Roots 2.3

Armsmaster looked unhappy, not that I could imagine why. I guess I was taking up his workshop time, but still. I had thought he would love this kind of thing.

"Tell me again what you're trying to do here?"

It… probably didn't help that I wasn't having any luck. Weiss was always better with Dust, dang it. "Lightning Dust gets used for stun rounds a lot back home, but if you do it right, a similar technique can be used to do… aha! This!"

The yellow Dust crystal in my hand finally flashed, and once the spots were cleared from my eyes I held a crackling, sparking dagger. I swiped it through the table, leaving scorch marks - oh, is he mad at me again?

He spoke again. "What… exactly… is that?" He... actually sounded more interested than upset. Perfect.

"Lightning Dust! We use it for, like, electric generators on Remnant, but Huntsmen use it more often as ammunition. Load it into a Dust cartridge, it gets activated right as it fires, and instead of a chunk of crystal, you've got a tangible cloud of lightning flying at your target. Do it right, and it stuns people instead of, y'know, killing them."

Armsmaster had picked up one of the other cartridges now and was looking it over. He walked over to a bench on the wall, and stuck it into some kind of… scanner? "How do you control the amperage, keep it from killing people?"

That was a very good question. "It just kind of happens. Dust seems to naturally work in really convenient ways, and nobody knows why."

"...Interesting." He looked back to the other cartridges. "What do the other colors do?"

Armsmaster was sounding more and more intrigued. "Red's fire, pretty much what it sounds like. Green's wind, same deal. The blue is ice; when the crystal activates, it turns into a bunch of ice - like, gallons of it for an average sized crystal."

"I see." He turned around to face me. "As fascinating as this has been, what exactly is it you're trying to do? I assume it involves the electric knife you're holding?"

I nodded. "I don't have anywhere near the Dust supply I'd need for it, but take this…" I waved the knife. "And scale it up to like two dozen times its current size…"

His eyes widened beneath his helmet. "I see. That being said, you yourself said you're limited in resources. What's your plan?"

Now here was the kicker. "I was hoping that's where you could help. I know this world doesn't have Dust occurring naturally, but I was hoping you could come up with a way of synthesizing it, or maybe have something else that did the same thing."

"Hmm. My specialty doesn't lie very close to matter synthesis… but I might actually have something for you in terms of the other option. It would still require you to blunt your blade temporarily, but perhaps I could work up a better solution, given time..."

Ugh. I hated the idea, but as long as it was temporary… "What do you have?"

He stepped around the table, and a locker behind me opened on its own. Going to it, he retrieved a small box, made of raw, unpainted metal and with dark lines at the seams. He crossed over to his scanner, grabbed a small chunk of metal from underneath the table it sat on, and laid the box and the metal together inside.

Closing the lid, he stepped back as the lights dimmed down and the box activated. Through the transparent blue of the scanner, I saw the box's seams begin glowing with light, and it burst into lightning, flickering along the box's interior.

"Wooooah"

Armsmaster seemed satisfied with himself. "I built it a few months ago, meant it to essentially be a Lung-scale taser. He wound up shrugging it off, so I scrapped the project, but it might be useful to you. Attach it to your weapon, and you should be able to coat the blade in visible electricity, and I can alter with the generator to lower the power to human-safe levels."

I was excited, but his tone at the end implied there was more he wasn't saying. "And?"

He seemed to think for a minute. "Let's make a deal. I'll give you this and help you maintain it, and start working on a method that would let you keep your blade's edge, and in exchange, we have a talk about Remnant's technology some time. If it's all based around this Dust, then I'd like to see how much we can incorporate into my own gear."

That seemed reasonable enough. "Sounds good to me! How long will it take you to get it ready?"

"Give me a few hours. I should have it done after your patrol. Keep that conversation in mind, please."

"Will do- wait, the patrol! What time is it?" I looked around frantically. Why didn't he have a clock in here?

"Twelve thirty-four, you're fine."

"Oh. Right." Heads-up display in his visor, probably. Made sense. "I should probably go get ready for that. Thank you again!"

"Bridge room, bridge room… there!"

I opened the door, stumbling through to find Dauntless waving at me. "Hello again!" he said, waving at me.

Once the brief moment of deja vu passed, I was able to respond. "Hello. So... I guess we're patrolling together now?"

