Chapter 12

Working Out the Problems.

An hour later, and after being fed a breakfast of some kind of fried lizard and cactus dish that was... Not bad, but certainly different. The two find themselves in Grend's truck.

'Calling these beasts trucks is a bit of a misnomer.' Dave considers as he sits on one of the two couches that face each other in the living area. They are really too big to qualify, being too wide to comfortably fit on a normal road where they are from at about eleven feet. The eight wheeled vehicles with their larger than normal tires and a ground clearance of at least three feet are obviously intended for cross country travel and defense.

Just as obviously, the sixty-foot long and two-story behemoths are in the same weight class as the commercial mining vehicles that inspire awe in people that love such technological powerhouses.

Complete with armored plating, solid metal tires that have rubber treads basically mounted to them, and gunnery emplacements on the roof as well as gun ports in various places, the things are beastly. But legitimately required if what the tribal leader is telling them is true.

Mindy shakes her head.

"So these Grimm are basically a monster-plague that never seems to die out, get stronger the longer they live, are attracted to negative emotion, and kill anybody they come across. That cover it?"

Grend gives the two a curt nod.

"Indeed. That is one of the reasons that the nomadic tribes tend to be the size they are, rarely being over a hundred members. Last night was an exceptionally bad attack. The worst I have seen since I was a small boy. But the larger a group of humans gets, the larger the groups of Grimm they can attract and the more powerful the variants that can be summoned. Without a standing army in the form of militia and hunters, plus fortifications and high walls, it is difficult to make any kind of permanent home anywhere." Then he sighs. "Historically, even large cities tend to fall eventually. Against an unending tide that is merely waiting for an opportunity to strike, all it takes is a single bad year. Say, a plague rolls through. Or a war between neighboring states. Before anything can be set to rights, the Grimm will move in and finish the job. Given the effort that has to be expended to defend territory, even something as simple as a bad year for farming can be devastating. It is unusual that they have the ability to secure too much surplus in a given year. So any kind of problem in their food production from bad rainfall to a diseased crop or wildfire can spell their doom and don't assume that what you have seen is all there is. As much as I hate to admit it, while the numbers were proving to be unwieldy for us the fact is that none of the Grimm you saw last night would even qualify as particularly dangerous as these things go. The two Death Stalkers would be the closest to a serious problem, and even they would be considered a low tier threat to a standard strike force of four professional hunters. The Beowolfs and Creeps would be considered barely a nuisance unless they attacked from ambush, and with immense numbers." He shrugs sadly. "Unfortunately, with nobody currently in the tribe that has an unlocked Aura that is powerful enough to be effective in combat, we are somewhat at a loss right now. We have hope for some of our younger tribe members, but unfortunately, when we do have someone promising and send them off to school it is only rarely we see them again for more than a visit now and again. I hesitate to call it brainwashing because we hear tales of valor concerning the things they have done and feel pride in their accomplishments. But it does make it difficult to keep going, year after year, when more often than not your best and brightest leave and take their potential with them."

Dave leans back thoughtfully.

"And that is why you were so interested in us that you pulled that crap a couple of hours ago?"

Shamefacedly, the man nods.

"In my defense, these are standard negotiating tactics in the desert regions. In fact, it would be fair to say that if you were not so ignorant of local customs it should be me rather than you that would be taking umbrage at your reaction." He also leans back, offering an apologetic look. "But what is done is done, and unless you wish to revisit things for whatever reason, I am willing to ignore it and move on."

Mindy doesn't seem thrilled by that answer but decides to let it go. Grend looks back at Dave.

"So, you have said that you would need tools, and space, to create these additions to my tribe's vehicles. What exactly do you require? It may take time to get it all together, it isn't like there is a hardware store around the corner. Besides, all things being equal I would prefer to stay away from the City of Vacuo. So we may need to do trading with other tribes to get what you need, as other than the capital I would be hesitant to claim anyplace would have what you require. At least, here in Vacuo, anyway."

Mindy raises an eyebrow in curiosity.

"Someplace better than Vacuo for this?"

