Ch. 65 Burn until you can no more
Yang sat on the side of the bed with Pyrrha still asleep under the covers. She held a scroll in hand, finally deciding it was time to watch the message Ruby sent her.
On the screen, Ruby was sitting in the Signal comms centre, a place Yang was fairly familiar with.
"Hey Yang! So uh, I think by the time you get this message you should be in Mistral already… I hope Haven is treating you well, all four of you." she shuffled around awkwardly and checked the recording was working properly before continuing.
"Soooo… about why I'm recording this message… uh, you know how I said I'd go to Signal and continue from here? I uh… well I didn't really mean that…" she took a deep breath to centre herself and calm her emotions.
"I didn't want to hold you or the rest of my team back, but more importantly I was waiting for Jaune… my partner. I don't know what you and Pyrrha are like together, but to me? Jaune was the first real friend I had, probably ever… I told this to dad after you left for Haven, but truth is, none of my friends from Signal ever kept in touch with me… and the thought of returning here and having to rely on people who just… abandoned me? Not something I wanted to go through…
So… Jaune… he came back yesterday… or maybe it was earlier today? Anyway, he came back and…"
At this point Ruby touched the red metal peeking from underneath her cape and smiled.
"Well he did something very nice for me… I'll show you when we meet up eventually, but I think I'll keep the details a surprise for now.
Plus, you know me better than almost anyone else, I bet you can guess what would make me happy like this.
So this leads me to the last thing I wanted to tell you. We… we decided to help a few of our friends back to their feet and that means we'll be going to Atlas. By the time you receive this we should already be there since we'll be catching an Atlas military transport while helping them with something.
So please contact me when you get this. Mistral and Atlas should have regular contact through Argus, so the message should reach me in a few days.
Love you Yang, hear from you soon."
There were many parts of that message that stood out to Yang. She wanted to watch it together with everyone originally, but after Qrow informed her that Ruby was in Atlas and knew about the affliction she inherited from Amber… She felt betrayed at the time.
She felt angry that Ruby didn't tell her anything about going to Atlas.
Now that she heard the message? One sent before Ruby left Patch? She had some context.
Maybe even a few days ago Yang could have felt conflicted about just how much impact Jaune had on Ruby's life. But after yesterday? After she broke down in Pyrrha's arms? She got it… or she thought she did…
Yang needed to punch something. She needed to blow off some steam.
=O=O=O=
"So remind me, why am I here?" asked Weiss a little confused.
"You came with Winter." Ruby replied, as if that answered anything.
"Why is Winter here?" Weiss asked, resigned to let this play out.
"She's one of the few people that can accompany Jeremy out of his holding cell."
"So why is he here?" she had to actively stop herself from saying more. It would have been easy to be mean to the would-be-criminal, but after finding out what happened to him, she felt bad for him.
"...because neither me or Jaune knows enough about the reading equipment to calibrate everything properly." Ruby admitted, a little embarrassed about her lack of knowledge on the topic.
"It's Jaune or I. And what are you two doing again?"
"Testing a dust turbine powered mostly by Aura… you know the experimental metals we were working on in Beacon…" that was mostly the answer Weiss was looking for as no one actually told her what was happening today other than running some test. Well there was one question left unanswered.
"And I am here, why?" She asked the question perhaps a little harsher than she intended, her frustration with having to ask a second time seeping through.
"Weiss you don't have to be here, we just thought you'd be interested in the new dust tech we're developing… do you want to leave?" Ruby said dejectedly.
"What? I, no! I just thought I'd play a role in this you know…"
"Well, Jaune is one of the few people that can just power one of these on and run them for hours on end… he's really just going to stand there and keep an eye in his aura while the instruments do the rest…" There were some things left unsaid there but Winter interrupted before Weiss could say anything.
"Weiss just let it go… this sort of experimental tech usually doesn't allow people to observe critical testing." stressed Winter while Jeremiah honed in the calibration.
"I know, I know… it's just a bit… I don't know… I feel like I don't have a purpose here."
"Your purpose is to observe and help Whitley when the SDC needs to evaluate prospective business avenues regarding this tech. You did publicly declare you'd support him…"
Before Weiss could add anything Jeremiah called out the go ahead to Jaune and Ruby.
Jaune went ahead and placed his hand into the Aura conductor. The oversized stiff rubber glove was fitted with a fine mesh of platinum and gold wires connected to the small jet engine mounted in the testing rig.
While Jaune was technically in the same room as the engine, there were quite a few layers of protection between them both hard-light and physical and further layers of reinforced glass separating him from the others in the control room. As he pushed his Aura into the metal, he could feel his semblance responding to it. The engine started moving with a muffled roar.
