"Exchange Program"

By Kpmh2001

Beacon Academy, Cliffside Firing Range

A very long time ago, Nathan's parents had asked him what he had wanted to do for a living. They had asked more than once actually, and now that he was actively thinking about it, they had seemed quite eager to get him out of their house. But that was a thought for another time.

Eventually, he had the answer to that question in the form of the ODSTs. He wanted to drop out of orbit in a tiny metal coffin, and then punch holes into monsters from the stars with a rifle that had a barrel that was long as he was tall. There was just something about the thrill of the lifestyle, as well as the odd sort of nobility of the extraordinarily dangerous job that appealed to him on a personal level.

At no point during his life however, did Nathan ever think that he would find himself in a position to be training other soldiers. And to that end, he had certainly never anticipated teaching what were effectively legitimized partisans wIth all-natural energy shields how to operate anti-tank weaponry. And yet, thanks to some officer who probably had more than a few leaks in their brain, that was exactly what he was doing.

Then again, the Headmaster must've offered up something good in exchange for us being here for a little while. Nathan thought.

Whatever exchange of assets and favors that had presumably happened high up the chain of command was of little concern to him. Due to a shortage of personnel who were qualified to offer instruction to the Huntsmen and Huntresses in training at Beacon Academy, Onyx Team had been pressed into that duty for at least a few days. It kind of seemed like a waste of time to Nathan, but then, he wasn't an officer, so clearly he just didn't know what he was talking about.

Nathan and Yu had been assigned to help a team of first year students called "Juniper" or "JNPR" with their inability to defeat larger targets, especially from a long range. While Nathan was still trying to figure out exactly how he felt about the whole situation, Yu had immediately embraced her petty authority over the students, and was doing her best impression of a psychotic drill instructor as she taught them to operate a wire-guided anti-tank missile launcher.

"For the love of fucking god, do you have a deathwish or something?!" She demanded, dropping a verbal barrage onto team JNPR's leader, a blonde boy named Jaune. "That missile is meant to tear open tanks and cook the bastards inside, it is not a fucking toy! Do not drop those!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I didn't touch the safety!" The poor boy tried to defend himself, but it was of little use.

Yu was very good at yelling, exceptional even. He'd never admit it to her face, but privately, Nathan admired her spirit… even if she was a bit of a bitch.

Jaune on the other hand, was something of an enigma to Nathan. On one hand, he seemed woefully unprepared to be the squad leader of his team. He wasn't particularly assertive or commanding, and it seemed like he didn't even know a lot of what he was meant to be doing as a leader. He also had a particularly bad case of the butterfingers, which Yu

On the other hand, he certainly had a strong fighting spirit, he was quite friendly and charismatic, and he seemed to be quite well liked by his team. Perhaps he was doing something right, but Nathan simply wasn't there to see it.

"Okay, let's do this properly!" Yu sternly shouted. "Ren, Nora, get that launcher set up!"

The two Huntsmen in training deployed the tripod and mount of the missile launcher with impressive efficiency. The Dominion was outfitted with enough infantry and support weapons to outfit a batallion, so sparing some of the older weapons in the ship's inventory for training purposes wasn't actually that much of a loss. It also helped that the Insurrection-Era Guided Missile Launchers were totally replaceable, thanks in large part to just how obsolete they were steadily becoming.

Obsolete or not, these things have more than enough impact to punch a person-sized hole through a Goliath. Nathan thought. It was certainly a considerable upgrade to team JNPR's existing arsenal, although Nathan doubted that Commander Miller was actually going to give the weapon away, at least for free. Maybe we could get some of that Steam Dust, I like the idea of shooting a guy with an instantly-deployable smokescreen.

While Ren and Nora worked at about half of the speed of a normal Marine crew, they worked with a gusto that was very impressive, especially considering that this was the first time they had ever operated such a weapon before. Nathan picked up on how they seemed to instinctively know what the other was doing without even working, clearly, these two had been working together for some time.

"Hmm, not bad, but I've seen better." Yu sourly commented as they finished assembling the launcher. "Butterfingers, load that missile, and don't throw it on the ground and get us all killed."

"I uh… Yes Sir!" Jaune replied.

He loaded the missile with the help of Nora and Ren, ensured that it was in the correct position, and closed the locking lugs to keep it in place.

