Author's Note:
Surprise! There are actually two Interludes instead of only one... This one will focus more on the scientific innovations occurring as we approach this altered timelines equivalent of RWBY. Eventually everything will become unrecognizable, though fortunately with the length of this pic and Volume 6 on the way I might be able to keep some things semi canon, ignoring the differences with Alchemy which will get its own set of Interludes after Chapter Six is released...within a week or so? Anyways this will go into greater detail about aura and Dust, though the specifics will be elaborated into future sections over many, many Interludes. Most of this won't come into fruition for years instory but there will be a pay off eventually. Anyway review and follow...
Interlude 5-2 : Atlesian Aura Science 1
"Doc, how are your little experiments going?"
Doctor Polendina was startled out of his thoughts as one of his fellow colleagues patted his left shoulder. He brushed it off and his eyes refocused onto his fellow scientist. A young women of very rare faunus origin, she was one of the few scientists who decided to remain in the faunus-hostile kingdom of Atlas. She was a rather thin and short women, a head shorter than her fellow knowledge seeker. Her brilliant green eyes and bright set of red hair didn't distract from the well kept fox tail wagging in excitement.
The two had been working together on some new experiments but the faunus had to make a week long leave due to a family event. So he had been forced to work alone much to his chagrin, much enjoying the company of the women. Especially since the other lab worked had far less common sense than she did.
He scoffed at their sheer stupidity, the book they had gone through explicitly mentioned the high explosiveness, toxicity, and carcinogenic properties of some of the chemical based rocket fuels Atlas was jointly developing with Vale. Just as single mention of the Devil's venom was enough to give him an aneurysm. Geppetto decided to alleviate her concern by replying.
"Oh don't even get me started Dr. Kitsune! Our fellow workers are morons, they keep synthesizing and attempting to make use of fuels and oxidizer I've deemed clearly obsolete fuels based on the impracticality and general issues with the handling and safety!" Her tail and went still and her palm met her forehead within ten seconds of his frustrated statement.
"Ohh gods what did they do?" Her face had turned pale at his response and he slumped against his leather chair. The doctor pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
"They tried to use Chlorine trifluoride and 1-diaza—mmm" She covered his mouth not needing any more of his terrifying elaboration.
"That is…more than enough information. God damn those brain dead idiots…." She covered her mouth, but her eyes suddenly lot up as she took a look of an incomplete set of code. She approached it with an excited fervor, her tail bushing a against the brim of his pants. Polendina felt hot at the collar and loosened up his coat as the short women leaned against his table. She turned to face him with a twinkle in her eye. "What exactly is this? The new project you're working on?" He nodded and cleared his throat ready to speak.
"Indeed," His eyes had a difficult time meeting the bright and happy eyes of the faunus. "I've decided to advance a technology called neural networks. A method of simulating some of the properties of the brain. They can learn take by being fed a massive amount of data. That includes things like image recognition, speech recognition, as well as various other applications like remotely flying aircraft."
"Don't we already have that?" The man shook his head at her response. She personally specialized in Dust as well as aerospace engineering as well as though the last part was considered relatively new, until the reintroduction of the semi secret space program. It was in fact the main reason that Vale and Atlas were working together on this.
Vale's location near the equator made it a prime spot for rocket launches, being more stable than the other resident kingdom of Sanus only added it to the appeal. But he was going on a tangent, he needed to focus on the current conversation with his close friend.
"Of sorts yes, but it remains very primitive and in almost all vessels is still manually flown. We could make a quantum leap with this technology and would help with simulation for the rocket program as well." Her eyes widened, and her smile became rather sweet.
"Oh really?" He grumbled as the young women gently and sensually brushed her hands against his chest and wrapped her soft tail around his waist. "Do you plan to help little old me with my program? I could really use your help." She tapped a finger against his nose, and her smile became more alluring.
He really didn't want to deal with her shenanigans…
RING!
Saved by the bell…
The doctor backed up from the disappointed female, and his grimace softened into a small smile. He spoke quietly into the fun while the wily fox sulked away in the corner. Her tail twitched as she discreetly listened in on the phone conversation. After a few minutes of talking he finally hung up and the young women despondently turned away.
"Girlfriend of some sort." The bitter tone of the scientist made the Atlassian male flinch though it contorted into a face of disgust as her comment registered.
"God no! It's just a call from the girl old Gilda adopted!" There was a small sign of hope in her eyes. "She's a rather bright child and she's how I came upon those books I've acquired for study." Kaneru blanched and frantically apologized to her senior of one year.
"Wait…" Her bowing stopped as his statement registered in her mind "How exactly does a 13 year old have books on a science that didn't exist before now."
"Well, her parents were residents of that settlement on the continent of Dracos." Her eyebrows would have lifted up into space if they could as she thought of that place, and the horrible events that took place there.
"What happened there…was terrible." Her eyes looked haunted, having seen the bits and pieces of footage that escaped the destruction of the largest settlement on the near empty continent. The countless people slaughtered, their screams of agony as they torn apart by hordes of monstrous demons…
"Indeed my fr—"
BOOM!
Both scientist flushed with anger as an explosion rocked the mountain built laboratory. They rushed over, their lab coats fluttering in the breeze.
One corner was passed on the left, then on the right, and one more on the left. Both scientists gritted their teeth but suppressed their fury, at the confused and slightly singed visitor lying in a battered heap on the lab floor. A single carbonized tree collapsed into a pile of useless ash just as they took a single step.
