49

"What did I miss?"

This seemingly simple question from Ruby had a rather hard answer. Yang of course barely knew anything because she hadn't left Ruby for the entire time and even when somebody mentioned something, she didn't exactly pay attention to it.

So she called the rest of the team to ask for help.

Immediately, she got yelled at for not telling them that Ruby had woken up.

The place was quickly becoming rather crowded. First came the nurses to check on Ruby.

Then Weiss and Pyrrha.

Then Blake rushed in.

Then her team.

Then the entire corridor started filling up with classmates she never bothered to remember, senior and visiting teams and even some of the school staff started showing up.

All in all, the chaos that followed The Breach came back. At least this time, it was more localized and nobody allowed news reporters on the school grounds.

/

"So, are we changing plans now that Mt. Glenn is compromised?" Mercury offhandedly asked while lounging on his bed.

Both him and Emerald had been stuck in the room Beacon provided for visiting students with nothing to do except the orders from Cinder to lay low. Now she was finally back with their final team member in tow.

"No, we are proceeding as planned." Cinder replied and checked her scroll for updates from either Taurus or Watts. "The train was meant to only be a diversion anyway, it won't affect us, it just means that Adam will have to make a different one."

"And what if Torchwick sells us out? We will be trapped here."

"I wouldn't worry about that." Cinder said with a smirk. "He has enough incentive not to do so." She looked towards their latest addition as she glared at Mercury for suggesting Roman's betrayal with her eyes switching from green to her normal heterochromatic.

-BBW-

Awkward…

Really, really awkward.

If she could, she would have preferred to stay in her dorm. Or in the smithy, she had wasted a lot of time lazing in the bed.

Not only was she always put on the spotlight during every single class, Weiss would always keep her locked up and force all of the things she supposedly missed into her head.

But the cherry on top had to be combat class.

Yang was for some reason banned, Goodwitch was for some reason glaring at her all the time and nobody was telling her why! Or even telling what happened to her arm! Was it somehow her fault? Did she get caught up in the trainwreck when they arrived in Vale?

Thankfully, the first week of her renewed education finally ended. One, hopefully, last check-up later and after Weiss relented to let her have an afternoon to herself and not grill her on some random schoolbook material, Ruby rushed back to what she really wanted to do.

Although she really wondered why so many people were here with her… Pyrrha and Weiss were invited, Weiss' big sis and a bunch of soldiers weren't.

Whatever… "Pyrrha, everything looks right, I'll check if Weiss is ready and we can start."

"Got it."

"Weiss, how are you doing?" Ruby spoke into the com.

"[Finishing with fourth group.]"

"Okay! I'm starting up Pyrrha, I'll tell you when we start with the first group." She ended the connection and focused on the controls of the weapon. "Let's begin! You settled inside nicely?"

"As much as I could…" Pyrrha replied from the inside of her giant suit of armor.

"Hm. I'm starting you up, tell me if something feels off to you."

She clicked a few keys, armor's battery and cooling systems coming to life and filling the cliff above the Emerald forest with low hum.

"I'm all green. Something wrong or your end?"

"Everything looks alright but… the controls feel warm and tingly, should it be like that?"

"Yep! The gravity dust gets like that when used aaand let me tell you, it was a giant pain to make it! Compared to my rings… Well, you will be able to move your limbs pretty much as you would normally. Remember though, the hydraulics can only handle the slow stuff, you will need your semblance to move properly."

"I'll keep it in mind. Closing hatch." Pyrrha took a deep breath and started walking towards the edge.

/

It was so surreal.

Winter watched in awe as the machine slightly larger than a paladin slowly approached the edge of the cliff and then silently took off into the air. It shouldn't be able to do so, regardless of miss Nikos' semblance.

Its wings were there simply for storage and cosmetics, the thing didn't have a single engine to actively power the unit. Then there was the question of its weapons and all the weight it brought. A modified laser cannon from the spider droid on its left shoulder, triple barrel 35mm cannon on its right, the enormous sword, currently collapsed and bent backwards, on its right forearm and an in-built hardlight dust emitter on the left.

