Winter's Yacht, Early afternoon
Blanc had fellen asleep in her small lounge, laying back across the couch. He shook in his sleep, eyes twitching rapidly, and his body covered in sweat. Winter sat across from him, watching, until with a start, he sat up, eyes wide and startled.
"Are you okay? I take it you were having a nightmare?"
He paused, catching his breath. "Just memories..."
Her eyebrow raised, but he didn't elaborate. After waiting, she sighed and responded. "Flight time to Vale's Airfield for refueling will take us into late evening. I propose we stop there for the evening meal. There's a kitchenette on board; I confess I'm not much of a cook."
He got up, pulling his sweat soaked shirt off and reaching into his bag for a replacement. Winter looked away, ashamed at her thoughts, but then turned back, her eyes widening a the sight of all the scars across his torso. "Blanc, I... what happened to you?"
He shot up, quickly turning to put the shirt between him and her. "Um, do you mind if I use your shower?" She nodded, so he grabbed his bag, heading into her room. A few minutes later she heard the sound of her shower running; it used recycled water that was exchanged at the same time as the aircraft was yacht was effectively a small mobile apartment; not the fastest aircraft available, but faster than it's size should allow, and it made for a good staging area for missions, as well as fitting the profile of a Schnee heiress.
After a bit, she entered her own room, sitting on the bed. The door to the ensuite was open and she could hear the water running in the shower, and tell Blanc was inside the stall, so she raised her voice. "Are you going to tell me about your scars?"
He yelled back. "I don't see why I should. You may be my aunt, but you barely know me."
"I recognize what look like scars from a rapier, like the one my sister wields. Did she give you those scars?" There was quiet fury in her voice.
He didn't answer for a bit, then shut off the shower. Really, he was just rinsing off sweat anyway. He quickly toweled off, and she waited patiently, occasionally seeing parts of his shadow as he dried himself. "Most of them aren't from her, but yes, the future her did give me many of them. She was training me. It was painful but... looking back on it, I suppose it may have saved my life. You can't really understand. You weren't there; none of you were there. You don't know what life was like and dust will it, you never will."
"And the rest? I recognize whip scars, Blanc."
"None of your business. I'm pretty sure I was clear about this. You don't know me well enough for me to want to share this with you." He stepped out of the bathroom, nude save for a towel wrapped around his waist. She'd seen his scars already, but now she could really appreciate how much of his body was damaged. His feet, the brief glipses she caught of his calves - there were scars from slices and tears in his skin like a spiderweb. Her hand flew to her mouth, covering it for fear she'd lose what she'd had to eat that morning.
"Yeah, that's one reason I don't want to share it."
"I can't believe she'd do this to you. The sister I know... The Weiss I love would never do that to anyone, let alone her own child."
"I told you, most of this wasn't her. Some of this is from grimm, some of it is from other things..." He sat on the bed, still undressed. "Look, you see his round-shaped one here? You gave me that while you were training me to use the maiden's powers, with one of your ice bolts."
She looked at him confused. "Excuse me, training you with what?" His eyebrow rose.
"The maiden's... wait, you know what you are, right?"
"I'm the oldest daughter of Jacque Schnee, a special operative of the Atlas Military, and evidently, I'm your aunt."
"No, I mean about being the winter... you don't know yet. Great. This is stupid; you're supposed to have a handler from what I was told. You work under Ironwood, right?" She nodded. "Well, he is supposed to be yours. He hasn't explained this to you? The voices, the power boost and domination over elements associated with your season? Your eyes lighting up?"
Her face lit up, partially in excitement, but also a bit in anger. "You know what this is? This thing that's been happening to me?"
"Wow, okay. You must be going through your awakening. That's what it's called when the power transfers but is dormant, and then activates. Part of the reason why new maidens have to be sought out so often." He paused, grateful for her patience. "What do you know about the story of the wizard and the four maidens."
"The story of the seasons? It's an old child's tale, Blanc."
"It's also basically true. The wizard existed, and he granted four young women powers over the elements aligned with their particular season. You have the powers of the Winter maiden, and you trained me to use mine, which are from Fall."
She looked down at his crotch. "You don't look like a woman to me, Blanc."
