Finally, I managed to release the chapter after about two weeks of working on it... and you might not see that in the words

I've been REALLY busy over the past weeks (Mostly thanks to the For Honor Beta and from a couple of family issues) so I've only really had like 10 minutes to work on it each afternoon.

Sorry for the long wait peeps...

Naughtbeast

Chapter 12:

As the entire two teams of Guardians sat in the massive loading bay of Shadow's ship, the only thing that could be heard… was nothing. They sat around in various states of contemplation, all but one of them sitting. This one was, of course, Wulf… as he paced in front of all of them, he had his helmet taken off and was fumbling around with one of Invective's spent shells, something he would do when he couldn't think, not that it would help much.

"So has anyone even come up with any idea what we should do!" Wulf asked, sounding slightly annoyed and angry at the same time.

"Well if you were better at being a god-damn leader then we'd already have a solution!" quipped Damascus, although Wulf didn't get a chance to respond before Summer butted in.

"ENOUGH! Both of you shut your traps or I'll send both of your asses back to the Tower in pieces!" she roared, silencing them both instantly, neither of them wanting to anger the guardian. "So, the way I see it, we have two ways we can go about this… we either tell the government about the Fallen so that they can take them out easily, or we discreetly destroy them before the people of Remnant get too suspicious"

"I for one, vote we break the Fallen before they can do anything" offered Glacile, trying to get the conversation started.

"We won't be enough, we could never manage to take out an entire Fallen fleet… given the size of the battle we face, I suggest we give the locals a fighting chance" Pyrrha said, her face showing just how much she didn't want the same thing to happen as it did with Earth.

"If we do that, then it might alter the timeline and break our future" Ozpin reminded them, still not moving from his contemplative stature, which involved sipping from a coffee mug every ten seconds or so.

"Then the only thing we can do is nothing" grimly put Wulf, still pacing in thought.

"But we can't let the Fallen get to them!" Penny countered.

"I'm afraid that might be the only choice" Wulf refuted, speaking in a warning tone that showed just how serious he was.

"We can't just let them die!" Summer scolded him, shocked at her husband's sudden abandonment to everything he was meant to be protecting "Whatever happened to being the damned shield of the light, protecting those who need it!"

Wulf stopped pacing, although he didn't look back to her when he answered.

"My oath was to protect those of the Last City to the very ends of my life, what if, by the simple act of trying to alter this timeline, we bring the Darkness closer and it manages to reach Earth before the Traveler? What then! Everything would have been in vein and nothing would stand"

The others sat in silence for a few more seconds before Summer stood up once again and faced all of them.

"All in favour of helping the people of Remnant, please raise your hand" she announced, seeing as a few of them slowly raised their hands. When they had finished voting, she saw that only Wulf, Firewing and Damascus disagreed with the approach.

"Firewing?" asked Summer, not sure why the Hunter wouldn't want to help.

"Unfortunately, I must say that I agree with Wulf's point of view… if this is truly a point in the past, then we might threaten what has happened in the future…"

"Well what if we stop the collapse…" spoke the solemn voice of Shadow. Everyone turned to the Titan demanding an explanation for his interruption, not all of them wondering how this would be possible.

"Shadow, we are FAR before when the collapse was noted to happen… sure this is Earth, but the continents haven't even broken apart and drifted into those we are familiar with. It shouldn't be another couple of thousands of years until it happens and I doubt anything we do could stop it" Ozpin noted.

"Well what if we could?"

The Guardians all sat silently for a few more seconds until Summer asked the same question as before…

"All in favour of kicking the Fallen's ass back into oblivion and saving the hell out of Remnant raise your hand now"

As she expected, everyone except Wulf raised their hand… until she aimed Thorn at him and he hesitantly raised his own.

"Well now that we're all in agreeance where should we start?" Summer questioned, once again lowering her voice so it was much calmer.

"As with always, we need intelligence" Damascus answered, "That Captain can only give us so much and we need a better idea on the numbers we're fighting against"

"I'll head up a reconnaissance team to one of their Ketches" Wulf announced, standing up and walking down the loading ramp out to his ship. The others just shrugged and discussed who would go, the group settling with sending Firewing, Glacile, Torchwick, Ozpin and Penny along with him while the others would stay behind.

"So, what are we going to do?" asked Pyrrha, fiddling with No Land Beyond in impatience.

