This is a work of fan fiction, created for entertainment purposes only and with no claim to the characters depicted. Ownership of RWBY characters and concepts belongs to Rooster Teeth. Ownership of Iron Man characters an concepts belongs to Disney.

Chapter 38: Comes the Star Knight!

"There you are, you stealthy little booger." Ruby's voice came from under the pilot's dash. She emerged holding a tiny device made of Wind Dust and wire with a pair of forceps. With minimal effort, she shattered it with the tool. "Exactly where Penny said it would be."

Jaune was sitting in the co-pilot's chair, that dash having been pried open to reveal a nest of Dust crystals and circuits. He was busy adding silicon cards printed with silver circuits, making new interfaces for Arc Industries Dustless technology as well as personal innovations like the on-board Wardrobe system. "Is it wrong that I'm kind of disappointed in Roman for only planting five bugs on the ship he sold me?"

"You two have a weird relationship." Ruby noted, going back under to button up the console she'd been rooting around in.

All Jaune could do was shrug. "Not going to argue about that. The guy was nice enough to me when we first met at the Vale Technologies Expo back in the day—until he sharked me on some materials deals and left me on the hook for a lopsided deal on capacitors. And even then he was all 'oh, it's just business buddy'. I wanna hate the guy but..."

"High charisma is a dangerous thing," Ruby finished for him. "Heck, I got the guy arrested the first day I ever laid eyes on him and even I can't hate him." She popped out from under the console and plopped down into the pilot's seat. "My side's done! Beat you!"

Jaune rolled his eyes. "Yeah, but you had help. Speaking of which..." He pulled out his scroll and checked the TeamSight app Ruby had provided them from Beacon. It allowed teammates to monitor the relative position and Aura levels of one another in battle.

When Jaune had mostly been using it for as checking to make sure the team's two resident SHIELD agents were nowhere around when he did things Ozpin might object to—like making large purchases from Roman Torchwick. Nora was easy to track—just follow the path of destruction and sweet snacks. But Ren... TeamSight was just the bell he needed for that incredibly stealthy cat. He liked the two of them, but they worked for Ozpin and Jaune's one encounter with him left a gulf of trust that needed to be filled. With spying.

After making sure Ren was in the Arc Compound's kitchen, he completed his thought. "Has Penny managed to get into SHIELD's files yet?"

"N-not very deeply, unless you want to know how much a toilet on a flying castle costs, or how much coffee Professor Ozpin imports from Vacuo a year. She says she'll keep digging, but she has to go slow to keep from alerting them to her presence." She frowned and lowered her head. "I wish you would just trust people, Jaune. First Weiss, now SHIELD? You didn't used to be like this."

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Ruby, if there's anything I've learned in the past couple of months, it's that sometimes I put my trust in the wrong people. Someone in my company's been selling to the White Fang, it sounds like Cinder's the one who kept my family from contacting me..."

"Have you done anything about that yet? Because both me and Yang want a crack at her for that," Ruby interrupted.

"I called a few times. She's out of the office and her scroll seems to be out of the service range." He bent over his wiring work and sighed, "Every time I miss her, I get more angry. By the time we're both in Vale at the same time again, there's gonna be a huge reckoning, I can feel it."

Ruby blew a raspberry. "Not gonna say I'm rooting for it, but... I totally am. It's way past time you fired that creepy lady. Maybe you could give Velvet her job! That'd be awesome and it would be a pretty big statement about where you stand on faunus rights to have her as your CFO."

That gave Jaune pause. He didn't even know if he could get rid of Cinder like that. "I... come on, Rubes, Cinder made me who I am. Even if I could, I don't think it'd be right to turn around and stab her in the back like that. Even if..." he let out a groan as he slotted a card into place. The in-no-way-related-despite-the-name Arc Dust crystals around it flashed once as they passed current into the new component. "Look, she's done something completely unforgivable here, but the thing about Cinder is that she's cold and greedy as hell. She's always talking about how much money she makes off her. She probably didn't give a second thought about getting rid of what she saw as a distraction."

Ruby just started at him with dull eyes. "That is... in no way a good excuse."

"I know," he muttered, "But what I'm saying is, I think she might not... get this whole family, friendship and love thing. You ever see her office? No pictures. The only people I've ever seen her with are her assistant and bodyguard and she clearly doesn't like them. Maybe she just needs someone to reach out to her."

"Um... you have reached out to her," Ruby pointed out.

"Yeah, with the wrong appendage. You know how I am with women."

That made his oldest friend smirk, remembering her first meeting with the blonde inventor. 'hey there Little Red Riding Hood. You sure are lookin' good. Better watch out for any Big, Bad Wolves on the prowl tonight.'"How did that go, anyway?"

