"It's super nice to meet you!"
Velvet Scarlatina, despite her dark hair and clothes, was all happy smiles and rainbows. Honestly she kind of reminded Jaune of himself, a bright personality, despite the fact that they both clearly liked dark punk-rock clothes. Mmm. Velvet's clothes edged a bit more to the goth side, though, just a little.
"Yeah. I'm Yang. Yang XiaoLong-Branwen. It's a mouthful, I know."
"And I'm Blake Belladonna." Blake spoke from her wheelchair, having had her new updated prosthetics installed and fresh angelskin grafts. She'd insisted on accompanying them regardless of the fact Jaune had recommended she rest at home and recover. "Nice to meet you two."
Rather she'd asked for his help in locking her room, just in case Ruby tried to read another of her new books.
Weird but ok. He asked what the deal with those books were, but Blake just got embarrassed and said she'd go over them with him in private later. Something that was better in person, rather than over the Scroll.
"Sup! Sun WuKong. Jaune kinda helped me a lot on the boat ride over."
"Ah, I did hear about that." Blake gave a short apologetic bow. "I'm really sorry that happened. I didn't know Leader Khan was even off Menagerie."
It was part of the reason she'd wanted to come with him when he was going to go meet Sun, having already heard from him what had occurred on the Marching Finn.
"Nobody did, apparently." Jaune still found that whole situation to be weird. "But I guess it's not easy visiting Animus as the White Fang Leader."
Sienna Khan knew how to keep a good neutral face and feel, despite his natural ability to read into people. Actually she reminded him a bit of General Ironwood, though not nearly as good as he could be.
She was hiding something, but it had also been true at the time that what she was hiding was none of his business.
"Hey, no need to apologize!" Sun blushed in embarrassment, "Sure what happened was awful, but it wasn't anyone's intention. Accidents just happen on this star. It's a sad fact of life. We already sent a call back home. Everythings been taken care of, so there's no point moping too much over it."
"Uh, if you all don't mind me asking? Why do you all say star instead of planet for Remnant?" Yang inquired, cocking her head to the side. "It feels like only Faunus do it. I've never heard that before Menagerie."
"I'm not sure." Blake admitted, "It's something that I picked up from my parents. I've never really thought about it. It's not like I haven't heard other Faunus call it a planet either, but… huh."
"I use them both kinda interchangeably, but my parents are human and I didn't grow into any of my Faunus stuff until I was five or so-"
"Hah?" Sun blinked in surprise. "Whaddya mean by that? That's not how that works."
Jaune flinched, his right foot stamping against the ground.
"W-well, I was born visually human. Nobody really knows what happened to me. Just one day bam ears AND a tail." He scratched the back of his neck, not quite meeting anyone's eyes. "Maybe that's even why I have multiple traits? I donno."
"That's fascinating, but I don't really think that changes much." Velvet tapped a long index finger to her cheek. "Regardless of what you are, Jaune is Jaune, right? You're the guy that saved my dumb Sunny."
"Hey, you're getting it. Jaune's always been a bit crazy." Yang grinned, pulling him into a side hug. "But he's still the best."
Jaune giggled, feeling warm.
He was lucky it was harder to feel Yang's, well, Yangs through the armored Parabellum coat. That sundress of hers had been dangerous in a way he couldn't describe. Way too soft. He felt sort of guilty that he'd reacted that way to her body.
"Glad to hear it, Yang." He grinned as he reached out to grab her by the hip and pull her in to tighten the hug. "You're pretty great yourself."
"Yeah!" She yelped, "I-I am pretty amazing!"
"Ignoring the showboat-" "Hey!" "-what are your plans in Menagerie now? At the very least, as a Belladonna I'd be happy to help host the two of you after what happened."
Watching Blake play diplomat was pretty impressive. Jaune wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to pull that off convincingly. He sort of had a bad habit of forming a plan and acting on it without consulting anyone. He'd become better about it, now that he had his promise to Trivia to keep about not risking himself in actually STUPID ways like he had two years back as The Green Hornet.
Still maybe a bit too impulsive for his own good, though.
"I mean, I'd feel bad… but we're also not super flush on cash…" Sun awkwardly scratched his cheek. "We hadn't planned on not being able to rely on Uncle Sanzang while we were here."