It was also much more…human. Paladin may have been bipedal but that's where any comparisons ended. This one on the other hand was much closer to looking like a giant suit of armor than a tank on legs. Except its 'head'. That part was obviously in the process of development as it lacked any sort of plating or other protection, revealing a large omnidirectional camera lens. The other telling part of it being a work in progress was that the suit lacked any kind of paint.

No. To compare it to the paladins would be like comparing Penny to the normal android used by the military.

But there also lies the main problem. Both of them were completely unique. While Atlas had the technology to build it, they didn't have one to make it move. Just as Penny was built from scratch as the first artificial huntress, this thing was made for one person only.

"Why are you here, actually?" The little technician asked, not turning away from the screen.

Winter looked away from Pyrrha who was slowly becoming a dot above the forest. "Because, by some miracle, you were given access to a large amount of some of the best of our hardware. I'm here to make sure nobody blows themselves up, now that you are trying to take it into the field."

Ruby only hummed in response and continued to focus on the current test.

Winter was still looking at her back.

Penny…

Winter was her main…handler, so to speak, and she noticed the rather obvious change about her charge.

She would have some very harsh words for her but considering that Penny didn't really have a concept of human decency and her clothing choices were made mostly because she was ordered to wear uniform, it would be meaningless.

But it wasn't even the change in Penny's breast size that was the problem, although professor Polendina will definitely have some problems with it. The problem was what brought that change. And Penny, for some reason, was extremely evasive when it came to answering that. Thankfully Winter knew about her strange tic, always hiccuping whenever she tried to lie.

Sometimes she wondered whether it was put there intentionally or it was some sort of bug in the system.

It was somewhat hard to get the truth out of Penny. Not because she was a good liar but because Winter felt like she was bullying the girl when she pressed her for answers.

Floating Array has been augmented by Ruby Rose, now Penny's weapon shares the hard-light dust emitters with Pyrrha's Golden Paragon.

Ruby Rose knew about Penny's true nature.

And did absolutely nothing about it.

Nobody knew. At least Penny was lucky to choose a good friend.

But what to do with it now? Someone with knowledge of a classified weapon project should have been quietly taken away and properly interrogated. That would go splendidly, wouldn't it? That was one of the reasons why she didn't report this breach of secrecy to the general.

Then there was also her previous mission.

The only traces of their targets were found on Patch, an island where Ruby lived. She also probably had enough technical finesse to develop the weapon they were looking for.

But she couldn't just jump her. Not only was she working on mere assumptions, Qrow would take whatever accusation against his niece very personally.

"[I've reached the area.]" Winter was pulled out of her musing as Nikos' voice came from the coms.

"Good. Weiss! Commence the strain test! Phase one: Aerial Combat!"

/

Pyrrha was rather happy that she had a couple of minutes to adjust before starting the test. The panoramic vision required some time to get used to.

She also hoped that Ruby would do something with the interior later on.

While she understood that she was supposed to use her semblance to wield-or should it be pilot?-this weapon, she didn't need to make everything tied to it. There were only two buttons on the inside. The open/close button for entering and the emergency protection. Everything else was reliant on her.

Triggers for her weapons? Internal, pulled by her semblance.

The sword lock, along with the mechashift? Her semblance.

Activating the shields? Both the main one on her arm and the ones spread among the small gunblades.

Non-mechanical parts were very few to begin with and most of them were voice controlled. Like the start-up. Something like that should have had something like keys… Or the weird AI she had little to no idea how it actually worked. She only knew that it came alive whenever someone put on the control helmet and immediately scanned the eyes for identification.

Really, did Ruby expect her to memorize the entire manual? She barely got through the UI part, she still didn't know how to perform even the basic maintenance, much less whatever gibberish Penny helped Ruby write about the AI.

She sighed. At least she wasn't getting the mother of all migraines every time she tried to split her attention like that, anymore.

Something glimmered in the skies.

So it begins.

Five small pale blue nevermores flying in an arrowhead formation were headed straight at her with two similar groups hanging in the back.

"[Evade the attack. Destroy all targets with the gunblades.]" Ruby chimed in.

"Okay, I'll- I mean… Roger."