"She asked if I was manscaped and then summoned a four inch obsidian razor before clarifying that she meant 'internally'. Then she said that unless we kept things strictly business, she would do it for me personally. And that was before I even opened my mouth. Never tried anything with her after that."

Ruby stretched in the pilot's chair, giving a chuckle. "And after all that, you still think you can convert her to the side of good with the Power of Friendship."

Jaune shrugged. "We live in a world full of murderous super-beasts that seem suspiciously tailor-made to annihilate all humanity with no means of learning anything about them. Hope is all we got, Rubes. Despite everything I said about trust before... people are all we've got."

"But you still can't trust Weiss or Professor Ozpin?"

"Trust but verify. On to other things: thanks for volunteering to fly us out to Golden Fields."

The little redhead grinned, "No problem, Jaune! I'm happy to help. Thank you for letting me and Yang come along."

Jaune ducked his head before going back to work on inserting the last card. "Hey, if I'm going to be mending fences with my family, I might as well introduce them to the family I found while I was away. You and Matte will get along really well I think—she's the new primary smith at the forge. You guys could probably talk weapons for days."

"Aw, you're our family too, Jaune. I bet even Uncle Qrow would agree." Even though she was smiling, Ruby's eyebrows knitted with concern. "So... are you nervous?"

"Beyond," he admitted. "Just don't tell Pyrrha—she's already on pins and needles as it is."

"Is that why you're putting all your nervous energy into turning this baby into a mobile command center even though we're just visiting Golden Fields for the weekend?"

"Partly. But mostly because so far we've gone to a ball and been attacked by the Juggernaut, then when we went to fight Auraless terrorists, we wound up against the White Fang's entire Valean chapter of Dust users. So really, this is just good preparation. Who knows: we might get attacked by a time traveling conqueror or aliens empires from outer space."

That made Ruby snort and almost fall out of her chair laughing. "Yeah, or a guy with like a bunch of robot tentacles, or evil clones!"

The friends laughed for a while longer while Jaune finished wiring the dashboard. By the time they were done, it was time for dinner with the rest of the team.

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After a dinner of an excellent beef stew prepared by Ren, both Jaune and Pyrrha volunteered to wash the dishes while the rest of the team went off to their own devices. Ruby and Yang claimed the living room for video games while Ren and Blake disappeared to parts unknown. After a bit of wandering, Nora settled in to watch the Patch sisters' game in awe at the novel piece of entertainment.

"So what have you been up to?" Jaune asked, getting the water running, "I haven't seen you all day."

The former champion gave him an enigmatic smile. "You were making your preparations, I was making mine."

Jaune raised an wry eyebrow and accepted a pair of rubber gloves she offered him. "Did it by chance involve stressing over the trip tomorrow? Because you won't be alone if it's that."

"Hmm. You're not wrong." She grabbed a sponge and started rinsing bowls. "To be honest, I was doing some work to keep myself from blowing things out of proportion."

He laughed. "Yeah, same here. But... what's with all the secrecy? What've you been working on?"

Another coy smile. "Oh, just keeping my promise from when you were sick after the battle with Adam."

"I don't remember any promise..."

"That might be because it was a promise I made to myself: that if you weren't going to make an armor that could really protect you, I would. So since that day, I've been using the AutoCAD every moment I could spare. I spent today making some calls and then in the fabrication farm." When her admission was met with total silence, she started to get pensive. "Um... that is okay, isn't it?"

Thankfully, when she glanced aside at him, she found a fond smile and a look of admiration.

When Jaune saw her seeing him, he turned his attention back to the dishes; he was drying as she washed. "It's more than okay." He fumbled with a spoon as he tried to put the right words together. The words came slowly. "I get why you'd think it wouldn't though. Especially after our talk about why it's important to attune our Auras to our armor and weapons and I just insisted on new and bigger builds."

After a long pause, he continued. "The whole thing with the Sentry was a wake-up call for me though. The systems I designed for you, Ruby and Yang worked perfectly. They worked for you guys because I know all three of you and even if the Scarlet Spider and Wasp Mks I were both just tweaks of the Hematite, they were adjusted to maximize efficiency for your fighting styles."

"I mean... well you know this better than anyone: that's how I work. I can look at things—even how people move and fight and take it apart in my mind. Analyze it. After a while, see how to make it better. When it comes to the armors, I see what makes someone awesome and construct systems that enhance that and makes up for any shortcomings. Except... now I realize I can't do that for myself. I can't... see what there is to enhance about myself, so I just tried too hard to design something to make up for... well everything. All the shortcoming I have, all the ones I only think I have. Everything. And I know you can't get a good design out of that. Too many subsystems, too many conflicting design goals."

His expression had contorted into something hard and serious as he laid out the situation. All of that melted away into a soft, adoring smile as he once more made eye contact with Pyrrha. "So I need an outside perspective. Someone who knows me—both my strengths and weaknesses and understands how I think."