A jet engine, it seemed, was already fairly close to a weapon. Maybe it was similar to a flamethrower or maybe just the capability to strip flesh from bone when fully spun up was enough. Jaune wouldn't know unless he forced the integration of his semblance, which he would be unable to do anyway since he didn't build this one, Ruby did.
Jaune was already building parts of his own jet rig, though the engine part was still subject to adjustments depending on this test.
The jet spun up fairly quickly as Jaune steadily increased the output. Soon the Air and Burn dust produced a white even laminar flame from the exhaust as the turbine reached its maximum speed.
Technically it could go faster but they would risk it tearing itself apart at that point so Jaune kept it just around the projected threshold of strain and watched the dust slowly consume itself from within the metal lattice.
The point of this was an endurance test. Jaune would be providing Aura for probably twelve or so hours before being switched out for a few hours to rest. Rinse and repeat until the engine gives out. Ruby estimated it would take about two or three days for failure to occur. This prototype was slightly upscaled from the first one, which Ruby used as proof of concept and then burned out on her own power. The estimate was based on a linear increase calculated from the dust amounts and standard burn durations of the loose dust.
If she was proven correct, large scale models could be built for further testing to determine use cases. Ideally, once they were installed on airships these would be crewed by several teams of people on rotation or at least used in tandem with existing engines to decrease fuel usage.
For now though, Ruby just kept an eye on Jaune's Aura gauge and the instrument readouts from the testing rig. This would take a while and they all knew it.
Soon Winter needed to return Jeremiah back to the holding cells, lest somebody make a fuss. Weiss tried to keep Ruby company with conversation but soon ran out of small talk and left in order to not distract Ruby from the research.
The test, despite the initial excitement, turned dull. With Jaune inside the test chamber they had to use the intercom to communicate and those communications were reserved for research critical information and recorded.
So Jaune quietly stood in the test chamber essentially meditating and Ruby was bored out of her mind as the readouts barely changed over the course of hours. It was exciting of course, in theory at least, to have her hypothesis confirmed in real time as the numbers followed the predicted pattern, but in truth Ruby was about ready to pull out of research for a while after this.
At heart Ruby was a huntress and all this sitting around was not something she enjoyed.
Jaune was soon lost in thought completely. As he got the hang of providing a steady stream of Aura to the engine he turned his thoughts to the half built bike and how freeing it will be once it's done.
Penny was incredibly helpful and as soon as she finished researching the hard-light wheels, she started making suggestions. The frame of the bike was now covered in script and several oversights Jaune made in the design were fixed or removed.
Unsurprisingly, having gone through the data on integrating Aura into mechanical body parts, Penny was also making efforts to come up with the script that would cover her newly rebuilt body. Her very bones would be inscribed in ancient Valean. She found it strange and debated Jaune on why it seemed to do anything but faced with empirical evidence she was happy to accept it as at worst unnecessary but ultimately not detrimental and at best being helpful.
Jaune thought about all this while tending the test engine. It was a long vigil but it was crucial to have as few swap outs that could affect the steady nature of the test. The engine was roaring with power even as the couple who made it grew increasingly bored.
=O=O=O=
When Yang entered the dojo, she was hit with the familiar and nostalgic smell of sweat. She had searched for a good while for a dojo that was huntsmen friendly. Eventually, after spending the early morning hours walking through the city and browsing on her scroll, she settled on this one.
The reviews were flooded with positive things by Haven students ever since they got kicked out of Haven. There were many who took the free time they found themselves with and threw it all into training. She even saw some names she recognised from the tournament.
Apparently the Dragon's Bonsai Dojo was originally a fairly small place for active huntsmen to come train at when in the city. After the recent closing of Haven though, many students found themselves searching for a decent place to continue training at and the owner, being a retired huntsman himself and quite displeased with what Lionheart was doing, was more than happy to accommodate. The dojo actually expanded recently, replacing a part of its dry landscape garden with more outdoor sparing rings.
"Well you're a new face around here, you look like a student though."
Yang was brought out of her thoughts by a girl behind the counter. She looked like she was either an academy student or fresh out of the academy. Her loosely worn Mistrali style clothing clearly showed off the physique of a trained huntress underneath and a sheathed shortsword hung prominently from her sash.
"Uh, yeah, just arrived from Vale a few days ago…"
The girl behind the counter winced before replying.
"Oh, well that must suck. Oh, uh, welcome to Dragon's Bonsai, if you were recommended I'd love to hear who from. We have a deal going for current Haven students since the school cancelled classes, and I'm sure we can figure something out for you too. The owner is keen on keeping the new huntsmen in shape."
"Right, well I wasn't recommended per say, but I recognised a few names from the reviews on your website…"
"Sure, just give me a name and I can give you a reference discount."
The smile she gave Yang was almost dazzling. Yang wasn't prepared for just how upbeat the clerk was this early in the day.
