Reacting: Reign of Steel

by Helghy

A reaction/reading fic of MahinaFable's Reign of Steel. Make sure to check out the original as well as their other great stories over on their page.

4. Chapter 4

Sorry for the long wait. Finally getting back into the swing of things so expect more activity for my content.

Another big thanks to MahinaFable for allowing me to make this reaction for their story, Reign of Steel remains one of my favorite stories to read and I really wish any and all of you reading this to go give it a read. Even if you have, read it again. It's worth it.

Onward to the story.

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Taiyang Xiao Long held his wife closely, kissing her bare shoulders as they lay together in her bed. Summer giggled as he tickled her along her ribs, knowing just where to tease after sixteen years of marriage. "Tai!" she gasped after he planted a kiss on her neck. "You're being so affectionate tonight," she murmured. "Is something wrong?"

"No!" Ruby screamed in horror.

"We can't watch this!" Yang joined her sister.

The others all blushed and did their best to avoid staring at the screen. Even Cardin knew better than to eye up the couple enjoying their time with one another.

"Oh please. We're covered up in the sheets. You kids aren't getting a free show that easily." Summer said with a roll of her eyes while Tai snorted at his wife's reaction.

Even Qrow averted his eyes, catching Glynda doing the same. Ozpin simply chuckled at the reactions of the others remembering times with his own past lovers.

Cardin for his part wisely stayed silent and looked anywhere but at the beautiful woman and her husband. That wasn't something he wanted to even tempt himself into glancing at. He wasn't suicidal.

Tai hummed into the soft skin of her neck. "Something happened at work today. We didn't lose anyone," he said quickly, to assure her that it wasn't anything too serious. "It's just a pretty shocking development anyway."

"What? Did the Director announce that today was the first annual 'get nekkid with your wife' day?"

"Mom, no…" Ruby whined pathetically.

"If I had my way, that would be every day," he growled into her ear.

"Down boy," she said, playfully booping him on the nose with her finger. "Focus."

"It's like they're still teenagers." Qrow grunted out.

"It's a bit wholesome honestly." Glynda commented.

Taiyang sighed. "Right. So, this afternoon, Pyrrha Nikos came into my office, and dropped a bomb."

"Did she do the whole 'let me ask permission to date your daughter' routine?" Summer rolled her eyes. "A bit old-fashioned, but not really surprising."

The champion in question blushed a deeper red than her hair and let out a long suffering whine sound. "Why is that always the first thought?"

"Are you against it?" Yang asked with a half-lidded look.

Pyrrha stammered briefly and found that she couldn't look at the other girl. There was far too much embarrassment, both from the positioning of the couple presented to them, and the idea of her and Yang being an item.

Cardin looked around at the various members of the group as Yang prodded at Pyrrha. Just to try and see if he was the only one that wished he could be a fly on the wall for that.

Nora sank an elbow into the large boy's side in a surprisingly subtle maneuver that reminded him to behave. His face was just a bit too expressive to get by with those dirty thoughts about her friends.

"I thought the same thing, but nope. Turns out ol' Gil Arc was fuckin' around on his wife, and Pyrrha was the result. Explains why she was always so fixated on him."

Pyrrha's embarrassment drained away as much of the playful atmosphere drained away. She felt a bit ill thinking about her other's life and circumstances.

Before she could sink very far into that though she felt a pair of hands settle onto her. The larger hand of her partner on her shoulder squeezed lightly to remind her she wasn't alone, while the smaller but just as comforting hand of Ruby took her hand.

"What?!" Summer looked over her shoulder at her husband, silver eyes wide. "That's…"

"Shocking, I know. I mean, I could barely believe it, and I had two DNA tests to prove it. Pyrrha had one, and then I had the lab run a test with Jaune's blood sample."

Summer Rose was quiet for a long moment.

"Sum? What is it?"

The audience felt dread seep over them. Jaune felt like he wanted to shout at his father, or rather his alternate reality father. The emotions were disturbing but after a few breaths he recollected himself and tried to cling to the reminder that his father, the real one was actually an honest man who hadn't run around on his wife.

A single worrisome thought did remain though. Was his father honest and loyal because he was truly honest and loyal in their reality or had he simply lacked the opportunities of his alternate father.

She turned around to face him directly. "You remember back when Gil Arc taught us how to pilot an Armored Core? Well, there were times, when we were alone in the simulators, where he made...passes at me. He suggested that there were things he could teach me that would make me a better pilot, if I would attend 'special' lessons. In his office."

"What?!" Taiyang sat upright staring at her. He quickly did some math in his head. "Summer, we couldn't have been more than, what, seventeen?!"

"Yeah...it was creepy."

"Putting it lightly." Qrow practically snarled. The thought of someone pulling something like that on Summer or gods forbid his nieces had some murderous feelings rearing their head in Qrow's head.

"That kind of thing should be illegal, right?" Cardin asked, surprising most of the others.

"What? Come on don't tell me my reputation is that bad!" He shouted when he noticed them staring at him.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Who would have believed me? I was just a dumb girl from Patch, and he was The Hero of Vale! Even if they had believed me, would anyone have cared?"

"I would have cared!"

"You were still caught up in Raven," Summer huffed, crossing her arms.

"Shit." Taiyang bit out, clearly angry with himself but the squeezing embrace of his beloved wife at least dampened the awkwardly guilty feelings he felt regarding his first wife.

Tai sighed. "Okay, maybe I was too dumb at the time to go for the obviously better woman, but I was always your friend, Sum." He laid back down behind her, wrapping his arms back around her still-slender body. "I'm sorry Old Man Arc was a creep, Summer. And I'm sorry I made you feel like you couldn't come to me for help."

"I actually went to Raven. She told him that if he ever bothered either of us with that crap again, she'd cram his junk into a blender. Had her bandit sword and everything." Summer slowly relaxed in the embrace of her husband. "I just feel so sorry for poor Pyrrha. And Jaune...gods, poor Missus Arc! I met her today, when I dropped off Shooting Star at their hangar. She seemed like a nice little old lady…"

"My mom is, but she's also tough." Jaune said confidently.

"With as many kids as she has, I think she kinda has to be." Blake pointed out.

"The woman is a legend…can you imagine that many?" Yang asked, causing her teammates to shiver, though Ruby seemed a little less appalled by the thought and Pyrrha looked simply dreamy.

"I gave Pyrrha the choice of whether or not to tell Jaune. She decided that she should at least let him know. I don't know if they're going to tell the rest of their family, but I'm guessing probably." He kissed her bare shoulder again. "So I guess, after hearing all that, I just really needed to come love on you. I just...you know I would never do anything like what Arc did, right?"

Summer simply grinned at her husband. To most it looked like a loving smile. Both Qrow and Tai say a bit straighter at the look on the woman's face though.

Summer smiled sweetly at him. Too sweetly. "Oh, I know. Because I know that you know that if you ever cheated on me, I'd kill you. And if you ever abused your rank or position to cheat on me with the young girls in your Lance, I'd kill you slow."

"Fair." Tai said swiftly, getting a few chuckles from the younger kids.

Tai relaxed. A Summer that was playfully making over-the-top death threats was a Summer who wasn't really angry, at least not at him. It was when Summer got quiet and moody that there was a real problem.

"And not just a normal killing," Summer rambled on. "But a full-on murder-death-kill. They'd air video of it as a warning example for husbands everywhere to know not to cheat on their wives. And I'd get the girls involved, so they could kill you too. Ruby would probably invent an all-new method to kill you, resurrect you, and then kill you again. Especially if it was with Raven," Summer added bitterly.

Tai fought to keep from rolling his eyes at the grudge his second wife bore for his first. Deep down, Summer was always a little worried that one day, Raven Branwen would come back for the husband and daughter she'd abandoned, and worse, they would choose her. After all, Tai had already chosen Raven over her once before...That fear of hers persisted, even after she and her husband had sat their daughters down and explained the truth of Yang's biological parentage. Yang had shrugged it off, at least superficially, and commented that she didn't need to go chasing after some murderous bandit bitch who had already abandoned her, when she already had the best mom in the world.

Yang withered a bit and shrank down into her seat. She wished she could care so little about her biological mother. It wasn't so easy to abandon even the most childish desires though.

Thankfully her team and family were nearby to ground her.

Summer may have cried at that. A little. She simply adored her Sunny Little Dragon, just as much as the daughter that she had actually borne from her own body, and didn't know what she would have done if Yang had rejected her as her mother. That was just the kind of woman she was, with an open heart made to love people. If Pyrrha had been effectively orphaned even a year earlier, Summer would have been hell-bent on adopting her too; as it was, she had settled for taking the younger woman under her wing as a sort of protege, and the three teenage girls were close - though the dynamic between Yang and her friend Pyrrha was a bit different from that between the two sisters, or between Pyrrha and Ruby.

Pyrrha glanced at the woman who smiled brightly toward her. Maybe they could get to know one another. After all Pyrrha seemed like she was friends with her girls and Summer wouldn't mind mentoring an up and coming Huntress. Especially one that seemed as purely good as Pyrrha was.

