A/N: So…I hear there's some interesting news in the world of Armored Core?
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"Damn it!"
Pyrrha grit her teeth as her cockpit rocked, jolted by the bone-rattling impact of a missile barrage that she hadn't quite managed to completely dodge. She rode out the impact as best she could, barely managing to keep Argo on its feet. As soon as the world stopped trying to shake her teeth out of her head and calmed the hell down, the pilot immediately checked the status of her AC.
She swore under her breath. The damage to her right leg and booster was bad, but the loss of Argo's right arm - and with it, her Karasawa - was a catastrophe. With her plasma rifle gone and her multi-missile launcher's payload cooked off, all she had was the chain gun mounted to left shoulder.
"Executioner has been destroyed."
"Ember Celica has been destroyed."
Of course, some losses were worse than others.
Pyrrha opened her comm channel. "Lance-Captain, call the retreat!"
"Negative, Argo." Taiyang's voice was terse, unsurprising given that his daughter's AC had been disabled, possibly destroyed. "You all know the mission parameters. We hold off the enemy, or die in the attempt."
Pyrrha made sure to close her comm before swearing again. It's not that she didn't understand the military value of these simulations - best to experiment with doctrine before attempting it on the battlefield - but the scenario that the Director was pushing them through was completely insane.
Starting with that stupid Arms Fort that was the backbone of the OpFor.
A testament to the Kingdom of Atlas's complete lack of anything resembling "subtlety" or "restraint," the Arms Fort was what happened when the military industrial complex was elevated to the level of a state religion. Technically a mech, the Arms Fort was, as the name suggested, a mobile military base, one festooned with an objectively-obnoxious amount of missile launchers and artillery pieces. Well, it was only "mobile" in the loosest sense of the word, a colossal construct that slowly ambled along on giant legs, each the size of a good-sized skyscraper.
The proportions and armament of the Arms Fort boggled the mind, but it was made specifically to reinforce the disparate and far-flung mining settlements that were largely land-locked in the tundra Kingdom of Atlas. There was just no feasible way for the stupid thing to cross the sea and spearhead an attack on the city of Vale, so why were they being made to run this mission over and over again?
Pyrrha knew, in the very core of her being, that the pilots of Beacon were, bar none, the most experienced Armored Core pilots in the world, experience forged through the crucible of war and suffering. So with that said, if all of Beacon, all at once, couldn't repel this attacking force, then it simply couldn't be done, and certainly not without reinforcements.
"This is White Glint. Help is on the way."
A ragged cheer rose across the general comm channel as Jaune's voice crackled over the airwaves. Pyrrha smirked with the realization that the only way to fight bullshit was with bullshit of their own. That souped-up AC that Ruby cooked up for Jaune was literally insane. The first time he'd tried to pilot a simulator pod uploaded with the specifications for White Glint, the damn thing broke under the forces that it attempted to generate, crashing onto the ground.
Ruby, that Weiss Schnee girl from Atlas, and the AI Penny had all collaborated to find a working solution for getting Jaune the sim time that he needed in White Glint. In the end, they went with the simple expedient of running the simulator programs through the Glint's computer systems, augmented with what amounted to an enormous, Armored Core-scaled helmet. It wasn't a perfect solution, since it couldn't provide the sort of impact feedback that had so recently ruffled Pyrrha's jammies with the missile impacts, but the truth was, the only material they had that could withstand the truly insane stresses of the White Glint in combat was the White Glint itself.
They heard the distinctive roar of her brother's one-of-a-kind AC's flight boosters, and saw the silver flaming wings that carried Jaune into battle. White Glint dashed along the line, Jaune no doubt taking stock of the situation and the enemy and allied forces arrayed in the area before turning sharply in mid-air, pulling an about-face that no AC on Remnant could hope to match, before touching down behind the ragged and battered remainder of Dragon Lance. As White Glint landed, the booster wings shut down and folded neatly onto the AC's back.
