As the main airship continued to descend to where Ruby, Miles, Ty and Evan were positioned, Ruby grew more and more anxious.
“Ozpin, I really think we need some backup over here” she said growing more and more agitated.
“Patience Mrs. Rose” Ozpin said once again. “Once the main airship lands, then we will be able to begin our counterattack.”
“I just wish you told us what that counterattack plan was before we ended up staring down the barrel of their big gun!”
“Worry not Mrs. Rose. So long as they head straight to you without deviating from their plan, we will ensure victory.”
“Great, that makes me feel so much better.”
Lord Imperia loaded her staff with Dust for the upcoming battle. She then walked over to the main console and pulled up a projection of the aerial battle that was taking place. Most of the Atlesian ships were still spread out, trying to take out any airships that weren’t in range of the Order’s flagship. Lord Imperia quickly typed in a code for the console to highlight Lord Sangui’s ship. The console showed that he managed to slip away from the battle undetected and was starting to get closer to his target, that being the wing of the Academy opposite of where the flagship was. She grabbed her communicator and sent a signal to Lord Sangui.
“Lord Sangui,” she said as she made her way back to the main window of the helm, “have you faced any resistance to this point?”
“Negative my lord” Lord Sangui responded. “The enemy has no idea that I or my team are even in their airspace away from the battle. We will be touching down to begin our infiltration in a few moments.”
“Keep me updated when you can. I still think that Ironwood is playing a longer game than we anticipated.”
“I will make sure to my lord.”
Lord Sangui put his communicator away after Lord Imperia ended the transmission. He then moved up to the cockpit and looked out to where they were going to infiltrate. The warehouse where all of the Atlesian Knights and other android soldiers and mech suits were kept. Hoping that with the attack being centralized around the main airship, Lord Sangui had his team lower the airship on top of the warehouse. The ship hovered there long enough for the strike team to reach the ground, then it took off in order to stay away from the fight and be ready for a potential evac. With that, one of the grunt soldiers started cutting into the roof of the warehouse, and carefully removed it. The other soldiers and Lord Sangui then attached cables to descend into the facility. Within moments, they had all descended to the ground floor and had taken up their positions to begin their attack. Lord Sangui looked around and didn’t see any type of movement or heard the sounds of any machinery coming to life. None of the lights were on and there nothing that signified that they had been found or noticed. He then motioned towards one of the Atlesian Paladins, hoping that through their stolen access codes they could activate the Paladins and possibly put Atlas in a bind. Suddenly, the lights turned on and all the machines came to life. Several Atlesian soldiers and other Atlesian Knights appeared as well in front of the main hangar doors and took aim at the Order soldiers. Jacob and Pyrrha walked past the machines towards the Order with big smiles on their faces as they drew their weapons.
“Honestly,” Jacob said as he prepared a pair of kunai, “when you attacked Mistral it was a big coordinated planned attack. Now it seems like you’re just so desperate for anything you’re willing to throw everything at the wall without consequence!”
“That seems to be kind of a theme for their group” Pyrrha said mockingly. “They get the upper hand then lose it when one single thing seems to fall out of place. They did it when we were kids and they’re doing it again!”
“Yeah but last time they had the power of a literal god on their side, what do they have this time?”
“What we have,” Lord Sangui said as he took up a battle stance, “is enough determination and numbers to destroy you all.”
“Big talk from somebody who is literally surrounded by the worlds largest military” Jacob said as he threw a lightning charged kunai at the Order soldiers. Within that moment however, something popped up from the ground and absorbed the attack. A gooey looking person then started to melt into the floor like snow melts in summer. Lord Sangui then started slapping the backs of every soldier that he could touch, and suddenly several more Order soldiers materialized out of thin air. Some looked lifelike, others looked like slime monsters.
“Numbers aren’t an issue for me as you can see” Lord Sangui said with a smile. Jacob surveyed the new foes, cracked his knuckles.
“What good are numbers against superior strategy?” As he said this, Jacob signaled the Atlesian troops to attack. With the order given, the Atlesian soldiers fired and the Order troops either took up defenses or scattered to find whatever cover there was available. Any supply boxes or transport vehicles or anything that they could hide behind. But it was almost as if the entire space was set up in preparation for a potential attack.
“Surrender” Pyrrha said as she took a few shots at the hiding soldiers. “You have nowhere to run to.”
“I don’t need to run” Lord Sangui said as he took a knee. As soon as he did so, several Order soldiers surrounded him, as if to protect him from incoming attacks. The Atlesian knights continued to target all the enemy soldiers, but even if one that was guarding Lord Sangui fell, another guard leapt up and took his place to ensure that he was not injured. Moments later, several clones appeared around Lord Sangui, but this time they all looked exactly like Lord Sangui, with only slight variations that made them all stand out.