"Scarlet David? Our teams actually had a bit of a dispute at Beacon over the names being too similar…"
"A sun themed name? Yeah that happens a lot, you can only have so many teams with unique names really before you get some overlap." The clerk piped up in recognition while filling out some form before handing Yang the paper to fill out her info. "My team had a dispute over being ocean themed with a team of active huntsmen a few years older than us. We used to be team Deep blue, spelled DBLU. We didn't last past finishing Haven though, Dalia had a falling out with us so now we're just BLU. "
Yang looked over the form and started filling out the rest of it before replying "Yeah, our team split too. Two of us stayed behind in Vale, trying to help things there and two of us came here… Actually I think my partner might join me later, and the other's I travelled with might too."
The girl looked over the information Yang wrote down and her eyes widened.
"OH! …right of course team SWNY should have realised when you mentioned Scarlet's team, your partner is Pyrrha Nikos, I watched your team compete in the festival."
"Uh, yeah… listen I don't think she would like…"
"Oh don't worry, I get it, most of the people here won't care. She might get some stares at first but the students here are polite… you know cause they'll get kicked out if they're not."
She smiled menacingly as Yang pulled out a couple Lien to pay for the membership.
"Right… uh… is there a place that's… fireproof in here? My semblance can burn pretty hot when I get into it…"
"Oh sure, we don't allow the use of dust and such, but there are plenty like you. The second floor is entirely flame retardant so you can go wild there. Oh, and the new sparing arenas out back are just sand so unless you go throwing fireballs nothing should catch fire there either."
Yang was having trouble matching the huntresses upbeat attitude but still put on a strained smile and turned to walk further in.
"Thanks."
=O=O=O=
Ren and Nora sat in front of the TV. Oscar was still out cold, probably tired from both the long night and the long journey to Mistral. Qrow similarly was still asleep. Pyrrha was in the kitchenette, cooking up something for breakfast.
Yang was already gone by the time anyone else woke up, but since she left a note on Pyrrha's bedside table it was probably fine. Apparently she went looking for a gym to work out at, something Nora was very interested in once Pyrrha told her.
Now that the excitement of yesterday was over, Nora was finally tired of waiting for all of them to sit down and watch the messages together so she forced Ren to sit down with her and put on the message Ruby sent them.
"Hey there, Ren, Nora… So… this is actually the second time I'm recording this, but I messed up halfway through, so I recorded Yang's message first… I'm recording this right after that so if you're still together uhhh… well, I'm going to be repeating myself a bit.
So uh, Jaune arrived a few hours ago. Now I guess you two had some idea that he would… Oh he actually said "Hi" the first time around but I messed up that recording after shooing him away…
Anyway, he had a good reason to take this long to come back. It's a shame we didn't all go to Haven together… and I know I said I would stay at Signal but… yeah I was probably just waiting for Jaune to come back to me.
So now that I'm with Jaune we uh, we're planning to leave for Atlas! Jaune has figured out some things that could help Weiss back on her… feet… wow um, that one was not intended… All those years living with Yang and it's Jaune's sense of humour that does me in… There's also Penny and we're hoping to help her too… Oh shoot, should have mentioned that to Yang… can you tell her? I already sent her part of the message. Anyway we should be in Atlas by the time you arrive in Haven so contact me please?
I don't know how long we'll stay in Atlas but if all goes well I'd love to get the gang back together at some point. Even if you get assigned to a different team, you'll always be a part of team RNJR.
I know you can take care of yourselves, but maybe seek out the teams from Haven we met. Uhhh SSSN could probably use your help, I heard Sun went after Blake so they're down a member. Anyway I'm rambling.
Take care, hear from you soon.
Oh one last thing, if we miss each other on our travels either my dad or Jaune's family should be happy to host you until we come back to Vale. You know just in case the CCT gets even worse… Not being able to contact any of you or Jaune was… difficult.
Bye!"
=O=O=O=
Author's note:
First of all, I hope I managed to capture that same Ruby from fifteen chapters ago in the messages. Also I attempted to keep details consistent but still fit it into this chapter narratively. Other than that I guess Weisses straight man routine before the jet engine test may be a bit over the top for her but I thought it fit. Soon enough we'll be moving away from focusing on Atlas so if you've had enough of that, rejoice.
Personal life has been killing me as I really don't enjoy being cooped up and studying. My brain is so far gone that my most productive thoughts writing wise come to me while shopping, cause I can actually hear my thoughts then and not the drivel that passes for exam questions. Going on a date later today so hopefully that break from studying will get my brain back in working order.
But hey if you want to support me you can do so on P a treon . com (slash) OlympianScribe
Anyway I hope you enjoyed and are looking forward to the next chapter: Ch. 66 Ride with me