13 Chapter 13
-[Ironwood]-
He grit his teeth in frustration as he looked at the report on his table. A report about the single person who was determined to be a thorn in his side, Wynne Schnee.
A few Schnee airships had landed in Mantle and offloaded some kind of robots. He had never seen the model before but if he had to guess, it looked like an advanced version of the ones his scientists were working on…much more advanced.
What boggled his mind even more was the apparent reason for the deployment of these robots. It wasn't hard to guess as Wynne didn't try to be discreet about it.
He wanted to rebuild the Crater…and he was deploying such advanced machinery.
A terrible waste!
What was the point?! He was only proving him right that Wynne was just a whimsical teen who couldn't be trusted with the responsibility of handling the SDC.
His waste of resources in this foolish endeavor couldn't be any more glaring. What Wynne was doing would only harm Atlas in the long run. Who would hire people to do the work when there were robots who would do the work in less than half the time without uttering a single complaint.
The construction and architectural workers in Atlas would soon find themselves lacking jobs.
His soldiers' attempt to capture one of the robots was met with rebuttal by the Happy Huntresses who were apparently guarding the robots while they worked.
He'd attempt again but that would only achieve the same result. Not to mention, he couldn't do anything to stop him without having a large population of Mantle against him.
Adding to the fact that the SDC was too important for him to act carelessly. Winter was disowned as the heiress so the power would fall to Weiss if not their mother Willow.
If rumors were to be believed, she was no longer isolated in the background, now preparing to make an appearance.
Dialing a number on his scroll, he watched it ring only to suddenly end without the receiver picking up, causing him to almost scream in anger.
He needed to be careful in how he handled this.
Pressing a button on his terminal, he was connected to the speakers. "Specialist Schnee, report to my office."
-[Wynne]-
He smirked in amusement as he declined another call from Ironwood.
The man's hands were tied with nothing he could do. At least without him losing too much for it to be worth it.
Should Wynne decide to actually go on the offensive, there were more than a few hacked files to aid him.
One didn't create an android that could possess an aura without some immoral experimentations. Pietro, for all his 'innocence', was complicit with it.
Putting that out of his mind, he felt the airship he was on come to a stop. He was literally standing on top of the flying vehicle.
He was outside Atlas and currently in the freezing continent of Solitas. Despite the freezing temperature, it felt like nothing more than a welcoming breeze to him.
Despite the comforting weather, it wasn't what he was there for. His eyes focused down below on the small amount of Grimm moving around.
The cold climate made it mostly inhabitable by humans and Grimm alike…mostly but not completely. There were those few that managed to survive longer than the others.
There were types of Grimm that had adapted to the cold atmosphere, such as the Megoliath, Sabyr and some others.
The small herd of Grimm below him were Sabyr and while they were dangerous in their own right, they had no way of attacking him from the ground.
He didn't bear such limitations.
Glyphs formed under the airship, sword shaped ice emerged from them, firing downwards immediately.
The main weakness of the Sabyr type Grimm was its lack of durability.
He watched in nostalgia as the swords of ice rained down at high speed, easily skewering the Grimm below in a way a certain blond king would be proud.
Only a small number of Grimm managed to escape. Sabyrs were known for their speed so he wasn't too surprised or disappointed.
He consoled himself in the fact that he had taken care of the majority of them. Pulling out his scroll, he set the coordinates for the airship on a course for a trip back to Atlas.
The 'pilot' was a robot so he wasn't too worried.
A glyph appeared under his feet, spinning before engulfing him as he was teleported from the tundra to his bedroom.
'So long range teleportation also works.' He noted happily.
It was only one of his objectives of this short 'trip'. The other was to test the summoning aspect of his glyphs.
Up until now, he hadn't fought any Grimm and even now, he'd barely lifted a finger to kill the ones he saw.
Whether or not it qualified as an enemy that caused him to 'push past who he was', he wasn't actually going to put his life on the line until he was sure of his survival.
He also didn't believe that particular piece of advice seeing as how Winter could summon Beowulves and he doubted that they gave her much trouble.
He'd figure out a way to summon his fallen foes without having to unnecessarily risk his life.
Removing all other unnecessary thoughts at the moment, he focused, a glyph forming and spinning beneath him only to quiver before shattering.
Despite that, he didn't look frustrated or sad, only more determined as he began the process once more.
-[Mantle]-
The people of Mantle were divided at this point in time between those who supported what Wynne Schnee was doing and those who saw it as just another scheme.
Ultimately, the latter group was reducing day by day as the construction robots worked tirelessly, the city starting to take shape.
Despite it not being finished, envy was already starting to build among those who saw what had been achieved so far.
The buildings and structures erected in the Crater were comparable to the ones up in Atlas if not better.
That alone sparked up a debate on what Wynne Schnee was trying to do. From a logical point of view, he gained no profit other than the fact that the new part of the city looked wonderful.
His actions also began to publicly draw support as his actions in the relatively short time he was CEO were compared to that of his 'father'.
Ironwood wasn't exempt from criticism, with the people talking about how Ironwood could have done the same long ago but didn't.
One thing to note was that the Faunus who lived in Mantle wanted nothing more than peaceful cooperation with humans despite how they'd been treated.
Ironwood for all the good he portrayed himself to be hadn't done anything to help achieve that goal in all his years of lording his power around.
Two seats on the Atlas council and yet he basically ignored the pleas from the city below Atlas like they were second class citizens.
Now a new powerhouse had made himself known and was taking an active interest in the city below Atlas.
What more could they ask for?
Their hopes and pleas were being answered in the form of a new haven where faunus could live with equal rights and equal treatment…if Wynne's words conveyed from the Happy Huntresses were to be believed.
All they could do was hope that he would honor his words. If he did, Schnee or not, he would have the full support of the Faunus in Mantle, whether he knew it or not.
