Hold It In (RWBY/Transistor)

[Freehelm]

[X] Birdie No

I'm never one to allow my enemy to have air superiority if possible.

 

[Nightlight]

[X] Birdie No- Lumen, Creme, and Weiss's agreed-upon plan.

The kind that's essentially poking fun at an often-misconceived financial situation from late Medieval period Germany (ok yes technically the Holy Roman Empire and its several dozen fractured independent states but Germany ok let's not go there), and its laws and restrictions regarding the length of blades legal to be carried at the time, and I could probably spend several paragraphs explaining it, but explaining jokes isn't funny, so I'm just going to leave it there and see who giggles.

Look man by the end of this quest it's just gonna be me and that one dude who really gets me or I'm going to end up creating a wiki just to give you all a glossary to keep up with my dumbfuck sense of humour

Click to shrink...

Don't worry, I got it Prok.

 

[The Crimson King]

[X] APPLY DEMOLITION TO THE GRIMMALD BODY- Ada, Pyrrha, Blake, and if you're honest with yourself, it would be Leathers' choice if he wasn't shaking off a concussion right now. Their plan is rather similar, on the surface, to the others', a fusion in its own way- take the Process's Nevermore deterrent… and aim it at the other guy. Point-blank range. A quick check with the Process tells you that significantly less power will be needed to reach the same desired conclusion, but the sheer force of being near the blasting zone will render the surrounding land to bedrock. On the bright side- the sheer force of the explosion should put out any fires caused!

 

[ADeshantis]

Jaune suffering from a mild case of a severe phobia regarding non-crystalline Dust, on account of nearly killing himself with it as a child.

Click to shrink...

Hold up, you can't just drop that bomb on us and walk away here!

 

[Prok]

Hold up, you can't just drop that bomb on us and walk away here!

Click to shrink...

... I-

{Dust melts pretty easily as a raw ore, and once it's liquid, it tends to stick to hot metal. Heat it up in a crucible, pour it on, and let it crystalise in the groove. Jaune did pretty much the same thing for his middle school science fair.}

You squirm a little, your chest twitching with phantom pain as you remember how that ended.

"Oh? What did you do?"

Oh god now she's interested this is the worst day of your life-

"I... I've, always had an interest in this kind of thing, like, the most base application of Dust to a weapon, and for the science fair, I wanted to, you know, show off a little, in a way that didn't involve The Transistor."

"I see! What happened next?"

"Well, I managed to get some raw Dust ore, I did some work for an independent mine and got some instead of my normal payment, I read up on what to do, set up everything I needed, tried it in the garage-"

{He tripped over his feet during the demonstration, spilt molten Lightning Dust all over the floor, then leapt on the damn stuff like it was a grenade. Which, to be fair, it pretty much was.}

Turns out Lightning Dust isn't at all a hyperbolic name. Even purified improperly, you ended up with ferning all across your chest.

"Oh. That sounds incredibly painful." Penny says, managing to at least sound sympathetic.

"Oh, it was... agonising." You tell her, remembering exactly how painful the sensation of 4.5 million volts of electricity pulsing through your heart was.

Click to shrink...

-I dropped this bomb on you almost 2 years ago. It's just that it's only now met the criteria to finally go off.

Also, tad late, but vote's closed and you're having roast Nevermore for dinner.

 

[ADeshantis]

... I-


-I dropped this bomb on you almost 2 years ago. It's just that it's only now met the criteria to finally go off.

Also, tad late, but vote's closed and you're having roast Nevermore for dinner.

Click to shrink...

Ah. I forgot.

I can't remember everything, guys, I'm sorry!

Also, that's a pretty sad dinner given its gonna dissolve.

 

[BlackCoat13]

Also, that's a pretty sad dinner given its gonna dissolve.

Click to shrink...

Prof. Port: "That just means it's all of the taste and none of the calories! Absolutely delicious, though admittedly not very nutritious. You really want to eat the Grimm while they're still alive! Then they don't dissolve so quickly. Truly, the most dangerous game. I think my friend Zaroff Zokine wrote a book called that a couple years back, but I never read it. Even though he was on my team he was quite insufferable. Anyways! Eating Grimm, morally I think it's okay. If something is trying to eat you, it should be fair to eat it right back, eh? Nevermore are quite tasty lightly charred and seasoned with a bit of pepper or fire Dust. And the aquatic Grimm, if you can get them are just absolutely delicious-"

Jaune: "You know, upon reviewing these Process recorded speeches from Port's class, I'm not sure any other teacher in Beacon actually knows what Professor Port is trying to teach here. "

 

[ADeshantis]

Let's breathe some life into this baby with an omake. Maybe two.
First off, let's have the logical conclusion of Jaune being able to lift like Machio and Nora wanting to learn.

Nora vs Kevin

---

Pyrrha Nikos and Cinder Fall stared each other down; the proud champion on her knees in the shattered remains of Ozpin's clocktower office, the other half of the Fall Maiden towering over her bruised form, bow raised, obsidian arrow pointed at the window Pyrrha's armor left straight to her heart. Never before had Pyrrha wished so vehemently that she hadn't considered sex appeal when designing her kit. Cinder grinned malevolently as she pulled the string back. "Do you... believe in..." she cocked her head to the side as she heard a sound. "What the hell is that?"

"That", as it happened, was Nora Valkyrie. Her friend was up on that Clock Tower, and no force on Remnant was going to stop her from getting up there to help, gravity and enormous Grimm dragons be damned. Nora didn't have time for any of that! It was time for her secret technique! One refined through an entire year of training with the secret muscle techniques passed on from Jaune's mysterious, hunky bodybuilding teacher. (Or, in normal language, a year of proper nutrition, access to proper weightlifting equipment, instructions on a well-rounded weightlifting routine, and the kind of motivation that made lesser mortals quiver in fear.) Nora looked across the Beacon campus at the giant dragon perched upon the clock tower, her eyes narrowing in determination. "RUBY!" She called across the battlefield, catching the hooded sniper's attention. "HIT ME!"

The frisson of fear that rippled through the assembled Beacon Academy first years, and some of the first year transfers who'd been watching the tournament, was a palpable thing. Even the Grimm stopped for a moment to take note of the new note that had been added to the delicious symphony of fear. It was a lesser fear, but a deep one where it could be found within the song of terror that called them to the academy. Not instinctive; indeed, much of Beacon Academy had been taught to fear those words across various inter-team sparring exercises and live combat drills. Those words heralded chaos, panic, and mass destruction. Ruby Rose didn't feel any of that fear; only a giddy excitement. She loved destruction; her weapon of choice attested to that, and with one bullet, she knew she was about to unleash an untold amount of it. She cycled to a Lightning Dust round, charged it with her Aura, and fired on her ally, making Nora stagger and crackle with electricity. The grin that the redhead gave as she straightened, hefting Magnhild over one shoulder like it was a child's toy hammer, ensured that her run-up towards the tower was clear.

Clear of students.

She didn't pay much notice to the Grimm. They didn't slow her down.

