AN:

And there we go.

The Pen and the Sword.

Hooooly shit it's been a ride.

It has absolutely nothing to do anymore with the thought experiment that originally spawned it - which, to summarize, was me wondering as everyone else had what the world would look like if they hadn't dusted Pyrrha at the end of Volume 3. This thing grew into a massive beast that pretty much told the story itself, I was just there to throw letters at the wall and hope it would stick.

That's not to say I'm bitter, or resentful, far from it. I'm proud of this monster, and I simply cannot overstate how happy I am that so many out there enjoyed it and stuck with me for the ride.

So let's dole out some trivia before I get into plans for the future:

Perhaps the biggest surprise to you all is that Magic Aldric was *never* a part of the picture when I started this. I'd had this idea for a character that more meshed with the title of the story - the Pen is mightier than the Sword - who used his wit and the future tech of the world he'd been dropped in to bridge a gap he didn't have time to do naturally. But I planted the idea of him having the surplus of aura inside of him, and the bit with him and Cinder discussing what all it could be was mostly just spit-balling possible in-universe explanations. The concept for the Masters was born there, when I realized that Aldric being magic actually answered a lot of questions. From there it just snowballed into what we have now.

It was fun as hell, gave me a lot of toys to play with, but it hadn't been planned. As I've grown older and kept writing, I've found my style in just peppering details as I go, just dropping them in because it works and sounds good in the moment, and then finding a way to tie it all together later - making it seem like I'm a mad genius when, in reality, I'm flying by the seat of my pants and enjoying the ride like all of you. The only other example of this I'll give is in how Aldric spared himself killing Ruby - how Neo and Myrtle tied into it. That was just pieces I'd thrown in earlier falling into place. I'd never made Myrtle's semblance with the intention of having it fulfil that role, it just worked out - and if I hadn't thought of it (Or, if you prefer, if Aldric hadn't put those pieces together), Ruby would have been straight-up, not-kidding, dead, and the story would have had to react to that.

And that's just one example.
Or... Two.

Anyways - Next: Earth.
Not gonna lie, I actually regretted bringing Earth into the setting after a while. I made it work (or at least I like to think I did), but I still kind of feel like it was too 'big' and derailed the tone quite a bit during the time it took center-stage. That feeling is largely why, after the 'Worlds War One' arc, I kept them out of it except for Aldric's networking and some plot moments. Earth was never meant to be the focus of the story.
Though closing Remnant and Earth off at the end had been the plan even before I regretted it, so it worked out in the end.

Moving on:
Similarly, something I regret, though more in the sense of just missed opportunities, is the fact that I never found a way to believably bring Sun Wukong or Penny Polendina into the story - largely because of the Earth thing, but also because I had little reason for Aldric to interact with those two. I always loved Sun, just this big fuckin' goofball of energy, I would have loved to have him get on Aldric's nerves, but have Aldric force himself to play along as Ash; and for Penny, Aldric's like me - dude's a fucking nerd. He would have freaked out, gotten all excited if he had an AI to play with, and like Sun, I always liked Penny. I'd actually pegged her as an android within seconds of seeing speak her on-screen, I dunno if that's impressive, but I was always proud of it.
Unlike Sun, I'd actually had all kinds of ideas of how to use Penny beyond the initial 'Holy shit you're an AI!' thing. I'd always wanted to have Aldric speak in constant TeamFourStar references during their first and second encounters, and I'd had light ideas of playing with the idea that, since Penny is an AI and has a Semblance, that meant she had a soul, and Aldric would have concluded that would definitively mean sentient AI could be considered alive. It would have played into my initial idea for the Time Travel arc, in which I'd drafted a potential contingency for him dying was the Batcave creating a T-800 modeled after him. I'd even briefly considered having Aldric keep an Eldar soul stone on his person at all times, such that when he died, his soul would be caught by the stone, and the Terminator would venture out to locate Aldric's corpse and insert the stone into its chassis - effectively reviving Aldric, but as with many Warhammer implements, playing around with Warp fuckery was waaaaaaay too dangerous for the rewards.

Anyways, like Sun, I couldn't find a way to bring Penny into the story meaningfully, and after I abandoned the Terminator idea, I went through two or three other ideas for how to go about the Time Travel arc before I ended up redeeming Cinder. I was this close to having Aldric successful pull a Dr Manhattan and return by telekinetically stitching a body back together and piloting it from limbo, but I liked the idea of Cinder being redeemed too much. That one gave me more toys to play with, later.

One last thing...
I did the math, and all of the Record entries alone count for 70,154 words in this 800K story.
Sounds cool, right?

Well, try this on for size: I have a 'rejects' document that, as the name suggests, has all the stuff I cut out from chapters but kept in case I could use it later. To give you an idea of some of the stuff in there, there's an entire alternate cut of the bit where Aldric gets tranquilized by the Terrans and brought to the Russian Carrier - but instead of Yang, it was Blake, and all of the fragments of the 'Dr Manhattan' resurrection I'd planned for Aldric, and God knows how much else.
It's wordcount, as of today?
233,732.

