Episode Brooklyn: Chapter 1: Chained in Time

Chapter 1 of Brooklyn's adventure.

Memories Long Forgotten

A Confrontation That Created

More Questions

Than Answers

And Time Only Moves

Forward

 

 

 

Four Years After the Graduation of Team JCTB

The City of Mantle

 

 

 

            Brooklyn flipped through a comic book that she had become enthralled with over her long journey as she sat in a coffee shop in the center of the lower city of Mantle.  It was an unseasonably warm day in the city, but then again warm meant anything over 20 degrees for more than a few brief moments.  It was an interesting day to be sure.  Most kids might have been having snowball fights in the streets or something, but kids today were breaking out baseball equipment as if it were the first day of summer in the streets of Vale.  Brooklyn smiled as she watched some of the kids pick teams before playing.  She then got a message on her Scroll, and she quickly packed up her comic and made her way out into the streets.  She walked a few blocks then heard the roar of what sounded like jet engines, but was actually Penny Pollendina, the reconstructed robot girl of Atlas.

            “Salutations friend!” Penny said saluting Brooklyn.

            “Ruby said you were really energetic, didn’t realize it would be this energetic” Brooklyn said with a smile.

            “I like to think I get it from my father” Penny said grinning ear to ear.

            “I’ll take your word for it.  So, what do you know about this place we are going to be raiding?”

            “The Order had several strongholds within Mantle over the years.  While General Ironwood has mostly cleaned up these safehouses, it’s possible not all scraps of evidence were cleared out.  I’ve already checked the archives of the evidence currently do not show any reference to your mother or anything related to her activities.”  Brooklyn simply sighed and continued following Penny as she continued explaining as they got closer to their destination.

            “Given the fact that you only knew about these pieces due to the fact that memories locked away by Vinculum Memoriare of the Order returned to you, it stands to reason that perhaps you know about certain things that we do not.”

            “Don’t get your hopes up” Brooklyn said with a sigh.  “I’ve been looking these past few years and found next to nothing.  All I have to go on is this vague memory of growing up here in Mantle for a short time.”

            “Well that’s better than most of what we have found over the years” Penny said with a smile.  “And since this is so important to you, I believe something like this is required to be dealt with by you instead of some random Atlas soldier.”

            “Getting answers is important.  How they are found is not all that critical.”

            “Normally I’d agree, but I calculate there will be a far more emotional healing for yourself if you found the answers rather than somebody you have never met before finding them and then relaying that information to you.”

            “Forget it.  Are we almost there?”

            “As a matter of fact, we are here!”  Penny said pointing at a small abandoned apartment building. that was in the midst of being renovated.

            “I thought you said this place had been left alone?” Brooklyn asked as she watched an Atlas drone paint over some of the old cracked brick.

            “The inside has been” Penny replied.  “But Councilwoman Hill felt that leaving the space decrepit was not beneficial for the people of Mantle.  As such, she is in the process of revitalizing this building.  But I convinced her to leave the inside until you had at least gotten a chance to look through it all.”

            “I appreciate that” Brooklyn said as they stepped inside the building.  And like Penny had said, while the outside was looking more cleaned up, the inside was a mess.  Tables and chairs strewn across for reasons that Brooklyn could only assume was the remaining Order soldiers tried to defend themselves as Ironwood’s machines broke through and opened fire.  She looked around, pushing through some more debris and broken parts.

            “I know Ironwood considered this place out of sight out of mind but I figured he would have at least gotten some of these robots dragged back up to Atlas for repairs by now.”

            “Oh, the raid was only two weeks ago.”  Penny said as she pulled up a holographic document with the battle report.  “This was one of the most well-known straggler groups that Ironwood was hoping to let fester until it potentially reeled in a big name like one of the remaining leaders, but Robyn threatened to just have the Happy Huntresses clean them out to advance her agenda faster.  Mostly because her political platform is blaming Ironwood for focusing too much on Atlas than Mantle.”

