Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ A Certain Machinist ❯ Weddings and Assassins ( Chapter 7 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

 

SEVEN

 

Weddings and Assassins

 

 

Generally speaking, wearing a tuxedo and getting glad handed by the Vale city council, the Vale generals of the army and air force and several of the teachers at Beacon, including Ozpin who was very sarcastic about having to ignore lots of work rather than actually do some himself, all that generally did not lead up to assassins in the rafters at my wedding. But in my case, in a very James Bond way, it did. And I still don’t have aura. Unlike most of the locals, I planned for this, because I’d foiled several of Cinder Fall’s plans, and I wasn’t interested in letting her survive to tear apart Vale, when I’d gone to a lot of effort to make this place home.

 

Few people look up when they enter a room. I’d installed my turrets, two of them, with silencers and heavy 10mm subsonic bullets with low velocity fragmentation jackets up high, in the shadows of the cathedral with the cameras and AI searching faces. It is a pretty strange method, but the science is solid, and I’d used them on my building in live testing. And I so hate that the criminals still require live testing to stop them breaking in. I’d probably killed dozens of them.

 

Four weeks after I’d proposed, our hurried wedding was still a social occasion, with several dozen sour faced daughters of various officials looking on at Glynda’s literally glowing countenance.

 

“You’re glowing again,” I reminded her.

 

“Sorry. I can’t help it. Mum was like this when she was pregnant with Suzanne. My little sister was a holy terror after she learned to walk. Mum just glowed all the time. Caused the worst problems when she went to the grocers,” Glynda recalled, her Devonshire accent leaking out. Ottery St. Catchpole was in Devon, just down the road from the Weasley… hovel, apparently. Having Luna Lovegood for a mother, and the often absent Harry Potter as your Dad is probably a very confusing time for a childhood. Knowing your Dad was married to another woman, and maybe slept with a couple others and possibly fathered some sisters? Diana Cavendish was obviously another sibling, and sending them all to Novo Luna was a good move to keep them away from the mess at Hogwarts. Probably. If only it hadn’t given Glynda her personal issues, and her increasing anxiety about a first pregnancy after years of trying.

 

“My hand is getting sore from all the hand shakes. Everybody wants to be seen being friendly with me today,” I whispered to her.

 

“Not everybody. All those angry women were hoping to land you and manage your fortune,” Glynda laughed.

 

“Right. My fortune. I’m still my only employee most of the time.”

 

“You’d be rich if you licensed your inventions to other factories and took a piece of the sale price,” she reminded.

 

“We can talk about that after the wedding,” I promised. “Speaking of which: showtime.” We moved to our respective spot and the music started. She went down the aisle. I waited by the priest. We listened to his speech about love, charity, and kindness. We said our vows.

 

Cinder Fall emerged from a side door holding her orange glass bow. My AI spotted her, confirmed her drawing the bow and shot her twelve times before her aura broke and then another eight times to insure she was dead. There was a glow that rose out of her body and swarmed away. Probably her maiden powers going back to a certain girl in the basement of Beacon. Like calls to like.

 

The sound of tinkling shell casings was actually louder than the gun firing, and caused the military men and hunters to stand and turn suddenly. Someone in the back spotted the evaporating body of Cinder Fall and screamed. Glynda stepped between me and the threat, which is kind of annoying because it was the right move. She’s got magical armor and can cast a shield, and I can’t. There were two more tinkles and a girl with green hair and brown skin collapsed in a bloody spattered wheeze in a pew near a family with kids. There was another scream, and then there was a final rifle shot outside, followed by one more.

 

“CLEAR,” voiced my scroll.

 

“Well, it isn’t a wedding without a funeral, am I right?” I laughed uncomfortably. The Vale council looked uncomfortable at this, though Winchester and his son both laughed. Cardin really is huge, and the two men laughed the same. Yang and Ruby had deployed their weapons in the back. They were in my Friendly database so the AI wasn’t overreacting to their defensive actions.

