Whitley
Whitley approaches the cell door where James Ironwood is still trapped in. He sits in the dark, his beard beginning to grow longer as he sits in the darkness. He crosses his arms and he presses his shoulder against the thick metal door when he stands there, smirking as he stands there. "Was it all worth it?" Whitley asks him with a cocky smirk, and Ironwood looks up from where he sits, at where he heard the voice. His metal hand clenches into a fist and he grits his teeth in anger.
"Open this door, Whitley." Ironwood demands coldly. Whitley laughs, his blue eyes widening slightly when he stands there.
"I wouldn't be so rude, General." He says smugly, a comment that just makes Ironwood even angrier. Knowing that Jacques Schnee is hatching his plan to overthrow the Council. "I could be the only key for your freedom." He says. But Ironwood just scornfully gibes.
"You'd just run to your father like you always do." Ironwood says and that makes Whitley stop and he grits his teeth in anger when he says that, staring at the door which stands between him and the fist of the general that really wants to be sent straight through that door.
"What would you know?" Whitley chuckles, and Ironwood stands back up, walking over to the cell door, looking at where he is.
"I know a hell of a lot more than you, Ozpin told me about the things that are happening out there. Beacon and now Haven, and here you are at Atlas. Cowering under your father's shadow as always." Ironwood scolds with a scowl on his face, before walking back into the shadows of his cell. Whitley remains there and he sighs.
"Then maybe it's time to do something about that." Whitley states with a menacing smirk on his face. Whitley steps away from Ironwood's cell and he starts to walk down the white halls of the Schnee Manor, passing by waiters who carry trays. One of which is Klein and Whitley looks at him as he walks past him. But Klein hardly even takes notice of him, he just keeps on walking. Whitley reaches into his trouser pocket, taking some sort of key card from it and swiping it across the scanner. There is a faint green flash of light from the machine and the door unlocks, opening up.
The sound of drills and machinery working away resounds through the walls of the underground facility created underground. He walks down and there are scientists and engineers inside, working on something. Along with many bodies in bags on gurneys. He hops down from the steps with cheery energy as he approaches the gurneys. Whitley looks at one of the named bags. "How is production going, Doctor?" Whitley asks. The name on the tag reads Neon Katt; the one next to it is Flynt Coal. Whitley turns when a holographic projection of Doctor Merlot appears before him.
"We are working ahead of schedule. These Huntsmen have some impressive biology, not only is it making this project more viable...but also improving the Acolytes of Lien." He says, looking around. Whitley looks across the room and he can see a soldier wearing some sort of experimental rig and he presses a button. The device flashes bright and three over copies of himself form beside him and they mirror everything that he does. "All the semblances can be harnessed from their very D.N.A." Merlot says with a smirk on his face.
"Will it work on Deimos?" Whitley questions.
"Without a doubt, I must say however, I am surprised to see you wanting to create such a weapon. I thought you never wanted to be a Huntsman." Merlot presumes, crossing his arms.
"I don't." Whitley sharply says. "My sisters are a disgrace to the Schnee Family Name, if anyone is putting them down it will be me. Just need to wait for my father to give the order." Whitley says, smiling as he looks upon the mechanised suit being built. Only the Endo-Skeleton has been built so far but the plates are being welded on one at a time. And there are holograms that represent the blueprints of the Giant Armour, a suit of which that has been designed off.
Merlot chuckles. "I wouldn't hold your breath." Merlot says, turning and walking away, and the hologram vanishes from Whitely, but he did not hear the comment made by Merlot. He is too busy staring at the suit as it is being built.
Yang
They all stand around the table at Dragonspire Keep, ready to leave whenever they need. Returning back to the Emerald Forest...it is the closest they have been to Beacon after the fall. Nearly a year has passed and it still feels like the event happened yesterday. Raven holds her Odachi, ready to form the portal, but before they do, they see Kragen Nox walking towards them with his staff in his hand. "So, are you ready to go there?" He asks them all.
"I guess..." Yang sighs, feeling some anxiety about going there.
"Remember, to find the Visionary Book you must find different areas of which to locate it. Like the Arkhoni Ruins." He explains. "Once you find it, place you hand on the page and let the book sort through for what you seek." He explains.