“Now, we are fully ready to face you!” all of the Lord Sangui clones said in unison. With that, they leapt out from the ring of soldiers and started attacking anybody they could. The original Lord Sangui remained in the center of the circle of Order soldiers, almost as if he himself had been locked down and stuck in that position. Pyrrha saw this, but didn’t have time to react as one of the Lord Sangui clones leapt up and started fighting her one on one. She looked to see if she would have any form of support, but everybody else had their hands full with other clones of Lord Sangui. She then noticed something interesting about each of them. The one she was fighting was cackling and laughing like a madman. One was fighting Jacob with ferocity and anger without much thought for strategy. And then there were other clones that seemed to be much more tactical with their attacks while fighting the Atlesian knights and other troops. She then realized that everything was being pulled from the mind of Lord Sangui. Realizing this weakness, she quickly pushed her clone back, morphed her sword to rifle form, and fired a few shots in order to slow down the clone and force it to regenerate before re-entering the fight. She then took aim at the main circle of Order soldiers that were guarding Lord Sangui. She fired once and killed an Order soldier, knocking him over and creating a hole. The grunt soldiers realized this gap too late, giving Pyrrha a split second to fire again and hit her target in the center. She fired her shot, and it was placed perfectly on Lord Sangui’s temple. While his aura did absorb the damage of the attack, it knocked him to the ground, resulting in all the clones, both of Lord Sangui and otherwise to dissipate and flow back into him. Jacob and everybody else saw this, and trained their weapons on Lord Sangui and his circle of troops just in case he tried a stunt like that again. Realizing they had figured out how to counter his primary attack, Lord Sangui picked up a rifle from one of his dead soldiers and shouted,
“Focus fire on the fuel pods!” As he shouted, he and his troops tried to hit the weak points of the Atlesian mechs, but in that moment, Jacob activated his time dilation and leapt up into the air. The bullets to him were moving so slowly that he could simply take his sword and slice all the enemy projectiles in half like it was nothing. After doing so, he positioned himself to land right in front of Pyrrha, who was ready and waiting having her shield hovering out in front of her thanks to her own Semblance. Jacob then landed perfectly on the shield and Pyrrha sent both of them flying towards the enemy. As soon as he was in range, Jacob leapt forward and started cutting down the surprised Order soldiers. They all tried to defend themselves and take Jacob down, but the moment they turned their weapons on him, Pyrrha and all the other forces in the warehouse charged forward, leaving the Order stuck for options. Lord Sangui grabbed his communicator and yelled,
“We need immediate evac! Give us some cover fire!” As soon as he got his message out, he and the soldiers who weren’t being destroyed by Jacob and Pyrrha ran over to the ascension cables and started climbing. Jacob reacted quickly and threw several kunai at the cables, cutting most of them, causing several soldiers to fall to the ground. Other kunai, while not cutting the wires, flew close enough to several enemy soldiers to cause the them to panic and fall to the ground or fall because the knife hit them directly. Lord Sangui, clearly panicked, held out his hand and several more clone-like creatures started flowing out of his hand. This didn’t phase Jacob whatsoever, as he simply cut right through all the clones and tried to get closer and closer to Lord Sangui. But then something happened that caught him off guard. Something that nobody could have predicted. Forming before him now was not a clone of another faceless Order soldier, but one with the face of Nathan Grover. The clone looked exactly like Nathan, even down to the most minuet details. Jacob froze, not sure how to respond. Pyrrha initially wondered why Jacob froze, but when she saw the clone, she froze as well. The clone raised its weapons to attack, but luckily, one of the Atlesian knights shot the clone, snapping Jacob and Pyrrha out of their trance. They returned to their efforts of trying to keep the enemy from escaping, but while they did take down a few more soldiers, Lord Sangui still managed to make his escape. As the Order’s airship swung around to pick them up, Jacob pulled out his Scroll.
“Professor Ozpin, we’ve successfully countered their attack on the main warehouse. Some of them got away however and seem to be returning to the main fight. How should we proceed?”
“Hold your positions” Ozpin said. “Things are starting to fall into place.”
Lord Imperia readied herself as the primary airship descended into the corridor that they had cleared a path for. She didn’t know who or what was waiting for her and her forces on the other side of the door. So when the doors did open, she felt a bit disappointed that there were only four fighters standing in the hallway. Granted she recognized all four of them as heroes of the Battle of Vytal, but was still surprised and disappointed that there were only four.
“Is this all that Atlas has to offer against me?” Lord Imperia said mockingly.
“Well your last boss underestimated us” Ruby said as she readied her scythe, “And look where that got him.”
“This ends now” Miles said as he twirled his weapons into battle position.
“Ugh, I was in the middle of roasting these idiots!” Ruby groaned at Miles as she rolled her eyes.
