Jaune felt that he had been passing out a lot these days. First at the beach with the cube and most recently in front of the girl that he healed. Waking up the second time was in his opinion better this time. When he opened his eyes Jaune found himself lying in a rather old style hospital bed. A quick glance around revealed that he was in a cramped medical bay. It could fit perhaps ten patients at a time and was rather baren when it came to decoration. What caught him the most off guard was that the girl was sitting on a chair next to his bed, sound asleep.
She was wearing the same clothes as when he had found her only without the bloodstains and damage. Now that he was no longer panicking Jaune took the opportunity to study her. She was a rather beautiful woman in his eyes and it looked like she could be a huntress. Jaune wasn't an expert but after spending a month amongst hunters and huntresses he had gotten rather good at judging how strong most of his fellow students were. Even through the layers of clothes that some of them wore and this girl looked like she could give Nora a run for her money. At least that was his opinion.
Shifting around to get a better look at his surroundings Jaune found that the metal structure he had woken up with the first time was still on his back. Electing to ignore it he turned his attention back to the room around him and it wasn't long before he decided that he had enough of lying down and moved to stand up only to stop after his body erupted in pain causing all his muscles to seize. The closest thing he could compare it to was being set on fire. Soon the golden glow of his aura flickered into existence, working to counteract whatever was causing his pain. It was only a few moments later that the pain began to fade and Jaune's muscles relaxed.
Collapsing back into the bed with a quiet "oof" he lay still for a moment trying to recover from whatever his body had just gone through. Lifting up his hand to his face Jaune clenched and unclenched his hand several times. There wasn't anything wrong that he could tell was wrong other than some slight soreness throughout his whole body and the slightly off feeling of his aura. He could only describe the feeling as though his body was not only trying to reject his aura but that his reserves were also massively reduced.
He was pulled from his thoughts by the stirring of the girl sitting next to his bed. Looking over he was greeted with the sight of her stretching out her arms followed by a short yawn. Then she opened her eyes, meeting Jaune's own dark blue with her bright blue eyes. Surprise flashed across her face briefly before she schooled her face to a more neutral expression.
"Good, you're awake. I was hoping you could answer some of my questions." She spoke with a thick accent that Jaune had never heard before and he took a second to respond.
"Alright but I have some questions I want to ask as well." The girl was quiet for a moment before responding.
"Hmpf. I suppose that is fair. The first thing I want to know is what are you? You have a rig for a battleship but you only produce the profile of a human on my radar. Not only that but you are most definitely a male."
"What does being a man have to do with any of this? And who even are you?" Jaune had other questions but he couldn't stop himself from asking these two. He was rather offended that she seemed to think that him being a male was somehow wrong.
"The problem I have with you being a man is that all ships are female. You possess rigging which means you are a ship but you are not a girl. That is my problem with you. And my name is Tirpitz." Jaune had to admit her glare was intimidating but he still had had questions.
"What do you mean ship? How can someone be a ship?" Tirpitz frowned at that.
"You don't know about the Kansen?"
"What's a Kansen?" At this point Jaune was beginning to think this girl was crazy. Seriously, how could someone be a ship?
"We are weapons created to fight the threat of the Sirens after they pushed humans from the world's ocean." Jaune paused for a moment.
"By Sirens do you mean Grimm. Because that's the only threat humans as a whole face. I've never heard of a Siren before or of one of the kingdoms making a weapon that looks like a person." Shooting up to her feet, Tirpitz looked rather upset at this.
"I have no idea what Grimm are and what is this talk of kingdoms? Humans got rid of monarchies hundreds of years ago."
"What are you talking about? We only just got rid of them barely even a hundred years ago, not hundreds. We just still call them kingdoms because what else are we supposed to call them?"
"I don't know, just call them something else. It's misleading." slumping down into the bed Jaune let out a heavy sigh at this. He just didn't have the energy anymore.
"Fine whatever. Think what you like. I'm Jaune by the way."
"Jaune? Not Montana?" Looking up Jaune saw her pointing at his nametag.
"I'm not sure why my nametag says that. My name is Jaune." Tirpitz had a rather contemplative look as she thought about his words before offering a reason why it said Montana.
"Maybe it has to do with your class of ship." Jaune once again looked up at Tirpitz.
"My ship class?"
"Yes. My guess from the name and your rigging I'd say that you're a Montanna class battleship. An experimental design that Eagle Union created but never built."
"I still don't know what you mean by me being a ship. Or what rigging is."