"You know I'm never going to leave you," Tai soothed his wife. "Especially not for her. You're a better wife than she could ever dream of being, and Raven was never a mother at all. You've been the best mom in the world, and Yang knows it. A murdering bandit who already abandoned her could never offer her even a fraction of what you've given her every day for her whole life."

"True." Yang said softly as she let Summer pull her all but into her seat with her.

She sighed. "I know. I just...I don't want anything to happen to our family."

"It won't," he promised. "I'd never do anything to risk everything that we've built together. I love our life. I love our family. And I love you, Summer Rose."

"I know, Tai. But still…"

"Still?" he asked.

Summer frowned.

"Do you think Gil Arc told his wife the same thing?"

"Maybe, but he's got nothing on me." Tai grinned.

Summer scoffed but smiled back at her husband happily.

He held her closely. "I'm not Gil Arc. And I'm going to prove it to you, every day, for the rest of our lives."

Summer turned and snuggled into his chest, before a thought occurred to her and she began making little cackles to herself.

"Uh-oh." Tai kissed the top of her head. "That's your diabolical laugh. Should I be worried?"

His wife reached around him and planted a hand on each muscular buttock, giving her husband's rear a hearty squeeze. "I claim this butt in the name of Summer Rose," she declared, her tone lofty. "No birds allowed."

"So that's where it came from." Jaune said as he blushed and glanced at Ruby.

The girl practically felt her cheeks catch fire at the boy's innocent statement.

"Oh gods," Tai chuckled. "Has anyone ever told you that you're a goof?"

"Only you. And that's a biased source, so I ignore it."

"Fair enough."

Summer snuggled happily against him. "I love you, Taiyang Xiao Long."

"That was super sweet, but I hope we never witness it again." Yang commented.

"Seconded!" Ruby announced.

"I don't think that is how it works ladies." Ozpin chuckled before sipping at his drink once more.

[/]

Jaune looked at the stranger that was his father. He was laying still in the hospital bed, just as he had left him, and his mother, having only left his side briefly when her other children had basically dragged her off to shower, eat, and get a few hours of sleep. It looked just as it had the previous evening, before everything he thought he'd known about his family was shattered.

Several members of the audience grimaced but Jaune remained stock still as he stared forward at the image of his bedridden father.

He couldn't argue the evidence. Two different medical facilities, from two different Kingdoms, separated by seventeen years, and with DNA samples from both his father and himself, had pointed towards the same conclusion. Pyrrha Nikos was his half-sister.

If she'd been older, it would have been easier to accept his father's actions as a youthful fling, from his wild youth long before his parents had been married. But no, Pyrrha was the same age that he was - actually a few months younger. Gil Arc had had an affair with Pyrrha's mother when his own mother was pregnant. With him. He didn't know why, exactly, it made it so much worse, but it did.

Then he saw his mother lovingly rest her hand on the old man's brow, and he knew why. While growing up, Jaune had always taken his mother for granted, flourishing under her watchful gaze while dreaming of one day growing up to be just like his father. Isabelle Arc had been an attentive mother to all of their many, many children, seeing to their needs while her husband had travelled the world, teaching students how to pilot the Armored Cores.

"It seems cruel. Such a betrayal." Ren said sadly.

"It is cruel. It's horrible." Nora said while glancing at her beloved teammates.

Students like Ceres Nikos.

Jaune felt his fist clench of its own accord. Pyrrha had lost her mother at Mountain Glenn, two years previous, and according to her, she had only been thirty-three years old at the time of her death. A thirty-three year old woman left behind a fifteen-year old daughter, and basic arithmetic made it readily apparent that Ceres had been young when she had conceived Pyrrha with Gil Arc. She'd been an adult, but only barely, while his father had been in his early fifties. He had been her instructor, an international hero, and she had been barely older than Yang.

"It's worse than just cheating on my mom. He's a predator. He, he, I don't know what to even think of him." Jaune grumbled.

"We aren't our parents though, Jaune. Remember that." Weiss suddenly spoke up catching the boy off guard.

"Those aren't your parents either, Mister Arc. Remember that." Glynda also pointed out.

It was legal, but it didn't make it right. He shook his head. For as long as he could remember, "what would Dad do?" had been the quick, easy-to-consider solution to pretty much any problem, whether that was a question of ethics or of practicality. But the implications of Pyrrha's paternity made it clear that, in this instance, his father's actions clashed wildly against something innate within Jaune, an inborn sense of right and wrong.

The odds of his conservative, traditional mother - who kept trying to arrange a marriage for her son, despite him telling her that people his age simply didn't do that - agreeing to a more unconventional marital arrangement were remote, to say the very least. Her objection to Saphron's relationship with Terra hadn't been that her daughter had fallen for another woman, but that she had been intimate with her before marriage, nagging her daughter to 'put a ring on that poor girl' for two years until they'd finally tied the knot. And Jaune knew that there was no way in hell that his mother would have signed off on his father being involved with someone so young. All signs pointed to deceit and infidelity from his father.

"Jaune, your mom is adorable." Blake pointed out.

"Uh thanks?" He said before realizing the girl was trying to distract him a bit.

"Thanks." He said again. He and Blake didn't interact much but really she was another of his friends and he appreciated it.

And his poor mother had no idea.

"Hey, Mom," he said, gently wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Jaune didn't have the faintest idea what to even say. He couldn't just blurt it out, not now. For her sake, Jaune would have to hold off telling her about Pyrrha until his father was fully-recovered, and some semblance of normalcy had reestablished itself in the Arc family. He didn't want to go two-for-two in giving his parents heart attacks.

"Even now you are guilting yourself, kid. Not your fault." Qrow said before clicking his mouth shut as his colleagues, practically the entirety of the elder generation present gave him meaningful looks.

But one day he would tell her. Her and all of his other sisters. They all deserved to know the truth, and Pyrrha deserved some sort of certainty as to whether the rest of her biological family would accept her. Even if the rest of them rejected her, Jaune swore that he would be her family. Sure, the Xiao Long family had been there for her - because that's just the sort of people they were - but to have been rejected by her father and his family would wound her deeply. Everyone deserved a family; his father said -

Jaune shook his head quickly, even violently. He was done taking his father's words and sayings as absolute certainties. It didn't matter what Gil Arc would have said about the situation; Jaune Arc wasn't going to leave his newfound sister all alone, because that's the sort of man that he was going to be. And that sort of man was the sort who would go to his mother and comfort her as best he could.

"Your family is a treasure, Taiyang, Summer." Ozpin said seriously to his old friends.

The couple smiled softly. They were quite proud of their others for being there for Pyrrha when she needed them.

"You impress me, Mister Arc. Glynda said with the gentlest smile the students had yet seen on her face. Seeing him comfort his mother and so readily stand by his sister was inspiring.

"Oh, Jaune," Isabelle said, taking in the sight of him in his Beacon flight suit. "You look so much like your father."

"Oof." Yang commented before getting elbowed in the ribs by all three of her teammates causing her to flinch slightly.

He tried not to wince.

"Let's sit down and talk for a bit," he said, guiding her to some chairs that stood on the opposite side of the room. "It's okay. Dad will...he'll still be there." Jaune helped his mother into a recliner that some kind soul had dragged into the room for her. "There's a hot drink dispenser down the hall. Would you like some tea?"

"Oh, that sounds lovely," the Arc matron said, smiling gratefully at him. "What a polite young man I've raised."

"Yes she did. She raised you right clearly." Weiss somehow made her praise sound incredibly earnest and haughty in equal measure.

After a moment, Jaune returned, with a pair of cups filled with soothing hot tea, and handed one to his mother before sitting in a decidedly-less comfortable plastic chair next to her. "So, I got to know some of my fellow pilots today," he started off.

"That's good. Remember, strangers are just friends you haven't met yet."

"That's what you told me your mom says! It's like a callback." Ruby nearly squealed, causing some of the others to jump a bit at the sudden burst of energy.

"Heh yeah I guess that was one of the first things I said to you, wasn't it?" Jaune scratched at the back of his head.

"Well after all the corny stuff about your name…" Ruby teased playfully.

"And sometimes, even more than that," Jaune murmured wearily, thinking of his newly-revealed sister.

Isabelle smiled at her son. "Just so. Especially any adorable, surprisingly insightful mechanic girls that my son swears he isn't interested in, but can't keep from talking about?"

Some people grinned quite happily at that question, some with a blush. A couple frowned pretty deeply though.

"What? No, Mom, we went on some simulators - like the arcade, only, you know, completely awesome. I did...okay," he said, deciding not to worry her by saying that his long-lost half-sister blasted him to pixellated smithereens. "The Captain says that there are areas I need to work on, obviously, but I'll be working hard to make sure that I'm up to par as quickly as possible. I'm also going to be retooling Crocea Mors." He hesitated, before deciding that giving his mother some hope for his future would help her feel more optimistic when they eventually broke the news to her. "I...kinda spent all afternoon with Ruby, going over my AC with a fine-tooth comb."

