-afraid that I need to return t-to work. While I n-no longer need the c-corpse for my intended research, there is s-still quite a b-b-bit to research, and I'll n-need to prep-prepare a report while my p-pills are still in my system."
"Of course. I have my own report to write." I gave a nod to the man, and walked away.
More than the one, really, but that second report didn't need to be spoken of out loud.
——
Writing the first report was slightly more difficult than I had anticipated.
With Grimm, I had some baseline of information, on what was relevant, what I should spent particular detail on, and what would be a waste of time for the people who needed to read it.
In the end, it was quick enough to write, though, I could sit down and write the- second report.
General Ironwood: While there is still a great deal that we don't know about Hell or its inhabitants, and the near certainty of additional dangers that we haven't seen yet, I believe that, for now, the potential benefits outweigh the risks. Morale seems high under the circumstances. Moss seems political. Concerning, but not active risk. Will send further assessments as the situation develops. -SWS
With that report written (most of the time spent writing it was in trying to determine just what was necessary to communicate my actual opinions while still keeping the message short enough for the type of encryption I would run it through) I ran it through the encryption key that Ironwood had given me, and would send it with the next transmission from the facility.
Truthfully, if we were at the point where we actively suspected that my messages to Ironwood regarding the viability and safety of the project would be intercepted by people at the base, well, I'd have advocated a more aggressive course of action than simply adding a few extra security measures.
Though, it did occur to me that this might be preparation for future projects. The General had hinted that I was being considered for being read into more classified information, and this could partially be a form of training, to make sure that I was capable of adhering to certain standards of classification. Or the extra secrecy was in and of itself a trap, to bait any spies into exposing themselves as they tried to uncover the secret communications.
Or it might be entirely sincere. He had wanted someone he knew personally to assess the project, and that implied that he might not trust the project heads. Or he wanted trusted professional eyes to assess the risk. He had been rather more cryptic than I was used to him being, and that did make me a bit uneasy, I could admit, though there had been operations where I had been trusted to make decisions on my own initiative and preformed quite well, rarely had those decisions been… social.
Of course, I could fret over each and every word General Ironwood both said and didn't say for hours in the hopes of understanding his precise intent here, but under the circumstances, I believe it would likely be best to simply use my own judgment and to keep an eye out, which was- actually what he had ordered me to do.
I shook my head, looking at my scroll even as I shut it off.
At this point, I could recognize when my thoughts began to move in circles or unhealthy patterns of thought.
As it stood, I simply didn't know enough; about Ironwood's intent, about the reliability of the people I was working with, and, of course, Hell itself, to properly make any decisions. And the only way to solve that particular problem was to wait and see, which admittedly wasn't something that I was terribly comfortable with.
It took somewhat more aggressive meditative practice than usual, but eventually, I was able to fall asleep, with lightly troubled dreams that I would fail to remember in the morning.
Author's Note
Author's Note:
So… this is a continuation of a story that I'd written some time ago. Well, honestly, more like a rewrite/dramatic expansion of the whole thing, but, still. I thought it would be a nice, short story to get back into things. Nearly 50K words later, I have… this. Fair warning, it'll probably take a decent chunk of time to get to the violence, because I had several primary objectives in writing this story, and part of those objectives involve worldbuilding. (Some of the objectives are serious, some of them are more along the lines of, "I want to see Winter Schnee stab a bunch of demons in the face," and I'll be happy to list them at this story's conclusion.)
Also, I hesitate to admit this, but, uh, I'm not caught up to canon RWBY. Volume… four or five, I think, is where I left off. Mind you, I didn't quit because I was disillusioned or anything, or because I thought it sucked and that I would ignore everything canon that came out after that point as I think a few writers did, I just… started writing this story, and honestly, it was taking long enough that I didn't want to write the whole damned thing over again the moment that canon contradicted it and get into long chains of editing that made the story take even longer to finish, the sort of trap that I've fallen into quite a few times. I was hoping to at least get this out before the newest season came out, but… yeah. (At this point, there's even a new Doom trailer out, which gave me a second kick in the ass needed to finish this damned project already.)
I tried to incorporate a few relevant details about things later in canon that I've seen that add to the story, but, uh, it'll be limited. Sorry about that. I will say that I am honestly looking forward to catching up with canon of both worlds.
For anyone wondering about dates, this whole thing is shortly before RWBY's arrival Beacon Academy, and shortly after the end of Doom 2016. If any of you are too impatient to wait for the actual demon slaying action and would prefer to skip the build up, well, let me know, and I'll try to let you know when things get properly started.
So… this is a continuation of a story that I'd written some time ago. Well, honestly, more like a rewrite/dramatic expansion of the whole thing, but, still. I thought it would be a nice, short story to get back into things. Nearly 50K words later, I have… this. Fair warning, it'll probably take a decent chunk of time to get to the violence, because I had several primary objectives in writing this story, and part of those objectives involve worldbuilding. (Some of the objectives are serious, some of them are more along the lines of, "I want to see Winter Schnee stab a bunch of demons in the face," and I'll be happy to list them at this story's conclusion.)
Also, I hesitate to admit this, but, uh, I'm not caught up to canon RWBY. Volume… four or five, I think, is where I left off. Mind you, I didn't quit because I was disillusioned or anything, or because I thought it sucked and that I would ignore everything canon that came out after that point as I think a few writers did, I just… started writing this story, and honestly, it was taking long enough that I didn't want to write the whole damned thing over again the moment that canon contradicted it and get into long chains of editing that made the story take even longer to finish, the sort of trap that I've fallen into quite a few times. I was hoping to at least get this out before the newest season came out, but… yeah. (At this point, there's even a new Doom trailer out, which gave me a second kick in the ass needed to finish this damned project already.)
I tried to incorporate a few relevant details about things later in canon that I've seen that add to the story, but, uh, it'll be limited. Sorry about that. I will say that I am honestly looking forward to catching up with canon of both worlds.
For anyone wondering about dates, this whole thing is shortly before RWBY's arrival Beacon Academy, and shortly after the end of Doom 2016. If any of you are too impatient to wait for the actual demon slaying action and would prefer to skip the build up, well, let me know, and I'll try to let you know when things get properly started.
I don't think it will be too much of a spoiler to say that yes, he will be included.
As for the other part, well...
There's going to be more buildup, but after the stage is properly set there will be a lot of fighting.
Perhaps not quite as much constant conflict as we see in Doom, since constant action is a bit less entertaining in text format than it is in game format, but... well, there will be a lot of violence. Fighting is one of the highlights of both series being crossed, after all.
Updates should be quick, since I have just about the entire story written out. There's only editing what's been done, one scene that needs finishing, and admittedly one particular fight scene that needs to be completely revamped.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
As I was saying elsewhere: These seem to be true demons, in pretty much the biblical sense. They want to corrupt and destroy humanity, so it's a good thing this version of humanity is relatively united.
Yes, a good thing indeed.
It would be terrible if there was someone like Salem out there.
But also: That one time you colonized hell because it's easier and safer than colonizing your own planet...
Yes, a good thing indeed.
It would be terrible if there was someone like Salem out there.
But also: That one time you colonized hell because it's easier and safer than colonizing your own planet...
Last edited:
- Location
- Puerto Rico
Good intro
Looking forward to more.
Cause I will be honest, one thing I really want to see in a RWBY/DOOM fic is VEGA meeting Penny and somehow Penny starts calling him big brother.
Looking forward to more.
Will this include VEGA?
Cause I will be honest, one thing I really want to see in a RWBY/DOOM fic is VEGA meeting Penny and somehow Penny starts calling him big brother.
Heh, yeah, people have a lot of ambitions for Hell, and I won't deny that at least a few of them are at least a bit intrigued by the thought of a Hell Colonization Project, but currently Hell is still more dangerous than Remnant for civilians, just because of the Hell energy.
Some discussion of the Grimm will be had next chapter or two, but nothing in too much detail, since it's still from Winter's point of view.
Glad you're liking it, and I'm looking forward to posting more.
While I also like the idea of VEGA interacting with Penny, unfortunately, the timeframe of this story is relatively short, and "waking up" VEGA would be... complicated. I'm going to say that Remnant technology could do it, but they'd need to design adapters to download his data to a computer, and even their most advanced computers would have trouble with processing VEGA as a person. Since even if I handwave that he can still remain largely himself if placed in smaller systems, well, remember just how large VEGA's complex was in Doom. Making a system capable of running VEGA.exe isn't going to be easy. Like, at least several months of work as they try to figure out how to best do this without risking damaging VEGA.
But assuming that circumstances align that Atlas has access to VEGA, I will say that I imagine that they would put a lot of effort into restoring him (even if you assumed a complete lack of altruistic motivations, VEGA might be able to help them out with replicating UAC technology), and that both Dr. Polendina and Penny would be involved in that project.
(And while I say that it's beyond the scope of this story, I mean that while I do have the ending written for this particular story, but that ending leaves an opening for future stories, even if I don't actively have anything planned, though I do have a number of ideas for connected one-shots.)
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
AI is somewhat of a specialty of mine. By which I mean, I work with it in a professional capacity -- though I don't build them, except as a hobby.
Which is to say, hmm... your conclusion is right, but your arguments are at least somewhat iffy. Let's see...
- First off, while I haven't played any Doom games beyond the original, if VEGA runs in a complex then they're probably using roughly equitech hardware to ours. It's been estimated that Google's computing clusters have roughly equivalent processing power to a human brain, though of course they aren't at all connected in a way that'd be useful for running a single, large AI.
Meanwhile, Remnant managed to pack the same amount of computing power into a chassis the size of a Penny, along with the power supply, cooling, weaponry, and all sorts of other extras that humans don't have. Their technology isn't just as good as biology, it's far better. So from a blank-slate perspective, they should easily be able to run VEGA.
But...
- VEGA runs in a complex. That is to say, it runs on what's likely hundreds of thousands of computers. This means there's got to be a large amount of cluster management software, specialized underlying infrastructure etc. etc, which wouldn't necessarily be either accessible to Remnant or possible to get running. In reality it takes dozens of people multiple lifetimes of work to build these systems; it isn't something a single genius can do in a decade, especially not cut off from the civilization that originally made it.
- VEGA doesn't use a programming language that anyone on Remnant has familiarity with. This is really a subsection of the above, but keep that in mind as well. It's going to be opaque binary code, likely without any documentation; they'd have to decap the CPUs and work out how they work, by looking at the physical circuitry, to have the slightest chance of getting the software running. This is no longer a "multiple lifetimes" project, this is something you could throw half of Atlas at and it'd take centuries.
Unless Penny can do it, but her AI design doesn't strike me as designed to work on software. That's a good safety net -- the AI alignment problem is hard, folks.
- However, all of that being said, if they could copy the software off of its original computers -- easier said than done, to be fair -- then there'd no longer be any reason to worry about experiments 'breaking' it. AIs can be trivially copied, it's just the hardware that can't be.
Which, yes, means there's no particular reason there couldn't be a dozen Pennies following Winter in. No reason except her family wouldn't want that.
Those are all valid points. I should probably note that... I am not exactly tech savvy, or at least, when it comes to technology. I I was just trying to explain why it might be difficult with my... limited understanding of such. Honestly, if I get to that point, most of the description of the difficulties would have been something like, "Dude, it's an alien AI from a largely different techbase in an alien programming language being tossed into machines that we had to custom design with custom adaptors just to let us plug the damned thing in. Be glad we were actually good enough to manage it in X amount of time, let alone get it to work at all. Lucky we had Jones over here with *incredibly convenient semblance* as well as *spoiler* available to make it easier on us."
It would be incredibly hand-wavey but, well, honestly, Doom 2016 had 4 major characters (Slayer, Hayden, Pierce and Vega), and it would be kind of a waste to one of the only three of that group that actually speaks.
Though the stuff you brought up is good and helpful when it comes to actually writing even that sort of scene out, so thank you.
edit:
Next chapter should be up tomorrow. Fair warning, future chapters will all be a lot shorter. I was a bit distracted these past couple of days so I had trouble doing the editing I planned on, but tomorrow should be good.
Last edited:
A Little More Conversation
I knocked on the Colonel's door, with three short, firm raps, and his voice spoke, "Come in, please."
When I entered the room, I saw the Colonel standing there, gazing out the window, and I couldn't quite suppress the thought that he had taken that position largely as an act of pageantry, but I suppressed that thought. While he hadn't made the best of impressions with me, he was likely to be my direct superior officer for some time now, and ideally, I could avoid cultivating an actively antagonistic relationship with a superior officer.
This time.
"Winter Schnee."
He said with a smile, and I simply saluted with a brief, "Sir."
"Please, be at ease."
I stood at a parade rest.
"You wanted to speak with me, sir?"
"Yes, Blaine spoke to me earlier. He mentioned the etchings you had found. Upon some careful consideration, I have decided to authorize an expedition that he has been requesting."
"Sir?"
"A trip deeper into Hell than we have ever gone before, in the hopes of seeing more signs of other civilizations that have managed to establish themselves in Hell. Or at least seeing if there's anything interesting beyond where our patrol routes have normally gone."
"Did you have a destination in mind, sir?"
He shook his head, "In truth, we don't know enough to actually find point this patrol towards any specific destination. If anything, we hope that this patrol might find something like an actual target for future missions. While you are free to broaden the mission parameters if you encounter anything of active interest, this is more of a mapping mission than some intelligence gathering sortie, and you are not to take unnecessary risks." That seemed sensible enough to me.
He approached his desk and pulled a folder off of the top of a large briefcase, handing the folder to me, and I opened it, skimming through the papers. A small map, additional notes on demons, and a few technical readouts of the custom equipment I'd be working with, from a review of the capabilities of the new Argent-variant Paladin (and briefly glancing at the image, it became even more apparent that it seemed to functionally be a normal Paladin with additional parts bolted on, rather than a proper variant model, but it was a proof of concept, I supposed), to the small, sphere like object.
"Sir, if I may ask, what is this?" I was quite willing to test experimental equipment, even in hostile environments, but using unfamiliar gear in unfamiliar territory far away from any friendly forces was something that I was distinctly less comfortable with.
"Ah, that is something that some of our scientists are quite pleased with, though really it was more of an engineering problem to downscale the technology." He reached over to his desk and popped open the briefcase, and nestled in it were several of those spheres. "These are Argent Accumulators, which are rather similar to the larger machines we have to process the Hell energy. These, however, are designed to be worn, and while they passively help to lower the impact of Hell energy on person's aura over time. Nothing too dramatic, really, but they should reduce the itching sensation some people have reported, and allow aura to recover more easily while in Hell."
That did sound like something that would be useful, assuming it functioned as described.
"However, its primary function only activates when the wearer's aura is broken, where it goes to full power and begins absorbing as much energy as it can, before it can reach the person wearing it. The primary function of this ability is to, well, give people a chance of surviving if their aura is broken, giving them another chance to recover their aura before the Hell energies can overwhelm them. This has dramatically reduced the risk factor of operating in this other dimension, and its development is the primary reason that we feel safe enough to send your patrol further than we've ever sent one before."
Truthfully, even on Remnant, it wasn't terribly common for someone to survive once their aura had been completely broken in an actual fight. Grimm tended to target people who were afraid and seemingly vulnerable, and those words tended to describe a person in the instant that their aura broke quite well. Still, "Having a wider margin of error would be useful."
He smiled and nodded, "Yes, every day we work this project, we're making it that little bit safer, that little bit more efficient. While the deaths that occurred the first time we opened the portal should not be forgotten, and security should always be a primary concern at this facility, I believe we're nearing the point where we could begin actually exporting all of this energy that we have been producing."
Ah. That was the purpose of this meeting.
"According to Blaine, you've found some evidence that other civilizations have met these demons. Other civilizations have found their own way into Hell."
"It's nothing confirmed, sir, but that seems the likely explanation."
He smile grew broader, and I wondered what he had taken from that statement, "Yes, it's, well, unconfirmed. It's an unknown, even."
He began pacing, and I resisted the urge to follow him with my eyes even as he walked behind me, "The potential good of Argent energy cannot be overstated, and should not be abandoned because others were careless. If other civilizations didn't take the precautions that we did, if, in fact, we determine that some other poor faction was wiped out by the forces of Hell, that is a fact that has absolutely no bearing on the viability of our own Argent extraction process, save, perhaps, for an example for how to even better prepare our security measures. I'd even call a number of our security measures paranoid, and more are added with each expansion to our maximum level of productivity. Having multiple combat Specialists permanently stationed here might be considered excessive, but in the early stages, well, being prepared for the potential worst-case scenario is only reasonable." He finished, finally having circled around to where I could actually see him.
Not caring to engage with his point quite yet, I asked, "Multiple specialists, sir? I've only met Specialist Lavender so far."
He paused, his train of thought slightly derailed, before giving an enthusiastic nod, "Ah, yes, Specialist Rowan Helmer is also on site, but he's focusing on this side of the portal, as apparently his semblance makes raw Argent energy particularly uncomfortable. There isn't much for him to do, with the heavy weaponry we've placed around the base, but he hunts the occasional small pack beyond our base, largely in an attempt to slow down any chance of the Grimm numbers reaching the critical mass necessary for an actual noteworthy attack. Just because we're dabbling in Hell doesn't mean the creatures of Grimm are resting, after all."
While on the one hand, it was good to know that we weren't neglecting the security of this side of the portal, I had worked with Helmer for an operation, staging an ambush for White Fang operatives. He had been enthusiastic about the operation in a way that I wasn't entirely comfortable with.
Like sheep to the slaughter, I could recall him saying, and considering his personality, it seemed equally likely that that statement was made either thoughtlessly or with deliberate malice, and neither possibility spoke well of him. Still, there wasn't much moral nuance to these operations, and he was a skilled fighter. While in my presence, hadn't done anything… actionable, yet.
"I had not yet encountered him on base, sir, but we have met."
"Ah, of course." He paused, seemingly trying to find where he had left off of his speech, before giving a deliberate shake of his head, "The point is, I don't want to act carelessly, here, with this operation. If you do happen to find evidence that a civilization was wiped out by these demons, your orders are to prioritize finding out how, exactly, the demons managed to wipe them out, and how our security measures might prevent the same from happening to us." He smiled, "Of course, I would never ask you to hide any, mission relevant details in your," he paused for a moment, "reports, but I might ask you be careful when considering how certain revelations might be taken when received out of context. This project can do too much good to let more short sighted individuals stop it before it can even properly begin."
He seemed to be hinting that he knew I was sending additional reports to the General, but of course in a plausibly, politically deniable way. And that he considered, "The demons wiped out a near-peer civilization to Atlas" to not be something that warranted an immediate pause to operations as it would be further investigated, but something to be quietly looked into until a more detailed and more favorable report (with the problem already safely solved) could be sent in.
Politics.
"These are your orders then, sir?"
"They are." His face went solemn.
I took a brief moment to consider that. Truthfully, I suspected that if it came to my making a decision that contradicted the Colonel's, that Ironwood would back me to the hilt, especially if I was acting to prevent a possible demonic invasion of Remnant. But there was no guarantee that it would come to that, and if the General was going to stand behind my decisions, well, I would want to give him the steadiest ground I could. And, of course, there was no need to enter an unecessary fight before I even knew if these other civilizations had been completely wiped out.
"Very well, sir." This time, I believe I succeeded in keeping any negative sentiments off of my face, as he simply smiled and nodded.
"Excellent. Now, your expedition will be taking place tomorrow, so I'll leave you to whatever preparations you feel are necessary."
"Of course, sir."
I walked away, folder in hand.
