Happy New Year, my lovely readers! May 2019 be less shitty than its predecessor. Wishful thinking, I know, but a man can dream.

Anyway, I'm back from my break, rested and ready to go. So, let's get to it!

RWBY Watches Earth Movies

Chapter 6: Jurassic Park, Part 6

As the group exited the visitor's center, their new charges in tow, a pair of red, green and yellow SUVs pulled up alongside. They had glass sunroofs, a trio of lights on top, and, most curiously of all, no drivers. The kids were extremely excited, and Ozpin had to try to keep them from being accidentally run over. As soon as they stopped, Yang climbed in one and started looking around.

"Aren't they lovely? Aren't they glorious? These will be your transports for the afternoon." Oz said proudly.

"No drivers?" Whitley asked, somewhat confused.

"No. No drivers. They're electric. They run on this track in the middle of the roadway. Totally non-polluting, top of the line. We spared no expense."

"It's an interactive CD-ROM!" Yang said excitedly as she messed with the touch screen on the dash, "See? You just push the right part of the screen and it talks about whatever you want."

"Yang, darling, you're alright in there," Ozpin said, directing traffic, "Dr. Nikos, come with me. Dr. Arc, come in the second car."

"I'm gonna ride with Dr. Nikos." Nora said, trying to sound casual.

"Yeesh, Pinky," Torchwick said, "Could you be any more obvious?"

"Really? That the best nickname you could come up with?" Nora said, expertly deflecting his comment.

"I'm with her Boss. That one was kinda weak." Neo's sign read.

"Traitor." Torchwick grumbled.

Ozpin had already begun ascending the staircase back into the visitor's center by the time Jaune had started back toward the rear car. He stopped when he noticed Ruby in his way. She looked up at him with recognition and slight admiration.

"I read your book." She said.

"Oh, that's- that's great." He replied stiffly.

"Do you really think dinosaurs turned into birds and that's where they all went?"

"Well, a few species may have evolved along those lines." He grunted as he climbed into the car, Ruby hot on his heels.

"Cuz they sure don't look like birds to me." Ruby said with a chuckle. Jaune looked to Pyrrha for help, but he saw that she was enjoying this, so he got back out of the car, knowing Ruby would follow. "I heard that there was this meteor that hit the Earth someplace down in southern Vale, and made this big crater- "

"Listen…" Jaune interrupted, pausing to try and remember the girl's name.

"Ruby." She finished for him.

"Ruby, which car were you planning on?"

"Whichever one you are." She replied.

"Well, seems you're as persistent as ever, Little Red." Torchwick said.

"She always was, even at that age." Summer said with a smile.

"I get it from my mother." Ruby sassed, causing Summer to ruffle her hair.

Taking this into account, Jaune formulated a plan. He started walking towards the lead car and held the door open for Ruby, acting like a total gentleman, Ruby talking the whole way, "Then I heard about this thing in Omni, about this meteor making all this heat and it made a bunch of diamond dust. And that changed the weather. And they died because of the weather. And then my teacher tells about this other book by a guy named Winchester. And he says- "at the mention of his rival, Cardin Winchester, Jaune closed the door on Ruby and turned back to the other car, only to see Yang standing before him, messing with one of her ponytails and smiling.

"She said I should ride with you cuz it'd be good for you." Yang said innocently.

Jaune looked up and saw Pyrrha in the front seat of the second car laughing to herself. So that was how she wanted to play, was it?

In the control room, Qrow led Ozpin in, briefing him on a weather report he had just received.

"National Weather Service is tracking a tropical storm, about 75 miles west of us." Qrow said, taking a quick swing from his flask.

"Ay yay, yay, yay, why didn't I build in Mistral?" Ozpin said to himself, but loud enough for all to hear.

"I'll keep an eye on it," Qrow assured him, "Maybe it'll swing south, like the last one."

Ozpin patted a dark-skinned technician on the shoulder. The hair gave her away immediately. Anyone there would have recognized that hair color and style anywhere. "Emerald," he said, "Start the tour program."

Emerald swung around in her chair and began furiously typing on a keyboard. She was wearing a button-up shirt with the top two buttons undone and tucked into black slacks underneath a white lab coat. In her mouth was a lit cigarette, which seemed fairly new as very little of it was ash.