"Hey, if you're alright with it, I can put you both up with some of the spare rooms at the Green Laurel Inn right next to the bathhouse." Jaune grinned casually. "Technically I don't own it and it belongs to the settlement, but I have senior managerial privileges. I'll pull some strings."
"Hold up. What do you mean, Jaune, who else would own that all? You literally built them both from the ground up." Blake narrowed her eyes at him. "I know you filled all the paperwork with my dad."
"Well I'm not interested in being anyone's landlord." Jaune shrugged, "It's all under Chief Ghira's name on my insistence. Everything's a lot neater if it says all under Menagerie management than in the hands of someone that doesn't even live around these parts. Plus that way we can easily take excess profits and reinvest into the Kingdom without having to consult me every single time. Easy peasy."
"Shit, that's awesome of ya." Sun laughed, "I don't know if I coulda done that, that all sounds like easy money. Aside from the building everything ground up thing."
"Maybe it's because I have money that I don't really care for it?" Jaune shrugged, slightly embarrassed about the compliment. "I know it sounds privileged as all hell, but money's just a means to an end. Besides, if a bunch of Grimm overran someplace what good is money then? I'd rather rich people get that shit through their thick skulls. Life isn't, or rather shouldn't, be about money."
Blake sighed as she wheeled over so she could give him a light punch in his thigh.
"What did I tell you about valuing your work more, you moron?"
Jaune just laughed, placing a hand on her head as he gave her a pat, enjoying the feeling of being significantly taller for once, rather than only slightly. Honestly at the rate he was going, he wasn't going to be anywhere close to Big Brother Juniper's height, which gave him a bit of a complex about how slow he was growing. Yang was still taller than him.
"I do, and I want to give it back. It's because I know how much value it has that I'm giving it, stupid."
They shared a laugh as Yang leaned into his shoulder, clearly also wanting more attention as well, though she didn't say it. The warmth and scent of sunshine, the smoothness of warm scales erupted from her Aura against his left shoulder as Blake's parchment and ink, the sensation of moonlit dew crawled up his right.
"Damn and I thought I was lucky." Sun muttered. "Jaune you dog."
"Hmm? Yeah I have a dog tail."
"No, Sunny. Clearly he's just oblivious." Velvet laughed as she kissed Sun's cheek.
"He's super oblivious." Yang agreed, her voice slightly muffled into his shoulde, as Jaune gave a squawk of indignation.
"Just the worst when it comes to that stuff." Blake agreed as she leaned into his palm, her voice faintly rumbly.
"What? What'd I do?"
"Oh. Ooooooooh. Godspeed, bro."
"Ok, what am I missing here?"
Jaune was a cool ass dude. That was the only way that Sun could ever put it into words.
He was smart as all hell, but didn't think himself any more important than somebody else because of it, which suited Sun just fine, because frankly, he was a bit of a moron and had always been ok with that. But that had normally meant having nerds lord their intelligence over him. And that was annoying.
In Vacuo, though, as long as he could whoop ass, he could stand up proudly.
But maybe he hadn't taken his own studies seriously enough? He wasn't going through any official schooling at the moment, and had never viewed that as an issue… But watching his new friends go through winter assignments made him dread the future he might have to face in a Huntsman College.
Hell, if that was just for training schools, what the hell was actual college going to be like. Should he be worried? He felt worried.
"Ugh. The sun is bright. Even though it's winter in the other Kingdoms, it's summer down here!" Yang whined, as she threw back her arms, slumping against the back of her seat. "I should be down there on the beach, rocking it on the summer sands, not sitting here doing homework."
"Better we get it done all this week and have the rest of winter break to do just that." Jaune chuckled, finishing up the only assignments he hadn't apparently completed, which was his history project, as he leaned over to help Ruby (apparently Yang's half-sister) with a bit of math. "We all agreed this is the best way to maximize all our fun."
"Ughhhhhh. The rest of you guys are so lucky you don't have to do homework!" Yang whined again, slumping forwards onto her table. Blake gave her a V sign with her fingers, slightly mockingly. "And how did Nora already finish her stuff on the boat ride over?! Did she just copy Ren?!"