_______________________
The evening before the expedition, I sat at the cafeteria table with my fellow specialists, Lavender and Helmer. Helmer was slightly shorter than myself, with a narrow build, bright red hair, and a perpetual smirk.
To a certain extent, Specialists, especially field specialists such as myself, didn't necessarily seek to create their own cliques apart from the common soldiers or various officers, but our occasionally curious role within the military hierarchy, possessing both more and less authority than our nominal ranks might suggest, with our generally being given enough leeway to have a great deal of initiative on a tactical level or even just commanding entire garrisons. It wasn't terribly uncommon for one specialist to have authority over an entire city's garrison while another only commanded a handful of Knights despite possessing the exact same rank… our roles were complicated, and socially speaking many weren't sure as to whether we should be regarded as grunts, officers, or celebrities. It was often easiest to simply sit down with other specialists, socially speaking.
"So," Lavender said, curiosity in his voice. "I have to ask; what do you think about- everything?" He waved his hand around, indicating- everything.
"By 'Everything' I would assume that you mean Project Argent?"
"Yeah, the whole- mining hell thing."
Helmer shook his head at that, "What we're doing isn't exactly mining."
"Eh, some of the scientists have been talking about trying to dig a mine, see if we can pick up any natural resources other than Argent. It's, well, the whole- potential of this project is amazing."
"It's certainly intriguing," I said, "but I'm not entirely certain if the benefits outweigh the risks."
Helmer shrugged, If you look past the initial few months, things are now consistently fairly safe. I imagine they'll keep getting safer as we learn more about Hell."
Lavender shrugged his own shoulders. "Yeah, I'd say that looking at the past month or so, our casualty rates are, what, only a bit higher than those of your average-" he paused, before glancing at myself, before his gaze darted back and forth between Helmer and I.
I sighed, before waving a hand, "I am quite aware of who my father is, thank you, you can feel free to say that the casualty rates are comparable to those of a dust mine."
He winced at that statement, while Helmer just grinned, taking a long drink out of his cup but utterly failing to hide his amusement.
"Ahah, ah, right," Ash paused, taking a moment to stop talking and collect his thoughts before continuing to speak. "Anyway, Argent is- huge. As in, we could be far, far more productive than we're being. Even with our most paranoid and conservative harvesting procedures, we have more energy reserves than we know what to do with. Like, even without refining the process further, which the scientists are very sure seems entirely possible, we run this base at full tilt for two weeks, we can power the capital cities of each of the four kingdoms for a year."
I admit, the scale of project had escaped me. "Colonel Grant never mentioned anything with that level of potential."
Helmer huffed and waved his hand, "The man's selling a miracle cure for all illnesses, what, you think he should talk about how it'll also make your dick bigger? Apparently, some of the Council who have been brought in on this already think he's a crazy bastard overselling the effectiveness of this project, if anything, going more conservative in his marketing makes it more believable."
Despite his crude language, he did have a valid point.
Lavender tilted his head, "Though, it wouldn't surprise me if he's listening to Doctor Blaine." At the mention of Blaine's name, Helmer scoffed, but Lavender continued speaking, "He's been pretty paranoid about security, especially when we learned that the demons could talk. All the password resetting if soldiers miss appointed check in times, the aggressive stance towards demons close to the base, the great big damned bomb positioned right under the base, which he made using conventional dust instead of our abundant Argent supplies because he just doesn't trust Argent enough for his last contingency… he's a paranoid guy."
Helmer shook his head. "I mean, I have problems with some of the procedures, just because someone got captured doesn't mean that my own personal passwords were suddenly compromised, but it's probably for the best that we play this carefully. Being conservative gets us enough to be valuable, and we don't exactly want to be fighting a war on two fronts."
Right.
Fighting the Grimm and the demons at once. That was a thought. The Grimm were unpleasant enough, having to face a foe to humanity that had an intelligence behind it? "Have we tested to see how the Grimm respond to demons?"
"That's actually one of the main questions I hear get tossed around by the men," Lavender said with a grin, "but mostly it's in the context of who would win in a fight between various types of demons and Grimm."
"From what I've heard," Helmer put emphasis on the word 'I' as he spoke, "The scientists are a bit worried about what unfiltered Argent energy would do to a Grimm, considering just what it does to humans. The optimistic projection is that the Grimm would explode. Less optimistically…"
His voice trailed off, and the implication was clear. There were a lot of ways that that could go badly, most of which could make for parade of cheap horror films.
Optimistically-
I thought back to the demon I had spoken with, how it relished in telling me of the fate of those soldiers.
Optimistically, they could sit back and watch as the creatures of Hell and Grimm attempted to butcher each other. That would be something that I could enjoy.
"Of course, Argent could end the war with the Grimm," Lavender said, as if he wasn't stating something utterly ridiculous.
At both of our incredulous looks, he held up his hands, "I mean, think about it! Stick a few of those argent batteries in a cruiser, and that cruiser can go at full speed for as long as the parts inside can hold up, its guns never have to stop firing. They can respond to distress calls from isolated settlements, every time a hunter or specialist spots a Goliath herd in the wild they can just call it in and have it blasted by our airships without worrying about wasting valuable dust on targets that are just hanging out in the wild. Every obscure farmstead can have its own automated turrets, and the cities can have bigger ones."
"That won't stop the Grimm." Rowan said, frowning.
"Sure, sure, but we sure as hell can push them back further than they've ever been before. We thought we were in a new age of expansion with places like Mountain Glenn, well, maybe with Argent, we really might be able to actually hold new territory, to expand even. Hell, Grimm aren't the only potential problem that would be solved."
"Like what?" I asked him, curious.
"Like the White Fang, for example?" He said with a grin.
Rowan scoffed, "While I wouldn't mind watching, I don't think bigger guns are exactly going to solve the problem of the White Fang."
"Yeah, but with Argent powering our cities, most of our weapons, everything? We'll have a hell of a lot less use for Dust, we'd likely mostly just use it for specialized processes and give it to Hunters and Specialists, due to its interactions with semblances, but, well…"
"Without needing the Dust to power everything," Rowan said, a curious look on his face, "We wouldn't need to run the mines quite so harshly," Truthfully, even without Argent we didn't need to run those quite so harshly, but running them to the same level of output with lesser levels of cruelty would be a bit less profitable which is something that could hardly be tolerated, but I wasn't in the mood to argue that point at the moment, "which would destroy one of their primary propaganda points…" While I hardly cared for or respected the White Fang as an organization, it wasn't just propaganda.
"Without the mines being so necessary, with the White Fang's recruitment going down, with our military being able to more proactively hunt down the Grimm and so they'd be better able to respond and guard against White Fang attacks, well, all of that leads to better conditions for the faunus eventually."
I spoke up, "You're acting as if bigotry against faunus is purely a socioeconomic concern."
"I mean, you know, there are genuine bigots out there, but a lot of it is just, well, convenience, really. Or just slowly dying tradition. I mean, I don't think your father hates faunus, but his mines are basically one of the biggest points of contention, really."
That- was not necessarily a statement that I agreed with. Oh, he did explain his actions to me from time to time, it was hardly his fault that the only workers willing to work in his mines were faunus, and they were cheaper to care for with their night vision allowing them to see without expensive lights that were dust-mine safe, and we needed that level of output to support our troops and power the economy, and once we've reached a more financially secure position we can ramp down production somewhat, and a similar series of entirely sensible if callous arguments.
But I had, as a young child, heard him talk about those people, in the wake of attacks. I could sympathize with the anger, seeing the fear the White Fang had put into my siblings, even myself when I could admit that, it made me furious. But there was always that little tone to his voice, as if the faunus should ignore the fact that any attempt to unionize was quietly reported to security forces, and that they were frequently labeled as cells of White Fang sympathizers when the events were conveyed to the press, who generally accepted those stories with little question. That any reaction to his actions other than gratitude for providing them with jobs qualified as base ingratitude. The occasional times he referred to terrorist actions with an odd venom that implied he'd really rather be using a… broader terms than "White Fang."
But of course, I could hardly bring those personal anecdotes to an argument like this, and I expected that my vague feelings would be largely ignored, and so I remained silent. One could bring a certain level of politics to the position of Specialist, but even here there were limits.
The conversation had shifted to Rowan and Lavender arguing about whether or not Argent Energy would work in space, unlike dust, and what, exactly, scientists would discover if they took samplings from the moon. Lavender seemed convinced that there would be moon Grimm burrowing within the rock, though part of me suspected that he was simply attempted to rile up Helmer.
I shook my head, while Argent energy hardly seemed the panacea to all the world's troubles that Helmer and Lavender seemed convinced that it was, there was certainly- potential.
Assuming that we didn't all get ourselves killed by provoking the hell dimension, of course.
_____________
Author's Note:
And now things finally get to the Expedition. Chapters should stay about this length from now on, I just made the first one that longbecause I jumped the gun and was too eager to get to the places that were actually the meat of the story because I felt a bit weird having the first couple chapters of a Doom/RWBY cross not actually involve fighting things.
When I entered the room, I saw the Colonel standing there, gazing out the window, and I couldn't quite suppress the thought that he had taken that position largely as an act of pageantry, but I suppressed that thought. While he hadn't made the best of impressions with me, he was likely to be my direct superior officer for some time now, and ideally, I could avoid cultivating an actively antagonistic relationship with a superior officer.
This time.
"Winter Schnee."
He said with a smile, and I simply saluted with a brief, "Sir."
"Please, be at ease."
I stood at a parade rest.
"You wanted to speak with me, sir?"
"Yes, Blaine spoke to me earlier. He mentioned the etchings you had found. Upon some careful consideration, I have decided to authorize an expedition that he has been requesting."
"Sir?"
"A trip deeper into Hell than we have ever gone before, in the hopes of seeing more signs of other civilizations that have managed to establish themselves in Hell. Or at least seeing if there's anything interesting beyond where our patrol routes have normally gone."
"Did you have a destination in mind, sir?"
He shook his head, "In truth, we don't know enough to actually find point this patrol towards any specific destination. If anything, we hope that this patrol might find something like an actual target for future missions. While you are free to broaden the mission parameters if you encounter anything of active interest, this is more of a mapping mission than some intelligence gathering sortie, and you are not to take unnecessary risks." That seemed sensible enough to me.
He approached his desk and pulled a folder off of the top of a large briefcase, handing the folder to me, and I opened it, skimming through the papers. A small map, additional notes on demons, and a few technical readouts of the custom equipment I'd be working with, from a review of the capabilities of the new Argent-variant Paladin (and briefly glancing at the image, it became even more apparent that it seemed to functionally be a normal Paladin with additional parts bolted on, rather than a proper variant model, but it was a proof of concept, I supposed), to the small, sphere like object.
"Sir, if I may ask, what is this?" I was quite willing to test experimental equipment, even in hostile environments, but using unfamiliar gear in unfamiliar territory far away from any friendly forces was something that I was distinctly less comfortable with.
"Ah, that is something that some of our scientists are quite pleased with, though really it was more of an engineering problem to downscale the technology." He reached over to his desk and popped open the briefcase, and nestled in it were several of those spheres. "These are Argent Accumulators, which are rather similar to the larger machines we have to process the Hell energy. These, however, are designed to be worn, and while they passively help to lower the impact of Hell energy on person's aura over time. Nothing too dramatic, really, but they should reduce the itching sensation some people have reported, and allow aura to recover more easily while in Hell."
That did sound like something that would be useful, assuming it functioned as described.
"However, its primary function only activates when the wearer's aura is broken, where it goes to full power and begins absorbing as much energy as it can, before it can reach the person wearing it. The primary function of this ability is to, well, give people a chance of surviving if their aura is broken, giving them another chance to recover their aura before the Hell energies can overwhelm them. This has dramatically reduced the risk factor of operating in this other dimension, and its development is the primary reason that we feel safe enough to send your patrol further than we've ever sent one before."
Truthfully, even on Remnant, it wasn't terribly common for someone to survive once their aura had been completely broken in an actual fight. Grimm tended to target people who were afraid and seemingly vulnerable, and those words tended to describe a person in the instant that their aura broke quite well. Still, "Having a wider margin of error would be useful."
He smiled and nodded, "Yes, every day we work this project, we're making it that little bit safer, that little bit more efficient. While the deaths that occurred the first time we opened the portal should not be forgotten, and security should always be a primary concern at this facility, I believe we're nearing the point where we could begin actually exporting all of this energy that we have been producing."
Ah. That was the purpose of this meeting.
"According to Blaine, you've found some evidence that other civilizations have met these demons. Other civilizations have found their own way into Hell."
"It's nothing confirmed, sir, but that seems the likely explanation."
He smile grew broader, and I wondered what he had taken from that statement, "Yes, it's, well, unconfirmed. It's an unknown, even."
He began pacing, and I resisted the urge to follow him with my eyes even as he walked behind me, "The potential good of Argent energy cannot be overstated, and should not be abandoned because others were careless. If other civilizations didn't take the precautions that we did, if, in fact, we determine that some other poor faction was wiped out by the forces of Hell, that is a fact that has absolutely no bearing on the viability of our own Argent extraction process, save, perhaps, for an example for how to even better prepare our security measures. I'd even call a number of our security measures paranoid, and more are added with each expansion to our maximum level of productivity. Having multiple combat Specialists permanently stationed here might be considered excessive, but in the early stages, well, being prepared for the potential worst-case scenario is only reasonable." He finished, finally having circled around to where I could actually see him.
Not caring to engage with his point quite yet, I asked, "Multiple specialists, sir? I've only met Specialist Lavender so far."
He paused, his train of thought slightly derailed, before giving an enthusiastic nod, "Ah, yes, Specialist Rowan Helmer is also on site, but he's focusing on this side of the portal, as apparently his semblance makes raw Argent energy particularly uncomfortable. There isn't much for him to do, with the heavy weaponry we've placed around the base, but he hunts the occasional small pack beyond our base, largely in an attempt to slow down any chance of the Grimm numbers reaching the critical mass necessary for an actual noteworthy attack. Just because we're dabbling in Hell doesn't mean the creatures of Grimm are resting, after all."
While on the one hand, it was good to know that we weren't neglecting the security of this side of the portal, I had worked with Helmer for an operation, staging an ambush for White Fang operatives. He had been enthusiastic about the operation in a way that I wasn't entirely comfortable with.
Like sheep to the slaughter, I could recall him saying, and considering his personality, it seemed equally likely that that statement was made either thoughtlessly or with deliberate malice, and neither possibility spoke well of him. Still, there wasn't much moral nuance to these operations, and he was a skilled fighter. While in my presence, hadn't done anything… actionable, yet.
"I had not yet encountered him on base, sir, but we have met."
"Ah, of course." He paused, seemingly trying to find where he had left off of his speech, before giving a deliberate shake of his head, "The point is, I don't want to act carelessly, here, with this operation. If you do happen to find evidence that a civilization was wiped out by these demons, your orders are to prioritize finding out how, exactly, the demons managed to wipe them out, and how our security measures might prevent the same from happening to us." He smiled, "Of course, I would never ask you to hide any, mission relevant details in your," he paused for a moment, "reports, but I might ask you be careful when considering how certain revelations might be taken when received out of context. This project can do too much good to let more short sighted individuals stop it before it can even properly begin."
He seemed to be hinting that he knew I was sending additional reports to the General, but of course in a plausibly, politically deniable way. And that he considered, "The demons wiped out a near-peer civilization to Atlas" to not be something that warranted an immediate pause to operations as it would be further investigated, but something to be quietly looked into until a more detailed and more favorable report (with the problem already safely solved) could be sent in.
Politics.
"These are your orders then, sir?"
"They are." His face went solemn.
I took a brief moment to consider that. Truthfully, I suspected that if it came to my making a decision that contradicted the Colonel's, that Ironwood would back me to the hilt, especially if I was acting to prevent a possible demonic invasion of Remnant. But there was no guarantee that it would come to that, and if the General was going to stand behind my decisions, well, I would want to give him the steadiest ground I could. And, of course, there was no need to enter an unecessary fight before I even knew if these other civilizations had been completely wiped out.
"Very well, sir." This time, I believe I succeeded in keeping any negative sentiments off of my face, as he simply smiled and nodded.
"Excellent. Now, your expedition will be taking place tomorrow, so I'll leave you to whatever preparations you feel are necessary."
"Of course, sir."
I walked away, folder in hand.
_______________________
The evening before the expedition, I sat at the cafeteria table with my fellow specialists, Lavender and Helmer. Helmer was slightly shorter than myself, with a narrow build, bright red hair, and a perpetual smirk.
To a certain extent, Specialists, especially field specialists such as myself, didn't necessarily seek to create their own cliques apart from the common soldiers or various officers, but our occasionally curious role within the military hierarchy, possessing both more and less authority than our nominal ranks might suggest, with our generally being given enough leeway to have a great deal of initiative on a tactical level or even just commanding entire garrisons. It wasn't terribly uncommon for one specialist to have authority over an entire city's garrison while another only commanded a handful of Knights despite possessing the exact same rank… our roles were complicated, and socially speaking many weren't sure as to whether we should be regarded as grunts, officers, or celebrities. It was often easiest to simply sit down with other specialists, socially speaking.
"So," Lavender said, curiosity in his voice. "I have to ask; what do you think about- everything?" He waved his hand around, indicating- everything.
"By 'Everything' I would assume that you mean Project Argent?"
"Yeah, the whole- mining hell thing."
Helmer shook his head at that, "What we're doing isn't exactly mining."
"Eh, some of the scientists have been talking about trying to dig a mine, see if we can pick up any natural resources other than Argent. It's, well, the whole- potential of this project is amazing."
"It's certainly intriguing," I said, "but I'm not entirely certain if the benefits outweigh the risks."
Helmer shrugged, If you look past the initial few months, things are now consistently fairly safe. I imagine they'll keep getting safer as we learn more about Hell."
Lavender shrugged his own shoulders. "Yeah, I'd say that looking at the past month or so, our casualty rates are, what, only a bit higher than those of your average-" he paused, before glancing at myself, before his gaze darted back and forth between Helmer and I.
I sighed, before waving a hand, "I am quite aware of who my father is, thank you, you can feel free to say that the casualty rates are comparable to those of a dust mine."
He winced at that statement, while Helmer just grinned, taking a long drink out of his cup but utterly failing to hide his amusement.
"Ahah, ah, right," Ash paused, taking a moment to stop talking and collect his thoughts before continuing to speak. "Anyway, Argent is- huge. As in, we could be far, far more productive than we're being. Even with our most paranoid and conservative harvesting procedures, we have more energy reserves than we know what to do with. Like, even without refining the process further, which the scientists are very sure seems entirely possible, we run this base at full tilt for two weeks, we can power the capital cities of each of the four kingdoms for a year."
I admit, the scale of project had escaped me. "Colonel Grant never mentioned anything with that level of potential."
Helmer huffed and waved his hand, "The man's selling a miracle cure for all illnesses, what, you think he should talk about how it'll also make your dick bigger? Apparently, some of the Council who have been brought in on this already think he's a crazy bastard overselling the effectiveness of this project, if anything, going more conservative in his marketing makes it more believable."
Despite his crude language, he did have a valid point.
Lavender tilted his head, "Though, it wouldn't surprise me if he's listening to Doctor Blaine." At the mention of Blaine's name, Helmer scoffed, but Lavender continued speaking, "He's been pretty paranoid about security, especially when we learned that the demons could talk. All the password resetting if soldiers miss appointed check in times, the aggressive stance towards demons close to the base, the great big damned bomb positioned right under the base, which he made using conventional dust instead of our abundant Argent supplies because he just doesn't trust Argent enough for his last contingency… he's a paranoid guy."