She smiled at him again. "Well, there's that name again. All afternoon, hmm?"

"Oh gods." Jaune groaned at the look of his alternate mother's face. Though he completely missed the rapid glances Ruby was sending him from his side.

Pyrrha however didn't, but her slightly grown slowly shifted into a pained smile. Ruby and Jaune could be great together, and she could be quite happy as the best partner that Jaune could ask for.

Jaune blushed. "It's not like that," he said. "She really is a genius. Has all sorts of ideas on how to retrofit parts from Gen 2s onto the ol' heap. She even volunteered to help with the rewiring that we'll need to do to get everything working, and that's apparently going to be just a huge pain in the butt to do."

"So it's just your appreciation for her mechanical skills that put that little smile on your face, hmm?"

He was startled to discover that he had been smiling as he recalled the time he'd spent with Ruby. "I mean...she's just nice to be around, you know? It's not just that she knows her stuff, but she's just so...excited to be doing what she's doing. She's just so enthusiastic about her work, and she has a way of making it so that you can't help being excited about it too."

"Ruby there is the same as Ruby here. Why knew." Jaune chuckled before shooting a smile toward her. He couldn't avoid his confused feelings getting splayed out in front of everyone like a show so he might as well own them.

"Mmhmm," Isabelle hummed, knowingly. "You know, I met her mother today."

"You did?" he asked, surprised.

"I did. Since she's taking over the watch over Forever Fall, she's stored her machine in your father's hangar. I made sure to thank her for her and her husband looking after you with Beacon. Apparently, you've made quite the impression yourself, young man."

Jaune glanced towards Summer.

"All good things so far." The woman reassured him with kind expression.

"Oh...kay?" Jaune replied, confused. "I haven't really done anything, though. I've just tried to do the best I can."

"Lovely woman, that Summer Rose, and such a beautiful family too," remarked Isabelle. "She showed me pictures of her own children, of course. You know, that Ruby girl is cute now, but when she grows up, she's going to be strikingly beautiful."

"Oh gods, Mom…"

Weiss giggled. She kind of wished her own mother was more like Isabelle Arc. She was clearly traditional Atlesian to her core but she didn't cling to any of the cold indifference that had infected and ruined her own family.

"What? When you know what to look for, you can just tell these things. You know, Miss Rose would probably be on-board for -"

"Mom!" Jaune pinched the bridge of his nose, then sighed. "Mom, we've been over this. People these days don't do arranged marriages anymore. It isn't...it isn't modern, you know?" He paused as he considered further. "Well, maybe they still do up in Mantle. But we're here in Vale."

"Yeah…I'm not about to agree to arrangements." Tai said flatly.

Isabelle's expression fell. "I...I know. I guess I'm just too much of an old fossil."

"Mom," Jaune sighed softly. "She always means the best but things are a lot different here in Vale, especially from when she was out age."

"Even more so in that world. It seems like things have changed even more rapidly for that Remnant than our own." Ozpin pointed out.

"Mom," Jaune reached out to her, feeling like just the worst son in the world.

"I only ever wanted the best for you, and your sisters," she said, smiling sadly. "My mother arranged for me to marry your father when we were young. There was so much that we put off while he performed his work, and by the time you and your sisters were born...well, the world we knew was gone, and a whole new one had sprung up in its place. I just...I just want to care for my babies, but everything I learned in the old world doesn't work anymore in yours…" Isabelle trailed off, looking truly despondent and hopeless.

Jaune appreciated that his friends didn't say anything at the moment. He felt sour with the thought that his actual mother might feel the same.

He couldn't wait to be done with this so that he could call his parents. He wanted to reaffirm that his father was in fact a good man unlike his alternate self, and he wanted to do something to remind his mom that she was appreciated for everything she had done for him and his sisters.

Jaune stood and embraced his mother. "Mom...I know that you're doing your best. I just...look, even if Summer and Taiyang were willing to arrange a marriage for their daughter, that's the sort of weight of expectation that neither of us need. It's like...you know you can overwater a garden, right? Sometimes, you need to step back and give it enough space." He hesitated, then decided to press on. "I can tell you that if I had to make a list of girls that I could see myself with, Ruby Rose would be at the top. And I promise that if anything does come of it, I'll let you know right away." Jaune smiled ruefully. "I'll even sit there and listen to you tell me that you told me so all along."

Isabelle sighed. "Okay. If that's what you say that you need, then that's what I'll do." She smiled, wiped her eyes, and patted his cheek. "You are a good boy, Jaune. Your father and I have always been proud of you."

Jaune forced himself to smile past the wrench in his heart. "I try."

"It's a heartbreaking but love filled scene. I don't want to see this family hurting." Summer muttered quietly to her husband.

"Our others will help somehow. I know we will." Taiyang responded quietly but with complete conviction.

[/]

Dragon Lance, in all their ragged glory, met once more for their daily briefing. Jaune waved as he saw his new sister with Yang and Ruby, and made to join them. "Hey, how is everyone this morning?"

Pyrrha smiled nervously. "Just so you're aware, Ruby and Yang know. I had told them about, you know, my paternity, because I needed to tell someone, and then you came into the picture so…."

Jaune groaned, and pinched the bridge of his nose, sitting down in a chair with a hard thump. "Well, I guess it makes sense."

Ruby patter Pyrrha's hand pleasantly. She actually kind of liked the idea of another pseudo sister. It seemed that she and Pyrrha were close like that in the other world.

"Please don't be mad," Ruby pleaded with him. "Her mom died and she was all alone. She needed people she could rely on. You don't know how much time she's spent agonizing over not wanting to hurt your family."

Several of the audience members frowned or winced at that. Pyrrha had been through some hard times. At least she had Yang, Ruby, and their parents there to help her.

Jaune sighed, letting go of his irritation and reminding himself that none of this was Pyrrha's fault. "Well, nothing to be done now," Jaune said. "So, that's you, me," he said, indicating himself and Pyrrha, "Ruby, Yang, and Captain Xiao Long who know for sure," he said.

"And odds are, Dad told Mom about it," added Yang. "Probably either before or after canoodling. Probably both."

"Ugh, other me, don't say that crap." Yang whined.

"It seems that other Yang growing up around her parents still being together made a few changes. Small ones." Ren pointed out.

"So cause she grew up with mom still around she is chill with the thought of her mom and dad…the thing." Yang hissed.

"The fact that this bothers you so much is probably the best part of this entire affair.

"Oh, ew, Yang!" Ruby protested.

"What?"

"I don't want to hear about Mom and Dad canoodling!"

"And Ruby is Ruby." Jaune laughed happily.

The girl in question shifted a bit but smiled at the thought.

Lance-Captain Xiao Long, who had just entered the room, immediately turned back around and left, entirely unheeded. "Nope. This is going to be a 'not before my coffee' kind of day, I can just tell."

"Wise choice." All of his colleagues replied.

"You do, of course, realize that at some point, Pyrrha and I are going to have to challenge you and Yang to a duel, right?" Jaune pointed out to Ruby.

Yang scoffed. "Please. My little sister is way better than your little brother," she said to Pyrrha.

"I'm older though." Jaune commented.

"Hush Jaune, Yang thinks she can beat us." Pyrrha said with a competitive smirk shot toward the blonde.

"Pyrrha…she can easily beat me. I am still new to this remember?"

Pyrrha blinked before huffing out an annoyed sigh at the look of satisfaction on Yang's face. It was adorable but she needed to find a way to wipe that superior smirk off pronto.

Wallflower she might be but Pyrrha hadn't stumbled into being a grand champion without being extremely competitive.

"Actually, I'm older," Jaune pointed out.

"Well, my little brother stood up longer to me than you did, Yang," retorted Pyrrha, sticking her tongue out. Yang got into the challenge, staring down her friend.

"No, seriously. We compared birthdays. She was born a few months after I was. That, you know, that makes me the older one."

"You need to drop it, trust me. They won't listen." Qrow said with a sigh.

"I've been piloting longer. That makes me the big sister," replied Pyrrha, still locking gazes with Yang, neither girl backing down.

"No it doesn't!" protested Jaune. "That's not how time works!"

"I have a Karasawa. Your argument is invalid."

The audience began to crack up as the conversation spiraled into nonsense.

"No it isn't!"

"Yes, it is! I am imbued with Big Sister Energy by it."

"Prove it!"

Pyrrha and Yang both turned the gazes on him at the same time. Ruby yelped and hid behind his chair, while Jaune was inexplicably filled with the urge to go to his room and make sure that he didn't have any homework left undone.

"...point proven," he eventually conceded.

"That isn't fair." Jaune whined.

"What the hell even was that?" Cardin asked, stunned.

The rest of the pilots soon began filing in, though Cardin appeared strangely subdued. The Lance-Captain reappeared with a truly massive mug of coffee in hand.

"Is it me, or does your dad look worn out?" Jaune muttered to Ruby.

