Author's Note: This story isn't exactly my most cerebral work, but much like "A Drunken, Genderbent, Arkos Marriage," it's a lot of fun for me to get away from the horrible crap that consumes my thoughts all the time. Mental health break via silly giant robot story.
Also, shout-out to the Works in Progress Discord server, which is, apparently, home to a number of readers having a field day matching Armored Core design concepts to RWBY characters, which is part of what made me decide on using Armored Core as the tech base for my mecha AU instead of, say, Xenogears.
Even though in that game, you can Shoryuken a google-eyed T. Rex with a giant mech.
Like a boss.
Ideas for later. Anyways, here's Chapter 2.
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The walled fortress of Beacon consisted of numerous industrial-sized buildings clustered around the enormous Beacon Tower, which dominated the Vale skyline, an imposing edifice of concrete, steel, and large glass windows. Beacon served as the main hub for maintaining and deploying the Kingdom's contingent of Armored Cores, as well as housing the pilots and myriad mechanics, engineers, and technicians needed to keep a standing force of giant war machines in working order, it also served as the point defense for Grimm attempting to attack the city from the Emerald Forest, just as Bartholomew Oobleck maintained watch for Grimm attacking from the sea and Gil Arc held off Grimm from Forever Fall.
Or, at least….how Gil Arc had held off Grimm from Forever Fall. Jaune still refused to accept the possibility that his father may have succumbed to his heart attack, but even in the best-case scenario, it was readily apparent that his days of piloting Crocea Mors were over.
Jaune hoped his father wouldn't resent him for that. He gave his father a heart attack and then stole his AC out from under him. Truly, a glorious beginning to his career as a heroic defender of the people.
Once the procession of Armored Cores made its way into the gates of the compound, Taiyang took the lead, the weight of his massive mech causing shockwaves to reverberate through the ground with each thunderous step it took. "This way to the hangar where Crocea Mors is registered," he said by way of explanation.
Oh. It hadn't even occurred to Jaune that they would have designated hangar spaces for each unit, though once he considered it, it made sense. There could be dozens of Armored Cores held within Beacon at any given time, though to the best of his knowledge, it had never been filled to capacity before. Of course they would have some system to keep everything organized.
"Go to the space outlined in yellow," Taiyang told him as he entered the tall, reinforced hangar building. Sure enough, the spot reserved for Crocea Mors lit up on his HUD in yellow, and Jaune awkwardly walked the AC towards it. He….kind of didn't know how the docking procedure worked, actually. That was one of the boring parts that the 'AC Attack' arcade game skipped over in favor of pulse-pounding giant robot action.
Well, shit.
Jaune could only shrug helplessly and walk towards the gantry, figuring that if he did something truly wrong, someone would stop him. So he shuffled forwards, as much as a twenty-meter tall mech could shuffle, anyways, before stopping at the gantry and awkwardly rotating Crocea Mors in place, waiting to see what would happen next.
After a few seconds a voice came over the radio. "Uh, hey boss, you all right? You take a hit to the ol' noggin' or something? Take it out of combat mode already!"
He flushed in embarrassment, fumbling for a second before finding the same switch with which he'd activated combat mode in the first place.
"Combat Mode deactivated," buzzed the electronic voice of Crocea Mors' computer. "Switching to standby mode."
The central viewscreen scrolled system diagnostics before shutting down, leaving only a single red LED illuminating the inside of the cockpit as the Armored Core went to sleep. Taking that as his cue to get a move on, Jaune released the crossed-harness and crawled out of the seat, turning the release valve on the hatch to free himself from his father's AC. He blinked at the bright lights of the hangar before hauling himself through the hatch and onto the gantry.
A few feet away, an older rabbit Faunus man in a grease-stained blue jumpsuit, his ears protruding from the worn baseball cap he wore, blinked at him astonishment. "You….aren't Gil," he said, before shaking his head upon realizing how dumb that sounded.
Fortunately, Jaune was there to match him dumb-for-dumb. "I tagged in for him," he said lamely.
The mechanic's thick grey mustache quirked as the old man huffed in amusement. "Well, you're either a damn good hacker, or Gil set you as an authorized pilot. An' seein' as how Taiyang didn't shoot you dead, I'm guessin' it's the latter."
"Uh, yeah," Jaune quickly agreed, looking around at the hangar. There were numerous ACs lined up, with technicians and mechanics scurrying between them. The machines came in a wide variety of configurations and loadouts, including a massive heavy unit on full-on tank treads….that was also painted bright pink and grey. Shaking his head at that particular pilot's strange sense of aesthetics, Jaune focused on the mechanic. "My father, he….I think it was a heart attack. I need to go speak to Director Ozpin. Do you know where I need to go?"
"I've got you covered." The two men turned to see Taiyang himself walking towards them on the gantry. In person, he looked like he'd just stepped off the set of an action movie, being tall, tanned, and blonde, with a bit of roguish stubble on his chin. He wore a tan flight suit, and carried a helmet under an arm. He nodded to the Faunus mechanic. "Hey, Bugs. This is Gil's kid, Jaune. It's kind of a mess. Jaune, this is Peter Coney, but everyone calls him 'Bugs.' He's the head mechanic here at Beacon. Don't let the looks fool you, he's an important man here."
The mechanic chuckled ruefully. "I'm just a wrench jockey that doesn't know when to quit. I've been workin' with your pops for a long time, kid," he said, addressing Jaune. "Been keepin' the 'Yellow Pain in the Ass' runnin' since long before you were a glint in your old man's eye, so me an it are old friends. I'll take good care of it while you get things sorted out, okay?"
"Oh, um, sure," Jaune said. Then, remembering his manners, he added "Thank you, Mister Coney."
The mechanic waved him off, already unpacking some kind of diagnostic pack from a case he carried. "It's what I do, kid. And call me Bugs, everyone else does. Oh, and tell your dad that when he's feeling better, ol' Bugs is gonna have some words with him about what he did to those main boosters."
"Okay, I'll do that," he told the mechanic, feeling a little better at the man's inherent assumption that Gil Arc would recover enough to resume what was apparently a long-running argument between pilot and mechanic. He went ahead and joined Taiyang, who clapped a hand on his shoulder as they went down the stairs to the hangar floor.
"I know it's a rough situation, but one silver lining is that you're here at the same time as a whole bunch of new recruits," the older man told him. "It would be worse if you were the only new rook joining the force."
Jaune noticed a young woman in a bronze-colored flight suit, who had blood-red hair drawn into a bun at the nape of her neck. The woman was staring at him with piercing green eyes, looking at him like she'd seen a ghost before turning and walking away at a pace just shy of outright fleeing from him.
"That's Pyrrha Nikos, one of the younger pilots I was just talking about. She went on missions with your dad a few times, and always makes an effort to be in the hangar when he would swing by. I guess she was fangirling over him. Wouldn't be the first time."
Jaune shook his head as he turned away from the direction where the girl had fled. "That's a weird thought."
"Well, the old man's kind of a big deal," Tai said, shrugging philosophically.
[/]
A moment later, they approached an area of the hangar where the damaged Ember Celica had finally limped into position, with Crescent Rose next to it. A woman with black hair cut to a short bob, clad in a black and white flightsuit, stood before the Armored Cores, her arms crossed and tapping her foot impatiently. Next to Jaune, Taiyang suddenly got a lot more nervous.