Helmer shook his head. "I mean, I have problems with some of the procedures, just because someone got captured doesn't mean that my own personal passwords were suddenly compromised, but it's probably for the best that we play this carefully. Being conservative gets us enough to be valuable, and we don't exactly want to be fighting a war on two fronts."
Right.
Fighting the Grimm and the demons at once. That was a thought. The Grimm were unpleasant enough, having to face a foe to humanity that had an intelligence behind it? "Have we tested to see how the Grimm respond to demons?"
"That's actually one of the main questions I hear get tossed around by the men," Lavender said with a grin, "but mostly it's in the context of who would win in a fight between various types of demons and Grimm."
"From what I've heard," Helmer put emphasis on the word 'I' as he spoke, "The scientists are a bit worried about what unfiltered Argent energy would do to a Grimm, considering just what it does to humans. The optimistic projection is that the Grimm would explode. Less optimistically…"
His voice trailed off, and the implication was clear. There were a lot of ways that that could go badly, most of which could make for parade of cheap horror films.
Optimistically-
I thought back to the demon I had spoken with, how it relished in telling me of the fate of those soldiers.
Optimistically, they could sit back and watch as the creatures of Hell and Grimm attempted to butcher each other. That would be something that I could enjoy.
"Of course, Argent could end the war with the Grimm," Lavender said, as if he wasn't stating something utterly ridiculous.
At both of our incredulous looks, he held up his hands, "I mean, think about it! Stick a few of those argent batteries in a cruiser, and that cruiser can go at full speed for as long as the parts inside can hold up, its guns never have to stop firing. They can respond to distress calls from isolated settlements, every time a hunter or specialist spots a Goliath herd in the wild they can just call it in and have it blasted by our airships without worrying about wasting valuable dust on targets that are just hanging out in the wild. Every obscure farmstead can have its own automated turrets, and the cities can have bigger ones."
"That won't stop the Grimm." Rowan said, frowning.
"Sure, sure, but we sure as hell can push them back further than they've ever been before. We thought we were in a new age of expansion with places like Mountain Glenn, well, maybe with Argent, we really might be able to actually hold new territory, to expand even. Hell, Grimm aren't the only potential problem that would be solved."
"Like what?" I asked him, curious.
"Like the White Fang, for example?" He said with a grin.
Rowan scoffed, "While I wouldn't mind watching, I don't think bigger guns are exactly going to solve the problem of the White Fang."
"Yeah, but with Argent powering our cities, most of our weapons, everything? We'll have a hell of a lot less use for Dust, we'd likely mostly just use it for specialized processes and give it to Hunters and Specialists, due to its interactions with semblances, but, well…"
"Without needing the Dust to power everything," Rowan said, a curious look on his face, "We wouldn't need to run the mines quite so harshly," Truthfully, even without Argent we didn't need to run those quite so harshly, but running them to the same level of output with lesser levels of cruelty would be a bit less profitable which is something that could hardly be tolerated, but I wasn't in the mood to argue that point at the moment, "which would destroy one of their primary propaganda points…" While I hardly cared for or respected the White Fang as an organization, it wasn't just propaganda.
"Without the mines being so necessary, with the White Fang's recruitment going down, with our military being able to more proactively hunt down the Grimm and so they'd be better able to respond and guard against White Fang attacks, well, all of that leads to better conditions for the faunus eventually."
I spoke up, "You're acting as if bigotry against faunus is purely a socioeconomic concern."
"I mean, you know, there are genuine bigots out there, but a lot of it is just, well, convenience, really. Or just slowly dying tradition. I mean, I don't think your father hates faunus, but his mines are basically one of the biggest points of contention, really."
That- was not necessarily a statement that I agreed with. Oh, he did explain his actions to me from time to time, it was hardly his fault that the only workers willing to work in his mines were faunus, and they were cheaper to care for with their night vision allowing them to see without expensive lights that were dust-mine safe, and we needed that level of output to support our troops and power the economy, and once we've reached a more financially secure position we can ramp down production somewhat, and a similar series of entirely sensible if callous arguments.
But I had, as a young child, heard him talk about those people, in the wake of attacks. I could sympathize with the anger, seeing the fear the White Fang had put into my siblings, even myself when I could admit that, it made me furious. But there was always that little tone to his voice, as if the faunus should ignore the fact that any attempt to unionize was quietly reported to security forces, and that they were frequently labeled as cells of White Fang sympathizers when the events were conveyed to the press, who generally accepted those stories with little question. That any reaction to his actions other than gratitude for providing them with jobs qualified as base ingratitude. The occasional times he referred to terrorist actions with an odd venom that implied he'd really rather be using a… broader terms than "White Fang."
But of course, I could hardly bring those personal anecdotes to an argument like this, and I expected that my vague feelings would be largely ignored, and so I remained silent. One could bring a certain level of politics to the position of Specialist, but even here there were limits.
The conversation had shifted to Rowan and Lavender arguing about whether or not Argent Energy would work in space, unlike dust, and what, exactly, scientists would discover if they took samplings from the moon. Lavender seemed convinced that there would be moon Grimm burrowing within the rock, though part of me suspected that he was simply attempted to rile up Helmer.
I shook my head, while Argent energy hardly seemed the panacea to all the world's troubles that Helmer and Lavender seemed convinced that it was, there was certainly- potential.
Assuming that we didn't all get ourselves killed by provoking the hell dimension, of course.
_____________
Author's Note:
And now things finally get to the Expedition. Chapters should stay about this length from now on, I just made the first one that long
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I'm actually surprised they've never managed to make rockets. Kerosene-- okay, oil isn't that common, so the lack of that is reasonable. Hydrox, though? That just needs electrolysis, and then you have something not dependent on magic to burn.
Or is the problem that their metallurgy is also based on dust? Or that they lack chemically powered batteries?
I guess it could be a lot of things...
Or is the problem that their metallurgy is also based on dust? Or that they lack chemically powered batteries?
I guess it could be a lot of things...
I'm honestly not too sure.
I'd guess that part of it was, once they discovered that Dust didn't work in space... well, I'm just trying to picture how we might have reacted if, during the space race, once we first got an unmanned vehicle into space, we discovered that suddenly the jet fuel stopped burning. And any batteries lost their charge. And the electronics just... stopped. And somehow the only fuel source that we could actually use to power our equipment while outside of the atmosphere was coal, for some inexplicable reason.
It would be fascinating to any scientists, to be sure, but continued experiments would be pretty expensive, and how much money can we really justify putting into experiments with getting things into space and seeing what actually works and what doesn't while we're still worried about the Cold War/Grimm attacks. Sure, someone might eventually try coal, if you're willing to throw enough rockets our there with engines that can experiment with fuel sources and energy, but still.
Baron Ouroboros
Emerald Leaves and Crimson Petals
- Location
- Vancouver
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This was nice! I'm eagerly looking to see how the story turns out. 
- Location
- Sealed away in a pure maidens heart
Forgot the quotation marks! Can't wait for things to turn wrong, especially with this much set up for it!
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Predictions:
- Hell makes further attempts at corrupting people. They failed badly with Winter, but they'll succeed with someone. My bet would be either that Specialist she dislikes or the scientist, but both of those are clearly foreshadowed -- which means there's a good chance it'll be someone we've never heard of.
- Hell also makes an attempted direct assault, using forces and types of demons we haven't seen yet. This is thrown back, but not without casualties.
- Atlas gives zero fucks, because this is still easier to deal with than the Grimm.
Salem might enter the fray on either side. She has her own agenda, which isn't helped by a demonic invasion -- but she might think she can use them. If she decides that, she'll be mistaken. Alternately, she might turn this into a 1v1v1.
Last edited:
This was nice! I'm eagerly looking to see how the story turns out.
Thank you, glad that you're enjoying this.
I don't want to confirm or deny anything, but I am glad to see speculation.
Glad to see that you're enjoying this, and thank you for catching that.
Sorry for the delay in responding; I wanted to respond to some of these as I released the next chapter, but I've been feeling a bit off these past few days, and I'm not particularly confident in my editing work when tired (just did a third glance through of the chapter and noticed a couple of big things that I had missed from my previous editing). Also there was another part that I was poking at because I wasn't quite sure how well it fit into canon, but I think I might just post it and ask people's opinions anyway.
Next chapter should be a bit longer as compensation (... also because I didn't write these as chapters and this segment had a rather late natural stopping point.)
- Location
- XLNRVR
While it never been stated in official source, some fanfics rationalize this by "dust was found to be a very potent of energy source, to the extent that their entire technology tree is dust related, and thus conventional energy sourced like ours were left undeveloped in near beginning branch of the technology tree"
The Expedition
The Expedition
There were more complications when launching the expedition than I had expected. The terrain was rough, to be sure, but I had hoped that we could send Bullheads through the portal, and aircraft could allow us to more easily travel the long distances without dealing with the terrain. As it stood, though, initial testing showed that the air above a certain altitude surged with strong bolts of Argent energy, and no surge protectors or Argent collectors we'd been able to build so far could withstand them. And that was before you took into account the fact that anything attempting to fly near that altitude would be swarmed by flaming, exploding skulls. At my incredulous look, Lavender had merely shrugged. We did call this place Hell for a reason, I supposed.
As far as our troops went, Lavender and I were accompanying twenty soldiers (of which five were engineers whose job it was to help everyone else navigate the rough terrain), with our only vehicular support being a single Argent-Variant Paladin. I looked forward to seeing those in action, seeing as to how they entirely replaced conventional munitions with Argent Energy based plasma fire. The Paladin, at least, could handle the difficult navigation by virtue of being able to jump, unlike our wheeled vehicles. As such, all present carried their own supplies (My own pack possessing the standard quick release variant, which allowed any high mobility combatant to simply dump the bag as combat began.) It was bulky and uncomfortable, but our destination meant that we couldn't simply assign Knights or vehicles to carry our supplies, and I wasn't about to order one of the soldiers to carry my bags for me.
We were a rather large and cumbersome procession, considering the terrain, which I admit didn't fit my usual tactics, but it was believed that a larger force would provoke larger demonic responses, and analysis of prior behavior indicated that this force might serve as a fair balance between the demons assembling an overwhelming counter attack with preventing too many light skirmishing forces from ambushing us.
"So," Lavender said. We were walking together in the front of the formation, for now, but as time went on, he would slip to the back. Keeping both the Specialists in the same place in the formation simply didn't make much sense should we be ambushed, but this close to camp, it was relatively unlikely that we'd be attacked from behind, and so we could have a brief moment of conversation.
"Blaine seemed impressed by those pictures you showed him," he said with blatantly false tact.
"Yes, well, it was evidence of another potential first contact."
"I've shown similar pictures around, but I only showed them to the anthropologist we've got on base. Either Blaine noticed something that she didn't, or Blaine just has more clout to throw around, considering that only one person managed to get all this going," he gestured to the formation around them.
"Or he knows how to convince an officer that what he has is valuable, useful and actionable intel."
"I suppose." He sounded uncertain, though. I suppose Blaine wouldn't have made the best of impressions on him.
"You say that you had similar pictures?"
"Oh, yeah, got a few, not entirely sure what they're about, but whoever was in that picture you sent seemed to be in a starring role in a few of them. There are a lot more depicting demons fighting demons, some with things we haven't seen yet that may or may not be metaphorical, that sort of thing, though the most interesting one I saw was probably the robed wizard guy."
"Robed wizard guy," I said, a very particular inflection on those words to make it clear that I was quoting him and not using those words myself.
"Yeah, there was an image of a robed guy leading four other, smaller figures to smash an archway that looked a lot like the portal we rebuilt. Pretty sure those are the people who smashed the portal on our end when it was first made, maybe stopped an early demonic invasion."
"Really?" I asked. Four smaller figures with a larger figure? That was a common enough motif in Remnant mythology, to the point that it was considered by many to be one of the reasons that Huntsmen were assigned in teams of four.
"Oh, yeah. That particular mural was a wreck, and we barely managed , pretty sure there was more to it, but that's what I saw, anyway."
Interesting, but long dead mythological figures were hardly relevant to the day's mission.
"Have we seen what the ancient people were doing with Hell in the first place?"
"Ah, most of the carvings we've seen made by humans were worn down by age and weathering, even on this side of the portal, but the closest thing we've seen to a mission statement says that they were looking for a weapon to kill their god or something."
I nearly halted my step at that, but continued over the rough terrain, "Truly?"
"It's- a weird translation of an obscure dialect, some of the people we have looking at the ruins think it's a metaphor or turn of phrase or something."
"Really? Just a casual turn of phrase, seeking to kill their own god?"
"Yeah, though it might not even be literal. I mean, a number of ancient theologies have the Grimm as fragments of a god's will, or symbols of divine wrath or whatever, so it could just mean they wanted make a big gun to kill a lot of Grimm. A lot of surviving ruins of ancient civilizations are religious sites, and those often involve dramatic turns of phrase that people of that age might have understood to be a metaphor, but just sound weird to modern ears. Hell, sometimes we just translate things really pretentiously because we assume that people from the past all talked like that. Translating dead languages can be complicated."
"Interesting," I said, vaguely surprised by the idea that I was being sincere with such a statement.
"The whole thing didn't turn out too well for them, though. Some of those columns on our side were wrecked by claws, and those weren't the right shape for Grimm."
It sometimes felt like every project to wipe out or cripple the Grimm backfired on Remnant eventually. Our thoughts and conversation were quickly interrupted, however.
"Hold up a second," Sergent Errands, our Paladin pilot, spoke up from the radio. "Need to discharge some energy." With a slight shifting, the red painted Paladin aimed itself in the direction of a nearby small-building sized column of stone, almost worn enough that one couldn't tell that it was artificially created. Its guns shifted to a firing position, and its plasma minigun strafed across the base of the column, shards of rock blasting off in all directions and they ripped through the rock and straight to the other side. The column slowly and ponderously fell to the ground in a tremendous crash, clouds of red dust raising from the impact. And then, from the other side of the mech, the much larger, single barrel briefly glowed with heat as a massive blue, pulsating orb emerged, striking into the column and turning the already cracked rock into molten slag.
I sighed, and thumbed my own radio, "Sergent Errands, explain your actions, if you would?"
"Ah, sorry ma'am, but these Argent Paladins, while they're on mission, they don't really have a way to turn off their Argent Accumulators, and an overload can lead to nasty consequences. We can, however, bleed off that energy in other ways." The minigun arm of the Paladin lifted into the air and fired a swift spray of energy at the sky.
I took my index finger off the button and took a deep breath, before pressing it down again, becoming audible once more, "Sergent Errands, I am quite well aware of that, I did read the mission briefing, after all. What I am wondering is why you decided to target the column instead of an empty patch of ground, or possibly the sky."
"I- ah, because it was there?"
I glanced towards the heavens, though I didn't find any particular solace in the churning red sky sky, and spoke again, "You realize, of course, that this entire mission is proceeding based on intelligence gathered from carvings found on pillars similar to that one, correct?" I was exaggerating the similarity, but there could easily have been writing on the now ruined pillar.
At his silence, I continued. "Next time, I would suggest aiming at less prominent targets."
"Yes ma'am." He said, sullen.
"Excuse me, Sergent?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"As you were." I said, making sure that my dismissal was quite clear.
There was silence after that, and it wasn't long before Lavender slipped to the back of the formation, where he'd likely be a more effective rearguard than I would.
_____
It wasn't long before we stopped our route.
There was no ground along our path. Just a long, distant drop to a ground too distant to see, what with massive stormclouds of Argent energy flowing far beneath us. Ahead of us, there was another large island, but it wasn't within easy jumping distance, and only another series of small floating islands connected these two places.
"Let's get the spikes ready." One of the engineers called out, and they reached into their packs and stabbed long stakes into the ground.
I, personally, would have been able to make those jumps with ease without ever worrying about falling (I'd made more difficult jumps as a matter of convenience), most of the soldiers were nowhere near as mobile as a Specialist, and so, we had precautions. Setting up a crude bridge, or a rope to shimmy across were other options, but for now, it was decided that the quickest way to reach the other side would be to just tie themselves to these stakes and leap, allowing the stakes to catch them if they fell, where they'd be dragged upwards to try again. Luckily, there was nothing we could land on beneath us, so the risks of miscalculating the necessary lengths of the ropes were fairly low.
Even I allowed myself to be attached to the rope as I leapt across. It might be pointless, in my case, but sometimes, as General Ironwood liked to remind me, the best way to get the troops to stop complaining about something was for their superior officer to do that very same thing. It was especially effective for Specialists and safety precautions, because even a soldier's machismo often dimmed when seeing the Specialist-tier combatants showing some concern for their own safety. If someone as skilled as a Specialist was taking it seriously, well, they could hardly be looked down upon for following suit.
When I did leap, however, I did it two islands at a time.
I was willing to serve as an example, but I wanted that rope off of myself as soon as possible.
Besides, this way I could stand watch on the far side.
The team slowly jumped across, some of the more hesitant soldiers being mocked by their fellows until they finally made the jump, until the only two left on that side were the Paladin and Lavender.
"You know," Errands said as Lavender began attaching several steel cables to mountings on the mech's body. "I could make a jump like this in my sleep. Those pylons aren't really all that necessary."
Lavender slapped the side of the mech hard enough to make it shift slightly, "Hey, maybe you could, maybe you couldn't, but we still have no idea why these islands float, so if these things have a maximum weight allowance, we'd really prefer to not figure that out by throwing our big expensive robot into the infinite void."
Errand chose to make the rest of the leaps in silence, and every time the islands shuddered he did seem a bit more hesitant.
—
A few scattered demons attempted to ambush us during our march, but for whatever reason, they didn't seem to attack with any real coordination or numbers. It vaguely surprised me that so many of the Hell Knights were inclined to get into melee with me. I would think they'd realize that the soldiers who walked around with guns might be more vulnerable in melee than the person with a sword, but perhaps it was a matter of pride.
They preferred long, sweeping attacks, I preferred darting in and out of their reach and cutting their throats, which worked well enough for me.
The floating heads, the cacodemons, were largely handled by Errand, his guns allowing him to shred the things long before they could fully prepare their attacks, and the troops focused their fire on the imps fairly well.
I took a brief moment to watch Lavender swing his hammer in a wide, clumsy swing, the hell knight he was fighting easily dodging. It saw the opening caused by the swing and threw its fist forward-
Only for the momentum of the swing to completely and instantaneously reverse, the Hell Knight's own momentum completely failing to stop as its forearm was obliterated by the hammer. Before the hammer could sink into the arm and get stuck, the momentum shifted again, and the hammer easily exited the bone in a shower of splinters and gore.
Lavender's semblance. The ability to completely reverse or halt his personal momentum, with a few slight complications the details of which I still didn't fully understand. It wasn't the most elaborate of semblances, but it often allowed him one good hit, and with his preference for big, heavy weapons, one good hit was often all he needed.
Even knowing the "trick" to it, fighting him in melee was quite difficult, as his fighting style seemed a thing of dumb brute force, but so many of the "openings" he left were completely nullified by his ability to reverse his momentum, either to dodge or to counterattack, and indeed were deliberate traps. Instinct could not be relied on in a fight against him.
By everything I've seen, as a personal combatant, he could have placed impressively in various tournaments, his talents actually better suited to fighting people rather than the Grimm, but he was intent on being a Specialist, to actually have a role in history, and he preferred that as few people as possible knew exactly what his semblance could do.
Against foes who charged into melee, and had just enough intelligence to see an opening and without the durability to have a chance to learn from their mistakes? Few on Remnant would be as deadly as he could be.