"Oh, Mom must have canoodled with him, like Yang said. Poor guy's all tuckered out."

"Don't say anything, just move on." Ruby said with a sigh.

"This is kinda surreal." Yang added in.

Taiyang took a long draw from his coffee, then looked out over the motley collection of heavily-armed lunatic teenagers of which he was in charge.

"All right, let's get this shitshow on the road. So, yesterday, an incursion from Leviathans was stopped in its tracks by the combined efforts of Bartholomew Oobleck and our own buddy act over there. I know it's bizarre that there were two attacks so close to one another, but as they came from different directions, the Director believes it to just be a coincidence. Still, the Grimm were swiftly and unceremoniously FUBAR'd, and without any collateral damage of note this time, so good work, Valkyrie and Ren."

Taiyang paused to take another sip of the sweet, miraculous nectar of the gods that was coffee. Strong. Harsh. Bitter. Just like his first wife. "Today's watch is being taken by Velvet Scarletina and Yatsuhashi Daiichi, of Eagle Lance. That means that we're all free to work the sims today, and I intend to make good use of that time. Arc."

"Sir?" Jaune asked.

"Training arc time. Get it, Training arc?" Taiyang offered.

"Six out of ten, hun." Summer replied.

"Ouch dad, I wouldn't quit your day job." Yang shot at her father causing the man to playfully glower at her.

"I know it'll take some time to get Crocea Mors squared away, but I want you in all the sims this morning anyway. There's a lot of tactical protocol to cover, and the specifics of your AC aren't that important for that."

"Yes, sir."

"Good. After chow, you're to finalize the rebuild plans with Ruby and report to Head Mechanic Coney for him to review. Everyone else? We're gonna have fun today," Taiyang promised.

"Why do I feel fear when he says fun?" Cardin asked.

"I feel it too." Weiss agreed, feeling odd for doing so with the brute.

"I'm just trying to make you kids strong." Tai said pleasantly.

"I felt it again." Cardin said.

"I don't like it." Blake agreed.

[/]

Remnant was a world in which military doctrine revolved around giant mechanized war machines. Fair enough. Any aspiring master of the art of killing had to have at least a degree of familiarity with the preeminent weapons of their age, after all. But the truth is, the professional warrior class called Armored Core pilots had one great, glaring vulnerability, one that they rarely, if ever considered. Beneath the tons of armor, nestled within the heart of the machine, lay a man or a woman, the same as any other.

And Mercury Black, the greatest assassin in the world, knew well the vulnerabilities of mere men.

The audience leaned forward in tense silence at the new point of view and the information regarding an assassin.

He didn't remember the name of the Haven pilot who he was slowly crushing the life from, strangling him under his unyielding iron heel. His partner had hacked a message supposedly from the Director, luring the man to the unused briefing room, where Mercury could kill him at his leisure. The only reason that he'd targeted the man, the only reason that he found himself on his back, eyes bulging, fingers trying to claw at Mercury's alloy leg prosthetics, was that he liked the style of the man's Armored Core, and he was going to steal it. That was it. No grand cosmic destiny, no great heroic morality tale for people to share through the generations.

Mercury smirked as he finally snapped the man's neck with a twist of his foot, watching the man's clawing hands fall away and the light fade from his eyes. Target number two should be arriving in three...two...one…

"Brutal." Nora muttered.

"We need to be on the look out for this individual." Ozpin quietly said.

"Actually, one of the teams being placed by Haven in the Vytal tournament may have had him on it. We might need to review the exchange students once again." Glynda said.

"Agreed. However, we musn't jump to conclusions. There are vast differences between our world and this one. This Mercury Black could easily be one."

The assassin smoothly drew a knife and threw it in one fluid motion, the blade catching a woman, the pilot of the Armored Core that he had selected for his partner, right in the throat just as she opened the door. While the woman staggered back, hands flying to her throat, Mercury took two quick steps to reach her, pull her inside the room, and slammed the door behind her. She fell bonelessly to the floor, right next to her recently-deceased Lancemate.

"I forgot people don't use aura there. I feel so vulnerable all of a sudden." Weiss said while wrapping her arms around herself.

"He enjoys it, the killing." Jaune said with a scowl.

Mercury casually ran a hand through his silver locks before he squatted over her, his smile impossibly wide as he gripped the hilt of the knife protruding from her throat. "Shhh," he hushed her. He ripped the knife free, drawing it across her neck as he pulled, and revelled in the feeling of her hot blood splashing against him.

It wasn't just that he was good, damn good, the best at killing; Mercury Black truly loved his work.

"This guy is sick." Yang growled.

"He wouldn't be shown without a reason. He might be a danger to Jaune or the others." Pyrrha suddenly pointed out.

The audience focused once more despite the gory spectacle.

Of course, he normally would never have done something so utterly reckless as to intentionally spray himself in his victim's blood. But his new employer had informed him that she had an inside man at Haven, and she was as good as her word. Having just slaughtered two pilots, Mercury took a moment to tie up their bodies - he'd made a promise, after all - and then strolled casually down the hallways, whistling cheerfully as he saw not a single soul to waylay him. Hell, even the hangar was empty - or nearly so.

"Mercury!"

"An inside man at Haven, and a female employer? We need to increase our scrutiny on Leonardo's students and staff. I wish to contact him but who knows if they are spying on him or how." Ozpin snapped into a plotting mode.

Ah, there was his lovely partner. Emerald Sustrai, thief, hacker extraordinaire, and the solitary speck of light in his life, which had gone pitch black before she came into it. She had saved him when no one else had given even the slightest hint of a damn about him, had shot his miserable bastard father in the back to save his life, and he adored her for it. He would die for her, kill for her, or anything else that she might require.

Of course she was worried about him, being all covered in blood as he was. "It's okay," he said, in his closest approximation of a soothing voice. "None of it's mine."

"He is not sane. That girl has wrapped herself up with some mega crazy." Nora said.

She stared up at him with red-brown eyes peering at him from between her mint-green hair. Emerald was so beautiful; what was he supposed to do, not kiss her?

"Mmf-Mercury!" She pushed away from him, enough to break the kiss, though he kept his grip tight on her hip. "You - you said you were going to tie them up!"

"She didn't want him to kill. We need to see if this Emerald is with our world's Mercury as well. She may be out way to stop him if need be." Ozpin said.

"Her I distinctly recall. Such unique coloring of hair and eyes make her hard to forget. She is beautiful, but I do think she was actually on a team with Mercury." Glynda said.

"Shit, that isn't going to be a coincidence Oz, you know that." Qrow grumbled. The headmaster said nothing but tightened his grip on his cane.

"And I did!"

"After you killed them!"

"Emmy," Mercury began, speaking to her as if she were an impossibly naive child. "I couldn't just let them live. They know our new toys better than anyone else, especially yours." It was true. The Armored Core that Emerald would be piloting, Fevered, was chock-full of experimental weapons, though the frame itself was fairly standard. It had the Phantom stealth unit mounted to its back, and on its shoulders were affixed rocket launchers whose prototype payload of ion rockets was said to be able to scramble the Fire Control Systems of enemy ACs. The rest of its loadout was fairly conventional - machine gun in the right hand, handgun in the left - but those special tools were clearly designed to go disrupting groups of Armored Cores, leaving them confused, disoriented, and easy pickings for follow-up attacks.

"Our best bet is if our enemies don't know what you can do until we're already tearing them apart," he continued.

"They are preparing for something really bad, and now they have Armored Cores. The damage that just the two of them could do…" Jaune said in horror.

"That load out is for fighting other AC's too. That's bad. Really really bad." Ruby added.

"We didn't have enemies until we started working for her," Emerald pointed out, her tone bitter.

Some of the adults hummed in thought at how Emerald acted. It seemed she was more dragged into the situation by her partner, though they were withholding judgment at the moment. The girl was definitely still an accomplice to some heinous crimes.

"Remember our promise? We'll keep each other safe, we said. Well, this is how I keep you safe, Emmy. Just remember that everything I do, I'm doing it for you." He kissed her again, then smiled as he felt her trembling in his embrace. He couldn't help that he was just irresistible to her. "All right. Let's get a move on, yeah? Cinder said there's a ship that'll be waiting for us just off the coast."

Blake bristled at Mercury's words. They were eerily similar to some she had heard in the past.

Yang tried her best to calm her partner with a comforting hand place on her leg, but the other girl seemed to not even notice it.

Mercury let her go and turned to board his new Armored Core, Talaria. He never noticed how the blood from his hand stained her hair.

[/]

Jaune tried not to sigh as he saw incoming high-explosive death rain down towards both him and the simulated Lupus Grimm that he'd been dueling. All he could do was to hit the boosters and brace himself as the pod began rocking violently to simulate the effects of Crocea Mors not quite escaping the splash zone of his Lancemate's barrage. The viewscreens went orange, white and red as they depicted the explosions going off around him, and all manner of alarms began shrieking in protest.