"Er, hey babe," he said, leaving Jaune a few feet away in order to put his arm around the woman's waist. "Mission went well, we're all good."
The woman in question did not look happy. "Really, Tai? Their first live mission, and Yang's unit is crippled?"
"Aw, come on, Sum, it's just some servo damage," he said, trying to placate her. "She was doing her whole 'look at me' routine, and wasn't checking her six. Between the cost of fixing her AC's leg and the telling off Bugs is gonna give her, that should help the lesson sink in, in a way that a sim just can't teach."
Summer Rose turned her silvery gaze onto her husband. "Wasn't checking her six?" she echoed. "So you mean to say that you watched it happen and let her get hit on purpose?"
Tai winced at her tone. "While it's important that we protect our girls, that doesn't mean we can coddle them either, or else when we're not around, they'll really get in trouble."
The woman sighed. "I suppose you're right. I still don't like it. They're our girls, Tai."
While they were talking, Crescent Rose's pilot had made her way down the stairs to join her parents. Ruby wore a flightsuit similar to her mother's, save that instead of white accents, hers was in a rose red that matched the color of her Armored Core. Jaune thought that she was a tiny little thing, like a miniature version of her mother, save that her hair was a deep, dark red that was almost black, except for where it lightened towards the tips of her bob.
"Hi, Mom!" she chirped. "Our first mission went awesome! They were a herd of Armadons, and I got to swish them apart, all 'vroom-woom-vroom,'" Ruby pantomimed making broad slashes with her arm, obviously referring to her AC's plasma blade. "Then Yang got nerd-pwned for being a showoff, and oh, we met Jaune!" she finished, gesturing towards him.
At that, Summer turned to him, only just then realizing that a stranger was there the whole time. Ruby had gone to greet him, but had gone oddly quiet as she looked at him for the first time, staring up at him with huge silver eyes, her cheeks flushing slightly.
Jaune quirked an eyebrow at her odd expression. "Uh….hi?" he asked, awkwardly.
"Oh, wow," Ruby murmured. "You're….really tall, actually."
At six-two, Jaune was much taller than the average AC pilot, though given that his father was similarly tall, he hadn't had much trouble fitting into the cockpit of his Armored Core. He supposed he did kind of stand out in the hangar, though, between his height and the fact that, unlike the other pilots, who all wore flightsuits, Jaune was still dressed in casual jeans, sneakers, and his trusty Pumpkin Pete hoodie. He looked like some kid who fell into an AC's cockpit instead of a professional pilot….which, he admitted to himself, also made sense. Still, tall and short were relative, and he figured he'd point that out to the Rose girl.
"Well, how do you know that you're not just short?"
That seemed to break whatever weird spell had come over Ruby, especially since her parents shared a brief chuckle as Jaune had inadvertently hit on some kind of inside joke. Ruby glared up at him, with her fists clenched, cheeks puffed, and a little frown on her face. "I'm not short! I drink milk!"
Jaune blinked, confused again. "What?"
"It's something of a family joke," Summer said, putting her arms over her daughter to calm her down, while Ruby stuck her tongue out at Jaune.
"Wow, New Boy shows up and everyone just forgets about plain 'ol Yang, huh?"
Yang wore a flightsuit similar to her father's, only it was, well, rather tighter than what Jaune had seen Summer, Ruby, and Pyrrha wear. She was also struggling to pull a helmet off of her head, which caused her mother to sigh in resignation. The woman let go of Ruby and went to her older daughter.
"You need to let me cut it again," she said, clucking like a mother hen as she pried the helmet off of Yang, letting her thick, wild blonde hair escape from their protective prison.
"But mom," Yang whined as Summer set about untangling the mess that was her hair. "All my mystical, magical powers are stored in my hair!"
"You mean the mystical, magical powers of showing off for people instead of looking after your little sister?" Summer retorted.
"...Okay, when you put it like that, it does sound a little derpy," admitted Yang.
Jaune was torn between wanting to ask if they could hurry things along and not wanting to interfere with a family moment. Minor skirmish or not, the daughters had gone into combat. How would he have felt if someone had tried to hurry along one of those moments he'd spent listening to his father for the sake of expedience? Still, the uncertainty of not knowing his father's condition was weighing on him.
While it only took a minute or two, it felt like an eternity to Jaune as Summer swiftly set Yang's hair into two neat tails that rested on her chest. Her….er, prominent chest. Jaune quickly averted his eyes, but not before Yang had caught him looking. She sent him a violet wink, one that promised a great deal of mockery later.
"Oh, by the way," Yang said, her tone casual. "We're totally busting out New Boy here outta jail later."
"Wait, what?" Summer looked over to him again, confused.
Taiyang sighed. "This is Gil's son. Apparently Old Man Arc suffered a heart attack, and sent Jaune here out, unregistered, to hold off the Grimm until we arrived. Now Oz is being a dick about it, and is probably going to press-gang the kid here into service. He said he wasn't going to have him arrested, but still, it doesn't feel right."
"Oh, no!" Summer held a hand over her mouth. "How awful for you! I'm so sorry to hear about your father," she said to Jaune.
"Thanks, but I kinda really need to get to Ozpin and get this over with," he said.
"Is becoming an AC pilot something that you're okay with doing?" Summer asked. "If it isn't, we can stop him from drafting you. Make a fuss about it to the news, and we'll put up a huge political mess that he'll have to back down from. You've got more options here than you think."
Jaune gazed down at his shoes. "I'd always wanted to pilot an Armored Core one day. Just before….before the attack, I had argued with him again. He told me that he'd never wanted that life for me, that to have his children live in peace was all he wanted from his lifetime of service. And then he….just collapsed, and there was the Grimm, and Crocea Mors, and it's….I didn't want to kill my dad," he croaked. His vision swam, his sneakers becoming fuzzy and indistinct as tears welled in his eyes.
"Jaune…"
He looked up, blinking back the tears. Ruby hesitantly reached out before steeling her resolve and putting her hand on his shoulder. "Jaune….I know your father means a lot to you. But you shouldn't center your life choices around just what he wanted for you." She smiled brightly at him. "I mean, you taught yourself how to pilot an AC! On an arcade machine! That's amazing! And I think that if you brought that kind of drive to doing this for real, you could make a real difference here. But the question isn't what your dad wants, or what Ozpin wants, but if that's something that you want."
"She's not wrong," Tai added, pointedly picking up Ruby's hand and moving it off the boy's shoulder. "We'd have to polish the rough edges, sure, but I've seen worse from actual pilot school graduates. But whatever you decide, I think Summer and I should help go over any forms Oz wants you to sign."
Jaune reached up and wiped the tears away with the sleeve of hoodie. "I mean….thanks, but why do you care?"
"Huh?" Tai looked genuinely confused.
"I mean, I'm a stranger to you all. Why do you care what happens to me?"
"Well, you're an emotionally-compromised teenager, and we're not a pack of dicks."
Summer coughed meaningfully.
"And we're a family of conscientious people," Tai smoothly corrected, as if he'd not been interrupted at all. "The main point is, you need some responsible adults looking out for you, and if it were Yang or Ruby in your shoes, I know that I'd feel better if someone cared enough."