 

“So, three assassins. And I recognize two of them. This one is capable of casting realistic illusions on one person. The evaporating woman is the ringleader, a spy sent by a certain enemy Queen,” I said to Glynda. “She shouldn’t have stepped into the open so soon, but perhaps being denied access to the CCT transmission tower interfered with too many of her plans.”

 

Glynda managed to convince the guests to join us at the reception while the military investigators came to figure out what had happened. I gave names and associations to the highest ranking general, on the quiet while Glynda did her glad-handing. Being a combat teacher does remarkable things for remaining calm and having the ability to resist stress.

 

“So the ashes are what used to be Cinder Fall, former resident and survivor of Mountain Glenn. Her family died there and she was out for revenge. Killing me and probably multiple Vale councilmen and generals was enough bait to draw her into acting directly. She was the one behind the dust thefts, in order to build the bombs that were meant to lead large numbers of Grimm inside the walls during that subway breach incident. She was also working with Doctor Merlot, who faked his death, to take control of the Atlas battleships and androids to make them attack Vale citizens during a coming terrorist incident she was planning. It was probably meant to happen at the same time as a terrorist attack during the Vytal tournament, probably during the final match when most people would be watching, for maximum psychological impact. This would have empowered the Grimm. It would be a good idea to have observers onboard long distance airship transport flights looking for grimm stampedes, swarms, or other herd activity,” I suggested. The Vale Air Force general nodded agreement. It was a good idea.

 

“This still leaves the White Fang to act on their own, though they may still be coordinating with anarchists with high ranked hunter abilities.” He’d already provided sketches of two of them, and warnings about their abilities. Where he got this information they had been warned not to ask. Only that it was credible and had saved a lot of lives in Vale during the Breach incident. So don’t ask, just use the information shared.

 

“Roger. And the green haired one?” the general asked, pointing to the cooling corpse.

 

“Her name was Emerald Sustrai. She was an orphan, a pickpocket from Mistral. She had a strong but limited ability to force people within visual range to see illusions she controlled. It only worked on one person at a time, but was able to fool even experienced hunters. She was directly responsible for injuries to one of the senior hunters being cared for in the Beacon long-term care ward.”

 

“What about the gunshots outside?” the inspector asked, stepping forward from the crowd of officers.

 

“That was their assassin. Son of Marcus Black, who cut off his son’s legs in a drunken fit of rage. The boy was disturbed, and cruel like his father. He was responsible for a number of assassinations, though who and how many I do not know. His legs are prosthetics. I would not be surprised if they aren’t boobytrapped. Treat them that way. They contain guns and explosives. My drones probably found him with a rifle or explosives detonator?” I asked. The inspector nodded grimly.

 

“That is what our men report.”

 

“Do you need anything more from me or may I join my wife? As grim as these events are, we do still have a celebration,” I pointed out. The councilmen and several of the generals gave various orders and followed me out of the cathedral, heading for vehicles to go to our venue for the reception.

 

The reception was in a large family restaurant we’d rented out for the event, and was filling up with guests who hit the open bar to calm their nerves. My turrets whirred in near silence, watching, waiting for any further faces on my kill on sight list. Like Adam, scorpion, or muscleman. Or that one guy with the chainsaw.

 

I noted that Weiss was attending with Jaune and Pyrrha, doing her best to put on a smile. I hadn’t talked to her yet, but hoped to eventually. It seemed to be my job here, besides making guns. Reports had come in that my weapons had saved a number of villages from attacks, including by a certain tribe of bandits. Knowing Yang’s mother was watching her, and had presumably seen me when I was camping at the Xiao Long home, I wondered if she was testing my defenses or making a statement or just offloading some vicious tribesmen against my armed and ready customers. I was continuing development on my turrets, since face recognition and limited AI gave them useful abilities, particularly being able to see in infrared, like Marvin the Paranoid Android. Penny arrived with Ruby, dragging the adorable robot girl around the reception. I made sure to rub Ruby’s head, as usual, and pointed her toward the desert table.