"Nora's an airhead, but she's smarter than you give credit for, Yang." Jaune frowned, "She tries really hard at Sanctum. She likes the praise she gets from doing well in class, even if she hates studying just as much as you do. History's her best subject, actually."
"It's true." Lie Ren, Jaune's only brother (adopted) smiled as he pat the head of the orange haired girl hanging off his shoulders as he finished his own assignments. "She blitzed through it all just so that Mother Noelle would praise her. Honestly, even I was surprised to see it completed so quickly."
"He he!" Nora flashed a V sign with her right hand as they all hung out around one of the larger tables at Cafe Cornucopia by the docks, kept cool by the sea breeze despite the summer heat. Plus Aura. "History is decided by she who breaks the first leg!"
"She got a couple of problems wrong and hasn't blown anything out of the park, but honestly, she made a solid C+ effort." Jaune laughed as he leaned over the table to high five his sister (also adopted, also with Nora he apparently had EIGHT sisters, like what the fuck) in a congratulatory manner. "Even might get B's on everything with a bit of luck."
"C's get degrees, Jauney!"
"Eh, I could care less about grades. In the end what matters is combat ability and field knowledge for a Huntsman." Jaune laughed with a statement that Sun could agree with. "I'm just glad nobody is failing."
"Emerald and I brought everyone's orders!" Velvet snuck behind him, kissing his cheek as she placed one of the two trays of drink orders at the table. "Are you sure you didn't want us to order any snacks?"
Sut watched as Yang perked up at the mention of snacks, sliding her assignments to the side as she sat up straight and pulled her chair in excitedly. Weird. There were no snacks.
"My master will provide sustenance." And Jaune also had a female butler. Which was somehow less tacky than a maid. Emerald clearly had some Vacuoan heritage too, even if she was apparently born in Mistral. And like all of Jaune's female friends was also hot. "There will be no need."
She began helping pass out everyone's drinks, clearly having perfectly memorized what everyone had ordered.
Good gods, Jaune was swimming in hot girls. Somehow, while Sun envied him, he also pitied his new friend.
The dumbass didn't even understand how good he had it. Lucky bunny-dog. Yeesh.
Still, Sun considered himself pretty lucky to have landed Velvet and sometimes she could weirdly be a handful as well. He didn't want to imagine how difficult it was for Jaune to juggle multiple chicks. He was a braver man than Sun, either way, even if he didn't understand the situation he'd found himself in.
"I've got some crepe cakes I've been messing with if you all want to try that."
Everyone winced as Nora slammed her hands on the table so hard that the whole deck of Cafe Cornucopia shook for a moment.
"ALL MY YES!"
"Oh no." Ren muttered. "Jaune, you've unleashed a monster."
"What the hell's a crepe?" Sun asked curiously. "Never heard of it before."
"I believe it's a super thin, delicate pancake of sorts? Something that survived the Great War in Old Mantle?" Velvet looked excited at the prospect of sweets as well. She always did say girls had a second stomach for sweets, even if Velvet could only really register basic sweetness rather than their exact flavors. "That sounds promising."
"Stay. Nora stay." Jaune was calling out to his adopted sister like she was a dog as he pulled out three of these 'crepe cakes' from his Semblance.
Nora had to actively be held back by Ren. Sun got the feeling those two had a story together.
Super thin fluttery layers of baked something were stacked utop each other, each layer thinly separated by an almost equally thin layer of some sort of cream. They smelled a bit fragrant and sweet, making every girl (and honestly, Sun found himself swallowing as well at the smell) take gulp down their saliva.
It looked delicate and professional. Already every cake had been perfectly sliced, so perfect it looked like a machine in a factory had churned it out, but there was a really weird human touch to it. Near perfection, but clearly handmade.
"Ok, so these took way more time than I'm willing to put into again without it being special occasions, so hopefully it was worth the effort." Jaune didn't seem to be concerned about the hyper focused eyes of every girl at the table on the fancy cakes, black, green, and pinkish red. "This one's black sesame. This one's pistachio. This one is strawberry cream. Every cake has eight slices and there's, uh; me, Ruby, Blake, Yang, Em, Nora, Ren, Sun, and Velvet. Hmm. I'll pa-"
"I'm fine just sharing my slices with Sun." Velvet sweetly interrupted. "To be honest, my tastebuds were damaged after an incident. It's hard for me to grasp more subtle flavors anyways."