Hmm, good instincts there. Nathan thought as he leaned into Yu's ear to speak to her somewhat privately. "I can't help but notice you aren't correcting him."

She grinned at him maniacally. "I'm just glad that somebody finally appreciates my seniority, Private."

Nathan eyed the Corporal Pins on her BDU with annoyance. "Asshole."

"Dickhead." She quietly shot back, before turning her attention back to team JNPR. "Okay, Pyrrha, you're up! You remember how to run that targeting computer?"

The Red-haired woman gave a firm nod. "I believe so, just a moment."

Pyrrha was by far the most resounding member of team JNPR, and not just because she'd demonstrated a remarkable ability to floor Nathan's ass during a sparring match earlier. She was intelligent, had a good habit of keeping her mouth shut when others were speaking, and she was very adept at not asking stupid questions. If she had been born back in human space, she would have probably been an absolutely stellar Helljumper.

She also looked pretty much identical to Fairfire, so that made it really difficult to not just see a younger Elizabeth every time that Nathan looked at her.

I wonder how she's faring? Nathan thought. He knew that Fairfire and Ben were helping another Huntsmen Team, CRDL, if he remembered correctly, sharpen up their CQC skills. Ben had been somewhat reluctant to participate in the exercise, arguing that even with their Auras, there was a real possibility that he could accidentally kill or injure the members of CRDL. Given that Ben's comment prompted cheering and encouragement from some of the other nearby students, Nathan concluded that CRDL probably wasn't all that popular.

"I believe that I have a lock on the target." Pyrrha announced. Yu leaned over her shoulder and examined the firing computer, and gave a nod of satisfaction at Pyrrha's work.

About two kilometers away in the depths of the Emerald Forest, a cluster of decrepit training robots sat in a pile. They were not even worth scrapping, and so they were serving as a mock target for team JNPR's efforts. It was a fairly small target for such a weapon, but a challenge was perhaps exactly what the Huntsmen and Huntresses in training needed.

"Now, Nora, Ren, double-check the tripod. Butterfingers, clear the safeties! Pyrrha, run the pre-fire check on the targeting computer!" Yu instructed. "Remember, do not fire the weapon without our order!"

Typically when in the field, ODSTs and Marines would skip a number steps in the firing procedure, as to get their missile into the air quicker. Normally skipping safety protocol was universally a bad idea, but when facing the Covenant, speed had been a priority. But now that they were in a training environment, Nathan noticed that Yu was taking a great deal of care to make sure that team JNPR cleared the weapon to fire correctly.

Team JNPR had the weapon ready to fire in less than ten seconds, which was an improvement over the thirteen seconds it had taken them the previous time. When it was done, the team sat in the fire-ready positions that Nathan and Yu had instructed them in, intended to protect them from the loud firing sound.

"Hmm, not bad, not bad at all." Yu said, before Nathan watched her eyes go wide with rage. "Butterfingers! What in the name of god is that trigger discipline?! Do you intend to fire?!"

Jaune straightened up as soon as she spoke. "No ma'am!"

"Then why the hell was your finger on that trigger?!" Yu loudly demanded.

"Because… I uh…" Jaune began to reply, but quickly realized that he had no answer.

Yu grabbed him by the shoulder and gestured out at the forest before them as she pulled him in closer. "I want you to briefly imagine something really quickly here, alright Butterfingers? Let's assume that you and your team are working as part of a larger formation, and you've done the right thing and set up this launcher behind the main line of infantry and armor. Now let's assume you live up to your name and fire that missile by accident, tell me, is that missile going to hit the enemy, or is it going to directly impact a friendly tank, fry your allies, and earn you a spot in the brig?!"

Jaune's blood drained from his face. "But, what about the targeting computer? Wouldn't that stop the missile?"

Yu blinked blankly in disbelief before she gave him an evil grin. "You know what Butterfingers, that's an excellent point! I bet you the firing computer would absolutely recognize your friends, who by the way, don't have a UNSC IFF tag, meaning that to the firing computer they're just another thermal signature to track. But since you're so confident, how about you go stand in front of the launcher and prove your point?"

Nathan rolled his eyes at her antics. "Yu come on, don't make the kid pee himself. Besides, Ozpin said we're not allowed to do things the way we do them at home."

