Reign of Steel

by MahinaFable

In a world threatened by Grimm of titanic scale, mankind designed enormous war machines to face them head-on: the infinitely modular Armored Cores! All his life, Jaune Arc wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, the legendary pilot of the first Armored Core. When tragedy strikes, will he be able to live up to his family's legacy, and defend the people of Vale?

9. The Answer

A/N: Sorry for the delay! I injured tendons in my left wrist and palm, and it made typing to any large extent very difficult for a while. I tried speech-to-text, but firstly, it didn't feel right, and secondly, do you have any idea how many times I had to go back and edit instances of "Jaune" appearing as "Jon?" Even when I was pronouncing the name like I was some kind of outrageous French caricature. Then, after more or less recovering and uploading some short, "interlude" chapters for "The White Knight," my decade-old laptop finally gave up the ghost, leaving me with a shiny new ergonomic keyboard, and no device on which to properly type.

I was beside myself. The nerd rage was real, yo.

Anyways, that's all sorted, so here we go.

[/]

Jaune stood at the same window in his hospital room from which his mother had been staring the previous morning. He remembered the snarky comment that he'd made to Lance-Captain Xiao Long when they'd gone into the forest to fight the Lupus Grimm. It seemed much harsher in hindsight, now that the Emerald Forest was largely burnt and charred. Like any other Valean, Jaune had grown up with the lush foliage bordering the city on two sides as a constant of the landscape. Seeing it gone like that was...jarring.

The Director had impressed upon Jaune that the power that had awakened within him - Jaune had no other way to describe it but as honest-to-gods-magic - had its limits. He couldn't do everything he set his mind to, but that didn't mean that he wasn't now possessed of abilities beyond other men. Ozpin had also made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that only he was responsible for how he used those abilities, for good or ill. The thing was, he didn't know, exactly, the extent of his powers, just that he was not, in fact, all-powerful or invincible.

That reality had been driven home as he had listened to the medical staff at the hospital. A nurse had received the news that his husband had been identified as one of the missing loggers who had been murdered in the Emerald Forest. The poor man had been inconsolable, and one of his colleagues had stepped up to take over his shift. The x-ray technician who operated the machine to monitor his skull fracture was pulling extra shifts because his wife made her living carving speciality furniture out of Valean hardwood, and with the Emerald Forest in such a state, there was no telling if they'd be able to make ends meet without her income.

Jaune wished that he could make everything okay. He wished that he could give the nurse his husband back. He wished that he could make the x-ray tech's wife able to do her work again. He wished that he could go out into the ruins of the Emerald Forest and bring it back to the way it had been, the way it always had been for his entire life, green and lush, full of living things. But he couldn't. It was beyond him.

So, then, what could he do?

Well, as it turned out, one thing that Jaune could do was to heal himself shockingly quickly. Upon viewing his x-rays, the head doctor overseeing Jaune's case was genuinely stunned, calling it a medical anomaly. Jaune had just shrugged and suggested that there was something about the Arcs that enabled them to shrug off hits particularly well. The doctor had scoffed, pointing out that the young man had had a skull fracture, one that had healed overnight, and to such an extent that, if she hadn't known where it had been previously, she never would have suspected Jaune to have suffered such an injury at all. The doctor had pressed him for an explanation, for which Jaune could only answer, truthfully, that it was magic. After the woman had given him such a scathing look that he had wanted to go crawl back into the bed and hide, he had asked if she had a better explanation. The doctor had been driven to vexation at the realization that she did not.

After that little exchange, Jaune was ready to be discharged, but there was one last bit of business that he needed to address. Apparently, Beacon's pilots were unable to leave its grounds for the duration of the crisis - however long that was meant to be - and with his father banned from its grounds, this would be the last opportunity Jaune would have to speak face-to-face with Gil Arc, at least for a long while. He heard a knock on the door shortly before the old man entered the room.

"Son."

"Dad."

Gil shook his head. "I'll never get used to seeing that. How quickly someone can recover with that...magic awake in him."

"Could come in handy," replied Jaune. "Can't argue that it's got me up and moving again pretty damn quick."

"So. What is it that you wanted to speak to me about?"

Jaune moved to one of the chairs, sitting in it. "You know, since all this started, I've been piecing together your past, Dad, and that very definitely includes the awful things you got up to behind Mom's back. But there's one question, more than anything else, where I need the answer. I need to know it, for my own peace of mind. Just tell me, Dad...why? Why did you do it?"

Gil sighed deeply, running his hand through his hair before sitting down across from his son. "What you need to understand is that I'm only human, Jaune."

"Lots of people are human. They don't do what you did. Try again."

"Don't give me that lip," snapped Gil. "You said you need my answer, so here it is, boy. Your grandparents arranged for your mother and I to be married, long, long ago. Hell, I was younger than you are now when I was engaged, set to be married to some girl from Mantle that I didn't know, and had never met. We can talk until we're blue in the face, but you'll never understand just how different the world was back then." Gil shook his head. "The point was, before my life had even really started, a major part of it was already set in stone. Then came Crocea Mors. Do you know why I became its pilot, at the tender age of seventeen?"

Jaune knew the story. Everyone did. "You volunteered. A room full of hardened test pilots all shirked away from firing up a vehicle with a Hidden Fire generator, but you, a rookie cargo pilot, showed them all up by stepping forward when no one else would."

Gil chuckled at his son's recitation of the story. "That's what they tell you. Truth was, they put me in that machine because I was the most expendable person on the base. If I died, it was no big loss - the Armored Core was by far more valuable than the idiot kid piloting it. But then, the Grimm attacked on that very first test, and it turned out that that dumb boy could fight when he had to. Sound familiar?" The old man sighed. "For the first time ever, the Grimm weren't just pushed back, but soundly, easily destroyed. A punk kid and an Armored Core did the work of entire fleets, and Vale had a hero on its hands. So for years, I fought, and I fought. I wrote the literal, actual damn book on AC tactics in engaging the Grimm. Other pilots with their own ACs came in time, and among them was Maria."

"Maria Calvera?" Jaune asked. "I had heard about rumors."

"And they were true," replied Gil. His gaze was distant, lost in long-off days. "She and I had a deep, passionate affair. Gods, what a woman she was, Jaune. Maria was bold, and fearless, laughing at death as she made her machine dance among the Grimm. Her every glance set my heart to racing; her kisses set my blood on fire. A word from her, and I would have broken off my engagement to your mother, Jaune, and damn the consequences. She was everything to me, my just reward for the years of strife and hardship for people I never knew. And then, one day, she called it off. Just as abrupt as you like, she left me and returned to Mantle. She died there. A part of me - probably the best part - died when she left."

Jaune said nothing, merely gazing at his father with a stoic expression. Gil pressed on. "After that, well, why not marry your mother? It wasn't like I had anything else to lose, and it was the expected thing for The Hero of Vale." The old man practically spat the title. "I imagine you'd want to know if I ever felt anything for Isabelle, right? Well, here's your truth; even I don't know. Even I can't tell where the lies end and the truth begins. Did I go to such lengths to keep my affairs a secret to spare her pain, or to spare my reputation? Both? Neither? But on and on I went, trying to find that spark, that excitement that had gone from my life when Maria left."

"That's it?" Jaune asked, incredulous. "You preyed on all those girls because you were bored with Mom?"

"You don't know what it's like!" Gil snapped in response, rising to his feet and pointing at his son. "That day at the house was the first time she showed anything approximating a spine in the entire time I've known her!"

Jaune was on his feet in a flash. "That's my mother you're talking about!"

"Yes, I know! Gods, I know, an insipid, simpering doormat of a woman, whose primary contribution to this world was in falling pregnant every time I looked at her! Your mother has all of the skillset of a cow, of a rutting animal! You don't know what it's like, to be married to someone like that, trapped in the chains of public expectation. Can you blame me for straying, when my only legitimate companionship was that?"

Power. The ability to enact one's will on the world around them. Restoring the Emerald Forest was beyond Jaune's powers, enhanced though they may have been. Patricide was not. He could do it. Hell, he may not even have needed Aura to do it. A strong enough blow to the temple would do the trick, and if not, once he got the old man down, he could strangle him to death with his own hands. Jaune was certainly angry enough at his father to do it. But...was that the kind of man he wanted to be? The kind who murdered his father over words that he said?

Jaune forced his hands to unclench, and then turned away from his father, looking out again over the Emerald Forest. "It's funny," he finally said, after a long silence. "Ever since I can remember, I wanted nothing more than to be just like you, Dad. Then, after learning about what you did...the possibility that I really would be just like you has haunted me. That there was some external force that could just fundamentally change me, and turn me into you. But after hearing your answer, I'm not afraid of that anymore. Because while you're my father, and I'm like you in a lot of ways...in a lot of ways...the most important ways...I'm nothing like you at all. For all your accomplishments, deep down, you're just a dirty, disgusting old lecher who never got over getting dumped."

"Don't you dare talk to me like that!"

"I've been daring a lot lately, Dad. You might have noticed."

"As a matter of fact, I have. And you aren't so righteous as you like to posture, boy. Just what would you do if that Rose girl, the one you damn near killed yourself for, walked out of your life? If you never got the chance to make things right, to win her back?"

Jaune kept gazing out of the window. "Same as now. I'd try to be the best man I can be. After all, I promised Mom that I would be a good boy," he said with a rueful smile. "But if I never saw Ruby again? It would hurt, sure. But my hurt wouldn't make it okay to reach out and hurt others. I can see that. That you never could is the difference, I think, that keeps me from being you. And if I ever slip, I have eight amazing sisters and my mom, to kick my ass up around my ears and tell me to behave." Jaune sighed deeply, then turned around. "We're done here," he announced.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. I got what I needed, and there's little point in listening to you spew decades of pent-up spite and venom. I have work to do." The young pilot frowned as a thought occurred to him. "Actually, there is something else. There are a lot of our people who need a hero right now. They're suffering, scared, unsure of the future. They're...grieving. I don't know how much of 'The Hero of Vale' was an act, but when you thought you were dying, you sent me to protect the city. I believe - I have to believe - that that means something. If there was ever anything to the legend at all, you could do a lot of good for a lot of people, just by going out there right now. Or not." Jaune shrugged. "I can't make you do the right thing. But I can suggest it."

Jaune didn't say anything else as he walked out of the hospital room. Reaching the elevator at the end of the hallway, he keyed it to the lobby floor, and leaned against the far wall. He didn't want to think about his father anymore, not when there were more important things to contemplate. What could he do? Well, he could go back to Beacon, let his friends, sister, and Ruby know that he was okay, for one. Call Cerulea and check up on the younger girls. Call Saph and thank her for being there for their mother, and to make sure that Terra and her baby were well. See if the White Fang left sufficient knock-off Crocea Mors parts around to scrounge up a replacement AC, then get to work designing his own. He was definitely going to need Ruby's help on that one; for the life of him, all that he could visualize as "his" Armored Core was just Crocea Mors. Or Crocea Mors with better weapons.

Power. Ozpin had told him to be aware of his power, and conscientious of what he did with it. Well, what could he do with it? What would he do with it? He couldn't restore Vale, bring back the dead, or magically change his father. He wouldn't beat his father to death in outrage over his disparaging his mother. What he could and would do was to get back into the fray, as quickly as magically-possible, to do his part in restoring security and prosperity to the people of his city.

That was his answer. When granted power, Jaune Arc would do his best to help.

[/]

Seated at her desk, Ruby was frustrated to the point of tears. She had her parameters, specifications that she needed to meet, but they were impossible to cram into one machine, at least with the technology that she had at hand. Taking the most specs for the most powerful generator on the market and tweaking it for even more power still didn't meet the energy output requirements, and worse, there was a rather distressing chance that, instead of a controlled chain reaction, it could go into an uncontrolled meltdown. She pushed her chair back from her desk, pushing up her bangs with her hand.

Ruby wanted to throw something. What was even happening with her? Her dad had told her that they were going to take her to see a therapist, but...her entire family had seen her eyes glowing with a silver light. Maybe if they hadn't seen that, she would have been able to write off her vision as some kind of bizarre, stress-induced hallucination, but she wouldn't hallucinate both her parents and Yang all saying that they saw the same thing from her.

Right?

At the end of the day, the teenage engineer decided that, if she was so far gone that she was hallucinating that much, then she was pretty much irretrievably insane anyway. If that was the case, then she may as well act as if this was reality. So far, so good, but that didn't solve the problem of White Glint's power needs. Every instinct within her was screaming at her to get it built, but how could she do that when she was seeing things that defied the limits of physics? If she wasn't crazy already, then it wouldn't be long until she really was, at this rate.

With her efforts stymied once more, Ruby opted to take a break. Every once in a while in her fevered drafting, either one of her parents or her sister would come in and almost physically pry her away from her desk, in order to take care of her body's needs. Her mom had threatened to toss her in the kitchen sink and wash her like a baby if she didn't shower, and Ruby had not wanted to test if she was joking or not.

Her dad had obviously asked her mother if she'd ever experienced anything like what their daughter had, seeing as they shared the same silver eyes. The older woman didn't know if her eyes had been glowing, as she'd been on her own when it happened, but while she'd never had the compulsion to build anything, she had, once, been given a very strong presentiment that she was supposed to marry, well, him. She'd thought she had lost her chance when he'd eloped with Raven Branwen instead, but things had worked out in the end.