With every step, Nora Valkyrie gained speed, but she also gained size, every muscle in her body flexing with incredible power, uncaged, untamed. Unstoppable. Her frame bulged and grew, remaining somehow alluring and feminine even as she swelled with the kind of muscle that tore at her clothes, leaving her barely clad by the time she reached top speed. Her legs bunched, then flexed, and she leapt, screaming a scream of joy and battle-rage and bloodlust as she hurtled through the air like a demented, electrically charged cannonball.

Atop the tower, Pyrrha Nikos did not answer her foe's questions. Instead, she did what she had been trained to do for the whole year whenever she heard that yell. She hit the deck immediately, curling into a ball and pulling a cage of spiked metal around her; none of it touching her, grounding herself out with an improvised Faraday cage in case of collateral damage, because whenever they practiced this, the collateral damage had been epic in scope and scale.

Practice didn't hold a candle to the real thing. The battle paused for a moment as Cinder Fall was struck by a comet of lightning, steel, Aura, muscle, and violence. Nora didn't even slow down, careening through her and into the great dragon that hadn't even had the time to react to the new threat. Of Cinder Fall, nothing remained. Of the dragon, only a headless corpse, which fell to the ground and began to smoke and dissolve.

From the ruined stump of its neck stood Nora Valkyrie, the new Fall Maiden.

---

OK, I lied, none of this is logical, but I was possessed by it and had to write it.

I might post a new Alt-Jaune some time tonight or tomorrow morning, if I can work out the kinks.

 

[Walpurgusnacht]

Nice, I like it

 

[ADeshantis]

I couldn't fit it into the narrative without breaking the flow, but imagine Leathers standing knee-deep in a Deathstalker doffing his hat at the sheer, concentrated Gorkamorka. Except he wasn't wearing a hat, so he head-butted a Creep (Grimm) so hard that he ended up with its mask on his head and then doffed that.

 

[The Crimson King]

We should totally try to make her learn that.

 

[Prok]

this, in theory, could have been out last Wednesday, on the anniversary of Nelward uploading Ghost, which, yeah, scraping the wood off the bottom of the barrel as far as reasons to update go, but then I ended up in the hospital for like 2 hours and you know being stabbed 6 times for a cannula takes a lot out of me even besides the thing that put me in hospital in the first place

on another note, and this is pedantry of the highest fucking order but I've earned a little of that after the past two weeks, this did come out faster than the last one

---

Creme only takes a few minutes to explain each option, and she's surprisingly fair about it too; she doesn't make her option sound any better or worse than any of the others, or vice versa, she presents each one as neutrally as she can, given the situation.

So, going out and beating up the overgrown Kelpie, letting the Process do its thing with the Nevermore, and aiming that same cannon at the overgrown Kelpie.

{I don't think I'd trust that last one- even if the Process aims straight down, the shockwave alone would probably turn this clearing into a new cliff face.}

Damn. You're kinda really curious about what this proposed ordinance would do to it.

Since it's so much closer, we could achieve complete cellular carbonisation with roughly 20% of the power, saving this forward operating base from complete structural compromise!

Would you and the others be able to stay here?

The heat created by the wasted energy from the beam would be enough to fatally injure everyone, even with heat protection in place. You would still be required to move away from here, just not quite as far.

… Could you…

"Ooh, bulb's flickering, give it a tap-" DC 12, Roll: 14. Success!

Oh, that would be mean though.

Mean, but very possible!

You most certainly do not give a nasty little smile at the thought.

"... Jaune? You've been real quiet, and that look on your face doesn't say rainbows and puppy dogs to me," Lumen says.

"... I vote for firing at the Nevermore-"

A hissed yes from Creme, a little smile from Weiss, groaning from Ruby and Nora, Ada and Pyrrha seem rather nonplussed about it, Blake is worried-

"-and I know how to kill two birds with one stone. I can't nullify the backblast, but nothing is stopping us from using it anyway."

- and that's what gets their attention.

"... You're going to trap that deer Grimm in here and turn the place into a cremation furnace," Blake says, getting it in one.

"Well if you can do that, why don't we just stay here anyway?" Ada asks. "If you're redirecting the… you're directing it through here."

"Sorry. Still gotta move. On the bright side, we probably won't have to move as far," you tell her, giving an apologetic smile while you do.

"We would move to the other side of the ridge at the very least, to be safe," the walls tell you, and you feel the formation of a door on the other side of the hall- your exit.

Leathers finally stumbles out of the medical wing, his balance finally under control, just in time to see everyone starting to move.

"Wus' happenin'? Where we goin'?"

"Firing a laser at the Nevermore, redirecting the backblast into the deer Grimm out there, and running like hell to get out of the blast radius, now move, you little concussed git," Lumen helpfully explains to Leathers, the last bit snapping him out of whatever sick, sick fantasies that description just put into his head.

He falls in with the group, just in time to watch the back door open. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch a Cell pop out of the wall and float off behind you, quickly reentering your field of view, towing a conspicuously large cuboid behind it.

Well, at least the relics are safe.

"Wait, um… Jaune?" Ruby stops for a moment, grabbing your attention, "shouldn't we… warn people?"

"Why would we do that?" Blake asks. Out of curiosity, you realise after a second, not some callous desire to not warn people.

"A 5 milliwatt laser can blind you instantly just from a flash across the eyes, but you can put your hand in front of it without a problem. If that laser's powerful enough to kill a Nevermore at 2 kilometres up with enough energy to overcome thermal bloom, then…" Ruby responds, trailing off as the implication sets in.

"{Point taken. I'll… oh. Well, it'll be the last thing I do, but I can send a warning out for… agh, I don't know, I can't… everyone in the Emerald Forest should do it, so I'll just… ok, no, yeah, I can do this,}" The Transistor says, sounding about as uncertain as you've ever heard it.

"Wait whaaaat-" Nora coos, treating the revelation that your sword can talk more calmly than anyone else has ever treated the revelation.

Ren on the other hand somehow manages to look more tired, probably filing away the knowledge of your talking sword with all the other things he's going to scream into his pillow about later tonight.

That's not exactly the most comforting thing you've heard all day, but… lasers aren't that dangerous so long as they've got nothing to reflect off of, right? You can stare at the beam of a 5-milliwatt laser, and so long as there isn't anything that can redirect it into your eyes… and, it's aimed up at the sky, which has nothing to reflect off of, and a Nevermore, which is black, so…

Ugh. There are too many variables to justify winging it. Better safe than sorry, you suppose.

"Do it."

The Transistor does not respond. It doesn't need to, you already feel that pulse in your head, a wide-band data packet sent through what your gut says is an already-existing network, but- how? There's no…

Ohh. 'You will be monitored and graded through the duration of this evaluation.'

They must have cameras up all over the forest. It's the only way they could monitor people since you're pretty sure there aren't enough teachers at Beacon to even have one for every two people in the Initiation, even if they were all stealthy enough to stalk you and not be seen.

… Those bastards watched you almost die from an aneurysm and didn't do anything about it!

In complete fairness, sysadmin, Ozpin did say the instructors weren't going to intervene, and even if that wasn't the case, this is not the time nor place to be angry about it. Please prioritise, sysadmin.

With a wordless sigh, you… begrudgingly accept that you should set that aside for the moment, and begin to lead the others outside, preparing for the dash to the rock ridge further to the north, maybe to the tower you can see, even from here.