Yu sighed grumpily. "...Damn bureaucrats. Okay Butterfingers, how about we have you take over Ren's job with the tripod, and he can handle the firing mechanism."

Jaune nodded nervously. "That uh, sounds great! Ren has guns, I bet he's got loads of trigger discipline."

Nathan glanced over to Ren's weapons and grimaced, pistols with knives attached. While it was undeniably cool, he was willing to bet that Ren had probably torn more holes in his pants than everyone else in his team combined. He didn't even have sheaths for them, which seemed oddly reckless for a man who was otherwise fairly unfazed by everything. Then again, compared to the warhammer/grenade launcher hybrid that his partner used, it was a perfectly reasonable weapon.

Maybe having Ren control the firing mechanism isn't such a bad idea. Nathan thought as he realized who the alternatives were. Pyrrha was needed to manage the targeting computer, and Nora… well, Nathan wasn't entirely sure if handing her the keys to such a gigantic weapon was really a good idea.

He'd already been an unwilling witness to her engaging another Huntsmen in training in a live-fire duel, and she had shown both impressive skill and concerning ruthlessness with how she used her warhammer/grenade launcher hybrid thing. Of all of the members of team JNPR, she was unquestionably the scariest.

"Sure thing. Uh… what do I do again?" Ren awkwardly asked as he and Jaune switched stations.

While Yu ran him through the firing procedure, Nathan overhead a brief exchange between Pyrrha and Jaune as they disassembled the tripod. Nathan decided to eavesdrop on the grounds that it sounded like the two Huntsmen in training were talking about Yu and himself.

"-I'm sure there's nothing to worry about." Pyrrha said. "They're soldiers, it's normal for them to be harsh during training."

Jaune sighed. "I know, it's just… I don't feel like I'm really contributing as much as I should be right now. I mean, I barely even know what this thing does!"

"Jaune, try to remember that this is an alien weapon, I think that's entirely reasonable." Pyrrha pointed out.

"It is reasonable." Nathan interjected.

Apparently neither Jaune or Pyrrha had been expecting him to be listening, which was odd, as they hadn't exactly been speaking quietly. But Jaune quickly relaxed himself from his defensive posture as he processed what Nathan had actually said.

"...You think so?" Jaune asked.

"Dude, on my first day of Sniper School in the Marines, I dislocated my own shoulder when I fired my rifle." Nathan said, earning a wince of sympathy from both Pyrrha and Jaune. "I'd say compared to me, you've been doing just fine."

While Jaune thought over his words, Pyrrha seemed to fixate on another detail in what Nathan had said. "How did you manage to dislocate your shoulder with recoil?"

"We were using a bunch of the older SRS99s, really high-caliber, and mine had a broken recoil-dampening system from the last guy who owned it." Nathan explained. "Couple that with a bad firing stance, and you've got yourself a visit to sickbay to get your shoulder put back in! Oh, hang on, I might have a picture here."

"I uh… I don't think I need to see that." Jaune somewhat squeamishly commented as Nathan brought out his datapad.

"The gun, not the injury." Nathan clarified. "And come on, a dislocated shoulder ain't that bad. You know, I got my Femur split in half when a Nevermore stuck a feather through my leg. The only reason I didn't bleed out is because the feather stopped me from bleeding."

Pyrrha and Jaune once again winced in sympathy. "Ow…"

"Yeah, I know right?" Nathan said. He was happy to have somebody empathize with his past injury. "Okay, here's the one I'm looking for."

The picture was of a young Nathan and a handful of other Marines who had attended the same class at Sniper School, all holding their rifles in various poses. He was struck by a faint wiff of nostalgia when he saw himself in Marine Battle Dress Uniform, even if he still heavily prefered his ODST BDU, he'd always like the Marine uniform. He only vaguely remembered the rest of the snipers-in-training, as they had been split into different units upon graduation.

"Woah." Jaune commented as his eyes widened. "Those guns are massive!"

"You carried those everywhere you went, without Aura?" Pyrrha asked with a note of admiration. "That must have been exhausting."

Nathan closed the datapad and put it back in its place. "I still do actually. Mags and Specialist Schnee haven't gotten around to teaching us how to use our Aura to carry more stuff, we're still working on the "not dying when you get shot" part of our Auras."