While that was all very sweet and 'd'aww' inducing, it didn't actually help Ruby at all. She wandered out into the living room, and was just about to flop onto the couch and gripe to her mom, when came a knock at the door. Ruby looked at Summer, who shrugged as she stood from her chair and walked to the door.

"Director Ozpin," said Summer, her voice carefully-neutral and professional. "Can I help you?"

"Good day, Miss Rose. May I speak with young Ruby? A matter of some considerable importance has arisen that concerns her."

Summer's posture abruptly became much more guarded. "What's this about, Oz? You're not dragging my little girl through a court martial, not when she was on the field at fifteen."

"This has nothing to do with the incident in the Emerald Forest, I assure you," Ozpin was quick to state. "Rather, it concerns her talents as an engineer."

Summer turned around to peer at her youngest. "Ruby, what did you do?"

"Nothing..." muttered Ruby.

Her mother just stared at her.

"Nothing!" the girl reiterated, with teenage petulance. "I mean…" she held her arm and gazed to the side. "I sent a video asking for help, but there's no way he actually saw it."

"He?" Summer echoed. "Who did you ask for help?"

"Well, that very issue is why I've come to your home today," Ozpin spoke up. "You see, I have Yasuyoshi Karasawa in my office, asking to meet you, Ruby. He mentioned something about taking you on as his apprentice."

Ruby went stock-still. "What?"

Summer shot her daughter a concerned look. "Ruby? Are you okay?"

After a brief moment, whatever shock that had hit the girl had worked its way through her system as the younger Rose burst into a flurry of activity. "My notes! I need my notes!" She nearly tripped over her own feet in her haste to get back to her room, and the work desk within. Rapidly skimming through her dense collection of loose-leaf sketches and schematics, she picked out what she prioritized the most; the power generator issue. Then she staggered back into the living room, this time actually tripping to skid, sprawled-out, on the floor, coming to a rest at the feet of her mother.

"Ow."

Her mother could only sigh with long-suffering humor as she helped Ruby to her feet. "Don't get too excited," she warned her daughter. "We're just going to hear the man out. Nothing is finalized until your father and I have the chance to go over everything and set terms. No one is going to take advantage of my baby girl, not when you're in a...vulnerable state."

Ruby gave her mother a flat look. "Dude, Karasawa could outright yoink every design I've ever made, and if he taught me how to craft like he can, it'd be a bargain at twice the price."

"Still, I'm going to make sure that you're treated fairly. It's my prerogative as your mother. Speaking of which," continued Summer, lightly swatting Ruby upside the head, "I am your mother, not 'dude.'"

"All right, all right, sheesh!" Ruby griped, rubbing the back of her head. "Anyways, can we go now?"

The Director merely shook his head as he led the two Rose women towards his office. If Karasawa did end up accepting Rose as his apprentice, the old master certainly had his work cut out for him. Facilitating this opportunity for young Ruby was no hardship for Oz; while he maintained that taking the gamble on recruiting the Rose girl that young had been worth the risk, seeing it backfire had not been easy on his conscience. If things worked out, being the only known apprentice of Karasawa would ensure that the girl would be set for life. Beyond that, Ozpin was genuinely curious as to what design Ruby had sent that had piqued the old eccentric's attention.

Upon reaching his office, he opened the door, revealing the old man. He didn't look like much, being a slight man of advanced years, wearing a plain brown samue, traditional craftsman's garb from Mistral. His head was bald, save for a ring of white hair around the base of his skull, and his features were heavily lined with age. But when Karasawa opened his eyes to regard the new arrivals, his silver eyes were clear and sharp...and a notion began to form in his mind. This was, after all, the first time in decades that three people with silver eyes were in a single room together.

"Mister Karasawa. Allow me to introduce you to Ruby Rose. I believe you've met her mother, Summer?"

"Ah, yes. It has been some time, as evidenced by the young lady I see before me." Karasawa rose, somewhat laboriously due to his age, and approached the young girl and her mother. "Hello, Ruby Rose. When last we met, you were but a babe, held securely in your mother's arms. Then, I turn around and that infant has grown to a girl, pleading to me, to the gods, to anyone for aid to build the White Glint. As it turns out, that aid has arrived, and sooner than you would have expected."

Ruby's eyes glistened. "I can't believe you actually saw that message! And my plans! And you actually came to help me! I-I-I…" she stammered, before a thought occurred to her. "Wait, how did you know the name of the White Glint? I didn't have it on the plans, and I don't think I mentioned it in the video I made."

Summer looked sharply at her - no doubt having something to say about her fifteen-year old daughter making and sending videos to strange old men without her knowledge - but Karasawa clasped his hands behind his back.

"I'm glad that you asked that question, as it cuts to the quick of what I have to teach you. Quite simply, I know the White Glint's name as I saw it, just as I believe you saw it yourself."

"What?" Ruby stared, wide-eyed at the old man.

"You were attending to your own business, whatever that may have been," began Karasawa. "Then some thing, a word, a glance, an event witnessed, a phrase overheard, set off a vision where, among other things, you witnessed an object in action. Given the phrase scribbled on your plans - 'Gods help me, I love him' - I suspect that it has something to do with a certain young man that the machine is meant for."

Ruby flushed deeply, while beside her, Summer just sighed. "Oh, Ruby…"

"The world faded away, and all you could see was the machine and its wielder, yes?" Karasawa continued. "You could see it just as plainly as you see me standing before you now, perhaps even more clearly, and when the vision faded, you were left with a strong...no, overwhelming compulsion to see the machine built and delivered into the hands of its intended wielder. If others were with you, it no doubt gave them quite the shock, as your eyes were glowing with a celestial light."

The girl's jaw hung open. "How…?"

"Because, girl, your story is as mine was, long ago. Tell me, what do you know of the silver eyes?"

"Uh...they're silver. And I got them from my mom, and apparently, they do magic things?"

Karasawa chuckled. "Ah, but you are so impossibly young. The silver eyes are a gift to humanity from the God of Light. It is that divine, celestial luminance that we Silver-Eyed Seers channel, and with that, we can see secrets hidden from mundane understanding. After all, what are eyes for, if not for seeing?"

Forgotten at his desk, Director Ozpin was trying very hard to keep from interrupting what he was hearing with a deluge of questions of his own. This was just a day for all kinds of staggering revelations. First, he discovered that the Second Race had created at least one fully-synthetic intelligence, encroaching on territory that had previously been the exclusive province of the gods. He had once considered if humans had created the Faunus, but had dismissed the idea; after meeting Penny, he was no longer so sure of that assumption that doing so was beyond them. And now he was learning that an entirely different methodology of utilizing the silver eyes had manifested without his knowledge. It was a sobering reminder that, while he may have known more than any other man alive, that didn't make Ozpin all-knowing. He had known Silver-Eyed Warriors, souls bestowed with celestial powers that could turn Grimm to stone with torrents of silver light pouring from their eyes, or even the power to outright obliterate them at a glance...but those powers had always had limits, and once Salem began fielding colossal Grimm almost exclusively, the Silver-Eyed Warriors, like all the others, had no choice but to flee or die.

Ozpin didn't know if this was another style of utilizing the powers of the silver eyes, a utility that had always existed but had never been widely-known or if those powers were themselves manifesting differently then they had in the past. The latter possibility concerned him greatly, particularly if Karasawa's assumption of the origin of his visions were truthful. The gods may not have forsaken humanity as entirely as they, or Ozpin for that matter, had believed. While the Second Race might see that as a hopeful sign, Ozpin knew better. After all, the God of Light was just as responsible for the state of Remnant, and the predicament of mortals, as his sinister counterpart.

All he could do was listen, and seek to learn.

"So, if I can see the White Glint, and you could see it, why can't I see how it's supposed to work?" Ruby asked.

"You opened your eyes for the first time, and wonder that you cannot perceive all?" asked Karasawa in response. "Your eyes have opened, yes, but you need to train your mind to fully comprehend what you see. To examine the visions with your own will. Only then will you be able to build the Answers."

"Answers? You mean weapons?"

"No, I mean Answers. I design weapons and lesser parts as well, of course. After all, I still need to eat! But my true masterworks, the pieces that are divinely-inspired, those are Answers. See, the Grimm pose to us a challenge. What are we, in the face of such catastrophe? What can mere mortals do in the face of such unyielding hate? Each divine masterwork is an Answer to that challenge, and for many years now, it has been my task, my burden, and my great honor to act as a...conduit, or a courier, to deliver those Answers to those who will bring them to bear against the enemy. It's why each vision is set off by a moment of intense, numinous humanity. The indomitable will of a mother to see her children safe," he listed, nodding to Summer. "A daughter's longing for the love of her father. A soldier's determination to achieve the magnificence of perfection. I have seen many such moments over the decades, but now I find myself in the curious position of witnessing such an occurrence from the outside. Tell me, what set off this vision of yours?"

Ruby gazed at the floor for a moment. "I did something...really stupid," she said. "I should have died, but instead, he came and...it was insane. Something that a crazy person would do. He laid down his life for mine, and somehow, he came out okay. More or less. He charged straight through plasma to save my life, and when I found out, I just…"

She gazed back up at Karasawa, her eyes glowing with silver light.

The master nodded. "Good. Come along, girl. I will teach you how to see."

[/]

Another afternoon, another patrol finished. Pyrrha guided Argo to its berth in the hangar with the ease of long habit. Shutting down the Armored Core's combat systems, she lingered a bit to listen to the rest of her Lance bantering back and forth over the radio. What they didn't speak about told her almost as much as what they actually said. For instance, Nora and Cardin were completely ignoring one another, as they had all day, for anything that wasn't absolutely required to coordinate for the day's patrol. Between that and the fact that Ren wasn't prodding Winchester, like, at all, Pyrrha gathered that Nora and Cardin were in a serious fight. They might even break up. On the surface, Yang was being her normal happily fabulous self, but she never once mentioned her little sister, perhaps seeking to avoid picking at the scabbed-over wound that her actions had caused. For that matter, the Lance-Captain had been very withdrawn today, not speaking save for orders, with none of his usual dry humor or quick lectures.

With how Yang and her father were acting, Pyrrha wondered if something had happened to Ruby. A part of her was irritated at the discovery that she was worried about her. Why should she worry about Ruby Rose? She hadn't worried about her, or Jaune, or anyone else until it was too late. She was an impulsive, airheaded little brat who wasn't worth one more moment of her attention or concern.

...Pyrrha did hope that she was okay.

She sighed. Holding a grudge was hard work.

Switching off the radio and emerging from the cockpit of her Armored Core, Pyrrha stood on the gantry, pulling off her helmet and securing it to her belt. Apparently, the Atlesians had arrived earlier that day, as confirmed by the three unfamiliar Armored Cores that stood together in a cloister on the far end of the hangar from Dragon Lance's assigned berths. She hoped that the Atlesian officer - apparently called a "Specialist," being roughly equivalent in rank to a Lance-Captain - would select her as part of the squad to hunt down Adam Taurus. When it came to duelling, there were few that could reasonably challenge her, and they were all veterans like Summer Rose. Actually, given how Taurus had traumatized her daughter, attempted to kill her, and callously mocked her husband as he did so, Pyrrha wouldn't be surprised if Miss Summer didn't volunteer to hunt him down herself.

Maybe they'd even be able to work together. After all, they both had Karasawa plasma rifles, and it would be sweet justice to sear him to death, just like he'd been ghoulishly bragging about having done to other people. That would be lovely, wouldn't it?

She tugged the band holding her hair bun, allowing her red hair to fall freely to her shoulders. On the hangar floor, the Lance-Captain was having a word with Cardin and Nora. She caught the tail end of the conversation as she finished climbing down the stairs.

"...and I don't know if you've noticed, but we've kind of just burned through our designated allotment of drama for the last year or so," Taiyang told the pair. "We are at drama capacity. So you'd better let me know right now if the two of you can't work together, before it becomes my problem."

Nora glanced at Cardin before sighing. "No, sir. It won't be a problem."

"Good. Make sure to keep it that way." Taiyang crossed his arms as Cardin and Nora walked off - in different directions, Pyrrha noted.

"Captain?"

He turned to face her as he heard her voice. "Haven't checked in yet, Pyrrha. If there's any update on Jaune, you'll be the first to know, I promise."

She flushed in embarrassment. She supposed she had been harassing the poor man, since, as his commanding officer, Taiyang would be the first one at Beacon aside from the Director to receive a medical update on Jaune's status. "Right," she acknowledged, her tone apologetic.

Taiyang sighed. "Look, I'm about to head to my office. Come with me, and I'll let you know if there's an update as soon as I can."

"Of course. Thank you, Captain." Pyrrha fell in a step behind him as he strode out of the hangar. "Captain?" she asked.

"Yes?"

"How is Ruby doing?"

"I thought you were furious with her?" he asked.

"I was...I am," Pyrrha admitted. "But even though I'm so unbelievably angry with her, I...I'm worried about her."

Taiyang paused for a moment. "She's been...coping. You weren't the only one who had some harsh things to say to her in the wake of that whole mess. As an officer, I stand by everything I said. As her father...part of me wants to tell her that I take it all back, that she's my precious little flower that can do no wrong. But I have to crush that part, as hard as it is, because I have to guide her into becoming an adult, and that means having her face the consequences of her actions." The Lance-Captain pinched the bridge of his nose. "I tell you, Nikos, being a parent is both the most amazing thing and the hardest thing in the world."