"Jaune's food's so good you might regret that." Ruby declared cutely as she reached over to help Jaune plate a pink slice of strawberry cream, passing it over to Velvet first. "Try it before you decide to have less. It's only fair."
That was honestly pretty kind of Ruby.
When Sun had first found Velvet it had been over a dozen kilometers into the desert sands of Vacuo. He'd been running from a sudden sandstorm, trying to get back to the city. Due to the lack of visual integrity he'd stumbled over her body, half burnt up and dying, covered by the recently upturned sand.
Naturally he couldn't just leave someone to die like that so even though it slowed him down, he risked his life to carry her home.
Honestly he didn't know how he made it back during that storm, even now, or how Velvet's body wasn't torn up by the whipping sand filled wind when she'd been out of Aura and burned up to hell. She'd made a near miraculous recovery, partly due to some 'uncles' from Atlas, only a little scarring remaining on her back between her shoulder blades, some parts of the skin having darkened in an odd way, but a few things suffered irreparable damage.
Her loss of taste was one such thing. She could only taste simple, strong flavors. Pretty much couldn't even really feel the texture of what she chewed either most times. It even made her kissing a bit clumsy here and there, but Sun couldn't help but to feel that was kind of cute.
Whatever had happened to her had even seared all the bumps and ridges of her tongue away, leaving it perfectly smooth. Different, but not really a huge problem. Even the roof of her moth had suffered the same, as if she'd been forced to inhale flame or a rush of sand had worn away the flesh inside her mouth.
She never did say what or who she'd been fighting to leave her in that state.
Velvet just gave the girl a polite smile, a little fork grabbing a thin sliver of delicate layers of cream and, it was called crepe, right? Then popped it into her mouth.
She chewed, and chewed. Looking confused and surprised all the while.
"Wow. Huh." She sounded vaguely confused and distracted, her eyes gazing down at the cake. "I can really taste the effort that went into this. Weird."
"Whoa, really? Hey, just take my whole half." Sun smiled, a hand rubbing against Velvet's sides. It was rare to see a reaction like that from his girlfriend about anything. He'd never been able to see his girl enjoy food. "That's awesome, Vel!"
"No, I'd rather still share." Velvet giggled, smearing a bit of the cake's cream on her finger and smearing it onto his nose as he scrunched it with a small burst of complaint. "It makes it more special to share it with you."
Gods he fucking loved this girl.
"You two get along very well." Blake noted, half curious, from her wheelchair (apparently she was recovering from some surgery and it wasn't permanent) at Jaune's side. "Very cute."
"Sunny's the best." Velvet giggled, sitting side saddle in his lap instead of getting her own chair. "Saved my life you know. I've got a bad habit of almost dying."
"Oh? There's a romance plo- I mean. I'd like to hear more about it, if that's alright." Blake coughed.
Plot? Like a book?
"Ah, well, it's a long and complicated story. Not really a share around a table over tea thing." Velvet weakly waved, just reaching over for their share of cake. "Not a very happy one, except when I finally met Sun."
Sun laughed as he pulled Velvet closer and planted a kiss on her cheek.
"Don't listen to her. Velvet could write a book on what happened to her throughout her life so far."
"S-Sun! You're my boyfriend, a biased source! Don't take him too seriously!"
She was always adorable when embarrassed.
"Hey we won't judge." Yang promised, already having taken a slice of every flavor of crepe cake on a plate for herself, leaning back with that and a cup of strawberry banana smoothie. "Honestly I'd just love a break from homework."
"Well I'm not telling it, so you'll have to hear secondhand from Sunny."
"Oh? What if I embellish it, babe?"
"Don't babe me." Velvet pouted, twisting his nose. "As if you weren't going to already anyways."
Honestly Velvet had definitely had a bit of a life, from how Sun told it.
Despite her Semblance Photographic Memory, which seemed to not just give perfect memory but copy muscle memory, trauma was apparently enough to overcome it.
