Chapter Text
The airship bay was colder than he remembered, the steel walls humming faintly as power lines thrummed with stored energy. He then recalled that it was only later that they reconfigured the heating grid.
James stepped through the gangway, boots clicking against the grated floor.
Then he saw Trish Rust waiting for him.
He hadn’t expected company on this particular mission, not like this.
“Chief Officer Trish,” he greeted evenly, voice clipped as always. “Going to accompany me to annoy Vale?”
Trish Rust fell into stride beside him, her gloves tugging at the hem of her coat.
“I’ll be in charge of the Saint flagship,” she replied coolly. “Matters below the Commander’s responsibility fall to me. Arrowfell may be the fortress, but Saint is our mobile base. Consider this… a transfer of weight.”
Her words carried a faint bite, professional but edged. James made no response beyond a faint grunt, eyes forward as they walked down the narrow corridor.
It was Trish who broke the silence, her gaze catching the unusual bulk behind his waist as they passed into the lift chamber. “A hand cannon?” she asked, brow arched. “Seems… impractical.”
James glanced down at the weapon’s matte finish, its steel and Dust-infused barrel heavier than any standard sidearm. “Powerful, though,” he answered. “But I’ll admit… it is heavy.”
He had lost to Winter carrying this around. But he could use the extra firepower.
The transport elevator shuddered as it engaged, rising slowly toward the flagship’s central deck. Trish shifted her weight, studying him sidelong, and then shook her head faintly.
“You’ve become melancholic.”
James turned to her, expression unreadable. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not as boring. Not as rigid. Not… Mr. Try-Hard,” she said, the faintest smirk tugging at her lips before vanishing as quickly as it came.
James met her eyes for a long moment, then looked away, his tone calm and even. “We all have to grow up.”
Trish leaned back against the elevator’s cold wall, arms crossing. “I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not. But I can see why the General picked you. It’s like you’ve been doing this for years.”
Her gaze narrowed, studying him with a critical edge. “Leadership suits you, James Ironwood.”
His eyes shifted downward, and for a fraction of a second his composure cracked. The faint shadow of pain passed across his face before he reined it back.
“I disagree,” he said softly. “If anything, I’m incapable of discerning people’s hearts and minds.”
Trish snorted, lips twitching upward in faint disdain. “Unless your semblance lets you read minds, nobody has that figured out.” Her voice softened only slightly, her posture still tight. “For the record. I don’t like you, James Ironwood. Never did. Always thought you were a patriotic, pompous prick. Everything about you screamed ‘Atlas first, humanity second.’ You’re the kind that might bomb a few to save many.”
James’s tone didn’t waver, but he felt called out. “You’re not wrong. I still think that.”
She tilted her head, studying him, the faintest note of respect threading through her words despite herself. “Maybe. But at least you’ve learned flexibility. That matters.”
He said nothing at first. His gaze fixed on the ceiling of the lift, listening to the quiet thrum of the machinery and the gale outside of the lift. I died watching Atlas burn and drown, his mind echoed bitterly. If I can’t learn to bend, if I can’t learn to listen, then what’s left of me deserves nothing more than exile. And I’d be… a hermit of my guilt.
“Hopefully,” James said at last, his voice flat but carrying weight.
The elevator clicked to a halt, its heavy doors sliding open with a hiss. The Saint flagship stretched before them, its interior polished steel and clean lines marking it as one of Atlas’s finest designs.
“This way,” Trish said, straightening. Her tone was professional again, but the earlier edge hadn’t vanished. “I’m confident I can lead this crew. But don’t mistake that for complacency. I’ll be observant. Always.”
James nodded once. “As you should.”
She led him through the wide corridor where uniformed officers saluted sharply as they passed. Trish took the time to introduce each of the primary crew from the navigation, gunnery, communications, logistics, her voice crisp, and efficient. James responded with curt nods, his gaze lingering longer on the younger faces, the ones still eager, and still green.
Finally, they reached the captain’s cabin. Trish stopped at the door with her arms folded. “This will be your quarters, Commander. I’ll oversee liftoff. Rest while you can.”
James inclined his head slightly. “Thank you, Chief Officer.”
Without another word, he stepped inside. The cabin was sparsely furnished but functional. A desk, bunk, terminal, a narrow viewport showing the looming clouds of Solitas beyond. He set his coat across the chair, placed his weapons carefully within arm’s reach, and stood a moment in the silence, watching the faint reflection of himself in the window.
Outside, the flagship hummed to life, engines rumbling with restrained power.
James sat down at the desk, spreading all the documents in his hands, before he steepled his hands.
His thoughts were shifting to Vale, to Mountain Glenn, and to what waited ahead.
The reports sat neatly stacked before him. Topographical assessments, dust consumption projections, Grimm migration studies, Vale’s optimistic budgets, and the overconfident language of bureaucrats who had never set foot beyond their city walls. He had read them twice already. Now he read them again, not for new insight, but to test his resolve.
He knew how important Mountain Glenn was to the Kingdom of Vale. Their first great expansion in decades. An ambitious gamble to prove that humanity could carve out a second bastion beyond its old walls. The politicians called it “a beacon of progress.”
The Huntsmen were treating it like a frontier to be tamed. The people of Vale were told it was a fresh start.
And five years from now, it would all burn to hell.
He leaned back in his chair, hands folded. The memory wasn’t a vision, not prophecy. It was knowledge, future knowledge he carried with him.
In five years, Mountain Glenn would be overrun. The Grimm would tear through the defenses, drawn to the growing unrest. The metro tunnels would become deathtraps, and the survivors would scatter or die.
And worse, beneath that failure lay another truth.
Merlot Industries.