While you walk, then jog, then run, the others beside and behind you, the Nevermore raining down razor-sharp feathers the size of spears on you all, but not breaking from its circling pattern yet, as your HUD finally flashes back into existence as Bracket rises from his virtual grave, all across the Emerald Forest, every working Scroll begins to ring.

|||

Unknown Grimm has escaped from restraints.

Opening bunker doors.

...

Unknown Grimm has been captured and restrained by Process. Proceeding to stun Grimm.

Understanding of laser weaponry limited on Remnant- no mathematical basis to work from- testing required.

Query: have we checked the servers mastercomfork_Bracket logged?

Negative.

… Engineering designs for hypothetical megawatt-scale laser-based defence system- with alteration, can be turned into an offensive weapon.

Note: Power consumption of this system far exceeds the instantaneous electrical draw of any known power plant on Remnant, let alone the production capacity of any given portable generator.

Conclusion: These Atlesians are crazy.

Passive power generation insufficient for planned design- creation of power generation units necessary.

Begin construction.

|||

Somewhere in the forest, a blonde girl walks into a clearing, humming a tune to herself as she nibbles on a fingernail, completely ignoring the snarling Beowolf slinking out of the foliage.

"Er, M-Meri, that's a Beowolf, you should maybe probably deal with that instead of biting your nails-" a voice says from the air near her, quickly growing into a barely-restrained shriek of concern.

"Nope! Hyu ahn't shcared of jusht one leetle wolfie, ah yu?"

Meri's words are garbled, partly by her accent, partly by her less than stellar grasp of Valish, and partly by the fact that she has reached that critical point of the nail bite where, if one isn't careful, a clean nibble can quickly detour directly into the root and become a painful, bloody hangnail.

The Beowolf, rude little bugger that it is, does not care for her need for concentration, and rushes forwards, drawing a yelp from the voice, and forcing her to step out of the way of it as it rushes towards her invisible partner, who begins beating it off with… something.

She sighs, and starts fiddling with the bitten nail again, gently pressing it between the thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand, then sliding down until-

rip

The nail grows heavy in her hand, curling and blackening until all that's left is a matte black sphere the size of a musket round, growing hot and smoky in her hand as she turns to the beast of Grimm, now harassing her invisible partner, before winging it directly into the back of its skull.

The leaden ball of once-nail-now-something-else punches through with almost no resistance and the Beowolf collapses like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Ha! Napakymppi! Clear ze area!" Meri yells in triumph, then caution, just before she starts to count down in her head.

Three, two, one...

Boom.

The detonation reduces the Beowolf to a cloud of smog, the shockwave sending it out and up in a mushroom cloud. Meri stumbles from the force, covering her mouth and nose in the crook of her elbow until the cloud dissipates.

A moment passes in silence once the remnants of the Beowolf cease existing, and Meri passes it by inspecting the hollow left in her finger, watching a new nail rapidly grow into place, trying her damnedest to remember something… important.

…

Any second now, it'll come to her any second-

HER PARTNER RIGHT YES-

"Yoohoo! Meester inveesible man! Is hyu dead?"

"No, I am not dead, and I have a name, you know," the air on the other side of the crater says, just in time to draw her attention to the oil slick of person that begins to appear.

It's not much, just an arm here, a patch of freckles there, an icy blue eye framed by curly red locks up there- shifting and fading in and out, never forming enough of a silhouette for Meri's brain to catch onto the fact that, yes, person there.

Still enough for her to get an idea of what her partner looks like- that is to say, unlike anyone she's ever seen before.

"Vell, yes, I am sure hyu do, but I do not remember it," Meri says bluntly. "I am very bad viss names."

"... I- you know what? Just, call me Al. Everyone else does."

Meri nods, mouthing the name to herself for a few seconds to commit it to memory.

"Alright! So, hwere are ve go from here, Al? Because I sink ve may be lost."

"Well, I think we're still going north, we haven't been turning as far as I can tell-" Al starts to explain, just as Meri's Scroll begins to vibrate against her hip.

"Hm?"

The device keeps vibrating even after she unclips it from her skirt waistband, only stopping when, after a moment to remember how to open it, she unfurls it to a screen flashing between two shades of red in a way that screams warning on some primal level even she can understand. She notices Valish text in the direct centre, in what she thinks is all-caps, along with an arrow at the bottom of the screen, currently pointing somewhere to her right.

Ok, um…

come on Meri it's time to work that crash course-

"Va-varning... high... high-energy... uzage- veapon, uzage- ohh zat's not good is it?" Meri does her best to put her limited knowledge of written Valish to use, and it doesn't take her long to get the gist.

It also doesn't take her long to drive her partner into another bout of hysterics.

"High-energy WHAT-" he shrieks, a set of panicked footsteps appearing in the grass just before Meri suddenly feels pressure on her shoulders, and it takes all her self-restraint to not smack it off once she realises that it's Al, who begins to recite the warning for her.

|||

The church has lost all pretence of being built by human hands.

Unnecessary decoration, material, angles, all discarded, the material moving around in such tiny but universal increments that the building no longer looks like a building- it looks like the surface of a four-dimensional cuttlefish, merely patterns moving along a plane.

The tower shifts towards the centre, lengthening, narrowing, twisting and fusing with the former roof until it resembles nothing on Remnant- just a spire of metal jutting out towards the sky.

Engage targeting.

The barrel snaps into position, turning in little circles to seamlessly track the Nevermore, unerringly aiming directly at centre-mass.

Around the reindeer Grimm, massive cubes rise from the floor, filling the room with a deadly hum, the snap of arcing electricity around it driving the creature into a fearful frenzy. All around the interior, red eyes begin to form, allowing the Process visual confirmation for any warnings, and to view the captive Grimm for escape attempts.

Beginning construction of multiple-laser diodes and focusing apparatus.

Query: what is the best wavelength to pierce Grimm flesh?

As one, the many eyes that had begun to form to oversee the creation process swivelled towards their captive.

The Grimm stops flailing, its ragged, bug-bitten ears flattening against its skull as it gives out a fearful whine, red eyes wheeling around behind its fully-recovered mask.

Suggestion: Exhaustive testing regimen.

|||

Elsewhere, another pair is in the midst of battle. A girl with dark skin covered in intricate markings slams an axe into the skull of a Beowolf, splitting it in two, dragging the rapidly decomposing corpse along with her as she dodges another, raising a hand and pulsing Aura through her tattoos, a section along her palms flashing a deep purple.

A dark sphere forms around the Beowulf and turns its leap into ungraceful flailing as gravity simply ceases to exist around it leaving it yipping for help as it floats off into the sky.

Off to the side, a boy with very large sunglasses, designed to keep out all light, and a yellow cloak charges at his quarry, horse chopper above his head in defiance of both God and basic blade training. Bringing it down with a half-hearted yell, the sheer length of the blade neatly bisects the Beowolf mid-leap.

The girl's eyes widen for a second as she sees another Beowolf slink out from the foliage behind him then begin to sprint, running low and fast to go for his ankle and drag him to the ground.

"Lord Abha-!"

"Behind me, I see it," he mumbles, planting his sword in the ground and twisting in the instant before it latches onto his ankle.

The Beowolf, devoid of an ankle to bite and space to stop itself ends up launching maw-first into Rashmi's planted sword, with fatal results.