'What the hell did they…?' His walking slowed as he noticed a faint glow of something within the ash. Kaneru was the first to react and she seems to blur as she leaped into action. She carefully sifted through the ash, quickly dirtying her clothes in the dead plant mass. Doctor Polendina roughly grabbed the apparent student by the scruff of his neck, but patted away the ash on his clothes. The fox women pulled out a crystal…
"Oh…oh dear…" The programming and aura expert took a step back, his awe taking control of his movements. He had never seen such a thing happen before…only rumors…
"What did you do?" The boy, a twenty year old Atlas academy student who was visiting from Beacon for some sanctioned tests blinked and took a deep breath.
"The…hmm scientists were testing your theory on the…origins of Dust…" The faunus women steadied the woozy student and asked for him to continue.
Geppetto remembered finding the theory brilliant…if it could only be tested. The fox believe that Dust may originate from aura, likely that of millions of plants and animals over hundreds of years. First an aura would break down but not disappear completely. It would form into clouds and rivers of wandering aura gradually crystalizing over long periods of time and forming deposits of Dust.
Her main reason for hypothesizing the idea was the numerous documented incidents that occurred known only as an Aura Cascade. Often preceded by or even causing massive Grimm incursions. Essentially massive bursts of aura would erupt from the ecosystem, acting like massive beacons for Grimm.
In all documented incidents where the Aura Cascade began before or during a Grimm attack. Enormous deposits of Dust were discovered during the battle and used to fight off the prowlers of the night. Most of the time they were however dismissed by the scientific community as false tales told by rattled villagers. Aura Cascades are known to happen but on incredibly small scales, maybe one or two meters across. No signs of Dust were ever found…
"What else man. Can you speak?" He needed to know more.
"Y-Yes…ahem yes sir. They decided to…modify the recently developed aura sensors for our scroll you see. They knew that there was always a great deal of interference from outside sources." The Huntsman student coughed and Kitsune passed him a bottle of water eager to know more.
"So they redesigned it to sense those interferences, still ignoring some of the more mundane sources of interference like EM or heat. They found it…a massive field of aura, natural energy that permeates Remnant's atmosphere. They found areas of greater density around cities, towns, forests and jungles. Clouds of it…clouds of aura!"
The young man was in complete shock and awe and barely coherent due to the explosion but a slap on the face woke him up. "They noticed that there was a condensing cloud of aura around the tree brought in for the experiment and they asked me to inject my aura into a crystal, as they directed the cloud into it at the same time hoping it would have an effect. But… then they decided to set in on fire to see if it would do anything." There was a grumble of "dumbasses" under his breath at that.
"Hmm… I think this counts for a celebration." The other lab hands perked up until he gave them a thumbs down. "For us I mean, you almost killed a future Huntsmen with your lack of common sense. Please take him to the infirmary."
They all sulked but complied with his order, moving him with tenderness not wanting to anger the lead scientists further. There was a odd "hmmph" from his female friend and she picked up a few pieces of of glowing quartz crystal. Unlike the Fire Dust, they were all clear and did not seem to exhibit the properties of any known Dust types. She waved her Scroll over the clear crystal and her tail became completely stiff, the oddest body movement he had seen from her yet.
"Those dumbasses really did it… three fucking months of dead ends and failed experiments…and we found the key by complete accident." She waved him over and he felt complete glee and elation as the electronic device sensed a strong aura emanating from the stable crystal. He reached for it but his colleague kept it from his reach with a smile. The mid 20s age faunus women sauntered over to a lab table. She grabbed various lab tools after placing on the appropriate personnel protection equipment.
"Kit what are you planning." Kaneru flashed him a brilliant smile that seemed to summon something inside of him. His heart woke up and he felt the affection her had been nursing for months rise up. But ignored it as the women carefully chipped several shards off of the Crystal and placed it into small clean slides. She lifted them up on small grated stands, and placed different objects underneath. Under one she placed a burning flame, under another a tiny amount of activated Lightning Dust, with a third, she placed a water sprayer. The final one was a simple air blower.
He watched in amazement as the crystals shifted to their respective types over a period of about three minutes.
"Huh…neat." She gave the doctor a rotten look at his simple reply and tsked while cleaning up her mess.
"Neat is not the word I would use for the greatest discovery since the discovery of Dust itself." She let out a scoff and placed the remaining chunk of crystal under isolated storage. "But even with this…I still feel uneasy.
Polendina gave out a confused harumph. "Why? This is incredible!"
"Because it's too easy," Kitsune rubbed her arms out of habit, brushing against a myriad of scars. "It's impossible for something this simple to create…to have remained undiscovered for centuries. There has to be some reason right? Or maybe I'm just giving humanity too much credit." Her tail curled around her waist in a furry hug.
"Unless…" Her eyes flickered over to him. "Every time anyone managed it they were destroyed by Grimm, or other malevolent forces. There's a reason the SDC wasn't allowed to fund this research station. In fact we have enough funds for at least a decade at our current pace."
"We'll have to keep our research into Aura private for now. Besides while our Dust understanding is advanced, creating Dust is a whole other ball game. If this goes right, perhaps we can finally be free."
Doctor Polendina was practically ecstatic at the idea and began to think on what new types of technology could be created. He glanced over at his notes and research on Neural Networks and neuromorphic computing, as well as a new paper on Diamond computer wafers.
He wondered… What would happen if he injected aura into a carbon based neuromorphic compute?
"Hey what was that students name anyway?"
"James Ironwood, one of the best of his year. Size he wants to join the military as a specialist. He's a bright one two, fascinated with technology really and how it can help protect Atlas from the Grimm."
"So clearly he'll keep this to himself."
The doctor grinned."He's a friend…" He paused in his statement and turned to face his fellow scientist with some nervousness and trepidation. "Hey… Kaneru?"
"Hmm…?"
"D-Do you want to go out for coffee some time? I uh know a good place near the academy that serves some good drinks and various foot items. It would be sensational if you would come along.
"…"
"I…I would love to!"