 

“Be sure to leave some for the other guests. Everybody is going to want some,” I warned her.

 

“Yes, Dad!” Ruby replied sarcastically. I noted a certain crow in a tree, and gestured to him to join the humans. He shrugged but sat still on the branch. Good thing I programmed my turrets not to shoot at crows. They could tell the difference between actual crows and ravens and nevermore. So Ruby wasn’t going to be an orphan on my watch.

 

There were toasts, speeches from various people, including Doctor Oobleck and Professor Port, who both knew Glynda well, and eventually I gave my groom’s address, and then Glynda gave her own, and we cut the cake and ate a piece together for lots of photographs and scroll videos. My turrent guns outside fired a few dozen times and several white fang in disguise were killed. As it happens, you can map a skeleton, so even a mask or face paint won’t hide who you are. Carrying weapons visible in infrared under their clothes, which are transparent to infrared, cinched their intentions. I didn’t inform the guests because… well, silencers. The second attempt to disrupt our wedding failed spectacularly and we got to dancing and guests ate cake or joined us, as is traditional. The whole point of a wedding is to announce to lots of important people that the couple is off the market, and hitting on either was a fabulous way to get kicked out of the community or executed for bad manners. I think the pile of dead White Fang outside being cleaned up by the police with their sirens and lights off so as not to disturb us was also a message as to my preferred method. Glynda sipped fizzy apple juice and I did too, needing my wits about me with all the fun happening outside.

 

The dancing and partying and more salubrious speeches would periodically arise from the crowd, with well wishes for a fruitful union, an appropriate time for Glynda to place a hand on her belly and smile, which got wolf whistles and cheers from those sober enough to notice. More dancing, more handshakes, more well wishes and eventually guests began to leave in small groups, tipsy and their drivers helping them into their cars to get them home or to a hotel safely in the late hour. My guns coughed a couple times at common muggers making an attempt on guests wandering a little too close to patches of shadow. The guests didn’t even notice, though I think their drivers did. Silencers are awesome. Eventually we reached the point of propriety that Glynda warned her students to get back to their accommodation. We left things to the cleanup crew and left for my fortress of solitude, with turret guns, bullet armored walls, face recognition software, and a police station within sight of my doors after all the times spent cleaning up “local gang violence” with the same 10mm holes in them.

 

Cleaned up using an actual hot water shower I’d installed in the last week wasn’t heaven, but it beat the cold chemical shower I’d been using for the last six months. We retired to bed, too exhausted for sex on our wedding night. We did that in the morning, of course.

 

The next day was a slow morning with pancakes, applesauce instead of syrup, coffee, and long lists of messages to sort through. There were even some death threats from anonymous that was probably White Fang. There were well-wishes from Blake, Ruby, Yang, Jaune, and Pyrrha. There was a polite message to Glynda from James Ironwood, who admitted to having missed his chance to express his affection for her in years gone by.

 

“Did he really?” I asked her. She raised a delicate eyebrow.

 

“Are you trying to imply something?” she asked.

 

“No, you’re definitely hot. I meant did James actually have a crush on you, or was he just lying for political reasons?” I explained.

 

“I’m told by sources in Atlas that James had been rather seriously involved with a woman during his early years at the academy. I’m told they had a family, as well.”

 

“So that was smoke he was blowing. Fine, then.”

 

“I rather believe his comments to me were always saved for when Ozpin was present in order to attempt to distract the headmaster,” Glynda answered, moving onto the next message.

 

“Glynda, are you fully aware of Ozpin’s nature?” I asked her. It was the time, after all.

 

“How do you mean? And I say that knowing you frequently have access to any number of well kept secrets. Like my name and parentage,” she added.