"We're apparently licenced teachers here so let's put that to good use…" Summer answered cryptically, smiling as she put on her helmet and jogged down the loading ramp, the others not even bothering to question her and followed the Hunter to wherever she was going.

[Geostationary Orbit above Remnant, above human colony known as 'Vale']

As the daily goings of the planet happened below them, the Fallen were simply overjoyed at their apparent inability to even remotely see their presence, judging by the lack of opposition they had experienced during the short time of their operations. Inside the command bridge of the Jevaris Notoriacis sat Chavis, the Archon ordered by the Elinski High Command to observe this alien colony and report back on their capabilities… and so far, he wasn't impressed. They hadn't managed to intercept any of their communication frequencies, none of their military even considered the possibility of interference from another planet.

They were in the perfect position to simply wipe them out in a matter of months… or so he thought. A commotion arose from outside the command bridge, shouting making it past the sealed bulkhead, until the door opened to reveal a Dreg wearing what he recognised as Comm crew gear. The Dreg scurried forward, taking a knee before the throne of the Archon.

"My Lord, we have…"

He didn't have the chance to finish before the Archon surged forward and gripped him by the neck, lifting him a few feet off the ground with his immense strength. The dreg's hands tried to feebly claw at the massive digits that were firmly constricted around his neck, a vain attempt considering the Archon could snap his neck without a second thought.

"YOU DARE ADRESS ME YOU LOWLY SERVANT! WHAT DOES YOUR MIND DEEM SO IMPORTANT TO IGNORE THE RULES I HAVE ENFORCED FOR MY ENTIRE SERVITUDE TO OUR KELL!"

Chavis slightly lessened his grip so that the dreg could talk though the grip.

"They killed them!" the dreg choked out through the death-grip, the Archon narrowing his eyes and lowering it to the floor.

"Speak now or I shall have you executed"

"Brother Naklis failed to report back after his raid on the planet's settlement! I checked on their equipment's signatures and they're all dead!"

The Archon roared in rage, slamming the dreg into a nearby wall with a swipe of his arm, breaking a few of the Elinski's bones and causing it to whimper in pain.

"FIND THOSE RESPONSIBLE! THE WORTHLESS KUR OF THIS WORLD CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO KNOW OF OUR PRESENCE!"

The many Elinski around the command deck began scampering to their assigned stations, getting to work on preparing a raid-party to find those responsible. That was, until a massive explosion rocked the Ketch and alarms began blaring across the command deck.

"My Lord, we have reports of a boarding party breaking in through the lower levels!" announced a Vandal from one of the stations, switching to one of the outboard camera's and showing the Archon a massive breach in the main airlock of the Ketch. The Archon roared in rage, enough for the crew to know that he wanted them dead… so they made sure to run to the armoury before they were on the receiving end of his fury.

"GET ME THEIR HEADS!"

[On-board the Elinski Ketch – Jevaris Notoriacis]

"Well that has got to be the easiest breach I've ever done!" remarked Torchwick, loading in another rocket into the Iron Gjallarhorn's chamber. The warlock sauntered through the large hole in the space-ship's hull, smiling as he noted the peeled back metal glowing bright orange even in the vacuum of space. He transmatted Gjallarhorn and took out Suros Regime, using his glide to manoeuvre through the zero-gravity of the open bulkhead.

He carefully made it over to one of the closed doors into the interior, opening his palm and summoning his Ghost, letting the little light do its work on the door. After a minute, it finally shunted open with a mechanical hiss and he floated in, closing it behind him and activating the airlock, hearing the chamber pressurise and the gravity return to normal. He shimmied to the door on the inside and carefully opened it slightly, not seeing any Fallen and then stepping through fully, breaking into a sprint and heading to his intended destination.

He was just about to round a corner when four Vandals sprinted past, all holding shock sabers, luckily they were running perpendicular to him and didn't seem to notice the Warlock as the ran. Torchwick thanked Wulf, Firewing and Penny for their distraction, being in the form of 'knocking' on the front door and raising hell. It was his job to make it to the loading docks and take out the Skiffs that were docked there so that they couldn't simply run the second they realised they were in a losing battle. Ozpin and Glacile were off doing god-knows what somewhere else in the ship.

He steeled himself and hefted his rifle, once again taking off down the halls, it was his time to do what he did best… burn everything to the ground.