"I…." Jaune's shoulders slumped. "I guess I'm kind of a mess, huh?"
"Well, everyone's messy sometimes," said Summer, moving to stand next to her husband. "Okay girls, your father and I are going to help Jaune here get sorted out with Ozpin. We'll see about celebrating your first mission tomorrow. In the meantime, Yang, get that servo sorted out, and Ruby, try not to bother Mister Bugs too much, okay?"
"Got it!" Yang gave a two-finger salute.
"Bye, Jaune," Ruby said, oddly shy. "I hope everything works out okay."
"Thanks, Ruby," answered the boy. "Thank you. I know it's weird, but I think it will."
When their parents had left with the Arc boy in tow, Yang turned on her sister, violet eyes glittering with mischief. "I never thought I'd see the day," she said. "My baby sister, finally noticing….boys!" Yang pronounced the last word with exaggerated emphasis, placing the back of her hand against her forehead with great drama.
Ruby looked at her sister with great skepticism as she began walking towards the maintenance and repair console at the base of Ember Celica's gantry. "What are you talking about?"
"When's the last time you met an AC pilot and not pestered them to see their machine?"
Ruby tripped over her own feet, and would have hit the concrete hangar floor with a splat, had Yang not reached out and caught her.
"Falling already, huh?"
The younger sister winced at the pun. "Shut up, Yang. Besides, the only reason I didn't ask to see Crocea Mors was because it wasn't a good time!"
Yang gave her sister a flat expression. "Rubes, you were pestering Ren to get a good look at StormFlower while it was still on fire."
"That doesn't mean anything!" Ruby shook her head.
"Well, it means you've got a problem," Yang muttered.
"It's just….he seemed so sad, you know? Sad and lost, and I just….wanted to make him not sad and lost anymore," Ruby said, shrugging helplessly.
Yang gasped. "That's how it starts!"
"Huh?"
"The process. That's how it starts!" Yang's eyes were wide and glittering with mischievous joy. "Remember how Mom told us about how she and Dad really got together? A tall, blonde dorky guy was in distress, and she just flew into action! You must have inherited it from Mom!"
Ruby gave her sister a flat look. "Yang, that's dumb."
"That's not dumb; that's amore!" Yang crowed. She reached over and snatched up her little sister in a tight embrace, who flailed uselessly in her attempts to escape. "Don't worry, Rubes. With my expert assistance, you'll have landed your first boyfriend in no time flat. Plus, I caught him checking out the girls, so we know he's compatible that way, at least."
"He….he was checking you out?" Ruby asked, her tone low. She didn't know why it bothered her. They had just met Jaune, and of course he was going to look at Yang's bazoombas. The world was round, the sun rose and set, and guys looked at Yang's bazoombas. That was just the way of things. What was odd was that it had never bothered Ruby before. She had just shared laughs with Yang about how dumb boys were to be entraced by round bags of glandular fat. But for some reason, the idea of Jaune looking at Yang's bazoombas made her feel….anxious, and unhappy. She didn't like it.
Yang picked up on Ruby's distress, and tried to backpedal. "Aw, you know how it is. Boys are dumb that way, remember? I mean, looking at boobs is one thing, but you went and made him feel better, even when he still doesn't know about how his dad is doing. That's not the sort of thing a guy is just gonna forget, you know?"
The realization that she had eased some of Jaune's misery, even just a bit, made Ruby feel oddly warm and….nice. Like snuggling with a thick fur blanket, but on the inside.
"And she blushes!" Yang cheered victoriously. "It's official; I'm shippin' it. Don't worry, I'll teach you everything you need to know to land your man!"
"How would you know?" snarked Ruby, still blushing. "You make big dumb flirts, then run away everytime someone flirts back. Remember that time Pyrrha…." Ruby trailed off as a thought occurred to her. "Oh no…" she murmured.
"Rubes?" Yang looked at her sister, confused. "What's up?"
"Do you think Pyrrha saw him? Jaune, I mean?"
Yang blanched as she realized what Ruby was referring to. "I mean, she stalks Crocea Mors pretty hard, so I don't know why she wouldn't…."
"Okay, you get your own AC sorted out for a change," said Ruby, prying away from her sister, who finally let her go. "I'm going to go find Pyrrha."
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Director Ozpin stood before the large windows that dominated his office in the main Beacon Tower. From his vantage point, the rest of the Beacon fortress, and then the sprawling city of Vale stretched, from forest to forest, mountain to sea, millions of men, women, and children who relied on Beacon and its Armored Cores to live safe and prosperous lives. Vale had more than doubled, both in geographic size and population, since the debut of the first AC. Between that and the previous century of increased technological development, mankind had been able to firmly establish large, permanent city-states, instead of being divided into small, nomadic tribes and tiny, heavily-fortified settlements cowering in the shadow of their colossal oppressors.
It was important for Ozpin to take the time, on occasion, to really see it, to take in the visible evidence that the scheming, the sacrifices, and all the compromises were actually having an effect on the lives of the normal people of Remnant. He needed it.
He couldn't afford to hate himself more than he already did.
The Director sighed heavily as his secretary informed him that a boy calling himself Jaune Arc had arrived to see him. Just one more tick on the ledger.
When he heard the door to his office he lingered on the view for a moment before summoning his resolve.
The teenage boy in the jeans and hooded rabbit sweatshirt, looking like a lost puppy, was to be expected. What was not was that that lost puppy was flanked on either side by Summer Rose and Captain Xiao Long.
He cleared his throat. "You must be Jaune Arc, yes? And Miss Rose, Captain Xiao Long, what an unexpected surprise. I trust I will not need to summon security - again - Captain?"
"That depends entirely on what you've got to say to the kid here," Taiyang said, cheerfully pulling up a seat across from Ozpin's desk and casually popping his feet on the polished hardwood.
Ozpin frowned, partially at the flakes of dirt that crumbled off of Xiao Long's boots, but more that Summer wasn't restraining her husband's juvenile antics, meaning that, on some level, she was offended as well. He had no allies in this meeting. The Director opted to ignore the Captain's rudeness with considerable grace, recognizing it for the provocation that it was. "Mister Arc, would you care to sit down?"
"I'd rather get this done with as quickly as I can, so I can speak to my family, and learn about my father," the boy, Jaune, said, with a slight edge in his tone.
Ozpin remained unphased. No doubt they had spoken to the boy beforehand, got him to be more wary than someone so young and off-balance would ordinarily have been. No matter. "Well, if that is your wish, allow me to be blunt, Mister Arc. In exchange for absolving you of the criminal offense of unauthorized use of an Armored Core, I would see you recruited as a pilot of Beacon, dated to one day previous, so as to retroactively authorize the actions you took this night." He reached into a drawer of his desk and reached into it, pulling out some forms. "To that end, I've drafted these recruitment papers. All you need do is sign them, and you'll be free from legal jeopardy."
"I'm sure you won't mind if we give this a once over," Summer said, leaning over to pluck up the forms.
"The terms are all reasonable, I assure you."
"Mmm." Summer hummed as she scanned the forms. "Taiyang, my love, I fear my memory is failing me. If I recall correctly, the standard recruitment terms stipulate a service period of five years for a new recruit, yes?"