Grend nods sadly. "Unfortunately, yes. While the desert here breeds strong, independent people and kills the rest, which naturally is something we take some satisfaction in warranted or not, it can't be said that my homeland is... Technologically savvy, I'll put it that way." He looks up at them. "There are only truly four kingdoms left that I would call even remotely hospitable to humans or Faunus, and somehow you have lucked into the least of them. With the smallest population and yet still needing to import much of our food and other needs, Vacuo is generally playing catch up in most areas and with the scarcity of food overall, it keeps us constantly in the red financially. As I said, nobody tends to have a surplus, so the premiums we pay to import are extreme. It is part of the reason many of us take up a nomadic lifestyle and live off the land. In truth, we barely have a centralized government at all, and there is almost no ability for any kind of force projection from the capital to assist people in their time of need. Save perhaps for the hope that hunters trained at Shade academy might be in the area. While many claim other academies turn out better hunters, and I would be hard-pressed to argue it based on history, I will state without reservation that Shade academy turns out the best hunters to deal with the dangers one must face in the desert aside from the Grimm themselves. In that way Hunters trained elsewhere, while I won't doubt their skill in combat or bravery except on a case by case basis, tend to be less than ideal here. But as an overview of the other three kingdoms, and remember that I have never been to them." He pauses for a moment. "And also be mindful that I have prejudices of my own, I'll not claim to be impartial. The nearest to us is Vale, in the East. A land of green and Grimm, only there the Grimm can find it easier to hide. Home of Beacon academy. Supposedly the best Hunter school on Remnant." He smirks. "For deployments anywhere but here, anyway. Technologically they are superior to Vacuo. They are, however, ruled largely by a council and as I understand it that council is more concerned with lining their pockets and staying in power than they are the common man. Which means that it isn't the kind of place I would want to live myself. But if I had to leave here, that is probably where I would go."

He pauses, getting a drink of water from a canister with a screw-top lid. A common thing to see in the camp. Apparently, water rationing is a serious thing with these people, and letting yours spill or even just evaporate isn't something that is looked upon favorably.

"The next place I would consider at least slightly acceptable is Mistral. Their prejudice against Faunus being slightly less than other places from what I understand." He frowns. "Unfortunately, they don't have a lot of contact with us and so I know very little about them. The last is Atlas." His face becomes a sneer and his tone takes a dive.

Dave can't help it.

"I'm getting the feeling you don't love these people?"

Grend shakes his head.

"Mostly I try to take people as they come, but it is difficult to be that easygoing when you are looking at an entire nation that all but encourages the enslavement of your people. Faunus there are treated horribly, far worse than pretty much anywhere else. There are laws to back up that treatment, an ocean to keep them from being able to leave, and the Schnee Dust Company, the single largest exploiter of the Faunus people, is based out of that place." He sighs. "That said, it cannot be denied that technologically they are far ahead of the other three kingdoms. They operate vastly huge airships, the size of the largest naval vessels, to project their power over land and sea. I could almost admire them if they weren't being propped up by the broken backs of Faunus that die trying to make ends meet for their families in the Schnee Dust mines."

Dave clicks his tongue twice and stands. "Well, I guess to answer your original question about what I'll need? First I'll need to see what we are working with. I assume that somewhere here you have a mechanic I can borrow for a while so I can look over your systems? I'll have a better idea of what I'll need and can actually do once I've seen what I am starting with."

Grend nods and takes him to meet the mechanic in the truck they have that is a rolling shop, armory, and storage for more expensive trade goods. Mindy breaks off from them, having decided to spend her day doing other things.

After nearly five hours of going over the truck schematics and tinkering around with a guy that just says to call him 'Mick,' and has clothes covered in enough grease stains that he may well be a fire hazard merely by existing, Dave has a better answer.

"Okay, Grend? The good news is that this will be a lot easier than I thought it would be as far as the actual conversion goes. It turns out that what you actually have is a hybrid of sorts. The trucks actually run on electrical motors. When you use electric dust, it powers those motors directly. When you use combustion dust, it powers a generator that makes the electricity you need. Adding a third system that just bypasses both and feeds directly from a battery bank shouldn't be difficult. The problem is that the size of the battery is going to be immense. It'll have to be, I knew these things were big but I had no idea just how heavy they were. If you stripped out everything non-essential. Made them big hollow rolling things. They are still over a hundred tons apiece. That's a lot of weight. The kind of battery backup it would take to power something like that is ridiculous. We'd be looking at adding probably ten to twenty tons worth of weight just for that, never mind any of the solar collectors and cabling that are required, and it would take quite a while to charge up those batteries once you stopped. A week or two, maybe. But it is possible."

Then he looks down.

"The problem? Honestly, I'd need one of these things to convert into a rolling factory to even have a chance to do this if we didn't want to stop somewhere for a while and use, you know. Stationary structures. Which I am getting the impression isn't part of your game plan. Plus, once I had all the bits and pieces built and we started the conversion, we'd be stuck in one spot for a while unless we wanted to abandon it if we got attacked by something we couldn't handle. I'm guessing the first one could take weeks. After that, I'll have a better idea. But it likely won't be a quick process no matter what we do."

Then he hands the man a pad of paper with a list of raw materials and tools.

"That's the minimum I think I would need to kit out one of these trucks. And you'd lose something like two-thirds of your under storage to a new battery box to do it, plus we'd need a new design for your roof defenses. Since that's where the majority of the solar panels would be going. I can't stress enough that this would be a major undertaking. But, if you can get me the stuff I am pretty sure I can do it."