"I think the fact that it's hard means that you're doing it right, sir."

Taiyang glanced at her. "Maybe. Incidentally, try to hold off on any kids with Yang until you're both at least in your late twenties."

Pyrrha's eyes were as wide as saucers. "Kids?" she croaked out, her voice cracking.

He snickered at the expression on her face. "Relax, I'm fucking with you, Nikos. But you're not especially good at keeping it a secret. Yang had a hickey on her neck, and Summer caught that right away. She says hello, by the way." Tai chuckled at the unbridled panic writ 'cross her face. "I believe the word you're looking for is 'busted,' Nikos."

"I...uh…"

"If I was going to bite your head off, I'd have done it a lot sooner than now. I'm guessing you overheard the last bit of my talk with Winchester and Valkyrie?"

She nodded.

"Good. Same thing applies. We are at capacity for bullshit, so keep the teenage dramatics to a dull fuckin' roar. Call it a personal favor to me to cut down on the migraines, yeah?"

"O-of course, sir," stammered Pyrrha, still off-balance from being so utterly busted.

"Right." Taiyang came to a halt before his office door, unlocking it and striding in. He went to the console on his desk, firing it up to check for incoming messages. His head canted as he read one. "What in the goddamn…?"

"Sir?"

"Okay, Pyrrha. Your brother was discharged from the hospital about an hour ago. He's not cleared for active duty yet, but he reported in and is back in his qua - and she's gone," Taiyang shook his head as Pyrrha darted from his office without a word. He typed up a quick message to Arc, telling him to report to his office after his sister and Lancemates finished celebrating his return - so, in the morning before the briefing.

He'd need to talk to the boy. Partially to confess his own guilt at what he'd ordered him to do, but also...Tai didn't have the words to express how grateful he was to him. Ruby was alive. Sulking, traumatized, emitting silver light from her eyes and rambling about freaky Armored Core designs, but she was alive to be all of those things, and that was because Jaune Arc had made an insane death charge on her behalf.

So yeah, the kid was officially on his good side.

He pulled up the next message in his que, a message from his wife. He frowned as he scanned it. Someone had come to teach Ruby about her silver eyes? What? Summer had promised to explain in person, saying that she would be with Ruby and this supposed teacher in the workshop.

Taiyang pressed his palms to his eyes, trying to will away the headache that had begun to form. When that failed, he skimmed lightly over his remaining messages, and then, once satisfied that neither Beacon in general nor Dragon Lance specifically would implode if he took the night off, he set off to find his wife and youngest daughter.

[/]

In retrospect, Jaune should have expected that his returning straight to Beacon from the hospital wouldn't have been too appreciated by his younger sisters. He'd called home after returning to his quarters, and his younger sisters' initial joy and relief at seeing him unharmed had quickly given way to juvenile ire that he'd not gone home to visit them, irrespective of the fact that he was under orders as a Beacon pilot.

"...You could have at least stopped by," Noir muttered in a huff.

"I would have if I could, I promise," he said. "But being part of Beacon means that I have to follow instructions, and if the Director says that all the pilots need to be at Beacon, then that's what I have to do, as soon as I was able to leave the hospital."

"But why?" Violet butted in.

"Well, we need to have everyone on hand to respond in case another crisis breaks out," Jaune explained.

"But, I mean, what are you specifically gonna do about it? You don't have an AC anymore, right?"

Jaune coughed awkwardly. "Well, I'm going to see about getting a new one. Then I'll stop the bad man who burned the forest down, the restriction will be lifted, and I'll be able to come see you all."

"You mean Pyrrha will stop him," Rouge corrected. "We visited her yesterday, and she said she was going to make him pay in blood for hurting you."

"You visited Pyrrha yesterday?" echoed Jaune, surprised.

"Well, yeah." Rouge rolled her eyes with the supremely unimpressed disdain that only a teenage girl could impart. "She's our new secret sister, and no matter what Dad might have done, Arcs look after our own."

Jaune felt a warmth spread in his chest at his little sister's declaration. "She must have been so happy to have you visit her."

"Yeah, she had the happy tears," Violet reported. "But really, pretty sure she's gonna stop the bad guy, not you."

"What?" protested Jaune. "It could be me!"

"Mmm, nope," Rouge decided. "He already kicked your butt pretty good. Besides, Pyrrha's a girl, so that automatically makes her, like, twenty percent cooler than you."

"At least," agreed Violet.

"Oh! Oh!" Jaune pouted in overwrought outrage, looking to entertain his sisters. While he was happy that the younger girls, at least, had readily accepted Pyrrha, he couldn't let that slight stand. "Even you, Noir?"

The black-haired sister, who had always been his number one fan, looked off to one side. "Well…"

"Wow. Wow," he said, with exaggerated drama, a hand over his heart as though he'd been shot. "I see how it is. Kick your poor old big brother when he's down."

The girls giggled at his put-upon expression, even Noir, the little traitor. Jaune smiled ruefully, when he heard a knocking at his door. "I'm going to have to go now," he told his little sisters. "Remember to be good for Mom, don't give Cerulea too much trouble, and I'll see you all as soon as I can. I love you, you little boogers."

He ended the call after hearing the various sounds of farewell that they sent to him, then stood up from his couch to go see who was at the door. He opened it and was nearly bowled off his feet by a bronze and red blur.

"Jaune!"

Jaune chuckled, even as he took a step backwards to keep his footing. It looked like he had one more little sister left to comfort. "Hi, Pyrrha."

Pyrrha clutched him to her as though she thought he could fade away at any moment. "Oh, Jaune, I'm so sorry! I should have been there, I should have been able to keep you safe, what were you thinking!" she babbled helplessly, all her fear, sorrow, and regret pouring from her in one great burst.

"Hey, I'm all right," he soothed her, stroking her long red hair. "I'm as good as new, see?"

She blinked up at him, as it registered that not only was he okay, but he was very okay, as though nothing had happened to him at all. "How did you recover so fast?" she asked him.

"A wizard did it."

She lifted a fist to punch his arm before thinking better of it. "Wait, are you okay to get punched?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, no," Jaune deadpanned. "In fact, for reasons of health and safety, I should never get Pyrrha-punched, ever again. It could trigger a relapse."

She smiled brightly. "You big wuss."

"Hey, I bruise easily!" he said. "There's a reason we fight with giant steel war machines, instead of trying to brawl ourselves."

"Oh, Jaune…" Pyrrha's smile faded as she sobered. "I was there when they pulled you from the wreckage. I was so scared…"

"I'm sorry" He sighed deeply. "I kind of didn't have much choice there. And I kinda totally wrecked the family car," he joked, trying to raise her mood again.

"Jaune. Beacon recovered the camera footage, all of it. We all saw you charge straight into that plasma. What were you thinking?"

"I couldn't let him kill Ruby. At the end of the day, it's as simple as that."

"You didn't know that it would work!" Pyrrha protested. "It could have gone off directly in your face, and then you and Ruby both would have died!"

"But at least I wouldn't have abandoned her." Jaune shook his head. "At the end of the day, I have to be true to who I am." He gave his sister a sad smile. "People can kill us, sure. They can shoot us in the head, hit us with a car, blast us into smithereens with plasma. But no one, not even Adam Taurus, can make us be something we're not. Sometimes, the only choice we have left is how we're going to face the end, and I chose to go down fighting."

Pyrrha let him go, stepping back. "...I wonder if that's how my mother felt," she said after a long moment, her tone quiet and subdued. "When I saw them pull you out and put you on that stretcher, all I could think was how it was happening again. Jaune...you promised me that, even if no one else accepted me, you would be my family. How can you keep that promise if you get yourself killed?"

Jaune sighed, running his hand through his hair. "I'm going to get some water. Do you want some?" Pyrrha shook her head, so Jaune shrugged, moving into the small kitchenette to pour himself a drink. He re-emerged into the living room, taking a long pull of cool water before sitting on his couch. He patted the cushion next to him in invitation, and Pyrrha reluctantly took a seat next to him. "You know that there are no guarantees in our line of work, Pyr. You know that. Any one of us could be killed at any time. That's the nature of our calling. But even if I'd died back there, or if I die a month from now, that won't change that I'm your brother. And I know that you won't be alone. You'll have Yang, and Ruby, and their parents, and all of the friends you have on Dragon Lance, and with the girls..." He frowned as he saw Pyrrha wince at Ruby's name. "Pyrrha? What's wrong?"

Pyrrha was silent for a long moment, trying to work up the nerve to confess what she'd said to the girl his brother had laid his life on the line to rescue. Finally she spoke up. "I...the night you were hurt, when we heard what she'd done, charging in like that...I was harsh to her. I blamed her for you being hurt. I...I called her stupid, and self-centered, and I lamented that she walked away without a scratch while you were lying still on that stretcher. I was horrible to her, when she was at her lowest, and the worst part is, I can't stop myself from feeling so unbelievably furious with her."

As she finished, it was Jaune's turn to be quiet, contemplating what she'd said. Eventually, the pressure got to Pyrrha, and she broke the silence. "Jaune? Look, yell at me, call me an evil bitch, throw me out of your apartment, just say something."

That broke Jaune's train of thought, and he gave his sister an incredulous expression. "I'm not going to do any of that, so stop being dramatic." He stroked his chin. "You know, I spoke to our father today."

"Hooray."

"Tell me about it. I finally got the answer I'd been searching for, the reason why he'd done everything he did to those women. What turned him from a guy not so different to me to...well, the man we know now. It was spite, Pyrrha. Spite that he carried for decades, that he allowed to fester inside of him, like an infection." He held up a hand as he saw her about to object. "I'm not saying that you're wrong to have felt the way you did. You lashed out at Ruby from a place of fear, and hurt, and it's perfectly understandable that you felt that way. But what I'm asking from you is that you get it out, then let it go. Don't hold on to it. Vent it, express it, let it seep from you, and then let it pass. And don't do it for me, or for Ruby, or for when you finally put the moves on Yang. Do it for you. For your own sake."

"How?" she asked. "I don't want to keep feeling this way, but I can't help it."

Jaune smiled warmly, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Well, it helps to keep love close. Let it lead you, let it guide you, just...trust it. Do that, and you can't go too wrong."

"Did you think that up from your hospital bed?" she asked him.

"Nope. Ruby told me that, on our first date." He hugged her once more before standing up. "I know you love Ruby like a sister, and that will guide your way, in time. After all, we have so much to love each other for." He offered a hand to Pyrrha to help her up. "Now, what's everyone else up to?"

[/]

Weiss kept to herself in a small booth in the corner of a recreational room, picking at her dinner as she observed the Valeans in their natural habitat. It seemed Atlesians were, as a rule, much more reserved than their Valean counterparts, who appeared to be rather...boisterous and unsubtle in their display of emotion, for good or ill. From what she'd studied from Jaune Arc's dossier, his mother, Isabelle, had hailed from Mantle's prestigious Geles merchant clan. The Geles family had suffered something of a hit when Isabelle's brother, one Jacques Geles, had been found guilty of violating Atlesian anti-slavery regulations, and had been rotting in jail for over twenty years. While Isabelle had had no part of her brother's misdeeds, having long before immigrated to Vale and married Gil Arc, the Geles family's disgrace had only been mitigated by the fact that their daughter was married to possibly the most famous hero in the entire world.

She wondered which side Jaune would favor more - the reserve of Old Mantle, or the comparatively flamboyant Valean élan? While Jaune's gallantry in the defense of Ruby Rose was stirring, was he prone to such over-the-top antics as a matter of course, or had he been pushed to such an extreme by Adam's barbarism? Apparently, the only son of Arc had lived an entirely unremarkable life until his recruitment into Beacon, so Weiss supposed it was more likely the latter. Personal compatibility was a factor in determining her choice of husband, after all, and Weiss had no desire to bind herself to someone who, good intentions aside, grated upon her sensibilities. To her, some of the Valeans were as akin to a speaker turned just a smidge too loud for her comfort. The same could also hold true to her would-be spouse's own personality; it wouldn't do for her to throw her all into a marriage only for her husband to entirely miss her affections for being too subtle.

Still, Weiss supposed, national stereotypes were just that; stereotypes. Gods only knew Winter didn't fit the national stereotype of Atlesian reserve, what with her coming out swinging against everyone and everything in sight. When they'd returned to their suite upon Director Ozpin's dismissal, Weiss had made sure to impress upon Winter that she'd embarrassed themselves, their family, their military, and possibly even their entire nation, to someone who was not only a very high-ranking foreign official, but who was also of the very few real friends that their father had. While Weiss couldn't be certain that Winter had ever met one of her father's true friends before - Weiss herself certainly hadn't - there were only a very few people who would have that kind of intimate understanding of their father's emotional character, and of those, most were dead.

Weiss could only count her blessings that the Director seemed invested in James Ironwood's daughters as people as much as military assets, and that Winter's exposure to the Valeans had been limited to just that one man.

Diplomatic. Nightmare.

They hadn't been ashore at Vale for an entire day yet, and already, Weiss felt a headache creeping upon her. That headache worsened as a large group of boisterous young Valean pilots burst into the rec room. One of them, a short, orange-haired girl with ruddy cheeks, bounded up to the man tending the bar. "Barkeep!" she bellowed. "Ply us with your finest ale and wenches!"

The bartender was apparently familiar with this new menace, as he merely shook his head with long-suffering aplomb. "We've been over this, Nora. The ale I can do, but the only wench here is you, doll."