"Yep," drawled Tai.
"Well, there clearly must be an error," Summer said, with exaggerated innocence. "Because this would tie young Jaune here to the service of Vale for a period of no fewer than ten years!"
"Then people ask me, 'why is your relationship with your boss so strained, Tai?' And I'll be like, 'because of shit like this, hypothetical person who somehow knows about my work.'" Tai rolled his eyes. "I'm getting really fed up with this sorta thing, Ozpin."
"And what choice do I have?" Ozpin glared at the two AC pilots. "This entire city relies on the Armored Cores that deploy from Beacon, and those machines require pilots. We need more, especially as our first generation pilots age out of service. Peter Port has already tendered his resignation, and I imagine that Bartholomew Oobleck will be following suit in a few years. Clearly, this incident shows that there will need to be a retirement age set, so we don't have pilots keeling over and leaving fronts undefended."
"We just got a new batch of recruits not two weeks ago," protested Tai.
"And how many will still be active in five years? How many will be burnt out, discharged from injury, or dead? In the last two years, we lost Wolf Lance, in its entirety, Bear Lance, in its entirety, and half of Eagle Lance! Of the recruits we took on last year, all of exactly four are still fit for duty! We lost Glynda at Mountain Glenn! You lost her at Mountain Glenn!" Ozpin shook his head, visibly reining in his temper. "Perhaps if you, Captain Xiao Long, were a better instructor and officer, I would not need to resort to methods that you find distasteful."
Taiyang shot to his feet, clenching his fists. The room went very quiet, an oppressive, dangerous stillness.
When Taiyang spoke, his voice was low, and scarcely louder than a whisper. "If you tell me that you recruited my daughter, my fifteen year-old daughter, to punish me for Mountain Glenn, then you'd best call that security right now, because one of us won't be leaving this room alive."
"In a shocking turn of events, it turns out that the world does not, in fact, revolve around you," Ozpin shot back. "I recruited Ruby Rose when I did, in the way that I did, because her talents, as both a pilot and an engineer, are needed, and needed now." He looked to Jaune. "Let me be frank, Mister Arc. Had the events of this night happened three years ago, I would have concocted some legal fiction to extricate you from the judicial consequences. The truth is, we need Armored Core pilots, and we need them desperately. A young pilot, 'arcade-trained' though he may be, who can take an Armored Core into live action against the Grimm, and not only survive but actively slay two of their number, is a resource that Vale simply cannot do without."
Jaune looked between Taiyang and Ozpin, then at Summer, who returned his gaze with her large, silver eyes. They reminded him of Ruby, and the way the young girl had made such a disorienting, confusing matter so clear. She had told him to lead his life for its own sake, to do what he wanted with his time and talents. His father had never told him anything of the internal politics of Beacon, nor of the apparently heavy losses suffered amongst its pilots over the last few years. He recognized the name of Mountain Glenn, of course; it had been the site of his father's most crushing defeat, but that had been before Jaune had been born, while the argument between Taiyang and Ozpin made it sound as though something cataclysmic had gone down there, and much more recently.
In the end, none of that mattered. Ruby had been right. Here, he could make a difference. He was needed.
"You know," Jaune said wryly. "You could have opened with that, and saved us all a lot of yelling. Let's talk terms."
[/]
Pyrrha was unusually tall for an Armored Core pilot, standing a few inches taller than even Yang, who was also fairly tall. So it was with some amusement that passing technicians took in the sight of the statuesque young woman being outright hustled off by the much smaller Ruby Rose, who dragged her friend to an out-of-the-way corner of the compound's recreational center.
"Ruby? What is it?" Pyrrha asked the younger pilot.
"We need to talk," she said, the unusually-serious tone in the ordinarily bubbly girl's voice putting Pyrrha on notice that this was Serious Business. "You were watching Crocea Mors again, weren't you?"
Pyrrha flushed at having been caught, but her embarrassment was vastly dwarfed by her concern for its famous pilot. "Well….yes. I saw….well, it had a different pilot, a younger pilot. Is….is Mister Arc okay?"
Ruby sighed. "So, that younger pilot was his son, Jaune." She paused to let Pyrrha absorb that revelation.
"I….I guess it would make sense that he would have….children," Pyrrha finally said. "I mean, I knew he was married, and children kind of come with the package, most of the time."
"Right," said Ruby, nodding. She directed Pyrrha to a well-worn old couch nearby. "You, uh, you should sit for this," she suggested, resuming once her friend had sat down in the thick, soft cushions. "So, Mister Arc's son, Jaune, he said that his father sent him out in his stead because….because he suffered a heart attack."
Pyrrha raised her hand to her mouth in shock. "Is he….is he okay?" she gasped.
Ruby could only shrug helplessly. "He didn't know, and Director Ozpin made him come straight here."
The older girl frowned. "That was cruel of him."
"Yeah, he was making a big deal about the whole 'AC Authorization' thing. Yang's planning on busting him out if he gets thrown in jail."
Pyrrha looked at her hands. "I want to meet him," she said. "Did you see him in person? What was he like?"
Ruby chewed his lower lip. "Well, we only got to meet him for a short time, and he obviously wasn't in the best, you know, state then. Physically, he was tall, really tall, so you have that in common. He's got messy blonde hair, and these really deep blue eyes…." Ruby trailed off as she realized she was rambling.
"Uh-oh, is that the beginning of a crush I detect?"
"Not you too!" wailed Ruby. "Yang's being all weird about it, saying she 'ships' it. But anyways, as a person, he was able to hold off the Grimm and kill a few with Crocea Mors. His father obviously means a lot to him, so, you know, that….might be a thing. But he was obviously determined to protect the city, and was willing to face the consequences for it. I think….I think he'll be a dependable person."
Pyrrha smiled at the description. "Well, I'm glad to hear that he doesn't sound like a jerk."
"Yeah, but this is, like, a really bad time, so, you know…."
"I know," Pyrrha sighed.
"Hey, there you are!"
The redheads looked over to see Yang approaching them, waving her greeting.
"So, what did Bugs have to say?" Ruby asked her sister.
Yang coughed awkwardly. "Er, yeah, he threatened that if I blew another servo doing something so dumb again, he was going to make me drag the replacement part over to Ember Celica by hand."
"Doesn't that weigh, like, a ton?"
"Yeah. He said it would build character." Yang waved the question off. "That's minor, though. How much have you discussed about….you know, Pyrrha's deal?"
Ruby gave Pyrrha a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Well, we went over the heart attack, and I told her a little about Jaune."
"I think she's got the beginnings of a crush going on," Pyrrha immediately tattled on her younger friend.
"Why?!" Ruby wailed, as both Pyrrha and Yang smirked down at her. Gods, it was like having two evil big sisters instead of just the one!
"Well, we can torture Ruby later," Yang said. "The important thing is figuring out what to do. If you approach him, you'd better be damn sure, Pyr."
"I am," the taller redhead nodded. "In my mother's effects was a lock of his hair and the results of a paternity test. I don't just believe Gil Arc is my father, I have the evidence to prove it."
Yang shook her head. "No you don't."
Pyrrha blinked. "Um...yes I do? Remember the part with the evidence?"
