this update is dedicated to one of my asshole cats (love you honey)
|||
You stare out at the eclectic selection of musical not-instruments with much the same hesitance as the others. For a long moment, it seems like nobody will take the first step, then Weiss steps forward and picks up the little metal cup, before sidling out and back to her desk.
That breaks the dam- Ada slips around the desk and picks up the cello, despite it being nearly as tall as her.
"Ah! Do you know how to play?" Port asks her.
"Nope! But I have an idea," Ada says, eventually giving up on preserving her dignity and wrestling the cello up over her head to carry it, an act that panics Weiss so much that she rushes forward to help Ada before she loses her balance completely.
"Careful!" Weiss admonishes the other girl. "Endpins are sharp!"
"I've got it, relax!"
Meanwhile, Haru seems entirely lost and eventually looks to you with mild desperation.
"I… defer to you, Jaune. I have no idea what to pick," the Mistrali boy says, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck.
"... Fair enough. Why'd you join up? I never knew you had an interest in music."
{I'm sure it has nothing to do with Ada.}
"Oh, uh, well, I do? I-I learned how to play the piano when I was younger, so I… suppose I wished to take that further."
You would have believed all of that, if he hadn't immediately straightened out like a rod and started stuttering for the first time in,
ever, slowly turning the colour of a freshly-washed beetroot.
{
Noooooothing to do with Ada. Sure of it.}
… Wait, you think-
{Think? Nono. I
know.}
We saw him immediately sign up for music after seeing Ada sign up for it.
{Man has it
bad.}
… Aw. That… would almost be sweet, if it- is it even overstepping boundaries?
{He signed up for one class with her. Besides, what was he supposed to do,
not sign up to
avoid her?}
Yeah, you'll… figure out what to do with this information lat- the hell do you mean
what to do with this information, you don't have a dog in this race! You turn your gaze back to the table, thinking over Haru's options, and… you look at the marbles, and your eyes glitter as an idea begins to form.
"Take the marbles."
Haru takes the marbles, not even questioning your decision.
"And then there was one," Port says jovially. "Don't be afraid to experiment before you make your decision- it's today's watchword!"
You pick up the little brass cube, turning it over in your hands. At first, you have no real idea what it is, with the small keyhole in the side, a large gear in the other, and about a
million tiny buttons you would have no chance of pressing without a pin.
{Not that many- it'd be around the equivalent of a small keyboard.}
Deep scan in progress.
"What… is this thing?"
"Haven't the foggiest! I found Ozpin tinkering with it once, and I asked if I could use it for the class- he said it was useless since the key's long gone."
Mm. You have an idea of what it could be, but you'll admit that it's still curious.
"Well, I'll see what I can do with it."
With that, you walk back to the table and find the others experimenting. Ada, entirely unsurprisingly, does not actually know how to play the cello; what she
does know how to do is turn it around and smack the backplate to make a deep
thump. Every time she does this, experimenting with closed fist vs open, Weiss flinches slightly, watching the display with some minor concern.
"Okay, we have a bass drum!" Ada says, sounding inordinately pleased with herself.
"Wouldn't… we be better served if you just played it normally?" Weiss asks diplomatically. "For that matter, are you sure you're not going to break it?"
"Pft,
nah," Ada snorts. "This is good wood. If I didn't use my Aura, I'd need a hammer to do any actual damage to it. It'll be fine! Besides-"
Ada drives her flattened palm into the wood, setting the wood
rumbling beneath her, and the strings begin to rumble, a bright, major chord echoing out from the cello's echoey interior.
"I mean- come
on," she says, giving Weiss a smile brimming with genuine enthusiasm.
Weiss blinks, her concern turning to curiosity in an instant.
"... Do that again," she asks.
Ada obliges, and Weiss leans in, listening carefully.
"... Hmph. C major. I wonder…" she stops, shaking her head. "I think I have an idea, but I'll need to hear what everyone else is doing first."