Reaching out, his gloved hands reached out to hers, relieving them of the bowl she was washing before taking hold of them. "There's no one more qualified for this and frankly, no one I'd be more thrilled to have building my armor. So it's... it's beyond alright what you did, Pyr. In fact, thank you." He leaned in an gave her a quick kiss.

Even given how long he'd taken to lay out his feelings, Pyrrha still took a moment to fully absorb what he'd said. Over the years, she'd developed something of a callus when it came to praise. From fawning fans to her sponsors to her mother back in her tournament days, she'd had her fill of it. This time it was different though; not just because of who it came from, but for what. She's replicated and tweaked Jaune's designs before, but this was her first original piece of engineering. It was time to see if all the learning-by-osmosis she'd been doing had paid off and it made her a little giddy.

As they pulled back from the kiss, she smiled broadly with a playful little quirk on her lips. "Do... you want to see it?" She asked.

A spark of childlike glee entered Jaune's eyes. "Can I? Is it ready?"

Pyrrha nodded. "It still needs a shakedown flight, but there's no harm in trying it on. That is unless you were planning on going out to fight some more terrorists, Grimm or mystically empowered ex-classmates of mine. In which case, I'll have to insist you take the Scarab or one of the auxiliary Hematites. After all, I still have some calls out about some of the modules."

At this Jaune blinked. "Modules?"

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A few minutes later and the pair were across from the main house in the warehouse-like fabrication farm. The building was a natural expansion of the dozen or so rapid fabrication machines Jaune originally installed in his lab way back when Arc Industries first took off. What originally started as a means of creating tools and parts he needed on the fly had grown into a fully automated factory and storage facility almost as large as the main house that took up more than a third of the space along the compound's western wall, right below that section's Helios unit.

By the time the couple reached the rack where the new armor had just emerged from being painted and detailed a few hours prior, they'd picked up an audience in the form of Ruby, Nora, Yang, and Ren plus Blake, who had been dragged along by Yang, but didn't seem all that attentive.

Made five times as awkward by having what she'd planned in her head as a private presentation to Jaune becoming a public speaking engagement, Pyrrha tried to ignore the small crowd as she synched her scroll to the farm's systems.

"S-so..." she began, "I was inspired by Professor... Director Ozpin's mention of the story of the Knight and the Star Dragon. Specifically, the Knight's weapon, which allowed him to do almost anything. I wanted to pattern the armor after that: one system that can perform any function it needs for a given mission. Obviously weight and power requirements..." she realized she was getting to technical—to the point Yang was yawning—and cut herself off. "Um, yes. Anyway I decided to make the armor modular. One base armor that could incorporate many different weapon, propulsion and defensive components. A base which I designed so it could be carried and deployed from a form the size of a suitcase."

The many, many times she'd seen Jaune perform his showmanship hadn't rubbed off on Pyrrha at all. In fact, years of living a relatively private life with the amazing attention sink of Jaune Arc as her shield had made her old presentation skills rusty to the point of crumbling.

But she tried anyway, raising her hand toward one of the completion workbenches that lined the area and applying her semblance to the device lying there. A white, black and orange rectangle roughly the size of a large suitcase rose from its resting place and shot toward her in exactly the same manner as her weapons would.

That is, it shot toward her with the speed and urgency as if she desperately needed it to defend herself in combat. Everyone else in the room tensed even though Pyrrha barely looked as she caught the ballistic luggage with both hands, stopping its forward progress with a clapping sound that rang throughout the room. She barely even budged at the impact, the only sign there had even been one being her ponytail swaying back and forth.

The sound shocked her more than anything, and she cringed at it, completely ruining the effect as a whole. Letting out a sheepish laugh, she held up the metallic box, which now that it wasn't moving at sixty-miles and hour was clearly constructed of dozens of interlocking plates designed to slide over one another.

"Um... without further ado, I give you the Star Brand modular armor system. Jaune?"

The man in question had been standing beside her right up until he'd been ducking behind her to protect himself from the flying armor. Trying his level best to pretend that hadn't just happened, He stepped forward as Pyrrha popped the locked on the 'suitcase' and used her semblance to lower it to the ground before him.

Inside the 'luggage' was a chaos of moving parts clustered around a pair of foot prints exactly his size. It didn't take a genius to realize what he was supposed to do, so he stepped onto those footprints.

Immediately the machine came alive. Metal plates extended and locked around his feet as struts extended out to the sides before snapping into place around his knees, dragging the metal cables of the artificial muscle systems. Using those as tracks to follow, a new set of struts followed, connecting from his knees to his thighs and then a segmented brace rose to encompass his waist. Within moments, his body and limbs were encased in the familiar artificial muscle system. Then more components, following magnetic tracks (he couldn't help by chuckle that it had taken Pyrrha to think up that innovation) started rising out of the shell of the 'suitcase': repulsers, connector nodes, ECM systems, sensors, and finally the Arc Reactor itself, which slotted into position on his chest.