With his foes slain, that particular ambush was concluded, and we moved on.
————————
Sleeping within Hell itself was- an experience, I supposed. Not one that I cared for, to be honest, the constant fear of attack, needing a heavy watch at all hours of night, the strange noises…
While the odd scratching feeling of the hell energy brushing against my soul was muted, it was still present, the Argent Accumulator doing its job.
It was not my most restful sleep, and I knew that I was not the only one who felt that way. Still, it was- interesting.
Should this project ever be unclassified, I suppose it would make an interesting story. Or it could serve as one upmanship should I ever be in a conversation with someone that I didn't care for. "Yes, your story about how the construction workers outside your house are keeping you awake is indeed quite interesting. I can empathize with your troubles with your sleeping troubles, as I've had a rather similar experience when I was campaigning in Hell…"
My mind drifted, as I stood on watch, as I did wonder what Weiss would think of all this.
Though, my experience would likely be less telling the story naturally and more answering a long series of exceedingly polite questions until I had functionally told the story anyway.
She seemed to be very enthusiastic about attending Beacon, which I was glad of, though I confess I had to read between the lines somewhat, considering that most of the letter consisted of her telling me of how much she was studying and how the eventual electives she might take could serve her in whatever career path she might take, and with rather little about her personal feelings.
As frustratingly impersonal as it was, it was also oddly endearing, her barely restrained enthusiasm leaking through despite her attempts to be strictly professional, and hopefully her teammates would notice that side of her.
It was- easier to fall back to sleep, when thinking of how my sister was doing.
—————
Not much happened that morning, save for an attack by Imps and those armored beasts called Pinkies.
(I did not understand the naming scheme we were using for the demons. On the one hand, we had names with a certain dignity, such as the Hell Knight, the Imps, or the Cacofiend, and on the other, we had Pinkies and the Mancubus, the large, fat demons. When I happened to ask Lavender about the matter, he told me that the last two were the only surviving names from the old naming scheme that was invented by soldiers who were actively fighting the beasts and needed some way to identify their foes, which included titles such as "Fast Fuckers", "Big Fuckers", "Mean Fuckers", and similar such names, which had been the norm until it was decided that perhaps it might be best to have less crude nomenclature for whenever the reports became declassified. I didn't find the finer details of that story particularly plausible, but I pretended to implicitly believe the story as a courtesy.)
None of those demons were particularly difficult to deal with, as I allowed everyone else to fight the Imps, while I darted around and skewered the Pinkies, as they apparently only armored their front sides. They didn't seem prepared to face someone with the speed of a trained specialist, and their soft skin was easily skewered.
"So," Lavender said as we proceeded, speaking into the radio. "You have a lot less experience than I do in Hell, but, just so you know, this is, well, weird. We'd normally expect at least a few big demons attacking a group this side, a Mancubus or even a Baron."
"They might have concentrated their forces near our base, forming a thin cordon that we've already broken through," I said, allowing the tone of my voice to convey how doubtful I found that particular theory. They seemed to congregate in areas around the base, but I assumed there were other areas that those demons lived in before they attacked us.
That things would get less dangerous so quickly as we continued further away into their territory didn't seem to make sense.
"Still, well, just, keep an eye out."
"Of cou-"
With an act of remarkable timing, an imp leapt out of cover from the rocks to our side and- began running the same direction we were going in, seemingly completely ignoring us.
I raised an eyebrow as I stopped walking, watching its movements.
Any information I could have gleaned quickly became irrelevant, however, as a large spike of ice slammed into the thing's back, throwing it a foot or two forward before it simply collapsed to the ground, before melting into the ground. Not a conventional round, and I swiftly concluded that the ice lance came from Lavender's new gun.
I pressed a button on my radio, speaking to the group as a whole, "Next time we see a demon that does not engage, do not fire upon it."
"Any reason why?" Lavender asked, "I shot it because I thought it might be running to call in reinforcements or something."
Which was a… fair point, really, but, "Any curious behavior is worth noting and observing. In addition to that, the further we reach away from the core, the higher the chance of encountering demonic non-combatants."
"Non-combatants? Seriously?"
"Very slight chance, in all honesty, but the chance is there."
Truthfully, it didn't seem like the demon had been responding to us in any way, but on a exploratory mission, observing odd behavior was one of our objectives, and something about its motions had been- curious to me, in a fashion that I had difficulty defining.
"I suppose," Lavender sounded doubtful, but the curious expression on his face seemed to indicate that he was willing to consider the possibility.
I thought back to the conversation we'd been having. Had the demons simply formed a cordon around the portal site? That could explain why they were so eager to reinhabit ruins after we'd already cleared them, but that explanation didn't feel right to me, on a purely instinctive level.
And curious behavior from these demons could very well result in unpleasant things for us if we failed to understand exactly what was happening.
—-
It wasn't too long a walk before we neared the end point of our assigned route, and not much of interest had happened on that walk. A few scattered hell knights who seemed to be rushing towards some destination in the distance, though they at least diverted to attack us upon first noticing our presence. Errands handled them well enough on his own, having needed to vent energy anyway. A few more of these imps ran past us, darting from column to column and climbing on walls, all to reach some unknown destination that I was tempted to pursue, but it could easily have been a trap. I wouldn't mind personally springing a trap to gain more information (I had pulled that trick on the White Fang, my family name being quite the tempting bait for them to attempt to ambush me, though I was proud to say they hadn't tried directly attacking me in quite some time), but the trap might instead just be a ploy to keep me from the group, pinned down while demons swarmed the main patrol.
Still, we might need to pursue this distant target at some point, and I held up a hand, telling the patrol to stop.
I took out my scroll, observing the distance we had traveled. While the signal from the base was too weak to reach us here, special pedometers that could track the distance traveled even when there were diversions such as demonic ambushes. That, combined with a compass sufficed to give a rough estimate of where we were in relation to the base, though I wasn't sure how reliable I should consider the compasses, considering that it was doubtful that the magnetic poles of Hell were remotely similar to those of Remnant. Early testing at the base showed that they functioned well enough at consistently pointing in one direction anyway, but "well enough" could easily be insufficient as we moved further and further from the primary facility.
Flag our (estimated) current location, flag the (estimated) direction that the Imps were traveling in along with (estimated) origin points for each of the running demons we'd encountered on the chance that where they were running from was as important as where they were running to…
"Hey- shut that thing off for a moment." Lavender said, approaching me. For the briefest of moments, a wisp of indignation rose through me, but I had tamed that particular reflex of mine. Mostly. I turned off the scroll, its processors stopping their whirring as I looked around.
The area we had entered was wide and open, of the sort that was uncomfortable if I was expecting to face humans or faunas, somewhat comforting if facing Grimm, and largely neutral when facing demons.
Looking at the way Lavender was tilting his head in various directions, I frowned and followed suit, trying to listen as I looked about the broken wasteland.
There was the thrum of the Paladin's engines, muted breathing by the troops as they attempted their own listening, and-
What faintly sounded like a distant explosion.
I tried turning my ear to face the direction of the sound, but even with my training in doing just that, I couldn't truly pin down the direction of the faint sound.
"There," Lavender said with more confidence then I was feeling, so I followed the direction of his finger.
It went in a different direction from our patrol route, through an area that seemed mountainous, but the entire point of this patrol was exploratory, and strange explosions did qualify as points of interest.
"Send a message back to the base. Tell them we'll be diverging from our route, and give them an estimated heading."
Errand responded, "Yes ma'am," and the powerful radio began to heat up. Hell was filled with extreme, errant signals on the radio waves as well as strange storms, leaving conventional radios useless over any significant distances especially without the assistance of a CCT tower. So for distances such as the ones we'd traveled, we'd simply sent extremely powerful bursts, fueled by the ridiculous power efficiency of Argent, of the same message numerous times to account for any corruption in the message, which could be responded to by a burst from the base's own overpowered radio array. While energy wasn't a concern, overheating the components within Hell's unforgiving atmosphere was, and so they could only safely operate with quick bursts rather than prolonged conversation. There had been talk of more consistent methods of communication, relay systems, or even trying to build a lesser CCT tower on this side of the portal, but so far, without a consensus on the topic, none of those plans were being implemented, and so we resorted to the first, improvised solution of heavily boosted signals, which worked well enough.
"Message sent, ma'am."
I nodded, then set my radio to address the entire patrol, "We're tracking that noise. Light jogging speed, remain vigilant."
I set out, remaining on point and retaining a "light jog" pace. Light jog for the soldiers, but for myself, it felt painfully slow, especially if those truly were explosions or a fight happening in the distance. If necessary, I could go ahead, let Lavender and Errands defend the troops while I used my superior speed to scout ahead.
However, I was an officer, and part of a military, and in this context, so far from support, I couldn't just hide the troops under my command in a corner while I did everything myself. There was easily a chance that I could be overwhelmed, or they could be overwhelmed without my support against foes that we would be able to easily face together.
I'd leave it an option, but for now, the group remained together.
"As the one with more experience in Hell, what do you think the noise is?" I asked Lavender, switching my radio to private communication.
"Not sure. We've never been out this far. Could be infighting, I guess."
"Infighting?" I asked, curious.
"Oh, yeah, Helmer found out about that during the couple of days he operated on this side of the portal. Basically, if you trick demons into doing some friendly fire, there's a chance that they get angry enough to try to start fighting each other at the same time as they're fighting us. There's a chance that they might start fighting each other for other reasons too."
"That is, interesting information," I said. For some reason the thought that these hateful things might fall into infighting hadn't occurred to me, and I imagined that part of that was my experience with the Grimm, where the closest thing one might see to infighting would be the occasional Grimm using other Grimm as projectiles.
"Anytime," Lavender said cheerfully, without apparently noticing the comment.
I shook my head as I maintained my casual pace, the troops maintaining speed.
As the noise grew louder and became more clear, tracking also became more difficult in the canyon, and I suspected that the source might have even been moving.
We soon reached an open plateau in the mountainous region, and multiple flashes of red light appeared all around us, the sign of demons manifesting.
And quite a few of them.
Over thirty flashes of red light, in my quick and casual glance.
I didn't bother waiting for them to fully manifest. I twitched my sword, triggering a slight dust explosion that I could channel into my summons.
A large flock of the smaller, ghostly Nevermore manifested, surrounding one of the larger patches of gathering demonic energy as I dashed to one of the closest patches of red energy.
A flash of light manifested a single Imp, who failed to remain alive long enough to register his surprise at my sword entering and exiting his skull.
"Ambush!" One of the soldiers yelled belatedly, even their experience leaving them slightly behind a Specialist's speed, and soon, the fight began properly.
The largest summoning circle glowed brighter, and a large, grotesquely muscled beast emerged, its dark red skin making it look as though the muscles were exposed, and with the ram horns on its skull it nearly reached fifteen feet tall.
One of the Barons, as the soldiers had called them. The most dangerous demons encountered in Hell so far.
"Huntress and shepard, adaptations!" I yelled, and kept my blades as a single weapon. Dual wielding might help for smaller foes, but some enemies required a bit more force than a single blade could provide.
I could hear the team behind me scrambling, guns blasting away, the soldiers attempting to focus on the smaller Imps. The formation I'd called was simple enough. The most mobile combatant would focus their efforts on the largest and strongest opponent, if not winning then at least buying time, while our Paladin would focus on any larger demons, and Lavender would keep the more melee focused forces off their back and potentially herd them into firing zones.
The unfortunate thing about a Specialist's role in the command chain was that often enough, while we were in charge, we were often genuinely most useful concentrating purely on personal combat, regardless of our own talents (or occasionally, lack thereof) in terms of tactical command.
The more conventional soldiers, in this case, were best served by following the orders of their sergeant, and the sergeant would interpret those orders. In this case, "adaptations", was an amendment to the orders, essentially declaring, "I am going to be fighting a very big thing, and thus may not be able to concentrate on changing your orders should circumstances change. Do not follow my orders to the grave if they clearly no longer apply." (To a certain extent, it was assumed that Atlas soldiers would have the good sense to do so in any case, but I preferred to remove the ambiguity on the off chance I ever needed to tell them to obey my orders even if they seemed suicidal.)
In this case, I couldn't kill the Mancubuses or the Cacofiends as quickly as the modified Paladin could, and they took long enough that any attempt to get into melee would last long enough for further ranged demons to target the exposed troops, and the Baron could apparently last long enough under the hail of the Argent Paladin's fire to enter melee, and by all reports, that was likely a losing proposition.
Judging by how the Baron seemed to ignore the Nevermores darting about its head as it glared in my direction, even as the flame-infused phantasms began to explode around its head as it seemingly failed to even notice, that assessment seemed… accurate.
Its fists glowed an infernal green, and it sent a massive ball of green flames at me, and I leapt above it, still trying to make some progress forward as the sphere slammed into the ground beneath me. Doing so meant I was still ever so slightly caught in the plasma explosion caused by the detonating green sphere, and, well riding the wake of the explosion just meant that I would get to the demon quicker.
I could feel the heat of the flame, even with my aura as I flew towards the thing.
By years of experience, I knew that that had drained, nearly a fifth of my aura, and I suppressed a wince at the pain. More- impressive than expected, I could admit.
The demon, on the other hand, seemed almost surprised by my survival for the briefest of moments, before that surprise was replaced by the usual murderous wrath, and it stretched its tree-sized arms and roared as I continued my approach.
Melee was my specialty, I had no qualms in admitting, even if my semblance granted me a fair amount of versatility in that regard. Despite the fact that this thing also held a preference for melee combat, in this case, I would simply have to trust that my tactical assessment was the more accurate one.
If I could reduce the thing to melee, well, even with its ludicrously thick arms, that was my comfort zone.
Again the thing seemed surprised, before its roar turned to one of- eagerness, almost, as I began to cut around its ankles and thighs. It would roar, kick with massive, furred cloven feet, reaching arms down to grab at me (something I particularly tried to avoid), but so far, all of its wounds seemed superficial, judging by the things reactions.
It was supposed to be tough, but I hadn't quite expected this level of durability.
As it lifted a leg to stomp at me, I darted to the other leg, trying to slice at tendons through the unnaturally tough skin, though I didn't even know if losing tendons would actually debilitate a demon, and even so my cuts remained shallow.
It stomped its raised foot down, seemingly unbalanced, and I pressed my attack, thin streaks of red on its leg beginning to overlap as I sliced again and again in the space of a second, hoping to dig in deeper.
In my furor, I never noticed that it had seemed to stop moving, and only barely noticed the soft green glow above me.
I leapt back with a snarl, as much force as I could muster into a clumsy jump at an awkward angle and still only barely escaped as the thing slammed its hands into the ground, an explosion of green energy emerging from around it. We stood still for a moment, facing each other, as I watched the puddle of molten rock by the thing's feet hiss and steam, as I resisted the urge to observe how the other soldiers were doing, before it roared, and I charged back in.
It launched a crude and clumsy kick my way, and I simply slid underneath that attack, sword raised high, though with my angle of attack, it merely clinked off the hard hoof and failed to achieve any damage.
From somewhere to my- left- there was a large explosion, which helped to refocus me.
I needed to hurry.
I thrust my knife into the leg of the beast before it could turn around, putting all of my weight into the thrust.
This time, I was satisfied to note that the blade sank to its hilt in a spurt of blood.
I used the knife as a foot hold as I leapt up the leg, climbing the beast's back as it flailed about trying to reach me. It took less than a second for me to reach the shoulders, and from there I awkwardly stabbed the sword into the back of the thing's neck, not having a good angle to actually deal much damage as it stomped around.
As it reached its hands back towards me, I leapt forward, slightly off the Baron's shoulder, and summoned a simple but overpowered glyph circle, perpendicular to the ground. Speed, acceleration, and a stable place to jump from, it allowed me to simply launch myself back towards the throat of the beast, its arms still stuck behind it, and with maximum force and momentum I held my blade ahead of me as I burst through the air, the blade easily cutting into the thing's throat in an explosion of gore.
Warm, sticky, and unpleasant, I noted as I landed, flicking the blood off of my blade as the beast collapsed behind me. I could take a moment to appreciate the fact that my aura allowed the blood mostly seep off of me instead of sinking in.
Otherwise I'd never have worn white to the battlefield. Because all of the blood I was being regularly coated with would simply be inconvenient, and I'd never get the blood off no matter how hard I tried, just like-
At that thought forcibly repressed, I looked around, and as the demon faded into green energy I collected my dagger from the place it had fallen, merging it once more with my sword.
The area was mostly cleared of demons, though I could see two dead bodies among the Atlas troops- armor partially melted from the plasma blasts of a Cacofiend.
I dashed towards a small collection of imps who had been barraging the improvised fortifications, and, well, they died quickly enough, each of their bodies bisected with single swings from my sword. Truthfully I'm not sure if they even noticed me before they died.
The rest- well, Errand had cleared up the Cacofiends, with Lavender having killed the Hell Knights with his usual efficiency, th rest was simply chaff.
Of course, the moment I thought that, numerous red circles of energy emerged on the ground around us, and the second wave of demons arrived.
There was the usual assortment of Imps, Hell Knights, and Cacofiends, but three of them were Summoners, the ones that the demons had chosen to use as their mouthpieces when addressing me.
Teleporting, fast, and as the name suggested, they could summon more troops. Or possibly create them, we weren't entirely sure, yet.
Naturally, with my speed, they would be my priority, though this time I thought that perhaps I didn't have to completely ignore the soldiers under my command.
On what was almost a whim, I focused, concentrated, and summoned into the world two white, ghostly Hell Knights, and sent them charging into a group of Imps, who almost seemed confused for a moment before the specters set upon them with remarkable violence.
Fighting the summoners was annoying as had been described to me. They moved quickly, their ability to hover made them maneuverable in melee (though they mostly used it to survive until they could teleport away again), and the shockwaves they sent across the ground were often inconvenient to dodge and too powerful to simply endure, which allowed them to control the spacing of the battle quite well.
Quite fortunately, they seemed to be fairly distracted by myself, and failed to notice the my own summoned Hell Knights they'd dashed directly in front of, whereupon my summons simply grabbed one of them out of the air, with one seizing the head and the other the feet, and the ghostly Hell Knights simply-
Pulled. They pulled in each direction.
I turned my head to watch the others as I heard the sound of ripping flesh, the two remaining summoners seeming to respond without reaction, throwing their shockwaves towards my summons, and I could feel it as one of the summons simply dissipated into nothing.
Still, that distraction was more than sufficient for my purposes, and I ran at full speed towards the nearest of the surviving summoners, who barely had time to turn his head as I cut through him.
The other took the opportunity to raise his arms to the sky, and a large circle appeared on the ground. I ran towards him, ignoring the circle for the moment, but he teleported away too quickly.
With a flash of red light, the summoned demon emerged from the circle, a grotesquely fat thing roughly man shaped, covered in cybernetics, a belly opened to the elements and two large guns for arms.
The Mancubus, going by the unfortunately accurate descriptions.
As distracting as its mere existence was, I needed to prevent the Summoner from bringing more allies to the fight, and so I simply ordered my remaining Hell Knight to attack it while I continued to chase the Summoner.
With only one Summoner left, it was far less able to control the terms of battle, needing to choose between offense and evasion, and eventually, it chose poorly.
The thing waved a glowing arm, and threw a final shockwave in my direction. Not needing to dodge other attacks, I was free to simply dart to the side as the shockwave moved to where I had just been standing, and rush forward at full speed, glyphs augmenting my movement as I ran to it, jumped ever so slightly, and ran my blade through its neck, sending the head flying into the distance.