 

“Ah, well, now that we’re married I feel it safe to share a bit more. My earth was nearly the same as yours… only your parent’s adventures were popular children’s stories. Seven books, eight movies. Your own birth was speculative, as was your sister’s but it turned out to be accurate rumor. In a similar vein, the stories here are likewise entertainment in my homeworld. So all the secrets are dramatic scenes, including Ozpin’s true name, his true age, and his ex wife. And the magic associated with their four daughters and their deaths.”

 

“Really now. I had suspected from Ozpin’s comments. He always seems unflappable, bored like he has seen every possible thing before. So, what is Ozpin’s true name?” Glynda challenged.

 

“Ozma the Great. And his wife was Salem. When he died, she went mad with grief and searched to the whole of Remnant for a way to resurrect him, eventually meeting the Brother Gods and asking for that boon. They considered her request to be offensive and cursed her with eternal life. She lives today, to the northwest of Vale in a castle on the continent that looks like a dragon. She is the queen of the grimm. Ozma suffered through endless reincarnation, and his curse is such that his memory never fades, but his personality overwhelmns and consumes the victim who houses his soul. So that book that Blake sometimes reads, the man with two souls is actually true.”

 

Glynda stared at me. This went on for an unnerving length of time.

 

“Just a moment,” she hushed me when I started to lean forward to see if she needed a reboot. Great truths can cause a system crash, after all.

 

“So he’s over two thousand years old.”

 

“Yes,” I answered.

 

“And his wife is the queen of the grimm.”

 

“Yes. She’s been organizing the terrorism beyond Vale and was the one giving orders to Cinder Fall, who tried to murder us yesterday. Twice.”

 

“Is Ozpin evil?” she asked.

 

“Not evil, but very bored, and he knows that attempting to kill his wife is impossible, which is part of the reason that various highly skilled hunters and huntresses disappear from time to time. The queen has servants, highly skilled spies who serve her presumably to help destroy Remnant’s human civilization or perhaps rule over some small number for personal reasons, most of which are entirely nihilistic and insane. The big muscle guy I’ve pictured used to be the brother of a start pupil of Ozpins, and she went to seek out some detail on the queen, was captured or killed, and he’s blamed Ozpin rather than the queen, who probably killed her or had her killed by grimm. Totally insane. The scorpion faunus is a religious zealot who serves Salem because he believes her to be ascending to godhood if she’s succeeds in killing all humans, including him.”

 

“That’s insane, but not worse than some students I’ve known,” Glynda shuddered at memories.

 

“So isn’t trying to win a war against this Salem insane if she’s alive because the brother gods will it so?” Glynda remembered.

 

“Pretty much. The thing is, her power is limited to the grimm and her servants. Kill enough servants and she’s back to grimm alone, and they aren’t good at talking or recruiting new servants. It could buy us a decade or two of relatively disorganized peace. We happen to have killed around half her servants, so far. Get those two and a couple wandering spies and we’ll be even better off. And Amber should be healing, finally, and Ozpin might be feeling a bit less helpless or tense in response. Of course, we will still need to deal with possible grimm swarms on the Vytal festival, so I’m going to be busy dealing with my projects, and you might try to convince Ironwood to run a virus scanner and a firewall on his Operating system for the ships and paladins. They are wide open for hacking right now, and they could attack civilians and hunters if they are controlled by Merlot, who is still alive and presumably has access to the CCT network. Ozpin pretty much ignored my warning about the CCT didn’t he?”

 

“No, he actually placed guards and disabled the terminal in the main operations room so the inserted hacking tool did nothing, was extracted along with the infected equipment, and is being examined by Professor Polendina back in Atlas, at his lab,” Glynda countered with a smirk.

 

“Really? That’s good news. Sensible of them. And kept it secret, too. Well done,” I kissed her. She tasted of coffee.