"Damage report," he said, from between gritted teeth, as soon as the violent rocking died down enough for him to regain his bearings. He shook his head at the icon representing Crocea Mors in the lower right corner of the central viewscreen, which had the right arm simply gone, the right leg in red, and the entire rest of his AC depicted in yellow, indicating that the component parts had suffered notable, though not critical, damage.

"Right arm slagged. Right leg FUBAR'd. Damage across all other parts. Gods. Damn it. Nora!"

The image on his viewscreens froze as Captain Xiao Long, watching over the simulated mission, paused the scenario.

"Look, I told you I was launching!" Nora protested defensively.

"And I told you to wait until I got clear!"

"Just overboost out of the way!"

"I don't have overboost, Nora!"

"Hehe, oops." Nora said with a cheeky grin.

"This reminds me of initiation and the bridge." Jaune groaned.

"You were fine!" Nora scoffed while waving her hand dismissively.

"Oh, so definitely not the point."

There was a pause over the radio.

"Uh...my bad," she apologized, sheepishly.

Jaune clenched his fist and took a deep breath.

"Arc, Take a break," Captain Xiao Long cut in, the viewscreen going blank as he shut down the simulation entirely. "Valkyrie. We've been over this…"

"Listen things need to explode a little bit every now and then. I don't know why you and Goodwitch are so uptight about it." Nora scowled.

"Oh you poor woman." Tai said toward the blonde woman.

"I appreciate the sentiment." She replied with a flat tone while glaring at the mad bomber she had in class.

Jaune tuned out Nora's well-deserved dressing-down from the Captain as he released his harness and climbed out of the simulator. He'd been in there for four hours straight, running simulated missions with his new comrades, and familiarizing himself with both his own machine and how the others fought. As he entered the viewscreen-bedecked simulator viewing room, he wiped the sweat off of his brow with a towel and gratefully accepted a bottle of sports drink from his sister, only to pull a face at its aftertaste. Cardin was right - chalky orange.

Blech.

"I warned ya." Cardin shrugged.

"Still not used to chill Cardin." Yang whispered to Blake. The Faunus had calmed down a bit and scoffed slightly while eyeing the boy she'd already marked as a typical run of the mill racist asshole.

Still, he had learned a lot about his team's Armored Cores that morning, and had had a chance to get some insight into their personalities through the design of their Cores and how they operated in combat.

"In only a four hour session, that's some good progress, wonder what specifics though?" Tai commented.

Cardin's Armored Core, distressingly-named 'The Executioner,' was like Crocea Mors on steroids, sharing the same blocky, angular aesthetic in its parts, all bearing a plain gunmetal grey finish. His machine was just shy of an outright heavyweight in classification, and he made use of the increased carrying capacity to pack heavier ordinance than Jaune's smaller machine. The Executioner was loaded for bear with a heavy gatling gun in its right hand, an Armored Core-scaled grenade rifle bolted to its left forearm, and a pair of rapid-fire missile launchers on its back. Interestingly, Cardin was the only pilot, other than the Captain, to opt for an Exceed Orbit Core over an overboost Core. When asked, he'd explained that his maneuverability wasn't all that great, and the autonomous laser cannons that The Executioner's Core could deploy could punish opponents that came in to attack his vulnerable rear before he could turn to face them.

Nora had chuckled at that particular phrasing. His rear was vulnerable indeed.

Cardin choked on his spit for a second while Nora looked caught between disgusted and elated.

Ren was decidedly the former of those two options.

Cardin himself had been subdued, not speaking more than what he absolutely needed for the mission. Apparently, that was something of a novelty, which his fellows had made sure to point out. Jaune supposed he was still a bit off-balance from his confrontation with Blake the previous day. Still, they'd worked well together, as he had with Lie Ren and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Pyrrha.

"Of course." Pyrrha said brightly with a smile at her partner.

Ruby was an interesting case, where it was obvious that she was having a bit of difficulty keeping the actual, current capabilities of Crocea Mors separate from all the ideas that she had in her head about what it would be able to do after she got her hands on it. As a result, she kept proposing plans that he couldn't actually execute, either because of a lack of firepower or mobility, which wouldn't have been such a problem if she hadn't basically called out her ideas and then rushed to do them. As a result, she kept getting caught in the wind when Crocea Mors just couldn't do what she wanted. She'd managed to repeatedly blitz her way out of trouble just as quickly as she found it, but Jaune felt pretty bad about being largely useless to her.

"It's not your fault though, that's my brain messing up!" Ruby said.

"Well, you are just kind of ahead of the game I think. Plus if it's anyone's fault it's my dad's. The fact he hadn't been updating his equipment is ridiculous." Jaune replied.

"That I think we can all agree on." Weiss nodded.

Yang wasn't as awkward as his sister for him to work with, but her point-blank fighting style, combined with his underpowered ranged weapons, meant that Jaune had to mix it up close too if he wanted to provide any meaningful support. That was especially important, as their simulated mission pitted them against virtual White Fang ACs. Jaune had been a bit offended to find that the mass-produced Armored Cores piloted by the White Fang were almost identical to Crocea Mors, save for the black, red and white paint scheme.

Crocea Mors, his father's legendary Armored Core, was being mass produced. Jaune felt that that was just rubbing it in at that point.

"Yeah that could sting a bit." Qrow chuckled.

He could have dealt with that, but the real problem was that, due to his underpowered generator, he couldn't deploy his most powerful weapon, his plasma blade, frequently enough to really watch Yang's six in the middle of a furious melee brawl. At one point, while frustrated at his generator recharging to allow him to activate his blade again, he lost patience and actually lashed out with the left arm itself, thus starting a massive Armored Core fistfight. Between his efforts and Yang's pile bunker weapons, that particular mission looked less like professional pilots taking on a radical insurgency, and more like a bar fight waged between drunks that were twenty meters tall.

All right, frustrations at his technological limitations aside, the recording of that mission did make for entertaining viewing.

"Aww we missed an awesome robot fistfight? Are you kidding?" Yang shouted.

"I demand a refund!" Nora shouted in total agreement with Yang.

"A refund of what?" Ren asked.

Blake's Armored Core was just weird. Her machine, Gambol Shroud - no one but Blake had actually known what a 'Gambol' was - was actually supported by four legs. Without thinking, he had asked if she meant 'like a cat,' which earned him a very unimpressed look from the Faunus girl. Instead, Gambol Shroud's four legs were splayed diagonally relative to the core, the end result appearing more reminiscent of an arachnid, or a crustacean. That latter comparison was bolstered by Blake explaining that the quad-leg's great strength was its increased mobility in a wide variety of harsh terrain conditions, which she would expect to face in underdeveloped Menagerie - which, in turn, inspired Nora to declare that Blake would be having a 'crab rave' on the tropical beaches of her homeland.

"Huh, weird looking but super cool." Ruby pointed out.

"It would work well back home too." Blake thoughtfully muttered.

All of Blake's efforts to explain that 'gambol' was actually a verb meaning to jump and run joyfully meant nothing in the face of Dragon Lance's unanimous decision to nickname Blake's AC the 'Combat Crab.' Blake had huffed mightily about this, muttering about 'human oppression,' until Yang had pointed out that her Lance teasing her and giving her crap was better than a Lance that was coldly ignoring her except for one of their number spitting vitriol her way.

She still wasn't happy about the nickname, though.

The Faunus tried to act vehemently offended on her other's behalf but the giggles and chuckles from her friends killed any actual fervor.

The unofficially-dubbed Combat Crab had most of its weight allocated to a heavy-duty, high-speed, hotshit generator, which made sense, as all of Blake's weapons were energy-based, despite the fact that the quad-leg design had a fairly high passive power draw relative to most other leg types. Blake had explained that, as counterintuitive as it may seem, disassembling the weapons to realign the internal mirrored focusing arrays of laser weapons after extensive use was far more practical for her people than relying on shipments of solid-state ammunition to keep her AC in fighting condition. Shipments to and from Menagerie with the Kingdoms was rare, and Blake wanted to make sure that her Armored Core was ready to fulfill every need her people may have, and at any time. As a result, she bore a laser rifle of reasonable power, which fired a tight beam of coherent light, in her AC's right hand, a serviceable and above all, reliable plasma blade on her left forearm, and a rapid-fire pulse cannon paired with a heavy-hitting laser cannon on her back.

She had to watch her energy reserves very carefully, but her Combat Crab could make one hell of a lightshow. Which Nora again referred to in terms of its usefulness in making a crab rave.

"Crab Rave comments aside, it really would be perfect for fighting back home. It took all of the issues in menagerie into consideration even." Blake was a bit awed.

Jaune could appreciate why Blake had made the choices she had, but damn if those four legs all creeping along didn't set off atavistic aversions to bugs in his brain.

His musings on his teammates and friends was interrupted by the arrival in the simulator viewing room of an exasperated Captain Xiao Long and a contrite Nora Valkyrie.

"Are you all right?" Ren asked his partner.

Jaune shot him a hurt look. "Is she all right? I'm the one who got blown up!"

"Not for real!" Nora argued.