He laughed, relaxing a bit at the humor. "No, I suppose not. I got my powers when mom was just pregnant with me. There was no one else around and available who qualified, I guess, and the former holder must've died thinking about mom or something. You were... are the winter maiden. I don't know much about how you got your powers, I was just a kid when mine started to manifest and you came to train me to control them. They were always a bit disagreeable with me, though. I must've been a terrible pupil." She smirked at him. "The powers transfer when the former holder dies. As far as I know they've always transferred to women before; young women who were virgins."
"I hate to break it to you, Blanc, but I've not been a virgin for some time. Certainly well before this... thing... started happening to me. I... I'll suddenly get flashes of something like memory; things I never experienced but they feel real, and there will be light coming from my eyes. The room will get cold. I've had a flare for utilizing ice since my aura was unlocked, that and summoning. Your poor mother still struggles with that, I know. So far I've been able to hide it; I didn't know what was happening to me."
He pulled her into a one-armed hug. "I had a similar experience, though mine was a bit more violent. Blew the roof right off out house in Patch. Mom pitched a fit; thought we'd been hit by tornado or something, until she saw my eyes. That's when she called you. I thank Dust you were there to explain it to me. I guess I get to pay it back now. Ironwood is supposed to talk to you about this, but I guess he doesn't know yet, if you've been keeping it a secret. I'll train you, the way you trained me, if you want."
She pulled him all the way into a hug, her head over his shoulder, heedless of his almost nudity. "Thank you, Blanc. I've been so scared. I thought... I thought they'd throw me out or... put me in a prison or dissect me. Once I was flying and had an episode, and the console froze over. I was lucky that the autopilot was engaged and that nothing shorted out either... I was still forced to have most of it repaired after landing. I tried to control it by keeping my emotions in check, and it had worked for a while, but lately..."
He returned the hug, warmly. His aunt hadn't been as cold and indifferent as his mother had been, but she'd definitely been difficult and stand-offish, even while training him, and afterward he rarely saw her again. She hadn't survived the early days of the final siege of mankind; she'd been the one to inform his mother that her beloved partner Ruby had been murdered, and that was the last he saw of her.
Blanc could feel her tears on his shoulder, and he just held her while she sobbed. He didn't know what else to do, and while he felt a bit weird to be a grown man, naked, holding his own aunt on her own bed, there was nothing sexual about what they were doing. He understood that fear she had when weird things began to happen that she couldn't explain but knew she caused. He'd had the same things happen to him, only he'd been a child and could still believe in magic. He wasn't sure who had it worse between them, at least in this respect, but he could offer her the same comfort she'd offered him when it had been his problem. Always another task, and time was growing shorter with every day.
Leaning her back, he looked into her eyes. "Let me get dressed. In the meantime, what do you know about meditation?"
Xiao-Long home, Patch, late afternoon
Ruby'd never kissed a girl, or anyone other than her family, really. A peck that had left her flushed and giggling during her first few years of school, until that boy turned into a bully and started pulling her hair. It was the one time Yang just laughed it off rather than knocking the bully around. She still didn't quite understand why it was different, but Yang said it was. She'd said that he was trying to show he liked her. It hurt! It's why she got her hair cut short, and kept it that way. She figured, less hair to pull, less hair pulling. It helped that it was easier to clean and take care of, too.
Now though, she couldn't stop herself from imagining pulling Weiss's hair while she...
"Ruby, what are you thinking about?" She was staring. She was staring at Weiss and she'd been caught. Why was Weiss smirking?
Ruby choked down the cookie she'd been eating. Weiss had joined her for once, taking small, polite nibbles. "Uh, I was thinking about this boy who pulled my hair after kissing me."
"Oh, he stole your first kiss, then pulled your hair in a passionate embrace?" The heiress was laughing now.
"No, we were little kids. Kids don't do those kind of things."
"And huntresses? Do we do those kind of things?" Ruby's mind filled with images of pulling Weiss's head back, revealing her long, slender neck to Ruby's tongue, tracing the fencer's collar bone, downward...
"I think Yang does. Do you?"
Weiss looked into her eyes from across the plate of cookies her dad had left for them before heading out to Signal to work on grading some papers. "I believe I do. I have in the past." She looked away. "When the person and the time is right, anyway."
"Weiss, are we flirting?"
The white-haired young woman suddenly choked up. "Ruby! I... you don't just spout things out like that?"