I looked back, and saw my summoned Hell Knight had leapt upon the Mancubus, eagerly ignoring the fire coating its body as the Mancubus tried to use its flamethrowers to force the thing off of it, and now the both of them were coated in flame as the Hell Knight grabbed at the cables attached to the thing's back and began ripping them out. It wasn't long before it became apparent as to what those cables were for, as the cable ripped free in a spray of fluid that quickly caught fire, the fire racing to the leaking nozzle until the two exploded together.
I stood for a moment, listening.
There was still noise, but- distant. The battle here had been won, and we seemed closer to those distant sounds of combat.
I looked at the surviving troops, haggard, five fewer than we had set out with, at least one clearly in shock. With that, we constituted a bit over half of the month's casualties.
Lavender was leaning on his hammer, the head pressed firmly into the ground, and he was trying to hide the fact that he was panting.
On the one hand, they didn't seem terribly fit to continue. Even I was getting tired at this point.
On the other, the distant battle nearby was getting louder, and even with the odd ways that sound often traveled in canyons, let alone canyons in some strange hellscape, our goal wasn't far now.
"We'll need to keep moving. Prepare an Atlesian Pyre and prepare to move out." I said, ignoring the surprise, disappointment, and slight hints of anger of the soldiers under my command.
But- no, while we didn't have to fear Grimm being drawn to our negative emotions, morale was- still something of a concern. I drew myself up, this poise coming more from my old etiquette classes than from military training; I wanted an aristocratic air, for now. "These demons launched a particularly intense attack the moment we began to approach that battlefield. These creatures do not want us to reach whatever it is that they've been fighting. I, personally, am disinclined to grant the desires of any demon."
The way they looked away from me, none of them seemed to be inspired by that statement, it still seeming to risky, for them at least. And- perhaps it might have been. "Lavender. You will lead them back to our main base, with a full report ready." I said, presenting the decision as if that was what I had planned on doing all along before seeing their reactions. "On my own, I will be able to avoid more fights than we could as a group, and reach the target far more quickly."
"And if they attack us on the way back?" Lavender asked. "We had trouble with that group even with our patrol at full strength."
That statement was- a fair point. But- "The objective of the demons seems to be to keep us from that area. I believe that they'll focus their attention on the person attempting to travel in that direction."
"Would they even notice you?" Errand asked. Again, an annoyingly fair point. "I mean, comparing one person to a large patrol with a mech, well…"
At that, I crossed my arms behind my back and turned my nose up at him, a task made slightly harder by the fact that he was inside a rather large mech suit, but being above other people was more a thing of attitude than of actual height. "I hardly intend on being subtle."
At that, Lavender gave an amused snort, though he actually seemed to been relieved by that statement. Even he'd seemed drained by the fight. "Right, I'll believe that." He glanced towards the other soldiers, "She makes enough noise, well, we'll get a nice leisurely stroll back to the base."
Considering that he was reinforcing my point to the soldiers, after some slight deliberation I decided not to be offended.
"Good luck, and try to leave a few demons for the other guys." He shook his head as he gestured for the troops to begin marching back the way they came. As they started moving, he glanced back at me and spoke, "Just, uh, remember that you can also use that speed of yours to run away, alright?"
His shoulders were more slumped than they were when the soldiers had been around us. I knew he kept a casual air about it, but- well, there was a reason he preferred to work with machines or on his own, and five of those reasons were being gathered in a row, with the mech facing them and Errand ready with his guns.
I looked him in the eye, and I allowed my own posture to loosen. "I will," I said with a single nod. "Don't let them hit you too many times."
"Hey, if not me, it'll be someone else, and I can take a hit better than most." He said that with a forced grin, and I chose not to push him on it.
Instead, I simply turned around and ran.
However nice a break might have been, I did have a mission to complete.
edit:
Haha...
This took a bit longer than anticipated. First I wasn't feeling well, then, well, life, then my figurative muse started yelling in my year about this totally cool Legend of Zelda story I had, and I got knocked out of my groove.
Anywho, posting this now, and I'll respond to any comments since my last post later. I just wanted this thing out now.
Also, I should note that the part of the lore I mentioned being not a hundred percent certain of it working is pretty close to the beginning of the chapter, namely, the distant backstory of Remnant as it relates to Hell. I... think it works, but I'm not sure.
There were more complications when launching the expedition than I had expected. The terrain was rough, to be sure, but I had hoped that we could send Bullheads through the portal, and aircraft could allow us to more easily travel the long distances without dealing with the terrain. As it stood, though, initial testing showed that the air above a certain altitude surged with strong bolts of Argent energy, and no surge protectors or Argent collectors we'd been able to build so far could withstand them. And that was before you took into account the fact that anything attempting to fly near that altitude would be swarmed by flaming, exploding skulls. At my incredulous look, Lavender had merely shrugged. We did call this place Hell for a reason, I supposed.
As far as our troops went, Lavender and I were accompanying twenty soldiers (of which five were engineers whose job it was to help everyone else navigate the rough terrain), with our only vehicular support being a single Argent-Variant Paladin. I looked forward to seeing those in action, seeing as to how they entirely replaced conventional munitions with Argent Energy based plasma fire. The Paladin, at least, could handle the difficult navigation by virtue of being able to jump, unlike our wheeled vehicles. As such, all present carried their own supplies (My own pack possessing the standard quick release variant, which allowed any high mobility combatant to simply dump the bag as combat began.) It was bulky and uncomfortable, but our destination meant that we couldn't simply assign Knights or vehicles to carry our supplies, and I wasn't about to order one of the soldiers to carry my bags for me.
We were a rather large and cumbersome procession, considering the terrain, which I admit didn't fit my usual tactics, but it was believed that a larger force would provoke larger demonic responses, and analysis of prior behavior indicated that this force might serve as a fair balance between the demons assembling an overwhelming counter attack with preventing too many light skirmishing forces from ambushing us.
"So," Lavender said. We were walking together in the front of the formation, for now, but as time went on, he would slip to the back. Keeping both the Specialists in the same place in the formation simply didn't make much sense should we be ambushed, but this close to camp, it was relatively unlikely that we'd be attacked from behind, and so we could have a brief moment of conversation.
"Blaine seemed impressed by those pictures you showed him," he said with blatantly false tact.
"Yes, well, it was evidence of another potential first contact."
"I've shown similar pictures around, but I only showed them to the anthropologist we've got on base. Either Blaine noticed something that she didn't, or Blaine just has more clout to throw around, considering that only one person managed to get all this going," he gestured to the formation around them.
"Or he knows how to convince an officer that what he has is valuable, useful and actionable intel."
"I suppose." He sounded uncertain, though. I suppose Blaine wouldn't have made the best of impressions on him.
"You say that you had similar pictures?"
"Oh, yeah, got a few, not entirely sure what they're about, but whoever was in that picture you sent seemed to be in a starring role in a few of them. There are a lot more depicting demons fighting demons, some with things we haven't seen yet that may or may not be metaphorical, that sort of thing, though the most interesting one I saw was probably the robed wizard guy."
"Robed wizard guy," I said, a very particular inflection on those words to make it clear that I was quoting him and not using those words myself.
"Yeah, there was an image of a robed guy leading four other, smaller figures to smash an archway that looked a lot like the portal we rebuilt. Pretty sure those are the people who smashed the portal on our end when it was first made, maybe stopped an early demonic invasion."
"Really?" I asked. Four smaller figures with a larger figure? That was a common enough motif in Remnant mythology, to the point that it was considered by many to be one of the reasons that Huntsmen were assigned in teams of four.
"Oh, yeah. That particular mural was a wreck, and we barely managed , pretty sure there was more to it, but that's what I saw, anyway."
Interesting, but long dead mythological figures were hardly relevant to the day's mission.
"Have we seen what the ancient people were doing with Hell in the first place?"
"Ah, most of the carvings we've seen made by humans were worn down by age and weathering, even on this side of the portal, but the closest thing we've seen to a mission statement says that they were looking for a weapon to kill their god or something."
I nearly halted my step at that, but continued over the rough terrain, "Truly?"
"It's- a weird translation of an obscure dialect, some of the people we have looking at the ruins think it's a metaphor or turn of phrase or something."
"Really? Just a casual turn of phrase, seeking to kill their own god?"
"Yeah, though it might not even be literal. I mean, a number of ancient theologies have the Grimm as fragments of a god's will, or symbols of divine wrath or whatever, so it could just mean they wanted make a big gun to kill a lot of Grimm. A lot of surviving ruins of ancient civilizations are religious sites, and those often involve dramatic turns of phrase that people of that age might have understood to be a metaphor, but just sound weird to modern ears. Hell, sometimes we just translate things really pretentiously because we assume that people from the past all talked like that. Translating dead languages can be complicated."
"Interesting," I said, vaguely surprised by the idea that I was being sincere with such a statement.
"The whole thing didn't turn out too well for them, though. Some of those columns on our side were wrecked by claws, and those weren't the right shape for Grimm."
It sometimes felt like every project to wipe out or cripple the Grimm backfired on Remnant eventually. Our thoughts and conversation were quickly interrupted, however.
"Hold up a second," Sergent Errands, our Paladin pilot, spoke up from the radio. "Need to discharge some energy." With a slight shifting, the red painted Paladin aimed itself in the direction of a nearby small-building sized column of stone, almost worn enough that one couldn't tell that it was artificially created. Its guns shifted to a firing position, and its plasma minigun strafed across the base of the column, shards of rock blasting off in all directions and they ripped through the rock and straight to the other side. The column slowly and ponderously fell to the ground in a tremendous crash, clouds of red dust raising from the impact. And then, from the other side of the mech, the much larger, single barrel briefly glowed with heat as a massive blue, pulsating orb emerged, striking into the column and turning the already cracked rock into molten slag.
I sighed, and thumbed my own radio, "Sergent Errands, explain your actions, if you would?"
"Ah, sorry ma'am, but these Argent Paladins, while they're on mission, they don't really have a way to turn off their Argent Accumulators, and an overload can lead to nasty consequences. We can, however, bleed off that energy in other ways." The minigun arm of the Paladin lifted into the air and fired a swift spray of energy at the sky.
I took my index finger off the button and took a deep breath, before pressing it down again, becoming audible once more, "Sergent Errands, I am quite well aware of that, I did read the mission briefing, after all. What I am wondering is why you decided to target the column instead of an empty patch of ground, or possibly the sky."
"I- ah, because it was there?"
I glanced towards the heavens, though I didn't find any particular solace in the churning red sky sky, and spoke again, "You realize, of course, that this entire mission is proceeding based on intelligence gathered from carvings found on pillars similar to that one, correct?" I was exaggerating the similarity, but there could easily have been writing on the now ruined pillar.
At his silence, I continued. "Next time, I would suggest aiming at less prominent targets."
"Yes ma'am." He said, sullen.
"Excuse me, Sergent?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"As you were." I said, making sure that my dismissal was quite clear.
There was silence after that, and it wasn't long before Lavender slipped to the back of the formation, where he'd likely be a more effective rearguard than I would.
_____
It wasn't long before we stopped our route.
There was no ground along our path. Just a long, distant drop to a ground too distant to see, what with massive stormclouds of Argent energy flowing far beneath us. Ahead of us, there was another large island, but it wasn't within easy jumping distance, and only another series of small floating islands connected these two places.
"Let's get the spikes ready." One of the engineers called out, and they reached into their packs and stabbed long stakes into the ground.
I, personally, would have been able to make those jumps with ease without ever worrying about falling (I'd made more difficult jumps as a matter of convenience), most of the soldiers were nowhere near as mobile as a Specialist, and so, we had precautions. Setting up a crude bridge, or a rope to shimmy across were other options, but for now, it was decided that the quickest way to reach the other side would be to just tie themselves to these stakes and leap, allowing the stakes to catch them if they fell, where they'd be dragged upwards to try again. Luckily, there was nothing we could land on beneath us, so the risks of miscalculating the necessary lengths of the ropes were fairly low.
Even I allowed myself to be attached to the rope as I leapt across. It might be pointless, in my case, but sometimes, as General Ironwood liked to remind me, the best way to get the troops to stop complaining about something was for their superior officer to do that very same thing. It was especially effective for Specialists and safety precautions, because even a soldier's machismo often dimmed when seeing the Specialist-tier combatants showing some concern for their own safety. If someone as skilled as a Specialist was taking it seriously, well, they could hardly be looked down upon for following suit.
When I did leap, however, I did it two islands at a time.
I was willing to serve as an example, but I wanted that rope off of myself as soon as possible.
Besides, this way I could stand watch on the far side.
The team slowly jumped across, some of the more hesitant soldiers being mocked by their fellows until they finally made the jump, until the only two left on that side were the Paladin and Lavender.
"You know," Errands said as Lavender began attaching several steel cables to mountings on the mech's body. "I could make a jump like this in my sleep. Those pylons aren't really all that necessary."
Lavender slapped the side of the mech hard enough to make it shift slightly, "Hey, maybe you could, maybe you couldn't, but we still have no idea why these islands float, so if these things have a maximum weight allowance, we'd really prefer to not figure that out by throwing our big expensive robot into the infinite void."
Errand chose to make the rest of the leaps in silence, and every time the islands shuddered he did seem a bit more hesitant.
—
A few scattered demons attempted to ambush us during our march, but for whatever reason, they didn't seem to attack with any real coordination or numbers. It vaguely surprised me that so many of the Hell Knights were inclined to get into melee with me. I would think they'd realize that the soldiers who walked around with guns might be more vulnerable in melee than the person with a sword, but perhaps it was a matter of pride.
They preferred long, sweeping attacks, I preferred darting in and out of their reach and cutting their throats, which worked well enough for me.
The floating heads, the cacodemons, were largely handled by Errand, his guns allowing him to shred the things long before they could fully prepare their attacks, and the troops focused their fire on the imps fairly well.
I took a brief moment to watch Lavender swing his hammer in a wide, clumsy swing, the hell knight he was fighting easily dodging. It saw the opening caused by the swing and threw its fist forward-
Only for the momentum of the swing to completely and instantaneously reverse, the Hell Knight's own momentum completely failing to stop as its forearm was obliterated by the hammer. Before the hammer could sink into the arm and get stuck, the momentum shifted again, and the hammer easily exited the bone in a shower of splinters and gore.
Lavender's semblance. The ability to completely reverse or halt his personal momentum, with a few slight complications the details of which I still didn't fully understand. It wasn't the most elaborate of semblances, but it often allowed him one good hit, and with his preference for big, heavy weapons, one good hit was often all he needed.
Even knowing the "trick" to it, fighting him in melee was quite difficult, as his fighting style seemed a thing of dumb brute force, but so many of the "openings" he left were completely nullified by his ability to reverse his momentum, either to dodge or to counterattack, and indeed were deliberate traps. Instinct could not be relied on in a fight against him.
By everything I've seen, as a personal combatant, he could have placed impressively in various tournaments, his talents actually better suited to fighting people rather than the Grimm, but he was intent on being a Specialist, to actually have a role in history, and he preferred that as few people as possible knew exactly what his semblance could do.
Against foes who charged into melee, and had just enough intelligence to see an opening and without the durability to have a chance to learn from their mistakes? Few on Remnant would be as deadly as he could be.
With his foes slain, that particular ambush was concluded, and we moved on.
————————
Sleeping within Hell itself was- an experience, I supposed. Not one that I cared for, to be honest, the constant fear of attack, needing a heavy watch at all hours of night, the strange noises…
While the odd scratching feeling of the hell energy brushing against my soul was muted, it was still present, the Argent Accumulator doing its job.
It was not my most restful sleep, and I knew that I was not the only one who felt that way. Still, it was- interesting.
Should this project ever be unclassified, I suppose it would make an interesting story. Or it could serve as one upmanship should I ever be in a conversation with someone that I didn't care for. "Yes, your story about how the construction workers outside your house are keeping you awake is indeed quite interesting. I can empathize with your troubles with your sleeping troubles, as I've had a rather similar experience when I was campaigning in Hell…"
My mind drifted, as I stood on watch, as I did wonder what Weiss would think of all this.
Though, my experience would likely be less telling the story naturally and more answering a long series of exceedingly polite questions until I had functionally told the story anyway.
She seemed to be very enthusiastic about attending Beacon, which I was glad of, though I confess I had to read between the lines somewhat, considering that most of the letter consisted of her telling me of how much she was studying and how the eventual electives she might take could serve her in whatever career path she might take, and with rather little about her personal feelings.
As frustratingly impersonal as it was, it was also oddly endearing, her barely restrained enthusiasm leaking through despite her attempts to be strictly professional, and hopefully her teammates would notice that side of her.
It was- easier to fall back to sleep, when thinking of how my sister was doing.
—————
Not much happened that morning, save for an attack by Imps and those armored beasts called Pinkies.
(I did not understand the naming scheme we were using for the demons. On the one hand, we had names with a certain dignity, such as the Hell Knight, the Imps, or the Cacofiend, and on the other, we had Pinkies and the Mancubus, the large, fat demons. When I happened to ask Lavender about the matter, he told me that the last two were the only surviving names from the old naming scheme that was invented by soldiers who were actively fighting the beasts and needed some way to identify their foes, which included titles such as "Fast Fuckers", "Big Fuckers", "Mean Fuckers", and similar such names, which had been the norm until it was decided that perhaps it might be best to have less crude nomenclature for whenever the reports became declassified. I didn't find the finer details of that story particularly plausible, but I pretended to implicitly believe the story as a courtesy.)
None of those demons were particularly difficult to deal with, as I allowed everyone else to fight the Imps, while I darted around and skewered the Pinkies, as they apparently only armored their front sides. They didn't seem prepared to face someone with the speed of a trained specialist, and their soft skin was easily skewered.
"So," Lavender said as we proceeded, speaking into the radio. "You have a lot less experience than I do in Hell, but, just so you know, this is, well, weird. We'd normally expect at least a few big demons attacking a group this side, a Mancubus or even a Baron."
"They might have concentrated their forces near our base, forming a thin cordon that we've already broken through," I said, allowing the tone of my voice to convey how doubtful I found that particular theory. They seemed to congregate in areas around the base, but I assumed there were other areas that those demons lived in before they attacked us.
That things would get less dangerous so quickly as we continued further away into their territory didn't seem to make sense.
"Still, well, just, keep an eye out."
"Of cou-"
With an act of remarkable timing, an imp leapt out of cover from the rocks to our side and- began running the same direction we were going in, seemingly completely ignoring us.
I raised an eyebrow as I stopped walking, watching its movements.
Any information I could have gleaned quickly became irrelevant, however, as a large spike of ice slammed into the thing's back, throwing it a foot or two forward before it simply collapsed to the ground, before melting into the ground. Not a conventional round, and I swiftly concluded that the ice lance came from Lavender's new gun.
I pressed a button on my radio, speaking to the group as a whole, "Next time we see a demon that does not engage, do not fire upon it."
"Any reason why?" Lavender asked, "I shot it because I thought it might be running to call in reinforcements or something."
Which was a… fair point, really, but, "Any curious behavior is worth noting and observing. In addition to that, the further we reach away from the core, the higher the chance of encountering demonic non-combatants."
"Non-combatants? Seriously?"
"Very slight chance, in all honesty, but the chance is there."
Truthfully, it didn't seem like the demon had been responding to us in any way, but on a exploratory mission, observing odd behavior was one of our objectives, and something about its motions had been- curious to me, in a fashion that I had difficulty defining.
"I suppose," Lavender sounded doubtful, but the curious expression on his face seemed to indicate that he was willing to consider the possibility.