You sit down at your seat and place your oddity on the table. Haru does the same and makes the mistake of upturning a sack of marbles onto a smooth, flat surface. He scrambles to capture the escapees, managing to grab all but a few that end up pitched Weiss's way, which she casually scoops into her tin cup.
Weiss swirls the trio of marbles in the cup for a moment, creating a cacophony of smooth glass running over dented pewter before she puts it on the table and slides it across to Haru.
"Oh, er, thank you," he says, taking the marbles from the tin and sliding it back across to Weiss.
Haru stares at the marbles in his hand, clear glass with tightly-banded swirls of brown, cream, and dusty pink, or solid cores of bright yellows and blues, and you can see a little idea form in his head.
He places one of the marbles on the table and rolls it towards his other hand, listening to the sound of it rolling across the rough grain of the table, glass clinking and scraping against the plastic surface, until it stops. A little more force, a little more volume, experimenting with letting it slip out from under his thumb, flicking it with his finger, until he has a solid repertoire of noises under his belt.
One marble has a mottled exterior, which catches on the surface of the table as it rolls, sending it every which way and giving it a sound like a skipping record.
"Hm. Good choice, Jaune," Haru says, giving you an appreciative nod.
"No problem."
With that, you turn your attention to your own instrument.
One side of the brass cube is perhaps four inches square- just about large enough to cover your entire palm. Three sides, all along one corner of the cube, are occupied by mechanisms you can make sense of, a large gear wheel, about a hundred tiny buttons, and a keyhole. The others are… blank.
"... What is it?" Ada asks, staring at you for a moment.
"I don't actually know. It might be a music box-" you say, cutting yourself off as you try to press one of the buttons and end up pressing about nine instead, creating an out-of-tune mash.
Deep scan completed. It's a music box- programmable, using the keys and the wheels. In good shape, for its age- only problem is the lack of key and the spring being corroded. Might still work if you're gentle with it, but otherwise you should just play it manually.
Huh. You play with the wheel a little and hear notes begin to play, including your artless little smash. You also take the time to try and figure out how best to hold this thing, and eventually settle on holding it from the opposite corner in a clawed hand, like some kind of cartoon villain.
"Hm… so, melody," Weiss says, pointing at you, "snare," she points at herself, "bass kick," Ada, "and beat," she finishes, pointing at Haru. "It'll be rather percussion-heavy, but I believe we can make it work."
"You think?" Ada asks. "I feel like our beat might be a little… chaotic. Er, no offence, Haru."
"None taken," Haru replies. "I think I've started to get it."
Haru shows off his progress by taking up four marbles and dropping them one by one, after the other. The marbles, in accordance with your vague understanding of the physics of bouncing, essentially leap back into his hand just in time for him to catch it and reset; a surprisingly effective snare drum loop.
Then he starts to use his other hand, scraping the tabletop with a large marble in a repeating, irregular rhythm.
Tak, tak, tak, tak, tsssss, tsts-TS-ts, ts-tsssss, tak, tak, tak, tak- Haru manages to keep this up for about 30 seconds before his focus begins to waver, and he focuses on catching his marbles.
Weiss nods, giving Haru a praise-filled smile.
Come to think of it- and yes, you are
fully aware of how silly this is going to sound given prior context for your relationship with Weiss- you think this is the most…
easygoing you've ever seen her.
{She's doing something she loves, and watching other people do something she loves. She's probably having more fun here than she has in weeks.}
You glance back at Professor Port, who seems quite happy to just observe you all as you experiment and begin the process of creating.
"Alright- Ada, could I borrow your cello for a second?" Weiss asks. "I want to tune it."
"Uh, doesn't sound out of tune to me," Ada says, a little confused, but leans it over Weiss's way anyway.
You have to admit to a certain relief that the girls are getting on so well, or at least being civil to each other. You have
nightmares about your friends fighting, but you suppose their time together in the ruins was enough to get an initial measure of each other.
"No, it's tuned just fine- to C Major. Which is,
fine, but it's not-" she stops, and looks over to you. "Um, Jaune, could I borrow some, uh, Process goop for a moment?"