"That's right! We'll start you off easy - across the bridge, through the boardwalk, then veer off into some of the seedier parts of town. I'd give us a fifty-fifty shot of running into something we can help deal with, but odds are we won't have any serious trouble. You've got one of the communicators, right? Know how to use it?"

"Yeah, it's pretty self-explanatory. Actually, I'm more worried about the fans than I am about any fighting."

"Well then, that is something that the Daring Dauntless can help you with!" The sentence started at a normal volume, then quickly rose to a triumphant shout. "I shall draw the enemy fire as well as I'm able, and we'll be out of the trenches A-S-A-P!"

As cheesy as it was, it was somehow still reassuring. He had his schtick down pat. "Okay then. I guess we should get going!"

The doors opened, and the light streamed in. The smooth blue of the forcefield bridge stretched out ahead of us, thirty or so feet wide and several hundred yards long; I'd looked this up earlier, and I knew that it was connected to a small building on the shoreline, subtly fortified as a defensive measure. Dauntless' glowing boots apparently let him fly, so we made good time across a bridge that would probably have taken us a good half-hour if we'd had to walk it normally.

By the time we exited the far building, nodding greetings to the PRT troopers based inside as we passed through, there was already a small crowd gathered about the loose fence on the other side. Dauntless spoke quietly enough that only I could hear him; "Just shake hands, smile - yes, they can tell if you're smiling, your whole body language changes - and sign autographs if you'd like. You don't have to talk to anybody if you don't want to, though it really wouldn't hurt." He pulled away slightly as we reached the crowd.

The noise was what struck me first. People shouting, each and every one struggling to be heard over all the others - reporters asking questions that I couldn't hear, civilians and tourists waving sheafs of paper, books, and pictures, police shouting in order to keep everything calm - I almost froze entirely until I saw Dauntless marching forward into the mob, grabbing someone's pen completely at random and start signing and shaking hands.

I could do this. It was just civilians.

Seeing him so seemingly at home, I was able to take another step. I forced a smile onto my face and started making my way through. The crowd parted ahead of me, a shocking feat given how dense they seemed to be, and I was able to keep on walking relatively unimpeded.

Dauntless was ahead of me, shining bright and drawing a bunch of attention. I could see him hovering a couple inches off the ground to lift him up above the crowd; meanwhile, my own relatively short stature made sure that even more eyes were on him. He really knew what he was doing.

Following his example, I took a marker somebody was holding out and signed- was that a T-shirt with my symbol on it? Where had they gotten that? As soon as I finished it had vanished back into the crowd, replaced by stuff ranging from newspaper clippings to toys to stuff I didn't even recognize. I kept signing, experimenting with the signature a little but trying as hard as I could to keep it recognizable.

I kept moving forward, saw Dauntless slow down ahead of me, realized that the crowd was only a few more feet deep, and sped up a little. I couldn't keep up with the suffocating chaos, and whether I was able to fake it or not I wasn't going to be able to take it for long.

I finally passed through the final line of people and saw Dauntless turned around back towards me. He waved me towards him as he began to fly off, headed vaguely northwest. Before I followed him though, I turned around to face the crowd. Not really sure what I was doing, I gave them a wave, hand high in the air so even the people further back could see me.

I scattered away to the sound of applause and cheering, headed off after Dauntless.

"You handled yourself well out there. The wave, in particular, that was downright inspired."

He'd seen that? I thought he was flying the other way. "I mean, it was just a wave…"

"Just a wave? You used your powers, flying up slightly to make yourself seen, you were surrounded by a cloud of petals, I'm pretty sure you were glowing, just a bit. I'd bet money that that image will be in the newspapers this evening."

"I… did? I was just waving before flying away, I didn't think… I was more scared than anything. The petals were there because I was already using my Semblance, so I could get out of there faster."

"If you really just wanted to get out of there, I don't think you would've waved like you did."

Didn't I? I wasn't really sure how to respond to that. I was gonna be a hero while I was here, but I hadn't really thought much about the PR side of things. I just figured I'd try and slide under the public's radar while I was here so that it wouldn't make too big of a splash when I vanished to go back home.

When I didn't respond, Dauntless kept talking. "I don't know how much of this stuff you did where you come from, but if you keep up the kind of thing you just managed, you'll end up just fine here. You'll have to work at it - nobody can pull this kind of stuff off without any effort for very long - but I think you have the chance at a strong future here, if you want it."

I smiled. "No offense, but I think I'd rather have a strong future on Remnant."