 

“I saw that Jaune was escorting Pyrrha. And he’d gotten her into a dress. And himself into a tux. They looked good together,” I mentioned, changing the subject.

 

“Yes, I’m sure that Ozpin was upset about that. Probably forced him to talk to Miss Schnee,” Glynda replied, sipping her coffee.

 

“Which one? Winter or Weiss?” I asked for clarification.

 

“Winter is coming soon, presumably to meet with her sister as well as escort the competitors from Atlas Academy.”

 

I snorted in laughter. Winter is coming.

 

“What?” Glynda asked.

 

“Ever see Game of Thrones?” I asked her. She shook her head.

 

“You didn’t miss much. Mostly tits and dragons, not that big of a deal, but it was during a drought for television that wasn’t car reviews or murder mysteries, so lots of people saw the show, and they put it on HBO so it was international. Winter is coming used to be a frequent quote in that show, so people tended to laugh anytime someone said it be accident.”

 

“Ah. I see. This is one of those differences between our worlds, then.”

 

“I’m sorry I can’t bring the music from there over here. It might actually change how people think.”

 

“Why? What could be so amazing about music that it would change Remnant?” Glynda asked.

 

“Remnant has a small population. Maybe 20 million? Earth was over seven billion when I died there. We were on the cusp of artificial intelligence, and already had limited applications for it, including music and video and image generation. It wasn’t perfect, but it had a lot of potential if they could get it past mimicking humans and actually developing intelligence, self awareness. Music expands the possibilities of what people think humanity is capable of, of thoughts and emotions that primitive survival and low populations struggle with, never have the time to develop. Remnant is too-often stuck dealing with survival to actually stop and smell the roses and think deeper thoughts. And those who do think them don’t have a good way to share the ideas, so they either go into seclusion chasing the end of that rainbow, never sharing it, or develop a superiority complex that makes them into madmen that hurt people they find too inferior to have worked it out for themselves, or unable to listen. It explains people like Merlot. He could have done a lot of good for Remnant, but he decided to experiment on grimm and caused the Mountain Glenn disaster, inadvertently orphaning Cinder and driving her insane with the need for revenge while working with the madman that literally caused her parent’s deaths and ruined her childhood. Salem probably thinks the irony delicious, but since she cannot die, madness is all she has to keep her company.”

 

“Do you always have deep thoughts at breakfast, dear?” Glynda asked me. I shrugged.

 

“Probably. It motivates my work, at least. Probably caused by all those restored brain chemicals ignited by the power of strong coffee first thing.”

 

“So when this war is on hiatus and your factory is automated enough you don’t have to work 60 hours a week, or better yet, we license your technology and designs to bigger factories with employees, and you can make money without working, what are you going to do then?” she asked me.

 

“Quality of life for demilitarized settlements, with turrets to defend their walls? Water treatment plants? Semi-automated crystal mining equipment? Liquid fuels for non-dust-crystal based tools and vehicles? We can’t grow a big civilization that will last using a fuel that has to be mined and will eventually run out. They don’t have oil here. The planet didn’t have life or continents before people got here. The shape of the continents makes that obvious. That means there’s no oil, coal, or even lignite to use for fuel. We have to manufacture fuels like natural gas from sewage and trash, convert that to complex liquid hydrocarbons, and make enough to supply human needs so population can rise steadily, and take back the land from the grimm. Get to the point that even huge swarms are easily defeated without causing fear or panic, and eventually get advanced enough to destroy the grimm tar pits, where the grimm rise, and find a way to close them off.”

 

“That will make the Brother gods angry. They created this world to test humanity,” Glynda reminded me.

 

“That’s what the anime said, but it never got finished.”

 

“What do you mean?” Glynda asked, confused.

 

“The company that made it went woke, then broke, and the property sold off. The last few seasons of RWBY didn’t make money so they canceled the show. Nobody knows how it ends, including the writers.”

 

“That is… kind of sad,” Glynda said with a degree of thought.