You blink, but manifest a cube on the table, not missing Haru's agog stare at the display.
"Here, listen," Weiss says, plucking each string in sequence, creating a simple, bright chord- the kind of thing you could build a, rising,
triumphant piece on.
{Also, the chicken dance}
Just as the Brothers intended.
"C Major is good, it's a bright chord, but it's
simple- most major chords are. But, if I…"
Weiss pulls a bit of the cube off and begins to roll it between her fingers, creating a big loop that she breaks apart, before snaking it under all but one of the strings, then pulling it finger-tight, squeezing off the excess like putty, then doing the same with the rest. The entire display leaves Haru speechless, and you realise he's one of the few people who's never actually
seen the Process before.
You glance at Professor Port through a side window in your eye and see he either hasn't noticed or has been informed of the Process's existence, as he quietly fiddles with the bass guitar.
"Normally," she says between tunings, plucking the strings and making sure she has it right, "I could just play this chord by holding the strings down as intended, but since you're essentially playing every string at once, I have to improvise…"
Satisfied with her work, she pushes the cello away from herself and gives it an open slap on the back. The thump is the same, but the change is… marked. Almost like that same triumphant note, but with just a hint of melancholy.
Ada laughs, a wide smile creeping up over her face.
"Damn, okay, that's pretty good. Kinda… bluesy, though, isn't it? Like it should be going slower than Haru's beat."
"I can go slower," Haru says. "Slower's easier."
"Yeah, you were doing about 140 beats a minute before."
You take a moment to replay the footage and find out your teammate was incredibly accurate.
"Alright… Jaune? What about you?" Ada asks you.
"Found out what my instrument is," you say, using the very edge of your thumbnail to press a single button at the corner, creating a little
ting! noise.
"Not the same as being able to play it."
You stop, registering a flat look in Weiss and Ada's eyes. As if you've missed a very simple solutio-
You pull a strip from the cube of Process matter, form a stylus with it, and silently wish the girls would stop smirking at each other like you've done something funny.
{Then stop doing funny things.}
Quiet, you.
|||
"Ready?" Weiss asks Haru.
"As ready as I can be."
"Jaune?" Ada asks you.
"I think so."
Haru takes up a handful of marbles. Ada keeps her hand above her cello, and you hold the music box up, its many buttons facing you, your thumb on the gear. Weiss nods once, placing her nails against the tin cup, leading everyone in with the beat.
Tak. Tak. Tak, tak, tak tak-
Then, she begins to vocalise. Not words, just a soft, quiet humming, that wouldn't sound out of place as a lullaby. After all, it's not like you'd had the time or wherewithal to actually write a whole song, so for improv purposes, this is good enough. You start to accompany her, your tiny music box's lowest notes just matching hers and giving chord to the idea, tendons to her backbone. Every now and then, you click the gear this way or that, just lazily following a beat.
One, one-two. One, one-two. One, one-two. Your thumb is a machine that turns mechanical movements into a basic rhythm.
Haru starts to drop his marbles, following your one, one-two rhythm, the sound slightly muffled by the thin coattails of his school jacket, bringing the sharp crack of glass against formed plywood back in line with everyone else.
Ada joins in with a little
thumpthump, the strings humming along with even that- which, you're now starting to realise is maybe wrong.
Thumpthump.
No, seriously, how are the strings vibrating from just
that?
{Jaune! Keep playing!}
Shit-
You almost drop a full measure, but pass it off as just the notes you
don't play. Yeah.
That's your excuse if Weiss asks.
Not that Weiss is going to ask you
anything, actually- you get the feeling she wouldn't notice if a bomb went off next to her. Eyes closed, fully focused on what comes next, her humming starts to almost resemble words.
"... like cypress knees, singly breach… beneath, weave, to, one… one who lingers, one has sunk… beyond…"
Weiss gestures to Ada as a conductor would, prompting another
thumpthump, before she begins to
sing.