"I've asked you not to call me that, Pila," he gently chides his partner as he pulls the sword from the ground, flicks the last drops of smog off it, then sheathes it again, holding it up like a hiking staff as he begins to walk off. "Just Rashmi, here."

"I-I apologise, sir-" Pila stutters, eyes on her feet as she speaks.

"Ah!"

A wince, a sharp exhale, "Rashmi. It is… a difficult habit to break-"

"Pila."

"-and, and I don't understand why you wish for me to break it, why, you wish to break from tradition like this-"

"Pila."

"-i-it's wrong, for me to act as your equal, and you to act like mine, and-"

"Kapila!"

Her eyes snap to look at her partner, and she sees his face set in concern, and something more concerning besides- a light so yellow it turns his cheeks gold leaks from behind the large sunglasses perched on his nose, turning the glass orange, a light so alluring and illuminating and glorious and- and she averts her eyes before those thoughts go any further.

"Check your Scroll for me."

Without questioning his command, she pulls her Scroll from her pocket, and opens it, just in time for it to begin flashing red, a message in large, white, angry letters.

"What does it say?" Rashmi asks, his Scroll going off at its place on his hip.

She begins to read the warning aloud, frowning deeper and deeper the further she reads.

WARNING

HIGH-ENERGY WEAPON USAGE IN PROGRESS AT EMERALD FOREST RUINS.

DO NOT APPROACH THE WHITE BUILDING IN THE RUINS.

DO NOT FACE THE WHITE BUILDING IN THE RUINS.

DO NOT LOOK TO THE SKY ABOVE THE RUINS.

SEEK TALL COVER AND SHIELD YOUR EYES.

YOU WILL BE INFORMED WHEN TEST HAS CONCLUDED.

FAILURE TO FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS MAY RESULT IN PERMANENT BLINDNESS OR IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE TO EYES.​

"... That… sounds bad."

"Lord Abha-"

"Ah."

"It is not safe here," Pila spits, cutting past him harshly enough to startle the boy. "We must move, and quickly. I spotted a grove of willows that will shade us, a few minutes east of here."

"... As you wish, Pila," Rashmi mumbles, silently following her to safety.

|||

The Grimm screams. Several smoking craters mar its body, some already bubbling up with scabs and healing over, others still raw wounds, healing stymied by unknown means.

Tests 47-53 complete: hypothesis confirmed- lasers of sufficient strength within the 600-615nm range healing and cause damage up to a magnitude greater than the next-best performing subjects. Gauge diode and dye medium 81-88-9 for 608nm wavelength.

Query: Keep test subject alive?

Solution: heat output will kill it regardless. Active effort wastes time and power. Finalise construction.

The Grimm is left as is, head resting on the cool, white floor, tongue lolling as it wheezes for breath and tries to heal itself. Above its head, the ceiling begins to shift, becoming narrower and more circular, something like an inverted funnel, the diodes recreated at its mouth, a series of focusing lenses flashing into existence up at the half-metre opening at the tip of the spire, vents opening along the entire length of the tower to keep the laser firing for as long as it can.

Final checks:

- Diodes set to correct wavelength, dye medium 81-88-9 in place: check.
- Target within range: check.
- Heat vents operational: check
- Initial laser power: 25 Megawatts.
- Beam diameter at target: 0.5 metres.
- Laser pulse rate: 12000 pulses at 1-millisecond intervals- total runtime of 12 seconds.

Everything is ready. Creating black box to record results in the event of data loss due to destruction.

A metre-long spike juts into the rock, quickly separating and eating away at the rock around it until a small cubbyhole has been formed, about 30 metres underneath the ground, the air cold as winter, well-insulated from the outside world. The spike loses its rigidity, curling up like a minimalist snake.


Prime laser. Final announcement will be made with countdown for firing.

|||

You finally make it to the lip of the ridge while Bracket expertly bats away the Nevermore's last perfunctory shots, feathers the size of javelins sprouting out of the ground around you, each fibre sharp enough to shave with.

Overall, it doesn't seem that interested in you. It doesn't attempt to follow you, it makes no attempt to dive at you, it seems quite content to just throw feathers at you from its vantage point high in the air, barely a black vaguely-winged splotch on the sky.

Coincides with known behaviour of Giant Nevermore- happy to attack from afar until targets leave range. May change flight pattern to keep group in sight.

Will that mess with the Process targeting it?

It shouldn't need to move that far to keep on target. Base predicts no problems with that much lateral movement.

Wonderful. People begin dropping down around you, in various states of dishevelment and with varying levels of grace.

"Anyone hurt?" you ask, once the last of them drops down.

Ruby looks at her cloak with abject horror in her eyes, the massive hole and subsequent rip about two-thirds down apparent to anyone that so much as glances in her direction.

"Ugh, this is going to take hours to fix! Ooh... if this plan doesn't work, Jaune, I'm killing that stupid bird myself!" she squeaks at you furiously.

You try and downplay it, but it is actually quite unnerving seeing the tiny girl so genuinely angry. It feels wrong, the same way a hallway full of tilted paintings does.

"I believe in the Process. It knows what it's doing, and if it doesn't, it's good at finding out what it needs to do."

Almost on cue, a booming synthetic voice rings out across the clearing and into the forest, deep enough and loud enough that even the echoes off the valley ahead leave your bones rattling.

"ATTENTION, ALL, PERSONNEL.

THE, HIGH-ENERGY, WEAPONS, TEST, WILL BEGIN, SHORTLY.

PLEASE, HEED, THE, WARNINGS, FROM, EARLIER-

DO, NOT, APPROACH, THE, WHITE BUILDING, IN THE, RUINS.

DO, NOT, FACE, THE, WHITE BUILDING, IN THE, RUINS.

DO, NOT, LOOK, AT, THE, SKY ABOVE, THE RUINS.

SEEK SHELTER, AND, COVER, YOUR, EYES.

FAILURE, TO, COMPLY, MAY RESULT IN, PERMANENT BLINDNESS, OR, DAMAGE TO, EYES.

THE, TEST, WILL, BEGIN, IN, TEN."

A moment passes with no further announcements. More than a few seconds, at least.

"... Ten what-" Yang asks.

"NINE."

"Oh."

You can't help but hold your breath and try to think unintrusive thoughts as the countdown rings out across the forest.

Ten seconds. Ten seconds without anything else going wrong. That's all you need.

|||

"EIGHT."

"Sir, should we still be up here?" you ask. "That... thing seems somewhat insistent on its safety instructions."

Your name is Glynda Goodwitch and you can't help but feel a tiny thread of anxiety in your chest from the fact that those warnings that appeared on your Scroll are now being echoed out for about 25 kilometres from its epicentre- a white building that just popped into existence a few minutes after Jaune Arc appeared on the scene, of the same general aesthetic as the robot that helped that group take out a Beowolf pack.

You are absolutely sure that there is no connection, there. None at all.

"SEVEN."

Nada.

You don't even need your Scroll to see the building. It stretches up into the sky like a hypodermic needle for titans, visible from here. Even accounting for your height, you think it must be large enough to be seen even over the curvature of Remnant.