"Executioner and Ember Celica are down," Taiyang reported. "Argo is walking wounded."
"Well damn, there goes the right flank I wanted to make." Jaune went silent for a moment as he contemplated the situation. "Right, let's try this. I'm going to rush that big son-of-a-bitch over yonder. I'm going to try to get too close for it to target with those missiles and cannons and hurt it just as hard as I possibly can. You guys are going to follow behind me and cover my six from those hostile ACs."
"How are we going to do that? We're already down two. Three really, Pyrrha's AC won't last long," protested Nora.
"Believe it or not, Dragon Lance is in the best shape right now. Eagle Lance is down to just two, and Wolf Lance is just gone."
Pyrrha spoke up. "We won't last long in a frontal charge, not against that many ACs."
"Well, I'm hoping that this big, flashy machine of mine might draw a few heads my way. I buzz them on my way to charge the Arms Fort, they turn on me to shoot at me, and you guys form a spearhead and attack them from their rear."
A click on the comm indicated that Yang had tried to interject, most likely with some comment about Jaune's phrasing, but since she'd was 'dead,' she wasn't allowed to actually speak up.
"Shut up, Yang," Jaune drawled anyway, correctly guessing who was trying to speak up and why. "All right. Sun Dragon, you're point. Argo, left rear, Magnhild, anchor rear right. I really wish Cardin hadn't gone and got himself blown up - ideally, you'd be rear center, and firing long range over the top…you know what, belay that order, Magnhild. Storm Flower on rear right."
"My AC wasn't designed for that kind of role," Ren immediately spoke up.
"I know, but this is either going to work pretty quickly, or it won't be a problem for long. You have more close-range weapons than Nora, and we're going to need to give it our all if this is going to have any hope of working." White Glint's wings unfolded, and the booster array roared back to life. "Form up and move out, Dragon Lance!"
Jaune took off, his Armored Core flying low in his madcap charge for the Arms Fort. Bright flashes of dazzling white light accompanied the cracks of White Glint's laser rifle taking precision shots, as the Motorcobra machine gun in its left hand rattled off sedan-sized rounds in a devastating strafing run. The enemy AC's opened fire, unleashing hell on him. Bullets whizzed past, missiles burst, and the crackle of energy weapons sizzled through the air. Through it all, White Glint flitted about with an impossible grace and effortless precision, dancing through the sky the way Jaune himself would dance his ballet.
It took Pyrrha's breath away. She was so proud of her brother, she thought she would just burst.
As he predicted, many of the AC's turned their backs on Dragon Lance in their attempt to track the White Glint, and the squad was determined to punish the enemy for that mistake. A line of explosions bloomed among the enemy's ranks, as Nora unleashed her inner pyromaniac. The Sun Dragon led the push to follow in Jaune's wake, ponderous but as unstoppable as the storm. But for all of their best efforts, the enemy was too many, and Dragon Lance too few to properly screen Jaune's flank. A rocket clipped the White Glint - no matter how agile the machine or how skilled the pilot, one can't dodge if there is nowhere safe to dodge to - and while its armor held, the impact stalled its momentum. A volley of high-explosive death rained down on Jaune, blasting his AC from the sky. With Dragon Lance out of cover and in formation, the Arms Fort decided to target it next, disregarding its own allies and positively saturating the entire area with missiles, rockets, mortars, and artillery shells.
With her screen gone blank, Pyrrha yanked off her helmet in disgust. Another failed sim, and this one with the White Glint on their side. If literal divine intervention couldn't make the difference, then the parameters were just simply impossible to overcome.
So what was the Director playing at?
Clenching her fists in frustration, Pyrrha took several deep breaths, in an attempt to calm herself.
Pyrrha Nikos hated to lose.