That confused her more. "Why not? It seems like if you really liked someone, why wait to tell them? We don't know what's going to happen. Bad things could be just around the corner. We face grimm all the time, and criminals who might kill us. If I like you, and you like me, why shouldn't we tell each other?"
Weiss turned toward her, serious consideration on her face. "I suppose you have a point. Are you telling me you like me?"
Ruby nodded, and Weiss reached out to her, yanking Ruby's hair, and pulled her into a kiss. It was wet, and Ruby had no idea what she was doing, and she was a bit grossed out at first when Weiss started to push her tongue into Ruby's mouth, but then it touched her tongue, and she felt herself sigh, and warmth spread through her, from her chest downward, and the reaperette wrapped her arms around her partner, titled her head a bit more, and did her best to mimic what she liked best about what Weiss was doing.
And then, Weiss pulled her hair again, tilting her head backward and began to kiss her way down Ruby's neck, and Ruby understood why hair pulling could be a good thing.
"Am I interrupting something, Schnee?" In the doorway, leaning against the frame, stood Qrow. He was not smiling, nor was he holding his flask.
Blake sat, Yang's head in her lap, watching the clouds pass. There was a bit of a chill in the air, but it was still early afternoon, and quite comfortable out in their regular gear. From the house, they could hear raised voices.
"Is it really so bad if she likes Weiss, Yang?"
It took a while before the blonde answered. "I don't think it's Weiss. I think it's that Ruby's 15." Before Blake could interject. "And Weiss isn't."
"The age difference isn't that much, and she is a hunter-in-training. She can drink and have sex if she wants to."
"Of course she can, but she shouldn't. Not yet, anyway. Dad's not even comfortable with Blanc yet - not really, you know that. And Ruby? And Qrow's probably trying to be the dad he wanted to be but couldn't, or maybe... maybe he just doesn't understand how to be more subtle about it."
"Subtle like flying all the way to Beacon because he thought his daughter got knocked up, when she's just knocked her boyfriend out?"
Yang cringed. It was still a soft spot for her; she was full of regret over what she'd done.
"So you don't think your dad would have a problem if say, you and I were in a relationship?"
Yang laughed. "I dunno, Kitty-kat. Fancy trying out a blonde flosser?" Blake slapped Yang's shoulder. "Nah, probably not. Some of dad's students in every class were gay and he never said anything about it. It didn't really come up when we had the talk." A door slammed, Ruby marching toward the pair. Behind them it opened again, and Qrow ran out behind her.
"Get back here young lady. We weren't finished." Weiss was behind them, still in the house, her hands covering her face.
Ruby turned, screaming at him. "Who do you think you are? You've suddenly decided now is the time to start acting like my dad, and your first act as a parent is to call my girlfriend a whore!" The girls gasped.
"I didn't call her a whore. I called her a slut who preys on children."
Now that the arguers were closer, the loungers could see the red handprint on Qrow's face.
"I. Am. Not. A. Child! I kill Grimm. I drink milk! M. I. L. K. Just because I don't drink that stinking stuff you keep in that flask doesn't make me naive. If Weiss and I want to fuck, we're going to fuck." Yang stood up and covered the girl's mouth, Blake behind her, mouth hanging open, and Weiss behind Qrow, in tears and covering her own mouth.
"Five minutes and you're already talking about sex. You're fifteen, Ruby." The reaper broke free, getting right up into his face.
"I'm a legal adult. I can drink if I want, I can screw if I want. Yang lost her virginity at 15! What's the big deal? I'm not even going to get pregnant!"
Yang interrupted before Qrow could continue, a shocked look on his face. "Ruby, how do you know that?"
Ruby stopped, turning to her sister, a sheepish look on her face. "I sort of followed you that night... and watched."
"Ruby!"
Blake slipped subtly over to Weiss. She whispered "You want to go some where and talk?"
Weiss looked grateful. "I think I ought to stay." Yang slapped Ruby, then punched Qrow, and then all three stalked off, completely ignoring the remaining two. "Then again..."
"They'll be all right. Come on, let's go find someplace quiet to talk. Yang showed me a pond over this way." She took Weiss's hand, and began to lead her off. It just so happened to be in the direction none of the three had left.
