AN: I am so sorry for not having this up on time. I just got back from DC after preforming in the 4th of July parade there. I got back from a 14 hour bus trip at 4:30 in the morning so I was basicly passed out all of Wednesday. I hoped you all enjoyed the 4th if your from the states like me. If your not, well happy Sunday. As we return to Warzone, we get to experience Slav cooking with Airborne and a bit of background building. And yes look up Life of Boris for the instructions on the dishes, you will want to subscribe. Uh that's all I have, please tell me what I fucked up so I can attempt to fix it.
On the way to their dorms, Airborne snuck in the dining hall and stole some food, carried off a bench, and stole a vacuum. Phyrra immediately tried to get them to put back the extra devices but Airborne ignored her and proceed to run down to their barracks, RWBY and JNPR reluctantly followed. They arrived to find Krauss and Jonathan tearing the bench to small pieces and throwing them into the barrel. Adam was setting up the vacuum to suck smoke out of the room and into the vents from the looks of it. Wilhelm was lighting the flammenwerfer.
"What on Remnant are you four doing." Exclaimed Weiss.
Krauss displayed that crazed grin of his and answered. "Cooking! Kitchen's closed, so we're making Kompot And Borsch."
(Kompot is kinda like a tea except you simply drop the whole fruit in the pot. And Borsch is a slavic soup . Lookup Life of Borris if you want to make either yourself, it's really tasty.)
Whatever Weiss was about to say was cut off when Wilhelm opened up with the flammenwerfer into the "stove". All but Krauss jumped back in surprise.
"Christ! A little warning next time will ya." Exclaimed Adam.
"Hey I kinda know what I'm doing."
The kids watched as Airborne prepared the food. Krauss joked about replacing all the water with vodka to make it more Slav. Airborne laughed their heads off at that. The kids were rightly a bit confused at that. Jonathan had to keep an eye on Ruby who seemed utterly determined to eat all the strawberries for the kompot. After a while in the fire, the four steel helmets had the finished meal in them. Adam gathered enough mess tins and began to serve everyone the soup and drink.
Airborne offered up the table to the kids and took to the corner where the "stove" sat. They were soon joined by Ren and Jaune who had been shooed away from the table. The boys traded stories of home. Krauss telling of his two brothers, Adam of his wife, Jonathan's mother and father, And poor Jaune and his seven sisters. Ren and Wilhelm stayed pretty quiet. Turns out most of the group came from Chicago and it's suburbs. As their spoons started scraping to bottoms of the bowls Krauss pointed something out.
"I noticed you remnants all about showy acrobatic stuff when you fight, why is that?"
Ren pondered the question."Awhile back there was a massive war, the incredibly oppressive governments at the time even began destroying art." The three Americans looked at Wilhelm. Said person muttered an interesting string of curses involving mothers, potatoes, an 88 and a cavalry sword. "After the war people became more … Expressive of their personality and emotions, that's why you gets names like Ruby and Emerald. How Yang and Nora's fighting mirrors their personality. How do your people fight Stg. ?"
Krauss paused. He got up and walked to his bag and fished out his laptop. He walked over and sat back down he fiddled with it for a minute before flipping it around to show the group.
"While Two started a witch hunt for anything Nazi related, no war really changed anything globally besides tactics." He hit a button. "This is footage from a movie that pretty accurate to the landings at Normandy during the second world war. Just replace the green with my ACUs and many more automatics. To date it was the largest Amphibious invasion ever. Uh don't talk about this to Ozpin, he'll have my head for this." (Cue Saving Private Ryan beach scene.) Ren and Jaune sat mesmerized by the utter horror that was combat to Airborne. The landing seemed like suicide. Auras couldn't protect you here only luck could, and she wasn't very kind. The relentless machine gun Fire swept through the drowning men, those who made it to the flat sandy beaches found little shelter from the literal wall of lead raining on their position. Dead and dying men were everywhere, the grey sand and water turned red with the blood of combatants. Ren couldn't help but feel sorry for those medicals. He generally ended up patching up JNPR and sometimes even RWBY when things got bad. Jaune looked at how the sergeants and higher ups commanded. They willingly took actions that would and did get people killed to accomplish their objectives. But the way the men did those tasks unflinchingly, that is what Jaune wanted to be able to do. To lead without doubt trailing his thoughts.
As the battle raged on krauss's laptop, The other half of the room sat eating the soup, that to the girl's surprise even Weiss seemed to like. Heck Blake was on a fourth bowl.
"Ruby." asked Weiss. Ruby looked up from her bowl, half a turnip hanging from her mouth. "es viss!" Weiss frowned.
"Swallow your food first you dolt." Hearing this she promptly swallowed the remaining food. "What is it Wiess?" While the Heiress was well knowledged in the uses of dust in weapons many of the finer points outside the use of raw dust escaped her grasp. For instance the types that could be used to propel bullets. So she scraped a bit of the pile from empty casing towards Ruby.
"Does this look like any Dust you would use in bullets?"
Ruby leaned closer to examine the powder. She could immediately tell it wasn't Dust. Ground Dust used in propellant was made of irregular bits that were roughly cubular like sand. This was shaped as small tubes of pure black. "This isn't any Dust I know of. Where did you get this?" Weiss simply held up the case. "Wait, that's what Airborne uses?"
