Ch. 75 A lucky break
"Hey kiddos, so I'm here…"
Ruby turned away from the assembly she was working on and Jaune lifted his head from inscribing script on a part of the blade.
"Uncle Qrow! I texted you hours ago, where have you been?" Ruby was ecstatic that Qrow finally showed up.
"Where do you think, at a bar celebrating finally getting off my meds." Qrow smirked.
"That can't be healthy Qrow. Wouldn't it be kinda sad if Vale's greatest huntsman died from liver failure?" Jaune said as he looked back at his work.
"I'll be fine, it's not like I'm getting blackout drunk daily. Anyway, what is it you wanted to show me?"
Jaune met eyes with Ruby and spoke up "Critica Mutatio" handing the weapon to her.
As Jaune got back to inscribing the parts, Ruby perked up and walked over to Qrow.
"Check this out, we made a prototype! This is Critical Shift, an axe with a kama mechashift mode, but critically, it has the same mechashift system and kinetic energy absorption system as your new weapon. It's a proof of concept and it kinda works!"
"Ruby, slow down, kinetic absorption?"
"Right! Check this out!" she moved over to the anvil with the use of her semblance and hit it full force with the axe. Something clicked and a ring came loose from the gear housing at the head of the axe, spinning perpendicular to the gears.
"See, it absorbed the impact and stored it in the ring!"
She looked intently at the spinning ring. Qrow was about to speak up when he heard her mumbling "...now if I can time this right…" and clicking the trigger.
Click! CLANG!
The ring slipped into place and stopped and the gears in the mechanism spun up abruptly, forcing the mechashift to transition to a kama mode.
"Aww, I mistimed it again. Well I got close enough but it's not supposed to make that noise. You see the gears spinning? It's gonna make the kama hit harder!"
Qrow looked at the display confused.
"Okay… and you wanted to show me this… why?"
That made Jaune pipe up from his work.
"It's basically impossible to do what Ruby did. She can only do it somewhat reliably because her semblance makes her perception faster. I can do it kinda reliably because my semblance gives me the precise timing to do it and even then I get failures pretty often. For a normal person, they'd need to get incredibly lucky to manage to get the timing close enough to have it work at all."
"So it's gonna be impossible to use with my semblance…" Qrow finally caught on.
"Exactly!" Jaune and Ruby said at the same time with a grin on their face.
"Okay… so how long do you think before you have the real thing?"
"Later today probably. We already have most of it done from yesterday, Jaune is finishing up the inscriptions and now that we know the prototype works, I started cutting out the gears on the water jet. Some cleanup and assembly later and boom, working weapon!"
"You kids work fast…" Qrow commented.
"No we don't, you've just arrived late, the CNC has been machining parts for a few hours now." Jaune rebuffed him with a little bit of snark in his voice.
=O=O=O=
Oscar was walking through the grounds of Haven.
He had spent the morning in the school's gym training under Ozpin's instructions. In truth, it was a disheartening endeavour. Sure he was starting to see some progress and his official role as Qrow's apprentice gave him access to a lot of the facilities, something he would never get at home, but he couldn't really be happy about the progress.
He didn't want this life. But what could he do, his aunt's farm was lost, everyone he knew before was either dead or far away from Haven and he would need to leave the kingdom to study at Beacon soon.
"I understand this can be disheartening Oscar, but I assure you that while this isn't the path you envisioned for yourself, it is the correct one to take in our situation."
Oh and let's not forget about the reason for many of his problems, the old man that took residence in his head.
Oscar frowned upon hearing Ozpin's words, not bothering to respond to him. No reason to do that when the guy can literally read your every thought.
"What's got you all frowny like that?" a female voice interrupted him from his brooding.
"Huh? Oh sorry, didn't see you there." he replied as he turned to her.
She had a head of beautiful bright blue hair with streaks of cyan mixed in and cyan eyes. Her pale skin was flawless and he could tell she had a slim but toned figure thanks to her tightly fighting short sleeved white dress shirt and light blue pants.