"That's very pragmatic of them." Jaune noted. "And uh, I wanted to ask about that actually. When you all fought the Schnee Dust Company, did you guys just… not have Aura? Like, at all?"

"We did during the later battles, but in the first few engagements, we didn't." Nathan answered. "That didn't stop us from winning though, even if it was a pretty nasty surprise when we first found out that pretty much everybody we were fighting had a personal bullet-resistant shield. It's a good thing that we're used to fighting guys like that."

"How do you fight them?" Pyrrha asked. "When you didn't have any Aura, how did you win?"

"The same way that we're teaching you actually, range." Nathan said as he patted the wire-guided missile launcher. "This bad boy can take out an alien tank at four kilometers, and it'll do it in one shot."

And we also had two Spartans and a Frigate loaded to kill. Nathan privately added.

"Uh… Kilometers?" Jaune awkwardly asked.

Ah, right, they use a different measurement system. Nathan remembered. Thankfully, he had a datapad to do the annoying math for him. "That's two and a half… miles?"

"Yeah, miles, that sounds about right." Jaune confirmed.

Nathan frowned, what a stupid word to describe range. "I can't wait until Curie gets your damn measurement system fixed. Your planet is nice, don't get me wrong, but man, whichever scientist came up with that nonsense should've really kept his day job."

Jaune awkwardly laughed. "Yeah uh, I never really got it either."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "I thought that you were the Squad Leader? Does somebody else on your team handle navigation?"

Jaune scratched the back of his head nervously, prompting Pyrrha's interjection. "We haven't started studying that yet."

Nathan nodded, that made sense. "Well pay attention when you do, I failed LandNav like four goddamn times, and it was a pain in my ass each time."

"It was five!" Yu rudely interjected.

"Raunchy bitch!" Nathan retalitated.

"Arrogant Asshole!" Yu replied in kind.

Nathan chuckled at the expressions of surprise on Pyrrha and Jaune faces as Yu returned to instructing Ren how to fire the missile system.

"Do you… have some issues with her?" Jaune nervously asked.

"Nah, she's a grumpy bitch, but she's pretty great." Nathan answered. "Not really my type though."

"I heard that!" Yu interrupted again.

"You were meant to!" Nathan shot back, before turning back to team JNPR's leader. "But yeah, don't let her get you down. She's rough on everyone, but that's just how she is. Once you get to know her, she's not all that bad."

Jaune let out a sigh of relief. "Well, at least she doesn't have some kind of personal grudge against me."

Not yet. Nathan somewhat less optimistically thought. Although thankfully for Jaune, Nathan and Yu probably wouldn't be sticking around Beacon long enough for any grudges to be developed.

"Nathan!" Yu interrupted them. "Skip the gossip and get the rest of JNPR in position! We're going to try this again!"

"You heard the lady, up and at em'." Nathan said.

Pyrrha and Jaune joined their teammates, and reassembled the weapon system in record time. And this time, Ren employed proper trigger discipline, much to everyone else's relief.

"Hmm, not bad." Nathan said. "What do you think, Corporal Sato?" He was still a bit bitter about how she had pulled the NCO card earlier, so he made sure to refer to her properly, but with more than a little sarcasm.

"Well it's an improvement but it's not hard to improve on garbage, run it again." Yu harshly answered.

While team JNPR did as they were instructed, Nathan leaned closer to Yu to speak to her privately. "Look, I get the whole attitude of instilling a sense of discipline… but we're only going to be here for a few days. Maybe we should make an effort to make a better impression."

"Better impressions don't save lives, being hard on them while they're training does." Yu argued, but thankfully she had the foresight to speak in a whisper. "Come on Nathan, you went through Helljumper School, you know just as well as I do why the instructors had to be so harsh. These kids wouldn't last five minutes against the Covenant!"

Nathan sighed, she had an annoyingly good point. "I know that, but we don't exactly have enough time to get their mindsets adjusted like that. Our training took months, not days."

Yu frowned, it seemed that for once, she was actually considering the validity of Nathan's arguments. "Then we should get whatever we can done with the time that we have."

"I'm not saying we don't do that… but maybe a bit of positive reinforcement couldn't hurt." Nathan suggested. "I'm not saying you go easy on them, I'm saying that maybe we should give them a bit of credit when they do make improvements."