"Boo! This bar sucks!"

Despite the girl's protest, her dissatisfaction didn't prevent her from hopping right over the bar - something else that the hapless bartender was apparently used to, as he didn't even bother trying to protest - and divvying out drinks to the rest of her friends. Weiss's interest perked up as a tall, brawny young man hopped onto the bar, signalling the bartender to cut the ambient music that had been playing. Now that man was a big slab of pure, cornfed man beef. Maybe Vale wasn't so bad after all?

Then the man standing on the bar opened his mouth, and Weiss's attraction towards the muscular hunk dropped down to zero.

"Friends, pilots, mechanics, miscellaneous motherfuckers gathered in this bar, lend me your ears!"

"Get on with it, ya fuck!" heckled another pilot from somewhere in the dim reaches of the rec room.

"Hey, go suck a stack a' dicks!" the large man shot back. "We've got ourselves a toast!"

"Is that really necessary?" a slender, blonde young man asked from the center of the newly-arrived unit.

"You lived, bitch, that means you get a toast. A happy toast, with tits and booze, instead of everyone bein' all sad and shit. Now get up here, ya bastard! I'm speaking for you."

"It's how Cardin shows affection," the orange-haired girl said with a shrug.

The blonde man sighed and reluctantly climbed onto the bar next to the first man, Cardin apparently. Weiss's interest was piqued again. While not as thick and brawny as his friend, this newcomer was also tall, with a lithe, athletic build and fine features.

Well, if the Valeans were going to be obnoxious, at least they were nice to look at.

"All right, this crazy motherfucker here is Jaune Goddamned Arc," Cardin said, slapping his friend heavily on the shoulder, nearly knocking him from the bar entirely. Well, that certainly garnered Weiss's full attention. She was glad to see that Jaune was more or less humoring his more loud and obnoxious friend instead of enthusiastically partaking, looking vaguely embarrassed at being the center of attention.

"Now I know what some of you guys are thinking: Arc? And yep, Jaune's dad is that Arc. But I ain't here to talk about his daddy. Nope, we're toasting Jaune here tonight because this crazy son-of-a-bitch tangled with Adam Taurus and saved the life of everyone's little sister, Ruby Rose."

At that, a number of off-duty mechanics, discernible by their maintenance jumpsuits, began cheering and whistling for Jaune. Weiss made a mental note that Ruby Rose, inadequacies as a pilot aside, was apparently much loved among the technicians and maintenance staff of Beacon, another potential landmine to warn her sister to avoid.

"When Adam Taurus and his pack of White Fang scum ambushed Captain Xiao Long on a training mission, Jaune here rushed into action to save Ruby. With her AC disabled, Taurus, that fuckin' prick, turned his plasma cannon on her. A hapless girl in a busted up AC, and the son-of-a-bitch was gloating about frying her to death." The Beacon personnel booed and hissed at the scene that Cardin was painting. Weiss had to give it to the man, he knew how to work a room. "So what does Jaune, the crazy fuck, the absolute madlad do?" Cardin paused, letting the anticipation build in the room. "He puts himself between her and him, and knocks Taurus on his ass! A ball of superheated plasma, bigger than this room, and Arc fuckin' dives through it! He shoulder checks Taurus to the ground, cannon goes off into the sky, and the damsel in distress is saved!" Cardin waited for the cheering to die down before continuing. "Now of course, some insane stunt like that took its toll on Crocea Mors. Oh, did I not mention that Arc, the madlad, pulled all of this shit in a machine that's older than every last motherfucker in this room? But even with the old gal literally melting out from underneath him, Arc goes out swinging. His missiles cooked off, his rifle slagged to shit, his plasma blade cut from his machine, Taurus stops to talk shit. So fuckin' Arc activates laser interceptors and burns his optics out!"

When the laughter faded, Cardin raised his glass, his expression turned deadly serious. "Arc, you took the fight to the enemy, fought until your machine slagged out from under you, and best of all, you lived to come back to us. You're a rook no more. So let's all raise a glass to Jaune Arc, the Madlad of Beacon!"

"To Madlad Jaune Arc!"

Jaune blinked in sudden, horrified realization as the other Beacon personnel toasted "Madlad." He turned to Cardin. "Wait, that's not my callsign, is it?"

"MADLAD! MADLAD! MADLAD!"

The blonde wilted. "That...that can't be my callsign! A vocation full of crazy people think I'm the craziest? My mom's gonna have a stroke!"

Weiss chuckled to herself as Jaune continued to protest the moniker in vain. Poor Jaune. While she hadn't actually met him as such, from what she could tell observing him, the word that seemed to best fit him was 'adorable.' He seemed like a fundamentally decent, ordinary boy who kept getting caught up in things and somehow doing the impossible. Definitely the sort of boy that she could see tying to her bed.

She blinked. Where had that thought come from? She peered suspiciously at her glass. Valean wine was apparently much stronger than the Atlesian equivalent. Well, either that, or the Valeans didn't water it down as a matter of course, which...well, Weiss figured that she'd better cut out the drinking, lest she contribute to making a poor impression of her people on the Valeans.

With the toast over, the music resumed and the unit had dissipated throughout the rec room. The entire place had a much lighter, jovial feel to it. She supposed that the story had a sort of morale benefit. After all, while Vale had suffered a grievous attack on one of its cultural and economic keystones, a story of daring heroism - especially one where everyone lived - had a buoyant effect on the pilots and technicians, who were all chatting with greater aplomb as they ate and drank, the buzz of conversation punctuated by laughter. Checking on Jaune, she saw him standing next to the orange-haired girl, speaking to another blonde and a redhead, who were, apparently, an item as they cuddled together in the booth. Cardin was chatting up a black-haired cat Faunus woman, who looked quietly amused.

"They're quite a bunch, aren't they?"

Weiss looked up to see a Beacon pilot addressing her. He wore a green and black flightsuit, and he had beautiful shimmering black hair, with a magenta streak, that framed his sharp, classically-Mistrali features. In his hand, he carried a bottle of red Valean wine and a glass from which to drink it.

Dear father, the SPC heiress mentally composed. I regret to inform you that I will not be returning to Atlas, as you appear to have dispatched me on a mission to the Land of the Extraordinarily Hot Boys…

Of course, she would never say such a thing aloud, let alone to a stranger. "They are quite...exuberant," she said, settling on what she hoped was a diplomatic turn of phrase. Apparently, she overestimated her own subtlety, as the man fixed her with a slight hint of a smile, an upturning of the corner of his lips.

"You must be new here. I'm sure I would remember seeing you before."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

"Only the ones I find lurking in my usual hiding spot, watching the party instead of participating in it," he rejoined. Weiss inclined her head in acknowledgement of his point. "I don't suppose you'd care for some company, would you? I come bearing wine."

"I suppose I could use the insight of a fellow people-watcher," Weiss said, indicating the seat opposite of her own in the booth. The man sat and offered his hand.

"Lie Ren, Dragon Lance."

She took it.

"Weiss, Atlas Expeditionary Force."

He quirked an eyebrow. "Just Weiss?"

"Just for tonight."

"Fair enough. Care to split this bottle with me?"

Despite her earlier resolution not to drink any more alcohol, Weiss found herself allowing Lie Ren to pour her a glass of fine red wine. A slight smile quirked her lips as she raised her glass. "To the 'madlad of Beacon,' no?"

Ren tipped his glass to hers. "To Jaune Arc."

"So, what's he really like?" she asked.

"Well, Jaune is, above all else, a fundamentally-decent guy. He's dedicated to his team, his family and his nation, and puts everything into his efforts to serve them. Unfortunately prone to outbursts of lunatic piloting, as you've heard. He'll either die young or become a legend in his own right. Possibly both. He also is absolutely head-over-heels for Ruby Rose," he added, with a pointed look her way.

"What makes you think that I'm interested in that way?" she asked, coolly sipping her wine.

"Because you're a young woman from Atlas who refuses to give her last name, likely so that I'll speak to you more freely. That means that you hail from an Atlesian family of prominence, and that means that you're likely looking for an advantageous match. And of course, Jaune's father makes Jaune himself an attractive political match for a young woman looking for someone prestigious but non-threatening. Am I close?"

Once more, Weiss inclined her head in acknowledgement of his point. "Quite the astute observation. It seems you know Atlesians."

"More to the point, I know Jaune, and approaching him with an offer of an arranged marriage is probably the fastest way to send him fleeing from you in abject terror."

"The man dives headfirst into a miniature sun, but would run from an aristocratic Atlesian girl with an arranged marriage offer?"

Amusement twinkled in Ren's magenta eyes. "We said he's crazy. We never said he's stupid."

Weiss actually laughed at that, surprising herself. "Beware of Atlesians bearing betrothals indeed." She took another sip of her wine. "So, Mister Lie Ren, what do you think of Valeans as a whole?"

"Well, I've lived here for two years. Incidentally, that's around the same time the troubles with the White Fang started. On the whole, I've found them to be a welcoming and friendly people. Some of their leadership...not so much. While of course every individual is different, Valeans tend to have certain trends in their cultural outlook. They tend to take great pride in the natural beauty of their land, so Adam Taurus targeting their forest not only did economic harm, but inflicted emotional pain on the nation as well. Moreover, Valeans, in general, tend to fight with their heart, not their head."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, a situation recently arose where a Valean officer had to make a hard call as to whether or not to write off an errant subordinate or send another into danger. The officer chose the latter, and while the second subordinate was injured, he was successful in saving the life of the first. While there were extenuating circumstances to that call, not a one of that officer's subordinates objected to the call he made, and protested when he attempted to resign over it."

Weiss gazed into her glass for a moment. Obviously, the situation Lie Ren referred to was the very same incident that had nearly cost Jaune Arc and Ruby Rose their lives, and the fact that the Valeans were, apparently, in agreement of that call told her much.

"Don't mistake their prioritizing protecting their own as a lack of tactical understanding," Ren continued. "They aren't foolish, or uneducated. But Valeans tend to place a high value on the individual, and unless absolutely necessary, would refuse to sacrifice lives to cinch victory. Even in that most dire of cases, they would likely only do so under duress."

"How can they win if they fight like that?" Weiss wondered.

"Well, not easily, I've seen that for myself," answered Ren. "But for all the tactical weakness in their mentality, that drive to protect one another can propel them to otherwise improbable feats of individual valor." Ren shook his head. "I don't know your commander, obviously, but there's one more thing that any diplomat or military liaison must bear in mind when dealing with the Valeans."

"Oh? And what's that?"

"When it comes to actual, real world AC-to-AC combat, to the death, the only actual veterans that you'll find are here in Vale, either at Beacon or in the White Fang itself. You see that man over there, the big one who made the speech on Jaune's behalf?" Ren asked, pointing out Cardin Winchester, who still sat at the bar flirting with the cat Faunus girl.

"Yes, what of him?" Weiss asked.

"Cardin is among the ten most experienced AC-to-AC combat pilots in the world," Ren said. "He's loud, crass, crude, and obnoxious, yes. But he's also been fighting the White Fang since the very beginning of the insurgency. He fought them as they tried to flee Vale with the stolen Armored Cores. He fought them in the skirmishes leading to Mountain Glenn. He was at Lance-Captain Xiao Long's side through that entire, hellish nightmare. And as brief as it was, he fought off the White Fang at the same ambush that he was talking about tonight. He fought through all of that, and he's only nineteen years old." Ren paused to take a drink. "He's fought, and killed people, and more to the point, lost people. From all the pilots recruited to Beacon from his graduating class from Valean pilot school, he's the only survivor. Beacon has taken some hellacious hits, and that, in turn, has left their newer recruits vulnerable, with fewer veterans per recruit in each Lance. Of the last year's Valean recruits to Beacon, there are currently four survivors, all of them in Eagle Lance."

Weiss stared at him, then at the pilots around them. Suddenly, the close-knit bonds between them made a lot more sense. These people weren't merely co-workers, but survivors of a siege, caught between Adam's vicious insurgency and the predations of the Grimm.

"Casts Cardin's speech in a new light," mused Ren, more to himself than to her. "Of course he's thrilled that Jaune survived. By rights, he shouldn't have. Speaking of which, even Jaune Arc, the rawest recruit to Beacon, has fought against no less a soldier than Adam Taurus, who is definitely the most experienced combatant in the world, and lived to tell the tale. Or rather, lived to lament hearing Cardin tell the tale," he rephrased, with an amused shake of the head. He took a sip of wine, then fixed Weiss with a steady look. "And the thing is, Jaune largely trained himself, on an arcade machine. By rights, he shouldn't be in Beacon at all, and he's already survived a duel to the death, saving a comrade's life in the process. Can your commander match that feat? Can you?"

Weiss shook her head.

"Of course not. Only those who have been in the slog can really know what it's like. I'm not saying your commander doesn't know their business by the book, but if you take nothing else from what I say, your delegation must respect their real-world experience. They bought it with blood and suffering."

The heiress was quiet for a long moment, gazing thoughtfully at the people around her. "Well, you seem to be quite observant of the people around you, Mister Lie. May I call you Lie?" she asked, looking up from her glass and turning the full, devastating force of her large blue eyes on the man sitting across from her.

"You may...if you tell me your name," he replied, meeting her silent challenge with one of his own.

"A negotiation of terms, then," she teased, reaching for the wine bottle to refill her glass. "More insights on the people by whom I've found myself surrounded, in exchange for my name...and the pleasure of my company."