His only response was laughter.

We moved on, Dauntless flying over me as I ran across the rooftops, and I was surprised at how quickly the streets went downhill. In the span of a couple of blocks, the buildings went from well-maintained brickwork and siding to dank, dirty concrete and metal warehouses. Graffiti covered most of the walls, and the sidewalks beneath us grew more cracked and filled with weeds with every step.

"Scatter, meet The Docks. ABB territory, and the biggest area for non-powered crime too. If we're gonna find any action, it'll be here!"

"Alright!" I hadn't had a real fight since the Twins… wow, had that really been a full week before? The time was going by faster than I thought.

...My team probably knew I was missing by now. If I knew them, they'd have started hunting down Raven as soon as they heard. Hopefully, they had decided to bring in extra help this time, and not just charge in without a plan like we usually did...

"Hey, you doing alright?" Dauntless must've noticed my change in mood. I didn't know how, with me wrapped up in my cloak and a full-face mask, but he must have.

I pushed the thoughts away, returning to the excitement from moments before. "Yep, I'm fine! Let's go!" I rushed ahead, dashing to the next roof and leaving those thoughts behind. Dauntless flew to catch up after a moment but didn't push the question any further.

The patrol was supposed to last about three hours, and by that point maybe half of one had passed. By the time we got to the halfway point, we hadn't encountered anything except some weird looks from the passersby, alternating between fear and, oddly, anger. Dauntless flew down once or twice, and he managed to get a couple of kids excited, but the adults seemed to edge away from him.

Once he came back up, I raised the question. "What's up with the people here? I thought the Protectorate was all about PR, getting people excited over the heroes. It… doesn't seem like it's working here."

What I could see of Dauntless' expression turned sour. "It doesn't, always. A lot of independents and vigilantes make the mistake of assuming that makes it not matter, which is absolutely false, but… well. There aren't enough heroes to be everywhere at once. People get hurt, and when we fail to intervene, we get blamed for it. The end result usually looks something like this."

"That just means we need to work harder. Maybe we can't be everywhere at once, but neither can the bad guys, right?"

"Well, there's a lot more of them than there are of us." He raised his voice a little, slipping into his triumphant hero-tone as we passed a mother and her two children walking hurriedly down the street. "You work fast enough we can barely keep up with you!" The mother glanced up at us, and though her younger son looked excited she grimaced and ushered him along.

My confusion must have carried through my body language since he kept explaining, "I'm not sure what it was like where you came from, but here… to put it bluntly, we're outnumbered and outgunned on almost every count, and not every patrol ends as successfully as your first day here did. It's why our PR is so important; because if people knew how bad off things really are, there'd be mass panic."

That caught me off-guard. Oscar's constant reminders about ensuring things stayed secret, hiding as much as he could, because of the panic he believed that his knowledge could bring. I was never really sure whether to agree with him or not - some of what we hid could have done a lot of good in the long run, but when any major disturbance could trigger a major Grimm attack… I had gone along with it because of that. I would need to think about how I was going to react to it here.

I didn't respond, and he let the conversation end. We continued on, swapping small talk and little else for the patrol's remainder.

That evening, I finally found myself with nothing urgent to do. After some exploring in-costume, I found myself in what must have been some kind of break room on the Rig. It wasn't my first time to really rest since I'd gotten here, but it was close, and it felt really good to just sit back and chill for once.

Crescent Rose, retrieved from Armsmaster's workshop after the patrol with Dauntless, sat partially dismantled on the table in front of me, and the module Armsmaster had built while I was out was among the pieces. It was smaller than expected, but it was still going to be tricky to fit it in without taking things out.

I was debating between adding a slot to allow it to rest inside the barrel and just welding it to the outside when I heard the door open behind me. A woman's voice spoke, "I'm glad to see you're settling in."

I half-turned to look over the back of the couch and saw the speaker, dressed in tight camouflage and a colorful scarf in red, white, and blue. Miss Militia. Her scarf was pulled down, and I could see her full face.

I responded carefully as I eased the collapsing barrel extension back into place. "Slowly, but yeah. It's been a little crazy in the past few days."

She walked over to the window, looking out at the city past the forcefield bubble. "I certainly know that feeling." She turned back towards me. "I don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm Hannah."

"Ruby. I'd shake your hand, but, uh…" I reached for the rag before realizing it was already stained black with so much grease that there was no hope of getting my hands clean.

