21 Chapter 20

Author Note: I felt guilt for raising your hopes like that so I put together a chapter as fast I could. Enjoy.

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-[Wynne]-

The two were now seated at a cafe with Blake giving him a look of confusion that demanded explanation.

He had refused to talk further until they had gotten settled somewhere. "You know, looking at me like that won't make things go faster." He said, taking a sip from his partially filled cup.

"You're stalling." Blake accused, causing him to raise a brow at her, unimpressed.

"If that's how you feel, you're free to leave at any time." He threw back, unbothered by the glare that she gave him.

Despite the look, she didn't get up to leave. The hope of possibly helping menagerie had already been put into her head so he doubted that she'd leave, as rash as she was.

"Didn't think so." He said, setting the cup down. "Now, let's get down to business."

"What do you mean you want to expand Kuo Kuana?" Blake asked.

Wynne's casual expression became a bit more serious. "As you already know, Menagerie is made up of roughly two thirds desert land. Kuo Kuana is nice and peaceful but it is also crowded and at the brink of overpopulation." He began explaining.

"It is also lacking a lot in terms of technology. Faunus are treated unfairly and as such are unable to form many connections or benefit from the general development of the world." He saw Blake's eyes furrow at the mention of the treatment of Faunus.

"What I'm offering is to help Menagerie to thrive in spite of all of this. Kuo Kuana is rich and skilled in agriculture, something that isn't really prevalent in other kingdoms due to pollution and their advancement in technology." He finished.

Blake had a strange look that seemed to take time to comprehend it. He simply sipped out of his drink and waited, there was no reason to rush it.

"Why are you doing this and why now? What do you stand to gain?" Blake questioned.

"Like I've said many times, I'm not biased against faunus. I'm equally annoying to both races and it's a hassle to differentiate them because of a few extra appendages." Wynne said in a casual and almost lazy tone.

Blake was silent for the next few moments but her face was expressive enough for him to guess what she was thinking.

"Then what do you need me for?" She finally asked.

"Faunus aren't exactly accepting of humans, much less a Schnee. With Menagerie lacking a CCT tower, it would be difficult at the least to get in contact with Menagerie's current chieftain. That's where you come in." He said, a look of realization growing on Blake's face.

"That's right." He added, confirming her thoughts. "I need you to help me contact your father."

An uncomfortable look replaced the look of realization and Wynne knew why. Blake had run from home and hadn't contacted either of her parents since then.

While he could find his way to menagerie himself, Blake was an essential part of his plan as someone who would open the gateway of communication and make them less hostile, even if just by a little.

"Important stuff aside, time to eat. I'm starving." Wynne said, changing the topic for the moment and catching her off guard.

-[Later]-

After his talk with Blake, he had a few tedious errands to run, further reminding him that he needed an assistant.

He was currently in one of his facilities in Atlas, a special one underneath the manor grounds. One thing he had to note when creating this was the fact that Atlas was floating in mid air so he had to be careful not to go too deep.

Walking through the facilities, he passed many worker bots that were moving around doing various kinds of jobs and errands.

With the creation of his special model of robots, his production had increased over ten folds due to the fact that he could now assign roles and tasks to them.

As he walked, he reached a door with a label 'Project Jupiter' written in bold on it. Getting closer, the proximity sensors picked him up, opening the doors automatically.

Inside was a large area with numerous robots working and a very large but incomplete construct in the middle of it.

It was something that anyone from Earth would recognize.

'The people of Remnant are so far ahead and yet so far behind. They are too advanced to see the solution that was right in front of them.' He thought, looking at the satellite rocket that was being built by the robots.

Remnant discovered dust very early after the brother gods wiped them out. With the existence of aura and the mysterious substance called dust, the people looked for ways to harness them and use them as power sources.

They continued that for centuries until they got to where they currently were. Technology had grown dependent on dust and they subconsciously ignored the natural fuel sources that remained untapped in the world.

Dust doesn't work in space, ruling out space travel for Remnant's scientists. There has been no reason given why dust doesn't work but it has been accepted as such.

Coming from a world that thrived from fossil fuels, he had the solution to this.

The rocket had two engines, one that ran on dust and the other then ran on liquid hydrogen with liquid oxygen serving as the oxidizer.

The dust powered engines would take the rocket as high as it can until dust no longer worked, the liquid engines would then be activated, taking it higher and into space.

If this worked, it would eradicate the reliance of CCT towers which could easily be destroyed and compromised. An added benefit was that despite her immortality, Wynne doubted that Salem could survive in space, leaving it out of her reach.

He wondered what Ironwood would think if he found out about this, a chuckle escaping his lips at that thought.

As excited as he was to work on this project, there were other factors he had to consider, one of them being an egotistical and disgraced scientist called Arthur Watts.

The man was involved in the work on the mantle security network and had access to it. The security codes were changed once in a while in Atlas while the codes in Mantle were the same as always.

'I need to find a way to locate and deal with him soon. Another thing would be to find Salem's castle without tipping her off.' He thought, sighing at the headache he could already feel coming.

"Oh joy." He muttered sarcastically.

-[Roman Torchwick]-

In one of the many warehouses in Vale, he looked over a small pile of files with an intrigued look.

The frequency in dust robberies had gone further down with more and more of their forces being repelled.

Cinder would obviously not be happy but there was nothing much even she would really be able to do about it.

Fortunately, Neo was good at her job, getting the information he required from the right sources. Shifting the top sheet of paper, it revealed the picture of a white haired teenager with a smile on his face.

'Well well well, what do we have here?' He wondered.