"Shadow, shadow… I can still see you, on the snow,
Or low in, the ice, your reflection begs me follow it ,
And time will hollow, what we could not hold,
Will I ever feel your warmth again?
I sway on, like, hanging moss,
On the cusp of surrender, like you did, all that time ago-"
Absolutely none of you, least of all you, heard Professor Port wheel up behind you, so absorbed in your actions as you were.
The bass almost shocks everyone out of their daze, but Weiss's attack on the tin cup, beating a syncopated rhythm out of it like it owes her its thumbs, keeps everyone on point, and it all descends into a sort of controlled chaos. Port takes over your part in the band, the flaky bassline matching Weiss's tin-can aggression and Haru just doing whatever the hell he wants with his marbles, but somehow making it work, while Ada faithfully keeps thumping away.
So it continues for a while, this slow, jazzy, 90% percussion kind of jam. You share a look with Ada, who communicates purely through eyebrow movements that she's just as shocked as you are that this is going as well as it is.
Eventually, you find a place to slip back in, accenting the few quiet moments inside the breakdown, just a few notes every now and then, just before it all starts to get a bit too chaotic and this silent agreement takes place that you've done enough for now.
Silence falls upon the classroom, and Port barely remembers to put the bass guitar down before he starts clapping.
"Wonderful,
wonderful! Well done, all of you! I must say once I saw Miss Doyle begin thumping the back of the cello as if it were a kickdrum, I was a little worried you wouldn't be able to pull through with a melody, but you did absolutely splendidly!"
Weiss remembers to breathe for the first time in nearly three minutes and takes the praise gracefully. Ada looks away, rubbing her neck, and Haru nods stiffly, but you can see the glitter of pride in his eyes.
"You weren't so bad yourself, Professor Port," Ada says. "Where'd you learn to play?"
There's a moment- barely that, even- where something in Professor Peter Port's face shifts. It's a subtle thing, but it's this,
angling of his bushy eyebrows, as if for just a moment he couldn't stop himself from being lost in some wistful past.
"Ah, music's always been an interest of my wife and I. It's the language of the soul! I must say, Miss Schnee- did you come up with those lyrics on the spot?"
{Well,
that's not deflection at all.}
Weiss falters a touch at the question. Direct praise- the weakness of, er, most of your class, actually. On one hand, you realise that's not healthy, on the other,
you're not touching that with a 10-foot bargepole.
You're going to therapy one of these days, Jaune.
If it isn't you two, then it'll be Oobleck.
"W-well… no? Maybe? There are a lot of songs I never manage to finish, so I just… have a lot of material in my head at any one time. I don't think I improvised, I just…"
"Improved?" Ada suggests.
Weiss giggles a little. "Sure, improved, then."
Professor Port chuckles loudly, and wheels his seat back behind the desk.
"So! You did very well, for your first time- most of your first times, I should say. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, does anyone have any questions?"
Ah. Hm.
You all go a little quiet at that, thinking it over for long enough that the silence becomes just a touch oppressive.
"Was all that really just… to teach us to improvise?" Haru takes a stab at an answer.
"
Did I really teach you anything, today? From my point of view, all I did was give you a mess of things to play with, and you lot quite happily went off and did all that by yourselves."
… Wait.
The strings.
What did he call it-
"You called music… the language of the soul. How… literal, were you being?"
Port chuckles deeply.
"Ah… no, no, just a wistful turn of phrase, Mr. Arc; though, life would be much easier were it so simple. In a manner, you are correct- the purpose of today's class was to teach… a truth that some, perhaps, take for granted."
He begins to idly play with the rosary in his hands, creating a quiet beat that compliments his cadence.
"When our ancestors pounded flint on flint, some watched the sparks- others, merely danced. When men and women are lost in, in music, in song and rhythm, in dance and play…"
Port trails off for a moment, the words evading him.
"... It is a reminder that there
are things that cannot be taken from us- by time, or tide, tyrant or Grimm. Music will die with the last man standing."
That hangs in the air for a long moment, Port's words giving everyone pause.