"Despite its warnings, we should be relatively safe, at this distance anyway- if it's firing straight up, there will be very little for the laser to reflect off of. Besides, aren't you curious?" Ozpin asks you, a soft smile on his face.

"SIX."

God that is nerve-wracking. The sound is powerful enough that you can feel every syllable in your bones.

"Of course I am, I just feel the need for caution- the risk to our already less-than-stellar eyesight isn't something to dismiss. Is curiosity really worth the risk when we can watch this on a camera?"

"We don't have cameras pointed at the sky, Glynda."

"We have drones."

Ozpin blinks, a moment of blank incomprehension on his face as he tries to remember what drones are.

"FIVE."

"... The miniature, remote-controlled Bullheads?" You gently prod, hoping to jog his memory.

"... Ah, yes, those toys you insisted on buying-"

"They aren't toys-" you snap, only just managing to reel it in at the last second. "They are 80,000 Lien free of our surveillance and maintenance budgets, once Mulberry replaces the batteries with proper Dust engines, and there are five out there right now on a test run. That's how we caught the Rose girl pasting a bird on the way down."

You… may still be a tad defensive about the subject.

"Glynda, you bought them from a toy store," he points out, setting you off once more with zero effort.

"Their place of purchase has nothing to do with their purpose!"

"They're pink, Glynda. They have ponies on them. You put more ponies on them."

… The stickers came free, dammit, and you weren't going to put them anywhere they'd be seen.

The two of you sit in silence, yours, somewhere between frustrated and mortified, Ozpin's, incredibly self-satisfied, as the rest of the countdown, er, counts down. Once it reaches zero…

It fires.

A single thread of orange light flickers into existence, eerie silence its only accompaniment, slashing the air in half as far up as you can see and turning the blue midday sky orange to the horizon. It paints Ozpin's shadow in stark relief against the ground, doing the same for every tree below you. If you focus, you can see the edges of your vision flickering, the only sign that the laser is pulsing, too fast to count.

You watch as the black splotch of the Nevermore is pinned like a butterfly, its holding pattern growing erratic, desperate to flee from the pillar of unparalleled destruction. Its pained screams echo across the forest, a sound of hatred, of rage, of fear.

It takes a little effort to push down the sadistic little flutter in your heart hearing a sound that sweet.

The beam begins to waver- growing unstable after only a few seconds, then scattering across the forest in many little beams as the spire buckles, collapsing like an opening flower to the sound of screeching metal finally rending as heat and stress catch up to it. You manage to close your eyes and flare your Aura just in time to protect them from the errant laser foci that end up aimed your way.

While you're sure you manage to avoid permanent damage to your eyes, your cheeks still felt hotter for the laser's passing. When you open them again, all that's left to see is the slow collapse of the spire, the fortress it came from, and a single, fiery speck on the horizon, slowly crumbling into a trail of ash and smog as it spirals towards the ground.

And just like that… it's over. No more booming voice. No more Nevermore. No more dawn sky.

You release a breath you didn't realise you were holding, a shudder of catharsis skittering up your spine as the sheer power brought to bear to destroy one Grimm sinks in. The birds, frightened into silence by the sudden change of daylight, start to sing again, and it sounds wrong for something so normal to occur after, after that.

"... Sir?" you murmur, looking for one person, anyone, who could confirm that that just happened.

You look over to him, and find him silent, and, perhaps more disconcertingly, his mug on the ground, its contents steaming away in the morning chill.

For a moment, panic rises in your chest, panic you swiftly force down as you step forward to examine him, only to stop the moment you see his face. His silvery eyes are wide, unfocused, staring off into the middle distance as tears stream down his cheeks.

The honest vulnerability in his face, the genuine shock and awe, the kind of emotions you associate with being exposed to Ozpin, not him experiencing them, and that unnerves you.

You've known him too long to really buy into the whole 'omniscient wizard' act, God knows you don't put much faith in the 'omniscient' part anymore, but at the same time, you've never seen him this close to just, being a fragile old man. It's almost frightening, and you don't know why.

"... Ozpin?" you whisper, feeling the sudden, urgent need to treat him like you would a pane of sugar glass.

He blinks, finally focusing on the present, on you. With a final sniff, he wipes the trails from his cheeks with the heel of his palm, suddenly looking much wearier.

"Ah… Glynda, I… it, would be, best t-to talk to Jaune Arc sooner rather than later. I believe."

His speech is slow, not slurred, exactly, but spoken like a man who's unsure of every word he's saying, but he does speak and that's better than you expected.

"I think immediately is the timeframe we should be aiming for-" wait no your boss is in the middle of a mental breakdown that's way more important- "agh, never mind Jaune, are you alright?"

The concern in your voice startles you, and it startles Ozpin enough that he finally fully rejoins you on Remnant.

"I'm fine, Glynda, just…" a quiet laugh bubbles past his lips as he shakes his head a little, "dazzled, I suppose."

You narrow your eyes a fraction at his choice of words, and silently throw a gesture up where you're sure he can see it.

"Eight fingers, Mistrali peace sign. I only meant it metaphorically," he tells you with a smile. "Now… I believe most of the major obstacles have been dealt with."

A sigh of relief leaves you, and you can't help but smile at the assessment. Pulling your Scroll to you from where you dropped it, you pull up the live statistics for on-screen Grimm death and compare it to last week's measurements, once you brush the grass off it.

"I believe the phrase you're looking for is cleaned out. Visual estimates place the Grimm population of Emerald Falls at 30% what it was this morning."

"... Good lord, what are we feeding the children these days?"

"If I didn't know any better, I'd fear Chef Splot was making his special soup again," you say, entirely meaning it as a joke.

Ozpin looks at you, and you meet his eyes.

… A rock forms in your stomach as you realise you can't remember what the breakfast menu was today.

"Perhaps a quick trip to the kitchens wouldn't be out of order-"

"Yes absolutely let's go right now-"

|||

The sound of rending metal is deafening, more so than the merely nearly-deafening sound of Grimm screaming in pain. Eventually, though, the noise stops, and you're left with just the sound of… silence.

The silence somehow sounds too loud. It settles in like a pressure on your ears, a thick, woollen cloth that makes you worry you wouldn't hear your fingers if you snapped them. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, the pressure is gone, and you can hear things like birds and the rustling of leaves and your heartbeat rattling in your inner ear.

"... Is… is it over?" Ruby whispers, almost too quiet to be heard.

"I think so," Yang tells her, not speaking much louder. You hear a shuffling of cloth against rock, and soon you're all slowly starting to creep out from underneath the outcropping like cautious rats.

You're one of the last up and over, thanks to the day as a whole finally catching up with your body, so you hear the sound of muttered curses and gasps of awe and something in East Mistrali that you're fairly sure is not something a four-time tournament champion would want to be caught saying in civilised company, before you finally make it over and fully understand why.

A few years ago, there were plans for a commercial Bullhead, The Mercurius Grand, a sort of 300-person cruise ship affair held up with oversized rotor blades and more Gravity Dust than common sense, that would ship people (read: Atlas's 1%, just about the only people on the planet with a chance of affording a ticket) across the world in comfort, speed, and safety. 4 days to anywhere, the posters said.

It was supposed to revolutionise travel.

