Very tired. Will respond to things in the morning. Maybe the afternoon.
... Probably the afternoon.
You get the update now though.
You consider your options, for a moment, between waiting it out, trying to find a resin that smells strong enough to wake him up, or shaking him like you've been filled with that rumba beat-
Something shifts in the bushes.
Training takes over as you prick your ears for any sign of life, as tenuous a description as that is for Grimm, and pin it down to somewhere to your left, where the trees grow denser, leading deeper into the forest.
Raising your left hand and pulling your sword from its sheath with your right, you pin your pupils and watch as the world takes a tint further than violet. This isn't truly necessary, but it does help to be able to see what you're drafting.
The darkest superviolet you can find is pulled into your eyes and given form in your blood, bursting out from underneath your fingernails and stringing itself between a pair and a half of trees, as close to where you can hear its approach as you can.
With a twist of will, cruel-looking barbs and razors cover the glassy wire, hopefully enough to stall it at a minimum, and you go to Jaune, deciding you don't have time to wait.
You raise your hand, and-
|||
The moon was high.
The moon was red.
The moon was whole.
A simple stone spear raised to the full blood moon as if in
angerworshipdefiancerespectdesperation-
Who are you? What is this moon?
Lucidity does not come without struggle, but in the moments before waking, as if a veil has been taken from your eyes, you realise what's wrong with this place, deep in your bones.
Where are the st-
|||
You're fairly sure the sting of a full slap is the worst thing you've woken up to, full stop.
A rather undignified squawk of surprise is the first thing you say, before blinking away the bleariness and finally realising where you are, who just slapped you, and locking on the sight of a Beowolf rushing through the underbrush towards you.
You start to warn Lumen just in time to watch it get clotheslined on what you can only assume is invisible razor wire, because uh...
There's- that's- that's a pretty torn up pup right there.
"Wake the fuck up, big guy, we've got Grimm to kill." Lumen tells you, smog lazily rising into the air behind him.
You let him pull you up by an offered hand, and start to take stock of the situation.
"Sysadmin! You're awake!
You
wince at the sound of the Process speaking directly into your mind, a dull nail glacially pushing itself into the left side of your brain.
That's your first sign that things have continued to go wrong since the launchpad. As you look around, it takes you a moment to place the second thing.
Something very important is missing. Map, Aura readout, Bracket's message display, the thousand or so little popups telling you everything about everything, so prevalent in your vision that you never noticed they were there until they were…`
Gone. All of it.
No synthetic grumbling greets you, aside from the happy and concerned rambling of the Process as a whole, slowly driving more nails into your left hemisphere as it cheeps and chirps, but from your sword…
Your sword.
The third, final, and greatest sign that things are not as they should be, is your sword.
Your stomach drops into your shoes when you see it laying on the ground. Cold, and grey, and
lifeless, oh gods what's happened to your baby boys-
You touch it, sending out a mental ping to confirm any sign of activity within it, and find…
Nothing.
Whatever happened to it has, at best, completely shut it off. At worst, it's corrupted the Transistor's memory so much that it's undergone a complete OS breakdown, meaning you'll need to find a way to perform a fresh install. Or code it from scratch again.
… You stare at the odd, line-shaped hole in your sword's blade, and after a moment to recollect what happened on the launchpad, slip your hand through it, confirming the truth.
The thinner piece comes off like breaking rock candy. As it snaps out, you sense the tiniest hint of something in the Transistor-
Another nail, the reflexive clenching of your eyes only making it so much worse.
Behind your eyelids, you begin to see the sun rise. When you open your eyes again, you see light sputtering into existence within the Transistor. Not that beautiful, mint-turquoise light you love seeing a second shadow cast in, no.
It is… orange. A deep, red-bordering orange, that is warm and bright and sunny and
sickly.
The slightest connection remains, and when you query it, it isn't Blue or Bracket that answer- it's not an AI at all. Just, automated self-repair protocols, not important enough to be given true sentience.