"[Pyrrha…you don't need to use the jargon if you don't want to.]" Ruby sheepishly added. Pyrrha could almost see her leader bashfully looking away in embarrassment.

Smiling at the thought, she focused on the approaching enemy.

Momentarily stopping her semblance she dropped below their attack.

From each of her wings, three blades were released followed by two from the containers on the armor's thighs.

And now the worst part… The display lit up with ten separate crosshairs as the system was processing where each weapon was aimed.

A few moments later she opened fire.

"First group destroyed."

The two other groups attacked simultaneously. One spread out and closed in while the second started attacking with sharp feather barrages.

Two swords launched forward, each intercepting one bird. The rest was firing at the ones circling around her. The wings were spread open to create a protective dome over her.

"Second group destroyed."

Forcing the suit forwards, she split the last group's formation in two, destroying the middle nevermore by simply smashing into it. After getting some distance, Pyrrha turned around and dealt with the rest.

"Third group destroyed."

"[That was pretty fast… What about your aura?]"

"...Don't you see it?"

"[I do but you need to be able to check it yourself]"

"…sorry, I forgot how to do it."

"[Just say 'status' out loud. There are normally two bars at the lower edge of the UI, for aura and energy levels, but if you want a full report…]"

Pyrrha looked down and found the two green bars, each almost full. "Which is-"

"[Aura on the left, energy on the right.]"

"Got it. I'm all green."

"[Good. Ready to continue?]"

"Sure. This was kind of fun."

"[Starting phase two, evade and return fire.]" Ruby announced and ended the communication.

Evade what? Pyrrha wondered and started looking around. A couple seconds later, the proximity alert lit up on the left side.

Jerking downward, she watched the oversized arrow fly by.

Wow… I didn't know she could shoot this far… She was over one and a half miles away from the cliff where she assumed Weiss' archers were and yet she had almost hit her.

"Uh…zoom in?" She really didn't like the whole idea of making everything voice activated. She also would prefer the zoom in function to be more controlled by her, not by the AI that was figuring out the point of interest by scanning the position of her eyes.

Five targets, each about the same size as her suit.

Focusing on the cannon on her right shoulder she released the lock and let it slide down the suit's arm, the new larger crosshair appearing on the screen.

She raised the arm and put more power into her semblance to handle the recoil, but before she could fire back she had to dodge another five arrows coming at her. Those things were a bit too big to block with the wing shields and she didn't feel confident enough to aim and block with her other arm simultaneously. Ruby told her to evade anyway.

Recoil was still absolutely monstrous but compared to when she was testing the gun without the armor it was more manageable.

Now to wait for dust to settle down so she could see whether she took out all of them.

And again the alarm lit up, this time from the right.

Why is it glowing?

One of the approaching arrows exploded, releasing a large amount of steam.

A second later, Pyrrha burst out above the cloud, a thick black aura around the suit very visible now that she was putting her all into it.

She was starting to see a pattern. Always a small group for her to warm up, then a larger one for the actual test.

Ten archers, all lined up, bows drawn and even further away than the first group.

She retracted the cannon and locked it in place on her shoulder.

It was time to test out the other long range option.

The gunblades were only effective up close, even at medium distance they were already losing effectiveness due to being rather low caliber. The larger gun was more than capable of reaching the targets but she wasn't sure about how accurately she could fire it at this distance.

She just wanted to try out the laser, really. She saw what Penny could do and hers was supposedly even more powerful.

A loud thud and a bit of counterbalancing later, a green circle appeared on the screen, its ridges turning red with the high pitched sound of the weapon charging up. She could also feel the armor start to slightly vibrate as the cooling unit went into full power.

The circle turned completely red and she aimed at the leftmost archer after evading another volley of arrows.

She pulled the trigger, hidden somewhere inside the weapon itself and only signified by being made out of very ferromagnetic metal.

The red beam shot out and instantly vaporized the first summon. It was also unbelievably rowdy.

Pyrrha focused more of her semblance on the weapon to keep it stable so that the recoil wouldn't throw off her aim. Unknowingly to her, the additional magnetic field overlapped with the one inside the weapon, making the beam thinner and adding penetrating power.