"Uh, Corporal Sato… we've finished." Jaune awkwardly interrupted.

Yu and Nathan were both snapped back to the present. Yu took a step forward and inspected the weapon to ensure that it was assembled correctly. "Hmm… good, good. Pyrrha, did you acquire a lock on the target?"

"I did." Pyrrha reported. "Is something wrong?"

Yu shook her head. "I just wanted to double check what you have set up here. Lieutenant Jorge has allocated us some missiles for the sake of training, and we'll be live firing them until we run out or we hit the target."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "I was under the impression we weren't meant to be using live warheads."

"Yeah well, that was before the Battalion Armorer realized that these things have like, maybe a week on their shelf life." Yu explained. "I never took you as the kind of guy to complain about getting to blow something up."

"Yeah well…" Nathan began to reply, but realized that this particular debate probably wasn't worth it, plus, blowing things up was cool. "Yeah okay. Hang on JNPR, I'll get you some ear protection."

That was one thing that Nathan simply could not comprehend about Remnant, it was that nobody wore ear protection in battle. Sure they had Auras to protect them from hearing damage, but it was still painful. More importantly in his eyes, if your Aura was broken, you were left completely defenseless against any kind of harmful sound. Thankfully, the armories of the Dominion had more than enough surplus hearing protection to spare, and even a bit of wax or a few cotton balls did wonders to help protect the ears in a fight. Once all of team JNPR had their hearing protection on, and a close call where Jaune had forgotten to actually activate the protective headset, Yu ran them through a proper firing procedure.

Firing an anti-tank missile out of a tripod mounted launcher had a lot of potential risks involved, including the gigantic wave of hot pressurized air that would shoot out of the back of the launcher one the missile fired. Backblast was something that apparently even most soldiers on Remnant didn't seem to know about, so Nathan wasn't surprised to learn that team JNPR had no idea what Yu was talking about.

"I uh… can't help but notice that this all sounds really dangerous." Jaune commented as Yu finished explaining just how badly somebody could be injured, or even killed by the launcher's backblast.

Yu planted a palm on her face in exasperation. "Yes, the missile launcher is dangerous, it is a weapon. It's just like how if you trip and fall on your sword, that's also dangerous. The point is to know what the risks are and how to avoid them."

Jaune looked down at the sword on his hip with a sudden sense of doubt as Pyrrha stood forward. "I suppose it does make sense, if you mistreat any weapon, it's very easy to get hurt."

Ren's gaze shifted awkwardly between his own weapons and the launcher. "I uh, yeah, it is."

"Let me guess, you've had to stitch up those pants a lot, haven't you?" Nathan somewhat smugly guessed.

"...Yeah." Ren confirmed as he awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

"Don't worry Jaune!" Nora said as she gave her squad leader a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "When I was first training with Magnhild, I broke some of my toes!"

"...That's not very reassuring." Jaune replied.

Yu crossed her arms across her chest. "Not to interrupt here, but I think maybe once you all see what this thing can do to the enemy, you'll have a bit more confidence."

"You heard the lady, assume firing positions!" Nathan shouted.

Team JNPR manned the launcher, thankfully without any issues in their positioning. Clearly, they had been paying attention to Yu's instructions. Nathan would be playing the part of a spotter, and he had brought along a set of rangefinders for that exact purpose.

"Target acquired! Enemy Drones bearing three-five-two, two kilometers out!" Nathan announced, doing his best to simulate how he would provide the information in a live combat scenario.

Pyrrha configured the targeting computer to lock onto the given target as Jaune and Nora loaded the missile, all while Ren removed the launcher's safety systems. As a true testament to how quickly they were learning, they had the launcher ready to fire within fifteen seconds, not bad at all for people who had no prior training.

"Target locked!" Pyrrha announced.

Christ, she even sounds like Fairfire… well, a younger version of her anyway. Nathan thought.

Jaune quickly double-checked the space behind the launcher. "Backblast clear!"

"Fire!" Yu ordered.

Ren triggered the firing mechanism, and immediately a rod of metal and fire emerged from the front of the launcher with a deafening roar. A gale of harsh and hot wind was sent in every direction by the force of the missile's heat, which passed quite quickly given how windy it was. As nobody was standing in the backblast radius of the launcher, they were all able to avoid being scorched.