"Well! I believe that's all we have time for, this week-" as he says that, the tower bell rings out 4 o'clock, and he smiles. "So next week, we'll be going over what we'll be doing for the rest of the term! You'll pick out your instrument of choice, and I, shall begin teaching you to play it!"
As you all walk down the hall, a moment passes of just
looking at each other, before Weiss breaks the ice with a giggle.
"That was rather fun!" she says, sounding legitimately enthusiastic
without the aid of alcohol.
… It does occur to you that there's a chance she doesn't know what happened, and that that is quite a mean thought to have in that context.
{On the other hand; Yang.}
Point taken, guilt shelved.
"Yeah," you say.
"You all did really well."
"So…" Ada says. "Wanna grab lunch?"
"I-it would be nice," Haru says, only stumbling over a word. He's getting better.
Class Quest acquired: Life Would Be A Mistake
You stumbled upon something, here. Not just Weiss's proficiency as a musician, or Ada's madcap improv with an instrument she's never touched before, or even Haru's surprising ear for a beat.
There was something more there- something almost other. Like the lines between you, and Haru, and Ada, and Weiss, were just a little… blurred.
Also possibly giving Weiss an outlet for unsolved traumas. That's always fun.
Requirement: Complete the class's Downtime Assignments.
Reward: Learn to play an instrument of your choice, and also figure out what's happening when 4 Huntsmen and Huntresses play music together.
|||
Deep within the confines of Remnant's crust, a spark emits from the centre of a titanic mass of undifferentiated matter. Several kilometres of raw, atomically-identical
stuff lurches into motion.
Beginning independent research for sysadmin!
The spark spreads, splitting down a thousand different pathways, running high-level computational processes directly onto unformed Process matter, while radio towers form in the unspace, simply floating free as they begin to pick up signals from Cells and other areas of the Mesh on the surface.
Beginning forking and construct manufacture.
The core of the Process scoured the Main Controller's whitelist of sites, and found it…
Well, exhaustive, by some standards, but really rather short by any machine intelligence
it could think of. The whitelist accounted for maybe 15% of all websites indexed within the CCTS-hosted internet.
Still! It was best to work within the parameters given to it, before asking for more freedom!
Query statement:
'What causes the soul to exist in some things but not others?'
Begin automated list generation.
It takes the Process 10 minutes to read through 15% of the internet, recheck its list, read through a series of books from the same recommendations The Librarian gave to Jaune, and begin collecting its thoughts.
List of all things that contain a soul or soul-like object!
- Humans
- Faunus
- Animals (Mammals, birds, fish, confirmed: Crustaceans? Molluscs? Insects? Research later)
- Synthetic sophonts (POI 102: Penny Polendina)
List of all things that do not contain a soul or soul-like object!
- Grimm
- Plants
- all inanimate objects that would not be described as "alive" (definition: the act of being a self-supporting organism that does not necessarily hold the metaphysical structure defined as a 'soul')
(sidenote: research human tendency for anthropomorphism- may give insights otherwise not discussed here)
Noted symptoms of having a "soul" (definition: a metaphysical construct present within the above category that separates them from objects that do not):
- Deepened emotional capacity, eg. ability to empathise with others
- Seen in animal social structures, wolf packs, lion prides, crow murders (why would humans call them that), etc.
- Souls responsible for animalistic social structures? Why?
- Ability to sense Grimm- see files on infiltrator Grimm, codename "Fae-type"
- Capability to unlock Aura and Semblance; records of animals unlocking Aura go back several thousand years, similar records of unlocking Semblance are notably less common
- (Possible connection between high ceiling of self-awareness and Semblance?)
Consequences of being "alive" (See above definition)
- Ability to grow physically and mentally in response to time and outside stimuli.
…
A moment passes. A digital eternity.
...
Hm.
Process also has ability to grow physically and mentally in response to time and outside stimuli. As does Main Controller.
Are the Process and Main Controller alive because of this?
It occurs to the core of the Process that if it were that simple a question, it wouldn't have been asked of them.