Instead of releasing the trigger, Pyrrha simply swiped the weapon at the entire row of enemies, making the beam resemble a giant blade.

/

Ruby frowned. She hoped that Pyrrha would take her words about conserving energy seriously but clearly she was having too much fun.

Oh well, they have been both playing around with Beacon's power grid. It definitely left her with some bad habits. At least she wasn't overheating the thing yet.

"Good job, you took them all out. I'm sending to the location of the last phase. Let everything cool off on the way, would ya?"

"[Of course. Uhh…Ruby? Remember those launching platforms that the headmaster used during the initiation?"]

"Yeah?" She unsurely replied.

"[Well… Suffice to say that there is now less of them.]"

/

Now it was official. She joined the rest of her team on professor Goodwitch's blacklist.

She cringed and tried to ignore the loud crashing noise as the piece of the cliff she accidentally cut off finally fell down.

She finally reached the place. It was rather obvious with five of Weiss' knights standing in a half circle with their massive swords stabbed into the ground.

"[Last test: close combat.]" Ruby again spoke up, before Pyrrha could simply start shooting at them from the air. "[Try to stay out of the air to simulate tight quarters, you can use gunblades but none of the big ones.]"

Pyrrha nodded, then remembered that Ruby…probably?..couldn't see her and gave her a quick reply before dropping to the ground, suits legs only a foot above the ground.

There was no flamboyant drawing of her sword, merely remotely releasing the locks that kept it in place on her forearm. Immediately after release, the hilt and cross guards automatically shoot out.

It felt strange to hold a weapon in this way. She could feel the gravity dust push back against her hand, transferring some of the feel from the suit hand holding on the actual sword.

The swordsmen always spoke of how the sword was the extension of them. Well, now Pyrrha was taking it quite literally. While only the fuller was susceptible to her semblance, she could still feel the entire arm and hand through the control system and the entire structure through her semblance.

At least Ruby didn't tell her to use the mechashift and go fight with a swordlance… She was sure that she would end up breaking something.

Activating and wielding the main shield was thankfully much easier.

/

Weiss had finally come back to the spot Ruby was occupying and joined Winter in watching Pyrrha quickly deal with the summons. She really enjoyed the strange mix of awe and trepidation her sister was trying to badly hide.

How ironic… Atlas and SDC try to one up each other when it comes to scientific development and yet they both get beaten by a little girl from the middle of nowhere.

It was a bit embarrassing. It was rather obvious that Pyrrha wasn't at her best but she was still winning simply because neither her nor Ivory were actually involved in that fight. That left their summons with about the same amount of intelligence their originals had. Which wasn't much.

Although it was entertaining to watch Pyrrha give up on the strange robotic swordplay and simply punch through the last knight with a bare fist. Whatever alloy Ruby used on it was definitely harder than the ones used in aviation.

I have an idea.

"I'm listening."

How do I possess a summon?

"I thought you were too worried about not getting your body back, should you ever leave it."

I'm actually a bit worried whether it would even be possible… I was born like this, I'm not like you who has much less…baggage, so to speak.

"Well, we have a couple of minutes to figure it out, don't we?"

/

Once again, for the last time. The warm up group and then the real deal.

The previous time was too…basic? She pretty much landed in front of them and they all patiently waited for her to get ready.

Who would ever give her that in an actual fight? Especially against grimm.

She would go high, then come straight from above.

Unfortunately, while her semblance allowed her to fly around a several ton war machine, it didn't make her immune to the laws and physics. For that, she would need the semblances of her teammates.

So when she made an extremely tight turn at full speed fifty feet above the group of knights, all of her internal organs noticeably protested.

Nine of the knights continued to stay motionless, even when Pyrrha almost smashed right into one after crashing down. The one that moved was giving her a side eye. She was sure of it.

"[Pyrrha! What happened?!]" Ruby yelled into the coms, voice full of worry.

"Urh…" Pyrrha groaned and waited for the amount of blood in her head to normalize. "I'm fine. Just not really used to turning at high speeds." She checked the controls and reactivated her semblance. "I'm good now, let's pretend it was a part of the test okay?" She tried to humor her way out of Ruby's wrath. Sure, now she was worried but then she would take her head for scratching her baby.