"Initiation, Bridge." Jaune replied.

"That's all you got and look you have all your bits as far as I can tell." Nora said.

"Virtually. Virtually blown up," Taiyang interjected. "Still, that does highlight an important issue. We're slinging around some pretty hefty ordinance, people. I get that shit happens - hoo, boy, do I get that - but that doesn't change the fact that if we get sloppy, people can die. Lots of them. Some of them might even be us. Every time you pull that trigger, you'd better be damn sure that you know where that ordinance is going." The Captain shook his head. "Again, I understand, live fire, things get crazy, and friendly fire can happen. But for some of our number," Taiyang looked directly at Nora, who wilted before him, "it seems to be a recurring pattern of behavior in simulations. So I'm putting some of our number on notice that if some of our number doesn't learn to check her fire, and frags one of my pilots, or gods help us all, kills civilians? Then I will see some of our number court-martialed for reckless endangerment. Is that understood?"

Nora gulped. "Y-yes, sir."

"Woah, dad is a real Captain." Yang said with some awe shot toward her father.

"What does that even mean?" Tai asked.

"Pretty sure it was a compliment sweetie." Summer said.

"Good." Taiyang pinched the bridge of his nose, then checked the time. "Talk amongst yourselves, kids. It's just twenty till your 'free period', then chow. Ruby, Arc, don't forget your assignments. Everyone else, meet back here at fourteen-hundred sharp. Dismissed."

Nora wrung her hands a little nervously. "So, um, Jaune," she began. "Sorry about, you know, the whole 'blowing you up' thing," she said, posing with her hands open as she spoke."

"Nora," Jaune said, his tone grave. "I'm going to ask you, very politely, to pretty, pretty please, with sprinkles on top, refrain from blowing me up."

"He added sprinkles," Ren said thoughtfully. "That means you have to avoid blowing him up."

"You guys are ganging up on me!" Nora said with a faux gasp.

"For a good cause." Ren suggested.

"The best cause, the not seeing me in pink mist form kind of cause." Jaune added in.

"The sprinkles are sacred," intoned Ruby.

"What sprinkles?" Pyrrha asked, confused. "Are we having ice cream?"

"This is taking an unexpected turn." Summer giggled.

"Well, since you added sprinkles, I suppose I'll try hard to avoid blasting you into teeny, tiny bits with my many, many explosives." Nora graciously allowed.

"Thank you. I look forward to many years of being un-exploded, thank you kindly."

An amiable silence fell over the crew.

"But seriously, are we getting ice cream?" asked Pyrrha.

"That actually does sound good." Pyrrha commented.

Director Ozpin probably hadn't meant for the free period before chow to be used for an entire Lance to go out into Vale to get ice cream, but as a stress-relieving, team building moment, it worked just as well all the same.

[/]

At some point, Emerald resolved to find out just how her dream romance had spiraled into an uncontrollable nightmare. She had grown up in the cramped and dirty streets of old Mantle, unwanted and unloved by any and all. She had got by picking pockets and running scams, and she'd never concerned herself with any plans beyond the next score that would put food in her belly and a roof over her head.

Then, by sheer chance, she'd met Mercury.

"No wonder she's caught on him." Qrow said with a sigh, very real sympathy for Emerald leaking into his tone.

Emerald could at least be honest enough with herself to admit that she'd first paid an interest in him primarily because he was cute. He was clever, with quick, bitingly-sharp comments that meshed well with her own cynical humor. Mercury could be downright charming, when he wanted to be. He was a bright flash of silver in the otherwise drab streets of Mantle's slum district. Being with him, Emerald felt less like a street rat and more like a girl, a young woman. For all of that, Mercury never actually told her what he did for a living, and she knew better to push. Plenty of people had to do things that they weren't proud of to make ends meet, and she knew she was in no position to judge if he was an enforcer for some gang, or something.

One day, a local pimp had made some pretty specific demands as to a change in her vocation. When she'd refused, he had given her a day to reconsider, saying that he'd be back, with a gang, and he wouldn't be asking that time. She had gone to Mercury with her plight, and before the sun had set, the pimp was found dead, with his neck snapped all the way around and his body mutilated in what the press had called 'creatively vindictive ways.' Some of the officers on the scene had puked at the sight of what Mercury had done to the man.

"I know it's wrong, but I don't really feel all that bad for the guy." Jaune pointed out.

"I mean, dude should have been locked away if he was trying to force girls into that life. At least he is off the streets." Yang agreed.

Summer felt her heart practically breaking for Emerald. No wonder she had become Mercury's accomplice even if she didn't approve of him killing.

It was brutal, yes, but it was the first time anyone had ever shown her that they cared about her. That was when she first began to fall in love with Mercury Black, and as they grew closer, he began to share his world with her. His father had raised him from birth to be the perfect killing machine, and Emerald had to admit, he'd done a damn fine job of that. The only one who could have rivaled Mercury as a professional assassin was his father, Marcus.

Then came that night, that awful night.

Emerald had never seen it coming. One moment, she was asleep, and the next, a full-scale war had erupted in her tiny, rundown studio apartment. Marcus Black had, apparently, cottoned on to her burgeoning relationship with his son, and felt that his connection to her was a weakness, and a potentially fatal one, to his perfect assassin.

Mercury had disagreed. Violently.

"Okay, so I feel bad for Mercury a bit now too." Ruby said sadly.

"There is a great amount of evil in our world. Only the strongest among us can continue to stand up to it over and over unchanged. Even then Unchanged doesn't mean unscathed." Ozpin wisely commented letting it sink in for his students and his comrades both.

Emerald had never witnessed such a fight, not before nor since, and she hoped to never see its like again. It had been brutal, and vicious in a way that went beyond any sort of detached professional killer's modus operandi. No, they were out to hurt one another, and that they accomplished, in spectacular fashion.

A desperate hip shot from Marcus's sawed-off shotgun had torn through the thighs and calves of Mercury's legs, shredding muscles from bone and dropping him to the floor. Emerald hadn't thought, just acted, scooping up one of the pistols that the two assassins had dropped in their battle, and she shot the father in the back. Somehow, impossibly, Mercury was still conscious despite his hideous wounds, and he had gripped his father's ankles and pulled, yanking him to the ground before falling on him.

"How could someone do that to their own kid?" Tai asked with mixed expression of pain and horror on his face.

Mercury had torn his father's throat out with his teeth.

"Gotta give it to him. He's a survivor. They both are. This is pretty hard to watch though." Qrow admitted. That meant quite a bit being arguably the most, or perhaps second most jaded person in the room.

Emerald was sure she'd lost him, so sure that Mercury was going to die that night, and that was an outcome that she could not accept. She had literally, physically dragged him, half-dead, through the streets, bringing him to the hospital.

The bills were expensive. The prosthetic legs, moreso. Emerald didn't care. She stole like a woman possessed, and burgled like a madwoman, taking risks she never would have had it just been for her own sake. She'd even hitched an airtaxi up to the new, floating city of Atlas, and had pilfered some valuables from the Schnee Manor. When she'd still come up short on his bills, Emerald had even resorted to selling her body, just what she had refused to do before.

All of that, she did without shame or regret. Because it was for him, and gods help her, she loved him.

The audience was silent by this point. Not even Cardin was willing to judge the girl for her decisions in her situation. Most fought back tears of some point while Qrow shared his stock of harder stuff with his friends.

When he had recovered, he had sworn his devotion to her, promising to keep her safe. And for a while, it seemed as though they had won their happy ever after. With him at her side, Emerald had gone from prey to predator. Fixers learned pretty quickly that attempting to cut Emerald Sustrai out of her fair cut was a very bad idea. Men who got handsy with her tended to not have hands anymore, and for the first time in her entire life, Emerald did feel safe.

But that wasn't all there was to it.

"Of course not. It never is." Blake quietly murmured.

Mercury kept killing, even in situations that didn't, strictly, call for it. And he wasn't just killing, but killing in theatrical, downright disturbing ways. In the underworld, Mercury Black wasn't just someone you called on when you wanted someone dead - Mercury Black was who you called when you wanted someone dead in such a horrific fashion that their spouse wound up committed to a psych ward from the trauma of seeing what was done to their loved one.

It had taken Emerald entirely too long to admit to herself that there was something seriously wrong with Mercury.

"We never want to admit that someone we truly love isn't who we believe them to be. We often cover up for any action they make in our head to try and reassure ourselves that our love is well placed." Ozpin once again wisely said, causing Blake to stifle a strange sound and stare at the older man.

The two caught one another's gaze for only a moment before Ozpin simply nodded to the young woman and turned back to the screen.

She had hoped that leaving the city where they had both endured such horror would help, and so, at her behest, the pair had moved to Mistral. She was sure Mantle breathed a sigh of relief. Emerald had plied him with all the love and affection that she could possibly give to someone, more than she ever dreamed she had within herself, but no matter how hard she tried, nothing seemed to fill the void within Mercury, that sick need to inflict suffering and death on others.