"Got it." Yang answers respectfully with a nod.
Raven nods, swinging her sword sharply to open a portal behind them so then they can walk through the black event horizon. They all start to walk into it, leaving Kragen Nox behind at his Castle. "What next?" The Architect asks.
"We wait for them to return." He answers.
This is not the first time she has been to the forest, but it is not the same as when they were here last time. There was still one member of their group here. This is the closest that they have been to Beacon since it fell. They all walk out from the red portal, their eyes looking upon the green trees that surround them all and Yang stammers as she sees the wounded tower in the distance. They all start walking from the portal as it closes and Qrow looks at Raven. "Been a while since we have been here." He says with a chuckle.
"Not all." She says, remembering when she first ever saw Fear, when he showed her the nightmare that haunts her mind. The possibility of losing her daughter.
But when they look around, Jaune notices that Yang, Weiss and Blake are walking up a hill in the forest. They walk up it and they can see Beacon in the distance.
What remains of it...
The tower is barely standing and the dragon is no longer frozen atop it. The school looks so destroyed and the howls of the Grimm no longer echo from there. For whatever reason, it sounds like it has been completely abandoned. The three of them stand there, Yang's coat blowing in the wind with her hair along with Blake and Weiss' as they just stand there. It is the first time they have seen the school since it was destroyed. Yang closes her eyes and all three look back at Jaune who is just walking through the forest.
He looks up at a tree and there is still the scar in it where Pyrrha threw Milo to save him, the tip cutting straight through his hood. Jaune lowers his head and sighs heavily, looking down at the floor as he continues to walk along. Jaune's eyes close and a tear pushes through the gaps in his eyelids. Kassius stands with Neptune and Sun, as they are the three that were never here to experience the Emerald Forest. "Give them time." Kassius says to Neptune and Sun, walking past them as he looks around for any sorts of Arkhoni Ruins.
Yang still looks at Beacon, and then she looks down at her cybernetic hand, sighing heavily. Adam might have had some second thoughts about what side he was on, but he still amputated her arm that day. A moment that Yang will never forget, or even forgive for that matter. Blake looks at her side and there is still a scar from where Adam stabbed her and she looks back. Weiss is still filled with guilt, despite that Jaune told her that she shouldn't have to, she still feels responsible for what happened to Pyrrha that night. Because she failed to get Ruby up there fast enough.
But there was nothing that could have changed what happened up on that tower.
But it is like a magnet, their eyes are all peering up there to the top of that tower. Heartbreaking memories of the news that they heard from Qrow.
Despite that there were only two people up there that actually knew one hundred percent of what happened up there. Ruby and Cinder, and Ruby even started playing the idea over and over in her head that perhaps Emerald performed her magic on her mind to trick her into believing it. But since they have not seen her and Ruby can see her in this strange realm, the Charred Forest...it seems pretty certain that she did actually die up there.
And Cinder regrets it, the personality of Amber starting to play a part on Cinder.
It feels like the three of them were stood there for ages, but eventually they walk away from the hill to start searching for the Arkhoni Ruins. "Come on, we need to find that book." Yang says sombrely.
"Like old times." Blake remarks, remembering the relics that they had to find. Those relics were nothing like the ones that they have to find now. The ones that must be kept from the grasp of Death. Things are nothing like they used to be.
"To think that once we thought that all of this was difficult." Weiss giggles as she walks with Blake and Yang, Yang in the middle, Blake on her right and Weiss on the left.
"I know, it seems pretty stupid in comparison" Blake agrees. But something Yang remembers actually makes her start laughing when she sees Jaune ahead of them. He is not laughing, but something else is making her laugh.
"What?" Weiss denounces.
"Oh, just remembering that time when we heard Jaune screaming like a big girl when he and Pyrrha bumped into that Deathstalker. And I thought it was a little girl." She giggles as she walks with them and even Blake starts laughing as she remembers.
"Yeah, and while you two were getting a relic, Ruby and I were hanging onto a Nevermore." Weiss scoffs when she remembers back to holding onto the feathers of the massive crow. The three of them laugh at their memories as they walk along. These are the things that are important to them when it comes down to the survival in this war. The good memories are the things that these people must clutch onto. Otherwise they will lose themselves, as many others have because of this conflict.