            “I mean, she’s not entirely wrong…..”

            “I trust the general” Penny said with a smile.  “Besides, without his funding, I wouldn’t exist!”

            “Just because you owe somebody your existence doesn’t necessarily mean they are trustworthy.”  As Brooklyn said this, something caught her eye.  A small glint from a brick in the wall.  She walked towards it and saw that it was a small brooch emblazoned with Brooklyn’s family crest.  Just like the one that was emblazoned on her pendant..  She pulled it out and looked it over, trying to see if it had any unique markings or something that made it unique, like a hidden key or code.  There wasn’t anything like that, but she did notice something interesting about this sigil.  Unlike the one she now adorned on her weapon, this particular sigil was reversed. Which might seem strange given the sigil was a blue bird that didn’t seem to have any discerning features if it was looking one way or the other.  But this one did.  All versions of the sigil that Brooklyn found in the past had the bird pointing their head to the right, while this broach had its head pointing to the left.  She started fiddling with it, but couldn’t seem to find anything different about it.

            “Did you find something friend?” Penny said as she entered the room Brooklyn was investigating and saw her looking over the brooch.  She then walked over and started scanning it with her eyes.

            “Nothing special about it that I can see” Brooklyn said handing it to Penny.

            “Yes, because it is not something you would know to look for” Penny said as she twisted the head of the bird on the brooch causing it to make a small clicking noise.  This caused a small compartment to open in the body of the bird on the brooch containing a single piece of paper.  And scrawled on that paper was coordinates.

            “The heck is this?” Brooklyn pondered.

            “According to my databanks, those coordinates lead to the peak of Mount Inja.

            “Mount Inja?  Never heard of it.”

            “Not surprising.  Most explorers never dare to venture near it.  It’s near the top of the continent of Solitas, and is considered the most dangerous place on all of Remnant.

            “Seriously?  They gave it that title when Vacuo exists?”

            “It is because it is not only the oldest of Remnant’s peaks, it is also the most dangerous.  Groups who venture into those mountains are either battered and wounded beyond reason or are never heard from again.”

            “Did anybody think to try and reach the peak by flying over it then landing from above?”

            “There have been attempts in the past, but there is a massive unnatural storm that covers the peak that has been raging for longer than recorded history.  All official records state that every time a person dived into the storm from above, they ended up disappearing like all other explorers who attempted to climb from the bottom.  The storm encapsulates the entire peak.”

            “Then I guess we’re about to make history today Penny.”

            “We are?”

 

 

Two Hours Later

The Skies about Mount Inja

 

 

 

            Brooklyn looked down and saw the storm swirling overtop the mountain’s peak.  Like Penny had described, it seemed unnatural.  The storm swirled like a hurricane, but it did not move.  It simply remained at the top of the peak, with occasional sounds of thunder clapping through the clouds and howling winds echoing.

            “The coordinates are right here” Penny said shouting over the winds, “but we can’t go any further.  Is this really worth the risk?”