That was why she seemed to lack memories of her parents. Most of them, at least. She knew their names, what they did, remembered what they looked like. That they'd divorced but were trying to reconnect and took Velvet on the Glacial Ferry to come to Menagerie together for a family vacation.
Though she now had a few pictures of them on her Scroll, showing that her black hair was dyed, before she'd gotten it from her uncles, she claimed she'd lost what their voices sounded like.
A human father and a Faunus mother. A Huntress at that. A couple who'd bought into the hope of Menagerie and tried to refix a broken relationship with their daughter. Possibly even for her sake specifically. And they'd chosen to come on the Glacial Ferry, which really had been the only real transport to Menagerie at the time, unlike the current two lines with the Marching Finn and the Green Zako.
On the last voyage it had made when it was sunk by Grimm.
By some miracle, her unconsciousness during the tragedy kept her from having a sensible emotional state for the attacking Grimm. Perhaps she might have been the only survivor of the whole incident.
Blake had offered the fellow Faunus her condolences, but Velvet just waved it off.
"What's done is done." She said simply, "You can't change the past."
Tragedies like that were truly unfortunately commonplace on their star.
Sun went on to say that Velvet had been found by pirates. Velvet's words of choice were "a bunch of criminals on a ship" specifically, but Sun called them pirates, which Velvet seemed to be amused by, Velvet apparently hadn't told Sun any details about that time of her life, but she'd eventually been able to separate from them, gaining her freedom by running off into the desert of Vacuo when they'd docked on Sanus.
After that, she'd simply been living day to day, like many orphans did, one day biting off more than she could chew, burnt all over and left for dead
"You should have seen the other gal." Velvet had joked, as if she found almost dying a bit funny, but Blake was sure that part of it had been just a bit of friendly bravado. "Can't say it felt like a victory at the time, but at least I'm still standing."
And that had been a bit over a year ago, according to Sun, stating that after a week, a pair of traveling wanderers drifted into town looking for her.
He'd tried to fight them, thinking they were the people that harmed and robbed Velvet (as she had been found with nothing) in the first place, thinking that they'd come to finish the job, but he lost the fight pretty solidly according to him. Sun didn't even try to dress up his loss, stating that he'd "-got my ass handed to me, TBH."
But Velvet seemed to recognize them as friends of her family, even weakly calling them her 'uncles' as they took her away.
"My dad used to work for Atlas, so he had some friends there. They'd been searching for me some time after I popped up on their radar. Thanks to them I fully recovered in a month, even though we purposefully left a small scar on my back as a reminder."
"Why though?" Yang asked, having finished her snacks and drinks. "I've seen burn scars and none of them come out pretty."
"It was probably the toughest fight of my life. I didn't want to forget that moment when I wanted to live to see another day more than anything." Velvet shrugged, her gaze distant as she laid her head into Sun's shoulder. "Maybe that's just a Vacuoan thing at this point,?I donno. Besides, it's small and on my back. It doesn't hurt either, even if I can feel it when I move. I think it's better that I have it, is all. A reminder to not be so stupid again."
"Yeah, being dumb is my job." Sun teased, only to get a roll of the eye and a kiss on his temple in return.
"Well I did come back to thank your dumb, hot ass, so maybe that's also my job. I agreed to go out on a date with you, after all."
"I got lucky. Our first date was pretty ass." Sun sheepish chuckled. "Got jumped by a cartel jerkass and Velvet used my own Huntsman weapon to fight them off with her Semblance. It's pretty insane to me that she agreed to stick around and be my girlfriend."
"You have Shotgun-Nunchucks that merge into a staff. I wasn't gonna walk out of a first date without having gotten to play with that."
"Ooooooh. That sounds cool!" Blake heard Ruby begin to enter what Yang called weapon gushing, "Can I see?!"
Sun just reached over to his side, four thin carmine sawed off shotguns with golden trim stacked into almost a brick, flicking it to snap it into place as a long bo staff as he slid it across the large table.
"Just don't turn the safeties off for Jingu Bang and Ruyi Bang."
"Awesome!" Ruby squealed, "I haven't seen Vacuoan design and metallurgy at work before!"
"Should I be worried other girls are handling your staff, Sun?"
"Vel!" Sun sputtered, slightly red.