"WARNING- FATAL ERROR HAS OCCURRED.
ERROR CODE: 0x0000010F
REBOOTING TRANSISTOR IN SAFE MODE FOR CRITICAL SYSTEM DIAGNOSTICS.
WARNING: SEMBLANCE MANAGEMENT UNAVAILABLE: SEEK ALTERNATE METHOD OF MANAGEMENT OR SENSORY DEPRIVATION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE."
The voice from your sword is low,
gratingly synthetic- everything you expected Bracket's chosen voice to be, and you don't
care because it's
alive, just
in a coma ok that's not exactly a
good thing but it's an
improvement-
You can't stop yourself from deflating, the breath of relief leaving you in a quiet shudder, dragging some of your tension with it.
It's ok. Get up, get going and it'll be ok, you hear your sword tell you with sunlight.
A weight rolls off your shoulders, and you can't help but feel like you might have a handle on this. Even the most minor sense of control seems to help you keep a grip on your anxiety.
"I… understood some of that." Lumen says. "Ok no, I didn't understand 90% of that, but I assume 'Semblance management' is important."
"My Semblance is running unchecked in an uncontrolled environment. If I don't do something about it, I'll probably pass out from overexertion in an hour or so." You state matter-of-factly, the emotional rollercoaster of your sword being dead then it not being dead kind of… pushing panicking about that down the list of priorities by quite a bit.
You doubt your sword is going to be like this for a full hour, and you refuse to stop being productive because of something like that.
"... Yeah, even I can figure out that that's bad. Do you… have a plan to fix that?"
You don't answer him just yet. Instead, you close your eyes, you take a deep breath, and … think.
It takes a moment, to fall back into the old routine of thought, approaching concepts and questions without forming them into conscious thoughts your Semblance can latch onto, but it comes to you like riding a bike. Take your problems. Break them down. Your problem is not the Initiation- the Initiation is a set of problems to solve. Find the biggest one, then find a way around it.
Your first problem- a time limit. One hour, before you're either useless thanks to migraines, or dead from an aneurysm. That hour, before anything else, is your greatest problem. Not Grimm, not your lack of a weapon, not your sword bricking itself, not getting your relic and leaving, not Ozpin.
So. Solutions.
… The Transistor wasn't the only hyper-advanced AI game in town.
"01, how much work would it be to make the Process emulate the Transistor's connection to my Semblance?
The Cell stops its wandering for a moment, considering the question with a low hum.
"We… are unsure. The Transistor's connection to you was significantly more, for lack of a better word, intimate than the Process's. On top of that, it was a two-way street- the amount of information it fed you about your surroundings was staggering, and the Process deals with information magnitudes above that, especially with the subterranean mass in place. We believe the best course of action in this vein would be to set up the same connection with this unit and use us as a bridge to the Process as a whole, as a filter. This would be faster, but less efficient, than recoding the Semblance management program to filter out irrelevant information from the Process as a whole."
"Wait, subterranean Process mass, what-" Lumen asks from somewhere to your left.
"I'll, tell you later-" You cut that line of inquiry off at the pass,
"-why would I need to do that? Don't you have access to my Semblance already?"
There are a few variable-tone beeps from 01 that you manage to translate as a sort of
ehhh-equivalent sound.
"In a word- no. We do not have the same programming or protocols involved in regulating your Semblance- those are admin-level programs, and the Process as a whole, this unit included, doesn't have permission to access or run them, nor do we have access to the one unit that did anymore. They would need to either be somehow cannibalised from the Transistor, which presents its own difficulties, or coded fresh."
Oh.
"... That's all?"
"Those are the two options we are aware of."
You can almost
hear Lumen blinking in dumbfounded shock.