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Jaune absently sipped on his orange sports drink as he waited for the Lance-Captain to finish compiling his report for the Director. Today's sim exercise was…well, as far as first attempts went, it wasn't bad, but it sure as hell wasn't optimal either. Even if it had worked, Dragon Lance - his sister, all his friends, Ruby's sister and father - would have been annihilated in the time before he could disable the Arms Fort's weapons systems.
He kind of hoped that they wouldn't notice that.
After a few moments, the Lance-Captain finished sending his reports and swiveled his chair away from the desk terminal. "So, Jaune, let's talk about today's simulation."
With a wry smile, Jaune took another sip of his drink before speaking. "Well, obviously, our sole objective failed. The Direct Charge tactic would require either an even faster straightline speed from White Glint, a heavier AC escort, or both."
"And how would you go about meeting those conditions?" asked Taiyang.
"Well, for the first, there's not much I can do, aside from groveling at Ruby's feet and hoping she can whip up another miracle for me. For the second, well…Beacon spread its defenders too thin."
Taiyang raised an eyebrow. "Elaborate."
Jaune shifted in his chair. "Well, sir, we tried to defend the entire city, and as a result, none of the Lances were in any shape to help me punch through and take the fight to the real threat. By trying to be strong everywhere, we ended up too weak to save any where."
"So, how would you deploy Beacon's forces in this scenario?"
"Well, sir, the thing about that Arms Fort is that, while it packs a real wallop, it isn't fast, and it really isn't subtle. Assuming that the enemy somehow managed to heft that thing across the sea or over the mountains to attack overland from Vacuo, it'd be pretty much impossible for us to not see it coming. That's a hell of a lot of crew to man that big bastard, let alone pilot all those ACs. If attempting to protect the city of Vale weakened our position, then we need to rely on our reconnaissance and espionage assets to alert us to its approach. We pick out a spot to intercept it, and then bring everything we can to try to take out the Arms Fort before it can target the city."
Taiyang nodded his agreement with the younger pilot's assessment. "You know, any sort of action against an enemy like that would cost a lot of lives. I noted how your tactical approach in the simulation would have left Dragon Lance in the wind, irrespective of your own success or failure."
Jaune winced. "Yeah…truthfully, I was kind of hoping you wouldn't bring that up." He fidgeted uncomfortably. "It's not something I would normally do, but…in that sort of situation? If the Arms Fort closed into range with Vale, everyone would have died anyway. At least with that order, it would have given Dragon Lance the opportunity to try and at least make it count against the bastards. We're all pilots of Beacon, sworn to defend our civilization against the Grimm, or against insurgents, or invaders, or…whatever else comes here looking for a fight, really. If it came down to protecting Dragon Lance or protecting the civilians of Vale?" Jaune looked up, meeting his captain's gaze. "If I somehow survived the battle, I'd be crushed afterwards. Destroyed. Every bit of my Valean soul hates to say it, but I would give that order if I absolutely had to."
The Captain's office was silent for a long moment, as Taiyang peered at him, his blue eyes somehow piercing. Finally, the older man nodded. "You should know, Director Ozpin has given me authorization to grant your commission, depending on how you performed today. With what I saw in the sim today, what I've seen these past months of training, and what I've seen just now, in this office? Well, we'll hold a brief ceremony tomorrow morning, but allow me to be the first to congratulate you…Lance-Lieutenant Arc."
Jaune stood, feeling vaguely dizzy at the realization of what just happened. Inheriting Crocea Mors had just been due to who his father was; his recruitment into Beacon was legally-dubious, half-assed at best, and done wholly out of desperation for more pilots. Even the White Glint was something that he piloted because something out there pulled the strings of Fate to make it happen. But this? Jaune had worked for his commission; he'd studied, and learned, and trained his ass off, and now his efforts had been recognized, a position earned wholly through his own merits.
He shook his mentor's hand, beaming from ear-to-ear.
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"That's the last of the server components installed," Ruby announced as she checked the list on her clipboard. On the floor-level work terminal of the AC formerly known as Crescent Rose, Weiss Schnee raised her hand in a thumbs-up gesture as she read a monitor.