I thought back to the conversation we'd been having. Had the demons simply formed a cordon around the portal site? That could explain why they were so eager to reinhabit ruins after we'd already cleared them, but that explanation didn't feel right to me, on a purely instinctive level.
And curious behavior from these demons could very well result in unpleasant things for us if we failed to understand exactly what was happening.
—-
It wasn't too long a walk before we neared the end point of our assigned route, and not much of interest had happened on that walk. A few scattered hell knights who seemed to be rushing towards some destination in the distance, though they at least diverted to attack us upon first noticing our presence. Errands handled them well enough on his own, having needed to vent energy anyway. A few more of these imps ran past us, darting from column to column and climbing on walls, all to reach some unknown destination that I was tempted to pursue, but it could easily have been a trap. I wouldn't mind personally springing a trap to gain more information (I had pulled that trick on the White Fang, my family name being quite the tempting bait for them to attempt to ambush me, though I was proud to say they hadn't tried directly attacking me in quite some time), but the trap might instead just be a ploy to keep me from the group, pinned down while demons swarmed the main patrol.
Still, we might need to pursue this distant target at some point, and I held up a hand, telling the patrol to stop.
I took out my scroll, observing the distance we had traveled. While the signal from the base was too weak to reach us here, special pedometers that could track the distance traveled even when there were diversions such as demonic ambushes. That, combined with a compass sufficed to give a rough estimate of where we were in relation to the base, though I wasn't sure how reliable I should consider the compasses, considering that it was doubtful that the magnetic poles of Hell were remotely similar to those of Remnant. Early testing at the base showed that they functioned well enough at consistently pointing in one direction anyway, but "well enough" could easily be insufficient as we moved further and further from the primary facility.
Flag our (estimated) current location, flag the (estimated) direction that the Imps were traveling in along with (estimated) origin points for each of the running demons we'd encountered on the chance that where they were running from was as important as where they were running to…
"Hey- shut that thing off for a moment." Lavender said, approaching me. For the briefest of moments, a wisp of indignation rose through me, but I had tamed that particular reflex of mine. Mostly. I turned off the scroll, its processors stopping their whirring as I looked around.
The area we had entered was wide and open, of the sort that was uncomfortable if I was expecting to face humans or faunas, somewhat comforting if facing Grimm, and largely neutral when facing demons.
Looking at the way Lavender was tilting his head in various directions, I frowned and followed suit, trying to listen as I looked about the broken wasteland.
There was the thrum of the Paladin's engines, muted breathing by the troops as they attempted their own listening, and-
What faintly sounded like a distant explosion.
I tried turning my ear to face the direction of the sound, but even with my training in doing just that, I couldn't truly pin down the direction of the faint sound.
"There," Lavender said with more confidence then I was feeling, so I followed the direction of his finger.
It went in a different direction from our patrol route, through an area that seemed mountainous, but the entire point of this patrol was exploratory, and strange explosions did qualify as points of interest.
"Send a message back to the base. Tell them we'll be diverging from our route, and give them an estimated heading."
Errand responded, "Yes ma'am," and the powerful radio began to heat up. Hell was filled with extreme, errant signals on the radio waves as well as strange storms, leaving conventional radios useless over any significant distances especially without the assistance of a CCT tower. So for distances such as the ones we'd traveled, we'd simply sent extremely powerful bursts, fueled by the ridiculous power efficiency of Argent, of the same message numerous times to account for any corruption in the message, which could be responded to by a burst from the base's own overpowered radio array. While energy wasn't a concern, overheating the components within Hell's unforgiving atmosphere was, and so they could only safely operate with quick bursts rather than prolonged conversation. There had been talk of more consistent methods of communication, relay systems, or even trying to build a lesser CCT tower on this side of the portal, but so far, without a consensus on the topic, none of those plans were being implemented, and so we resorted to the first, improvised solution of heavily boosted signals, which worked well enough.
"Message sent, ma'am."
I nodded, then set my radio to address the entire patrol, "We're tracking that noise. Light jogging speed, remain vigilant."
I set out, remaining on point and retaining a "light jog" pace. Light jog for the soldiers, but for myself, it felt painfully slow, especially if those truly were explosions or a fight happening in the distance. If necessary, I could go ahead, let Lavender and Errands defend the troops while I used my superior speed to scout ahead.
However, I was an officer, and part of a military, and in this context, so far from support, I couldn't just hide the troops under my command in a corner while I did everything myself. There was easily a chance that I could be overwhelmed, or they could be overwhelmed without my support against foes that we would be able to easily face together.
I'd leave it an option, but for now, the group remained together.
"As the one with more experience in Hell, what do you think the noise is?" I asked Lavender, switching my radio to private communication.
"Not sure. We've never been out this far. Could be infighting, I guess."
"Infighting?" I asked, curious.
"Oh, yeah, Helmer found out about that during the couple of days he operated on this side of the portal. Basically, if you trick demons into doing some friendly fire, there's a chance that they get angry enough to try to start fighting each other at the same time as they're fighting us. There's a chance that they might start fighting each other for other reasons too."
"That is, interesting information," I said. For some reason the thought that these hateful things might fall into infighting hadn't occurred to me, and I imagined that part of that was my experience with the Grimm, where the closest thing one might see to infighting would be the occasional Grimm using other Grimm as projectiles.
"Anytime," Lavender said cheerfully, without apparently noticing the comment.
I shook my head as I maintained my casual pace, the troops maintaining speed.
As the noise grew louder and became more clear, tracking also became more difficult in the canyon, and I suspected that the source might have even been moving.
We soon reached an open plateau in the mountainous region, and multiple flashes of red light appeared all around us, the sign of demons manifesting.
And quite a few of them.
Over thirty flashes of red light, in my quick and casual glance.
I didn't bother waiting for them to fully manifest. I twitched my sword, triggering a slight dust explosion that I could channel into my summons.
A large flock of the smaller, ghostly Nevermore manifested, surrounding one of the larger patches of gathering demonic energy as I dashed to one of the closest patches of red energy.
A flash of light manifested a single Imp, who failed to remain alive long enough to register his surprise at my sword entering and exiting his skull.
"Ambush!" One of the soldiers yelled belatedly, even their experience leaving them slightly behind a Specialist's speed, and soon, the fight began properly.
The largest summoning circle glowed brighter, and a large, grotesquely muscled beast emerged, its dark red skin making it look as though the muscles were exposed, and with the ram horns on its skull it nearly reached fifteen feet tall.
One of the Barons, as the soldiers had called them. The most dangerous demons encountered in Hell so far.
"Huntress and shepard, adaptations!" I yelled, and kept my blades as a single weapon. Dual wielding might help for smaller foes, but some enemies required a bit more force than a single blade could provide.
I could hear the team behind me scrambling, guns blasting away, the soldiers attempting to focus on the smaller Imps. The formation I'd called was simple enough. The most mobile combatant would focus their efforts on the largest and strongest opponent, if not winning then at least buying time, while our Paladin would focus on any larger demons, and Lavender would keep the more melee focused forces off their back and potentially herd them into firing zones.
The unfortunate thing about a Specialist's role in the command chain was that often enough, while we were in charge, we were often genuinely most useful concentrating purely on personal combat, regardless of our own talents (or occasionally, lack thereof) in terms of tactical command.
The more conventional soldiers, in this case, were best served by following the orders of their sergeant, and the sergeant would interpret those orders. In this case, "adaptations", was an amendment to the orders, essentially declaring, "I am going to be fighting a very big thing, and thus may not be able to concentrate on changing your orders should circumstances change. Do not follow my orders to the grave if they clearly no longer apply." (To a certain extent, it was assumed that Atlas soldiers would have the good sense to do so in any case, but I preferred to remove the ambiguity on the off chance I ever needed to tell them to obey my orders even if they seemed suicidal.)
In this case, I couldn't kill the Mancubuses or the Cacofiends as quickly as the modified Paladin could, and they took long enough that any attempt to get into melee would last long enough for further ranged demons to target the exposed troops, and the Baron could apparently last long enough under the hail of the Argent Paladin's fire to enter melee, and by all reports, that was likely a losing proposition.
Judging by how the Baron seemed to ignore the Nevermores darting about its head as it glared in my direction, even as the flame-infused phantasms began to explode around its head as it seemingly failed to even notice, that assessment seemed… accurate.
Its fists glowed an infernal green, and it sent a massive ball of green flames at me, and I leapt above it, still trying to make some progress forward as the sphere slammed into the ground beneath me. Doing so meant I was still ever so slightly caught in the plasma explosion caused by the detonating green sphere, and, well riding the wake of the explosion just meant that I would get to the demon quicker.
I could feel the heat of the flame, even with my aura as I flew towards the thing.
By years of experience, I knew that that had drained, nearly a fifth of my aura, and I suppressed a wince at the pain. More- impressive than expected, I could admit.
The demon, on the other hand, seemed almost surprised by my survival for the briefest of moments, before that surprise was replaced by the usual murderous wrath, and it stretched its tree-sized arms and roared as I continued my approach.
Melee was my specialty, I had no qualms in admitting, even if my semblance granted me a fair amount of versatility in that regard. Despite the fact that this thing also held a preference for melee combat, in this case, I would simply have to trust that my tactical assessment was the more accurate one.
If I could reduce the thing to melee, well, even with its ludicrously thick arms, that was my comfort zone.
Again the thing seemed surprised, before its roar turned to one of- eagerness, almost, as I began to cut around its ankles and thighs. It would roar, kick with massive, furred cloven feet, reaching arms down to grab at me (something I particularly tried to avoid), but so far, all of its wounds seemed superficial, judging by the things reactions.
It was supposed to be tough, but I hadn't quite expected this level of durability.
As it lifted a leg to stomp at me, I darted to the other leg, trying to slice at tendons through the unnaturally tough skin, though I didn't even know if losing tendons would actually debilitate a demon, and even so my cuts remained shallow.
It stomped its raised foot down, seemingly unbalanced, and I pressed my attack, thin streaks of red on its leg beginning to overlap as I sliced again and again in the space of a second, hoping to dig in deeper.
In my furor, I never noticed that it had seemed to stop moving, and only barely noticed the soft green glow above me.
I leapt back with a snarl, as much force as I could muster into a clumsy jump at an awkward angle and still only barely escaped as the thing slammed its hands into the ground, an explosion of green energy emerging from around it. We stood still for a moment, facing each other, as I watched the puddle of molten rock by the thing's feet hiss and steam, as I resisted the urge to observe how the other soldiers were doing, before it roared, and I charged back in.
It launched a crude and clumsy kick my way, and I simply slid underneath that attack, sword raised high, though with my angle of attack, it merely clinked off the hard hoof and failed to achieve any damage.
From somewhere to my- left- there was a large explosion, which helped to refocus me.
I needed to hurry.
I thrust my knife into the leg of the beast before it could turn around, putting all of my weight into the thrust.
This time, I was satisfied to note that the blade sank to its hilt in a spurt of blood.
I used the knife as a foot hold as I leapt up the leg, climbing the beast's back as it flailed about trying to reach me. It took less than a second for me to reach the shoulders, and from there I awkwardly stabbed the sword into the back of the thing's neck, not having a good angle to actually deal much damage as it stomped around.
As it reached its hands back towards me, I leapt forward, slightly off the Baron's shoulder, and summoned a simple but overpowered glyph circle, perpendicular to the ground. Speed, acceleration, and a stable place to jump from, it allowed me to simply launch myself back towards the throat of the beast, its arms still stuck behind it, and with maximum force and momentum I held my blade ahead of me as I burst through the air, the blade easily cutting into the thing's throat in an explosion of gore.
Warm, sticky, and unpleasant, I noted as I landed, flicking the blood off of my blade as the beast collapsed behind me. I could take a moment to appreciate the fact that my aura allowed the blood mostly seep off of me instead of sinking in.
Otherwise I'd never have worn white to the battlefield. Because all of the blood I was being regularly coated with would simply be inconvenient, and I'd never get the blood off no matter how hard I tried, just like-
At that thought forcibly repressed, I looked around, and as the demon faded into green energy I collected my dagger from the place it had fallen, merging it once more with my sword.
The area was mostly cleared of demons, though I could see two dead bodies among the Atlas troops- armor partially melted from the plasma blasts of a Cacofiend.
I dashed towards a small collection of imps who had been barraging the improvised fortifications, and, well, they died quickly enough, each of their bodies bisected with single swings from my sword. Truthfully I'm not sure if they even noticed me before they died.
The rest- well, Errand had cleared up the Cacofiends, with Lavender having killed the Hell Knights with his usual efficiency, th rest was simply chaff.
Of course, the moment I thought that, numerous red circles of energy emerged on the ground around us, and the second wave of demons arrived.
There was the usual assortment of Imps, Hell Knights, and Cacofiends, but three of them were Summoners, the ones that the demons had chosen to use as their mouthpieces when addressing me.
Teleporting, fast, and as the name suggested, they could summon more troops. Or possibly create them, we weren't entirely sure, yet.
Naturally, with my speed, they would be my priority, though this time I thought that perhaps I didn't have to completely ignore the soldiers under my command.
On what was almost a whim, I focused, concentrated, and summoned into the world two white, ghostly Hell Knights, and sent them charging into a group of Imps, who almost seemed confused for a moment before the specters set upon them with remarkable violence.
Fighting the summoners was annoying as had been described to me. They moved quickly, their ability to hover made them maneuverable in melee (though they mostly used it to survive until they could teleport away again), and the shockwaves they sent across the ground were often inconvenient to dodge and too powerful to simply endure, which allowed them to control the spacing of the battle quite well.
Quite fortunately, they seemed to be fairly distracted by myself, and failed to notice the my own summoned Hell Knights they'd dashed directly in front of, whereupon my summons simply grabbed one of them out of the air, with one seizing the head and the other the feet, and the ghostly Hell Knights simply-
Pulled. They pulled in each direction.
I turned my head to watch the others as I heard the sound of ripping flesh, the two remaining summoners seeming to respond without reaction, throwing their shockwaves towards my summons, and I could feel it as one of the summons simply dissipated into nothing.
Still, that distraction was more than sufficient for my purposes, and I ran at full speed towards the nearest of the surviving summoners, who barely had time to turn his head as I cut through him.
The other took the opportunity to raise his arms to the sky, and a large circle appeared on the ground. I ran towards him, ignoring the circle for the moment, but he teleported away too quickly.
With a flash of red light, the summoned demon emerged from the circle, a grotesquely fat thing roughly man shaped, covered in cybernetics, a belly opened to the elements and two large guns for arms.
The Mancubus, going by the unfortunately accurate descriptions.
As distracting as its mere existence was, I needed to prevent the Summoner from bringing more allies to the fight, and so I simply ordered my remaining Hell Knight to attack it while I continued to chase the Summoner.
With only one Summoner left, it was far less able to control the terms of battle, needing to choose between offense and evasion, and eventually, it chose poorly.
The thing waved a glowing arm, and threw a final shockwave in my direction. Not needing to dodge other attacks, I was free to simply dart to the side as the shockwave moved to where I had just been standing, and rush forward at full speed, glyphs augmenting my movement as I ran to it, jumped ever so slightly, and ran my blade through its neck, sending the head flying into the distance.
I looked back, and saw my summoned Hell Knight had leapt upon the Mancubus, eagerly ignoring the fire coating its body as the Mancubus tried to use its flamethrowers to force the thing off of it, and now the both of them were coated in flame as the Hell Knight grabbed at the cables attached to the thing's back and began ripping them out. It wasn't long before it became apparent as to what those cables were for, as the cable ripped free in a spray of fluid that quickly caught fire, the fire racing to the leaking nozzle until the two exploded together.
I stood for a moment, listening.
There was still noise, but- distant. The battle here had been won, and we seemed closer to those distant sounds of combat.
I looked at the surviving troops, haggard, five fewer than we had set out with, at least one clearly in shock. With that, we constituted a bit over half of the month's casualties.
Lavender was leaning on his hammer, the head pressed firmly into the ground, and he was trying to hide the fact that he was panting.
On the one hand, they didn't seem terribly fit to continue. Even I was getting tired at this point.
On the other, the distant battle nearby was getting louder, and even with the odd ways that sound often traveled in canyons, let alone canyons in some strange hellscape, our goal wasn't far now.
"We'll need to keep moving. Prepare an Atlesian Pyre and prepare to move out." I said, ignoring the surprise, disappointment, and slight hints of anger of the soldiers under my command.
But- no, while we didn't have to fear Grimm being drawn to our negative emotions, morale was- still something of a concern. I drew myself up, this poise coming more from my old etiquette classes than from military training; I wanted an aristocratic air, for now. "These demons launched a particularly intense attack the moment we began to approach that battlefield. These creatures do not want us to reach whatever it is that they've been fighting. I, personally, am disinclined to grant the desires of any demon."
The way they looked away from me, none of them seemed to be inspired by that statement, it still seeming to risky, for them at least. And- perhaps it might have been. "Lavender. You will lead them back to our main base, with a full report ready." I said, presenting the decision as if that was what I had planned on doing all along before seeing their reactions. "On my own, I will be able to avoid more fights than we could as a group, and reach the target far more quickly."
"And if they attack us on the way back?" Lavender asked. "We had trouble with that group even with our patrol at full strength."
That statement was- a fair point. But- "The objective of the demons seems to be to keep us from that area. I believe that they'll focus their attention on the person attempting to travel in that direction."
"Would they even notice you?" Errand asked. Again, an annoyingly fair point. "I mean, comparing one person to a large patrol with a mech, well…"
At that, I crossed my arms behind my back and turned my nose up at him, a task made slightly harder by the fact that he was inside a rather large mech suit, but being above other people was more a thing of attitude than of actual height. "I hardly intend on being subtle."
At that, Lavender gave an amused snort, though he actually seemed to been relieved by that statement. Even he'd seemed drained by the fight. "Right, I'll believe that." He glanced towards the other soldiers, "She makes enough noise, well, we'll get a nice leisurely stroll back to the base."
Considering that he was reinforcing my point to the soldiers, after some slight deliberation I decided not to be offended.
"Good luck, and try to leave a few demons for the other guys." He shook his head as he gestured for the troops to begin marching back the way they came. As they started moving, he glanced back at me and spoke, "Just, uh, remember that you can also use that speed of yours to run away, alright?"
His shoulders were more slumped than they were when the soldiers had been around us. I knew he kept a casual air about it, but- well, there was a reason he preferred to work with machines or on his own, and five of those reasons were being gathered in a row, with the mech facing them and Errand ready with his guns.
I looked him in the eye, and I allowed my own posture to loosen. "I will," I said with a single nod. "Don't let them hit you too many times."
"Hey, if not me, it'll be someone else, and I can take a hit better than most." He said that with a forced grin, and I chose not to push him on it.
Instead, I simply turned around and ran.
However nice a break might have been, I did have a mission to complete.
edit:
Haha...
This took a bit longer than anticipated. First I wasn't feeling well, then, well, life, then my figurative muse started yelling in my year about this totally cool Legend of Zelda story I had, and I got knocked out of my groove.
Anywho, posting this now, and I'll respond to any comments since my last post later. I just wanted this thing out now.
Also, I should note that the part of the lore I mentioned being not a hundred percent certain of it working is pretty close to the beginning of the chapter, namely, the distant backstory of Remnant as it relates to Hell. I... think it works, but I'm not sure.
- Location
- [REDACTED]- United States of America
I'm liking it but I really wish it hadn't ended right before the big reveal.
They're fighting the DOOM guy right?