For a moment Oscar's mind stopped and his body froze.
"Hello! Remnant to… unnamed boy!" her smile was almost dazzling to Oscar as he continued to stare at her.
His mind suddenly shifted into gear "Oscar! My name's Oscar Pine."
"Good to meet you, mister Oscar Pine! I'm Azure! Are you here for the entrance exams too?"
"Oh, uhhh not exactly, I'm… an apprentice to an older huntsman you could say… plus I'm too young to take the exam yet."
"Oh pish posh, I'm too young too, but I got recommended so here I am."
It was then that Oscar realised that the girl looked younger than the students here, maybe even younger than Ruby, who he came to know as the youngest of their group outside of him.
"Actually, I think I'm going to go to Beacon. My mentor is from there so…"
"OH! Are you with Branwen's group? My uncle said he was from Vale!"
Oscar could tell she was excited about Qrow for some reason, though he really didn't see why.
"Yeah, um… your uncle?"
"Trish Leiden, he's a teacher here. Dust labs mostly I think…"
Oscar wondered for a second if she was Azure Leiden then or if the uncle was on her mother's side before quickly speaking up to keep the conversation going.
"Oh uhh, that's cool, is he the one who recommended you?"
"Oh, no, that would be the new headmaster, I used to train at his gym before and he scouted quite a few of us regulars. Mistrall needs its huntsmen and students at Shelter are getting scouted left and right. Guess we're going to have to train faster and harder to fight back the Grimm." she smiled optimistically.
Oscar frowned. "Have you ever fought Grimm before?" He wasn't sure it was a great idea to start recruiting kids in this never ending war.
"Of course I had! The teachers at Shelter have been pushing us hard ever since Lionheart closed Haven. I think they caught on that we'd need it." She replied with indignation, though her enthusiasm waned a bit as the topic turned darker. "What about you, you don't look much like a huntsman in training."
"Plenty of experience unfortunately. My hometown was destroyed and I escaped on my own. I travelled here and got picked up by Qrow only a few weeks ago."
"Well… that… yeah I got nothing. Sorry for your loss?"
"Thanks, it means a lot." he smiled weakly.
"Well, I gotta find my uncle and get registered for the exam. It was nice meeting you Oscar, see you around." she waved at him and he waved back hesitantly.
"You know it's not smart to grow attached in our situation…" Ozpin spoke up from the back of his mind.
Oscar gritted his teeth, but said nothing.
=O=O=O=
"I'm very happy you agreed to this mister Ren."
"Of course headmaster."
"Oh please, call me Verdant, you're not a student of Haven. You've gotten here on your own power and made connections that will help you move past this academy."
Ren stayed silent after that, simply standing opposite Verdant in the arena ring.
"I suppose we should get started, wouldn't want to take away your time for no reason."
The two bowed to each other and took their stances.
Verdant noted that Ren had some minor imperfections in his, but the way he relaxed into his stance spoke of a solid foundation and the many hours of training that got him to this point.
Both flared their Aura and the battle began in earnest.
They exchanged blows and Ren took special notice of how Verdant moved, especially how he used his right hand. Or rather, how he intended to use it…
Ren noticed immediately how slow the man's dominant arm was. Despite the precision of the movements, the blows lacked power or speed. But those weren't the focus of this spar.
The goal here was twofold. Ren would observe Verdant's fighting style so that he could adapt the design of the prosthetic arm to it. Meanwhile Verdant observed how Ren fought, intent on giving the younger man pointers and advice.
"Your movement is very precise."
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment, I believe you should try to loosen those movements, move more like water does."
Ren nodded and the spar continued as he took in both the advice and the man's style, incorporating it into his own. He would spend many hours analysing those movements later with Jaune and Ruby in order to draw up the prosthesis. But that would come later, for now he left his mind to wander and his body to do the learning.