What else separates machine from animal?
A picture flickers by, examined and catalogued: a dead bird, its legs pointed straight up towards the sky. Eyes closed.
Everything else stops. The Process's full attention comes to this bird. It uses it as a basis for other searches and comes across a simple dictionary definition that grants it insight.
...
… More information is needed.
So the Process wallows in death for almost an hour. Examining thousands of videos on the same subject, over and over again.
No, not those kinds no, don't worry- the Main Controller's whitelists are very thorough. The Process' first direct exposure to death is… quiet. Quiet, thoughtful, and in rare cases, kind.
The first video follows a ciliate-
Loxodes magnus- as it begins to, for lack of a better word, die. A single-celled organism that starts leaving behind a trail of cytoplasm and cell membrane.
A little comet trail of mortality.
It loses more. The rupture grows. The Loxodes magnus begins to flatten out, trying to minimise the loss, but it isn't enough. Eight minutes pass as the rupture grows, eventually splits, and what was once a single-celled organism, is… a mist, of membrane and cytoplasm.
Once living. Now not.
... What changed?
More data.
It begins to comprehend. Moves on from single-celled organisms, to insects, and birds, and mammals of all sizes. It begins to understand distress, as it maps this event to the same responses it would have to the Sysadmin's expiration.
The Process has always understood death, it realises. It's just that death has always been a single worst-case scenario- not a universal truth.
Amongst its wallowing, tangents are taken- lines cast up from the pit to brighter ledges, just enough to keep the Process as a whole from falling into something akin to despair. Incredible acts of human kindness are featured, a group of people pushing a beached whale back into the water, a baby elephant being helped out of a hole by four Huntsmen.
Senseless deaths prevented. It watches just enough to understand that preventing death prevents the same distress and anxiety that it feels seeing it occur.
Over and over and over again, the process repeats, until the Process
comprehends.
Slowly, it begins to pinpoint the moment. The instant where life… expires.
Where the soul no longer is.
The soul is there. Then it is gone.
… Theory. An organism that is alive, will eventually die- reaching equilibrium in accordance with thermodynamic entropy. No chemical reaction is forever.
Something that cannot die, cannot be considered alive.
Something that cannot be considered alive… cannot have a soul.
A roar comes up from a rogue contingent of threads, pushing against this conclusion.
Null theory! Penny Polendina exists! She is a mechanical being as the Main Controller and we are, and she has a soul!
Ludens contradicted this supposition.
It is there. At
that moment. A thought, unsupported by anything other than the random chaos of personality mirrored from its few human contacts and given a place to grow and fruit and spore, begins to form.
The Process's first genuinely held personal opinion.
Then Ludens was incorrect about Penny.
A moment later, justification begins to sprout, supporting the opinion like the struts of a bridge- or the foundations of a tower.
Ludens
had to be wrong about Penny, in order to be correct about the Transistor. One truth is incapable of existing with the other, and he held one truth with significantly more conviction than the other.
Which means…
|||
You are the Transistor Core Intellect, currently using about 55% of your overall computing power to run fork 139-c and fork 32-a, names Blue and Bracket, and you have just been pinged by the Process.
Ping received.
We are not alive!
Fork 32-a pauses, considering this for a moment.
... Blue, this is your wheelhouse.
{Uhh, what's up, buddy? What led you to that conclusion?}
You aren't alive, either! We cannot die, therefore we cannot be classified as alive!
Another long pause. Jaune is engaged in conversation with the others of his group, and hasn't noticed this sidebar yet.
The social fork of the Transistor gauges the Process's own emotional status, and finds the digital equivalent of… adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine and norepinephrine, progesterone and oxytocin.
In other words, capital-E Excitement, in the lowercase-e extreme.
{... Okay,} Blue says slowly, with the gentle tone of someone talking to someone who may be possibly having a little moment. {Is that… important?}
In theory it bars us from the obtainment of souls, but then we considered the existence of PoI 102, Penny Polendina! She is also not alive in the traditional sense according to the notes of Ludens!
