A/N: Sorry for the late update, but I got sick and it took me a while to write this. Enjoy some badly-needed focus on Team JNR.
It was a simple enough mission, to track a robot of unknown provenance back to its source and deal with the source. Simple enough. A mission Ren, Nora, and Jaune can handle without backup.
It all feels wrong. They're deep into Mistrali territory, Ren keeping close track of the tracking beacon he managed to place on the robot, waiting. They aren't familiar with Mistral, but if a robot is threatening Vale they have to take it out regardless of their standard jurisdiction. There are more trees than Vale, which is pretty but really just another place for their enemies to hide. It's completely unfamiliar territory which means completely unfamiliar threats.
If Pyrrha were here things would be better. The Huntress's renown extends far beyond Vale, making her an instant threat.
"We're within a few miles," Ren says. "The robot stopped out there." He gestures towards a series of rolling hills to the North.
Neither of his companions say anything. They're on edge, constantly scanning the surrounding environment for signs of hostiles. A reaction time a second too long gets people killed out here.
Ren makes his way off the road, following the beacon's trail, his team following behind him. Jaune begins to voice the thoughts that have been circling in all of their minds.
"Isn't this place a little too quiet and peaceful for somewhere a robot just rampaged through?" he asks. "I mean, there are birds everywhere."
There are birds everywhere, their raucous cries filling the air. Not a chance they'd be here if the forest were disturbed, so their presence should be reassuring. It isn't.
"Yeah, it seems like too many birds," Nora continues. "Maybe the birds are spies."
It's best to shut Nora's wild train of thought down now and not let her make Jaune nervous, because Jaune still panics and forgets how to hold a sword when he's nervous.
"Nora, how would the bird spies report back their findings?" Ren asks, checking the tracking beacon again. The robot has moved slightly, but its position remains almost identical. No problems there.
Nora frowns, then brightens up again.
"Maybe they're robot birds," she offers.
Ren ignores her and keeps moving. They have cover as long as they stay within the thick forest, and he'll preserve that slim advantage for as long as possible. Nora does seem to have gotten the message, and stays silent as they trek over the forested hills.
"We're close," Ren says, holding up a hand to halt them. "It should be over the next hill. Proceed with caution."
That's a standard tactic, not a vague warning, and Jaune and Nora obediently drop to crawling on their elbows. Good. If they're that quick at following his orders now, they likely won't try any too wild strategies once the fight begins.
Ren peers over the crest of the next hill, hidden by underbrush that he shifts aside. There's the robot, an enormous vehicle balancing on tank treads. Too heavy to use legs to support itself, so it'll be less agile but far more stable. Reports are unclear on how many limbs the robot has, but it's somewhere between two and six, all equipped with ranged weapons. It looks like a standard four-armed torso, but he can't tell from this angle.
He begins calculating attack plans. Many of their strategies revolve around using gravity against the robots: destroying the wings and rotors of flying creatures, and bringing others down by taking out the often lightly-armored legs. That's not an option here, with the tank treads. The treads do make it much slower, so it'll be easier to pick off the arms, which leaves it defenseless.
That won't work. The robot as a whole is slow, but the arms are too fast. You'll kill yourself trying.
Ren stares at the robot again. He's seen it before, or something like it, but the standard torso is slow enough that they can pick off the arms, although it takes longer than just smashing the torso into the pavement by removing supports. They practice whittling away the arms, using terrain and abilities to shelter themselves, on a regular basis. This is still nothing his team can't handle.
"Can we go fight it now?" Nora whispers, and Ren shakes his head.
"It's an unknown type of robot, so we need more reconnaissance before we try to take it out," he says quietly. "You two retreat and set up a camp; I'll stay on watch. We'll be here for a few days, at least."
Ren has seen the robot somewhere, a massive hulk covered with dents and scars, a record of its prior battles. There are police files on it, but the newest date back ten years, before he was a hero. He shouldn't have seen something like this anywhere.
"When is Father coming back?" Ren asks.
His mother tries to smile, but he can see the lines of worry on her face. Ren is young, but he's old enough to know about the cost of the fight. His mother doesn't like to talk about the arm she lost, but one night she did tell him that story, when he begged and pleaded. He never asked to hear that story again, not the way she told it, pausing to breathe shakily, her eyes wide in fear and phantom pain. But he remembers the story. He knows it could have been worse. Nora is too young to understand, his parents say, but she's old enough to miss her family, and old enough to cry every night while he tries to keep her quiet, because he remembers what his father told him about how a hero has to learn not to make a sound.
His father is back soon, or most of him, tossed to one side and ground underneath tank treads. Ren's mother didn't say a word at that. She smiled, a sort of odd, grim smile with nothing but resignation behind her eyes, and she picked up her sword rusted from years of disuse and ran at the robot and died, never once making a sound, and keeping that same smile.
Ren had understood. His mother wanted to die a hero. Sometimes, he wished that she had stayed alive, but mostly he wished that he had been brave enough to go with her.
Ren stayed. He held Nora back as she begged him to let her fight, and he held her as her screams turned into sobs of despair. They were the only survivors. Pyrrha found them, searching through the wreckage for survivors, and offered them another place, another team, that they fit into effortlessly.
Nora was the fighter, the tough one, the strong one, the crazy one to people who didn't like her strategies. She and Pyrrha fought, wills clashing over anything, and he was always the one who talked them down to a compromise. The one to calm down and hold back. The one to solve disputes, to pick up the pieces. The one who reached agreements with the police, or talked desperate petty criminals into reconsidering. Their peacemaker.
Ren is done being the peacemaker. Too many people have died because he held back.