(Halo x RWBY) Remnants of the Reclaimers

Time to Send It

-Six months later-

The illusion of calm didn't last long as tensions ramped up in Atlas. Complaints of inequality between the upper and lower cities continued to increase, fueled by the upcoming election for the leadership of Mantle. Blue team felt largely uninvolved though. Sure they escorted supplies to and from the newly forming Amity Arena turned floating comms tower and fortress, but the couple of times that a transport actually had anything to stave off or stand off with, the other huntsmen and huntresses were guarding that particular truck. Almost as if the Spartans were becoming more known and understandably being steered clear of.

-John-117-

Since Blue team had been given somewhat unsupervised access to some of the storage of Atlesian supplies and tech, they had embarked on a project about a month after the Amity arena project had been started.

John and Linda now stood at the culmination of a little over five months of work, readying the final pre-flight checks as their best approximation of a space probe sat inside a rocket fueled by both dust and traditional fuel on top of a mountain just outside of Mantle. They hadn't really been able to perform a true test flight at the risk of being discovered as to what they were up to, but every simulation they had run with Pharia was running clear, and all the individual portions had been stress tested, so here they were. Kelly and Fred had stayed behind in Atlas, Fred to watch Mantle's newest governor's speech and Kelly to try to snoop around for more information about Atlas's relic, as the assumption they were currently working from with the information from both Jin and Pharia was that the only way onto or off of Remnant without someone outside initiating the connection was to force it via bringing the four relics together. The probe, on the other hand, was simply to try to figure out what was out there, and if all went according to plan, to have a communications uplink in orbit, extending the currently lackluster range of TEAMCOM to avoid a situation like had happened the year before when they had been split up.

With the rocket prepped, nothing was left to do but hit the button and wait the 15 or so minutes to get the readings. Linda was currently holding the control tablet, but John was kind of secretly hoping that she would let him hit the button, and she might have read his mind because she handed it over with a knowing tilt to her head. Confirming the all clear readings, John punched the glowing button, and the rocket lifted off with a roar. It was little more than a giant hunk of dust they had grabbed from an abandoned mine with a primitive ion thruster shoved on top for maneuvering outside of Remnant's atmosphere, and a sensor suite (some of which Linda had been reluctant to part with) that was stacked on top of that.

Linda sighed in relief after it cleared the launch pad, checked the readouts again then muttered, "Now we wait," she seemed to say something else as well, but she had muted herself and John never heard it. Then she sort of shook her head, as if shaking away a bad thought, and did something curious, she took her helmet off.

"Hey John can I talk with you for a bit?" she asked, holding back a nervous smile.

John responded, "Always,"

She took a deep breath, locked her gaze firmly on his despite the helmet, then blurted out, "Something about you makes me want to grab you and never let you go, when you went down fighting that scorpion Faunus bastard I would've fought the whole covenant and insurrection with nothing but a spoon if it meant you'd be alright. You've always been the most amazing person I've known since the program, I just feel so stupid for not realizing and telling you till now, but I know I shouldn't distract you when you're trying to get us all home alive in this wild world."

She grabbed his gauntleted hand with both of hers, then gave a final trailing statement, "Just know if you want –what was it that Ruby called it?-- a girlfriend, and think it won't get in the way of our mission, I'll be tripping over myself to say yes."