It was supposed to replace the over-reliance on hard to expand and repair train tracks and unreliable, dangerous ships, beholden to whatever aquatic affronts to Brother Light had made their home in the deeps.

It was supposed to be the future.

It lasted two weeks.

See, they'd armed the thing to the teeth, protected its various viewing ports, dining halls, bar and lounge areas, and its large, vulnerable pockets of Gravity Dust, the stuff being used to project a big bubble where gravity equalled null long enough for several thousand tons of steel, plastic, Dust, booze, and coked-up socialites to get to where they were going.

What they had neglected, however, was the rotors. And this is entirely fair- the rotors on your average bullhead would grind just about anything caught in them into a fine paste. The ones on this thing could probably swallow a Giant Nevermore and a couple dozen Lancers and barely notice it was happening.

Unfortunately, it managed to fly right by a new Lancer nest, while making its way through the Valish mountain ranges.

A couple dozen Lancers.

Not… an entire nest. There's video, of 600 Lancers entering each airwell, the smog burning out the motors while their bones bent and twisted the propellers on impact. A mass suicide in the thousands, all in the hope of killing about 400 people.

It crashed at the foot of the mountains. The impact took 200 lives. The cold and Grimm took another 80 or so before help finally arrived.

The reason that this is occurring to you at all, mind, is that… if you didn't know better, you would say you were walking through the crash site as it was, maybe a week later, once all the fires had been snuffed out. Just, heaps of twisted metal, completely unrecognisable as what they once were.

"M-my Gods… it's…" Pyrrha trails off, completely lost for words.

Grass blackened from heat crumbles beneath your shoes as you creep forward, the white metal around you slowly shimmering, red eyes forming to watch your party as you creep forward, slowly shifting out of the way as you move towards… ground zero, you suppose.

"Jaune, I hope you realise that that's really creepy," Creme mutters under her breath near you.

"A little, yeah."

You love the Process as much as you do any other given artificial intelligence, but having dozens of eyes tracking your every move while you creep through wreckage is a little unnerving.

… As is having all of them close the second you think anything in that general ballpark. The rubble keeps shimmering out of your way, so you cut a path back to the ruins in record time, and find, much to Blake's delight, that they're… well, intact is the wrong word for ruins in the first place, but no worse off than they were, at the very least.

The only thing that ruins it is the massive, blackened skeleton of the overgrown Kelpie.

"... That's… not right, is it?" Blake asks. "It should be gone by now... right?"

It should be so much ash. That it isn't is highly disturbing. Please be careful, sysadmin.

"The bones always stay around a little longer..." Weiss mumbles, not even doing that by the end as she realises that she's trying to justify something very, very wrong being the case.

"We… should be careful anyway," you tell them, choosing to be diplomatic about the whole thing.

"Seriously? Look at it, there's no way it could heal from that!" Nora interjects, making a very rational point. Nothing heals from being burned down to nothing but a skeleton. Hell, even as you look, parts of it have crumbled into ash, the heat at least partially carbonising it.

Something very simple occurs to you, and you start to examine the joints very, very thoroughly.

"You're right, Nora, it's a cremated skeleton."

"... Uh… yeah, that's what I-"

"That's standing on its own, with no cartilage, muscle, or ligaments holding it together. This skeleton is, quite possibly literally, being held together with spite alone."

You've gotten quite close now. Maybe two, three feet away from the mask- Gods you could use this thing's ribcage for a beer hall- and you've confirmed your fear. There isn't anything holding it together. It is literally being held together by spite, or by whatever horrible forces allow Grimm to go and keep going.

"Jaune?" Lumen says, a thread of abject horror in his voice. "I don't want to alarm you, but… you should get away from that thing. Quickly."

He says it in a familiar tone of voice- the tone of voice you hear in horror films, of someone talking to a friend they very desperately want to not look behind them.

Wheels spin in your head as you adjust the trope to fit your situation, and the mental image of two burning red eyes staring down at you as you make the mistake of looking up, only to immediately be devoured for a catalyst for its regeneration. In the end, you do the rational thing, because this is not a horror movie, and this monster cannot hurt you.

You look up and stare into the eyes of the beast.

Well, you were half-right- it's only managed to get back its left eye, which is currently staring down at you, wide and bright with complete and utter hatred for you, and something else you can't place.

… No. You can. You can, you just needed to adjust your sights for 'things Grimm shouldn't be able to do.' It's subtle, but it's still there. That eye, bound in place as it is, gives off the impression of a small, cornered animal, that wants to run very, very, very far away indeed.

"You're scared," you breathe more than say, the realisation genuinely shocking you to the core. "No, you're terrified."

"What?" Blake says. "But… it's a Grimm. Grimm don't get scared."

"Grimm don't usually survive being heat-blasted down to the bone, either," Lumen notes. "Which brings up a rather pertinent question- how do we kill this thing? The regular methods obviously aren't doing the job."

"Why isn't it doing anything!? It's just sitting there- staring at us!" Ruby says, her rifle up and ready to fire at the first thing that so much as twitches wrong.

Smart girl.

"It's still bound by basic biology. No muscles mean no way to move. It's paralysed."

Sysadmin, we feel it necessary to note that it is regenerating. It's not a threat now, but it shouldn't take more than a few minutes for that to stop being the case. We suggest you move away at a minimum.

Just crack its skull in half. That kills almost anything.

… This thing survived cremation and having half its mask shot off, and Bracket thinks that stabbing it in the head will kill it.

… Fuck it! It's not like you've got a better plan!

With a lazy sway of your wrist, the Transistor flits into position, only a few inches above the creature's brow, the point where its forehead begins to transition into a snout.

"... It can't be that simple," Ren says, and you're half-inclined to agree with him. "After all this, the solution is just stabbing it in the face?"

"Can't hurt to try. If nothing else, it'll be cathartic," you point out, to widespread agreement and capitulation on the grounds that stabbing Grimm in the face is, at worst, still pretty funny.

You look it in the eye, as the Transistor gently rises at a gesture until you can't straighten your fingers any further.

More flesh has begun to spring into existence beneath the eye socket, and you can see where parts of the crumbled bone have been replaced with pristine calcium.

It does not appear to be terrified anymore. If anything, it seems…

Resigned.

There is a moment where you feel some very dark thoughts being entertained in the pits of your heart, of disgust at this thing and its… arrogance, believing itself worth a clean death, worth… worth the energy needed to kill it.

With more anger than necessary, you flick your fingers down.

The Transistor falls like a meteor from heaven.

The abomination closes its eye in the instant before impact.

…

Like swallowing a mouthful of ash.

How damnable.

NEVERMORE MAJOR, REGENT OF THE AIR- SLAIN.
CERYNIA, PROTECTOR OF THE EMERALD RIVERS- SLAIN.
IT'S TIME TO REST, HUNTSMAN.​

XP gained: (2d20 + Concordance where applicable.)

Strength- (15 + 15) + 100 = 130.
Athletics- (27 + 13) + 160 = 200. Upgrade! B->B+.
Gunmanship (yes the Transistor counts as a gun if you throw it at things)- 25 + 50 = 75.
Swordsmanship- 26 + 58 = 84.
Tactics- 28 + 3 = 31.

|||

"Russel Thrush. Cardin Winchester. Dove Bronzewing. Sky Lark."