Either Weiss was going easy on her or she finally got used to the strange controls needed to swing her sword properly. How else would she explain that she put down nine summons faster than the previous five?

The last one actually stayed out of the fighting and was simply watching.

Then it started to change. The armor on its arms disappeared entirely and on its legs it retracted to form a strangle armor skirt(?). Its sword also slightly shortened and became much thinner, somewhat resembling a rapier, only made for a really tall person.

For some reason it kept the shoulder pats so the much sleeker look was a bit ruined.

Then it entered a very familiar fencing stance.

Pyrrha smirked. Okay, that would make up for a lackluster performance before.

/

"Aren't you going a bit overboard?" Ruby briefly looked away from the screen to gauge Weiss' reaction. A second later it was apparent that the two of them had switched.

"'I' wanted to try something out." Ivory gave her a meaningful look, implying that it wasn't 'her' who wanted to have some fun. "It would seem that it worked out better than I expected."

"You know those are stress tests for the joints and combat systems, not an all out live combat training. What if Pyrrha gets hurt? Or you break the whole thing?"

"And? I paid for most of it anyway."

-BBW-

Pyrrha was slowly walking towards the headmasters office.

Today was a really fun day with an absolutely brilliant finish.

But then she thought about it and her mood soured.

The only reason she had beaten Weiss' special knight was because Weiss was holding back. Her suit was more durable but that was about it. She couldn't use the more powerful guns, she was completely outmaneuvered and her semblance was completely useless against a crystal-like construct.

It was rather funny in a way. She came to Beacon to escape from her fame. But somehow that translated to escaping from being the strongest.

She wasn't vain to desperately cling to her title of unbeatable but she liked being the strong one. Someone who could be always relied on and able to protect her team.

But now…

She was still number one in combat class but:

Yang, the runner up, was outright banned from participating and Goodwitch never let them fight anyway.

Ruby… Nobody in the entire school had any idea how to actually fight her. They did know that infiltrating a White Fang base, crashing a train and fighting a horde of grimm would put her out of commission but that wasn't something useful in a one on one. Aside from that… She could become immune to physical attacks and any sort of elemental attack would need to be on such a large scale that the entire building would come down.

Weiss was fifth but… When was the last time she really used her semblance in a fight? Pyrrha was pretty sure that Weiss had never used a summon during the combat class. Of course, she was still the weakest out of top five when it came to close combat but with an army of self-made grimm and dust attacks, nobody would ever get to fight her up close.

And the only outsider, by not being a member of her team even if she hung out with all of them a lot and…the three of them were still trying to figure out how a relationship is supposed to work, Blake was the fourth best fighter. And the only one Pyrrha could confidently say she could beat.

She felt quite silly. At the beginning she worried that she would be The Celebrity and the rest of her team would be completely useless because of it.

Now she somehow became the weak link.

Ruby had already proved that she would be the first one to jump face first into the danger to protect them.

Then she simply had to be strong enough to never be in danger.

/

Another nice day. Or as nice it could get. They still didn't find the person who attacked Amber but aside from his lack of success on the shadow war front, Everything was nice and quiet.

He was even provided something nice to watch.

Did the girls forget that the Emerald Forest was filled with cameras? Of course, not many of them were pointed upward but he still saw enough.

Then he took a look at what information he could get from both Miss Rose and James. He barely understood a thing. Although he got a few chuckles from the commentary about how the name came about.

One of the choices was Iron Maiden. That was before miss Rose learned that it was a torture device.

A shame. It would fit nicely and be a good inside joke.

Whatever the flight show was about, it was apparently successful because he had to already sign a delivery permission for several gallons of paint.

A small ping sounded in the office, an alert that somebody was ascending into his office. He quickly checked the camera.

He was pleasantly surprised.

"Ah, miss Nikos, to what do I owe pleasure?" Ozpin calmly greeted the girl as she exited the elevator into his office.

Pyrrha took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes. "I made my decision."

Ozpin raised an eyebrow and waited for her to continue.

"I will become a maiden"

/

/

/