Ruby picked up a silvery card off of the workbench, and brought it to an open slot in a sort of grey box that protruded from the AC's head. She inserted the card into the slot, and the box retracted into the inner workings of the computational array that now filled the AC head unit. She then activated the crane arms that lifted the head up to the rest of the repaired Armored Core that would be Penny's new body, and watched as microwelder arms began the process of solidly connecting the head to the core.
It had taken a long time for this moment, much longer than Ruby and Weiss would have liked. After her previous "body" had been destroyed by Adam Taurus, in his last-ditch attack on Vale, Penny had been largely "stuck" due to the damage to her computational array. She'd been unable to see or hear the world from Weiss's modified Scroll, nor was she able to manifest holographically. Still, even her much-limited perceptions and ability to interact with the world was, according to the AI girl, a great improvement over that terrifying period where she'd been left all alone, unable to see, hear, or perceive anything, or speak to anyone.
The project leads over in Atlas were extremely reluctant to ship the advanced computing and communications components that Penny needed for full functionality, and apparently, Director Ozpin's Atlesian counterpart had spent weeks arguing with them of the necessity for it. Finally, Ruby herself had broken the stalemate when she offered the remains of Crescent Rose to serve as Penny's new body. Ozpin had shrewdly worded it as a "technological exchange," bluntly namedropping her as the only known apprentice of Master Karasawa.
Well, Crescent Rose was pretty advanced, even if it was her pre-apprenticeship work. When she'd worked on piecing the poor machine back together, Ruby had been able to tell the difference from it and what she'd accomplished with the White Glint, truly seeing where Master Karasawa had been coming from with his harsh criticisms. She'd patched up the older machine as best she could, but it's armor was still nowhere near as good as the literal divine alloy that sheathed Jaune's Armored Core, and most critically of all, it lacked the fusion reactor.
The fusion heart that beat within the White Glint was magnificent, a towering triumph of both engineering and art…and totally unsuited for mass-production. That was where Weiss came in. The Schnee Power Company had been the leading engineers of fission generators for decades, with the floating city of Atlas the crown jewel of their collection. They had both the expertise and the infrastructure to make the mass production of fusion generators - the very heart and soul of what would be the Fourth Generation of Armored Cores - into a reality in a measure of years, not decades.
Weiss herself had been something of a revelation to Ruby. While she dearly loved her parents, Yang and Pyrrha, and her boyfriend, all of them, to a one, would do this thing where their eyes would grow distant and unfocused as she explained her world of physics, engineering, and material sciences to them. But Weiss was the only person even close to her own age who was able to follow along when Ruby felt the need to talk to someone about her vocation.
The two of them quickly became collaborators, and with the blessing of Ruby's parents and lawyers, who ensured that the SPC knew that there were projects of Ruby's that couldn't be owned by them and ensured she received both credit and a very nice percentage of the profits, they set out making scaled-down adaptations of some of Ruby's designs. The first project was the Motorcobra, the combination machine gun and sword that Jaune's White Glint carried. The production version had to have the activated plasma blade inset-edge stripped out, due to the insufficient power supply from conventional fission generators, but the end result was still a powerful and adaptable short-range mauler. Penny had opted to replace the sniper rifle that had been Crescent Rose's only ranged weapon with one, changing her new AC from a skirmisher into a ferocious close-up berserker.
Ruby was a little wistful to have given up her AC, but with the benefit of just a little more age and experience - and Master Karasawa verbally kicking her ass for a few months - she was able to see how, in that instance, her engineering ability had far outstripped her piloting ability. Penny, with her fiber optic reflexes and complete immunity to G-forces, would be able to use the machine to its fullest potential, in a way that Ruby herself never could. The maintenance division was placing bets on who would win between Penny and Jaune, and with both of their machines being her creations, Ruby's prestige as a designer, even one her age, was considerable.