"Look, a parent is….you know, someone who raises you, who does their damndest to make sure your needs are met, someone who guides you and loves you. Gil Arc isn't your father. All that that test proves is that he's the guy who blew his load inside your mom while he was married to another woman."
"Yang!" Ruby was horrified at Yang's horribly crass and callous way of describing Gil Arc's relationship to Pyrrha Nikos. She looked to Pyrrha, worried about her reaction, but to her surprise, the older girl didn't look like she was about to either burst into tears or else sock Yang in the snout.
Her emerald eyes glistened with unshed tears, but her jaw was set in determination. "I….I don't know what Gil Arc would have done if he'd known I'm his daughter. If he would have acknowledged me, accepted me, or if he would have tried to hide me away as a shameful secret. I never worked up the nerve to ask and now….he might be gone now. I might have lost my chance to find out. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but….I want to at least let Jaune know about me." She paused as a genuine smile spread on her face, and her tears began falling freely. "I have a brother," she whispered, in quiet awe of that fact. "I have a brother…."
Yang gathered her up in a tight embrace as Pyrrha was overwhelmed by the emotions running through her. She was anxious, wracked with dread about what the implications of her existence would mean for the Arc family, a family that she desperately wanted to include her, but she was also positively inundated with joy that she had a brother. He wasn't a hypothetical possible-sibling, but a real boy, with a face to put to an actual name. She wanted to know all about him, to hear what his voice sounded like, to learn his quirks and idiosyncrasies, maaaaaybe stomp him out in a virtual Armored Core duel and tease him about it, to have inside jokes and allusions that only the two of them understood, and to have the sort of close relationship that she saw her dear friends Yang and Ruby share.
Pyrrha had lost her mother at Mountain Glenn. She was afraid that she would be alone, but she had made friends, connected with people, and she was preparing to meet her brother - her family.
"I should be more worried, but I'm so happy right now," she confessed, enjoying the warmth and intimacy of Yang holding her tight against her.
[/]
Jaune was bone-tired when the taxi dropped him off at Vale General Hospital. A few discreet inquiries, and he found the ward where his father had been taken for treatment. The older sisters and their spouses had apparently taken charge of the younger ones, hustling them back to the Arc household during the long night. Still, his mother was there. When he saw the number he was looking for, he softly stepped inside.
His father was in a coma, an oxygen mask fitted to his face. The steady beeping of the heart monitor at least reassured Jaune that the old man was still alive, brought low though he may have been. His mother sat in a chair next to his bed, looking as though she'd aged a decade in just a few hours.
"Jaune!" She rose and hugged him close. "I'm so glad you're okay."
"I….you don't hate me?" Jaune asked.
"Hate you?" echoed Isabelle. "Jaune, you're my baby. I could never hate you."
"But I did this. It's my fault that Dad had his attack. If I hadn't upset him so much, if I hadn't argued with him…"
"Teenagers argue with their parents, Jaune." Isabelle reached up to cup his cheek. "That's just the way of things. It's just that your parents are older than most. If it hadn't been your argument, it would have been something else, especially if he crammed himself into that machine again."
Jaune winced. "Er, yeah….about that…."
Isabelle sighed. "You're officially a pilot with Beacon now, aren't you?"
"Yeah…." Jaune rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "In my defense, though, Dad's been keeping a lot of things quiet, especially about Beacon. They're in trouble, Mom. They've been taking pretty bad losses lately, and….well, it's not just about me wanting to do it anymore. Vale needs me."
His mother looked at him for a long moment, her gaze searching him, piercing his soul. "You're committed to this," she finally said. "When did you find this resolve?"
"Ruby helped me find it," replied Jaune, before he winced as he realized what he'd said, and more importantly, who he'd said it to.
Sure enough, Isabelle perked up at her son mentioning a girl's name. "Oh? Who's Ruby?"
Jaune looked away, coughing awkwardly into his fist. "Uh, just another AC pilot. The Lance-Captain's daughter. Well, one of them, anyway. She just, you know, helped me make sense of things. Is all. Really, it's no big deal."
"Uh-huh," she said, with a knowing smile.
"Oh, gods, Mom, really?" he muttered, exasperated.
"Well, it's not everyday my listless son goes off and comes back talking about a girl who apparently set his head right with just a pep talk."
"Well, today just happened to be a day where I watched my dad nearly die in front of me, then piloted a real Armored Core for the first time, then killed a couple Grimm before backup arrived, and then went to Beacon itself. Kind of a big day all around."
"I mean, when most boys come home telling a mother about a crush, they usually start with their eyes or hair, or….other features, but when mine gets chatty about a girl, he starts off with how she helped him through emotional turbulence," Isabelle mused, as if her son hadn't spoken at all.
"It's not a crush!" Jaune protested. "I just met a girl who was, you know, nice. That's it!"
"When are you going to invite her to dinner?"
Jaune just facepalmed, though he had to admit, now that he knew that his father was all right - well, he wasn't all right, but he wasn't dead, either - retreading the familiar routine with his mother was comforting, in its own way.
"Oh, uh, speaking of that," Jaune said. "I've kinda been assigned to quarters over at Beacon, so I'm going to have to stay there. Summer Rose - Ruby's mom - she's taking over Dad's watch over Forever Fall for the time being. I'm going to be getting my skills up to snuff for the next month or so. Fortunately, Captain Xiao Long says that they've just got more new recruits, so I shouldn't stick out too much. Well, for that, anyway. There might be some baggage because of, you know, Dad." He smiled down at his father. "You guys just focus on yourselves," he said to his mother. "The next time I visit Dad, I'll be the one telling him about the crazy adventures."
[/]
The next day, Jaune reported, bright and early, to the briefing room where he would be meeting his new teammates. Since he had already met Taiyang, and the man had shown such an interest in his well-being, Ozpin had assigned Jaune to work under his command, as part of Dragon Lance - a name that Jaune found to be both impossibly cool and impossibly nerdy at the same time.
He was wearing a flightsuit of his own now, mainly white with deep yellow accents at the sides and shoulders, not so dissimilar to what his father wore. He couldn't quite stop himself from smiling as he had left his new small, single-room apartment in Beacon Tower to go to the briefing room. He looked and felt like a real AC pilot now. The briefing room itself was fairly normal, with a large number of bleacher-style seats facing a small raised stage with its back to a large window showcasing the Vale skyline.
Jaune was one of the first to arrive, but not the first. He waved as he saw Ruby and Yang sitting in a corner towards the front, sitting with that strange redhaired girl that he'd glimpsed last night, and went over to say hello.
"Hey Jaune!" Ruby chirped, apparently a morning person. "How does it feel to start your first day at Beacon?"
He smiled at the girl. "Not bad, all things considered." Jaune turned to Pyrrha. "Hi. I don't think we've met. My name is Jaune, Jaune Arc."
The new girl looked oddly shy for some reason as she took his hand. "Um, hi. My name is Pyrrha. I'm very glad to meet you, Jaune." Jaune thought that that was a little weird, but he just chalked it down to her perhaps being an outgoing personality. The girl's bright smile dimmed a little. "The other girls told me about what happened with….with your father. I'm sorry to hear about it."
