14

"Sir, is it really alright? The entire revision..." Winter slowly asked. She didn't doubt General, but still, it would take months to best go through the entire Atlas military equipment stock...

"Yes, especially now that I received reports of two missing Paladins! Two, Specialist Winter, even one would be a catastrophic strike against our security. The sole thing I'm glad for is that it's missing and gone unnoticed by the public." Winter paled. Paladin's, the Atlas' following big answer to elder Grimm, and two of them going?

Stolen?!

"With seven Bullheads that should be in the warehouse for repairs, as they were stated to be damaged, gone too, and I will not go through the listing all of the missing guns and military equipment that should be decomposed listed off through multiple safety procedures, weapons that never arrived to their final destination where they would be safely taken care off..." Winter could see General's hand tightening into a fist, his organic hand...

"This is an atrocious breach of our security and competence. I will have the names of all those who were responsible for this catastrophe. Either they are incompetent for their work, or they are traitors." General spat out, Winter noticed his eyes dulling as he calmed down, and something inside her wretched at the sigh of General using his Semblance in such a way...

Did his Semblance dull his emotions or outrightly steal them?

If he used it so much, would it still be her General?

...

Hers?

"But... I would be more glad for traitors and greedy opportunists who thought they could earn few liens in selling these things... Then to think my military is so full of incompetent elements..." General mumbled as he tiredly massaged his temples, and Winter had the urge to say something, to say that she was there and it was her duty to help him...

But she didn't. Winter didn't know if it was because of fear or...

Winter never thought she would be shy, or really, something like that, if it even could be called shyness...

But after a week with her mother, Winter realized something...

She...

She didn't quite like the way her mother, from time to time, looked at General Ironwood...

"...That said... It was already a week. How is your family Specialist? Did they get accustomed to their new temporary residence?" General's words woke Winter up from her thoughts, and she nodded.

"Yes, Whitley, he became more open, and I think the change of surroundings helped him. Weiss is the same, but more..." How could Winter say that? Each time she or someone else brought General into a topic, her sister's cheeks reddened. At first, Winter thought it was just a feeling of gratitude. Her sister didn't love their father. Sure, she wished to gain his recognition, but that was mostly all that was there...

With General...

Winter watched how Weiss looked to the side when she spared General the time he visited them, not like he couldn't. They lived in General's house, and it was just...

When General praised Weiss's dream of becoming a huntress and gaining respect as Weiss and not just Schnee, how he patted her on the head and told her it was an admirable goal and that he would pity losing such a brilliant young girl to Beacon but that he respected her drive...

The worst was that Winter could see that General spoke the truth, the way his eyes rarely showed any emotion danced in mirth...

Was it just adoration Weiss felt, or more?

Winter wasn't sure, but she realized she often looked at General in the same way...

The same way her mother looked when she saw General Ironwood play with Whitley or spend time teaching Weiss a military tactic...

Something their father has never done...

Winter wasn't blind, she acknowledged that feelings weren't her best area of expertise, but she wasn't blind...

"More open? Weiss, just like Whitley, take's the change very well. She often likes to spend time in the house's library and training yard." And what library it was, it wasn't big as the one in Schnee manor. No, against the Schnee library, the one in General's home was tiny, but...

Winter acknowledged the fact that the entire wooden look, with a fireplace by the wall and sofa near it...

The entire house, and not just the library, had an enormous homely feeling that just put people too easily, just...

"That is good news... Your siblings deserve to feel good." Winter didn't look nor acknowledge General when he paused, but she knew...

She knew that General wanted to say your siblings and you...

She knew...

And so she stayed quiet. There wasn't a reason to bring that up, no matter how warm she felt at his words...

"And your mother, how does she fare with her new responsibility?" Winter could hear the hidden edge in General's words, the way he spoke to her nor her siblings.

"Mother, she... She is doing well. She agreed with your proposition and is now in talks with Chieftain Belladonna about the workforce." Winter marveled at the plan General gave to both parties, and he gave them ideas they could work with, just with a few more details ironing and changing.

Menagerie would provide a worker's, and SDC would provide means to earn a lien.

Menagerie had plenty of workers. What they lacked were means to earn the lien, as Menagerie was mostly barren, and SDC had the exact opposite problem. It had access to rich and plentiful means to earn lien, but it lacked personnel...

What General gave them was an idea, one where each month workers from Menagerie would be transported to the SDC facilities or mines, where they would work for a month, and then transported back, changed with another batch of workers, as they would take a month-long rest, to spend their earned lien, and rest for a month until their next shift came...