Apparently, Weiss, as a gifted prodigy somewhat alienated from her peers, had also had a difficult time making friends growing up, something else that she and Ruby bonded over. And of course, one simply could not spend time around Penny without becoming her friend. It was just one of the Immutable Laws of the Universe. So it was that Penny had glomped onto Ruby, Ruby had glomped right back onto Penny, and then both of them had glomped onto Weiss, who was overwhelmingly glomp-able.
For the first time, Ruby had gone out and made friends, all on her own. Not Yang's friends, not people a few years older who worked for her dad, but her own friends.
General Ironwood had been thrilled to hear that his daughter was finally living something resembling a human life, what with making friends, forging connections with others, and exploring her interests. He had been decidedly less pleased to hear about how much time Weiss was spending in the company of a certain vagabond Mistrali pilot, which his wife teased him about endlessly.
"Okay Ruby, initiating generator activation!" Weiss called up from her workstation. Ruby, satisfied that the chip that contained Penny's Sapience Matrix was fully integrated into her new casing, made her way down to her Atlesian friend.
"Did it work?" she asked.
Weiss held up her Scroll. "Full array active in three…two…one…active!"
"Salutations!" For the first time in months, Penny's preferred holographic avatar - a redheaded girl in a green Atlesian dirndl - manifested over the screen of Weiss's Scroll. "Full operational capability restored! Oh, thank you, thank you, Friend Weiss, Friend Ruby! I am combat ready once more!"
Ruby smiled up at Penny's mechanized body. The former Crescent Rose had been repainted green and white - the AI girl had even switched the gas base for the plasma blade on the left arm, giving it a green color instead of red - and with the new paint job and Motorcobra machine gun, the newly-named Mechanical Sympathy had truly become Penny's new home.
She felt Weiss's hand on her shoulder. "Ruby…thank you." The white-haired Atlesian girl looked oddly embarrassed. "I truly don't know what I would have done had you not offered your help. The thought of poor Penny, trapped all alone in the dark…" If the heiress happened to wipe a tear from her eye, neither Ruby nor Penny were going to say anything about it. Then Weiss straightened up, the vulnerable sentimentality passed. "Should you ever wish to build your own personal Armored Core in the future, I will personally see to it that you have all the funding you'll need."
"Aww, shucks Weiss. You don't owe me anything. That's what you do for friends."
The imminent arrival of Ruby's boyfriend was foretold by the telltale giggling coming from Penny's hologram. Jaune looked a bit scruffy and disheveled, like he'd just come from the simulators, and he'd unzipped his pilot's suit a fair ways down, revealing the slight glisten of sweat on his chest. Without a word, he plucked Ruby off of the ground, giving her a spin as he held her.
"Jaune!" Ruby half-whined, half-giggled. "What's gotten into you?"
He set her down, giving her that bright, earnest smile that had her heart skipping in her chest. "I just got out of a meeting with your dad. They're going to announce it tomorrow, but you're now looking at Lance-Lieutenant Jaune Arc."
Ruby clapped her hands and squealed. "Oh, Jaune! I'm so proud of you!"
"Thanks. I was thinking I'd take the family out for dinner to celebrate. We'll go tell Pyrrha and then talk to Mom. Do you want to come with?"
"Do you think you could keep me away?"
"Congratulations, Lieutenant," Weiss said politely. "My sister spoke highly of you after that simulated mission you took together."
Jaune raised a brow, remembering just what the older Schnee daughter had said after his cyber-romp in the simulated version of his upgraded Crocea Mors, so that the Atlesian officer could weigh in on his capabilities, not those of the astonishing White Glint. At the end of the brutal slog that she had the barefaced gall to call "routine," Specialist Schnee had given her opinion on his abilities. "She called me 'a barely-adequate facsimile of a junior officer, if no one else is at hand.'"
"Believe it or not, that's high praise, by her standards," replied Weiss. "I'll have you know, neither myself nor our younger brother have risen beyond the ranks of Utter Dunce-dom. Be proud, Lieutenant Arc. Be proud."