The slightest hint of a chuckle conveyed his amusement. "I suppose your family isn't one of the merchant houses of Old Mantle."

"Oh?"

"Because you are simply terrible at haggling. Your offer is a bargain at twice the price."

She laughed, again, a musical sound. "You're quite the charmer...Lie."

He leaned back, clearly amused. "I try my best, miss…"

"Schnee."

Those striking magenta eyes of his went wide indeed, as Lie lurched forwards in his seat, all hint of amusement stricken from his face. "I've been chatting up General Ironwood's daughter?"

"Nononno," Weiss rushed to say, putting her hand on his arm. "Well, I mean, yes, but not tonight. Tonight, I'm just...Weiss." She could see that he was still quietly panicked, so she softly added "Please?"

He sighed, taking a long pull of his drink to build his nerve. "Okay. Just Weiss."

"Thank you...Lie."

He took the wine bottle, refilling his glass. "Well, might as well get the trade's worth. Let's see...if you're hunting Adam Taurus, you should know about his history with Lance-Captain Xiao Long…"

Weiss leaned back to listen to what insights he had to offer. Maybe this mission wouldn't be such a disaster after all.

[/]

Taiyang watched, with some degree of amazement, as his youngest daughter darted around the workshop, from one advanced fabrication station to another, while the most famous craftsman in the world hovered over her, barking instructions to her.

"They've been at this since this afternoon," Summer told him. "I think they're working on an alloy that will comprise the AC's external armor."

He grunted in acknowledgement of his wife's words. "Do you think it's real? What he had to say about her eyes?"

Summer could only shrug helplessly. "I haven't got a better explanation to offer. While that doesn't necessarily mean that it's true, Master Karasawa can apparently call up that silver light at will, and has at least some degree of control over it. I think that alone would make it worth letting her study under him."

"Well, what about you?"

"I've been listening, here and there. A lot of the engineering design talk goes right over my head, but...there is something else there, Tai. I can feel it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to use it the way Karasawa can, or the way Ruby could be able to, but he's no fraud."

As they watched, Karasawa set Ruby to work flash-forging ingots together at one of the high-tech workstations. The old man watched for a moment, then turned and approached the couple, his hands clasped behind his back. "You must be the father, yes?" he said by way of greeting.

"Taiyang Xiao Long. And I'm Ruby's father, yes."

"Very good. This will take time, you understand. It will not be easy on the girl. There is much that she must do, and she must learn quickly if she is to do it. It is difficult work, a strain on mind and body. Such is what it takes to produce magnificence."

Tai frowned. "This has been a pretty frenetic pace, and Summer says it's been like this all afternoon and into the night. How long are you expecting her to be here?"

"As long as it takes, nothing more, nothing less. The girl is young, and has, I suspect, never truly been pushed before. I can assure you, that will change."

Before Tai could reply, Ruby came up to them, her pace just shy of bounding like a puppy. She carried a plate of that alloy in a pair of tongs, the metal a strange, gleaming white alloy of a sort that Tai had never seen before. "Look, it's done!" she said, proudly holding up the plate for Karasawa to see.

The master looked far from impressed, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes at the girl. "It should not be complete yet. What did you do?"

"Oh, well, I entered the temperature and pressure settings into the Auto-Forge, and I -"

"Did I tell you to use the Auto-Forge?" he interrupted her, his tone sharp.

Ruby blinked. "Uh…"

"No. I did not. I directed you to watch the material as you manually held the temperature and pressure controls steady, over time. There are many reasons for this, but the most critical one is so that you can learn to see!" He snatched the tongs, with the plate held within, from his stammering apprentice, turning an appraising gaze upon the alloy. Taiyang fought to hold in a gasp as the old man's eyes briefly emitted the same silver light that he had seen from his daughter. After a few seconds, the light cut off, and Karasawa fixed Ruby with a positively withering look.

"Can you do that, girl?" he snapped. "Can you see past the obvious, to see the bonds of creation that hold the world together within the piece?"

"Er, no," she murmured.

"Of course you can't. Because it's a skill, one that must be honed, through experience. There is no shortcut to experience, girl, no trick that you can think of. You must focus during the process of creation, a process that is even more important than the finished piece. Now, because you sought to cut corners, this entire evening's work has been a waste."

"Well, at least we've got the alloy sample?" she offered, smiling sheepishly.

"Do we? Because this plate is useless. The bonds are uneven, weak in places. You might have had a chance to see that, even an opportunity for me to teach you how to perceive and correct such weaknesses, if you only followed my instructions!" He shook his head.

"I thought the Auto-Forge would be good enough -"

"Good enough? Good enough?!" Karasawa sounded generally affronted at the notion. "Am I training a Silver-Eyed Seer, or a silver-eyed hack? Are we churning out munitions-grade gear for pilot schools, or are we manifesting the will of a god into material reality? A piece is either without flaw or it is without use! There is no in-between. Take this slag, and separate the component metals. We must start anew, and this time, you will do exactly as I tell you, without deviation!"

Ruby took the tongs with a squeak, scampering off to obey. When her back was turned, Karasawa slumped, appearing less a demanding taskmaster and more as a very weary old man. He took off the cloth he'd wrapped around his head and used it to wipe the sweat from his bald pate. "As long as it takes, just like any other work" he said, with a resigned smile that was equal parts grin and grimace. "The girl will be my finest masterpiece, of that, I can assure you." Then he re-tied the cloth over his head, stood straight once more, and strode over to Ruby.

"So long as you call yourself my apprentice, you will eliminate the phrase 'Good Enough' from your vocabulary!" he barked, resuming his lecture as Ruby cringed in shame at her presumptuous error.

Tai shared a look with his wife. For her entire life, Ruby had been in her own world apart from everyone else. Her gifts had allowed her to progress in all of her studies rapidly, perhaps too rapidly, her talents outstripping her maturity. As much as it stung, Karasawa was right. Ruby had been so advanced that even her lesser efforts were hugely impressive to everyone else. She had learned that she could cut corners, take shortcuts, and still win praise for her talent. Her life had taught her that she could ignore teachers, because she knew better anyway.

She'd certainly demonstrated that latter notion during Taurus's ambush. If she'd stopped and thought about it, Tai was sure that Ruby would say the right things about his experience as a pilot, an officer, and an instructor, but when the flame hit the fan, she arrogantly thought she knew better.

It hurt, the realization that, deep-down, his little girl didn't really respect him. It was what he deserved, he supposed, for not standing firm about keeping her out of live combat.

But now, for the first time in her entire life, Ruby had a mentor who not only could see the world the way she did, but was unimpressed by her half-assed methods. For the first time, she would really have to work for her results, learn to accept nothing less than her best, and for gods' sake - literally! - to defer to someone's greater experience, to recognize that there were times when she didn't know best. He didn't know about all the talk about gods and magic, but just like Summer had said, Karasawa had done something. Honestly, even without all that mystical stuff, just having a mentor who could really reach Ruby and teach her the qualities she needed had convinced Taiyang to let her study under him. Ruby needed to learn patience, discipline, and humility, and if that meant some tired old man had to run her ragged making some hot-shit AC, then he'd take it.

He wished, wished to all the gods, that he could have been the guiding mentor that Ruby needed, but the sad truth was, he was just too different from her. But being a parent meant putting his girls' needs above his own feelings, and while it stung, Ruby needed this.

Summer put her arm around his waist and rested her head on her shoulder, once again reading his mood before he himself had figured it out. "I know," she said, continuing to watch their daughter hard at work. "Look at it this way, hon. You've been a mentor figure for who-knows-how-many young pilots here at Beacon. You're the closest thing to a father that Pyrrha's ever had. Lie Ren respects you deeply, and that's a hard boy to impress. Yatsuhashi blatantly plagiarized your AC design, down to the smallest detail, and Nora Valkyrie keeps her explosions under control because of you. Cardin Winchester pretty much worships the ground you walk on. Nothing less than an actual princess extended an invitation to our family to visit Menagerie whenever we wish, and has a name-your-price standing offer for you, specifically, to train the first generation of Menagerie's AC officers. The Director has you training the youngest recruits because you're simply the best, not only at protecting them, but at guiding them to be good pilots and good people." She playfully bumped her hip into his.

Taiyang sighed. "I know, and it's not that I'm not proud of what I've done here at Beacon, it's just…"

"Ruby's odd," Summer said, her tone soft. "She's always been different, and that's okay. It doesn't have to be a strike against you. You're an amazing father, a fine officer…" Summer's lips curled in a teasing smile. "And an okay pilot. I guess."

He turned to stare at her, affronted. "Just okay?"

"I guess," she repeated, with a playful flip of her hair. "If I'm being charitable. But only because you're cute. I mean, you've never beaten me in the sims. And you know why?" she asked, silver eyes gleaming with malicious glee.

"Oh gods, here we go," Taiyang, knowing full well what was coming next, rolled his eyes with fond exasperation.

"It's 'cause I beeeeeat you," Summer sang happily, clutching onto her husband like a happy little spider monkey. "It's cause I stooooooomped you."

"Come one, Sum, we're not seventeen anymore. You don't have to sing the 'I Beat Tai Song."

"It's 'cause I cruuuuuuushed you," she continued on her merry way, as if he'd never spoken. "It's 'cause I pwwwwwwned you."

"No one says 'pwned' anymore, Summer. We're old now, remember?"

"I beat you, I-I beat you!" she punctuated her giddy little song with a boop on his nose. His put-upon facade finally cracked, and he matched her silly smile with one of his own. In moments like that, it was as though all the long years and hard sorrows had never been, and they were young and carefree once more. Gods, how he loved her. Raven who? Never heard of her. There was only Sum-Sum.

The Lance-Captain hugged his wife to him as they resumed watching their daughter's labors.

[/]

It was late into the night when Lie Ren helped his drinking companion and conversation partner to her feet. Weiss had just a moment of unsteady dizziness as she stood from the booth, which prompted Ren to offer his arm. She held onto it to hold herself steady, and as she looked up at him, it struck Ren how very small the Atlesian pilot was, barely reaching five feet, if that. Weiss blinked, her large, pale blue eyes clear and bright despite the slight flush of pink at her cheeks.

"Oh, um, please forgive me for the unfortunate lapse. I'm afraid the Valean red is much stronger than I'm used to." Ren detected a distinct undertone of concern in her voice, as though she'd committed some grave and unforgivable sin.

He was taken aback by her reaction to what was, in the larger scheme of things, a minor and momentary loss of balance. "It's no trouble, Weiss, really. Do you remember where you and your team are staying?"

"Of course!" she replied, downright offended by the notion that she could forget such a thing. Her glare wavered as she realized that she wasn't entirely certain how to get back to her assigned rooms from the recreational room. All told, she'd spent a happy few hours deep in conversation with her Beacon counterpart, and the two of them had drunk the entire bottle of wine. "Um…"

At her consternation, Weiss's Scroll chimed. The Atlesian pilot took out the device, and as she activated it, a holographic image of a cheery ginger girl in green and white manifested in the air in front of them. "Don't worry, Miss Schnee! I never forget, and I can have you back in a jiffy!"

Weiss visibly relaxed at her synthetic partner's assurance. "Thank you, Penny. Penny, this is Lie Ren, one of the Beacon pilots we'll be working with on our mission. Lie, this is Penny, my assigned partner for this mission."

"Pleased to meet you, as it were," he said, inclining his head at the image. "Are you broadcasting from your quarters? Miss Schnee and I are in the main recreational room. Would you care to meet her here, or midway there?"

Penny giggled. "Oh, I don't have to meet you, silly. I've been with you the whole time!"

Ren gave Weiss a puzzled glance, causing her to give him an enigmatic smile in return. "Penny's not like other girls," was all she said for an answer.

"Very well, I give up. Penny, would you enlighten me?"

"Well, since you asked nicely…" began Penny, her tone teasing. "As it turns out, I am the world's first fully sapient artificial intelligence!"

Ren paused for a moment, wondering perhaps if he had drank too much. "I...what?"

"I'm made of computers!" she chirped.

Ren looked to Weiss once more, who nodded in confirmation of Penny's claims. Ren checked the chrono on his Scroll, decided that it was either too late in the night for him to deal with this, he was too inebriated to deal with this, or both, and opted to roll with it. "Right. Computer girl. Fair enough. So, you can help lead Weiss back to her quarters, right?"

A delicate cough from his side brought his attention back to the petite Schnee girl. "Why, Mister Ren, surely a gentleman such as yourself would never be so un-gallant as to fail to escort two lovely ladies back to their commander?" She batted long dark lashes that contrasted with her fair skin and blue eyes, and Ren could only sigh in resignation, recognizing that he was powerless to resist.

"Very well." He scanned the room one last time, checking on his friends. Blake stretched triumphantly next to a pyramid of drained shot glasses on the bar, having bested Cardin Winchester at a drinking contest. The big man was unconscious, slumped facedown on the bar and snoring loudly, while beside him, Yang and Pyrrha were attempting to figure out the logistics of dragging him to his quarters. They decided to drape one of his arms over each of their shoulders, while Jaune picked up his feet. It was strange that he didn't see Nora anywhere - it was rare that he lost track of her entirely, but between the wine and stimulating intellectual conversation, he'd done it.