Beacon Academy, late evening
Blanc had persuaded Winter to drop him off at the Academy so he could visit his room and sleep there, rather than her couch. The school was lightly populated by comparison to normal, but the grounds were never really empty, and the business of the school went on even without the students. As much as Beacon was a school, it was also a business and the nominal headquarters for hunters in the kingdom. Student tuition provided them access to the forge, but the same facility was available, and frequented, by hunters in the kingdom, as well as the dust shop and various other stores and businesses geared toward hunters. There was even a small bakery and cafe, which was where Blanc took his evening meal.
He'd wanted to get back to his room and get the nanolathe reproducing his coat. He had the raw material already; a bolt of the special cloth he'd constructed that had been slated to send on to the SDC was still there; he'd make another bolt after. Instead, he'd carefully cut enough material from it for another coat, with the pockets for armored plates, and put it into the lathe as source material. The process would take an hour or so, and then he'd have to weave the necessary glphys into it with dust to lighten it with the armored plates, as well as keep it cool enough to tolerate, as the fabric was air-tight, and installed the necessary electrical dust weave to allow it to become rigid so that he could glide with it.
After getting it going, he'd changed clothes, hit one of the shops to purchase a bag and some new boots, and then hit the cafe, which had a good view over the cliffs at Vale. From here he could see part of the coast, as well as the defensive wall between the city and the mountains that formed Vale's real defense against the grimm. He'd seen it on their flight into the kingdom from Bastion; the wall several meters high, and ringed from the eastern coast around the south, up the western side of the city, to the coast along the northern side. Forever fall lay outside the wall, but the Emerald forest was trapped between it and Beacon itself. It was a mystery how both forests continued to have grimm populations, given their proximity to Beacon and how often they were purged as a result.
The coast was defended by Vale's only remaining professional military force, the Valesian coast guard. They mostly operated fixed gun emplacements along the coast, and the various docks for the merchant kingdom. They did have a small navy as well; not suited to much more than defending the harbors and coastline from grimm, but Vale was mostly demilitarized, living under Atlas' protective umbrella. They served as a major port, and refueling post for the three other kingdoms, and the major location of international trade, based on their geographic position. This made the city rather cosmopolitan; Atlas' technology, Mistralian artwork, agriculture and style, and Vacuoan vices, spices, and dust. All along with Vale's abundant seafood and monopoly on various foodstuff that only grew in the Valesian climate. Vale tended to take the best of what was offered from the other kingdoms.
Unfortunately, their security forces were lax. Too much time spent living under Atlas' protective wings, too much reliance on the natural barriers of the mountains, and the automated defenses on their walls. Only their coasts, and their police forces, were professional. The kingdom had a nominal militia, but they weren't well armed or trained. The other part of the equation for the weak state of their security was the ability to rely on what was widely considered the best school of hunters and huntresses in Remnant. Beacon had always had a good reputation, but under the current headmaster, it had created better and more numerous defenders against the darkness of the grimm. Atlas, as a school, relied on it's technology and rigid military structure, while Mistral depended upon the creativity and uniqueness of it's candidates and it's wider selection. It was the most populous of all of the kingdoms. Vacuo had a tendency to provide the most self-reliant of the four schools, but they were also prone to wandering and working alone. It's population also tended to be the most hardy, having to defend themselves from grimm directly more often than the other kingdoms, and while it's population was the smallest of all the kingdoms, they had the largest portion of them as active hunters and huntresses.
Blanc ate lightly, wanting to be finished quickly. He still wanted to pack some things and see if there was anything else he needed to purchase to replace items lost while going to visit his father's family. He'd not have much time to rest on the flight to patch, which was relatively short, and he wasn't sure if Winter would be staying or not. He remembered that she'd had an on-again off-again thing with his grandpa Qrow, and wasn't sure if they were on or off right now.
Winter had taken to meditation well, but it was too difficult to train her in much of anything else in such a confined place, and secrecy was still necessary. He'd hoped to be able to find someplace on patch where they could find the privacy necessary to train, but he supposed he'd have to finally resolve the issues around Blake, and then bring the rest of RWBY into his secret, before he could risk training her. He loved her, but he doubted Yang would allow him that kind of privacy without knowing why. She knew some of his secrets, but this was Winter's secret as well. He knew, from experience, that Qrow was in the know, but he didn't know about Yang's father, and he knew no one else there would know. He also figured Weiss wouldn't leave it alone if she knew it involved Winter.