Like this, any unsavory activity would be immediately found out, as all workers would periodically exchange, which wouldn't happen, as her mother agreed with inspectors from Atlas Council, Menagerie, and Atlas military vising the facilities and mines...

General said it was necessary for the military not to be blind about their Dust provider status, as Dust was a strategic resource for the military.

Her mother couldn't agree more quickly...

Another thing...

Winter, some nights could see her mother reaching for a bottle of wine just to stop her trembling hand with her other. She could see tears in her mother's eyes when she spied on her...

It...

Wretched Winter's heart to see her mother like that...

And that was a reason why she was even more turbulent with her feelings when she saw her mother look at General Ironwood with those eyes, and she never had, or at least for truly a long time, didn't see her looking at father like so...

The way she smiled sadly and shook her head...

It...

Hurt to watch her so, Winter wanted to resent her, and she wanted to ignore it, but...

She didn't want to be such a person...

"Truly? I hoped it would work, and it is good news they liked my proposition..." General quietly said...

"No matter. I have another question for you, Specialist. How did your meeting with Ace-Ops fare?" That...

Winter winced. She...

She had a good impression of the team. Many of them was a professional, and especially Winter could see their respect for General, something that made her more at ease with the team.

But she could see their eyes, just like the rest of the military personnel. Winter could see in most of their eyes the way they looked at her, thinking she had it easy, being outrightly promoted into the right hand of General the moment she left the Academy...

And it was true, but they didn't know the burden, the way she watched General's hardships, unable to help, just be there in case General needed support...

---------------------------------------------------------------

The sole good thing about the lie that was Atlas gravity generator was that it was commonly known to eat an enormous amount of gravity dust, just like Amity Colosseum, that in my option, was a wasteful use of resources.

Was that Altlas military secretly hid an enormous amount of Gravity Dust, as it was needed to be shown that the Atlas needed it to stay in the air, even if that wasn't true, but at least, thanks to this lie, I had an enormous amount of Gravity Dust I could use for my future plans.

Even the Council didn't know of this. The sole person who ever knew of this was the General of Atlas military, who was always secretly a member of Ozpin's circle, hiding the relic as a Gravity generator, and thus hoarding Gravity Dust as proof of its existence.

As such, I could increase the Atlas air fleet without worrying about ever running out of Dust...

At least not in this lifetime.

So when I asked for ideas about new aerial attack drones, I wasn't surprised it didn't take long for my desk to be full of ideas.

Ultimately, as I already went along, the idea of automation, just with more contingencies in case of hijacking, as booby-trapping them to remotely self-destruct them, to make them capable of taking orders from just one special command platform.

The ultimate design looked smaller than a person, but with the capability of flying, being able to masterly maneuver in the air to evade or pursue, and two medium-strong laser cannons capable of killing even bigger Grimm after a few shots, or one in the right or weak place.

In short, it was an automated attack drone.

With Paladin, I had a bigger or smaller problem.

I was...

Unsure if I should order them to be completely taken down or have them reworked...

The problem was that even with better mobility than tanks, they had too many weak points, too small armor for the purpose of them being a vanguard, and too weak weapons for a war machine that should kill Grimm in hordes...

It was...

Paladin was a clumsy weapon, a nice to look on, but on the field, it was a mediocre weapon that was too costly to be used as just some fire support...

I was on the fence if I should just scrap them down, replace them with the new generation of aircraft gunship, and let the ground for AKs that are being armored up and given more powerful shotguns than their weaker assault riffles.

Ultimately, not tanks, but I could have my R&D department develop some heavily armored transport vehicle that could wield bigger weapons and serve more purposes than just Paladin...

Choices, choices...

"General?" Hm.

"Yes, Ms.Moon?" After a while, my secretary came into the room and gave me a folder.

"These are the names of those who want to try it."

Excellent.

"Good. Tell them that auditory tryouts will be held in a week, so they should prepare. If they need to, they can take time off from their normal duties, as this project has an urgency."

"Of course General." Moon nodded at me as she went away to share my order.

Making me look at the names.

"Seraphine Cherry..." When I looked at the image of a pink-haired girl in military uniform, I was assaulted with memories from my Earth life...

Well, she looks like her, but then, this one has more seriousness to her. Still, if she was as good as her counterpart...

What rested before me were the names of people from Atlas military who wished to try their luck in my next project, one that would serve as both a recruitment program and a new PR image of the Altesian military...

An IDOL Band...