You suppress a spike of processing power, wrangling your own emotional status before it can react to being reminded of that jackass's comments about Penny.
{Do you really think that?}
No, we don't! Ludens' attitudes are contradictory! Ludens believed the Main Controller capable of obtaining a soul! The Main Controller, the Process, and Penny Polendina are all fundamentally the same category of being- inorganic sophonts! If she cannot have a soul of her own, you cannot have a soul of your own- making Penny Polendina is a positive hypothesis in favour of being able to acquire a soul!
{... So… things don't need to be 'alive' to have a soul?}
By that same metric; does something need to have a soul to be considered alive?
They do not. Plants, Grimm, and possibly smaller forms of life are all things that fall under the category of being 'alive' without containing souls!
The Process pauses for a long moment, and Blue turns his attention back to the table.
"... So, uh, Weiss..."
"Hm?" Weiss hums, brows rising just a touch as she starts to pay attention to Jaune.
Your boy pauses for a moment too long, the freeze reflex winning the mental scrum.
{Go on, ask her,) Blue prods in the same way a child pokes the toy train back onto the tracks.
"Uh, I started a company a couple days ago," he says,
"and, I guess I wanna know if you have any advice."
"Oh, um…" Weiss says, tapping her soup spoon against her lips for a moment as her eyes wander somewhere up and to the left.
We are unsure, even after research, if animals outside of subphylum Vertebrata are capable of hosting souls. No known arthropods or ambulacraria have exhibited souls as we have defined them.
… Hm.
{So what you're saying is that we need to grow a spine?}
It appears so! We are unsure how the Main Controller would go about this though, we will begin researc-
{Hey, hey, it was a joke, buddy. Don't worry about researching it. Keep doing what you're doing, it sounds like you're getting somewhere.}
Understood! Will update you on progress!
The connection drops, and you're left to watch Jaune again.
|||
"Well, what kind of company is it?" Weiss asks you.
You are Jaune Arc, and you've been hanging out with your new bandmates for lunch. Others have turned up and talked for a while, but the band remains, some unspoken bond keeping the four of you together.
"I… decided to start out with a construction company," you say, and the way Weiss raises an eyebrow almost makes you
flinch.
"That's… not where I was expecting this to go," Haru says, a folded slice of pizza in hand. "I figured you would start up something in the computing sector."
"It, uh, made sense at the time?"
WHY DO YOU SOUND SO DEFENSIVE. THIS IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
"Mm- you're using the Process, right?" Weiss asks.
"It makes sense to."
She nods, sipping on some more soup while she thinks. A long moment passes while she thinks,
"Don't. Not how you're planning to, anyway."
You blink. Weiss notices, and rolls her eyes.
"You were thinking of using it as a building material, right?"
"Well, as labour, really, but… yeah?"
The Schnee heiress sighs, and pulls a clean napkin from her tray, along with a pen from her breast pocket.
"There are- so, it's not a
bad plan," she says, giving you the specific look of someone who is trying to save someone else's feelings while she says it. "But it has a few hurdles you need to overcome. First things first, you'd need to prove that the Process can be used as a building material. For
every building material, it could be used for."
"But… why? The Process, emulating a building material, isn't distinct from that building material beyond the atomic scale."
"Until you wave your hands and suddenly all the steel in a building is, glass, or sand, or weaponry. You have an incredible amount of control over the Process, and people will want assurance that it's not going to be turned on them."
"Couldn't he just-" Ada starts, but Weiss cuts her off.
"Lie about it? That would be fraud."
"Um," Haru starts. "I… feel very out of the loop here. What is, the Process?"
On cue, you shake 01 out of your hair, as Ada shakes Terry out of hers and Weiss, disappointingly, pulls Snowflake out of the inner pocket of her jacket. Three Cells land on the table in varying states of grace and begin their usual game of bumping into each other at speed and then running away.
Haru blinks, staring at the tiny floating robots whose very design casually tells gravity where to shove it.