As they walk, Ren and Nora walk behind Jaune, and they can tell that he is still suffering. No matter what he says, he will never stop suffering from the loss of Pyrrha, no matter how much time passes, the wound will never heal. It is like ripping an organ out, Pyrrha was such an important part of his life.
And now she's gone.
Qrow holds his sword in his hand, looking around as he walks with Raven and Winter, the adults of the group stood at the very back so then they can keep an eye on them all. "I don't know about you, but this is all starting to sound like wild goose to me." Qrow sighs as he walks.
"You're not giving up are you?" Winter questions.
"What could history possibly do to help us find out where Ruby was taken?" Qrow questions. "We need to plan and find possible individuals that could have information." Qrow snarls.
"No offence, but there is more to this that Ruby." Raven says, as cold as ever and that makes Qrow glare at her with furious eyes.
"She is all I am worried about." Qrow snarls as he walks and Raven gives him a look and then she just rolls her eyes.
"Well, we don't really have any other options right now, Qrow." Winter says.
"I don't care, my priority is finding my little girl." He whispers so then the others don't hear him say that.
"Why keep it a secret?" Winter asks.
"Because Yang has believed that they are sisters for her entire life." Qrow tells her.
"They have been sisters their whole lives, blood should not change that." Winter says.
"Sometimes things aren't that simple." He says.
"How?" Winter asks.
"Because it was my fault that Summer is dead." He coldly says, to get her to shut up and to move the conversation off to catch up with the others. During that debate, however, Raven has kept her eyes on the treeline.
There is that underlying feeling.
Like they are being hunted.
They continue on and they uncover what looks like a clearing, the trees part and before them is the same old structure that Blake and Yang found when they picked up their relics. "That looks familiar." Yang says as she points at it. They all start to approach the structure and they all look around. Hearing the tweets of birds in the trees. Yang and Blake walk over to the pillars that are stood in a circular shape and they look around. The pedestals where they picked up their relics are still there, but left clear. "Looks no different from when we were last here." Yang says with a huff, shrugging her shoulders.
"Look around?" Kassius asks.
"Yep." Yang answers as she searches for something. It looks untouched, but then again the last time they were here they did not realise the ruins would be from an ancient civilisation called the Arkhoni and that there could be a magic book around here. How things change over time.
Nora knocks on one of pillars to see if something happens, and of course nothing actually occurs. Ren sighs, face palming at how she does not quick prodding it. Jaune stands there, picking up an old stone to check if there is some kind of mechanism underneath it. Also nothing. He sighs when he looks around, but déjà vu hits him like a truck when he sees something in the distance.
The cave of which where he and Pyrrha found the Deathstalker. He walks towards the cave without anyone noticing that he has wandered off. He approaches the cave, looking at the markings on the outside of the cave, showing a Deathstalker on it. "How did I not see that?" Jaune rhetorically asks when he stands there. He looks at the floor and the torch that he made is still there after all this time. No one has been here since they came here. It is easy to forget that when they started and when Beacon fell, it all took place over a year.
And yet it felt much longer than that.
He turns around and leaves the cave. "Once was enough." He says to himself, shuddering at the thought of confronting yet another Deathstalker. Ever since then he has been afraid of Scorpions because of the massive Deathstalker that attacked them. He walks across the field to return back to the structure that they have found.
"Why can't these ancient civilisations make their stuff easy?" Sun growls in annoyance as he starts kicking a rock. He kicks it so hard that he starts bouncing on the spot, grabbing his foot in pain. "That hurt!" He yelps like a little girl.
"This is how a real man handles it." Neptune says, doing the exact same thing, kicking it so hard that he starts doing the same thing, like a mirror image to Sun. They both bounce around on the spot after not even nudging the stone slab from their relentless kicking. Blake and Weiss look at each other and they both roll their eyes at the same time and they return to examining the area for the mechanisms. "That didn't hurt! Not one bit!" Neptune lies before falling over.