[Command bridge]

"WHERE ARE THEY!" roared the Archon, slamming his fist into the ground, making all the other Fallen in the room subconsciously flinch.

"Sir, they've taken out the Skiffs!" alerted one of the subordinates, quickly ducking out of the way before the Archon turned his station into a melting pile of scrap thanks to his Scorch Cannon.

"I WANT THEM HERE NOW! If you want it done right, then you have to do it yourself"

As if to answer his challenge, he heard a massive booming sound that reverberated from the door leading to his chamber. The entire bridge went silent as it happened, knock after knock on the metal… until it was smashed clean off its bearings, a thick mist blocking the Elinski from seeing through the corridor.

Four Vandals sprinted through the breach, until they came back three seconds later knocked out cold. The Archon roared and fired a shot from his scorch cannon into the smoke, only for the shot to be sent right back at him, the Fallen moving to the side to avoid the projectile.

"WHO DARES!"

"I do…" came a response from the smoke, all the Fallen recoiling in shock as it was said in their tongue, none of them questioning what they heard. A figure stepped out of the smoke, a harrowing figure that speared fear into the Fallen on the bridge.

Wulf walked through the quite chamber of the bridge, all the while the Fallen not bothering to shoot out of fear of death. The Archon was fuming with anger and could barely contain his rage, brawling his hand into a fist and causing the handle of the Scorch Cannon he was using to crumple slightly.

"Take another step and I'll crash this ship into that damned city you call home!" warned the Elinski, his voice wavering in fear, mostly as he tried to come up with reasons how this single attacker could make it all the way to his bridge without even taking a hit.

Wulf just smiled and kept walking, his stride never faltering as he continued his path to the Archon. Said Fallen growled in rage and ordered one of his subordinates to gun the engines, receiving a pleading look that was quickly silenced by a death-glare.

"The engines aren't responding!" softly spoke the Dreg, hoping the Archon didn't hear, unfortunately, he did.

"WHAT!" roared the Elinski, turning back to the attacker and trying to look as menacing as possible.

"Looks like my friends managed to destroy your engines" Wulf teased, stopping his advance as he now stood a good few feet from the head Fallen. He casually twisted the grip on his axe slightly and the entire head was engulfed in a writhing miasma of Solar energy, Wulf letting the weapon's head drop to the floor, the very act cutting a gash into the metal of the ship. "You're going to relieve command of these Elinski or I'm going to kill you"

The Archon's breath grew heavy and laboured, until he erupted in a massive spiel of rage, roaring and taking off full-speed at Wulf while he fired his Scorch Cannon… and the only thing Wulf could do was smile.

[Five minutes later]

Torchwick had made sure to completely incinerate anything that resembled a Skiff before he made his way to the bridge of the ship, where he met Ozpin, Penny, Glacile and Firewing holding out a few set of stairs away from the entrance of the bridge. He was going to ask why when he began to hear combat in the bridge, seeing brief flashes of light through the open door, although never seeing any actual parts of the battle.

The Guardians leaned against the available walls as they waited, only having to do so for about a minute before they turned to the bridge to see the severed head of the Archon roll down the stairs, spewing Ether from its entrails as it did.

They saw Wulf walking casually down the stairs after the lost appendage, his axe being dissipated and the only thing left was a the sigil of the house that the Archon kept with him.

"Firewing, what house is this?" asked the Titan, throwing the sigil to the Hunter, said Guardian catching it instantly and looking it over.

"It's nothing I've ever seen before, although I know it's definitely a Elinski Sigil"

Just as he was about to continue, the group was interrupted by heavy footsteps, all of them transmatting their weapons instantly and aiming it right at the source, only to find a Vandal holding two Shock Sabres by their sides. It seemed to recoil when the weapons were aimed, although they didn't make any moves to attack, only holding the Shock Sabres in an X to defend against the bulets.

The Guardians, seeing that the Vandal wasn't going to attack, lowered their weapons slightly and Firewing gestured for them to speak. The Elinski hesitantly spoke, although when they did it sounded surprisingly feminine.

"Greetings" she hesitantly began, performing a deep bow "I have come to ask why you slaughtered the rest of our kin, but left us few alive?"

Firewing took off his helmet and smiled in response, knowing exactly what this Vandal was trying to do.

"May I propose a counter question? Why did you have to stay behind while the rest of your crew are heading to the dropships to try and escape?" spoke the Hunter, smiling as he saw the Vandal recoil in fear.