It wasn't that his friends and teammates were stupid, so much as they had very different perspectives and tastes than he did. Yang, Pyrrha, and Nora loved the simpler things in life, and were much more concerned with chasing the next thrill, living in the moment, to engage in much deep introspection. Jaune could be a surprisingly deep thinker when he put his mind to it, but he was much more of a philosopher, an ethicist to be precise, concerned with how people should behave and treat one another. Of all the Lance, Blake was the most like him, but where Ren studied people and their interactions for its own sake, and as inspiration for his poetry, Blake was obliged to do so by the pressures of her position. Beyond that, she'd held her cards far too close to her chest until very recently, and now that her truth was revealed, she was far too busy engaging in such activities - reading people, gauging relationships, studying power structures - in a very real way, with very real consequences, to want to do so as a form of leisure. When the Lance got to see Blake, she very much wanted a respite from such concerns.

But with Weiss, while she had a professional obligation like Blake did, Ren could tell that she enjoyed the game for its own sake, just as he did. She was insightful, witty, and very intelligent. And beautiful too, he couldn't help but note, as Penny guided them through the hallways of Beacon. Already, he was musing lines that he could set down, comparing her to the otherworldly, unreal beauty of the moon and stars above. It was fitting, because just as she was witty, intelligent, and gorgeous, Weiss Schnee was so far above him that she might as well be the moon for how untouchable she was to him. Weiss would be looking for a match that had something to bring to the table, political connections, economic clout, maybe even a national alliance. While Ren knew that he was a man of many talents - pilot, poet, retired costumed superhero, so on and so forth - those accomplishments, while respectable, wouldn't win him enough clout to even be considered an acceptable match.

So, best to get the girl and her computer friend to their commander, and then move on with life, noting that evening as a fun and enlightening respite, and compose a poem or two in honor of a girl he had no chance with and would never see again after her mission was over and she returned to Atlas. He wondered if Mountain Flower had made it to Vale yet. She would never, in a million years, believe that he'd rocked up to one of the Schnee Daughters and started flirting with her. That she hadn't immediately destroyed him for daring to speak to her would be one of his great all-time bragging moments as a man.

Before long, they had exited an elevator and approached a large double-door that Penny announced was the entrance to the Atlesian delegation's suite. "Well, here we are, safe and sound," Ren said. "I'm glad to have run into you tonight, Miss Schnee. I certainly enjoyed our talk."

"I...I enjoyed it as well, Lie," she said, oddly flustered. "And please, call me Weiss."

"I thought that was only for tonight?"

"Well...tonight isn't over until I pass through those doors."

Ren was trying to figure out a response to that when said doors opened. His heart threatened to halt entirely when he saw the identity of Weiss's commander. In retrospect, he didn't know why he should have been surprised. Anyone who knew of General Ironwood knew that his eldest daughter was said to be just like him. The taller woman in her Specialist outfit, complete with yellow epaulets on the shoulders, quickly marched up to her sister-subordinate.

"Where have you been?" she snapped. "You said that you were off to get dinner hours ago. Only the Director's assurance that you were fine kept me from tearing this place apart looking for you!"

Weiss rocked back on her heels, nearly tipping over before Ren reached out to steady her. "I-I was gathering intelligence on the personnel and political situation here, and -"

"Are you...drunk?" Winter interrupted her sister. But before, where she had been angry, she was then in a state of utter bewilderment as she beheld Weiss.

"The wine is, you know, much stronger here and -"

"Be silent, you boob!" The Specialist then turned her gaze sharply onto Ren, and he immediately glanced towards an exterior window. It wouldn't be the first time he'd made a moonlit flit to escape from a lady's angry relative, but it would complicate things pulling that stunt on Beacon Tower.

"What is the meaning of this?" The older Schnee sister snapped. "Were you hoping to lure a young, impressionable girl into an inebriated state to take advantage of her? Hmm?"

Ren stared at her, genuinely puzzled. "She's not that drunk?"

"Not that drunk? Are you blind?"

For just a moment, Ren forgot who he was talking to. "Are you? Weiss isn't that drunk. Trust me, I know drunk. Drunk threw up on my carpet the other night. Weiss is just a little tipsy, she'll be fine." And then, because the one night where he decided to speak up was the one night his mouth decided to get him killed, he continued. "And honestly, if this is how your family reacts to a few glasses of wine and straight home to her sister, I can understand her need for a drink. Besides, if I were to take advantage of her, I'd take her to my quarters, not yours. Frankly, I resent the implication that I'm some manner of ruffian, and I await your apology."

Winter was about to tell him exactly where he could expect said apology when Penny chimed in, manifesting once more from Weiss's Scroll. "Specialist Schnee, it's true. I was with Miss Weiss the entire time, and Pilot Lie Ren was a perfect gentleman towards her, and even me, once I revealed myself. Weiss had a great time, and logged the highest Giggles Per Hour ratio I've ever heard from her. Please refrain from dismantling him, as this will make our mission more difficult and, more importantly, will make Weiss sad."

"I for one, would also prefer to avoid being dismantled," Ren added, for good measure.

Winter looked from the boy to her sister - who was intently studying her own feet - and back again. She narrowed her eyes at the Beacon pilot. "You will go now, and forget that you saw anything, understood? You never met Weiss Schnee, and you certainly did not see her get inebriated. Have I made myself clear?"

"How could anyone forget a girl like Weiss?" Ren asked. In vino, veritas.

From beside her sister, Weiss gave a little gasp and flushed deeply, the blush even creeping up to her ears.

Winter glared at him for a long moment. "Go on, then, you are dismissed." Without another word, the Specialist turned on her heel and ushered her sister inside the suite. Ren could just make out her saying "Weiss, boys are dangerous," before the doors closed behind them, and he could hear no more.

Well. He'd hit on one of General Ironwood's daughters and talked smack right to the other one's face. He was a dead man walking. Still, it would make for a decent story, assuming he could tell it to Nora before he died, no doubt slain by being trod upon by a giant, multi-ton war machine.

Ren sighed as he turned around to return to the elevator. While the night had been diverting, save, perhaps, for the end, he was still a Beacon pilot, and he had work to do in the morning. Still, at least he'd be better off than Cardin when the morning briefing came. He was musing over how to capture the essence of Weiss Schnee in verse as he reached the door to his own quarters and popped the door open. He noticed right away that the lights were on. They were dim, but they were on.

"Nora?"

"Hey, Ren. I was wondering when you'd come home."

If the oddly husky tone with which she spoke wasn't enough to stop him in his tracks, the sight of her on his couch was. It wasn't that there was anything unusual, exactly, about finding Nora in his quarters, or on his couch, in his bed or using his bath. It was unusual to find her stretched out on his couch clad in a sheer bodysuit of turquoise mesh, her curvaceous body exposed to him.

"Nora?" he asked, his voice cracking. "What are you doing? What are you wearing?"

"You know, I was thinking," she began, rising to her feet and padding towards him. "I was thinking that I don't need Cardin, just like you don't need Yang. All we've ever really needed was each other, right? You and me. Just the way it always was. Just the way it always should have been."

She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her nearly-nude breasts against him, and began planting sweet kisses on his cheek. Ren couldn't deny that a part of him certainly enjoyed the feeling of a voluptuous, beautiful young girl in his arms. Any other girl, and he would have taken her to bed at that moment. But that wasn't any girl. That was Nora. The realization hit him like a bucket of ice water to the face.

"Nora...Nora, stop. This isn't right." He struggled with her for a moment, finally planting the heels of his palms against her shoulders and shoving. "I said stop!"

Nora stumbled away from him, her embrace broken. Nora could be strong, almost freakishly so, but not against him. Never against him. She stared up at him with those wide, turquoise eyes. "Ren?"

Ren sighed deeply. "Nora, we can't do this."

"But...why not?"

"It isn't right. You know it, Nora. It's...gods, we've been together since we were children. It's like kissing my sister."

Tears welled up in Nora's eyes. "I…"

Ren took a deep breath, then went to his bedroom. A moment later, he re-emerged, with one of Nora's oversized tee-shirts that she kept at his place. "Here, put this…" he trailed off as he saw that she had buried her face in her hands, crying. "Nora…"

"Nobody wants me," she sniffled.

"That's not true, Nora."

"Yes, it is! Cardin took one look at Princess Licks-Her-Own-Asshole and dumped me on the spot!"

"On further consideration, perhaps 'Princess Litterbox' wasn't so bad," Ren mused. Then he shook hs head. "Look, Cardin's an idiot. You know, I know, and from what you told me, even he knows it. But more to the point, you're wrong that no one wants you, because I want you."

"But -"

"No, I don't mean like that," he said. "And to be honest, I don't think you wanted me like that either. I think you were hurting, and insecure, and you wanted to feel safe, like you wouldn't have to be alone. But you don't need to use sex to try to keep me around, Nora. We'll always have each other, because I love you. Just not, you know…"

"Not in the pantsless way?"

"Not in the pantsless way."

Ren continued speaking as Nora pulled the tee-shirt over her head, thankfully obscuring her breasts and loins from view. "I think that one or the other of us would have realized what was happening sooner or later, and it would have ended in terribly awkward fashion."

"You know, most guys would have jumped at the chance to have an easy lay," she noted.

"I could not have loved you so much, loved I not honor more."

She turned and embraced him once more, but this time, without the frenetic, urgent need coloring it.

"You're going to make some woman very happy one day, Lie Ren."

He could only shrug helplessly in response, his mind far away, lingering on an untouchable star he'd met that night.

"Maybe."

[/]

The first rays of dawn's light still streaked across the sky when Jaune Arc reported to Lance-Captain Xiao Long's office. The Captain was brewing his morning coffee, a vile, black concoction that Beacon legend said could eat through the hull plating of an Armored Core. Taiyang moved to greet his pilot with a firm handshake.

"Jaune Arc. I'm so glad you're not dead. Have a seat."

Jaune chuckled as he took a seat across from Tai's desk. "Me too, sir. I was glad to see everyone else, or course, but where's Ruby? Ozpin told me she's okay, but no one would give me anything more specific, not even Pyrrha and Yang. They just told me to talk to you first."

"I asked them to do that," Taiyang said. "There are...things going on with Ruby, things that involve you as well. Some of those things, I'm going to need you to keep to yourself, even from the rest of the Lance. Is that understood?"

"Sir? Is Ruby okay? Is she not coming back to active duty?"

Taiyang hesitated, filling the silence by filling his mug with molten coffee. He took a draw from it and grimaced, though whether that was from the coffee or what he had to report, Jaune couldn't say. "Well, you should know the worst of it first. In light of her actions at the Emerald Forest, and out of concern for both her own safety and that of her fellow pilots, I have pulled Ruby Rose from both Dragon Lance and the Beacon active duty roster more generally. I trust we're not going to have a problem with that?"

Jaune sighed. It wasn't surprising, really, that Taiyang would make that decision. Jaune would do damn near anything for Ruby Rose, including, apparently, powering through molten plasma to rescue her. But that didn't change the fact that she had nearly got both herself and him killed, and he couldn't, in good conscience, protest the Lance-Captain's decision.

"I...no, sir, we won't. It's not my place to argue. You're her commanding officer...or were, I suppose...and also her father." He ran a hand through his hair. "She must be taking that pretty hard. Do you think I can see her?"

"Well, Arc, that brings us to our second huge issue. See, while you were in the hospital, ol' Master Karasawa was in town, and decided to show up and offer Ruby the chance to study as his apprentice."

Jaune's eyebrows practically rose into his hairline. He'd never heard of Karasawa even considering an apprentice. No one had. The old man had his own methods, that he guarded jealously, and cared not one whit for whatever treasures the wealthiest companies in the world could throw at him in exchange for teaching others his secrets. "That's...that's amazing!" Jaune paused as he considered the implications. "I am both excited and a little terrified to see what she can do after she's been trained by him," he admitted.

"Yeah, you and me both, kid," chuckled Tai. He shook his head, quickly sobering. "All right, now this is the part that you're gonna have to keep to yourself. It's also the part where you come in. So, when Ruby heard exactly what you did for her, charging through the plasma - and we're gonna talk about that in a minute - it kicked off something in her. You're gonna think I'm nuts, but me, Yang, and Summer all saw it, and when you see Ruby at work with Karasawa, you might be able to see it for yourself. Some kinda mystical silver light started glowing from Ruby's eyes, and she had a vision. Apparently, this vision involves the creation of some kind of freaky, insanely-powerful Armored Core, and Ruby's insistent that she's gotta create it, and you've gotta pilot it."

"Me?" Jaune echoed, confused. "If it's really crazily powerful, then shouldn't it go to someone like Miss Summer? Or even Pyrrha? I mean, no matter what Cardin said, I'm still just a rookie. I haven't had that much mission or even sim time, and I only just managed to survive a single fight. And that was a fluke."

Taiyang fixed him with a solemn gaze. "Arc, trust me when I saw that surviving a single fight with an Armored Core, especially that Armored Core, is no small feat. Yeah, you lost, but you messed him up so bad that he couldn't put up any meaningful resistance once Cardin and Pyrrha showed up. He's still off somewhere licking his wounds, no doubt trying to retrofit whatever scrap he could get from the other ACs to keep his running. You showed cunning and unwavering courage in the face of the enemy, and that's why, not only are you now cleared to undertake missions without my direct supervision, but I've recommended, and the Director has agreed, to put you on the track for officer training."