"Whoa, easy on the jokes there, Ruby's only thirteen." Yang warned lightly, though Blake could feel her best friend's protectiveness under it, as usual.
"Oh. I thought she was just short. Sorry. You said she was a half sister and both your moms were with your dad so I kinda… oops?"
Blake choked back both a blush and a laugh. Velvet was pretty cool, even if she seemed to have zero shame.
"It's not too heavy, but the extra armor means more power consumption, which means less operational time. Even with your modifications, doubling the batteries we fit into the thing, it's got twenty minutes in a realistic combat situation. We need it to last longer than that, Cid."
"But that's way longer than any fight takes though, isn't it? I don't know how you expect me to do more than that." Cid argued with an angry sigh. "Remember, I am not Jaune Arc. Maybe give me a realistic goal? Or figure out transport and logistics to get your fighters into a combat zone then out with all that casino blood money coming in."
"Watch it, Cid. We like your work, but not enough to make you untouchable. As you've said yourself, you're not Jaune Arc."
"You asked me to take what I knew to make those fancy mining exoskeletons of him and turn that into a combat suit. Admittedly all I did was fit some armor into the basic design and hid the original design to throw off the Professor, but I did a pretty damn good job at it. If you want Atlas military work, find some Ordos Mechanicus guy willing to defect, fuck man."
"We're not Atlas military. We don't have Bullheads on call everywhere, even with our backers. Nor can we expect that we'll be able to get close to a target location on an airship every time even if we had that option."
"Then you figure it out! If you give me some Combustion Dust I could at least work some basic thrusters to slow descents so we might not need parachutes, but that's about as far as my ability goes. Nobody would be flying with it, but it'd be better than nothing."
"...How many units of Dust would you need per Leo?"
"Depends on the distance of fall, obviously. You set a normal drop height and I'll run a bit of math. Assuming average weights and adding some extra leeway should make it easier to set up, though I guarantee nothing." Cid shrugged, "Depends on also if riders have Aura and how much."
"The point of the armoring is to reduce the need for combatants with Aura."
"Yeah, well even though the armor plating's thick, it's not impervious to bullets. Just really fucking resistant. A shot'll get through something eventually, so I'd say get on an awakening chain the way any gang, cartel, or Crime Family does anyways. But don't listen to me, I'm just the nerd here, pointing out the obvious."
"...Your concerns will be noted. Just make sure enough test units are ready by next week. Dismissed."
Cid sighed, turning away from the call to inspect the joints on a Leo Suit, still marveling at what Professor Arc had filed as DLC coating that were used in the original design of the exoskeletons, now carried over to the Leo's joints.
According to the notes it was less useful than what he'd wanted to use, originally, but this was apparently a lot easier for Menagerie to produce, so it'd been the superior choice thanks to his Multi-Fabricator.
It made everything slide buttery smooth. Super cheap too, just needing raw carbon mass shipped from Menagerie. It literally came out of their trash. So cool. Gods what Cid wouldn't do to meet the kid in person and just shake his hand one time.
It was even almost worth coating the whole unit in it, but that would make the whole unit black. Which… admittedly wasn't a bad idea considering what their leader was deciding to call themselves, but even so, pure black was tacky, right?
And not nearly as stealthy as people thought it was.
There was a reason why Mistralian monkeys (ninja) often wore dark blues and greens instead. Camouflage was powerful. And unless it was a moonless night, pitch black could stand out. As long as they added enough black to everything that would be fine.
Maybe just for their leadership units though? Even if fundamentally the same, Cid was asked to make the leader units stand out so that their fellows could recognize them easily in the thick of a fight.
Of course this meant that their enemies would too, but that was why the leaders were people who actually had real combat training and experience.
Still, a full black unit would be cool as hell.
And considering that their first appearance was to be staged in Mistral… well, shouldn't they steal a bit of their pizazz? If he made it look like their own style, Cid might even be able to convince people that their organization was even some Idealist sympathizers taking things too far.
Sure maybe that would weaken the Idealist stance, but while the Idealists were trying to change their Kingdom, it wasn't exactly pro-Faunus either. Rather, if they played this smart, they might even be able to force a Faunus agenda onto the Idealists maybe? Eh, he'd let leadership handle that.