"Wh- the hell you mean 'that's all?' Jaune, we're in the middle of the
Emerald Forest, surrounded by
Grimm, and in the middle of the
initiation into one of the most prodigious combat academies on Remnant! We don't exactly have
time for you to sit down for a coding session!"
"Like riding a bicycle, huh?" Roll: 17+5=22. Success!
"Lumen, I've been streamlining this code since I was 10. I could do this with my eyes closed, and I can certainly do it while walking through the forest. Besides, I don't have much choice- one hour, then I'm either killed by an aneurysm or knocked unconscious with pain and killed by Grimm."
Silence, for a moment.
"... Yeah, ok, fair enough, can't really- can't argue with that, I guess…" You hear Lumen mumble to himself,
You open your eyes again, and the glorious shield of a concrete plan and the knowledge that you just have to get out of this forest if you want to fix your friends does nothing to help your migraine.
Instead, you force it to the side, your personal threshold for pain judging and finding it
wanting, and get up. Lumen is giving you a look, one you can't quite place the emotion in, but you think it's somewhere in the neighbourhood of bemusement.
"... I… ok, sure, but, like… in the meantime, do you need a weapon, or…?"
Hm?
Oh, right, weapon.
You turn, and with a grunt of effort, heave the Transistor onto one shoulder. Your Aura flares deep in the muscles of your arm and shoulder, keeping them from tearing themselves apart as you lift. The hole you dug into it helps here, keeping it snugly on your shoulder.
"I'm good."
People never seem to realise that
of course you trained to lift this thing.
Lumen stares at you, surprise raising his eyebrows and slackening his jaw slightly. You only
just catch the slight blush in his cheeks, made stark against his pale skin by the morning sun streaming through the trees.
Odd. It's not
that warm out here.
"... Er, well, good. Let's, let's go."
Spinning on a heel, he picks a direction, walking out of the clearing with such confidence that you almost start to follow him before his Cell chimes in.
"Lumen, you are heading south. You are proceeding in the exact opposite direction of progress."
You watch as he pulls the exact same heel spin and begins walking the other way, refusing to say a word.
|||
Your name is Ada Doyle, and your landing doesn't really go much better.
On a completely unrelated note, here are some fun facts about launchpads!
Did you know that standard launchpads are powered by Water Dust-based hydraulics, allowing them to create thousands of kilograms of force in less than a second, launching anything on them at tremendous speeds, and are regularly used for transport of goods and people in the southern marshlands of Mistral because most other forms of transport are slow, ungainly, and usually fatal in the face of the millions of giant reptiles that make up most of the area's solid ground?
Did you know that Beacon launchpads make normal launchpads look like anaemic nerds who get stuffed in lockers?
Did you know that you weigh 90 pounds soaking wet, making you the lightest projectile on a Beacon launchpad in the academy's history?
My point is- speedy thing goes up.
"FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK-"
"MS ADA CURSING LIKE THAT REALLY DOESN'T HELP ANYONE LET ALONE US-"
The wind buffets against your good eye and socket, and you swear you feel a breeze against your brain, but you can't force it open to see where you're going.
"FLARE YOUR AURA!" You only just hear Terry suggest over the sound of the wind, and take his advice.
Suddenly, you can open your eye again, the wind… still
there, but somehow not as cutting as before.
Looking around, you see…
Speedy thing reaches its zenith.
The Emerald Forest is below you. Far,
far below you. Somewhere to your left, you hear the quiet echo of someone lamenting slamming into a bird.
For a moment, you feel like you're floating, and the sight of the forest from so high up …
Stuns you.
A rolling landscape of a thousand shades of green, trees completely hiding the forest floor bar a few clearings. Almost directly in front of you, you can see where the forest drops off into a chasm, surrounded by ruins.
… Well, that's where you need to go, you
don't think, so completely enamoured with the sight of the forest that any kind of logical analysis is replaced with the sort of childish wonder you felt seeing Beacon from the airship, yet somehow
better for not being behind glass.