"Officer training?" Once more, Jaune echoed the Captain. "Me? But Captain, I'm the newest recruit here! I mean, Ren's calmer, Pyrrha's just straight-up better, and Cardin's got more experience than the rest of the Lance put together!"

Taiyang folded his fingers in front of himself. "Well, first of all, I want to emphasize that this isn't a commission. It's an opportunity for you to earn your commission. If you want to make Lance-Lieutenant, you'll have to work for it, and trust me, I'll make you earn it. It means that I'll expect more from you than anyone else. The second point I want to make is that Beacon doesn't promote officers based on who the best duellist is. My wife was never an officer. Did you know that?"

Jaune shook his head.

"It's true. That isn't because I'm a better pilot. She's always beaten me in the sims. Even has a song about that she sings whenever she wins," he added, with a rueful smile. "But where I have her beat is in the field of situational awareness. She's never been particularly interested in tactical placement of her teammates, or coordinating logistical concerns. Now, Summer can do those things - she's been a pilot for more than twenty years, she picked stuff up through osmosis - but her talents are so amazing that few can keep up with her, and it's usually a more effective use of her abilities to sic her on the strongest enemies on the field while I organize support to back her up. Pyrrha's a lot like that - in that way, she takes after Summer the most out of the three girls - but just without the full extent of experience to back it up. I saw how you beat her, in that second duel. You won using tactical improvisation, greater situational awareness, and the ability to misdirect her into not seeing your strategy until it was too late. Those qualities, among others, are why you've been selected."

"And Cardin?"

Taiyang took another drink of his coffee. "Well, you're certainly right about Cardin's battlefield expertise. In the cockpit, he's a skilled, levelheaded veteran, an absolute asset to Beacon in general and Dragon Lance specifically. Out of the cockpit, the boy's been a walking disciplinary hearing, making unit cohesion worse, not better. My letting Pyrrha kick his ass instead of writing him up was doing him a favor. Honestly, he should have been promoted to Lance-Sergeant long before now, but his conduct has held him back. Incidentally, with his recent improved behavior, his promotion has been approved, and I'll be awarding him his chevrons today. It hasn't escaped either the Director or my own notice that his behavioral change started not long after you joined our ranks. Care to explain?"

"Oh, I can't take credit for that," Jaune said. "While Cardin's always been...well, Cardin, the worst of it was his issue with Blake. That kind of blew up after my first briefing. I was having lunch, Cardin came to chat, and then, when he shouted something at Blake, I just straight-up asked what the problem was. He explained what happened, with his friends from pilot school, and then she explained about Menagerie and why they needed those ACs. It was a whole thing, and then they stopped fighting so much, and everyone else started talking with Blake more. Now with her being all princess-like, I'm pretty sure he's crushing on her. Probably not great for Nora, though."

"No kidding. Well, my hat's off to the boy for his ambition, if not his sense," Taiyang said with a shrug. "And before you ask, while Princess Belladonna also has many fine leadership qualities, we can't have a foreign official giving orders to Beacon pilots, at least not without the sort of diplomatic agreements that we have with, say, Atlas. Meanwhile, while Ren is certainly calm and levelheaded, he's only really been interested in wrangling Nora, not in leadership more generally. Good pilot, solid and dependable in and out of the cockpit, but definitely more of a follower in a fight. Still, every Lance needs pilots like him, that an officer can trust to carry out orders competently and without issue. And I'll note that you didn't even ask about Nora, for reasons that should be obvious."

"Yeah...sorry, Nora."

"And Yang is almost as raw as you, but with bouts of immaturity here and there," Taiyang added, finishing out the Dragon Lance roster. "Well, here's the thing, Arc. It's something that I tell every officer recruit when they're first given the offer. Being selected means that there are certain traits that you have that make you potentially suited to a leadership role. That does not mean that being selected makes you inherently better than the others, nor does that make those others inherently worse than you. If I see it go to your head, I will yank you from that track so fast it'll leave an afterimage, am I clear?"

"Crystal, sir."

"Good." Taiyang checked the chrono on his desk, then drained the rest of his coffee. "Gotta get to the briefing soon, so let me just add one more thing." He gathered up some documents from his desk and clipped them to a clipboard, setting it back down and then rapping his fingers on the edge of the desk. "You know, I've been doing this a long time, Arc. A long time. And in that time, there have only been a few times when I've really struggled with finding the right words. The first time I had to write to a seventeen-year old kid's parents and tell them that he wasn't going to have a long and illustrious career fighting Grimm, because I wasn't able to keep him safe. The time I had to report to Ozpin that Glynda Goodwitch had died, and worse, how she'd died. Testifying to the Vale Council about how Mountain Glenn had gone to shit so bad, so fast. And now here. I…" Taiyang hesitated. "I failed, Jaune. I failed my daughter when I let her take on a role that she wasn't ready for. And because I did that, I failed you as your Captain, when I sent you into that inferno alone."

"I -"

"I know, I know what you're going to say," Taiyang cut off Jaune's attempted objection. "You were going to go after her anyway. Cardin brought up that point, and the rest of the Lance agreed. The thing is, though, when you reach a command position, you take responsibility for the people under your authority. You lead them in battle, and you do everything you can to create an environment where they can survive and succeed. And I took a gamble on Ruby's ability to handle it, a gamble I clearly lost, and the both of you nearly paid for it. Ruby would've -" Taiyang struggled with the sudden tightness in his throat. "Ruby would've charged off and died, and that would have been the end of it. That would have been the story of Ruby Rose, dead before her sixteenth birthday, because her father didn't put his foot down." He reached over to clasp one of his shaking hands over the other, trying to get the tremors under control. "But that isn't how it happened. Ruby's alive, alive to grow, and learn from her mistakes, and become so much more than she was, and she can do all of that because of you, because you pulled some damn fool stunt you never should have had to to save her life. And it's only a damn fluke that you survived. I…" Taiyang could only shake his head helplessly. "I have no idea what to begin to say to someone who I owe so much, and who I failed so completely."

Jaune stayed quiet for a moment as he absorbed Taiyang's words, tossing them over in his mind. "You know, I wanted to thank you," he finally said.

"What?"

He grinned at having the Lance-Captain off-balance. "I said, I wanted to thank you. I want to thank you for giving me a better example to follow. My father...they say he's the biggest hero Beacon ever had, but we know better now. He's a petty, selfish man who abused the trust placed in him, and abused his power over the people he was charged to train and protect. Beacon's been through hell the last couple of years, but it wasn't him who saw its people through the worst of it. Those bonds of power, authority, and responsibility, you treat them with downright reverence, and it shows. Your pilots adore you, and they trust you to lead us through the slog." Jaune finished with a shrug. "I guess it comes down to, if I had a choice, become a man like my father or become a man like you, I'd want to be more like you."

An awkward silence descended between them, which Taiyang broke by abruptly standing, grabbing his empty mug, and refilling it with coffee. "Whelp, that's enough mushy talk for one day."

"Yeah…yeah…let's hear it for emotional vulnerability."

"We're gonna have to do something extra-manly to make up for that. Like go fight a bear."

"Barehanded."

"While geeked on speed."

They shared a laugh, and as they left Taiyang's office, Jaune decided to try his luck. "I think I'm in love with your daughter," he blurted.

"Yeah, no shit? Was it the diving through plasma that gave it away?" Taiyang shook his head. "Look, I think we're a bit beyond the shovel talk at this point. You keep showing that sort of devotion to her that you did in the Emerald Forest - and keep it in your pants until she's of age - and you won't hear a peep from me, kid."

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Huh." Jaune ruminated on that. "You know, I thought you'd be scarier."

"Why does everyone think I'm so scary about this?! I think I'm pretty downright reasonable."

"At a guess? It's the bazookas, sir."

"Suck it up, kid, you'll live."

[/]

Winter gave one last check to her sister's appearance, and to her own. The previous night, when she had asked her little sister what she was supposed to tell their father about her scandalous escapades the night before, Weiss had simply shrugged and said that, in light of her own poor behavior upon meeting Ozpin, she had had to take it upon herself to build bridges. Alone, and without her sister watching over her, and that's why she had become inebriated.

The Specialist didn't know if the girl was being sincere or if that was a veiled threat to bring her down with her, but either way, it served as a galvanizing wake-up call to Winter. Ozpin had been right. She had been over-emotional upon her arrival at Vale, and that had set a poor example for her subordinates. Weiss could have been hurt, letting her guard down like that, and in ways worse than the merely physical. Thank the gods that Penny was there as a chaperone; if push came to shove when it came to Weiss's safety, Winter knew that Penny would have called for her immediately, sending out a beacon for her to follow.

With that said, though, Penny was still quite young herself, and moreover, was still grasping the nuances of organic behavior. While Weiss had slept off her drunkenness, Winter had had a word with the synthetic girl, and was dismayed to find that she was actively in favor of Weiss cavorting with that strange boy from who-knows-where, saying that she 'shipped' it. Winter had tried to explain that organic people weren't shipped like cargo - at least, not in lawful societies - and that they had to protect Weiss from dangers that she may not see coming. Penny had become more and more annoyed as she tried to get through to her, until she finally had blatted that she was "acting like a bitter old woman" and shut down for the rest of the night.

Rude.

Still, it was incumbent on Winter to maintain discipline for her team on the course of the mission, so she had roused Weiss from her slumber in the morning and had ensured that they would present themselves to the Valeans in nothing less than proper military order. Weiss dutifully fell in step behind her as she made her way back to the Director's office for their meeting. Upon entering, Director Ozpin greeted them with a nod.

"Good morning, Specialist. I trust you're well-rested and prepared to begin our mission."

"Yes, Director. Please excuse my poor showing in our first meeting. It was an unacceptable display from an Atlesian Specialist, and I can only beg your pardon."

"What first meeting?" Ozpin said, with a knowing wink. "As far as your father will know, this is our first proper briefing to get our joint mission underway."

While Winter didn't know that she would be that lenient in the Director's place, she wasn't about to turn away the lifeline he'd thrown her. "As you say, sir. I've been analyzing the results of the clashes in Taurus's campaign, and I believe I've found a particular opportunity that we can exploit to change the momentum in this fight. To put him on the defensive for a change. Taurus was no doubt hoping to have accomplished his main objective by now, or failing that, to have inflicted more damage on Vale forces while taking less to his own. That hasn't happened, and while he inflicted a major blow to Vale's economy and civilian morale, his own machine suffered heavy damage, and will need to be repaired. The main weakness that I've been able to discern from Taurus's strategy is a lack of logistical support for his forces. While keeping Beacon's pilots functional has been a problem, Beacon is much more capable of repairing damage done to the Armored Cores themselves. Taurus has tried to achieve parity in this while at the same time luring your forces out by hitting important infrastructure sites, but while he's technically won each encounter, each one has chipped away at his support, and finally, his own AC."

Winter strode over to the large windows in Ozpin's office, that overlooked the city of Vale. "I believe that if Taurus is going to resume his campaign in any meaningful capacity, then he is going to need to raid the city for replacement parts, at the very least. I propose we give them to him."

Ozpin raised a brow. "Give them to him?"

"In a manner of speaking. We lay a trap, Director. Use Vale's criminal underclass as intermediaries to suggest a particular factory or depot has a weakness in it. Set up shipping containers with the basic parts that are compatible with all ACs...and have trackers within. You'll need some of your people to set up a token resistance, of course. Enough for the White Fang to feel like they won the parts without our handing them over, but not enough resistance to actually prevent at least one container from being stolen. The White Fang takes the container to their base, the tracker gives their location to us, and then my strike team descends upon them like the wrath of a vengeful goddess."

"Hmm…" Ozpin stroked his chin as he considered it. "A clever plan, Specialist. Very well, that is what we shall do. I will make the necessary arrangements to bait the trap. In the meantime, I would like you to meet with some of our pilots and select who you wish to serve as part of your strike team. I'm sure your sister can be of great assistance to you in that endeavor," he said, nodding to the younger Schnee. "No doubt, you'll have no shortage of volunteers to take the fight to Taurus."

Winter nodded. "No doubt," she echoed. If there were any other feelings below the surface, they failed to breach the stoic, impassive facade of the professional Specialist.

[/]

The Captain had made it clear that, magic or no magic, Jaune himself wouldn't be cleared to enter a sim pod, let alone a real cockpit, for at least a week. "It's a head injury," he had explained with a shrug. "Last thing we need is a pilot having a damn aneurysm because a blood vessel constricted from pulling gees, or something."

His commanding officer had made sure that his time on medical leave wouldn't be spent idly, though. Jaune had a good-sized pile of books on his desk, manuals on Armored Core tactics - some of which had been written by his father - texts on general strategy and leadership, and the full set of Beacon officer regulations, all of which Captain Xiao Long had ordered him to learn inside and out by the time his week was up.

The Lance-Captain had announced that Jaune would be expected to take on a leadership role during the morning briefing that had followed their meeting. Jaune had been surprised at how uncontroversial the move was with his friends and teammates, all of whom had been pilots for longer than himself. He supposed it helped that he hadn't been commissioned on the spot, and was expected to learn how to lead, but in any event, no one had expressed any unwillingness to take orders from him in the sims. Whether that was because they trusted him or because they trusted their Captain so much that they took his word for it when he said he had the makings of a potential leader, Jaune couldn't say. Pyrrha, of course, had hugged him tightly, saying how proud she was of him.