"I don't know what you're talking about" she stuttered, doing a terrible job of hiding it.

"One of my associates took the liberty of installing motion sensors in the hallways leading to the loading docks… after he burned all of the dropships of course"

The Vandal's eyes widened in fear and the Guardians briefly heard a mutter of static, do doubt coming from a communication device the Vandal had.

"So now that you have the entire ship hostage, what do you want?" she asked, sounding completely defeated and downed. This time, it was Wulf's turn to speak, doing so with a toothy grin behind his helmet.

"Information…"

[Vale – Beacon Academy – Guardian Summer's class]

"Just one more time to clarify" said the extremely sceptical and worried Weiss "The easiest way to destroy it is to hit the most armoured parts… then switch to a different part when it is destroyed because it will receive less damage to the exposed components?"

Summer groaned for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. She had been subtly trying to work Fallen battle-tactics into the classes without outright saying that they would be killing aliens… which they no doubt might be soon. She had just made up some story about them being 'fake video-game aliens' and she was just using them to see how much the students knew about threat detection.

The first part of the lesson went off without a hitch, explaining the concept of shields much like aura, except it regenerated… although when she got to the parts about the higher echelons of the Fallen, such as Fallen Walkers, that's when things started to get hairy.

"YES! What is it you don't understand!" Summer said as calm as she could.

"I just don't see why we shouldn't attack the exposed components from the beginning rather than hit the most armoured parts of the machine"

"DON'T ASK ME WHY IT WORKS! JUST ACCEPT IT!" Summer nearly screamed, giving the Ice Queen a glare until she sat down. "Ok, now can anyone tell me how you can work out the highest ranking between the simulated combatants?"

"The more arms they have, the more important they are?" deadpanned Yang, not even putting in any effort"

"YES!" Summer jumped in joy, "for once you got something right!"

Yang was too busy being surprised that she had answered right to notice the obvious burn.

"Then how does the Servitor thing work then? It's just a giant floating eye with no arms, right?" Weiss once again questioned, sounding as sceptical as ever.

"Well, if you noticed during the 'simulations' that any surrounding attackers were surrounding in a warping purple mist, showing that they were under influence of the Servitor's buff per say…" Summer explained, referring back to how she used one of Wulf's old recording of him fighting the fallen to show it as a 'simulation' "Just think of anything it affects to be an 'arm'"

"Wouldn't it be more appropriate to judge them on size?" Blake interrupted, still engrossed in a book.

"I suppose that works too… Although not all the time" Summer replied, bringing up a holographic projector and showing a life-size image of S.A.B.E.R 2. "This little bugger is more powerful than, say, a Baron, although it might technically be cheating since it's really just a massive Shank and can't even hold a candle to some of the other's"

Blake nodded in acknowledgement so Summer waited for anymore sny comments… and smiled when she received the best that day.

"Why are we even studying this if we're never going to even fight these guys?" asked a very smug and mocking jock from the back of his room, Summer noting that he was one of the only people who bothered to wear armour here, a golden cardinal emblazed on his chestplate.

"I was waiting for someone to ask that…" she said, "Time for a bit of a… firsthand experience on the subject"

Summer went over to the door and walking through it, talking over her shoulder as she did.

"Meet me at the training room in five!"

[Training Room]

Summer looked down at the assembled crowd of Huntsman and Huntresses in training, trying to gauge how well they'd fight, until she was brought back to reality by a rather obnoxious cough from Yang.

"Ok everyone, now's your chance to put everything together!"

Summer took out a small holoprojector and threw it into the middle of the group, the small device beeping rather obnoxiously for a few seconds until it exploded in a massive shower of sparks and particles, the particles forming a rather large sphere around the group.

"I'd recommend stepping back" Summer deadpanned, seeing the students practically sprint away from the device, until the particles slowly came together and began forming a rather large object. It continued for a short while until a bright flash of light blinded most in the room, leaving… a Fallen Walker in the centre of the arena. "Ahhh… the wonders of light projection. Don't worry students, it's not real, only a small amount of hardened light so that you don't accidentally hit other people with the crossfire!"

As the students took in the massive mech, they all looked back up to her seeking some sort of explaination. She sighed once again and said the only thing that she could properly think of.

"Well… it's not going to kill itself!"