He snorted in amusement. "Whelp, ladies, it's been fun, but I'm gonna go kidnap my girlfriend now." He swept Ruby off of her feet once more, engaging in the ever-so romantic act of hauling her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Say bye to your friends, Ruby!"
"Bye to your friends, Ruby!" chirped the absolute dork, as she waved happily to Weiss and Penny.
Life was good for Ruby Rose.
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Pyrrha refused to be afraid of her own brother's Armored Core.
It's not that she feared that Jaune would ever turn its bizarre guns on her in anger, in the real world - that'd be crazy - but rather, she was well aware of the score between them in their one-on-one duels.
He'd defeated her when they had piloted ACs of equal age and ability, but she still remembered how the first bout between them went. Even though she'd trounced him, he'd still put up as tenacious a fight as he could in the face of such an overwhelming technological disparity. Pyrrha's honor as a warrior would be shamed forever if she failed to do anything less.
With that said, she was fully prepared to get just outright crushed that day.
Ruby had truly outdone herself with the White Glint. Since they'd figured out the simulator program, Jaune had been using it in the regular training sessions that Dragon Lance held, and when they had their half-recreational duels, he'd been thoroughly trashing every challenger. He'd danced across the outer range of Weiss Schnee's FCS, luring her into firing her laser cannon array on a broken lock before rushing in and coring her machine with the plasma blade built into his weird machine gun. With Winter Schnee, he took the opposite approach, playing keep-away from her deadly Moonlight plasma blade with his superior aerial agility, and systematically disabling her boosters before sniping her from afar with his laser rifle.
With his duel against Cardin, the random arena selector had placed them aboard a carrier ship. Jaune had won by simple expediency of flying off and sinking the ship with strategically-placed laser blasts and a volley of missiles. Since Cardin's AC couldn't hover indefinitely the way the White Glint could, Winchester lost via simulated drowning.
Cardin was still salty about that.
Still, at least Jaune was polite about it, as he went about thrashing everyone who challenged him. He didn't brag about it, he rarely mentioned it afterwards, hell, he didn't even trashtalk. He just showed up, annihilated his opponent just as methodically as he possibly could, and then left.
Captain Xiao Long called it "professionalism." Apparently, while her baby brother Jaune could, and undoubtedly did giggle uncontrollably in private about thrashing his friends - she had it on good authority from Ruby that he'd laughed his ass off about sinking Cardin - Lieutenant Jaune Arc had to maintain a certain degree of stoic decorum among the pilots that he was expected to lead, at least until he'd established his authority comfortably.
It was all very strange, and when she'd asked Captain Xiao Long about why, exactly, he had to do such a thing, he merely grumbled about how long it had been since Dragon Lance had had a proper command staff. Apparently, it was the first time since the start of the White Fang Insurgency that Dragon Lance had its captain, an XO, and a sergeant all at the same time, and the experience of pretty much the entirety of the surviving members of the Lance had been atypical as a result.
The sudden rush of images across the screens of her simulator pod brought her attention back to the imminent thrashing that they called a duel, the computer program selecting the environment for the bout at random.
Why had she picked a fight with Jaune again?
Oh, right. Warrior's honor.
In retrospect, not a great idea.
The program selected the farmlands outside of the city as the environment for the bout. Well, at least she wouldn't be subjected to the swift and ignominious fate of being summarily dunked a la Cardin. As the pastoral fields sprung into existence around her, Pyrrha caught sight of her brother's Armored Core across the field. She couldn't help but sigh in appreciation of the machine's beautiful lines and gleaming alloy armor. Not for the first time, it occurred to Pyrrha that she really ought to suck up to Ruby if she wanted to be among the first on the list when they started turning out more Gen Four ACs.