"Hold onto your butts." She said, more as a personal ritual than anything else. A final line of code, and the program began.

"So, Em," Mercury said, breaking away from his soda, "What do you think your role in all this is?"

"Well, at the very least I'm not a secretary, thankfully. Maybe I'm a chief operator of the park?"

"Whatever it is," Cinder said, "You at least know exactly what you're doing, and it's clear that Ozpin trusts you explicitly." 'Perhaps we should have tried this tactic to overthrow Shade.' She thought to herself.

Outside, Whitley was in the driver's seat of the lead car with Yang and Ruby in the back talking excitedly to each other, while Jaune, Nora and Pyrrha were in the rear car with Pyrrha alone in the front. As the cars began to move, little snippets of dialogue were heard.

"You want to join the future, right?" Whitley said.

"Oh, Oum help us, we're in the hands of engineers." Nora said sarcastically.

As the cars moved along the bumpy trail, a voice came over the radio system, saying, "During most of your tour, the appropriate information will be automatically selected and displayed for you. Simply touch the area of the screen displaying the appropriate icon."

Ruby leaned over the driver's seat and looked ahead, seeing a massive gateway made of a dark stone arch with torches set in and wooden doors. "Hey, look!"

"Are we gonna hit that?" Yang asked.

"Welcome to Jurassic Park!" the computer voice said.

As the cars passed through the gate, Nora looked up and joked, "What have they got in there, Grimm Kong?"

"Damn, that's an old reference." Yang said, ignoring her mother's look about her language, "Just how old is this you, Nora?"

"Dunno. Maybe my mid-thirties, I hope."

"Doesn't that guy on the recording kinda sound like Professor Port?" Ruby said

"Not pompous enough." Commented Jaune.

"Mr. Arc!" Goodwitch looked scandalized

"Now, Glynda, you have to admit that he's not entirely wrong." Ozcar said.

Back in the control room, Ozpin was at a computer terminal wearing a headset. He entered a short line of code, and the interior of the lead car came on screen. "The voice you're now hearing is Ryan Haywood." He said, "We spared no expense."

Back with the cars, they were passing through a dense jungle with electric fences on either side, as Mr. Haywood began speaking again.

"If you look to the right, you'll see a herd of the first dinosaurs on our tour, called Dilophosaurus."

"Dilophosaurus?!" Jaune said, quickly looking out the window.

"Shit!" Pyrrha exclaimed, mirroring Jaune's enthusiasm.

"Ruby?" Yang said, looking to her little sister for information.

"Dilophosaurus," Ruby said almost mechanically, "Carnivore, early Jurassic period. Name roughly translates to 'two-crested lizard'. Averages about 20 feet long and five to six feet tall, weighing a little under 900 lbs. Pretty much tiptoes the line between a large and medium-sized therapod."

"Thank you."

"One of the earliest carnivores," Mr. Haywood explained, "We now know that Dilophosaurus is actually poisonous, spitting it's venom at it's prey, causing blindness and, eventually, paralysis, allowing the animal to eat at it's leisure. This makes Dilophosaurus a beautiful, but deadly addition to Jurassic Park."

"That's interesting." Ruby said, leaning forward, "There's never been any evidence of that."

"Makes sense, if you think about it." Summer said, "Venom sacs aren't made of bone, so they would have decayed long before the bones had fully fossilized."

Everyone stared out the sides of the cars as they rolled by, trying to get a glimpse of the dinosaurs Haywood was talking about. Even Yang was struggling against Ruby to get a good look, but there was nothing to see but more jungle and high fences.

"Jaune," Pyrrha said, "Where?"

Jaune's face simply crinkled into a frown as the cars passed their last chance to see into the paddock and he slammed a hand into the door, conceding defeat. "Damn."

Back in the control room, Emerald was rapping a pencil against a computer screen, "Vehicle headlights are on and they're not responding." She said, running off the error and adding it to her list, "Those shouldn't be running off car batteries. Item 151 on today's glitch list. We have all the problems of a major theme park and a major zoo, and the computers aren't even on their feet yet." She took a drag from her cigarette, which had considerably shortened.

Ozpin turned to the man who sat before a trio of computer screens in a lab coat. If anything, his workplace resembled a nest more than anything else, with food and drink containers, candy bar wrappers, assorted papers, and what appeared to be a barely hidden lewd magazine scattered about and around his desk.