Last of all, the armor plates and flight surfaces assembled, white with black mesh at the joints and muted orange connection nodes along most flat planes along his limbs and on his back. A gold eight-pointed star symbol covered the Arc Reactor. The helmet followed the rest, an stylized visor like that which belonged to a knight of old.

Jaune looked down at his hands while at the same time checking all the start-up diagnostics flashing across his HUD. Most interesting were a series of icons flashing along the bottom labeled 'Swordsman', 'Falcon', and a final one marked 'PendingProjectTitan'.

"Nice." He commented, hearing his voice coming out extra deep and augmented by the armor. "What are Swordsman, Falcon and Project Titan though?"

Forgetting her less than stellar performance in presentation, Pyrrha beamed. "Well those are the three modules I've designed—though project Titan isn't done yet. They're also a prototype for that remote armor delivery idea we discussed. Would you like to give it a try?"

"Sure." Inside the armor, Jaune grinned widely. What he'd said before hadn't been just empty platitudes: it really did mean a lot to him for her to have designed this for him. He selected the Swordsman module.

'Swordsman Close-range Offensive System active and en route. Please stand by.'

There was an icon to bring up a map of the module's progress, but there was no need, as a moment later, a repulser blast launched a five-foot long, six-inch wide metal capsule from another completion workbench. It was painted white and gold, and flew unerringly for the Starbrand's right arm. Once it was in range, it snapped open to reveal a series of orange connection ports which locked onto his arm with a set of powerful electomagnets.

Then, like the scabbard of Crocea Mors, it expanded open into a shield, only instead of a simple kite shield, it became a lozenge-shaped tower shield. And in the middle, attached to the rear, was an over-sized mechanical hilt.

Taking it in his free hand, Jaune manipulated the trigger mechanism on it, extending a narrow T-shaped bar to about three feet long. The moment it was fully extended, the hilt whirred to life, filling the twin plasma channels along the sides of the bar with crackling yellow-gold plasma.

Their audience went silent for a long moment.

Ruby broke said silence. "Ohmigoodess, it's a plasma sword. They can make plasma swords now, Yang!" In a flash of rose petals, she was directly in Pyrrha's personal space. "Can you upgrade Crescent Rose to be a plasma scythe? Oh please, oh please, oh please?"

"You do realize you're going to be hearing about this all the way to Golden Fields, right?" Jaune asked as Ruby's begging continued unabated.

Pyrrha reached out and ruffled Ruby's hair. "We'll see what we can do, Ruby. After all, I'd hate to hurt your baby in the process." That got the younger woman to back off a bit luckily. With a smile, she turned to Jaune, "So how do you like it?"

Giving the glowing, humming sword an experimental flourish and checking the balance of his shield, Jaune gave a satisfactory nod. "I love it."

"Then even if Ruby begs the whole time we're there, it's worth it."

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AN: So there have been a lot of Avengers members over the years and only a few of them have been in the movies so far. Which made it pretty funny that everyone and their mother was trying to fit the whole crew into terms of the MCU when I had all of comic history to play with and showed no qualms about mixing and matching.

I went around and around on who Jaune would 'be' in this fic in terms of which superhero identity he'd have and then I asked 'What would Tony Stark Do'. And the answer was he'd never stop making armors. He'd keep changing and improving and he'd never settle.

So how do I get out of that? The Starbrand, Marvel's answer tot he Green Lantern Ring in many ways. It can do just about anything limited to the user's imagination. It just so happens that I also linked Jaune to the 'Star Knight' already.

Having Pyrrha be the one to design it came from my interpretation of Jaune's character in canon, which is exactly what he describes in story: he knows what makes everyone special but himself (which is ironically what makes him special). He needs outside forces to step in and show him what he's actually capable of just as much as (as I've described before) he needs 'pieces' to move around on the battlefield to show his tactician abilities.

Also, I really, really needed to establish Pyrrha's bonafides in making armor for later. Wink.

The conversation between Ruby and Jaune was a pleasure to write as it shows how Jaune's worldview has matured without falling into the trap of being jaded and cynical. He's NOT blindly trusting SHIELD, but he is trusting Penny because he trusts Ruby.

That dishwashing scene originally went on for-goddamn-ever. I couldn't find a way out of it for the life of me even as it turned into Pyrrha monologging about the armor's specs and me wanting to shoot myself to make it end. That's actually why I did the presentation bit; to end that conversation.

Next chapter, we arrive at Golden Fields while a rainstorm strikes the Arc compound and someone arrives bearing gifts—and secrets.