Qrow crouches down and he starts to examine the area and Winter uses her glyphs to push the things out of the way. Weiss stabs Myrtenaster into the floor and she closes her eyes. A large glyph forms on the grass and it spins round swiftly as it sits there. Light glows from the glyph and then the sword rises from the glyph. Then the armoured hand and finally the entire form of the Giant Armour emerges from the Glyph. It stands tall and presses the blade into the soil honourably to Weiss. She uses her mind to command the Giant Armour to help by moving the rocks out of the way. The huge knight crouches down and picks up the slabs of rock, throwing them across the way to find things.
Meanwhile, Raven is walking around the circular platform in the middle of the structure, staring at the markings. She is on the right track as Kassius starts thinking of the same thing. Kassius walks into the middle of the circle and he looks down. Beneath them is a strange mechanism in the shape of a foot. Or a boot.
He looks at Raven and then at the marking. "What are the odds that –" Kassius says, pressing his boot onto the print and he twists it round. Luckily it was in the right direction, not stealing his thunder from his little moment.
The mechanism twists round and there is a muffled bang from underneath them. Like clockwork, the sounds of huge gears start churning round and they can feel vibrations channelling through the floor and the stone ground starts to shift. Altering almost. The rocks start to rise up as metal pistons and mechanical devices transform the area around them. They all step out from the structure as the circular floor starts to descend downwards into a staircase as the other pillar rise up, creating the rest of the structure that was thought to be destroyed. Turns out it was underground the whole time. The pillars of which the relics were placed on sink into the ground, like activation keys.
A door at the bottom opens, a thick piece of stone that is slide aside, revealing a cob web infested interior. "How'd you figure that out?" Yang curiously asks.
"There was a print on the floor, I put my foot on it and turned." Kassius answers with a shrug.
"Nicely done." Yang says. Kassius and Raven walk down the stairs first with the others behind them. Raven holds her Odachi tight, the red blade glowing against the walls as she walks down, looking around for any traps.
"Watch your step, who knows what the Arkhoni have got waiting for us?" Qrow says as he walks around, checking their six as they walk. Another door is open and Jaune panics when he stumbles into a spider's web. He flails around like an idiot, screaming like a girl until Nora manages to pull it off him.
"It's alright!" Nora assures.
"Oh god, I hate those things." Jaune shudders.
"So you hate both spiders and scorpions?" Nora asks him.
"Never gonna let that go, are you?" Jaune questions.
"Nope." Nora giggles.
They approach a large room underneath the structure, the same size as it was above, however this chamber is underground. Similar to the Dragonspire Keep, there are ancient Knight Statues bent down around the circular room. And in the middle of the room is a pedestal, and as luck would have it.
There is a large book, thick with thousands of pages that are sat down. Dust and webs covering its body. It has a thick metal edge around it and there is a weird presence to it.
Yang approaches the book until suddenly a bright light shines upon them all, causing them all to stagger back. The light forms a projection, an old recording from that era. It is a human, an Arkhoni. He has short black hair and wrinkles on his face. He wears robes around his body and his hands are clasped together like some sort of priest. He bows before them honourably, despite having no knowledge of who they are.
He speaks, in ancient tongue that they do not recognise. It must be Arkhoni. "Salve, Ego sum qui loquor." He begins, speaking with a pronounced voice, one that is strong and wise, like he could speak forever. Something that has become quite relatable with those of Arkhoni origin, they tend to have deep, commanding voices. And this man does as well. They all listen to what he says even if they do not understand what he is saying. "Qui invenit hujus Libri describendis, maxime cum animus sit presumendum est quia mortui sumus. Hic stetit in notitia iuvabit inimicum. Mutantur Grimm."
"Grimm, he said Grimm." Sun points out as he walks around, looking at the hologram that has formed.
"Anyone know what he said?" Jaune asks curiously.
"Not a clue." Sun answers.
"Kragen Nox might." Qrow points out.
"He has a point...but remember...we came here for the book." Yang says as she approaches the book.
Yang approaches the book and the book suddenly levitates off the pedestal, opening before her and the pages all flick open in front of her, stopping on a page with a handprint on it. Yang looks at everyone behind her with worried eyes. But Raven nods as she touches her shoulder gently. She sighs, breathing out carefully.
She places her hand upon the page.
Yang gasps when she feels her body tighten and lock up as an energy source of some kind passes straight through her body and pulls her mind into some sort of environment that she does not understand. They all reach out for her but Yang is unaware as she is pulled into this strange memory.