He looked out over the city; Winter had dropped him off, but headed into Vale's airfield anyway. She had a regular hanger there, and reservations at her favorite restaurant. For two. He felt guilty about leaving her alone, but perhaps she'd picked someone else up to join her. She'd offered to stay with him, but he'd insisted that if she wasn't staying in his rooms, she may as well go on and enjoy herself as he had hours of work ahead of him, and would likely be poor company. He did offer to let her use his bed while he worked; he doubted he'd get much sleep, especially having napped earlier and dreamt of Salem's tender mercies.
His scroll vibrated, and he pulled out it, expecting Yang. Instead, it was Winter.
"Hey. Enjoy your meal?"
"I did. Would you like me to bring you anything?"
"I'll be working most of the night so I'm eating at the cafe, but thanks anyway. I didn't expect you to come back until tomorrow."
She smiled. "Refueling's finished. I could stay in the hanger, but I don't think I can sleep. You've no idea how relieved I am that you know about this." He did, somewhat. It couldn't be the same, of course, having been a child while she was an adult, but he'd been frightened of himself and of what people would think of him. He could still remember that anxious feeling, his mother and Aunt Ruby looking down on him as they looked out at the missing roof. He'd thought he would vomit until Ruby began to chuckle.
"Well, you can stay at my place if you want. Bed's not any bigger than yours, though."
"I'd like to watch you work, if you don't mind. Father hadn't told me anything about you, but I'm interested to see what you do for our family's benefit."
"Sure. It's not as exciting as you think it'll be; trust me."
She nodded, and then signed off. He supposed there really wasn't much left to say; he'd no idea how long it'd take her to get to her yacht, but from there it wouldn't take her long to arrive at Beacon, and he had no doubt she could figure out how to use the directory as well as anyone else. He finished the last portion of his meal as the sun set, then walked back to his room, meandering a bit to give the nanolathe time.
Winter had beaten him back, somehow. At his inquisitive look, she replied to the answer in his head. "I was already on board. I'm very interested to see our investment in you."
He unlocked the door, opening it for her to step in. The glow of the nanolathe's dust projectors and the quiet hum as they moved back and forth, working on the ballistic nanoweave fiber construct being transformed into a new duster greeted them before he slipped on the light switch, the arc of electricity in the overhead tubes creating it's own, louder hum, and washing out both the light and sound from the lathe.
"So that's the nanolathe you were describing? It's larger than I expected, but quieter. And you say it can produce anything?"
He nodded. "Just about. You have to have the complete designs and the raw material; it doesn't make something from nothing, but you can take the base elements and, given enough time, it will weave them into whatever you want. It uses dust projectors to manipulate the material at a sub-atomic level. The more intricate the design and the more it has to layer differing materials, the slower it is. Because the cloth was already made, it's going pretty quickly."
"And the glyphs? It can make those as well?"
He gave a non-committal shrug. "In theory, I guess, but in practice it takes aura manipulation to get it right. It can certainly weave dust into the material; standard stuff, but the glyphs still require a glyph user to get correctly. On the non-fabric material I have to stand at the machine and feed it Aura while it runs the patterns through, but it can make them then. If you'd had the chance you should have taken a look at some of the armor I made for Pyrrha and Jaune."
She paused. "Can you weave the glyphs to transport you through time?"
"Well, yes and no. Obviously it can replicate the pattern, but the problem is that it doesn't work unless I use it. The time dilation and acceleration glyphs work fine, but the temporal displacement glyph is more complicated. I think it requires active control from the glyph user to manipulate. It also takes a lot more power; I can store the power necessary in the other glyphs, but I think that one would drain the user completely and probably kill them."
He cleared space on his couch for her to sit, moving boxes of parts and raw material onto the floor. She noticed a set of military crates off to the side of the room. "What are those?" He waved her over, unlocking the case on top and throwing back the heavy lid. Inside was an exact replica of his Opticor, along with ten magazines.