=O=O=O=
Oscar walked into the arena looking for Jaune. Well he found him as well as Qrow together with Ruby standing on the sidelines while the two grown men stood in the ring.
He approached Ruby first. One might think it would be easy to talk to her since they were just about closest in age in the ragtag group that collected around the strange events he found himself in the middle of. Unfortunately for him, Ruby seemed wary of him, likely in large part thanks to Ozpin.
"Hey… what are they doing?"
"Oh, hey Oscar… Oz… well Jaune and I finally finished assembling Qrow's weapon. They were about to test it. Well… Jaune is explaining stuff to Qrow so you might as well listen in."
Oscar nodded and felt Ozpin's attention shift to the conversation happening in the ring with curiosity.
"...and this part here talks about your semblance and your life and skills. How a man faced with so much hardship has to, by definition, be incredibly lucky to even survive, let alone become one of the best." Jaunne pointed to the blade.
"That's nice and all, but I imagined something more… I don't know, lucky looking when you talked about symbology? You know, four leaf clovers and rabbit feet?"
"Well, did those good luck charms work for you before?"
"Admittedly, no…"
"Well there you go." Jaune smiled back at him.
"Well, how does it work then?"
"Okay, let me give you an example of another of my own pieces. The Equinus di Ardera Ventis, my bike. The whole body, basically anything that isn't on the mechanism itself is covered with descriptions of wind, wildfires, horses, noble steeds and their battles against Grimm. It doesn't talk about how the jet is supposed to help me smash Grimm faces, but about it being a noble steed. It's the imagery and emotion."
"Okay… I think I get it, but you can't blame me for being sceptical. How about you finish explaining and we can finally test it." Qrow spoke
"Alright, you've seen the prototype at work already but yours is bigger, more complex and incredibly failure prone."
"You mean guaranteed to fail in my hands?"
"Exactly! If it works even once it's a miracle, if it works twice its bordering on impossible and at three times we've confirmed it's working as intended. Remember the prototype has two rings and five gears to transfer the force, yours has seven rings and thirteen gears. Each ring has a miniscule time window to be triggered, let's say one in a thousand chance for simplicity sake, those chances multiply with every ring, two rings had a one in a million chance to work, all seven of them triggering flawlessly have a one in a sextilion chance to work. So that's what we're going to do, I'll attack and you'll defend, once the seventh ring unlocks and starts spinning, you'll go on the offensive and trigger the scythe mechashift. If it works, you'll have seven hits of mechanical amplification. After you use those up, we'll do it again and again. We're aiming for no failures at all."
"We're aiming for something impossible, got it."
"We're aiming to prove a complete reversal of your semblance."
"As I said. Imposible." Qrow grinned sadly.
"...Just take guard." Jaune said with indignation as he handed Qrow his weapon.
He looked over the finished weapon. The blade looked similar enough although slimmer than Harbinger. The blade still had its segments, though instead of five there were now seven with a black edge. The biggest difference was in the exposed gears of the mechasift. While originally the five exposed gears did little more than aid in transitioning the weapon between its forms, it now had thirteen gears surrounded by the seven rings pivotal to its new function. The whole mechanism was almost twice as big in diameter and the black gears were housed in a series of seven rings going from black to the same dark red of the original handle which was mostly reused.
Qrow took guard with the large sword. It felt familiar, balanced very close to how Harbinger used to be. His Aura infused into the weapon with ease, though it surprised him slightly just how much it took to infuse it completely despite Jaune using his high Dust alloy sparingly, giving the blade its black edge and the mechanism its black colouration.
Jaune stood opposite him holding a hammer in his hand. Percusio Gravi, Jaune's Gravity alloy hammer was the perfect weapon to test the kinetic absorption ability.
Qrow stood his guard as Jaune charged at him with force, an overhead strike with incredible weight behind it.
As the clang rang out, Qrow felt a click as the outermost ring of the mechanism unlocked and spun out of the plane of the blade.
"That didn't feel too bad."