Your stomach stops floating, beginning the slow climb up your throat.
Speedy thing goes down.
The other half of your arc doesn't differ much, besides direction and frequency of cursing, and the treetops you were so enamoured with 20 seconds ago don't look so nice rushing towards you at terminal velocity.
Gritting your teeth and closing your eye, you prepare yourself for-
Disconnect. An automatic reaction to the prospect of pain. She draws into her shell on instinct, dragging her tangibility with her.
The Midnight Wood- Disasterpeace
All that is left is a shade, barely shifting the leaves on branches in her wake until you hit the ground, your Semblance suddenly cutting out and letting you bounce.
As you lay there wheezing for breath, your spine currently folded over a tree root, you reason that as far as landings go, that definitely could have gone worse.
Then your kidneys register the fact they're so much mash and you have to push it down the list of landings ever so slightly.
"Ms Ada? Are you alright?"
"Yeah," you manage to wheeze out after a second, "I'm ok, just… need to catch my breath-"
Grimm.
It is in the air. The smoking sweat and saliva of an
animalnotanimal, acrid and sour, a thin pall in your nose undercutting the gentler scents of the forest.
It is in the sounds of the forest. Animals rushing away, rabbits and foxes bolting for their holes in the underbrush, birdsong going silent as hatred incarnate stalks its way beneath them. The sound of a wolf panting, given an unnatural
thrum to your ears.
It is in the earth itself. You hear, no,
feel the thumping of feet, paws, light, Beowolf, more than one? No, alone, maybe ejected from the pack
you don't know or care it dies or you do-
All this and more is frantically told to you by some ancient reptilian intellect that lies outside of your brain, some
lower cognition residing in your spinal cord, instincts uncaring of anything beyond the most basic
feedfuckfightflee reflexes
screaming all this at you as fast as thought can carry it, pressing a single ice cube to the back of your heart.
You unhook your machete from your belt, and focus on where the sound is coming fr-
seven o'clock, approaching fast, found you-
Spinning in a flash, you catch the Beowolf in its snarling maw with your blade, separating its lower jaw from the rest of the body.
Then its lower body from the rest of its body.
Two muffled thumps sound out behind you, and the acrid scent of smog begins to fill the air, and you draw some of the fabric of your poncho around your mouth before you end up breathing it in.
The adrenaline flooding your veins
hurts, every muscle pulled steel cable tight in anticipation, your eye wheeling manically around at every little twitch and rustle in the brush, your frontal lobe slowly shutting down as the ancient lizard of the basal ganglia wrenches the wheel from its hands-
|||
Priority evaluation, updated 12.536 seconds ago:
- Ensure physical and mental safety of companion, designation 'Ms Ada.'
- Ensure formation of pair then team with other Process unit companions; 50% complete.
- Ensure completion of Initiation.
Grimm de- Grimm dispatched by Ms Ada.
Warning: Ms Ada displaying signs of hypervigilance/possible panic attack. Erratic, paranoid behaviour directly after acts of violence in line with previous behaviour during hypervigilant episodes. Lack of focus on relative long-term goals deemed unproductive.
Proceeding with prepared mental grounding protocols.
|||
"Ms Ada?"
You wheel to the sound as you have every other, and only just stop yourself from cleaving Terry through the eye.
"We believe you may be experiencing a panic attack."
You don't respond. Can't respond. Every sound could be another Grimm, a subtler Grimm, not pouncing and trouncing around like an amateur and you have to be
ready for it-
"We believe the appropriate action right now would be to, to quote you- 'get your shit together.'" You hear Terry say, followed by… yourself?
Wait what?
Something in that sentence cuts through the haze of paranoia that had settled over your mind, and you turn to focus on your Cell.
"... What?"
"'Get your shit together.' That is what you told us to tell you to do if you were ever having a panic attack, so that is what we are doing- please get your fucking shit together and we shall find Creme."