Speaking of pride, Cardin Winchester had been officially promoted to the rank of Lance-Sergeant. When Xiao Long had affixed the shoulder boards, which displayed the three golden chevrons of a sergeant, to Cardin's flightsuit, the big guy had looked so proud that Jaune thought he might cry. For once, Pyrrha had punched his arm affectionately, instead of his face wrathfully.

He chuckled at the memory as he alternated between reading The Handbook of Lance-Unit Tactics, Volume 2, and picking at his lunch at the mess. He was waiting until Summer gave him the go-ahead to try and meet Ruby in the workshop. From what he'd gathered from Captain Xiao Long, Karasawa - and his mind still reeled at the notion that the world-famous master was now Ruby's teacher! - had really been putting Ruby through the wringer, the master-apprentice duo only pausing to eat, sleep, or bathe when absolutely necessary. It would be fascinating to see them work, but he didn't want to distract her from her task, deferring to her mother to let him know when he might be able to steal a few moments of her precious time.

Well, at least that solved the problem of getting a new AC. When Karasawa made one of his mastercraft items, it didn't matter if a pilot's style had previously utilized it or not - they made way to incorporate the priceless gear into their Armored Core's loadout. For the master to make a full-blown AC, and to take an apprentice to build it, was unheard-of. Jaune was more than a little baffled to hear that he'd apparently been 'chosen' to pilot it through some mystical process that may or may not have involved a god, but at the end of the day, he was a pilot in need of an Armored Core, and the best in the world were handing him one on a silver platter. He'd have to be crazy to turn it down.

"Hey, that's old man Arc! Turn it up!"

Jaune looked up from his readings and his musings to see his father speaking on one of the news channels playing on the vidscreen playing on the wall. He stood at a podium in front of a forest green curtain with the design of the twin gold axes of Vale - a nod to the centrality of foresting to the nation's economy and culture - behind him.

"...and while this vicious attack has targeted the core of our nation's identity, it has not and can not change who we are as a people. Trust me, I know. I 've seen this nation endure far worse than some upjumped brat in a stolen Armored Core. One day - one day soon - Adam Taurus will be dead and gone, and Vale will remain. He will be burned to ashes by the fire he set, and from those ashes, the Emerald Forest will grow and flourish once more, and we will remain!" Gil paused and gave a rueful chuckle. "I just wish I could be out there once more, protecting the city as I've always done. Turns out, you can be too old to pilot an Armored Core after all," he said, garnering some weak laughter from the press corps. "But just as our people have cultivated the forests for future generations, just as we toiled to set down the foundations for our children and grandchildren to live in peace and safety, so too has Beacon cultivated new generations of pilots to safeguard that future. Brave men and women who risk it all to turn back the darkness, whether it comes from Grimm or man. And among them is my son, Jaune."

Gil took a deep breath. "I have been given clearance from the Director of Beacon to disclose the specifics as to how the Emerald Forest caught fire. Adam Taurus's stolen Armored Core was equipped with a powerful plasma weapon, one that he attempted to fire onto the city itself." From behind Gil, a screen lowered and flickered to life, showing a doctored version of the camera footage from Crocea Mors. "My son Jaune, piloting Crocea Mors, put himself directly between it and Vale," Gil narrated. "He charged through the growing ball of plasma to knock Taurus aside, saving who knows how many lives. The discharge set the forest ablaze, but as heartbreaking as that destruction may be, it would have been far, far worse without the efforts of my son and the other Armored Core pilots that drove Taurus off. As it stands, Crocea Mors was ultimately destroyed, the old gal giving one last fight to protect the city and people of Vale. My son was injured, but he is alive, and expected to make a full recovery. I…" The old man's voice caught, and then he looked squarely at the camera. "I can't begin to say how proud I am of my Jaune. No man ever had a finer son. He will be back in action soon, with a new machine, and I can promise you all that you will see amazing things from my boy."

The press conference went on, with Jaune's father taking questions from reporters, feeding them rhetoric that was equal parts truth and lie with practiced ease. Jaune felt an uneasy presentiment at the display, wondering, once more, if that would be him in fifty years' time. His father had said that the Director had cleared him to speak, but Jaune had seen enough from the fallout of Gil Arc's actions to realize that that meant that the Director had told him what he could say to the press. Ozpin might have very well written the speech himself, though Gil was almost certainly experienced enough to feed the narrative to the public without too much overt direction from the Director's part.

Why would the Director want the public to think that that was how the ambush at the Emerald Forest went down? Jaune thought about it. If he was going to grow into a command role here at Beacon, he'd better learn how to start thinking like a Beacon officer. Well, to start with, it eliminated Ruby Rose from the narrative entirely. It occurred to Jaune that he'd never heard of a pilot being booted from Beacon. Realistically, it must have happened at some point over the fifty-year history of Beacon, some recruit out of pilot school just royally botching it up, or someone getting the boot due to disciplinary issues. But that was certainly not readily-accessible public information. Keeping the public from knowing that Beacon had sent a fifteen-year old girl into live combat, and that she'd subsequently screwed up, not only protected Ruby Rose from public scrutiny, but helped Beacon save face. No doubt Beacon would make seventeen years of age the hard minimum for recruitment, with Pyrrha, who'd been recruited at sixteen, the sole exception to that rule.

Keeping recruits out of live action until they were ready was something Jaune could get behind, as was keeping Ruby from facing the public's ire. But why claim the fire was the result of the discharge? Why suggest that Taurus had targeted the city itself?

Jaune chewed on that as he chewed on some rubbery steak-like meat dish. Well, to start with, Crocea Mors was a cultural icon for Vale, a symbol of the transition from a small, fortified town desperately fending off Grimm at great cost in blood and treasure, to a safe and prosperous modern city-state. Removing Ruby from the narrative meant that they had to replace her with something - while Jaune wasn't sure he deserved to be lauded as a hero, he also didn't want people to think that he charged through the plasma on a dare, or because he was too ignorant to recognize the danger - and the venerable old machine passing on it one last hurrah for Vale made a better story than "Gil Arc's dumbass son got it slagged out from under him." It also took the public's focus away from what they had lost, wide swaths of the forest, to what they could have lost. It was a rhetorical move designed to sway the public away from grieving the forest and towards resolving to protect what they still had.

It struck Jaune that there was one more dynamic at play in the re-shaping of the narrative. It re-cast events to emphasize Beacon's role in stopping the attack. In the new narrative, it no longer was the case that Taurus had caught them by complete surprise by tampering with the Grimm alert systems - Jaune was all for keeping that under wraps, if for no other reason then to keep future malcontents from repeating that stunt - and then thrashing two pilots, one of them without effort, before the rest could drive him off. Instead, it took what had been a mostly successful, if costly, attack on Taurus's part, one in which he called out Beacon without any apparent fear, and cast it as a failed attack. The narrative was that Beacon had intercepted Taurus and prevented him from carrying out his objective, albeit with severe collateral damage, the loss of Crocea Mors, and one pilot injured, but recovering.

Jaune let out a sigh, sitting back in his chair. He didn't like lying to the public that he was supposed to serve. Keeping Ruby safely anonymous was good, but it also kept the general public from challenging Director Ozpin on his recruiting a fifteen-year old. With first Pyrrha at sixteen and then Ruby at fifteen, it looked to Jaune as though Ozpin had been testing the waters to find out how young he could recruit pilots and have them be viable personnel. He had his reasons, Jaune was sure, but those reasons didn't change what had happened as a result of his testing. By the same token, it was equally-obvious that some things, like Taurus tampering with the Grimm alert system, simply couldn't be told to the general public, for its own safety.

He lamented that the AC Attack arcade game had never prepared him for such moral quandaries.

His contemplations were interrupted by the chiming of his Scroll. Jaune took out the device, to find an alert from Summer, saying that Ruby would be going on break soon. The pilot wolfed down the rest of his food as quickly as he could without choking, then grabbed up his book to make his way to the workshop. He trotted down the hallways at a pace just shy of a run, emerging outside and crossing the lot to where the large workshop stood, opposite of the hangars.

Inside, Summer greeted him with a nod, while Ruby stood at a workstation, an old man - Karasawa, Jaune presumed - stood behind her. The girl had her forearms encased in great, mechanical gauntlets that were wired up to some kind of fabrication machine. Some large component that Jaune couldn't even begin to identify hung suspended by delicate steel claws that turned the object over and around. As it rotated, blue industrial lasers scored precision grooves into the metal casing, each one apparently controlled and directed by a finger of the gauntlets that Ruby wore. Most incredibly of all, though, a bright, silver light emitted from Ruby's eyes, just as Captain Xiao Long had described, bathing the workshop in an ethereal, celestial glow.

"That's it," Karasawa coached her, his arms crossed over his chest. "Clear your mind. Stretch out with sight beyond sight."

After a few minutes, Ruby extinguished the lasers. The silver light faded from her eyes, and she slumped from the apparent effort, though she still looked eagerly at Karasawa for approval as she removed her arms from the gauntlets. The steel claws maneuvered the apparently-finished piece into the space directly before him, continuing to turn it over and around. As Jaune watched, the same silver glow emitted from the old man's own eyes. After a long moment of scrutiny, Karasawa gave a single nod. "This piece is adequate for our purposes."

Modest praise, but Ruby reacted as though she'd been awarded the Star of Vale, jumping into the air with glee. "We did it!" She looked over to her mother, but then went stock-still as she saw Jaune standing there, alive and healthy in the workshop entryway.

"Jaune…" she whispered.

Then she was running, full-tilt, leaping towards him. Jaune caught her and spun her twice in the air, holding her close to him as he set her feet back on the ground.

"I...Jaune, I'm so sorry," she whimpered, tears welling in her huge silver eyes. "I was stupid, and reckless, and I almost got you killed and...can you ever forgive me?"

He leaned down and kissed her, deeply, passionately, her foot popping up behind her for balance as she fell into his embrace. She was sweaty, with bags under her eyes and her skin was waxy and pallid with fatigue, but Jaune didn't care. Ruby Rose was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, her kiss the sweetest taste he'd ever had, and she was alive, unharmed, and in his arms.

Jaune could have held her like that for forever, but duty, and a need to breathe, forced them apart. They stood there, panting for breath, when Jaune reached up to brush the streaking tears from her cheek with his thumb.

"There's your answer."

[/]

Chapter Endnotes: Lancaster is go, I repeat, Lancaster is go.

I'm not an engineer, or a science-ologist, so I'm kind of making up advanced science-fictiony sounding equipment and procedures as I go. Just roll with it.

I've been quite quietly proud of how I've set the stage for Ruby's character flaws and how they can be addressed in this story. I see her kind of like Anakin Skywalker in Episode II, only without the "and the women, and the children too" rage. Her abilities made her arrogant and honestly, even a little lazy, and she needs to get that put in check so she can grow up. Maybe it's just because I'm getting old, but the "we know better than anyone else" attitude that the main cast has put on since Volume 6 of canon RWBY has really rubbed me the wrong way.

Karasawa's masterworks - the Silver-Eyed Seer stuff - I see as a form of magitek, something that can't be replicated by mundane means. This might get under the skin of some of the readers that prefer the hard sci-fi feel of Armored Core, but this is a crossover, and that means that the fantastical elements of RWBY are in play. Besides, if there's one AC that can get away with that, it would be White Glint. After all, when you beat it down at Line Ark, the sumbitch revives itself and resumes fighting, with no explanation given.

Fleshing out some of the command structure of Beacon in this chapter. The Watch consists of older or semi-retired pilots, whose mission is to respond to Grimm alerts and hold them off until reinforcements from Beacon arrive. Within Beacon proper, the pilots are divided into units, called a "Lance." Each Lance is commanded by a Captain, who answers to the Director. Within each Lance, there is normally an Executive Officer - a Lieutenant - and a Non-Commissioned Officer, a Sergeant. Dragon Lance has been a bit dysfunctional, and several members that may have otherwise filled those roles - CFVY - had to transfer to Eagle Lance to compensate for attrition. Beacon, as mentioned, has been hit hard in recent years, and with fewer veterans per recruit in each Lance, it's more likely that those recruits don't survive to learn from mistakes that may have otherwise been survivable. Dragon Lance has relied on Taiyang's exceptional abilities as an officer to hold itself together, but with Cardin's behavioral issues coming under control and the recruitment of a pilot with qualities that could make for a potential Lieutenant, Taiyang's jumping at the opportunity to re-establish some normalcy in his unit's command structure.

And yes, Ozpin is absolutely deliberately filling Taiyang's Lance with less-experienced pilots, both to teach them and to hopefully cut down on attrition. One of Taiyang's fellow Captains, Lance-Captain Safia Alabaster, has reportedly been quoted as saying "Well, yeah, we assign the rooks to Xiao Long. He's the super-hot Team Dad of Beacon. Er, don't tell Summer I said that."

Alas for poor Nora. Still, Ren turning her down was for the best. Ren's line to her - "I could not love you so much, loved I not honor more" - is an adaptation of the famous last lines of "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars," by English Cavalier and poet Richard Lovelace, published somewhere in the vicinity of 1655.

Winter's deathly afraid that someone is going to crush her sister's heart the way Adam crushed hers. Stifling, yes, unhealthy, oh gods, yes, but she does still care. I promise she won't always be unlikeable. I'm going somewhere with her.

Penny best wingwoman. In both senses of the word.

Right-o. Sorry again for the delay. Hope this extra-chonky, character-drama filled chapter makes up for it. Thanks, as always, for reading!

Love,

Mahina Fable