Jaune sighed. "Well, the good news is that he's alive. He's in a coma, but he's alive, and the doctors think that he has a good chance of pulling through."
"They do? That's wonderful news! I'm so happy to hear that!"
"Well, Taiyang - I mean, Captain Xiao Long - he mentioned that you had run a few missions with my father. Was he a mentor of yours?"
At that, Pyrrha's smile turned a little sad, a little wistful. "I had wished him to be, but there was only so much time that I had with him out there. Now, I suppose, his career is over, and when he recovers, he'll be looking to enjoy a well-earned retirement with….with his family. He was a very good teacher, though, and I listened to every word he had to say."
"That sounds familiar," Jaune chuckled. "I used to pester him for stories all the time. I guess I never knew how good I had it. They were all I had, really, but even just his stories and sayings gave me the foundation that I needed to train myself to pilot an AC. He never wanted his children to follow in his footsteps, you see."
Pyrrha blinked, looking genuinely stunned. "He….he didn't?"
Jaune shook his head ruefully. "Nope. But, it looks like that's happened anyway."
"Wow." Pyrrha looked like a slight breeze could knock her over. "I think I need a minute to process the irony here."
"I know right?" Jaune could only shrug. "Things just kind of worked out this way, I guess."
"Y-yeah," Pyrrha stammered. "Just destiny, I guess."
Their conversation came to a close as more pilots came filing in. What took Jaune by surprise was how young they were, the same age as himself, Yang, and Pyrrha. A tall, brown-haired man with shoulders so broad that Jaune honestly wondered how he fit inside an AC was the first, followed by a taciturn man in a green and white flightsuit, who was giving a piggyback ride, of all things, to a bubbly orange-haired girl who wore pink and gray - possibly the proud pilot of that garishly painted Armored Core that Jaune had noted the previous night. Finally, a cat Faunus - the only Faunus that Jaune had seen in a flightsuit so far - silently padded in, with an indigo suit and hair as black as a starless night.
"Whelp, looks like the gang's all here," announced Yang. "Let's go down the line. Big dude's Cardin Winchester. His AC can pack a wallop if you're not paying attention, but he's mostly bluster. The buddy act over there is Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie, and yes, they're pretty much always working as a team if they can help it. Nora's AC is the biggest one on the Lance, even bigger than Dad's, but it's slooooooow. Meanwhile, Ren's got a light little reverse-legged, which is good, because he hits and runs like a little chicken-wuss!" Yang picked up her voice at the end, making sure that the duo heard her.
"Aw, you're just butthurt because Ren gave you a good fingerblasting!" The orange haired girl shouted back from across the room.
Jaune sputtered as Nora's declaration got some ribald laughs from the room. "P-pardon?" he asked, his voice cracking.
They heard a very put-upon sigh as the boy, Lie Ren, made his way towards them, an entirely unrepentant Nora in tow. "Ah, a new recruit, I see. My name is Lie Ren, and this is Nora. Please forgive her. You see, my Armored Core is equipped with a five-barreled FINGER machine gun, to suit my skirmishing style, and Nora's enthusiasm for the name results in some….interesting euphemisms."
"Jaune Arc," he said by way of explanation, fighting the urge to sigh as he saw both of their faces express recognition. "Yes, that Arc. He's my dad. Anyways, what's this about, er, fighting Yang?"
"Oh, I bested her in the virtual arena the other day, and I fear she's still a bit….sore about it," he said, with just the barest hint of a smug grin on his face.
Yang snorted. "Yeah, well, come over here and say that, and we'll see whose butt is sore, mister."
"You could at least buy me dinner first," Ren sniffed.
Yang blinked, her smile fading. "Er….what?"
"Dinner. Generally customary for a date, since, after all, you intimated a desire for a lewd, and presumably in-depth exploration of my body. Or did you think I'm a cheap date?" Ren shook his head in mock sadness. "It hurts that you think so little of me."
The blonde girl took a step back, her cheeks aflame. "That's….that's not what I meant!"
Ren was preparing for another salvo of high-intensity snark-flirting, against which Yang had no defense, when she was saved by the timely arrival of her father onto the small raised platform at the front of the room. The room fell silent as cleared his throat.
"All right, Dragon Lance, here's today's scoop. Last night, Ruby Rose and Yang Xiao Long successfully carried out their first mission, protecting Vale from a herd of Armadons. The Grimm were all destroyed, but Ember Celica took some damage - a reminder to not get sloppy out there. Also, Gil Arc has finally retired due to medical reasons, and as a result, he passed on Crocea Mors - yes, that Crocea Mors, and yes, it's still functional - to his son. That son is the newest rook on Dragon Lance, Jaune. He's a little rough around the edges, but he held off the Grimm until we got there, so into Beacon he went. I'm sure you'll all have time to pester the holy hell out of him after the briefing, but for now, let's move on. Ren, Valkyrie, you're on watch today, gods help us all. If you've got to live-fire, all I ask is that you remember that there is a city in the immediate vicinity of the explosions."
Taiyang shook his head. "Moving on. Arc, we're putting you in a sim match against….oh, let's go with Nikos. Argo is a midweight generalist AC, kind of like Crocea Mors, so it will be a good test of both the machine and the pilot, help us get a read of where you're at. Belladonna, Winchester, I want you both in an anti-Grimm simulator - " he held up a hand to shut down the protests that came from both pilots. "Yeah, see, thing is, I don't particularly give a shit. You may not have noticed, but we're not exactly spoilt for choice here when it comes to pilots, and it's my job to keep the both of you pointing your guns at the Grimm, not each other. Every pilot in this Lance needs to be able to wing for every other pilot, and you two are going to learn to work as a team if I have to sic my wife on you to do it! Now, I don't want to hear another word from either of you that isn't 'yes, Captain,' understood?"
"...Fang whore," Cardin muttured.
"And congratulations, Winchester here just volunteered for KP duty for the next week. Shuck those potatoes, boy! Want to make it two?"
Winchester flushed angrily. "It's an insult, making us work with her. Don't you know what she's done?"
Taiyang pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm done arguing this with you, Winchester. There's only two ways this ends. You either fall in line, stay in line, and shut your mouth, or I throw you through this fucking window right now."
Cardin was silent.
"That's what I fucking thought." Tai sighed. "Right then, wrapping up. Xiao Long, report to the hangar and oversee repairs to your AC, then report to the sims. Rose, feel free to compile engineering reports on the machines, especially Crocea Mors. I want to know exactly what every Armored Core in our Lance is capable of, their strengths, and their weaknesses. All right, I want the first sim fired up at oh-eight-hundred. Until then, I'll be in my office, in case any of you need anything. Get to it, pilots."
With that, the Captain stepped back, sending one last glare in the direction of Winchester, and one towards Belladonna - just in case she got any ideas - and left the room, leaving his subordinates free to greet their new teammate.
[/]
An actual simulator used to train real AC pilots for combat kicked six different colors of crap out of the arcade machine. It looked and felt exactly as it had when Jaune had been seated in the real cockpit of the actual Crocea Mors. The viewscreens fired up, showing him the readout of his simulated AC's weapons and energy reserves, just like normal. They showed him the environment in which he'd be duelling against Pyrrha, in this case, downtown Vale. And they showed him his enemy, which stood across from him.