            “Given everything I’ve gone through?” Brooklyn said as she put on a parachute and cracked her knuckles, “Yes.”  With that, she jumped out the side of the airship despite Penny’s loud objections.  As Brooklyn fell through the air, she felt the pressure of the storm growing stronger and louder.  Within moments, she was in the thick of it.  The sounds of the thunderclaps were right next to her now, even a bolt of lightning flew past.  But Brooklyn remained determined no matter what.  Her Semblance created an aura sphere around herself shaped similarly to a meteor crashing through the atmosphere.  Anything that hit the Aura sphere bounced off in several different directions.  Finally, Brooklyn broke through the clouds and saw the ground below her.  She pulled the ripcord on the parachute and the cloth opened allowing her to drift down slowly to the ground.  As soon as she touched down, she was covered by the parachute tarp and got tangled in some of the strings.  At first, she tried to lift up the parachute and simply walk out, but the more she moved, the more she got tangled up.  Finally, she decided to just simply activate her scimitar and cut her way out of the parachute.  After a few more swings, she cut through and was surprised to not be greeted by cold harsh winds, but a soft summer breeze.  And the sun.  That was really surprising.  The sun shone down on the mountain as if it were the mountains of Mistral, the storm seemingly having disappeared in an instant.  She looked around and saw that a few yards away was a rather interesting tree.  It looked like a mighty oak, but instead of one mighty trunk that stretched to the heavens, it was a central trunk surrounded by six other stumps flowing away from the center.  Almost like water when a rock is thrown in a lake and makes a splash, these stumps flowed out from the central tree as if it were the ground from which is sprouted.  And all the different trunks had very different leaves on it.  One had the leaves of fall, another had the green leaves of summer, another had the first blooms of spring, another had the frozen leaves of winter, another had white cherry blossoms, and the one directly next to that one had black blossoms growing on it.  And in the center of it all, the central trunk had leaves that were a swirl of colors across all the branches spiraling up towards the sky.  It was almost as if the tree was wearing a ring around it.  The central trunk grew from the ground, the six other trunks grew out of the middle, and then the rest of the central tree grew into the collection of colors above the others.  Brooklyn continued to marvel at this and reached for her communicator.

            “Penny, can you hear me?” she said.  “There’s something down here.  And I don’t know what.  Somehow this thing has managed to live despite all of the storms that I had to get through.”  However, after a few minutes of silence, Brooklyn realized she was talking to radio static.  There was nothing coming through her communicator.  She pulled out her Scroll and saw it said there was no signal, which was strange as all Atlesain airships were equipped with regional-range communications discs to keep in touch with home base.

            “What the heck happened to them?” Brooklyn pondered as she stared up into the sky.

            “Excuse me,” a voice called out behind Brooklyn.  She quickly jumped around and morphed her weapon to rifle form and pointed it at the stranger.

            “Who are you?” she asked adjusting her sights at the stranger.

            “I was about to ask you the same question” the stranger said raising his hands slowly.  Brooklyn took a good look at the stranger and tilted her head in confusion.  The man wore a green shirt with white pants with a design more akin to the ancient days of Remnant, using strings as a belt and stitching visible in every inch of clothing.  But what surprised her even more was the fact that this man had silver hair but did not look a day over twenty.

            “Was there a secret renaissance festival happening up here all this time?”  Brooklyn pondered.  “I haven’t seen anybody dressed like that since that mission out in the boonies of Mistral.”

            “Mistral?”  The stranger asked in curiosity.  “What is that?”

            “What’re you talking about?  I mean, it’s a decent look, but given the normal weather of Atlas, I don’t know how this place is warm.  If we were at the base of the mountain  your skin would freezing off right now.”

            “What’s Atlas?”

            “You mean you seriously don’t know?  What, have you been living under some of these rocks or something?”

            “Not too far off, we actually have a village just down the way from here.”

            “Village?  I was told anybody who made their way up here would never be heard from again?”

            “Never heard from again?  Well my father likes to tell tall tales, but he has mellowed out over the years.  The message that he sends out today is one of acceptance and harmony.  So if people are never heard from again, it stands to reason they never wanted to leave in the first place.”

            “But how….”

            “We could talk all day, but I don’t think we’re getting anywhere just standing here.  Please, if you would just lower your….weapon?  Is that a weapon?  I’ve never seen anything like it.”  Brooklyn, still wary of the stranger, put her rifle away and walked towards the stranger.

            “I’ll trust you for now” Brooklyn said, “only because I have questions, and you seem to be the only one who knows anything about this place.”

            “I know much, but not all.  My father is the true Wizard, so he knows everything.”

            “Wait, did you say the Wizard?”

            “Yes, why?”

            “I don’t think I caught your name.  What was it?”

            “Ah, yes.  Where are my manners?”  The stranger held out his hand for a handshake and said, “My name is Ozpin.”

Author's Note

Please read/review/enjoy!