Their experiments, buried beneath Mt. Glenn, would accelerate the disaster.
James exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing. He didn’t have the luxury of pretending ignorance. That was the curse of foresight.
So what do I do?
There were two approaches.
The first was to be diplomatic. Smile politely, point out “areas of concern,” and phrase his objections with the kind of restraint Vale’s politicians preferred. He could talk of resource distribution, long-term sustainability, the burden of securing supply lines. He could even offer conditional support.
It would win goodwill, but it would also mean nothing. The project would proceed unchanged. Vale was too far committed, too desperate to prove itself.
The second was to be critical. Brutally critical. He could cut through their optimism with steel, pointing out every flaw with merciless precision. No softening, no compromises, no false encouragement. If Vale wanted an ‘observation’ from Atlas, then they would receive a verdict written in iron.
His jaw tightened.
The first option would gain him friends. The second will give him enemies.
But only the second had the chance, however slim, of sparing them from the disaster.
James rose from his chair and paced the narrow cabin.
Vale’s leadership wasn’t blind, they had to know some of the risks. But they were indulging in wishful thinking. The Grimm’s behavior was not static. Aggressive expansion into hostile terrain would only agitate them further. He had seen it before. Mountain Glenn lacked natural barriers. No cliffs like Vale’s outer walls. No ice plains like Atlas. No seaways like Mistral’s coasts. It was flat, open, exposed. Defenses would need to be constant, and constant defenses meant constant pressure. Pressure that never relented until one side broke.
And Grimm never broke.
He paused at the viewport, staring at his own reflection. For a moment, the stern face in the glass looked older than it should have.
Even if he persuaded them to reconsider, there was another obstacle… pride. Vale’s Council would not abandon the project without a fight. They had invested millions of lien, years of planning, and the lives of hundreds already relocated. Telling them it would fail was more than pessimism, it was a direct attack on their credibility.
Which raised the question… could he persuade them by appealing to reason alone?
Unlikely.
If reason was useless, then what weapon was left?
Arrogance.
James’s lips pressed into a thin line. He could already hear the tone he would use. Stern, dismissive, clinical. Arrogance was a weapon, and wielded carefully, it could cut through optimism like a blade. If Vale thought Atlas was condescending, then fine… he would be condescending. He would paint their vision as a folly, their optimism as delusion, their investment as doomed to failure. And when Mountain Glenn fell, as it inevitably would, those words would linger like an echo.
The tactic was cruel. It would alienate them. It would earn him resentment.
But resentment was survivable.
The loss of lives was not.
He returned to his desk, pulling the latest Grimm distribution map into view. Dozens of red markers glared back at him, each representing a confirmed sighting. Herds in the forest. Packs migrating south. A cluster moving near the planned metro entrances.
His eyes tracked the lines Vale’s engineers had sketched for their defense grid. Incomplete. Overconfident. He could already see the failure points. Too few fallback zones. Too many chokepoints. No redundancy for when the grid went dark.
His mind dissected it ruthlessly, one flaw after another.
The metro was a liability. It bypassed Grimm in theory, but it also created a perfect corridor for Grimm to flood into the city if breached. And he saw that when Beacon Fell.
The perimeter walls were too thin, too fragile, and reliant on weapons platforms that would fail the moment supply chains staggered.
The Dust reserves were expensive, limited, and positioned dangerously close to residential sectors. One breach, and the entire stockpile would be lost. That’s what the White Fang use to breach Vale.
And also.. the Huntsman allocation was insufficient. Vale Huntsmen were ‘free and independent’. They operate differently than Atlas Huntsmen and those who are actually willing to patrol the Mountain could not cover Mt. Glenn, not with Grimm swarming daily.
He made notes in the margin, cold and precise. Each critique sharpened his tone further.
And then there was Merlot. He grimaced, fingers tightening slightly on his pen. Merlot Industries had dressed itself in the language of progress, of “understanding the Grimm.” But James knew better. Their research was reckless. Unchecked. Dangerous. And though their involvement was hidden now, it would not remain so. When Mountain Glenn fell, Merlot’s sins would amplify the destruction.
To confront Vale with that truth was impossible. They wouldn’t believe him. He had no evidence as of the moment. All he could do was cut their pride deep enough that, when failure came, his words would sting. Perhaps then, next time, they would listen.
James leaned back again, folding his hands.
He could already imagine the scene of Vale’s Council, trying to mask their irritation behind polite smiles, asking for his professional opinion. And he, deadpan, would deliver it.
Mountain Glenn is indefensible. Your metro is a deathtrap. Your perimeter will crumble. You are spending millions of lien to dig your own grave. Atlas will not waste its soldiers protecting a vanity project destined to fail.
Cold. Sharp. Arrogant. But true.
He closed his eyes briefly.
There was another side to the tactic. If he was too soft, they would ignore him. If he was too harsh, they would dismiss him as an Atlas elitist sneering at Vale. The balance had to be deliberate. Arrogant enough to wound their pride, precise enough that his critique couldn’t be written off as bluster.
He would frame it as a strategy. Not a warning, but a verdict. Not emotion, but reason. He would not plead. He would not beg. He would state, and let the weight of certainty carry the rest.
James opened his eyes again, resolve settling in.
He had seen the future once, and it had broken him. He would not waste this chance by playing diplomat.
When Vale asked for Atlas’s perspective, they would get it in full. Tactical. Rational. Pragmatic. Merciless.
Arrogant, yes.
And even if his tactic fails, at least they might try to prove him wrong and do better.
If anything, James was hoping they’d do that. It was very unlikely that Mt. Glenn expansion could be stopped now, but if he could provoke them into shifting in a favorable direction, it would be better.