Mercury was a monster. And Emerald couldn't force herself to fall out of love with him.

This job was the latest in a series of runs of escalating stakes, and worse, Mercury had made the deal without consulting her first. In Cinder, Emerald saw the same sickness that she saw in the man that she loved, and she wanted nothing to do with the woman. Still, the promised payout for stealing Armored Cores would be enough for another relocation - Vale, this time - and would make them financially secure enough that she could make a strong argument that they never had to go on another run, never again. All that she'd asked was that he tie up the pilots in an out-of-the-way room while she bypassed the security systems on the machines and reprogrammed the biometrics to recognize them as their authorized pilots.

"Cinder…Ozpin, I think she is on the team along with Emerald and Mercury as well." Glynda pointed out.

"As I said, we will be paying a very close eye to this team and all of our visitors from Haven Academy." The Headmaster stated resolutely.

Well. He had done that.

Alone in the cockpit of her stolen Armored Core, Emerald buried her face in her hands and wept.

A hailing signal on her radio interrupted her misery. She looked up at the viewscreen - she and Mercury had left the city bounds and weren't far from the rendezvous point, where Cinder said there would be a cargo ship waiting. Coming towards town from the other side was another Armored Core, one with reverse legs and machine gun arms.

"Fevered, this is Trick Shot, come in Fevered," a man's voice came over the radio. "Was there an alarm or something? I was on my way back from what must have been a false alarm."

Emerald tried not to panic, and opened her radio. "Er, Trick Shot, this is Fevered. Everything's good, fine, here. Go back to Haven."

There was a pause before the machine gun arms of the Haven Armored Core raised towards her. Emerald winced, recognizing that there was nothing that she could do to save his life now. Indeed, next to her, Mercury's Talaria was already firing up its overboost.

The group grimaced at what they knew would be a brutal and senseless waste of life for a defender of civilization.

"You aren't Olive," the pilot said. "Who are you? How do you have her -"

While he was stupidly talking, Mercury made his move. His powerful overboost rocketed his lightweight, bipedal Armored Core past Trick Shot in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Talaria was behind and above Trick Shot when Mercury cut the overboost, wrenched his AC into a tight turn, then triggered his regular boosters. A silver bar of white-hot superheated plasma erupted from the emitter on the AC's left arm, and Mercury stabbed it into the top of the enemy AC's Core, directly behind the head.

He'd pinpointed the location of the cockpit compartment within the Core.

It was just as Mercury always said about Armored Cores; you didn't need to kill the machine, merely the man within. And men could be killed in so many ways.

Bit by bit, Mercury burned through the steel armor protecting the pilot within. Emerald winced as she heard the unfortunate Haven pilot shriek over the radio, molten armor and superheated plasma filling the cockpit from above. It lasted only a moment before it broke into hissing static. With trembling fingers, Emerald reached out and switched off the radio frequency.

Mercury extinguished his plasma blade and stood back from the AC. The entire process, from the beginning of the pilot's accusation to Mercury leaving the dead AC behind occurred in under ten seconds. The reverse-legged machine merely stood there, as it would until someone stopped trying to hail the seemingly-intact Armored Core and physically investigated it.

"Don't worry, Emmy," Mercury said over their personal frequency. "He won't be threatening you again."

Emerald couldn't bring herself to say anything as they left Haven behind, the dead Armored Core standing like a silent accuser behind them.

"Our others have some big threats coming their way if these are just the hired help." Qrow bit out as the scene following Emerald ended.

"But they'll handle it. They will, you'll see." Ruby replied instantly with complete faith.

"Yeah, I hope so kiddo." Qrow said with a long drawn out sigh before he gulped another burning mouthful down.

[/]

"So," Cardin began, after Dragon Lance - save Arc and Ruby, who were working in the hangar - had been briefed on the afternoon's sim exercises by their Captain. "I get what we're doing. What I don't get is why."

Taiyang sighed. "Let me try again. What did we learn from watching both Crocea Mors and how Jaune pilots it?"

"That it's a deathtrap?" Blake offered.

"That it's a deathtrap that can throw a left hook?" Yang suggested.

"That it's a piece of -"

"For the love of," Tai pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's...antiquated, yes."

"Is that a polite way of calling it a deathtrap?" asked Pyrrha.

"You know…" Jaune began.

"Jaune, it's a museum piece and is definitely slowing down your development." Ruby commented in a surprisingly stern voice.

"Ah, right." Jaune replied, confused why the girl seemed almost offended by that fact.

"It's antiquated and limited," Taiyang pushed on, trying to get the twitch in his eye under control. "Furthermore, Jaune doesn't know what he doesn't know. So you know what he did? He improvised. Hell, some of it even worked. He did bizarre, off-the-wall crap that just wouldn't occur to any of us, because we have the training and the tech at our disposal so we won't have to. Remember when he crushed that Centinel's head by landing on it? I'm not saying we're going to throw him into the fray as he is now, but there is something we can adapt from that."

"So...you're training us to pilot like an arcade ranger in a deathtrap?" Cardin asked, puzzled.

Taiyang sighed, looking up to the ceiling. "Winchester, when I finally do stroke out, I'm sending you the bill."

"Hey, I, err, other me made a good point though." Cardin argued.

"Not really kid. You're missing the point." Tai said with a sigh.

"Doesn't Beacon cover all our medical expenses?" objected Nora.

"Why am I a teacher? I hate kids." Tai groaned getting a playful swat from his wife.

The Captain facepalmed. "Let's try this again," he began. "Pyrrha - what happens if you activate that energy shield on Argo's left forearm and, I dunno, pop a Lupus in the snout with it?"

Pyrrha blinked. "Well, I...I guess I've never tried it before."

"Exactly." Tai snapped his fingers, pointing to her. "That right there. She's never tried it, because she never needed to try it, mostly due to her having that big fuck-off plasma rifle of hers. Now, our training and tech developed the way that they did, for the most part, because they worked. But they've also made our tactics, and the way we use our equipment, rote, even predictable. I'm not saying to ditch what's worked for you, but here, with simulators, we can try to learn to think in ways beyond the norm, to improvise. What we're going to do this afternoon, in a safe, controlled environment, is to try crap that we wouldn't ordinarily dream of. If it works, it works, and if not, well, at least no one's dead."

Taiyang felt a burgeoning degree of satisfaction as he watched the dim bulbs over the kids' heads slowly brighten as to what he was getting at. Ah, the joys of teaching.

"I really feel like you are looking down on us a bit there, Mister Xiao-Long." Pyrrha unhappily pointed out.

"I'm your teacher, or he's your teacher. It comes with the territory." Tai said, causing Glynda to cough awkwardly and Ozpin to simply hum in his typical semi-amused tone.

"Captain," Pyrrha asked. "If Jaune's instinctively doing something that you find so impressive, why didn't you say so today?"

Taiyang stared at her like she'd suggested he go defeat the Grimm by fistfighting them. "Tell a rookie that he's doing crap that has us rethinking how we do things? Are you out of your mind? His ego could grow and make him unteachable. His tactical improvisation is a stop-gap for deficiencies in his machine and his training, not a substitute. He still needs to learn. Hold off on telling him until he's got some more live fire missions under his belt."

"No, I'm pretty sure I could use the pick me up." Jaune awkwardly commented.

"You maybe but other you is kind of the rising star right now." Ruby reminded him.

"Right." Jaune said masking his frown as best as he could. That stung a bit coming from Ruby.

Pyrrha flushed at the rebuke. "Oh, sorry, Captain. I just thought -"

In the chair next to the redhaired pilot, Cardin scoffed. "You know, for someone who swears up and down that she's gay, you sure act like you want to ride his di -"

Cardin winced for his other self knowing he was in for it.

Without looking, Pyrrha casually reached over and popped him right in the mouth. Cardin stared, slack of jaw and wide of eye, first at her and then at Taiyang, in absolute shock. "Aren't you going to write her up for assault?" he finally sputtered at Tai.

The Captain shrugged. "I mean, I could, but then I'd also have to write you up for sexual harassment, and frankly, I don't have the time or gummy bears for all that paperwork. Talk shit, get hit, Winchester. Pyrrha, if he keeps giving you shit over your orientation, you have official sanction to beat him like a rented rug."

"Will do, Captain!"

"Atta girl."

"What the hell!" Cardin complained.

"That seems surprisingly effective…" Glynda suddenly intoned, causing the boy to sink low into his seat presenting a much smaller and less noticeable target.

Several of the students had to bite back their chuckles at the tiny little grin on the woman's face. It seemed Miss Goodwitch had a fun side after all.

"Can I have permission to beat him mercilessly as well?" Ren asked, hopefully.

"Ren! Be nice!" protested Nora, smacking him on the chest.

"Oh yeah." Nora said awkwardly as she recalled the situation between her and Cardin.

"Denied." The Captain crushed Ren's hopes and dreams of official sanction to beat Cardin until he physically couldn't say stupid things any more.