"Oh, shit!" Jaune blurted, causing laughter to break out at his expense.
It wasn't the build of Pyrrha's Armored Core that caused Jaune to break out in a mild panic - it was, as Taiyang had said, a fairly standard midweight bipedal build, not so dissimilar to Crocea Mors, albeit with more refined lines and an elegant, angular head atop a sharply-pointed core, all of which bore a gleaming bronze-like finish. No, it was the unmistakable shape of the weapon held in the mech's right hand that did it.
Nothing else in all the world looked like the infamous Karasawa Plasma Rifle. Each one was custom crafted by the eccentric AC parts designer Yasuyoshi Karasawa - only eight were known to exist in all the world, and only two were supposed to even be in the Kingdom of Vale at all. They fired powerful bursts of plasma that exploded on impact. If aimed carefully, a single shot could have taken out two, perhaps three of the Armadons that Jaune had fought the previous night.
"That's a Karasawa!" he shouted. "How does she have a freaking Karasawa!"
Pyrrha giggled over the radio. "I'm sorry!" she said, not sounding sorry one bit. "One of those missions that I went on with your father involved protecting a ship bound for Mistral, and I ended up actually saving it from an aquatic Grimm. Mister Karasawa himself happened to be on board, and he ended up making this for me."
Jaune gaped at her. "There's only supposed to be two in Vale! If you've got one, who has the other?"
"Oh, that would be our mom," Ruby cut in.
"Of course it is," Jaune muttered.
"Okay, okay, we've all had fun scaring the rook," said Taiyang.
Jaune relaxed. "Does that mean you're switching her loadout?" he asked hopefully.
"What? Hell no, we're just going to see how well you dodge it. Have fun!"
"Awwww, nerts."
"Starting match countdown," Taiyang announced.
As the sim counted down from five, Jaune prepared his first move. He knew that with heavy weapons held in the hand, they would be quicker tracking on the inside lines - in this case, to the left - than on the outside lines. On the other hand, if Pyrrha really had learned a bit from his dad, he was willing to bet that she knew that too, and would be preparing ahead of time to close off the outside line, expecting him to use his dad's knowledge.
So when the countdown ended and the match began, Jaune immediately hit his booster and skidded on the inside line, making a madcap break for cover behind a building. Sure enough, Pyrrha had thought to sneak off a quick shot at the beginning of the match, and the Karasawa's searing ball of white-hot, crackling plasma flew past him like a shooting star, crashing into a building behind him and sending the entire skyscraper collapsing in on itself.
Jaune didn't have time to linger on his success, as he kept wildly boost hopping in the air, juking directions and allowing himself to drop at random intervals to try and throw off Pyrrha's aim. He fired off with his own rifle, only occasionally hitting, the solid-shell rounds chipping away at the middleweight AC's armor plating.
It didn't help that she was being careful with her shots. The Karasawa was a devastating weapon, but its performance came with several downsides. The first was just the weight of hefting the damn thing. The second was that activating it put a severe drain on pretty much any generator that could fit inside an Armored Core. And finally, its plasma bursts were so intense that the Karasawa could only fire fifty shots before it required servicing, so if Jaune could provoke Pyrrha into either draining her reserves or burning out the rifle - or at least it's simulated counterpart - he could have a chance.
And then, as his AC hit the ground and skidded off to dash away from her, she decided to remind him that she had other toys to play with too. Pyrrha sent off a series of missiles at him, a salvo of six fired at once.
Jaune immediately knew what she was up to. If he juked away to dodge the missiles, she could lead him with her Karasawa. So instead, he dashed forwards, through the missile barrage. The simulator pod bounced and rocked to imitate the impact of a couple of missiles against Crocea Mors, but the AC held together, and Jaune made to attack Pyrrha head on.
She wasn't the only one who could sling plasma around.
He triggered the plasma blade in his left arm, swinging it down at Pyrrha's core, hoping to get a lucky direct kill shot.
The yellow blade was deflected by a broad dome of yellow plasma that emanated from the left arm of Pyrrha's AC.
"What?"
"That's….that's an energy shield, Jaune," Pyrrha answered, sounding bewildered that he was bewildered. "Didn't you know that we had these?"
While Jaune ruminated on that, he broke off his attack and dashed to Pyrrha's left, putting another building between himself and her AC as he regrouped. He was rapidly running out of options. He swung around into an attack run, zigzagging past another shot from Pyrrha's plasma rifle, which took out the building he'd been hiding behind, then set his FCS for missile fire of his own. He fired a pair of missiles at Argo, hoping that the impact would disorient Pyrrha enough to let him bring his blade back into play.
His hopes were dashed once more as a pair of small blue lasers fired out from Argo's Core, detonating both of his missiles with contemptuous ease.
"All right, what the hell?" he demanded. "Are you using the sim settings to help her?"
"What? Those are point defense lasers," Taiyang explained. "Pretty much every AC has those!"
"I, uh...I don't," Jaune said.
There was an awkward silence on the radio as they digested that information.
Jaune put up a good fight, but in the end, there just wasn't much that he could do. A lucky shot from Pyrrha's Karasawa blasted his entire left arm clean off. He broke into a sweat as the temperature in the pod skyrocketed, and warning alerts screamed uselessly at him. It was all he could do to keep his rifle lined up on her, blasting away until the bitter end. Her second shot filled his screen with white, the pod rocked violently, and then everything went pitch-black as the pod shut down entirely.
[/]
Taiyang let out a heavy puff as the simulated duel came to an end. "Well, what do you think?" he asked the members of his Lance, who had gathered to watch their new teammate take on one of their most skilled and devastating pilots.
"Well, in terms of pure piloting skill, he's actually quite talented," the Faunus girl, Blake, was the first to speak. "Fifty years ago, he probably would have been unstoppable."
"Yeah, but a lot's changed in those fifty years," Yang pointed out.
"I mean, I know it's an icon and all, but I'm pretty sure we can all agree that Crocea Mors needs to be put in a museum somewhere." Cardin crossed his arms. "He's going to get fucking buried if he goes up against Fang in that antique."
"There's just so many advancements that have been made since when his father began piloting," Nora added. "Did you see how he tanked Pyrrha's missiles back there? He had to do that, because he had no point defense lasers on his Core. Modern ACs use multi-missiles specifically to overwhelm those defenses, but with that ancient FCS and just two small missiles launched at a time, he might as well have been throwing spitballs."
"I'm kind of shocked he lasted as long as he did," said Ren.
Blake looked at him. "Like I said, his skills are there, but that machine is holding him back."
"You've been quiet, Rubes," Tai remarked. "Lien for your thoughts?"
Ruby frowned as she went over the technical data on an electronic tablet. "A machine, any machine, will only be able to function beyond its original purpose so far. Crocea Mors wasn't made to duel other ACs, because there weren't any others back then. It was designed to fight Grimm all on its lonesome, and it did that." Ruby stood and began pacing. "First, I need an inventory of parts that are compatible with it. This is a first gen, after all, and many of the parts made for its contemporaries aren't even in production anymore. I might have to custom-make specific components."