Almost a quarter of a million motherfucking words worth of what are essentially deleted scenes, rejected ideas, and alternate takes. Maybe taken down to 200k if I combed through it and got rid of anything that repeated itself, but still.
Neat, right?

Maaaaaaaaybe one day I'll clean it up, remove things that had been repeated, add some commentary explaining things, and then post it as a sort of 'Deleted Scenes' chapter, but my biggest hangup there - besides the effort it would take to do such a thing - would be interest on your end, and the fact that posting it would pump this story over 1 Million words, potentially putting off future readers. It's something I've been thinking on for a while though, so I won't say it won't happen.

Rapid fire before we move on:
Favorite fight: Aldric vs Cinder. Had way too much fun with that one, and it's the one the whole story was building up to. Runner up would be the Aldric Black fights, playing with his pragmatism was really interesting.
Favorite gag: In Aldric vs Cinder, I paid homage to Thanos vs Dr Strange in the form of Aldric and Cinder throwing stuff at each other, and the former using her power to crush it all down until it made a black hole and then throwing it back at Aldric. It's my favorite because of the effort I went through to, one, make sure it worked, and two, to make sure it didn't kill goddamn everyone on Remnant - the result being I scientifically determined the black hole would evaporate away due to Hawking Radiation in a nanosecond due to its extremely low mass... Resulting in the bit where Cinder throws it, it just passes like a fart in the wind, and they both just react for a second.
Favorite moment: Ozpin revealing himself to be a Master. I'd had that one planned since really early on - waaaaaay before the show revealed himself to be the same Wizard that made the Maidens - and felt really giddy when it worked out. As I recall, I posted that chapter just days after the reveal was made, so it was real cool how it lined up.
Favorite stunt: Aldric doing his best Saitama impression. It was stupid and I loved it even more than Aldric Black dropping the moon.
Favorite detail that never got mentioned: Contingency Galactus was an Ultimate Nullifier Aldric intended to use on the Brother Gods in case The Big One didn't work, BR (Or 'Beta Ray') Bill was Infinity War's Stormbreaker, and NOVA was straight-up a UNSC Nova Bomb to be used if the Maiden Contingency failed.
Favorite 'What Was I Smoking' moment: The bits I wrote in code in Fox Die Ja Nai. Firstly, it's actually the biggest fragment of my original intent, to bring Aldric back to life properly, but secondly, god I messed that up. I liked what I wrote for it, the existential horror of Aldric being stuck in the same limbo that Ozpin frequents, and Ozpin learning he was there and trying to calm him down, all through the guise of Pink Floyd, but the formatting for this website just isn't really built for something like that, and now it's kind of a Big Lipped Alligator Moment when presented with the fact that it didn't go anywhere at all.

Okay... Now for what I know you all want to hear:
What comes next?

Welp... Lemme tell you: I don't know.

I did have ideas for a whole extra act to the story involving the Brother Gods - several, in fact - but none of them worked out because I realized they all relied on the Brothers being alive in the first place, and there simply was no motherfucking way Aldric, with the Infinity Gauntlet, would leave them alone, with the threat they posed.

To give you an idea of how much I'd planned out the 'Gods Arc,' I had several ways the story could go, and it largely depended on how I played the Gods. In one scenario, after observing Remnant for a while, they judged Humanity unworthy, but instead of just wiping them out like they'd done before, they decided that would be boring, they'd done it once before and wanted to do something 'new' and 'fun' - that being selecting a Champion to do it for them. They would have shown up on Aldric's doorstep and propositioned him, and he - after determining that they weren't omniscient and couldn't read minds based off of clues Salem had given him during their dialogue - would have accepted, knowing that by being their champion, he could control the damage that was done, and that when he started his rampage, Ruby, Pyrrha, or Solidus Cinder would make their way to the Bat Cave in response. They would have obtained Galactus and brought it to Aldric, who would have then used it on himself, removing his having ever existed in the first place, and leaving the canon RWBY to occur as a result.

The second option was similar to the above, but instead they did just wipe everyone out... Except Aldric, who would be living on his Ranch in the no-magic Null Zone he'd made, thus making him immune to what they'd done. He would have realized something was wrong after a while when, while walking around, he found Ozpin's cane in his front lawn, no one would return his calls, and then a couple days later the Gods themselves would show up on his doorstep. He would have invited them in and, when they stepped inside the null-zone and lost all their power, would have blown them away with a shotgun, which I'd always entertained the idea of being Doomguy's Super Shotgun because it would just fit. After that he'd proceed to activate Contingency Aerith and personally oversee Humanity's return on Remnant - and there would have been implications that he had known the Gods were coming, had known they would wipe everyone out, and had known he would survive/be able to kill them, and allowed it all to happen, because then that would mean he would have a blank slate to work with and a Third Option with regards to Ozpin and Salem's argument: Starting the fuck over.