"I'm just saying," Cardin persisted, in the manner of an idiot, "it's weird, is all. Unless Arc is one of those chicks that pretends to be a dude. That actually makes a whole lot of sense. Hey, dibs on Arc if he's a chick!"

The disgusted looks sent Cardin's way for what his other said made him shrink even lower in his chair. He was really starting to wonder why he had been dragged into this nonsense.

Taiyang gave him a flat look. "Cardin, your mouth is doing that thing again, where it moves and concentrated Dumbass comes out. Might want to see to that."

On Nora's other side, Ren suffered in quiet, despairing humiliation over the fact that his Platonic Life Partner was involved with an imbecile. He was still traumatized from when he had walked in on the two of them. It had actually inspired his pseudonym's most successful poem, a moving and brutal elegy on how all that is good and pure is invariably trampled under the cold, merciless boot of a world that is worse than indifferent to the suffering of Man, but actively revels in it.

The audience all blinked in a stunned moment before Weiss almost began applauding.

"Please don't. Not when it came from a place like that." Ren stopped her as he saw her hands come up.

"Fair enough. I imagine the actual poem was amazing if the concept was that intriguing." She responded.

"Unless that meant edgy I think you aren't using that right." Qrow laughed, causing several of the kids to glare at him either on Ren's behalf or on behalf of poetry in general…essentially leading to about everyone in the room glaring at him and Cardin breathing a sigh of relief as he felt someone else put their foot in their mouth.

It had won him several literary awards, actually. "The Ghost of Kuroyuri," as his alter ego was known, was kind of a hot commodity in literary circles. One of his CCNet poetry friends, a young woman from Atlas who went by the pseudonym Mountain Flower, had actually researched the destroyed hometown from which he hailed, and had written to him about seeking closure for his trauma. Ren had been moved, and more than a little embarrassed, and so went along with her assumption that the poem was about that, and not about how he felt after witnessing Nora and Cardin in a compromising position.

"So Weiss is definitely Mountain Flower, right?" Yang pointed out.

"Oh for sure." Blake agreed.

Weiss grumbled but actually seemed a bit excited by the prospect.

While Cardin huffed and Ren contemplated the long, quiet death of the soul, Yang, seated next to Pyrrha on her other side, suddenly narrowed her violet eyes at her father as a thought occurred to her. "You know, Mom doesn't want you eating gummy bears anymore," she reminded him. "That sugar isn't good for you."

Tai's eyes went wide, and he put on his most innocent grin, which fooled absolutely no one. "Uh, they're sugar free?"

Yang continued to stare him down.

"I am perpetually outnumbered and surrounded." Tai sighed out before pulling Summer a bit tighter to his side. "Not that I would have it any other way."

"Such a flirt." Summer teased as she ran a hand across his leg gently.

"Oh look at the time, chop-chop everybody, to the simulators!"

"I'm on to you, Dad!"

"That's 'Lance-Captain Dad' to you!"

Several of the audience chuckled at that. They needed the release after the situation with Emerald and Mercury earlier.

[/]

Bugs Coney had been Beacon's Head Mechanic for as long as there had been a Beacon to Head Mechanic for. He'd been working alongside Gil Arc from the very beginning of the Age of the Armored Core, and in that time, he'd seen them go from a single pilot to a global corps of elite warriors on whose efforts an entirely new world society had been built and secured. He'd seen the little Rose girl's mother, Summer, come to Beacon as a fresh-faced, wide-eyed recruit, straight from the backcountry of Patch. That girl had become first a skilled pilot, then a respected veteran.

Ruby and her sister, Yang, had largely been raised in Beacon's hangar. While Ruby had, of course, gone to both conventional school and then, as a young teenager, to most of pilot school, much of what she'd learned about Armored Cores had been imparted to her by toddling along after the old rabbit Faunus as he made his rounds through the hangar. Between that and her infectious enthusiasm and undisputed genius, Ruby Rose was the absolute darling of Beacon's Armored Core maintenance and repair division.

Ruby blushed slightly at that sort of status among the staff at the other Beacon but honestly she felt a bit jealous too. Being raised around such amazing machinery and weapons was like a fantasy made real.

That - and a healthy dose of fear of the girl's mother - was the only thing that had kept the old wrench jockey from laying into the teenage girl at the extent of her plans for Crocea Mors. Still, Bugs was damned if he was going to let that travesty pass without giving her a piece of his mind.

"You can't just plan to tear up Crocea Mors!"

"Yes, I can! Look at me go!" Ruby waved her arms around, swinging the Scroll with the extensive list of modification plans in the mechanic's face.

The audience blinked in a bit of shock as Ruby shouted back at the man. Yang snorted though. She fully expected it when it came to something like this.

Coney glared at her. "That's not just any old Armored Core you're talking about! That's the Armored Core! Crocea Mors is an important historical artifact of Vale!"

"And it sucks!" Ruby, undeterred, yelled right back. "It sucks dookie from a slurpee straw!"

"That machine built Vale!"

"A gajillion years ago! It's poop!"

Bugs actually gasped. "How can you set your mouth to saying such lies?!"

"Want me to go down the line?" Ruby began pointing to components displayed on the Scroll. "The head is crap. The FCS is crap. The generator is crap, and even the wiring is crap! It isn't even fiber optic! It might as well run off of steam!"

"Okay this is entertainment. I never thought I would see Ruby talking like that." Cardin commented.

"You aren't alone." Jaune replied.

"Sorry!" Ruby all but squeaked.

"Heh now she's talking like Pyrrha." Nora joked causing both redheads to round on her, not that she was bothered at all simply grinning right back at them.

"I ran that wiring myself!"

"Yeah, back when the world was young, and the Grimm could be fought on foot!" Ruby snorted, invoking the oldest legends and myths that supposed that there was a time when most Grimm could be battled without mechanized assistance.

"Now you listen here, young -"

"No, you listen here!" Ruby bellowed, cutting the old man off. "Because I haven't finished going down the list of ways in which this machine is dookie! Its rifle is an oversized tickle cannon, and its missile launcher is a complete joke! The only weapon worth a damn is the plasma blade, which it can barely use, because as mentioned before, the generator is crap!"

"That rifle saw Vale through the Grimm incursion at Second Battle of Emerald Forest!"

"That rifle couldn't kill a mood! You might as well tape a boxing glove to an arrow, because that's how useless. This rifle. Is! I don't give a hoot about the past, because Jaune has to use it now, and face things his father never did!"

"I am actually kind of proud." Yang stammered as Ruby went beyond what she had expected for her passionate little sister's usual level.

"I can't tell if I am or if I'm horrified." Tai said.

"Definitely proud sweety. Definitely proud." Summer reassured him.

Jaune stared, wide-eyed, as Ruby panted for breath, matching the old mechanic glare for glare. After an extremely tense twenty second staredown, Bugs stood straight, then reached down to tossle Ruby's hair. "Right, well, you let me know if you need some of the team to help. Rerunning the wiring's going to be quite the task, you know."

"I know!" Ruby chirped, all tension gone, as if the old mechanic and teenage pilot hadn't just been shouting at the top of their lungs just a moment previous.

"Uh...what?" Jaune could only ask helplessly.

"Yeah, I'm with you other me." Jaune said equally confused.

"Oh, Mister Bugs signed off on my plans. We're all good!" Ruby said.

Jaune blinked. "But...the yelling?"

"And the creative description of how horrible Jaune's stuff was." Yang added in.

"Okay, kind of unnecessary." Jaune frowned.

"That's just how mechanics talk," explained Ruby. "You know, you've got to be able to back up your decisions and explain why you're doing something."

"...At full volume?" Jaune scratched his head.

"Well, yeah. That's how greatness happens."

"Is it?"

"Yes." Ruby said, backing up her other suddenly.

"Yeah why, not I guess." Jaune laughed while shaking his head.

"I have been saying that forever but-" Nora began, only for Ren to squeeze her hand and cause her to roll her eyes.

Ruby almost, almost called him cute, before her brain caught up to what her tongue was about to say. She was able to stop herself from saying it, but not from vocalizing at all, so what came out sounded as though she said something along the lines of "blerah."

Jaune and Ruby glanced at one another with a much more mild blush than they would have sported earlier at the information of Ruby considering him cute.

Jaune cocked his head. "What?"

"I said 'chain gun,'" Ruby bluffed wildly. "We've got a couple of models, so let's see what we can put in place of your radar!"

Yang snorted. "Great save sis."

"Right." Jaune was about to follow Ruby towards his console, when his Scroll chimed in his pocket. He pulled it out, revealing that his little sister Violet was calling.

Ruby muttered about how her 'save' clearly worked though no one heard her as they all focused on the scroll call that Jauen was getting from his sister.

"Hey, Violet. What's up?"

"Great news, Jaune! Dad's awake!"

"Ah, that's going to be interesting." Ozpin commented.

"No kidding." Qrow snorted as several of the audience got a bit nervous at the upcoming storm about to hit the Arc family.

---

Alrighty, hope to get the next one sooner than this.

Hope you enjoyed.

Till Next Time