"These are for delivery to your father, for demonstration purposes. The last one was still in the lathe when I returned." She gestured to pick it up, and he nodded. She lifted it up out of the crate, heaving a bit to get it up and into position on her shoulder. "It's not loaded, but the dust crystal for the ionization laser is installed. Harmless without the payload." She depressed the trigger, the laser lighting up and the mechanism spinning as if there was a charge to fire, and then shutting off.
"A bit heavy, isn't it?"
"It's really an anti-armor weapon. Useful against large or heavily armored grimm. The Boltor in the case below this is more on the lighter side." While she still held the bulk of the weight, he closed the upper crate, shifted it off to the floor, and then reached over to unlock and open the lower crate, revealing the rifle and ten loaded magazines as well. "Electric dust powers electromagnets which propel the steel bolt out at near hypersonic speed. They're thin enough that the pressure will let them penetrate grimm bone armor of up to 8 centimeters or more, but the won't do enough damage to large grim unless fired in number. The firerate is pretty high, though. The magazine hold 60 rounds, and it has a fire rate of 300 rounds per second."
"That's impressive! You invented these?"
He shook his head. "I don't remember who actually invented them; I just memorized the plans and brought them back from the future. They're actually quite simple designs, despite how they look. I bought the laser from the local hunter store; there's more work involved in creating the magazines and the plasma to put into them than the actual Opticor. Still takes the nanolathe to get the construction right, though. Too much precision needed for anything else. I suppose you could build these on a large scale with less precision. Put them on one of Atlas' destroyers or something." He took the Opticor from her, putting it back into it's delivery case, as she pulled out the Boltor and shouldered it, aiming down the sight.
"Weight seems good, feels like the stock is wooden." She lowered it back down, returning it to it's case. "A bit overly decorative, don't you think?"
"My originals are mostly wood; it makes them lighter than the composite metal the SDC is likely to use in mass production. The decorative nature is because the original I made for Jaune, and then one for myself. You know there's a functionality to style with hunters." She nodded and closed the case for him, then helped him stack the Opticor back on top of it. "My best work is on armor, though. Ruby, that's Weiss' partner, she taught me about making weapons, but I have a better knack at armor." He picked up a pair of leggings, made from the same nanoweave ballistic material that was in the nanolathe. "These are for her, Ruby that is." He pulled them open to show her the glyphs woven into the fabric with wind dust. "Because the material is air tight, it gets too hot too quickly. It's can't breathe. The glyph gets powered by the wearer's aura, but will keep the air underneath cool and moving a bit, enough so it should feel somewhat liek she's not even wearing them. It'll also provide her legs better protection than her current leggings. I made a pair for Weiss and Blake as well."
Winter picked up a longer coat, brown like his duster, but smaller in the shoulders, split down the back, and short in the front. The sleeves were long, but trolled up and attached on the side. Inside the coat were similar cooling and airflow glyphs, but in the sleeves were others. "And who is this for?" He took it from her, a small smile on his face.
"Ruby's sister, Yang. My girlfriend."
"I see. There's a lot more worksmanship in it than the others." He nodded.
"Same material, some thinner armor plates are woven into it, with mass-reduction glyphs to make it move easier and not hang and drop like an armored coat. The sleeves also have some special glyphs to make them more resistant to cutting edges reinforced with dust."
Winter's eyes widened. "You can do that with a glyph?"
Blanc pulled out a piece of paper on which he'd drawn the glyph to use as a reference. "it dissipates energy when triggered by damage. The moment the fabric begins to cut nearby, the glyph will pull all the energy from the cutting object; both the kinetic and whatever else. Red fire dust is typically used to make blades cut through armor. This will dissipate all of that, and charge itself from it, to boot. The more they get hit, the stronger the protection. At least until the fabric the glyph is on takes too much damage. That's why woven into the inner, secondary layer. Might feel a bit stiff, but less so than the rigid armor plates, and it'll offer better protection."
"Why the arms? Why not the whole body?"
"Too many glyphs required to cover the whole body. She'd find it draining during combat on her aura unless it was getting regular cutting damage. And it does nothing for blunt force. They're in the arms because I have a reason to believe Yang will need that, specifically."
She turned away. "More future knowledge? You know that's dangerous. What if something different happens? What if instead of having her arm cut, her opponent runs her through?"
"I can't protect her from everything possible. I just do what I can in anticipation of what I expect. This coat's a bit heavy for summer, but it'll work well for fall through winter. And it'll look great on her when she's on her motorcycle. She loves that thing." Turning back to him, Winter could see the genuine love in his eyes.