The four boys step forward, their visages appearing on the screen behind them as they step forward, allowing you to get a better look at Cardin's mug.

You swear you've seen him before, and that you can't remember bugs you enough, but even the Transistor, finally fully repaired, doesn't recall him either.

… But hand to any God you like you've seen him before-

"The four of you retrieved the bishop pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team Cardinal, led by... Cardin Winchester!"

The crowd cheers one last time, and the boys move off as the next lot move on. Currently, you and the rest of the hopefuls are off in a side-room from the auditorium, Ozpin's speech muffled by the heavy door. You've all split off into little groups of conversation, recounting grand tales of the day or just talking to friends old and new, ugh, you could cut the atmosphere of camaraderie into cubes and choke someone with it. You, with the kind of certainty usually reserved for gravity and the sun's cycle around Remnant, have ended up with Lumen and the girls. Ruby, Weiss, and the rest of your return trip party are closer than not, but not quite close enough to be... well, part of the group, if that makes sense.

Look, it's dumb teenager stuff, give it 5 years, you'll trade it in for existential panic attacks and the realisation that 1 am means something.

The only exception to the rule is Leathers, who was basically frogmarched to the nearest medical professional by Pyrrha and Yang to be treated for the apparent laundry list of head injuries he'd sustained over the day, including the last one, which apparently broke through his Aura. He only arrived five minutes ago, his head half-mummified in gauze, and immediately became a centrepiece of conversation.

Poor bastard. Looks almost as out of place as you when he's the centre of attention.

"So, um, Jaune… are you… going to be okay?" Ada asks at some point during the ceremony. "I mean, I'm no biology swot, but last I checked, aneurysms tend to be… y'know, fatal. And, you're looking great for a dead guy."

There is a distinct pause in conversation as people pick up on certain keywords in her question- namely if you had to guess, 'aneurysm,' 'fatal,' and 'dead guy,' and like that you're suddenly aware of significantly more eyes on your person.

"Alstroemeria Cadwallader. Meri Terhenetar. Kapila Agni. Rashmi Abha. The four… four of you? Where is Mr Cadwallader?"

"U-um, present! Sorry. It's worse in front of crowds."

Ada looks around, once the silence settles on her as well.

"Well, as long as you're here…"

"Hey, does this sound like a public discussion to you people?!" she squeaks more than yells, but eyes still avert themselves, conversation starts up again, and you no longer feel like a display piece in a medical school.

"... Sorry. Didn't think I was being that loud."

You smile softly at her.

"The four of you retrieved the Bishop pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team Ramona, led by Rashmi Abha!"

More polite applause.

"It's fine. And, yeah, I'll be fine too- it's... part of my Semblance. It messes things up when it's not kept in check, but it'll clean up afterwards. It'll heal, I'll just have a stuffy nose for a couple days."

Creme and Lumen tear their eyes away from the proceedings and give you the double-barrel single quizzical eyebrow and confused frown.

"... Wait. Are you saying-" Creme starts.

"Yes, I heal from brain damage given enough time. Well, so long as it's not... imminently fatal."

"... That's nice," Lumen says, apparently at a complete loss for words.

You don't blame him, mind- sometimes you find it hard to believe.

The ceremony continues, people begin filing out, and eventually teams RWBY, Ruby, led by, er, Ruby, PRLN, Praline, led by Pyrrha, and SSSC...

Pfft- don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh- team... Sassy, led by Salem.

Blue flashes the hot pink that Sassy translates to across a small square of your vision and you have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing. Then the bastard shows you a frame-by-frame of Salem's face as it's said and you have to bring up your Aura to not draw blood.

"Misters Arc, Tessaro, Misses Doyle, Daylaw, you're up," Professor Goodwitch announces, a fresh tablet in her hands.

The bandages on her hands don't escape your attention, and you have to make an active effort to not immediately start apologising, and Lumen, spotting this, quickly ushers you closer to stage left.

"Thanks," you mumble to him as you walk.

"I'm sure you'll get a chance to apologise about it, but now's probably not the time."

"Jaune Arc. Ada Doyle. Creme Daylaw. Lumen Tessaro."

You shift out as your name is called, the Transistor following directly behind you, and approach the stage at a brisk walk, and by extension, Ozpin. It is not what anyone with eyes would call a smooth approach, or even a coordinated one, but you do it anyway and pray the man doesn't, you dunno, invert the function of every orifice on your face with his horrifying headmaster soul powers. Irrational, yes, perhaps a little facetious, but...

Ozpin is a lot of things, and right now, safe for you is not one of them.

Still, social pressure wins out in the end, and you end up in front of him just like everyone else. Ozpin seems to notice your apprehension and smiles at you- it's a warm smile, almost grandfatherly, but it doesn't really do much to set your mind at ease.

He can't have mistaken your apprehension for nerves. Could he?

"The four of you have retrieved the Assassin pieces. From this day forward, you will be known as Team Jackal, led by..."

There is a moment that stretches out like taffy, far further than any single moment has much right to do, but you hold your breath and wait for the answer.

Some minor voice in your head squeaks out that it's obviously going to be you, and you attempt to quash your arrogance-

"Jaune Arc!"

Oh goddammit, it's going to be insufferable all week now.

The announcement does surprise you, a little- it stuns you until Creme snaps you out of it with a congratulatory shoulder-thump that could tip a bull over, which unfortunately makes you stumble towards Ozpin. He deals with it much more gracefully than you, and grasps your hand, shaking it firmly. You instinctively reciprocate.

And then you feel the piece of card slip out of his cupped palm and into yours as Ozpin quickly breaks the handshake and steps back, giving you just enough time to sleeve the card.

"Congratulations, young man. We expect great things of you," he says softly, giving you that same, genuine, grandfatherly smile.

|||

Your new bedroom is... well, larger than your old one, of course, but even quartered off the way it is, it's about one and a quarter what your old room was. Four double beds stand in a row, flanked on both sides by, well, your collective stuff, and doors leading off to twin en-suites, which are quickly divided by gender. You packed light enough that your crap, clothes, mainly, a few comics and paperbacks you didn't really have the heart to throw out once you realised that the internet existed, and a few changes of bed sheets, sadly too small for your current bed, have already been packed away.

{Would you really have used that X-Ray and Vav quilt cover where people could see it?}

With pride and you damn well know it, that thing was the embrace of angels.

As is, right now, with nothing else to do, you're sitting at the end of your bed- the mattresses are new, it turns out, and the springs are compressed tight enough to launch Ada 10 feet into the air with only a light starting bounce- staring at the card Ozpin palmed you.

We need to talk.
My office, any day this week after eight pm.
The lift password is 'cocoa with marshmallows.'
- Ozpin
​

That isn't ominous and incongruous at all. Definitely just wants a friendly chat.

Certainly isn't going to throw you off the top of the tower for your silence-

{Hey, enough of that. Look, we don't... really get what Ozpin is, but if he wanted to hurt you, he would have tried it by now, and we would have killed him for trying. And if we couldn't pull it off, I'm sure the Process would give it a shot too. Current odds are that it's a spider in the bathtub situation.}

... If you didn't know better, you'd say Blue was trying to convince you that Ozpin was more scared of you than you are of him.