… You… actually don't know what's more surreal- the fact that Terry, quite possibly the most innocent creature you've ever met, is currently cussing you out to drag you out of a panic attack, the fact that he's using a recording of your voice to do it, the fact that it's
working, or the fact that you actually feel a tiny bit
guilty for teaching it how to say the fuck word.
Still, it… works. Forcing yourself to take a steadying breath, you consider exactly what needs doing right now. First, partner. Finding Creme, Lumen, or Jaune is your first priority, and Terry mentioned Creme specifically, so you guess the boys have found each other.
"Terry, which way is Creme?"
"She landed about 500 metres southeast of here. According to Process unit Tulip, she reduced a tree to splinters upon impact and suggests using it as a landmark. Preliminary analysis of landing arcs shows two possible partners between you and them. We suggest avoiding eye contact if possible."
Yeah. That would be… annoying.
You wonder if…
"Terry, how far away can you detect Grimm?"
"Using sonar and visual confirmation, a Cell can detect Beowolves within roughly 30 metres on a flat plane- in a forest like this, that radius is closer to 18. Larger Grimm than that can be detected from much further away. Why?"
You silently practice the action a few times to yourself, trying to gauge how fast a Beowolf can sprint and how long it would take to just… rip it off…
Yeah, yeah, you can manage that. Even if you fuck it up, it's a goddamn
Beowolf, you can kill those fuckers blind.
Loosening your bandages, you unwrap them from your head, before shifting them so the patch covers your good eye, leaving your socket uncovered.
"Ms Ada, we have no idea what you are doing, but it appears to be very unwise. Is blinding yourself in a forest full of Grimm the best idea?" Terry asks with more than a little apprehension in his chirpy little voice.
"18 metres is more than long enough to rip my bandages off if I need to, and it guarantees I can't make eye contact with someone I don't wanna. Besides, it's only for a little while."
Can't make eye contact without eyes, is your logic. While the logic is inherently sound, the execution does leave a little to be desired, in Terry's eyes. Eye.
"Why not just cover your eye with a hand?"
"And miss the chance to scare someone with my socket?"
Silence.
A synthetic sigh.
"We shall try to guide you through the underbrush as best we can. Please don't complain when you trip on a tree root."
Ooh-hoo, someone's getting sassy.
Still, you can't blame him. On some level, you accept that this idea is
beyond stupid, but, it's 200 metres- what's the worst that can happen?
You place the patch over your eye, and begin the task of tying the bandages around your face in the exact opposite orientation you've been using for the past seven years, which is
really tough holy shit-
Once you're sure it's secure, rendering you blind to the world, you take a deep breath and ask Terry to lead the way.
"This way, Ms Ada. No, no, to your left, left, keep going, watch out for that root-!"
|||
Lumen stops, looking into the distance for a moment, and you almost bump into him because you're too busy typing.
"What's wrong?" You ask him while you continue to code away.
"...I don't know why, but I have the sinking feeling someone's doing something very stupid right now."
"... You realise Leathers is in this Initiation, right?" You say with just a little more vitriol than intended.
"No, no, not Leathers stupid,
stupid stupid."
You continue typing, waiting for him to elaborate. 01 was quite happy to sacrifice the majority of his body to create a one-handed keyboard and screen for you, and you've been blasting through a
very streamlined version of the Transistor's Semblance management code ever since. You decided very quickly that you could do without the popups, the
return of information in general, and focused entirely on stress and pain management, which you sorely…
sorely need.
The migraine hasn't progressed to the point of being crippling yet, but that doesn't stop you from feeling
miserable because of it.
Still, you'll take miserable over incapacitated.
After a few seconds, Lumen shrugs and continues to walk along.
"Eh, not our problem. 's probably not one of the girls, right?"
You consider what you know of both Creme and Ada, and figure that the worst-case scenario is one of them doing something stupid, but manageable by their Cell.