"Mercury," he said, "Our lives are in your hands and you have butterfingers?"

"Hey, there I am!"

"Is that a PlayFaunus magazine I see on your desk?" Emerald said.

"Looks like it. Never pegged you for that kind of a guy, kid." Roman commented.

"Eh, what can I say? I appreciate the female form. Racial distinctions are lost on me."

"Am I the only one offended by the fact that he has that…thing?" Weiss asked.

"What, sister? A porno mag?" said Winter. Weiss looked scandalized that her older sister, her idol, could even utter the words. "This, dear sister, is one of the downsides of being a part of a unisex team. You lack any true understanding of what the opposite sex is like until you have had to live with them."

"What about Whitley?"

"Not the same. He has his own room in a multi-million lien mansion that could easily house every person in this theater. Your team's sister team is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Am I correct, Ms. Valkyrie?"

"It's true Weiss." Nora confirmed, "You should have seen Pyrrha turn redder than her hair when we accidentally found Jaune's stash one time. Man, did he get an ear-beating from Pyrrha."

"Okay, but I somewhat expected that of Arc. Surely, Ren wouldn't have something like that."

"Of course not. He's more into hentai."

"If we're quite finished talking about people's porn preferences, let us continue with the movie."

Mercury laughed as he turned around in his chair, "I am totally unappreciated in my time. You can run this whole park from this room with minimal staff for up to three days. You think that kind of automation is easy?" He took a sip of his cola "Or cheap? You know anyone who can network eight connection machines and debug 2 million lines of code for what I bid for this job? Cuz if you do, then I'd love to see them try."

"I'm sorry about your financial problems, Mercury, I really am, but they are your problems."

"Oh, you're right, Oz, you're absolutely right. You know, everything's my problem."

"I will not be drawn into another financial debate with you, Mercury. I really will not."

"There's hardly been any debate at all."

Ozpin fixed Mercury with a firm look he had used on his kids, "I don't blame people for their mistakes. But I do ask that they pay for them."

"Thanks, Dad." Mercury said sarcastically.

"Well, now we know why I picked you to infiltrate the Park." Torchwick said.

"Unfortunately, I have to agree." Weiss said, with Winter nodding beside her.

"What'cha mean, Weiss Cream?" Yang asked.

"Obviously, Mercury, hard as it is to believe, designed the computer code that runs that entire park."

"And at some point after he finished," Torchwick continued, "Ozpin short-changed him and caught him in a legal loophole. This has him angry at his employer, which makes him very easily tempted. It's a delicate balance of business sense and understanding human behavior."

"Basically, don't fuck with engineers."

"Merc," Emerald said before Ozpin could retort, "The headlights."

"Yeah, I'll debug the tour program when they get back, alright?" Mercury said. Emerald's look indicated his answer wasn't enough for her. "Okay?! It'll eat a lot of compute cycles. We'll lose part of the system for a while. There's a finite amount of memory, you can't use it for everything. Are you gonna compile for half an hour- "

"Quiet! All of you!" yelled Qrow, who had been there the whole time, patiently watching the security feeds, paying extra attention to the Velociraptor pen, when he looked up and saw the current position of the tour vehicles, "They're approaching the Tyrannosaur paddock."

The cars pulled out of a tunnel and came down a small hill before stopping before a long stretch of fence and more jungle. Jaune, who had crawled into the trunk of the car he was in, so everybody could see properly, looked out and saw a whole lot of nothing. Just like the with Dilophosaurs, the jungle was silent, save for the occasional bout of chirping birds.

Nora chuckled to herself and began ticking off her fingers, saying, "God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs."

"Dinosaurs eat man," Pyrrha said, "Woman inherits Remnant." Nora started laughing while Jaune gave her a knowing look as she stared out the window, trying to see if there was something, anything, that she was missing.

"We'll try to tempt the Rex now," Emerald's voice said over the radio, "Keep watching the fence."

On cue, a small cage rose from the ground, inside of which was a goat, tethered to a metal post by a chain and collar.

"What's gonna happen to him?" Ruby said, somewhat confused. As the cage came down, she put the pieces together, "He's gonna eat the goat?"

"Excellent." Commented Yang.

"What's the matter kid?" Whitley said, keeping his eyes forward, "You never had lamb chops?"

