NOVEL NEXT Knock on ironwood
The world had very mixed reactions to the mile wide hell fire detonation when the people who had gotten rid of the grim in vale and were repairing the city saw the massive mushroom cloud of fire from where beacon sat. most people were of the hope that the authorities had finally made a move to kill the wyvern and grim that had nested there. those sharp eyed enough noticed that the flames were the same as a certain individual who had vanished after showing a massive amount of power after the attack on vale and beacon.
For salem it was like christmas came early as thanks to her obsession with leon she recognized those flames in an instant. 'so you were merely biding your time before punishing that foolish girl , how very like you to teach a lesson to her in such a way.' salem thought with a smile smile. since he abandoned the horde to face the wyvern the people videoing leon fighting were unable to capture the exact moment leon lost to the beast. as a result salem was under the misunderstanding that leon merely tactically retreated from the battle since it was a lost cause rather than get knocked out and dismembered for almost an entire week.
James ironwood was not having a good time however when the video hit his desk back in atlas as it implied several bad things for his own ambitions. the first was that the titan corporation and all it's drool worthy tech was still strictly hands off. ironwood had hoped leon died so he could legally subsume the company using his political prowess but with leon still alive and in a bad mood from the looks of it he had to trash that plan. The second was that as much as he hated to admit it he had no chance at all of defeating leon in battle after witnessing the maiden like power leon showed previously.
In order for him to unite the world under the rule of atlas and by extension himself ironwood knew he needed to be unrivaled in power and skill , leon removed any possibility of that being true. ironwood had been lauded as a military and academic genius but he knew without even a shred of doubt that his talent compared to leons was like a candle to the sun , not worth mentioning.
The proof of this was plain for anyone to see as it took ironwood decades of hard work to reach his current position whereas leon took a mere handful of years to rival and even surpass ironwood , it was clear to see the difference in talent. the final nail however was the sheer devastating power behind the attack leon had obviously launched on the new inhabitants of beacon. ironwoods many years of military leadership experience told him that any army he had would be decimated in an instant under a similar attack meaning uniting the world by force was now functionally impossible.
As far as ironwood was concerned leon might as well have been created by the god to spite his efforts and keep him in check. what was even worse was that ironwoods paranoia had been going haywire ever since he saw leon casually reading a highly restricted document in front of him. even after going through the system over and over again ironwood still had no idea how he had hacked into the servers without being detected. to make matters worse overhauling and fortifying the software was impossible if no one could find any weak points despite there obviously being some .
Theodore , the headmaster of mistral academy and secret traitor to humanity was in a panic at the fact that leon was still alive. the man knew that salem had been paying close attention to leon and had pressured him greatly to provide more information on the man. the problem was that the man was an enigma that had no social media accounts or public information on his origins. the little theodore had been able to get from the redacted files ozpin made only stated that leon grew up under the care of tye xiao long and the late summer rose , but that was it for his origins.
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