She braced herself as the countdown began. Pyrrha didn't think she could win, but she figured she had a chance to at least put up a respectable fight against her brother and his insane AC. If he rushed her, she would fire her Karasawa low and well in front, and hopefully rip up some of that pretty armor in the splash damage. If he kept out of range, she could activate her Mirror plasma shield on her left arm, and negate enough damage to bring her plasma rifle and back-mounted chain gun to bear on him.
When the countdown finished, she snapped her Karasawa up to fire low in front that would -
With a sudden, sharp burst of white light, her screens went dark.
What?
What?!
Pyrrha refused to believe that any AC, even one as self-evidently advanced as White Glint, could casually one-shot her. That must be a glitch!
That's when she happened to notice that her radar screen display was still active. The simulation was still going, but she couldn't see! Which means…which means…he shot out her optics!
Her blood ran cold. Everyone knew about the fusion generator, the bizarre weapons, and the gleaming alloy. But what sort of equally-crazy support systems must that thing have to so effortlessly blind her?
She didn't believe for one moment that it had been a fluke, and her suspicion was confirmed a second later, as a brief shudder and jolt announced that her prized Karasawa plasma rifle had also just been slagged, leaving little, if any, damage to the arm of her AC itself. Her boosters were the next to go, followed by her mortar. The cookoff of her missiles threw her to the left, and the subsequent slagging of her chaingun and its ammunition overtaxed Argo's gyroscopic balance, sending her crashing to the ground.
Pyrrha's face went flush with outrage. This duel hadn't been a duel at all! It had been mere target practice, for him to train in disabling hostile ACs without destroying them! Oh, that was it! She keyed in the forfeit sequence to the simulator, and had begun extricating herself from the pod before it had even finished. She needed to go find her brother and throttle him to death, at least a few times.
She stormed into the hangar, where White Glint stood, only to be intercepted by Cardin, of all people.
"Get in line, Winchester. I've got first dibs."
Cardin rolled his eyes. "Shut it, Nikos. Lieutenant Arc's already gone."
"What? Why?"
"Because, Captain says we can't have you going off half-cocked on him. Regs and all, you know? 'Sides, it's not like he did anything to you that you didn't do to all of us, right?"
Pyrrha recoiled. "What?"
"Yeah, feeding rookies to you? You didn't have a problem with the tech disparity when you had the biggest, baddest gun around. It was funny, sure, but if you can dish it but not take it when it's your turn, well, kinda makes you a bit of a dick, yeah?"
That stopped Pyrrha cold. "Cardin Winchester thinks I'm being a dick. Wow. I just…that puts things into a whole new perspective, doesn't it?"
"Why does everyone say things like that?" whined Cardin.
"Because you're a dick."
Cardin thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. "Fair enough. Anyways, Arc gave me a note to give to you. See you 'round, Nikos."
Pyrrha took the note and read it.
My Dearest Sister,
Get wrecked, loser.
Love,
Jaune
P.S. If you simply must exact revenge, meet me for dinner at my quarters tonight, seven pm. Ruby and Yang will be there, to plead for your foolish brother's life on his behalf.
Pyrrha let out her frustration with a deep sigh. Cardin was right - it was unfair for her to complain and act out when the shoe was on the other foot.
She'd only murder her brother a little bit. For appearance's sake.
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Mercury hefted his duffle bag over his shoulder. It'd been a long trek - he couldn't exactly mosey into Vale in a stolen Haven Armored Core, after all - but he'd made it to Vale. He took in the city, the scorched forest beyond it, and the gleaming fortress on the hill that rose above it.
Beacon. The only source of possible resistance to Cinder's plan.
A little murder and mayhem would not go amiss, but Cinder had been absolutely clear that his priority was information, not chaos. He was to scout the current state of Vale's defenses - and judging by the state of their forest, Mercury put it as 'not very fucking good' - and report back.
Only then could the attack begin. Only then could he begin building the perfect world to give to Emerald.
The assassin smiled broadly. It was time to get to work.
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