“You do you Ruby, but I’ve got a score to settle with these jerks” with that said, Miles rushed forward and started cutting through several Order soldiers. Ty and Ruby followed suit with Evan staying back to provide cover fire from his rifle. Lord Imperia fired a few rounds of Dust from her staff and tried to keep the four of them at a distance. But it became clear that this was going to be a close quarters battle. She changed the primary dust cartridge in her staff from fire to electric, and rushed straight towards Ty. Ty was quick to react to the incoming attack, and blocked it with relative ease. However, he almost got knocked back as soon as he made contact with the staff as Lord Imperia had charged the blade with electric energy. While his Semblance absorbed most of the hit, the sheer force and power of the electricity sent Ty flying after a few moments. He quickly gained his bearings, and got ready to try again.
“Seriously, why couldn’t Nora have been here for this one?” Ty said rushing right back at Lord Imperia. “That kind of stupid attack was made for her!”
“Fight now, focus on our absent friends later please!” Miles said as he continued to make easy work of the Order soldiers. Miles then noticed that Lord Imperia was fully preparing to defend and repel Ty’s attack again, but this left her wide open. Miles quickly adjusted his gravity so that it was almost like he was falling towards Lord Imperia. As he got closer, Lord Imperia noticed him flying straight towards her and turned to parry his attack. In that moment, Lord Imperia realized exactly what Miles was doing. He was drawing her attention towards him, lowering her defenses from the imminent attack that was coming from Ty. Ty took a powerful swing, and knocked Imperia into the air. As she tried to regain her bearings, she saw Ruby leaping up to strike her back down to the ground. Imperia tried to block the incoming attack, but Evan managed to fire a perfectly placed shot that caused Imperia to lose her grip on her staff, leaving her wide open for Ruby to strike. Ruby caught Imperia in the curve of her scythe, and threw her down into the ground. She still had some Aura left over, but when she hit the ground, she bounced up a short ways, and was right in the path of Ty, who took his sword, and swung it like a baseball bat, landing a blow that sounded like it was from a cannon. The strike that Ty landed on Lord Imperia was so powerful that she was sent flying straight back into the airship, knocking over several rows of Order soldiers in the process. She was slow to get up, but clearly ready for another fight. Just then, she saw something that caused her face to go white. Several blue rings were appearing out of thin air. Small portals that allowed for everybody that was present in Atlas to suddenly be right in the same corridor as the four that stood against the Order’s attack. Lord Imperia got up slowly, trying to gather her bearings. In that moment, another portal opened and Professor Ozpin, General Ironwood and Weiss all stepped through, with Ozpin carrying the Relic of Connection, a staff wrapped in two different vines. One white vine and one black vine.
“Played right into our hands” Ozpin said with a smile. Lord Imperia quickly got her bearings, and ran deeper into the main airship.
“All forces, retreat!” she yelled as an alarm started going off inside the main airship. As soon as the alarms started sounding, everybody ran into the main airship and started taking down whoever they could find. Ruby tried to use her speed, but the battle had been too much for her, and she barely had any aura left for herself in order to stay alive. Anybody who was close to the landing ramp tried to rush onto the ship itself, but the few trailing Order soldiers laid down cover fire, and kept most from advancing. Anybody with enough aura to try and make a serious attempt prepared to strike, but Ozpin held up his hand signaling them to stay back. Ozpin smiled and watched as the Order’s smaller ships started to turn and flee away from Atlas, with several escape pods flying out from within the primary airship and joining up with the other fleeing ships in the sky. The alarms continued to blare from inside the main airship, and the computer also started showing a countdown for a self-destruct sequence. It was clear that the Order was planning on sacrificing their command ship to possibly do some damage with its destruction despite their retreat. But before the sequence could reach its conclusion, Ozpin opened another portal with Ironwood right behind him. This portal lead them to the primary reactor core of the Order’s airship, where Ironwood found the nearest data port and plugged in a drive that started pumping information into the computer. Within seconds, the alarms stopped blaring and the self-destruct sequence was aborted. Ozpin smiled and made his way up to the command deck of the airship, while several Atlas techs began scouring through the computers for data.
“A great strategy indeed general” Ozpin said looking out the window. “Use the information of the relic as bait to weed out the moles in our organization, and draw in the leaders of the Order itself in order to turn the tide back in our favor. Now the Order is crippled, their data is ours for the taking, and so long as Ms. Curtiss and her team do their jobs, they will be on the run, trying to piece together what little they have left.”
“My only regret is that the chain of command was not apprehended” Ironwood said with clear disappointment in his voice. “If we had taken them out, we could have ended the war here today.”
“Perhaps my friend. But destiny is never left to chance. We have done our part, now we must hope that our friends can do theirs as well.”
As the ships flew through the air, Lord Imperia watched as their flagship still sat there, not exploding. Her anger was great, but she had even greater fears. She grabbed her long-range communicator and screamed into it,
“Lord Tenebirs, can you hear me? Lord Tenbebris?!” There was still no answer, not even the normal chatter that came out of the base. “Maximum speed to headquarters” Imperia said as she sat down next to the pilot. “I fear that our attack wasn’t the main concern for Ozpin and his forces.”
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