"Well it came out of one of their bullets didn't it."
Yang, ever the people person said "I'll ask them about it."
She got up and walked over to the "Man Corner" as she had dubbed it. She took one look at the video that was playing and nearly gagged. It seemed to be a recording of a war but. Simply put it was brutal and callous. None of the grace and flow like you would see with hunters, just a continuous bloody killing field, men holding organs in, others dragging wounded only to find they were dead, and so so much worse.
"Monty! What the hell are you six watching!" Krauss paused the blood bath and looked up.
"This? It's a reenactment of the D-Day landings during our second world war. These two."he pointed at the other Americans. "Were dropped behind the lines a few hours before hand to help reduce casualties. Saved a lot of lives, by the time the second and third waves hit the beaches most of the opposition was dead." Yang was understandingly shocked."How many died?"
Krauss shrugged" I don't know this is old history to me. El-tee any input?" The Lieutenant pondered the question "Eh sorry i haven't remembered either i just know omaha, this beach, had by far the worse fighting." Yang suddenly seemed to remember something. "Krauss, What kind of dust do you use in your rifle? Ruby is obsessing over this bullet." She held up the case.
Krauss's brow furrowed. "We don't use dust it's, we don't have any. 7.62 NATO are just smokeless powder, no idea what's the .30-06s or 8mm though. " he looked to Adam "is it cordite?"
Adam shook his head. "That'll be Brits son. They shove that shit in everything."
Yang was taking in the information she realized that Krauss was still using incorrect measurements. "Wait you said 7.62."
"Da"
"Ruby said that 9.5 mm." Airborne looked at each other.
"How tall do you think the Sergeant is?" Asked Wilhelm. Krauss stood straight and placed his back against the wall.
Yang examined him. "I'd say seven and a half feet maybe more."
Krauss raised an eyebrow. "No one's that tall. I'm only 6'2". He paused to think for a second. "What is the circumference of Remnant?"
Yang sat back in thought for a minute be turning to the table. "Weiss what's the circumference of Remnant?"
"40000 kilometers. Why would you want to know that." Answered the puzzled heiress.
"Airborne wanted to know."
Krauss was deep in internal mathematics for a while before he came to his conclusion. "Earth is larger by a quarter." It clicked for Airborne, why everything was so much smaller, why previously heavy objects became paperweights.
Pyhrra tried to get clarification "what do you mean larger?"
"On Earth Krauss is 6'2" tall. Here is is 7'6". Those dimensions you listed off for krauss's round? Their almost exactly 1.25 the size. The only reason we are even close strength wise is because Earth's Gravity is stronger. If this was equal gravity you'd stomp us into the ground." Explained Wilhelm. "Though that doesn't explain how those rounds tore through Cardin's aura."
Ruby was the one to reply. "Dust rounds generally move at a 1000 feet per second (fps) at high caliber rifle sizes, maybe yours move faster?"
Airborne was kinda surprised, Remnant had massive computing and engineering advantages over Earth but they had almost pathetic weapons tech. Jonathan said. "I had a BB gun, a gun that shoots using compressed air, that had higher fps. 30-06 has a muzzle velocity of 2200 fps minimum. If you get some hotter rounds they go up till almost 3000. The 8mm Mauser had even higher velocities."
Ruby was shocked. Her sweetheart , the gun she had made and tooled to get the best performance you'd find, was outpaced by a massed produced rifle. In a blur of red rose petals she appeared in front of our sergeant and began speaking in a rush of words."Howdoyoudothat! Thatslikethecoolestthingeverandgivesyousomuchmorerange." Before she could compleatly overwhelm the Sergeant, Yang pulled her away.
"Sis calm down, do you remember what happened to Cardin? That was from a pistol round. If you put something like that in Crescent Rose, you'd kill someone." Ruby remembered that and shrunk back into her cape. Wilhelm raised an interesting view point. "Your people rely heavily on Dust. Have you ever used other sources for power and weapons?"
Weiss shook her head. "Before the discovery of Dust, we relied on coal power for most tasks. As for weapons gunpowder was the norm. What do you use?"
Wilhelm answered" It's a huge mix. Coal is used out in far rural areas occasionally, but Oil and it many refined states take care of most of the work. From what Krauss said when we arrived, we also can get energy from splitting atoms in a controlled environment. That process while releasing massive amounts of energy, is incredibly dangerous in a weaponized form easily capable of wiping Vale or another kingdom clean off the map."
Krauss took over. "Nuclear power is a closely guarded secret and a dangerous technology. It is relatively clean though. It obviously pales when compared to wind or solar Sources. Though I guess your reliance on dust is based on availability. Oil is somewhat rare and hard to obtain, you have to dig deep and somethimes it has to be in the middle of the oceans."
The conversation rolled on and on. Eventually it was finalized. Earth's Oil had higher energy outputs at the cost of stability and long term effects, while Remnant's Dust was weaker, but much more stable with no notable pollution. Since oil was an ingredient in smokeless powder it made sense why it was so much more potent. Airborne noticed it was 3AM at the that moment and shooed the kids off to bed.