I also had a third option that shot off from the above, in which, instead of activating Aerith, he activates Doc Brown and goes to before he ever came to Remnant, and goes on an Odyssey (which I would have called the 'Aldric Quest,' in reference to Thanos Quest), reassembles the Infinity Gauntlet to Snap away Salem and the Gods.

That one, though, gave me another idea - the one I became most fond of... Buuuuuut this one would have taken a lot of time, as it would've been a straight-up new story, a sequel. Instead of using Aerith or using Doc Brown, Aldric gets a different idea, grabs one of the forks, and uses Galactus - but not to wipe himself away from history, but instead to eliminate a single choice he'd made. He nullifies the choice he made to play the Villain, and uses the Fork to immunize himself from being eliminated by the changes in time. The idea was to create a whole new story from that, 'The Path Not Taken,' in which we would have followed this new Aldric from the moment immediately following his being rescued by Cinder. Instead of going with her and following through with the Green Hornet plan, he takes a more moral route and flees, making it to Ozpin and going along a more heroic route, training under Ozpin, rescuing Amber, and working in the light instead of the dark - all the while hounded by the Original Aldric, who would have been the Kessler to this new Aldric's Cole MacGrath, in that he would be constantly confronting and pushing the Path Not Taken Aldric to solidify and commit to his heroic ideals and stay away from apathy, in the aim of creating a better world than the one he left behind - one saved on the foundation of morality and heroism, not compromise and moral ambiguity. I'd even had ideas of PNT Aldric eventually breaking off from Ozpin when he discovered that Ozpin knew who TPATS Aldric was, had interacted and coordinated with him to groom PNT Aldric, and had never told him - leading him on an odyssey of sorts to discover who TPATS Aldric was, and hopefully find a way to finish Salem 'his way' in the process, which would have picked up on a thread I never got to play with in this story - that being how Cinder found Salem in the first place: Finding the ruins of Salem and Ozpin's old kingdom and reading the scattered entries of Salem's manifesto.

But all of that relied on Aldric letting the Gods live in the first place, and that just didn't fly. That's not something he would've done, period.
Aaaaaaand 'The Path Not Taken,' as fun as it would have been, would have been an entirely new story founded on the exact same goals and underlying plot as this one: New guy in the world, his name's Aldric, uses quick thinking and quicker wit to fight people he really shouldn't, decides to go against Salem because she's evil and that's not good. While the story obviously would have played out differently, especially with TPATS Aldric still running around, it would have been a different journey to the same destination, and that just doesn't feel interesting to me. If I were to do that, I'd want to make something different, something new, and that just wouldn't have fit...
Not to mention I'm kind of burnt out on writing for RWBY, and haven't followed the show since Volume 5.

So I'm stuck, because now all I have are the ideas for a kinda/sorta epilogue. Not a full-blown arc, but I suppose they would be akin to the show's Character Shorts - one-offs that tell the story of a moment in time. The ones I have fleshed out the most are Pyrrha and Yang searching for Aldric and their encounters with him when they find him, but 'fleshed out' doesn't mean 'written' or even 'planned' out - all I have are some ideas about points I'd like to make and things I'd like to see, but nothing concrete. I also do have ideas about the fallout of some other decisions Aldric made throughout the story, but those are even more nebulous than Yang and Pyrrha's epilogues.

So what comes next?

As of right now: Nothing. This story is done - this is it. I've told the story I want to tell and made the points I want to make. My experiment was a success. For once I'm giving a character and a setting a happy(ish) ending. The bad guy is vanquished, (most) everyone lives - if scarred and traumatized - and they go their separate ways, ride off into the sunset, fade to black.
I have zero plans for a sequel to this story, I have at best minor plans for one-shot epilogues, but they're few in number, and until or unless I actually think them through and write them out, I'd go ahead and tell you to not expect them in the first place.
The only sliver of hope I'll give you all is that I try not to say 'never' in these situations. I may decide I want to write for RWBY again one day, I may come up with something sufficiently 'new' enough for me to be interested in returning to the idea for TPNT, I may come up with a continuation for TPATS, anything's possible, and I would love to play with Aldric some more, but I just don't have plans for it right now.

Past TPATS, things get a little more interesting. I've got my Naruto story I've been itching to return to once I finished this one, that's a must. I've also had an idea for a Destiny/Warhammer 40K crossover that's been eating at me for a while now, as well as a return to some stories in-progress on another account I've got, and as always I need to put some serious work into my original setting (Which, in case you're wondering, every Fanfic I write is used to test and flesh out a single concept for this setting. Illimitable tests out the application of science to to superpowers, and TPATs tested out how magic worked and what could be done with it.), but that's all for the folks who are interested in me.

For the folks who are just in it for Aldric, RWBY, and/or The Pen and the Sword, it's done.
Game over.

The end.

Thanks for reading.