Ch11: Serious for once.
"How do you think a world would develop without Grimm. Without Aura or Semblances, without Dust or Faunus?" I ask the trio.
"Probably quite peaceful. No Grimm to fight, no tensions with the Faunus. But relatively lower technology, without Dust to advance technology." Taiyang thinks a few seconds before revealing his analysis.
"Actually, our technology is more advanced in quite a few areas. Granted, Dust does wonderful things, but without it we've managed to make it pretty far. We've even made it off our planet, we put people on our moon. THE MOON, for Murphy's sake! And that was decades before I was even born!" I say, earning looks of stunned disbelief from the trio.
"Really?"
"Please leave all questions till the end please. As I was saying, the current human population of Earth is somewhere between seven and eight billion. And we haven't even settled parts of it! We've put men on the moon, we've managed to land robots on other planets, we have sent unmanned probes to the stars! And yet," My voice drops from its proud proclamations to a more saddened and depressed tone, "Let's just say when you have that many people, hell, even a fraction of that many people. They have different views, and they don't always match up. Can you imagine it? In the space of not even forty years, over one hundred million, far over one hundred million. Hell, three men managed to break one-thirty, and even half a damn century later, we still have no exact count. Over one hundred fifty million living, breathing human beings. All reduced to a mere statistic in not even forty years. Not through disaster, or disease, or famine. But through war and hate. Most of those people were killed by their own leaders, the people who were supposed to protect them from the evils of the world. And that's not even the tip of the damn iceberg, war is as much a part of our history as the Grimm are yours. And it gets even worse! We've managed to create MULTIPLE weapons capable of wiping out every last thing on our little ball of dirt. All of them. We've managed to harness the power of atoms themselves, and we turned it into a weapon. It's a rare day where the news channels aren't talking about some tragedy or another. Usually, it's some variation of one person killing another. If you think the Grimm are monsters, you have no idea what a monster even is. Hell, if you put the entire military, scientific, and industrial might of my world on Remnant, the Grimm wouldn't even stand a ghost of a chance. I will admit that a soulless being intent on killing you for the hell of it is nothing to be scoffed at, but the truly terrifying thing is a human being that does the exact same thing for almost no discernible reason. Individual people caused the deaths of enough people to eclipse the number of those alive on Remnant today. Hell, they probably killed more people than have EVER existed on Remnant. My world is far from peaceful. But, in spite of that, or probably because of it, humanity is able to shine in the dark. It is possible for someone to feed someone on the other side of the world. Men and women are willing to fight and die to protect people they will never know. That is what Earth is like. A world of simultaneously greater and lesser peace than anyone in Remnant will ever know." I finish my monologue, to take in the faces of the trio before me: Ruby is horrified, Yang slightly less so, but Taiyang is giving me a strange look. As if he's seen that, no matter how bad things may seem on Remnant, it could be worse.
"You make it sound so horrible." Taiyang says.
"I may have exaggerated a bit. I usually tend towards the melodramatic."
"Still, it doesn't sound like a nice place to be."
"And you think a planet full of evil soulless beasts IS?"
"Point taken."
"The thing is, I admit that terrible things have happened, we actually have designated things as being crimes against humanity itself! But the past is the past; you can't change it, and trying to change it would cause even more problems. You just have to learn to live with the horrible things that have happened. You live with them, and do everything you can to make sure that they never happen again. Instead of trying to make up for injustices admit that they happened, if the perpetrators are still alive then punish them, and most importantly: make sure it never happens again." I monologue, "And with that out of the way: I just got back from clearing out a few packs of beowolves and will now proceed to take a nap. Chat amongst yourselves, see you tomorrow." I say, before walking to my room and promptly falling asleep.
(AN: Kurt considers all forms of racism/discrimination to be utterly useless, unproductive, and plain wrong. He is less of a 'don't do it because it's wrong' and more of a 'don't do it because it's pointless and unproductive' kind of person.)
(Thursday, D+14)
"Whatcha working on Kurt?" Ruby asks, while I fiddle with some parts, my scroll, and the glasses that I had picked up earlier.
"Trying to set something up with my HUD." I say, picking up my HUD. "I'm trying to figure out how to set this up to tell me how many rounds are left in a mag." I say, pointing towards one of my 30 round magazines. "I've already set up a laser designation system, and a positioning system, but I'm trying to figure out something that can be used without modifying every single mag."
"How about placing a sensor on the gun itself, maybe near the barrel, to record the number of shots fired?" She recommends.
"Didn't think of that, it should work." I say, grabbing Blue Death from it's place next to my desk, at which I am currently working. I pick up a sensor, 'Nope, not that one, or that one, how many of these things do I have? There it is!' I think, rifling through the small pile of sensors I have in one corner of my work space. 'That goes there, this hooks up here, that goes over there.' I attach the body of the sensor near the muzzle of the weapon, just forward of the bayonet/bipod attachment clip. I place a pair of smaller sensors, above and below the muzzle itself, a pair of sensors which, when linked to the main piece, would (hopefully) record the passage of a bullet between the two secondary pieces.
(About two hours later)
"Finally." I say, exasperated, after two hours of trying to link the sensor, my scroll, and my HUD and turn it into a workable system. 'tried sleeeepp.' *thunk* 'Ow. Pain. Head. Sleep.' *Snores*