That's kind of what I was picturing, really. That and going to space is a bit complicated even before you have to design an entirely new type of fuel, and Remnant has a lot of things they could be prioritizing before space travel.
Hah, sorry, but that honestly felt like the best place to cut the story off. Especially since there were a decent number of places that would be even worse to end the chapter on coming up soon.
Next chapter should definitely be out quicker than this one, though, so don't worry too much.
That's one of the likely conclusions. Granted, they aren't hearing heavy metal music yet, but it could still be him.
First Impressions
I leapt from pillar to pillar, trying to maintain my height. As annoying as the occasional swarms of burning, flying and exploding skulls were, I was still faster than them, and speed prevented me from getting to bogged down.
At my next vantage point, I spotted five imps, running in the same direction as I was, and I jumped to the closest one, slicing through one with my separated sword and allowing the momentum to carry me through to killing the next.
As they were beginning to react to me, I simply raised my other hand and threw my dagger into its eye, and I used the brief reprieve to skewer the second to last of the imps, impaling it and then pressing my boot against its chest, kicking off of it and extracting the blade in a shower of blood and viscera as I leaped to the third demon to die and extracted my dagger from its head even as it had begun collapsing to the ground.
With that, I ran past the last demon without touching it even as it roared at me. In truth, I didn't know if leaving a demon or two alive out of every group I killed was essential to keep the demon's attention focused on myself, but leaving a few witnesses alive could hardly hurt.
Almost as an afterthought, I moved to the side slightly enough to just barely dodge the fireball the imp had thrown at me as it finally collected enough of its faculties to begin to chase me.
In truth, it had begun to occur to me that there was something of a flaw with this plan, namely that whoever was fighting the demons might not like my leading a train of them to the fight, possibly seeing it as akin to the Grimm baiting tactics the White Fang occasionally used. Regardless, it seemed something to deal with as I got closer to the target, and my current train was something that I could easily manage to deal with on my own, a few lumbering Cacofiends and a collection of Imps desperately scrambling to keep up with me in a way that was almost comical (disregard that, I noted as one tripped and fell into one of the seemingly endless pits scattered about the place, and another leapt into the blast of green flame from a Cacofiend, dying instantly and setting the Imps to attempt to kill the Cacofiends, it was comical.)
Every once in a while one of the larger demons, Mancubuses or Hell Knights, would manifest itself in a flash of light in front of me, and if it seemed like I had an opportunity to quickly kill it, I'd take it. Otherwise, I'd simply move on.
Without a team to look after, without needing to look for paths for the less acrobatic troops under my command, I had neared the once-distant sounds of battle within just a few minutes.
In truth, I'm not sure what I expected to find at the sight of a prolonged battle against the demons.
Likely a base or a well entrenched position, judging by how long the fight had been. Possibly an army.
I had not expected to find a single soldier clad in green armor not entirely dissimilar in appearance to the mass produced armor we provided our soldiers, it was even face concealing, something largely anonymous.
While I might have liked to have made a more calculating first contact, to assess this soldier more closely, I was somewhat distracted by the swarm of demons massing in the area.
Dozens of Imps, Hell Knights, several Cacofiends, and two Mancubuses were all seemingly fighting this one… with that armor I couldn't even tell for certain what sex the figure was, though by the build I suspected male.
Quickly determining that I'd really rather have the soldier alive for a proper first contact, I leaped down towards the nearest Mancubus, conveniently right below where I had entered this arena, and leaped towards the front of its mass.
The thing's beating, mechanical heart in its opened chest honestly disgusted me, and so I responded appropriately, skewering it with my sword and ripping it from the thing's chest as it tried to reach its clumsy, mechanical gun arms in my direction.
I flicked my blade, pulsing my aura as I did so, and the heart flew off of it, reaching an approaching Hell Knight and then-
Exploding.
Well.
That was useful information, I supposed as I leapt from the collapsing mound of fat, the thing quite dead without its heart.
Knowing I'd need to protect my newfound- I couldn't even call the stranger an ally yet, but at least a possessor of mutual enemies- but needing to fight aggressively, I summoned two ethereal Hell Knights of my own, and sent them charging into the melee where the soldier was fighting.
At worst, he might shoot the things, but hopefully he'd be able to recognize that they were fighting the same targets, and were also glowing, bright ghostly figures instead of the more fleshy versions he was currently killing, and so were unlikely to be his enemies.
With that, I ran to the next Hell Knight to challenge me. If my steps weren't quite as steady as they once were due to exhaustion, well, the relative lack of finesse proved to be immaterial, as the thing was still far clumsier and brutish than I, and I swiftly left the dead thing with its bleeding throat behind me.
I chanced a glance at the soldier, and noted that he did seem remarkably agile as he darted about a small group of Imps, the shotgun in his hands making single, accurate blasts at their skulls that killed them cleanly and efficiently. One demon seemed slightly more durable than the rest, and simply staggered, at which point, the soldier's gun vanished, and he grabbed the demon's head in both hands, wrenching the jaw and brutally dislocating it as he twisted the head far enough to snap the thing's neck, which was rather less quick and efficient.
I was so caught up in watching him fight that I nearly missed the Imp leaping at me from behind with a roar. Nearly, I thought, as I moved to the side and held my sword vertically in the direction that the Imp was leaping, its own momentum thrusting the sword into its face and slid down its body until it exited through the leg. Without my exerting much force, it wasn't a particularly deep wound, and the Imp simply collapsed on the ground as it landed.
I ignored the wounded Imp for now, in a solo fight I might have wanted to confirm my kill, but when I was protecting an allied VIP (well, Very Important for now at least, considering I wasn't quite sure how I'd find his people if he were to die in this battle) but instead charged for a Cacodemon which was readying one of its big balls of plasma but not actually aiming it at myself, which immediately marked it as a high priority target. I idly cut down another Imp as it tried to intercept my charge, and jumped on top of the Cacodemon's body. It bobbed in the air at my weight, and that moment of disorientation was long enough for me to bring my sword down into the thing's eye, which exploded into- yes, more blood, I was reaching the point where I missed fighting the creatures of Grimm.
As I leapt off the now-corpse, already dissolving in the air, I made a delicate landing by a Hell Knight, landing on one knee, Seeing the challenge, it spread its arms outward and roared, clearly making its own challenge. It was the work of a moment to dash by it's posturing arms, slicing at the vulnerable elbow of the conveniently unguarded arm, and it recoiled in shock at the pain and my treachery. At that, I couldn't help but smile, despite the tiredness in my arms and legs, despite the fact that I was in Hell, despite every single thing that had happened today.
Oh, yes, it was terribly surprised by my brutish and dishonorable attack. So crude, so rude, so terribly unexpected. It looked almost more betrayed as my sword cut through its throat. I have, in the past, indulged blustering White Fang members, roaring Grimm, and even drunken wretches when they wanted to show a few flourishes in battle, pausing the fight long enough to give them a quick salute, or a polite crossing of blades.
I was an officer and a gentlewoman, after all, and that was a simple courtesy to grant. Also, it was occasionally amusing to watch them puff themselves up and to then puncture their pride in a literal sense, but that wasn't an indulgence I could allow myself today.
I flicked a string of blood into the eyes of a charging Imp, and as it flailed backwards, I simply stepped forward and stabbed into its chest, ripping it out again with a heeled boot on its shoulder and something that was more of a shove than a proper kick. More Imps surrounded me, as unaffected by the death of their comrades as they always seemed to be. But I was ever so slightly distracted by the sound of rockets firing.
I turned to the surviving Mancubus just as a small flurry of rockets flew towards myself. I simply- flexed my will and my Semblance, using a significant amount of my blades' stored dust and summoning a massive rune forming on the ground around me, and within a moment it exploded into a cloud of mist and ice, the mist turning distinctly red around the Imps had been approaching me as the whirling ice and shredded their bodies. I pushed the miniaturized blizzard forward, the air clearing around me as the rockets were shoved out of the way, detonating to either side of me.
I faced the Mancubus as my crimson cloud dispersed, and raised my eyebrow challengingly as I casually held my sword to the side, brushing my free hand against my hair (an affectation, of course; my hair was kept perfect by my aura). I was somewhat surprised to see the foreign soldier behind the demon. Had he- the battle around us had gotten quieter, I supposed, he had likely finished off many of the demons on his side on his own.
I briefly chastised myself for tunnel vision, again, all the while wondering what the stranger would do. In turn, he brought out- a gun that was much too large to have hidden on his person, the minigun with three separate sets of spinning barrels something I might have thought excessive on a Paladin. The Mancubus distracted, it had absolutely no chance to respond as the barrels began to spin, and a truly remarkable amount of lead blared out, shredding through the layers of fat of the screaming board member-
I shook my head, dismissing the thought once more. Far too much blood in the air; I wondered if perhaps I should have brought a gas mask. I noted, off to the side, my Hell Knights butchering a Cacofiend; one seemed to be holding its mouth open as the other attempted to rip out the thing's tongue.
A burst of blood, and- well, that seemed to be the last demon on the battlefield, judging by the sudden silence, and now I stood before the stranger as my own demons came stand beside me, and I regarded him with some curiosity.
Aura was an expression of the soul, and as much as I was fond of the dignity of proper uniform, the aura was strongest when one could express that soul, and so those who had advanced in using aura beyond what mere flesh could achieve tended to have highly personalized outfits and weapons. It was, however much the occasional bureaucrat might whine about costuming costs and the logistics of customized equipment, simply more effective than a conventionally strict uniform appearance. As such, when I saw the form concealing armor, the only ornamentation seeming to be that odd red symbol on the green helmet, I had assumed the figure to be some grunt, not unlike the men that I had been escorting recently.
But- he had been fighting on a level closer to that of a Hunstman, and that gun of his, which he no longer seemed to be carrying was- to put it bluntly, we would have never armed our average soldier with such a weapon, even if we had the budget or the Dust, even ignoring that he seemed able to summon and dismiss those weapons with ease. I almost thought that he was using Hard Light Dust, but- that weapon had seemed solid to my eyes. Either he had some other trick, or whatever kingdom he served had advanced far beyond our abilities when it came to the usage of HLD.
He approached me, an angry, stalking walk full of barely contained anger and adrenaline, shotgun still held barely at rest, a movement that would makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand rise up-
Well, it would if I was a coward, at least.
In response to his wary caution, I raised an eyebrow at him, stood up straight and tapped my heels together, hands behind my back. He was of roughly the same height as myself, though our respective postures and his wider stance put my eyes slightly above where I presumed his eyes would be behind that faceplate.
I was just as willing to posture as he was, the rude-
My thoughts derailed as I actually remembered my objective, here.
Ah. Right. This was actually a first contact, a situation where being polite was paramount, the sort of scenario I might have seen in books or movies enjoyed by some of my fellows. For a moment, I regretted not joining them on more movie nights, as- well, truthfully, this wasn't something that we had particularly trained for.
However, I had been trained in statecraft, decorum, diplomacy, and fine dining etiquette by a combination of my heritage, my military service, and my work as a direct agent of General Ironwood, and as such I should be able to handle a meeting such as this, especially under circumstances with shared enemies. Grimm forged quick friends, as the saying went, and though those weren't always the most reliable of friendships, they might serve as a foundation for future efforts.
"I am Winter Schnee, Specialist of the Atlesian Military, and in the name of the Kingdom of Atlas I extend our greetings to you and your people." I held out hand for him to shake.
He stared at it, for a moment, the aggression having seemed to slightly bleed out of his form as he regarded it, but refused to shake it as he looked at me and spoke in a voice that, while low, was far less of a growl than I had expected from his appearance and behavior.
It was also, of course, utterly indecipherable.
A language barrier, obviously.
Shit, I restrained myself from saying during this likely historic first contact, though I imagined the history books might fudge the details anyway if I had.
This was very much not something that I had trained for.
I stood there, keeping my posture firm as I regarded him. Somehow, the thought of what, exactly, I would do once meeting another civilization had escaped my mind. I suppose I assumed that we'd simply kill enough demons in each other's proximity until we were friends, or perhaps I could just awkwardly leave once I learned where their base was and we could send a diplomatic team from whatever scientists or scholars we could grab with specializations that were even remotely applicable to meeting an alien civilization.
Was the man even human? Or faunas?
I didn't even know what his face looked like.
His helmet turned to my summoned Hell Knights, seeming ready to jump into violence within a moment, and looked to me.
He gave me a firm look, and pointed to one of the Hell Knights, and then made a slicing motion towards his own throat.
I could tell that he wasn't fond of them, but- "Are you threatening me?" I asked, an imperious tone in my voice. Language might not be the same, but I suspected tone and posture translated well enough, and my message was clear- utterly unimpressed.
He spoke, again, briefly, and instinct told me that it was more a statement of frustration than of communicating his intent.
He looked to me, and his shotgun disappeared, replaced by a pistol.
He pointed at me, then the demons, and then placed the barrel of the pistol beneath his chin (finger firmly outside the trigger guard, I noted) and shoving his head slightly upwards with the gun. He then lowered the gun, and repeated the gesture.
Was that- Charades?
For the absolute briefest of moments, I felt a surge of irritation that at the idea that refusing to join in on drunken party games might have made me less qualified than some of my peers in a diplomatic mission, but such was, of course, quickly suppressed in favor of trying to understand him.
His message seemed clear to me. The first "statement" hadn't been a threat, it had been intended as a warning. My summoning demons was dangerous.
My irritation with him lessened, somewhat, knowing that his anger seemed to come out of a form of concern, even as aggressively as it was communicated, and as pointless as it was. My Semblance wasn't actually summoning the demons, simply specters of my experiences. Whether they were demons or Grimm or Paladins didn't truly make a difference. He didn't know how my Semblance worked, much less have a better understanding of it than I did.
Still, I was diplomatic enough to dismiss my demons with a wave of my hand.
It was likely only the circumstances causing an overactive imagination that made it feel as if they disappeared with ever so slightly more- resistance, than they usually did.
I shook my head, and the two of us stood facing each other, him and I seemingly both caught up not entirely certain as to where to go from here.
Perhaps…
I carefully crouched down and and reached my sword down, making a circle in the dust on the ground. I looked to him, then pointed at him, then the circle. Him, then the circle.
He stared at me for a moment before crouching himself, looking at the circle, and I was struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. Myself in my fine Atlesian uniform, him in what appeared to be some highly advanced armor of a strange make, crouched down in Hell itself, making crude sketches in the dirt.
He looked to me, then pointed to the circle, and then to himself.
Ah, he understood. I hoped. It seemed likely.
I nodded, and now I made a triangle in the ground, and gestured to myself.
He pointed to the triangle, and then to myself, a hint of impatience in the gesture.
I scowled at him. Obviously we needed to go through the basics before we could communicate anything of value. As annoying as this was, it was entirely necessary.
Still, this should be enough for some communication. I made a simple, larger rectangle, which was hopefully recognizable as a building, though I was half-tempted to add a triangular roof and a chimney like a child's drawing just to make that fact more clear.
Inside the rectangle, I drew a number of circles, and outside, I drew a triangle and a circle. I watched as he stared at the drawing in silence for several long moments. It was hopefully clear enough. Take me to your base, let me talk to… anyone other than yourself, I'd make basic friendly gestures, and hopefully leave on friendly enough terms to be able to lead actual diplomats there in the future.
As he failed to move, I frowned. I could understand if he didn't trust me with the location of his base, was he trying to find a way to communicate that without being rude?
He slowly reached down to the drawing, putting his hand between our combined shapes and the rectangle, then slowly swept his hand across the building with a slow sense of finality, brushing away the rectangle and all of the little circles within.
Ah.
I admit, in that moment, I hoped that perhaps he had misunderstood what my sketches had meant. I wasn't quite sure what he might have interpreted them as, but- I hoped I had misunderstood. I had hoped that he had gotten wrong, that he was telling me that he didn't trust me with the location of the base, but the stance of the soldier before me, the way his helmet looked in my direction, I could not lie to myself and deny the simple conclusion.
"I see." What exactly could I say to someone who had apparently lost- everyone? Or perhaps only his people's base on this side of the portal had been destroyed,and he was lost to this side, left behind, perhaps?
I could say even less to someone who couldn't even understand my words. What, should I put my hand on his shoulder? I almost scoffed at the thought, staring at the swept sand.
With some hesitation, I began to draw again.
Another rectangle, but this one was filled with triangles. My sword rested above the border of the rectangle, and with the barest moment's hesitation I drew a circle within the rectangle, rather than outside with a triangle like I had originally intended. Leave the offer utterly unambiguous.
He sat there, a few long moments, watching the rectangle, before he moved his finger to the outside of the rectangle, drawing a circle, and then brushed his thumb over the circle within the rectangle.
A refusal, then.
I stared at him for a moment, wondering. From his gesture, it- did not seem as though he expected some form of rescue, or at least, none from his people. Was he- suicidal, perhaps?
At my questioning glance, he drew an X on the ground, and then gestured around us. That- was either Hell in general, or demons.
On a new section of ground, he drew a circle, and surrounded it with small crosses, his fingers, thick as the gloves made them seem, moving swiftly and dexterously as he made dozens of the marks around that lone circle. And then, with only a moment's delay he swept his hand across the drawing, and scoured our little map of each and every cross mark there.
Revenge, then. He wanted to stay and kill as many demons as he could.
I looked at the ground again. Or, perhaps…
At that, I drew a small circle and quickly surrounded it with cross marks. And then, deliberately, I reached down with my other hand, and with my own thumb, away the circle.
I watched him, carefully and deliberately. Confronting someone this openly over feeling suicidal was hardly a safe thing to do under most circumstances. Under these circumstances… there wasn't much else that I could reasonably do. With luck it might shock or anger him enough to temporarily knock him out of any suicidal urges? I couldn't know. There was a reason why I often had fellow officer read over any condolence letters I sent to the widows or orphans of soldiers who had died under my command, I had no true talent for helping strangers with their grief.
He watched the smudged circle, and again I wished it was easier to tell if he was trying to understand, or trying to determine how best to respond.
He reached down and drew a small number of cross marks on the ground, and then violently slammed his fist on the markings, grinding slowly on each mark he had made, and something about his posture made it quite apparent that he was actively thinking about the demons and his battles with them instead of simply making a dramatic gesture.
With that level of certainty in his motions, I doubted that I could dissuade him with reason or emotional arguments, even if we could speak each other's language.
No, this man was seemingly committed to the idea of killing demons until either every last one of them was dead, or far more likely, he died.
That was- I scowled at the smudged markings.
Utterly unacceptable to me.
But, I couldn't truly think of a way to stop him, unless-
At that, I began to draw again.
I drew cross marks, and quite a few of them, all along one direction, and then at one end of that formation I placed a triangle and a circle. At the far end of that line of demons was the rectangle marking the hell base filled with tri- Atlesian military troops.
And then I began to smudge out the cross marks between us and the base. When I reached the end, I place one last triangle within the base, and one circle outside the base.
Hopefully, the message was clear. "Escort me back to the base, we can kill plenty of demons en route, and once we get there you can simply go your own separate way."
If he accepted, I had two hopes. The first was that, upon seeing signs of civilization, upon seeing, and knowing with certainty, that there were still options for him, that he wouldn't just be one man fighting demons until he died, that the world as a whole would still continue, even if his part of it was gone, that he might find the will to live a normal life.
The second hope was that, if he got close enough, then Lavender, Helmer and I could smack him across the head, tie him up, and drop him on a chair in front of a linguist and a therapist.
That particular plan was, perhaps not optimal, but I imagined that I could fine tune it somewhat as we made the trip.
Of course, not a hint of such thoughts showed on my face as I watched him consider my offer, before he slowly gave a single nod.