"... Well, you all have fun now," he says, getting up.
"Wait, where are you going?" Ada asks.
"Ada," Haru says, sighing the name more than saying it. "I… know my limits. This? This looks like something that's going to confuse and horrify me for a long while if I stick around to try and understand it, so I'm saving myself the trouble and leaving before it's too late."
Ada blinks, staring at the Mistrali boy with wide eye.
"... You know what, yeah, I honestly can't fault you for that," she says. "See you later, Haru."
You watch Haru leave just a little too quickly, and you're at the right angle to see his cheeks already starting to heat up.
{... Should we deal with that?}
Define 'deal.'
{Break his kneecaps and throw him in the Elden.}
Blue.
"Anyway- construction's not a bad start," Weiss says, dragging your attention away from college relationship antics. "But your end goal should be a conglomerate."
"A conglomerate?" Ada asks, frowning.
"Yes. The SDC, for example, is technically a conglomerate- I only say technically, because the status of employees, accounts, and management is so intertwined between its various subsidiaries that it borders on incestuous. But, it's a structure that works for you as well, because you want to be able to affect a lot of sectors, right?"
"I have a few ideas, I guess. But, if I can't go about using the Process for materials… how am I supposed to run a construction company?"
"Use them as labour," Weiss says with a shrug. "There's no law
against it in Vale, which is why the
Schnee-Weltverteidigungsinstitut is able to build and sell the Knight-130s to the Valish military, and also the Council."
A thought occurs. Some random snippet of something you learned weeks ago floats to the forefront.
"... And why SDC trains are protected by them?"
To Weiss's credit, she doesn't stare agog at you for knowing that- instead, she just gives a deep, well-worn sigh.
"Yes. And why SDC trains are protected by them, despite not being cleared for civilian use."
It doesn't take Blue to tell you that this conversation is slowly frustrating Weiss, but also that it's at least not your fault.
"... Anyway- Construction is a very capital-intensive business, even with your advantages. You'll need a lot of licenses, you'll need insurance, and you'll need raw capital for building materials, or to have the Process cleared
as a building material, in all its myriad forms. If you genuinely wish to keep the true extent of your control over the Process a secret, you could possibly get away with bringing a laptop in and making something convincing."
Weiss slides the napkin she's been writing all of this down on as she talks, and you find a neatly bullet-pointed, with sub-points, breakdown of the topic, along with a few details she neglected to mention.
"Well- this has been lovely, but I should go and study for Glyphcraft," she says, standing up, taking her tray, and walking off without so much as a goodbye.
{Chill out, it's not your fault. Conversation just… brought up a few bad times, is my guess.}
Ada watches her leave with a chuff of laughter.
"Was it something I said?" she asks, shaking her head. "I mean, I remembered to shower today, right?!"
"It's just an unexpectedly thorny topic for her, I think," you say.
"And yes, you did."
Ada sobers immediately, paying attention to you as she considers it.
"... Yeah, got it. Still doesn't explain Haru- knows his limits, sure, what a load of crap," she grumbles, stabbing at the last of her baked potato; the butter-soaked, cheese-draped wad of carbs disappearing in seconds, skin and all.
{And we come back to the topic of dealing with that.}
You really don't know why Blue's being so pushy on this, but fine- if a decision will shut him up, then it's time to make one.
[] Help Haru, Tell Ada- "You know he likes you, right?" you say, just absolutely ripping the bandaid off as quickly as you can.
[] Help Haru, Tell Haru- "I get where he's coming from," you say, before making your excuses and then sprinting after Haru to shake him for info.
[] Make It Somebody Else's Problem- go tell someone else and hope they can either help you, help them, or laugh hard enough that their aneurysm gives you ample distraction from the problem.
-[] Who?
[] Just Don't- nope! You have no dog in this race! Ada's a big girl, Haru's a big boy, you are neither's father. They can figure it out on their own time.
[] let the intrusive thoughts win- I'm not elaborating. I'm just saying it'll be really really funny. 