The girl tapped a stylus against the tablet. "I want to start with the generator, see if I can give him a little more output to play with. He needs something that will hit harder than that basic rifle that he has. We may not be able to affix multi-missiles to it, but we can at least try to coax that old launcher to let him fire more than just two at a time. That means stripping out the FCS and putting in a new one, which…." Ruby winced as she imagined just how antiquated the electronics in the head of a half-century old Armored Core must be. "Yeah…." she muttered. "If we can upgrade the head, or even switch it out altogether, we can ditch that back radar unit, which would free up space for another weapon. I….kinda don't know what to do about missile interception, though."
Tai patted her on the shoulder. "So, draw up your plans, and talk them over with Arc and Bugs. When you've all got something workable, bring it to me, and I'll take it to the Director to get what you need." He paused as he considered the scope of the task at hand. "Honestly, it may be cheaper just to buy an all-new AC at that point."
"Well, I'll do my best to breathe some life into the old girl," Ruby said. "I think of it as...a challenge."
[/]
Jaune was surprised to find that Pyrrha was genuinely apologetic as she met him on the way to Captain Xiao Long's office.
"I'm sorry for overdoing it," she said, her shoulders slightly hunched, as if expecting him to yell at her. "I just, you know, I get too into it. Virtual duelling is one of my favorite things to do, and I just, you know….crush my enemies."
Once again, Jaune was a bit confused by her odd behavior. It was like she really, really wanted him to like her for some reason. But why?
Oh. Ohhh. Pyrrha probably thought he was attractive. Oh gods, his mother was going to have a field day with this. Jaune bet that if she knew that there would be so many young women interested in him as an AC pilot, she would have dragged him to pilot school, no matter what his father had had to say on the matter.
Still, Pyrrha was nice enough, and while he wasn't sure that she was necessarily girlfriend material, being nice in return cost him nothing, and would probably make her day.
"Well, you did what you were told to do," he reassured her. "Besides, your AC is really impressive. Did you design it yourself?"
"I did, though the parts are all mass-produced," she admitted. "I'm not like Ruby, but then, who is? Don't you think she's talented?"
He blinked. Where did this come from? Was she trying to scope out the competition? Well, when in doubt, just be honest. "Of course I think she's talented," he said. "I've never seen anything like Crescent Rose before, and she designed and built it from the ground up. She's a genius."
Pyrrha giggled next to him. "I bet she'd really like to hear you say that. It may not seem like it, but she has a hard time making friends."
"Really? But she's just so...positive. You'd think everyone would enjoy being around her."
For some reason, that just made Pyrrha smile happily at him. Jaune was really confused at that point. Was Pyrrha trying to flirt with him, or trying to set him up with Ruby? If it was the latter, than why did she seem to care so much that he like her? Or was she somehow trying to subtly manipulate him into seeing Ruby as a friend and only a friend?
Why were women so complicated?
For her part, Pyrrha was thrilled. So far, she was getting along great with her newly-discovered brother. He was polite and respectful, a determined and damned slippery pilot - she hadn't had that much fun in a duel in a while - and seemed to think highly of the people around him, especially her best friend. She hummed happily as she imagined how he'd react to her telling him her secret, admitting that it made sense, since they'd been like siblings from the beginning, and they'd go and tease Ruby and Yang together, and argue over whether or not bringing a Karasawa into a sim duel constituted cheating, and then someday, he would go with her to talk to their father about her, and she would have the family that she'd been longing for since her mother's death.
Jaune heard her start to hum happily to herself, and gave a mental shrug. If he had to get stalked by one of his dad's crazed fangirls, at least she was both agreeable and easy on the eyes.
The pair came to a halt in front of Captain Xiao Long's office. Jaune knocked on the door.
"Come in," Tai called to them, shutting down a flatscreen monitor that had a map of Vale on it. "Ah, good to see you two. Good fight in the sims. Pyr, you were pants-shittingly terrifying, as always. Jaune, don't get too worked up over losing - feeding newbies to Pyrrha is kind of a pastime around here. Actually, that's something I wanted to discuss with you, Arc." He leaned back in his chair. "The whole Lance is actually pretty impressed with your piloting, kid, and I gotta say that I agree with them. That was a pretty big disparity between your two machines, and that's the rub. Ruby put it this way; Crocea Mors was designed to fight the Grimm, all on its own, fifty years ago. It wasn't made to fight other AC's because there weren't any."
Jaune frowned. "Are we expecting to fight many ACs, sir?"
"Kid, we're expecting to fight pretty much everything, up to and including the gods themselves, if we have to. But I can confirm that there are hostile factions in control of Armored Core technology, of which the White Fang is only one. So, here's the deal. I'm guessing you don't wanna die, which is good, because I don't want to be the one to have to go to your mom and tell her that I got you killed piloting an antique. What I want you to do is to work with Ruby and Bugs to come up with modernization upgrades to your machine. When you've got that sorted out, I'll go to Oz, and he'll either authorize the requisition of those parts, or see about getting you a new AC altogether." Taiyang spread his arms. "Sky's the limit when it comes to building Armored Cores, kid. What makes them great." He turned to the terminal on his desk and typed a few commands into the keyboard. A few seconds later, a pair of lists appeared on Pyrrha and Jaune's Scrolls.
"Data readouts from your duel," he explained. "You can use it to see where you might need fine-tuning. There's also one more important figure you should read."
"Projected Death Toll?!" Jaune asked, having found the final statistic on the match readout.
Taiyang nodded, his expression deadly serious. "Mostly from the buildings that collapsed due to missed shots."
"I…." Jaune glared down at his Scroll like it betrayed him. "You know, it was a duel between ACs, in the middle of downtown Vale. Of course there were going to be casualties!"
"You're right, of course," Tai agreed. "Thing is, we can't always choose where we fight, and the day may come when you really might be brawling through a city. When that day comes, you're going to have to make some hard choices, but no matter what you decide, they can't be easy choices. Never forget that real people live and die by the choices that we make. This isn't a game."
[/]
Chapter Endnotes: You ever decide, "Hey, I'mma write a dumb giant robot story!" and then add, like 8k words of characterization and exposition? Pretty much by accident? Yeah, that's what happened here.
Gil Arc lives. When his wife discovered that he'd cheated on her, he may wish he hadn't.
Pyrrha's AC is the Zio Matrix Aethermaster, the Cover AC from Armored Core 2.
The Motherfuckin' Karasawa. The game actually labeled it as a 'laser rifle,' which is the most baldfaced lie I've ever seen in my life. It acts nothing like a laser in game, so I called it a plasma rifle. The Motherfuckin' Karasawa was just a beast of a gun that could just savage ACs.
The FINGER was another hilariously OP weapon in old-school Armored Core. Like, holy crap, it would rip through even the heaviest ACs like they were made of wet tissue paper. 'Fingerblasted' indeed.
The 'four recruits who were the only survivors from their year's batch of rookies' constitute CFVY. Fun fact, I literally forgot about them until one of my friends messaged me to ask what kind of designs I had for their ACs. Even now, I'm kind of contemplating their designs. I think for Velvet, we'll go with a four-legged, with lots and lots of pulse weaponry. Maybe. Don't quote me on that if it changes, I'm still workshopping them.
Weiss is serving in Atlas, with her sister. Don't worry, she'll show up.
Okay, less character drama and exposition, more giant robot action for the next chapter.
Mahina