"Yeah, that's the kinetic energy being absorbed, you can thank Ruby for working out that one. But thanks for telling me I can go heavier." Jaune grinned as he reared back for another blow.
As the clang rang out Qrow started to regret saying anything as his arms rattled. The first ring sped up significantly and a second one unlocked with a click, spinning perpendicular to the first one.
"I think you can handle a little more old man." Jaune said jovially as he reared back for a third strike.
Qrow swung the sword against the hammer to cancel out some of the force behind it but his arms still took the brunt of the force. With a click the third ring unlocked and spun perpendicular to the one before it, taking some of the excess energy from the first and second one.
Another strike, the fourth unlocked. Another, the fifth. And another, the sixth. And finally the seventh strike, the last one, unlocked the seventh ring.
The rings swirled around the gears in a hard to predict fashion, capturing the eyes of the audience and Qrow alike. While Oscar and Ruby looked on in anticipation, Qrow's eyes were filled with dread.
One in a sextilion chance that this would work, otherwise it all breaks and he's back to square one.
He took a deep breath, and with a steely gaze faced Jaune again.
This time Jaune switched back to Atra Aurora, his bastard sword, in order to better defend. Qrow launched from his spot in a familiar fashion and pressed the trigger.
Click!
The gears started spinning as the first gear slotted back into its place and stopped.
Click!
The second stopped and the gears sped up, as did the mechanism.
Click! Click!
Two more rings slotted in as the handle extended and the blade segmented into a curved blade of a scythe.
Click! Click! Click!
Fifth, sixth and seventh ring fell into place, the gear mechanism taking in all that stored energy and spinning at ludicrous speed, the largest central gear acting as a flywheel. The scythe unfolded in all its glory and Qrow struck Jaune.
The mechanism stopped at the moment of impact, transferring a chunk of that stored momentum into the blade, making Jaune slide back from the impact so far he impacted the arena wall.
Qrow looked at the still spinning mechanism, the first impact barely slowing the gears down.
He laughed.
Jaune approached the man with a smile on his face, even as his muscles ached from the impact.
"Well, Qrow? What do you say?"
"I say, you Jaune, you've given me a lucky break I didn't hope for anymore. What Ruby and you've done for me today… I… thank you."
"A Lucky Break huh… that's not a bad one what do you say?"
"Huh?"
"A name for the scythe Qrow, I'd say it deserves a new one."
"Lucky Break… yeah, I like that, it fits."
"Well, now that you've had your break, I say we continue testing." Jaune grinned.
Qrow wanted to groan at the pun, but the smile wouldn't leave his face as he took up his stance again, eager to continue.
Ruby swore she had never seen Qrow laugh like this before, like all the worries he had just disappeared in an instant. The Qrow that stood in the middle of that arena was a new man. A happier man.
Oscar meanwhile, was assaulted by the outburst of Ozpin's thoughts. It was mostly a jumbled mess to him but he could make out a few fragments here and there like "If what he said about the odds is true…" and "This shouldn't be possible."
Oscar hated it. His mind was filled with thoughts and impressions not his own and he could feel the most recent impactful impressions of his own slipping away. When an image of Azure flashed in his mind only to dissolve into a poorly preserved memory he reeled in anger "STOP!"
And Oz did, retreating into the back of Oscar's mind.
Oscar stood there, eyes closed and his hands clutching the arena railings with the force turning his knuckles white. This had to stop soon. Oscar's resolve steeled, he would ask Jaune to use the question.
=O=O=O=
Author's note:
Quite happy about this one, I've had Lucky Break in my head for a while now, probably like two months, so it feels good to finally put it on paper.
As for Oscar, I don't know if Azure will become a prominent character, but she sure did put things into motion. Another of those things that I've planed for a while have finally started moving.
In my personal life, I finally have the space to cook my meals, so that's what I've been doing over the weekend. Got some meal prep done probably for the entire week, which is quite nice.
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. 76 To remove the wizard