"Your rigging is the structure on your back. If you want to know more about being a battleship try concentrating on your rigging. A picture of your blueprints. Letting you know what you are capable of." Jaune rolled his eyes at this, still not convinced but did what she said anyways. Closing his eyes he began to concentrate on his rigging. Slowly his senses started to expand. He could hear a faint pinging and soon he knew exactly how far away everything in the room was as well as its size. The guns began to rotate and elevate to follow a point in Jaune's mind. Then the blueprint appeared in his mind. Or rather blueprints. There were at least four of them. Ranging from 60,000 tons to 72,000 tons, from 880 feet long to 1,100 feet long, and various designs for the superstructure and gun layouts. The only things that remained the same were the number of main guns, the number of secondaries, the caliber of guns, and RADAR and fire control systems.
"Okay you're right. I'm a Montana class battleship. Great. *Sigh* I need a moment to think." Jaune stared up at the ceiling, not sure how to deal with this revelation.
"Come on, I want to show you something." Tirpitz said before standing up and began to walk away. Not having a better option Jaune got up to follow her. Soon they emerged out on deck somewhere amidships. He wasn't sure exactly where since it was night and the ships running lights were off. Tirpitz pointed up at the sky.
"The moon, why is it shattered?"
Jaune shrugged. "Not sure. It's been like that since anyone on Remnant can remember."
"Remnant. Huh"
Jaune shot her a sideways look. "Did you bring me out here to ask about the moon or what?" Tirpitz shook her head.
"No, I wanted to show you this." Suddenly the ship began to glow and after a brief second broke apart into thousands of glowing blue cubes. Jaune, deprived of a place to stand, fell down to the ocean but once he stood back up on the surface of the ocean and looked back at Tirpitz to see the cubes forming a rig on her back. 'Those cubes are just like the one I found on the beach.' Once the glow faded the rigging became clear. It looked like his own to Jaune only with one less gun per turret and with the addition of two quad torpedo mounts. Plus there were the mechanical shark heads beneath two of the turrets.
"That's actually really cool." Tirpitz smiled at Jaune's comment.
"You should be able to do the same just do what you did earlier by looking at your design."
"That may be a problem. When I looked at my design it was fluctuating between four different designs." Frowning, Tirpitz thought about what he said.
"You may be right but you should at least try." Jaune stood still for a few moments trying to change his rigging into a ship like Tirpitz said he could.
"I can't do it, sorry. It's just that the designs keep misaligning is the best way I can describe it and there's something else."
"What is it?"
"I'm not sure but something seems to be blocking the designs from aligning."
"I see. I've never heard of that happening before." There was a brief moment of silence before Tirpitz asked a question.
"What can you tell me about Remnant?" Jaune let out another heavy sigh.
"What do you want to know?" Tirpitz didn't even hesitate.
"Everything you can tell?"
"All right, fine. But can you bring the ship back? It's going to take a long time to tell you everything I can but I also want to know everything about wherever it is you come from." Tirpitz nodded.
"That sounds fair." For the next five hours Jaune was asked about everything from daily life to Grimm incursions into human territory. In turn Jaune asked Tirpitz everything about her world once it became clear that the only probable answer to her differing knowledge about the world was that she came from another world. Their conversion only died down once the sun peeked over the horizon, illuminating the ship's deck.
By Then Jaune knew quite a bit about Tirpitz. About her sister that she never met and her lonely station in the north to deter the Sirens from invading in force. Tirpitz learned a lot about Jaune as well. His seven sisters, his dream to become a hunter to protect people, and his seemingly doomed attempt to graduate from Beacon. After that comfortable silence settled over them for a few minutes before Tripitz offered Jaune a proposition.
"If you want to protect people I can train you to fight. As a Kansen you're already stronger than any human you come across. Arua may prove to be a problem but nothing that can't be overcome with training. Besides, if we do run into any more ships or Atlas. I do not want to answer to them and from what you tell me they will not take kindly to my refusal" Jaune didn't even hesitate.
"Alright let's do it. Besides, It'll give us something to do on our way back to Vale"
"We're going to Vale?"
"Yeah we'll need supplies soon and I have an idea about how we can deal with Atlas if they want to start something with us. But for that we need to head to Vale, there's someone there that I need to talk to."
"Okay I'll get us underway." Tirpitz started the engines and began to head toward the bridge leaving Jaune near the bow of the ship by himself. He stared off into the horizon trying to gather his thoughts before his search RADAR picked up another large object to the east somewhere over the horizon. Smiling Jaune ran to catch up to Tirpitz. They may just find themselves with another ally very soon.