The chief is looking over the list and feels his heart sinking. They make most of their money doing small-time prospecting in the wastes and trying to get the better of other tribes in trades for water and other essentials. Their ability to find water helps considerably in this, and is the reason that they have had the good fortune to have four of these trucks made in the first place, most tribes are forced to make do with much less. On the flip side, because of the trucks, their overhead is far more. This means that while they are safer and their quality of life has improved since this investment, their money situation hasn't gotten significantly better. It could take years to get all of this together. Partly because some of it is expensive. But also because some of it just isn't stockpiled. It isn't used for anything he's ever heard of, at least not to any great degree. So while it shouldn't be particularly expensive, it is most likely going to be anyway because people are going to have to go out and search for it specifically.

"Hmm. Where is McReady? I know she has claimed you are more knowledgeable in such things, but a second opinion never hurts."

Dave smirks. "She took your need for the young people to be trained up properly without sending them off to hunter school seriously. So she's running a bit of a boot camp for a certain Butterfly just now."

Five hours ago...

Mindy has all the potential skill that Dave does, and it should be admitted is technically even just a tiny bit smarter than he is. But she isn't going whole hog into this construction for the side of the light thing for one main reason.

It sounds boring as shit. So yeah, screw that. Let Dave deal with that.

Instead, she thinks she has found a different way to be useful and is actually a little excited about it. First though, she hops on the radio to run her idea by her partner, since technically? She actually needs his approval for this, and boy doesn't that just irritate.

"Hey, Dave. Gonna drop the Chief from the group and see about running Butterfly through a few hours of boot camp. Back me up on the buttons?"

Dave gets a confused look on his face as he turns away from Mick and sub-vocalizes his answer.

"Why drop the Chief? We can have two in the party."

Mindy's response comes quick.

"Guessing I'll need to bring mom along for the ride, she looks a bit protective."

Dave nods absently. "Yeah, okay. Good luck."

At that Mindy makes it over to the strange three-wheeled station wagon and rickshaw hybrid to see if she can find her potential new trainee.

"Hey, Butterfly!"

The girl looks up from where she was screwing around with some rocks by scratching them against other rocks in an effort to draw. It occurs to Mindy when she gets a good look at the child in the daylight for the first time that she can't be older than ten, and if she is that old she is tiny for her age. She looks closer to eight or so.

"M-Mindy? Hi!" She looks uncertain, as she isn't used to adults looking for her that aren't her mother. "Did you need to talk to my mom or something? She is out looking for stuff near camp with some other people."

Mindy shrugs. "I'll need to talk to her eventually, probably. But I was wondering just how serious you are about wanting to be strong. To learn how to protect people."

Rebecca all but starts a small dust storm with how fast she is nodding her head.

"I'm real serious. I'm all the seriousness ever!"

Mindy nods sagely, then smirks. "Okay. Well, my partner is talking with your main mechanic type right now and I have some time to kill. So I was wondering if you would be interested in some training."

The young girl's eyes drop a little. "I can't go anywhere. Mom says I have to stay by the car when she is out of camp, so in case bad things happen she can find me fast."

Mindy shrugs. "I'm guessing that's a good idea. But we don't have to go anywhere to train, there is plenty of room to do it here."

The tiny Faunus looks around the small section of the camp that is considered theirs, a ten by ten patch that sits next to her mother's car. Then she whispers in a tone that would indicate that she is expecting to get into trouble if anything gets out.

"But we can't practice in here. You can't fight, even play fight in camp. The elders are real strict about it."

Mindy just laughs at this. "I said training, not sparring. For crying out loud kid, I'm not expecting you to be manhandling Grimm anytime soon. First, we need to get you in shape and let you get at least another five or six years older. I just thought I might try to give you a leg up on your dream like somebody once did for me." Then she looks around curiously. "Say, I've seen your mom. Where's your dad?"

The look on the child's face and her moment of silence is answer enough, but just as Mindy is about to retract the question, she responds.

"I don't have one. Mom says it was somebody in Vacuo City, but that he wasn't very nice and I shouldn't ever go look for him. She doesn't talk about him very much."

Nodding and trying to push back the irritation of what is sounding like some scumbag that is out of her reach, Mindy can't help but sigh.

"I'm sorry. But anyway, I have to ask. Can you read?"

The girl nods slowly. "A little. I know some words, but not all of them." She scowls. "There are too many words."

Mindy chuckles a bit at that and then sends the invite. The girl's eyes go exceptionally wide, and she tries to see past it to Mindy.

"Just press the 'Y' button and we'll get started. I think based on what you were talking about yesterday, we'll be working on endurance training today. So I hope you like being so tired you think you could fall over dead because that is how you'll feel in a couple of hours."

Seven hours later.

Mindy walks up on Dave as he is finishing up a sketch on his pad of graph paper.

"Whatcha doing?"

Dave motions her to take a seat on the rock he is using as a bench.