Nathan watched as the missile careerned towards its target, and grimaced as he saw that the missile was starting to veer slightly off course. Whether it was a faulty stabilizing fin, an issue with the computer built into the missile, or simply the age of the propellant within, something had caused a slight fault in the weapon's accuracy, and Nathan could tell it wasn't going to hit the target.

That's not on JNPR, they did just fine. Nathan thought.

Then, unexpectedly, the missile turned back towards the target, almost as if it had momentarily forgotten where it was meant to be going and suddenly remembered. The turn was very sharp, indicating that perhaps the missile had somehow managed to fix whatever had broken. A moment later, the missile landed in the cluster of decrepit training robots with a satisfying explosion. A moment later, Nathan heard the telltale thud of the shaped charge detonation, followed by the sound of the explosion itself.

Team JNPR let out a victorious cheer as Nathan glanced at Yu, trying to silently convey whether she had noticed the oddity with the missile as well. He noticed that she was giving him a similar glance, confirming that the anomaly hadn't simply been an oddity with his vision.

"What the hell was that?" Yu asked as she approached him. "Have you ever seen a missile do that kind of turn?"

"I haven't, but I'm not a small arms repairman, so I don't see all that many missiles mid-flight." Nathan answered.

Yu hummed. "Huh, weird. Either way, I guess the kids nailed it."

"I'm so proud of them." Nathan jokingly commented. Despite his sarcastic response, he was quite pleasantly surprised by how well their little instruction session had gone.

Either I'm more cut out for instruction than I realized, or those kids are a lot more capable in a fight than they look. Nathan thought.

"Okay JNPR, settle down!" Yu interrupted the team's celebrations, catching Nora just before she could tackle Ren with a bear hug. Then again, given the enthusiasm that she brought to the table, it was more like a hug from an unusually friendly Brute Chieftain. "Nora, please, ease up a bit, you're freaking me out here."

Nora gave a concerning chuckle as team JNPR gathered around Nathan and Yu. "Needless to say, you all did… good."

I see that she's better at being an evil drill instructor than positive reinforcement. Nathan thought with no small amount of amusement. He gave her a friendly elbow in the side and put on his best shit-eating grin. "You're doing great."

"Shut up asshole." She shot back at his teasing. "Anyhow, we've still got the rest of those missiles, but seeing as you hit the only target… I think that's going to conclude our lesson for now. Fine work kids."

"That was awesome! How did you make the explosion so big?" Nora asked.

"It was… much larger than I was expecting." Pyrrha added.

Nathan shrugged. "I'm a Marksman, not an Engineer, so I can't really tell you. But I do enjoy getting to use them."

"I can certainly see why, you weren't kidding when you said you could kill a tank with this!" Jaune said with a wide smile.

Yu rolled her eyes. "Not to insult your vast intelligence Butterfingers, but why do you think we call it an Anti-Tank Missile?"

"I… Yeah, fair point." Jaune awkwardly said.

"Now then, me and Nathan can pack this thing up. You go find your Headmaster and give him the good news." Yu instructed.

"Yes Ma'am!" Jaune said, snapping to a really bad salute in the process.

Team JNPR left without any further comment, presumably they would have more classes to attend to after they talked to Ozpin, and Nathan realized it was quite unlikely that he would see them again.

"You know, from what Ben said, I expected this place to be more…" Nathan trailed off.

"Chaotic? Yeah, I know." Yu finished his thought. "Everything around here seems pretty calm."

"I mean, don't get wrong, the idea of these kids running around with missile launchers and soulbound energy shields is… concerning." Nathan said. "But they're not nearly as bad as I expected them to be."

Yu shrugged. "Maybe we just got paired up with some of the good ones?"

"Perhaps." Nathan said. "Right, let's go see how Ben and Fairfire did. I bet they only broke a few bones."

"Are you fucking kidding me? Twenty credits says that Lunatic put one of those kids into critical condition, or you know, killed em'." Yu somewhat distastefully replied.

Nathan was slightly confused. "When you say Lunatic, do you mean Fairfire or Ben?"

"I dunno, I guess you get to decide." Yu said as she slung the last of the missile parts over her shoulder. "Come on, let's get going."