Actually he could even adjust both the regular and any 'leader' version he'd cook up to have a docking point to attach a large shield to the arm. Big and circular like a hoplite. Hoplon? Whatever the term was wasn't important.
Considering that with the suit, someone could use high caliber rifles in a single hand, having a shield seemed pretty smart all of a sudden.
Yeah because what he needed was to spend another few sleepless nights making that work.
…fuck. He was going to do it, wasn't he? Damn it all if all of this design work wasn't getting fun, as conflicted as he felt about it all.
And considering that they had built in oxygen tanks in the suit design by default, shouldn't they look into making pepper bombs? It was non-lethal, so that made him feel a bit better. Rather Cid had never been comfortable with how excited some of the people on site that were supposed to pilot the suits he was being (sort of) forced to make seemed way too excited at the prospect of using the Cracker Bombs that some asshole made as an IED.
Sure he hadn't exactly helped, by making them more viable, but if Cid was being honest, he was a bit more scared of the fact that he was currently isolated on a continent that didn't like his kind with no way out, being forced to help make weapons and armor. If he didn't deliver, he wasn't sure what would happen to him.
From what Cid was promised the goal of their organization wasn't to hurt innocents, just people that propagated the cycle of hatred to the Faunus, but explosives increased the odds of people getting caught up in what they didn't need to.
And even without his input, it wasn't as if Dust Charges were difficult to set up. Rather that was infinitely easier than using their own Cracker Bombs, but years of Professor Arc's influence had made the Faunus people proud in a way they'd never been before.
Hell, aside from the supply issues, it was better that they even ran the new suits on Dust if what they were looking for was pure operational capacity. But nobody wanted to do that. Even Cid himself was hesitant to bring up the idea. Out of nothing more than a sense of nationalistic pride.
Pretty much nobody who lived on Menagerie wanted to use Dust if they could help it. After all, they'd seen it. That a world without Dust could not only exist, but thrive. They pretty much only made an exception for weaponry so they could defend against Grimm.
For now.
Even their ships secretly had something that Professor Arc installed in secret that powered the things, though he hadn't explained to anyone what it was. That apparently it wasn't something anybody was ready for yet, or some other childish nonsense. But he was still only fifteen. He was allowed to have such sentiments for now. One day he'd see how important it was for Menagerie to better understand and use that tech too, Cid was sure.
Though if Menagerie's North Star ever found out how his trust was being betrayed like this…
His claws extended and retracted nervously.
The worst part of everything was that he'd overheard some of the plans going forwards.
They were planning on smaller targets, just enough that their name would get out there.
Then when the Vytal Festival came to Mistral, they'd make a big splash.
Of course, he knew that they weren't dumb enough to do something at the Festival itself, but it was undoubted that SOMETHING was going to happen in the Capital. Something big was being planned on and despite being in charge of the literal armor suits that would be protecting the lives of his fellow Faunus, nobody was telling Cid anything.
He didn't like that. Honestly, he didn't like that at all.
After all, Jaune Arc lived in Mistral, despite everything. Even if he didn't carry any love for his birthlands, but he had friends and family here. It felt too risky. But his complaints were shot down. He was just the tech guy, not someone calling the shots.
"Ugh. I need a smoke." Cid sighed as he reached for a cardboard carton of cigarettes. "Maybe some air outside will clear my head."
"Ah, then how do you feel about a classic Vacuo cigar, friend?"
Cid gulped, turning around.
A tall, broad shouldered Faunus man stood behind him, having entered Cid's worktent without having been noticed. A crimson sash, trimmed with gold, wrapped around his eyes, flattening the sides of a well groomed gray and red mane of hair. Faint scarring could be seen jutting out of the edges of the blindfold.
But as if he didn't require his eyes to see, the Red Mane of Golden Sands smiled at Cid, extending out a richly aromatic cigar, the ends already cut. Rings shone on his fingers like the sun.
"No need to be shy, my friend." A red and gray lion tail swayed lazily behind him, muscled and powerful, like the hairy and hard pectorals exposed through the top of his half unbuttoned carmine silk shirt, a trio of gold chains hanging around his neckline, each with gemstones the size of chicken eggs. "Have a little courage, eh? It's good stuff."