She smiled, then sat down on the next comfy chair over. "I understand. I've worked with Armsmaster long enough to get used to the typical Tinker quirks. If I ask what you're doing, will it set off a whole exhibition?"

"It… might. We should probably avoid that, heh." I floundered for a conversation topic. "So your thing is guns, right? How does that work?"

She smiled, and a knife sheathed at her side seemed to fly apart into a green-black cloud. The cloud orbited her head once before she raised her hand to catch it as it rematerialized into an assault rifle. "It's not just guns, but it's like this. Any weapon I can carry that I've seen before, and I can resummon it to reload… you seem impressed."

That was so cool! "You can do that with any weapon? No risk of jamming, no weight issues, you haven't b- wait, how do you use your power for hero stuff? I didn't think people were happy with heroes using deadly weapons."

The rifle flickered back into a cloud of energy, then reformed as a machete, then a handgun in one of the holsters around her waist. "You're right, to a point. If a hero can get away with operating without weapons, then the PR department will try to keep them from using them unless necessary. It really does give off the wrong image, though Dauntless could probably explain that better than I could. There are exceptions for those who can't operate without weapons - Armsmaster, myself. Even then, we're limited. I use rubber bullets most of the time, and Armsmaster takes a great deal of care to avoid doing permanent damage."

That still didn't make sense, but it wasn't worth the argument right then. "I guess..."

Hannah continued; "That's not to say that we never go harder. When the public doesn't see, or when we're up against a villain that won't hold back, then the showmanship stops. I swap to lethal ammunition, Dauntless ups the charge on his Arclance, Velocity pulls out this little knife designed to function with his power... though I guess that's not as relevant now."

Oh, right. "I heard the Director kind of replaced him with me. I haven't really seen how close the team is though… I haven't messed up something important by joining the team, right? I wouldn't have been very happy if one of my teammates had been replaced out of nowhere, so…"

She shook her head as she responded, "No, not at all. Assault and Battery will probably miss him, but transfers are pretty common. They can keep in contact, it'll be fine."

She seemed pretty confident there, which I took as a good sign. "Alright, that's good. Umm… you mentioned going harder sometimes, how often does that happen?"

"It varies. Most of the villains around here are smart enough to not draw too much ire, but they go too far on occasion. Then you've got the Brutes or similar that can just take it, so we'll go harder on them on occasion. Hookwolf, the Twins, Trainwreck." Something seemed to occur to her, and she continued, "Don't worry though, we don't go for the kill unless it's absolutely necessary."

Why would I be worried about that? I understood not wanting to kill, but sometimes you didn't have a choice. "Why, though? They kill people, right? Why go out of our way to avoid doing the same?"

Her expression hardened, just a little. "They don't all kill, and just because they do doesn't mean we need to sink to their level. Don't assume that we avoid it at all costs, either - if it becomes necessary, then we will… or at least I will. That doesn't mean it's the first option we jump to, either."

I was getting the impression that this was a bad topic, so I backed off. "Okay, okay." It felt like they were expecting a totally different mindset than my usual one, and it seemed like what they wanted was crazy. I took the excuse of needing to reattach a particularly complex geartrain to the base of Crescent Rose's blade to avoid having to respond, hoping that Hannah would continue the conversation.

I saw the flickering of her power out of the corner of my eye, as the cloud seemed to take a new form every couple of seconds. After a few moments of awkward silence, she seemed to settle on a very large pistol, which she holstered as she stood. "I should probably leave you to your work. It was nice meeting you, Ruby."

"Uhh, yeah, you too," I stammered as she headed for the door. When I heard it shut behind her, I slumped back into my chair. That was the third of my new teammates I'd talked to today, and I'd wound up in an argument with her. It was like my first few days as Weiss' partner all over again. Hopefully, this would solve itself just as quickly as that situation had.

I carefully ignored the fact that Ozpin wasn't around to fix our issues this time.

Woah, this happened quick. This writing goal is doing some good work, heh.

Not super happy with every piece of this one, but it's acceptable. We're getting to some of the underlying ideas behind this story now, which I'm pretty happy about, and I'll be introducing another minor subplot in the next chapter. Speaking of which, I'm gonna hope I can keep up this level of output, and aim for a release on either October 20 or 27. No promises though, sorry.

As usual, thanks for reading, constructive criticism is appreciated, and I'll see you next time!