{No, you're definitely the spider- but that doesn't mean Ozpin isn't a little wary of you. What the Process did today is, bar none, one of the most excessive shows of force in Remnant's modern history. I think he doesn't know what you are, or what you can do, or what the Process is, or how it will react if anything happens to you. I think he genuinely does want to just talk if only to take a measure of you.}

... Yeah. That makes sense.

So... go tonight, go tomorrow, what?

{Jaune, you've suffered a major aneurysm for the second time in a month. You need to rest. If you go tonight, that's your choice, but, as the closest thing you have to a personal doctor, and your friend, I think you should take a day. Maybe two.}

"... Ominous," Lumen says, directly behind you, and it takes every ounce of self-control to not jump up and have the top of your head meet his chin at speed.

"'Cocoa with marshmallows?' Really?" Creme comments, and you immediately see where this is going.

"Lumen, you're blocking my good eye! Move your ass!"

"Are you three quite done?" you grumble at them, moving off the end of your bed and silently commending the manufacturer because you didn't feel any of them on your bed.

"... Sorry. You were just so focused on it, I figured it couldn't be good news," Creme explains. "Why's Ozpin want to meet you, anyway? I mean, the Process, sure, but... that can't be the only reason, right?"

The three of them look at you expectantly, and you wonder for the first time if it's... safe- no, no, you don't get to make that choice for them. Broad strokes, details later.

"... Ozpin's what broke the Transistor. They deserved it, entirely, he has, a weird soul, for lack of a better term, and they tried to figure out what was weird about it, and he... lashed out, I suppose. I guess... he wants to talk about what happened, maybe about the Process... the truth is, I don't know what he wants, just that he wants to talk."

There. Minimum of assumptions, no wild unconfirmed theories- as close to the whole truth as you can give them right now.

"... Damn. Will you be okay going by yourself?" Creme asks, and for a moment you sense a certain, silent agreement between the three.

'If he isn't, we're going with him.'

It almost chokes you up, until you realise you've done the exact same for definitely one, debatably two of the people making that offer. So, you give them your best smile and try to seem about ten times more confident than you are.

Lee is one thing, the White Fang is another. You don't think... Ozpin is really a fair trade for helping deal with those.

"I'll be fine, really. It's just to talk, and turning up with other people will probably send the wrong message. If it, isn't just to talk, I'm sure..."

Images of an unleashed Transistor and an enraged Process fighting Ozpin and the rest of Beacon's staff flash across your mind's eye, ending with the sight of a skyscraper-sized construct, easily twice the size of Beacon's clock tower, a roar that rattles cobbles free of their mortar, an energy weapon strong enough to vaporise metal...

You haven't breathed in for a while. Long enough that your lungs are now politely coughing in your general direction- you oblige them, and continue before the smile grows too distant from your face to be convincing.

"I'm, sure the Process will... inform people if things turn sour."

Yes. Inform. Nice, safe word, inform.

A word that does not conjure images of world-ending monstrosities bent on revenge for your death. And then whatever the Process comes out with.

The looks they give you range from unconvinced to outright worry, and for a moment, you worry if you might just have to be a hardass about this.

"... Well... if you're sure, hon," Creme ventures after a moment. "Well, if you change your mind, just tell us, okay?"

"When are you going to go, though? Says any day this week, right?" Ada asks, not exactly changing the subject.

It's a good question, you admit. One you have to think about. Like, now.

---

So, when are you off to see the wizard? (Each option is valid, and has various hidden... opportunities, I suppose is the word. No option is objectively better than any of the others, so don't worry too much about that.)

[] Tonight- you're tired, you're on edge, you're recovering from major brain trauma, it's been a hell of a day- but guess what? So's Ozpin! You're both off-balance, so you might as well go for it now! Rip that bandaid off! This line of thought is entirely driven by rational logic! Woo! (Sure, you're off-balance, but so is he- maybe you'll get some more out of him than if you let him compose yourself?)

[] A few days from now- you want to at least take a few days to, a) recover from your major brain trauma, b) figure out exactly how deep-seated this new paranoia is and how to excise it, and c) SHOVE YOUR BOOT SO FAR UP THE TRANSISTOR'S CPU SOCKET THAT YOU LEAVE INDIVIDUAL SOLEPRINTS ON EVERY PIN. (The boys will be properly cowed for the meeting, and you'll have had some time to cool off. Granted, so will he. Risk losing the chance to show him something rare. Risk gaining the chance to do something rarer.)

[] End of the week- you have had a day, you deserve a week. Take a solid school week of just... relative normalcy, before you dive headfirst into yet another pile of bullshit. (Go through induction week first. You've definitely cooled off, and Ozpin will be as cool as an entire vine of cucumbers. Definitely lose the chance to show him something rare. Definitely gain the chance to do something rarer.)

 

[Sivantic]

stabbed 6 times for a cannula

Click to shrink...

Just so no one else panics like I did, he does not mean he was stabbed with a knife for some object called Cannula, it is a medical procedure that involves needles

No assault involved

 

[Redshirt Army]

Our boi deserves some rest. Either a few days or the rest of the week, I'm not picky.

 

[Endie Babel]

[X] End of the week

Yeah, dude needs a break, and if we're delaying might as well guarentee the chance to show off

 

[Chiperninerm]

[X] A few days from now

 

[The Sandman]

[X] End of the week

Let him wait.

And who knows, maybe during that week the Process will notice that weird bit of excess power draw in Ozpin's basement.

 

[Starwarlord]

[X] End of the week

IT'S BACK!

 

[RoninSword]

@Prok Not sure if the following sentence is cut off or not:
Around the reindeer Grimm, massive cubes rise from the floor, filling the room with a deadly hum, the snap of arcing electricity around it driving the creature into a fearful frenzy. All around the interior, red eyes begin to form, allowing the Process visual confirmation for any warnings and to.

 

[mastigos]

As soon as he leaves, you flare your Aura, feeling it surround you and numb the chill somewhat.

Ah! Likethisroom! Keepsourchipscold!

Click to shrink...

We should either buy Process a minifridge or teach it self cooling

 

[mickeysofine]

[X] A few days from now

 

[NuclearConsensus]

[X] End of the week

 

[PsyFarrow]

[X] A few days from now

Always nice to see to see more of Jaune who accidentally made a baby god.

 

[TortugaGreen]

Big laser did precisely what we expected it to: cook the shit out of the strong grimm and also destroy the building. That said, the Process has the wonderful ability to throw resources at the problem like nothing else - if the whole "subsuming the depths of the continent" plan is continuing, I'd bet it made a net profit in mass during the construction and firing of the Big Laser. Hopefully its next laser is better-built and doesn't autoimmolate, but it'll be able to tank quite a lot of self-destruction compared to what firepower we, a singular huntsman, need.

[X] A few days from now
Brain damage is serious business and the event mystery-box is a mystery-box, but it's bad practice to put it off until the last moment.

 

[doge]

"I think immediately is the timeframe we should be aiming for-" wait no your boss is in the middle of a mental breakdown that's way more important- "agh, never mind Jaune, are you alright?"

Click to shrink...

going to assume this Jaune should be an Ozpin. edit: on reread nevermind.

[X] End of the week