"The arc girl, Noisette. She tells me you're planning on dying. You don't see a future for yourself with Yang? You seem very invested in the relationship."
"I don't have much of a future at all. No matter what. This power we have? It's not supposed to be mine. Eventually, it'll obey you, and you'll be able to use it and live in harmony. I have to fight it, constantly, and if I lose control, it'll destroy everything. It's powerful, but it's not mine to keep, and I already told you what it takes for it to change hands."
The nanolathe finished with a quiet bell chime, and then opened, revealing the completed coat. Blanc removed it, setting it on the table, and then opened another crate and began to pull armored plates from it to insert into the coat. The plates already had glyphs on them to reduce their mass, and were shaped like rectangular strips rather than squares, long on one side, and the coat had pre-made pockets for fitting them, which Blanc then sewed shut after he'd filled them all. She sat quietly on the couch and watched him work. When he'd finished sewing in the plates, he lifted the coat and slipped it on.
"Well, what do you think?"
"It suits you. Like it was made for you." He grinned back at her smirk, then slipped it off his shoulders.
"Okay, this is the part you'll be more interested in. Dust thread is common, so I didn't need to manufacture this. I'm just going to stencil the pattern for the glyph and then sew the dust thread into the pattern on the inside of the coat. It needs to be a constant thread; if you break the thread before the glyph is finished then it won't be complete even if you attached new thread to it." She noticed he had a lot of spools of dust thread in a box nearby, for which he extracted the same white-ice thread She'd seen inside the leggings. "The thread is pretty strong, so it's just a matter of sewing it in and the glyphs turn out to be rather tolerate of imperfections, like extra length, or having some of the glyph under the fabric and not visible, which is why the glyphs look like stitching. The only other requirement is that while you thread the glyph, you have to feed it aura so it'll activate and charge. I suppose you could do this afterward, but I'm not sure it'd work for people who don't have a semblance that lets them use glyphs naturally, and this does. I also don't know if the glyph has to be sewn by a glyph user; I've never seen anyone else do this. Dust weaving is common, of course, but no one weaves glyphs. Well, until now, anyway."
"So, the glyph uses your aura's power, and when that drains?"
"It'll slowly absorb power from the wearer. Here, take a look at this." He pushed over a piece of paper, showing a particularly odd knot. "Believe it or not that forms a glyph. There are a few different ways to do it to get specific triggering effects, and depending on their placement inside the other glyph or glyphs, it will affect the timing of how that's drawn. I figured it out by trial and error mostly, but it's somewhat predictable once you figure out a few baselines, and all of that's been dictated in a patent document sent to your father on behalf of the SDC. And yes, I did invent this, so I don't feel bad patenting the way I did about the weapons in the cases over there."
"If you feel so bad about the weapons, why make them? Why patent them?"
"Because humanity is going to need them, sooner than they were available, and the SDC won't make them unless they own the patent." She nodded in understanding.
"This is going to transform the clothing industry, and I imagine our military supply division is going to be much more profitable this year. Our only real competition will be Atlas Autometa."
"Polendina's company?" At her nod, he continued. "Hey. I'm not sure how to ask this, and maybe we need to talk to Ironwood first, but... I'll need your help with something. It has to do with what's coming, or more specifically, Atlas' automaton weapons, and how they get hacked." She raised her eyebrow but waited. "I need to find the person who invents the hack, or how they take over the mechanized units. I've got a trace program hidden in the CCT System to help track who hacks it, but if we want to stop it, we need to know more about the hack. I think it comes out of Polendina's company."
"That makes the most sense. The SDC makes some defense droids but they're not popular with the current procurement division. To be frank, they're not as effective as Autometa's droids, nor as inexpensive to purchase."
"They also have all of their control mechanisms on-board, and Autometa's don't. That's a security flaw that will let our enemy take control of them, all at once. It makes them better at fighting for an army since you can control them from one place or issue more complicated orders than 'defend this' or 'destroy that' but it also makes it possible to neutralize them all instead of having to destroy them individually, like SDC's droids."
"They're still cheaper, and that makes all the difference, Blanc."