With that, I turned, and observed my compass. Assuming that it hadn't suddenly glitched out, I had a clear direction.
The only question was, I thought as I looked back to the man beside, was how fast he could run?
—
And so the prophecy is fulfilled, even if he (currently) seems a bit more reasonable than that.
At my next vantage point, I spotted five imps, running in the same direction as I was, and I jumped to the closest one, slicing through one with my separated sword and allowing the momentum to carry me through to killing the next.
As they were beginning to react to me, I simply raised my other hand and threw my dagger into its eye, and I used the brief reprieve to skewer the second to last of the imps, impaling it and then pressing my boot against its chest, kicking off of it and extracting the blade in a shower of blood and viscera as I leaped to the third demon to die and extracted my dagger from its head even as it had begun collapsing to the ground.
With that, I ran past the last demon without touching it even as it roared at me. In truth, I didn't know if leaving a demon or two alive out of every group I killed was essential to keep the demon's attention focused on myself, but leaving a few witnesses alive could hardly hurt.
Almost as an afterthought, I moved to the side slightly enough to just barely dodge the fireball the imp had thrown at me as it finally collected enough of its faculties to begin to chase me.
In truth, it had begun to occur to me that there was something of a flaw with this plan, namely that whoever was fighting the demons might not like my leading a train of them to the fight, possibly seeing it as akin to the Grimm baiting tactics the White Fang occasionally used. Regardless, it seemed something to deal with as I got closer to the target, and my current train was something that I could easily manage to deal with on my own, a few lumbering Cacofiends and a collection of Imps desperately scrambling to keep up with me in a way that was almost comical (disregard that, I noted as one tripped and fell into one of the seemingly endless pits scattered about the place, and another leapt into the blast of green flame from a Cacofiend, dying instantly and setting the Imps to attempt to kill the Cacofiends, it was comical.)
Every once in a while one of the larger demons, Mancubuses or Hell Knights, would manifest itself in a flash of light in front of me, and if it seemed like I had an opportunity to quickly kill it, I'd take it. Otherwise, I'd simply move on.
Without a team to look after, without needing to look for paths for the less acrobatic troops under my command, I had neared the once-distant sounds of battle within just a few minutes.
In truth, I'm not sure what I expected to find at the sight of a prolonged battle against the demons.
Likely a base or a well entrenched position, judging by how long the fight had been. Possibly an army.
I had not expected to find a single soldier clad in green armor not entirely dissimilar in appearance to the mass produced armor we provided our soldiers, it was even face concealing, something largely anonymous.
While I might have liked to have made a more calculating first contact, to assess this soldier more closely, I was somewhat distracted by the swarm of demons massing in the area.
Dozens of Imps, Hell Knights, several Cacofiends, and two Mancubuses were all seemingly fighting this one… with that armor I couldn't even tell for certain what sex the figure was, though by the build I suspected male.
Quickly determining that I'd really rather have the soldier alive for a proper first contact, I leaped down towards the nearest Mancubus, conveniently right below where I had entered this arena, and leaped towards the front of its mass.
The thing's beating, mechanical heart in its opened chest honestly disgusted me, and so I responded appropriately, skewering it with my sword and ripping it from the thing's chest as it tried to reach its clumsy, mechanical gun arms in my direction.
I flicked my blade, pulsing my aura as I did so, and the heart flew off of it, reaching an approaching Hell Knight and then-
Exploding.
Well.
That was useful information, I supposed as I leapt from the collapsing mound of fat, the thing quite dead without its heart.
Knowing I'd need to protect my newfound- I couldn't even call the stranger an ally yet, but at least a possessor of mutual enemies- but needing to fight aggressively, I summoned two ethereal Hell Knights of my own, and sent them charging into the melee where the soldier was fighting.
At worst, he might shoot the things, but hopefully he'd be able to recognize that they were fighting the same targets, and were also glowing, bright ghostly figures instead of the more fleshy versions he was currently killing, and so were unlikely to be his enemies.
With that, I ran to the next Hell Knight to challenge me. If my steps weren't quite as steady as they once were due to exhaustion, well, the relative lack of finesse proved to be immaterial, as the thing was still far clumsier and brutish than I, and I swiftly left the dead thing with its bleeding throat behind me.
I chanced a glance at the soldier, and noted that he did seem remarkably agile as he darted about a small group of Imps, the shotgun in his hands making single, accurate blasts at their skulls that killed them cleanly and efficiently. One demon seemed slightly more durable than the rest, and simply staggered, at which point, the soldier's gun vanished, and he grabbed the demon's head in both hands, wrenching the jaw and brutally dislocating it as he twisted the head far enough to snap the thing's neck, which was rather less quick and efficient.
I was so caught up in watching him fight that I nearly missed the Imp leaping at me from behind with a roar. Nearly, I thought, as I moved to the side and held my sword vertically in the direction that the Imp was leaping, its own momentum thrusting the sword into its face and slid down its body until it exited through the leg. Without my exerting much force, it wasn't a particularly deep wound, and the Imp simply collapsed on the ground as it landed.
I ignored the wounded Imp for now, in a solo fight I might have wanted to confirm my kill, but when I was protecting an allied VIP (well, Very Important for now at least, considering I wasn't quite sure how I'd find his people if he were to die in this battle) but instead charged for a Cacodemon which was readying one of its big balls of plasma but not actually aiming it at myself, which immediately marked it as a high priority target. I idly cut down another Imp as it tried to intercept my charge, and jumped on top of the Cacodemon's body. It bobbed in the air at my weight, and that moment of disorientation was long enough for me to bring my sword down into the thing's eye, which exploded into- yes, more blood, I was reaching the point where I missed fighting the creatures of Grimm.
As I leapt off the now-corpse, already dissolving in the air, I made a delicate landing by a Hell Knight, landing on one knee, Seeing the challenge, it spread its arms outward and roared, clearly making its own challenge. It was the work of a moment to dash by it's posturing arms, slicing at the vulnerable elbow of the conveniently unguarded arm, and it recoiled in shock at the pain and my treachery. At that, I couldn't help but smile, despite the tiredness in my arms and legs, despite the fact that I was in Hell, despite every single thing that had happened today.
Oh, yes, it was terribly surprised by my brutish and dishonorable attack. So crude, so rude, so terribly unexpected. It looked almost more betrayed as my sword cut through its throat. I have, in the past, indulged blustering White Fang members, roaring Grimm, and even drunken wretches when they wanted to show a few flourishes in battle, pausing the fight long enough to give them a quick salute, or a polite crossing of blades.
I was an officer and a gentlewoman, after all, and that was a simple courtesy to grant. Also, it was occasionally amusing to watch them puff themselves up and to then puncture their pride in a literal sense, but that wasn't an indulgence I could allow myself today.
I flicked a string of blood into the eyes of a charging Imp, and as it flailed backwards, I simply stepped forward and stabbed into its chest, ripping it out again with a heeled boot on its shoulder and something that was more of a shove than a proper kick. More Imps surrounded me, as unaffected by the death of their comrades as they always seemed to be. But I was ever so slightly distracted by the sound of rockets firing.
I turned to the surviving Mancubus just as a small flurry of rockets flew towards myself. I simply- flexed my will and my Semblance, using a significant amount of my blades' stored dust and summoning a massive rune forming on the ground around me, and within a moment it exploded into a cloud of mist and ice, the mist turning distinctly red around the Imps had been approaching me as the whirling ice and shredded their bodies. I pushed the miniaturized blizzard forward, the air clearing around me as the rockets were shoved out of the way, detonating to either side of me.
I faced the Mancubus as my crimson cloud dispersed, and raised my eyebrow challengingly as I casually held my sword to the side, brushing my free hand against my hair (an affectation, of course; my hair was kept perfect by my aura). I was somewhat surprised to see the foreign soldier behind the demon. Had he- the battle around us had gotten quieter, I supposed, he had likely finished off many of the demons on his side on his own.
I briefly chastised myself for tunnel vision, again, all the while wondering what the stranger would do. In turn, he brought out- a gun that was much too large to have hidden on his person, the minigun with three separate sets of spinning barrels something I might have thought excessive on a Paladin. The Mancubus distracted, it had absolutely no chance to respond as the barrels began to spin, and a truly remarkable amount of lead blared out, shredding through the layers of fat of the screaming board member-
I shook my head, dismissing the thought once more. Far too much blood in the air; I wondered if perhaps I should have brought a gas mask. I noted, off to the side, my Hell Knights butchering a Cacofiend; one seemed to be holding its mouth open as the other attempted to rip out the thing's tongue.
A burst of blood, and- well, that seemed to be the last demon on the battlefield, judging by the sudden silence, and now I stood before the stranger as my own demons came stand beside me, and I regarded him with some curiosity.
Aura was an expression of the soul, and as much as I was fond of the dignity of proper uniform, the aura was strongest when one could express that soul, and so those who had advanced in using aura beyond what mere flesh could achieve tended to have highly personalized outfits and weapons. It was, however much the occasional bureaucrat might whine about costuming costs and the logistics of customized equipment, simply more effective than a conventionally strict uniform appearance. As such, when I saw the form concealing armor, the only ornamentation seeming to be that odd red symbol on the green helmet, I had assumed the figure to be some grunt, not unlike the men that I had been escorting recently.
But- he had been fighting on a level closer to that of a Hunstman, and that gun of his, which he no longer seemed to be carrying was- to put it bluntly, we would have never armed our average soldier with such a weapon, even if we had the budget or the Dust, even ignoring that he seemed able to summon and dismiss those weapons with ease. I almost thought that he was using Hard Light Dust, but- that weapon had seemed solid to my eyes. Either he had some other trick, or whatever kingdom he served had advanced far beyond our abilities when it came to the usage of HLD.
He approached me, an angry, stalking walk full of barely contained anger and adrenaline, shotgun still held barely at rest, a movement that would makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand rise up-
Well, it would if I was a coward, at least.
In response to his wary caution, I raised an eyebrow at him, stood up straight and tapped my heels together, hands behind my back. He was of roughly the same height as myself, though our respective postures and his wider stance put my eyes slightly above where I presumed his eyes would be behind that faceplate.
I was just as willing to posture as he was, the rude-
My thoughts derailed as I actually remembered my objective, here.
Ah. Right. This was actually a first contact, a situation where being polite was paramount, the sort of scenario I might have seen in books or movies enjoyed by some of my fellows. For a moment, I regretted not joining them on more movie nights, as- well, truthfully, this wasn't something that we had particularly trained for.
However, I had been trained in statecraft, decorum, diplomacy, and fine dining etiquette by a combination of my heritage, my military service, and my work as a direct agent of General Ironwood, and as such I should be able to handle a meeting such as this, especially under circumstances with shared enemies. Grimm forged quick friends, as the saying went, and though those weren't always the most reliable of friendships, they might serve as a foundation for future efforts.
"I am Winter Schnee, Specialist of the Atlesian Military, and in the name of the Kingdom of Atlas I extend our greetings to you and your people." I held out hand for him to shake.
He stared at it, for a moment, the aggression having seemed to slightly bleed out of his form as he regarded it, but refused to shake it as he looked at me and spoke in a voice that, while low, was far less of a growl than I had expected from his appearance and behavior.
It was also, of course, utterly indecipherable.
A language barrier, obviously.
Shit, I restrained myself from saying during this likely historic first contact, though I imagined the history books might fudge the details anyway if I had.
This was very much not something that I had trained for.
I stood there, keeping my posture firm as I regarded him. Somehow, the thought of what, exactly, I would do once meeting another civilization had escaped my mind. I suppose I assumed that we'd simply kill enough demons in each other's proximity until we were friends, or perhaps I could just awkwardly leave once I learned where their base was and we could send a diplomatic team from whatever scientists or scholars we could grab with specializations that were even remotely applicable to meeting an alien civilization.
Was the man even human? Or faunas?
I didn't even know what his face looked like.
His helmet turned to my summoned Hell Knights, seeming ready to jump into violence within a moment, and looked to me.
He gave me a firm look, and pointed to one of the Hell Knights, and then made a slicing motion towards his own throat.
I could tell that he wasn't fond of them, but- "Are you threatening me?" I asked, an imperious tone in my voice. Language might not be the same, but I suspected tone and posture translated well enough, and my message was clear- utterly unimpressed.
He spoke, again, briefly, and instinct told me that it was more a statement of frustration than of communicating his intent.
He looked to me, and his shotgun disappeared, replaced by a pistol.
He pointed at me, then the demons, and then placed the barrel of the pistol beneath his chin (finger firmly outside the trigger guard, I noted) and shoving his head slightly upwards with the gun. He then lowered the gun, and repeated the gesture.
Was that- Charades?
For the absolute briefest of moments, I felt a surge of irritation that at the idea that refusing to join in on drunken party games might have made me less qualified than some of my peers in a diplomatic mission, but such was, of course, quickly suppressed in favor of trying to understand him.
His message seemed clear to me. The first "statement" hadn't been a threat, it had been intended as a warning. My summoning demons was dangerous.
My irritation with him lessened, somewhat, knowing that his anger seemed to come out of a form of concern, even as aggressively as it was communicated, and as pointless as it was. My Semblance wasn't actually summoning the demons, simply specters of my experiences. Whether they were demons or Grimm or Paladins didn't truly make a difference. He didn't know how my Semblance worked, much less have a better understanding of it than I did.
Still, I was diplomatic enough to dismiss my demons with a wave of my hand.
It was likely only the circumstances causing an overactive imagination that made it feel as if they disappeared with ever so slightly more- resistance, than they usually did.
I shook my head, and the two of us stood facing each other, him and I seemingly both caught up not entirely certain as to where to go from here.
Perhaps…
I carefully crouched down and and reached my sword down, making a circle in the dust on the ground. I looked to him, then pointed at him, then the circle. Him, then the circle.
He stared at me for a moment before crouching himself, looking at the circle, and I was struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. Myself in my fine Atlesian uniform, him in what appeared to be some highly advanced armor of a strange make, crouched down in Hell itself, making crude sketches in the dirt.
He looked to me, then pointed to the circle, and then to himself.
Ah, he understood. I hoped. It seemed likely.
I nodded, and now I made a triangle in the ground, and gestured to myself.
He pointed to the triangle, and then to myself, a hint of impatience in the gesture.
I scowled at him. Obviously we needed to go through the basics before we could communicate anything of value. As annoying as this was, it was entirely necessary.
Still, this should be enough for some communication. I made a simple, larger rectangle, which was hopefully recognizable as a building, though I was half-tempted to add a triangular roof and a chimney like a child's drawing just to make that fact more clear.
Inside the rectangle, I drew a number of circles, and outside, I drew a triangle and a circle. I watched as he stared at the drawing in silence for several long moments. It was hopefully clear enough. Take me to your base, let me talk to… anyone other than yourself, I'd make basic friendly gestures, and hopefully leave on friendly enough terms to be able to lead actual diplomats there in the future.
As he failed to move, I frowned. I could understand if he didn't trust me with the location of his base, was he trying to find a way to communicate that without being rude?
He slowly reached down to the drawing, putting his hand between our combined shapes and the rectangle, then slowly swept his hand across the building with a slow sense of finality, brushing away the rectangle and all of the little circles within.
Ah.
I admit, in that moment, I hoped that perhaps he had misunderstood what my sketches had meant. I wasn't quite sure what he might have interpreted them as, but- I hoped I had misunderstood. I had hoped that he had gotten wrong, that he was telling me that he didn't trust me with the location of the base, but the stance of the soldier before me, the way his helmet looked in my direction, I could not lie to myself and deny the simple conclusion.
"I see." What exactly could I say to someone who had apparently lost- everyone? Or perhaps only his people's base on this side of the portal had been destroyed,and he was lost to this side, left behind, perhaps?
I could say even less to someone who couldn't even understand my words. What, should I put my hand on his shoulder? I almost scoffed at the thought, staring at the swept sand.
With some hesitation, I began to draw again.
Another rectangle, but this one was filled with triangles. My sword rested above the border of the rectangle, and with the barest moment's hesitation I drew a circle within the rectangle, rather than outside with a triangle like I had originally intended. Leave the offer utterly unambiguous.
He sat there, a few long moments, watching the rectangle, before he moved his finger to the outside of the rectangle, drawing a circle, and then brushed his thumb over the circle within the rectangle.
A refusal, then.
I stared at him for a moment, wondering. From his gesture, it- did not seem as though he expected some form of rescue, or at least, none from his people. Was he- suicidal, perhaps?
At my questioning glance, he drew an X on the ground, and then gestured around us. That- was either Hell in general, or demons.
On a new section of ground, he drew a circle, and surrounded it with small crosses, his fingers, thick as the gloves made them seem, moving swiftly and dexterously as he made dozens of the marks around that lone circle. And then, with only a moment's delay he swept his hand across the drawing, and scoured our little map of each and every cross mark there.
Revenge, then. He wanted to stay and kill as many demons as he could.
I looked at the ground again. Or, perhaps…
At that, I drew a small circle and quickly surrounded it with cross marks. And then, deliberately, I reached down with my other hand, and with my own thumb, away the circle.
I watched him, carefully and deliberately. Confronting someone this openly over feeling suicidal was hardly a safe thing to do under most circumstances. Under these circumstances… there wasn't much else that I could reasonably do. With luck it might shock or anger him enough to temporarily knock him out of any suicidal urges? I couldn't know. There was a reason why I often had fellow officer read over any condolence letters I sent to the widows or orphans of soldiers who had died under my command, I had no true talent for helping strangers with their grief.
He watched the smudged circle, and again I wished it was easier to tell if he was trying to understand, or trying to determine how best to respond.
He reached down and drew a small number of cross marks on the ground, and then violently slammed his fist on the markings, grinding slowly on each mark he had made, and something about his posture made it quite apparent that he was actively thinking about the demons and his battles with them instead of simply making a dramatic gesture.
With that level of certainty in his motions, I doubted that I could dissuade him with reason or emotional arguments, even if we could speak each other's language.
No, this man was seemingly committed to the idea of killing demons until either every last one of them was dead, or far more likely, he died.
That was- I scowled at the smudged markings.
Utterly unacceptable to me.
But, I couldn't truly think of a way to stop him, unless-
At that, I began to draw again.
I drew cross marks, and quite a few of them, all along one direction, and then at one end of that formation I placed a triangle and a circle. At the far end of that line of demons was the rectangle marking the hell base filled with tri- Atlesian military troops.
And then I began to smudge out the cross marks between us and the base. When I reached the end, I place one last triangle within the base, and one circle outside the base.
Hopefully, the message was clear. "Escort me back to the base, we can kill plenty of demons en route, and once we get there you can simply go your own separate way."
If he accepted, I had two hopes. The first was that, upon seeing signs of civilization, upon seeing, and knowing with certainty, that there were still options for him, that he wouldn't just be one man fighting demons until he died, that the world as a whole would still continue, even if his part of it was gone, that he might find the will to live a normal life.
The second hope was that, if he got close enough, then Lavender, Helmer and I could smack him across the head, tie him up, and drop him on a chair in front of a linguist and a therapist.
That particular plan was, perhaps not optimal, but I imagined that I could fine tune it somewhat as we made the trip.
Of course, not a hint of such thoughts showed on my face as I watched him consider my offer, before he slowly gave a single nod.
With that, I turned, and observed my compass. Assuming that it hadn't suddenly glitched out, I had a clear direction.
The only question was, I thought as I looked back to the man beside, was how fast he could run?
—
And so the prophecy is fulfilled, even if he (currently) seems a bit more reasonable than that.