"Unit can confirm: Ada is the culprit. She has intentionally blindfolded herself to ensure she cannot make eye contact with anyone until she meets Creme. Process units Terry and Tulip are currently guiding them towards each other- should meet in around five minutes, at current rate of… Update- Creme has covered her eyes as well. Prior analysis of human behaviour during combat scenarios suggests that this implies an extreme level of confidence on both their parts."
You both stare in silence at Alabaster,
stunned by what you've just heard.
"... Oh my God if they survive this I'm never letting them live this down." Lumen says after a few moments.
You shrug a little.
"Eh. Five minutes isn't that bad. I mean, hey, we've been walking for about, what, ten minutes now, and we haven't seen any Grimm since-"
Without warning, Lumen wheels on you, and you only just spot the wild look in his eyes in time to not stop his hand slapping over your mouth.
"Don't. Tempt. Fate."
You raise an eyebrow at him.
"I'm serious!
Every time someone says something like that, it's as if the universe conspires to prove them wrong-"
Roaring. Ursa, sounds too small to be a Major, thank God, rushing towards you at about 20 miles an hour, easily outrun except for the fact that it's coming directly at you
ow ow ow thinking too hard-
Lumen turns to look at you.
"You
see? Murphy is real, Jaune!"
Wh- that's-
correlation does not equal-
Whatever, you don't care, you have bigger things to worry about right now. Like the Ursai you can see approaching you through the trees. Your instincts were right- they
aren't Majors, and you let go of breath you didn't realise you were holding.
You can take an Ursa without the Transistor,
easy, and you still
have the Transistor.
Shrugging your 300-pound computer off your shoulder, you finally grip it in two hands, letting it fall to the ground with a tactile
thud that reverberates through the soft earth.
To your side, you see Lumen bring up his sword, and various shades of red and violet and yellow climbing up the veins of his arms, towards his hands.
"You take left, I'll take right?" Lumen asks, not taking his eyes off the posturing bear creatures.
"It's a plan."
THE URSAI ROAR. YOUR HEART ANSWERS.
BOTH CRAVE VIOLENCE.
BY WHAT METHOD WILL VIOLENCE BE ACHIEVED:
[]Transistor- it was too big to be called a sword. Massive, thick, heavy, and far too intelligent. Indeed, it was a raw heap of crystalised math. (Bonus to damage on account of using the kind of weapon barbarians have to stuff their hands in their pockets for, penalty to movement because, yeah.)
-[] Overhead Swing- CRUSH ITS SKULL. (Hit chance: Base 30%. 40% chance of dazing on hit.)
-[] Leg Sweep- SHATTER ITS KNEES. (Hit chance: Base 50%. 45% chance of crippling on hit.)
-[] Centre Mass- WATCH IT CRUMPLE. (Hit chance: Base 70%. 50% chance of crumpling on hit.)
-[] THRUST- SPEAR IT LIKE A WALLACHIAN HORSE THIEF. (Hit chance: Base 10%. On hit, kill instantly. On miss, receive guaranteed counterattack.)
[] Razor Shield- you bring a virgin weapon to this eternal battlefield. It is inevitable that it will not stay that way. Baptise it in smog, and its name shall come to you. (Bonus to movement on account of not carrying the barbarian marital aid, penalty to damage because you chose the only formshift gauntlet not really meant to be used on its own.)
-[] Mask- TAKE ITS EYES. (Hit chance: Base 20%. 80% chance of, yeah, take a wild guess.)
-[] Neck- BLEED THE CATTLE. (Hit chance: Base 30%. 50% chance of bleedout on hit.)
-[] Vital Points- MAKE IT PAY FOR SUFFERING YOUR WEAKNESSES. (Hit chance: Base 40%. 50% chance of crippling on hit.)
-[] ONE-TON PUNCH- MAKE IT REGRET ITS CHARGE. (Hit chance: Base 5%. On hit, kill instantly.)