"Well, yeah, but…"

In the other car, Jaune watched the scene unfold, with low-key disgust. "T-rex doesn't wanna be fed. He wants to hunt. You can't just suppress 65 million years of gut instinct."

Sensing it was not in any danger just yet, the goat laid down. Everyone in the cars took this as a sign that nothing was going to be happening anytime soon, and so sat back and waited for the tour to continue.

In the control room, Ozpin sat at his desk with his head resting in one hand while his other lazily typed a line of code, bringing up the interior camera of the rear car. Coincidentally, it was around this time that Nora decided it would be very funny to make fun of him by getting really close to the camera and start talking to it.

"Now, eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right? Hello? Hello? Yes?"

"I really hate that woman." Ozpin sighed as he put his other hand under his head.

"I'm with Nora," Ruby said with a pout, "So far this has been the most boring tour of a DINOSAUR THEME PARK ever."

Nora sat back down next to Jaune, who had climbed back into a proper seat, as the cars began to drive away from the dense jungle and into what appeared to be vast plains.

"See the Tyrannosaur doesn't obey any set patterns, or park schedules. The essence of chaos." She said, groaning as she sat back down.

"I'm still not clear on chaos."

"Oh, it simply deals with unpredictability in complex systems." Nora explained, "The short hand is the Butterfly Effect. A butterfly could flap it's wings in Vacuo and in Atlas you get rain instead of sunshine."

"Nnnyooom!" Pyrrha said, bringing her hand over her head.

"Ah. Did I go too fast?" Nora said, messing with Pyrrha's hair playfully, "I went too fast. I did a fly-by. Give me that glass of water." She indicated one of the small cups on the dashboard, "We're gonna conduct an experiment. We should be still, the car's bouncing up and down, but that doesn't really matter, it's just an example. Now, put you hand flat, like a hieroglyph." As she got Pyrrha into the proper position, Jaune noticed something out in the field. It looked like there was a vehicle out there, identical to the Jeeps they had ridden in to get to the visitor's center.

Nora continued her experiment with Pyrrha, saying "Now, let's say a drop of water falls on your hand. Which way's the drop going to roll off? Towards your fingers or your thumb or your wrist?"

"Thumb, I'd say." Said Pyrrha.

Nora dipped her middle finger into the water and let a drop of water fall onto the knuckle of Pyrrha's middle finger. The drop ran off her hand toward her wrist. "Aha! Okay," Nora said, taking note of what had happened, "Now, freeze your hand. Don't move. I'll do the same thing, start with the same place again. Which way's it going to roll off?"

"Let's say, back the same way."

"Same way?" Nora confirmed as she repeated the process. This time the drop rolled down between Pyrrha's fingers. "Ah, ah. It changed. Why?" Nora said, taking Pyrrha's hand and rubbing it softly, "Because tiny variations, the orientation of hairs on your hand- "

"Jaune, look at this."

"-The amount of blood distending your vessels, imperfections in the skin- "

"Imperfections in the skin?" Pyrrha said coyly.

"Microscopic. But they never repeat and vastly affect the outcome. That's, what?"

"Unpredictability." Pyrrha finished. As she did, Jaune opened the car door and stepped out, walking into the field.

"See? See?" Nora said excitedly, "I'm right again. No one could have predicted that Dr. Arc would suddenly jump out of a moving vehicle."

"Jaune! Jaune~!" Pyrrha called after him, following his lead.

"And there's another example." Nora said aloud, laughing to herself, "See, here I am now by myself, talking to myself. That's Chaos Theory."

"Anyone else find it really ironic that Nora of all people is preaching about chaos and unpredictability?" Blake said.

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" Nora said indignantly. Teams RWBY, J_R, Qrow and Glynda fixed her with a deadpan stare. "Okay, point taken." She said sliding down in her seat. Ren couldn't help but chuckle and rubbed her head comfortingly.

This chapter was fun to write. A lot of witty banter and light humor is something I can handle. Drama? Eh, not so much. Also, some of you guys have been asking for longer chapters, so I'm trying to accommodate. Now, I'm not gonna be doing Couer Al' Aran length chapters of 5k+ words, but it will be at least 2k+.

Anyway, have a good New Year, and see you next week.

Next Update: 1/8/19