"This event will get them all outlawed. Too many civilian deaths. We ended up using drones instead, which required individual pilots in nearby control vehicles, which left them vulnerable to being overrun. I'd like to try to prevent that future as well, and save Ruby's friend Penny if possible."
"Penny?"
"Penny Polendina. Ruby told me about her a couple of times; never very specific but I guess it was the first death she'd ever witnessed, and Pyrrha kills her because of something one of our enemies does to affect her mind."
"I wasn't aware the doctor had a daughter."
"She's already in Vale. I saw her with Ruby earlier this year. Orange hair; and I don't mean copper but a sort of artificial orange. I'm pretty sure she's an android." That caught the specialist's attention.
"Indeed? That makes sense for him. As far as I know he's never had a spouse or romantic partner. At least, not one publicly known. It wouldn't have surprised me to find he'd had a daughter by some liason; he is wealthy and those things happen. It certainly fits his personality to make his own. But that's a significant improvement in artificial intelligence."
"She also has Aura."
"He imbued an artificial construct with a soul?" Blanc shrugged. "I'm both intrigued and disturbed. I wonder..."
"You think maybe he had an actual daughter, and something happened to her, so he somehow moved her into the android body? Yeah, Ruby thought so too. She used to pick up this book; it was fiction, mind you. 'A man with two souls'. Ever heard of it? Anyway, she'd pick it up and say 'If a man can have two souls in one body, why couldn't a machine hold one?' but... it was a fictional book."
"Well it should be obvious to you that not every story we think is fictional actually is. I never believed the four maidens would be true, either."
He chuckled. "Fair enough, you have me there. Anyway, do you think you could introduce me somehow?"
"And when would you have time to do this, Blanc?"
"I don't have a team, so when the first years are doing their first missions this semester, I'm going to have my fair share of available time. Don't worry about Ozpin or Goodwitch, I can explain it to them."
"Very well, I'll see what I can do. I do believe you'd have better luck if you went through the general, though. I can definitely get you in touch with him."
"That's a good idea. I think he'll want to meet anyway. Thanks Winter." She replied with a nod, then watched him begin work on another glyph. The remained that way until late into the evening, when Winter finally tired and retired to his room. Blanc worked through the night, completing the coat, packing new clothes into the bag he'd purchased, and wrapping his winter gifts for his friends in Patch.
I apologize for how long it's been since I updated this story. I've been trying to take the useful advice from my reviews; particularly about how I handle dialogue, and I think you can see it in later chapters, but frankly, between season 5 and some writer's block, I just haven't had the urge to write this out until recently.
I wouldn't have believed it, but Season 5 is even more dull than season 4. I've not seen the finale yet, but meh.
On another note, I do believe this story will be picking up, at least with action. There's going to be some 'maiden training' coming, and some good old fashioned violence. Time's growing short for Blanc and he's going to have to be doing his own thing more often than before, but it'll come back together in various places.
This story started off with Weiss and Ruby being a thing, and that's not really changed. I think Ruby's a bit autistic in how she seems to fail to understand interpersonal interactions; mildly perhaps, but she seems to blunder repeatedly. Here that's represented in a rather abrupt prompt to Weiss about her feelings which short-circuits the normal teenage dancing around needlessly, and gives Weiss the excuse she needs. And as a father myself, I know how I'd feel about my future fifteen-year-old daughter being caught in a potentially sexual situation with someone two years her senior (at least if the other partner is female, there's no fear of pregnancy).
I also apologize for the length of this chapter. It's mostly filler, but it's required to progress forward without problems dealing with how Blanc got his coat back.
Finally, for those of you paying attention, a lot of the clothing described is similar to the post-time-skip outfits. Yang's coat above, for example, should look a lot like the one from Season 5. Yang's proposed outfit for Blake in the previous chapter is intended to be her outfit from Season 4 and 5. I wonder why no one gives RT shit for having all of their characters wear the same outfits almost all the time. Uniforms I can understand, but no one changes clothes at all in season 4 or 5, and they're not in uniform. And, what is with Weiss' walk? I mostly like the improved visuals of later seasons, but this season it looked to me like Weiss was constantly walking in a way that suggested she'd just been fucked. It really didn't look natural at all. This wasn't something on other characters that I noticed but it bugged me endlessly. Sorry, I just had to vent about that.