"Not a lot. Just wracking my brain trying to think of ways to help these folks. How did your day go?"

Mindy laughs, but it's a light-hearted laugh rather than her usual sarcastic one.

"Well, Rebecca is dedicated, I'll give her that. Ran her ragged for two hours, then her mother showed up for mid-day nap time, then when they had gotten up and eaten something I ran them both ragged for another two. We'll find out tomorrow I guess how much good it'll do. If we're gonna be hanging out with these people for a while though, I'd like to start getting as many as possible trained up. You and I can go all day, but until they get their endurance up quite a bit I don't think any of them can. So I could theoretically just cycle through like twelve a day, two at a time for two hours each. Just basic Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution training for now though. Getting them up to a point that bothering with anything more is even fucking worth it is probably going to take a while. What about the trucks? Is it doable?"

Dave sighs and leans back into the 'L' shaped stone. "Yeah? But when I handed Hans the list of stuff I would need, his eyes about popped out of his head. These people don't really have much, and if an investment like this didn't work out they'd be kinda screwed. Since then I've been trying to think of other things we could maybe do for them that would be cost-effective."

Mindy motions the paper. "Anything worth trying yet?"

He passes the notepad over.

"Yes and no. If I ever get the solar and battery system on at least one of these trucks, then I think I could potentially replace some of their 'Dust' guns with downsized railguns. The problem is that if they are having to use electric Dust to power it, they aren't saving anything over just using these 'Dust rounds' in their current guns. So putting too much effort into it now is a little bit of 'cart before the horse' you know?"

Her eyes sparkle. "But we can build one? A railgun?"

He nods. "Yeah, but don't get too excited. Something like what I am thinking wouldn't be real viable as a man-portable weapon. The power pack alone would weigh a ton. I talked to Hans a bit about some of the Grimm types though, and having something that is able to hit damned hard at range is pretty essential. There are types that make the T-Rex from 'Jurassic Park' look positively tame, and that isn't even counting the ones that have gotten old and powerful enough to make a name for themselves in their own right. Fortunately, those ones don't seem to be as active generally. But if they do get stirred up for whatever reason whatever they are going after is usually a write-off. The people just don't have a way to fight them. Not even the big cities, generally. Not without huge damage and casualties anyway. Then I was just trying to find a more efficient way to do it, I mean, you throw enough explosives at anything, it'll die. But if everybody you know wasted away from starvation because you were spending everything on rockets, that gets you nowhere. Since we were already talking about using twenty-ton batteries, it seemed like a chocolate and peanut butter kinda match-up." He rubs his eyes. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wish Kleiner were here. He'd at least have a better idea what the hell he's doing, I'm grasping at straws. I barely know what I'm getting into, I mean we skill up really damn fast but until I do I'm a blind man in a candy store trying to sniff out a peppermint patty in a mountain of thin mints."

Mindy rolls her eyes a bit at this.

"Are we sure we even want to stay? If things are as hopeless as all that, maybe we'd be better off going to a city and getting our skills there, then trying to work out something that way."

Dave slowly shakes his head.

"I won't lie, it's tempting. But it rubs me the wrong way to quit before we try. That said if it turns out that they can't get me what I need? We may as well. If we can't actually help here we might as well go somewhere else we can. Anyway, tomorrow I am planning to help their mechanic with a tune-up on one of their main trucks. It should give me a better idea of what I'm working with than I have now. You going to stick with Rebecca and her mom, or are you going to try to roll it out to everybody tomorrow?"

Mindy considers for a second, then shakes her head.

"I'll probably stick with those two. Her mom, Kaytlyn by the way, is another Faunus and she has some kind of echolocation thing going on with a click she can make. Bat ears or some such. Makes me wonder what the hell the kid's father was but apparently, he isn't in the picture. Anyway, not as impressive as the flight her daughter has, but she's young. Probably only a few years older than you. I think if I can get them up to scratch relatively quickly, I'll have a lot less trouble getting the rest to take me seriously. You know?"

Dave nods. "Fair enough."

She turns the page in the notebook.

"What the hell is this?"

Dave turns a little red in the dimming light of the afternoon.

"Well, we're in a desert. It's a big flat-topped machine with slab sides that is practically begging for a solar power system. I mean..."

Mindy tosses the notebook back at him.

"They can't afford a conversion for one truck yet and you are trying to work out a Jawa Sandcrawler?!"

Author's note:

Not much to say about this chapter:

Basic overview of the problems dealt with.

A basic introduction to Remnant for the uninitiated out of the way.

Some possibilities are thrown out there.

And perhaps most importantly, all the groundwork established for a few month time skip without people leaving reviews that sound like confused lemmings wondering why I am retarded.

Not an exciting chapter, but kind of an essential one. Sometimes those happen.

Reviews and Fave's appreciated!