Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ A Certain Machinist ❯ Neighborhood Watch ( Chapter 4 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

 

FOUR

 

 

Neighborhood Watch

 

 

On the first Monday of the third week living at the warehouse, Yang showed up on her bike and toting an overnight bag. She pushed me aside as soon as I finished shutting and locking the delivery door, and rearmed the alarm. Already there were heat signatures of curious burglars out there. My non-lethal pepperball guns began firing on them and shouts of outrage resulted, causing the heat sources to leave again. They’d be back, and probably wearing gas masks, but they’d need time to get that. With the cops being so useless, the escalating war against the organized burglar gangs would eventually turn lethal, I am sure.

 

“I’m fighting with Dad and Qrow about mom, so I’m staying with you until they get reasonable,” she said, as if that was an explanation. I am in the middle of a production run so quickly text the two of them where she is and offer to put her up for a week until I can talk her down. Naturally, being a teenage girl with “Mommy issues” the one with the problem is her, not her Dad or Uncle.

 

Their eventual reply texts were grateful, and had the courtesy not to be crude, threatening, or mentioning condoms or similar. That done, I pointed Yang to my cot where she sacked out immediately. Figures she’d have skipped sleep.

 

“Well. That’s a thing,” I said to myself. The trouble with Yang is she’s a young woman with various insecurities and a chip on her shoulder, and a mother that qualified as a Big Bad all by herself. And I knew she was a Maiden, what’s worse. And her portals monitored those she cared about, which meant there was a portal from Raven in the room. It was probably microscopic, but she was able to finely control them. I set this worry aside and got back to my work.

 

My manufacturing was getting more automated. Every week I’d earn enough extra from sales to afford another piece of control equipment that reduced my attention on a part of the line, did a bit of Q/A, or otherwise ran a process that was too demanding. Once I’d started Proofing rifles and working out design tweaks to fix the problems before settling on the final design specification for model 5, which was a model 3 with a full rifle caliber in 308, a round that turns cover into concealment and can punch through most grim, and its 35 round quad stack magazine, suitable for either huntsmen or gate guards or night watch in remote outposts, once I’d worked out the kinks and stopped the vertical stringing problem, a matter of barrel tuning and stock fit, only then would I be able to start manufacturing this beast. Powerful enough I would probably put one on the gun rack in my delivery vehicle. Any gang that tried to hold me up would regret it, briefly. 308 is a serious round. It makes people explode, or drop like a sack of meat. I remember seeing a protest in Venezuela, back when I was in basic training, used to show the power of a sniper on a crowd, and some protesting bimbo just… dropped, dead, no warning or anything. The sniper had been over 400 meters away. It didn’t matter. She was instantly turned off, like a light switch. It was the start of the revolution that lead to Hugo Chavez taking over the country and pretty well destroyed all the wealth and civilization that the nation had enjoyed previously. All for his personal power and smug assurances he was the reincarnation of Bautista, the explorer who founded the country from Spain centuries before. It had gone well, if you were Spanish. Not so great if you were a native. That was here nor there. The important thing is I’d have a battle rifle I could use. And my vicious 10mm PDW was always close at hand, too. Maybe I could train Yang to use one, for those rare times when punching something with shotgun blasts isn’t getting the job done?

 

Six hours later Yang stirred and arrived on the shop floor to stare at me working. I noticed her there, tousled and pretty, with her expression a mixture of confused and bored. I’d filled more than half the warehouse with manufacturing lines for my firearms. And I was still doing all the work by myself.

 

“Why don’t you just hire someone?” Yang asked during a lull in the machine noise. I’d stopped the line to clear a jam.

 

“Feeling better? I’ll cook us something in a bit. I just need to fix this… there,” I stepped out and checked the part, adjusting the bit that was bent and hitting the GO button. It restarted its work and stuff moved where it was supposed to. Into bins and hoppers. Final assembly was still by hand, of course, but bins of parts made that work.

 

“Did you hear me?” Yang asked close behind me. I sighed.

 

“I can’t hire just anyone. Most of Vale is associated with organized crime, either gangs or the more powerful companies, which are arguably worse. The politicians are owned by the industrialists, and as long as I’m a low-volume operation I’m no threat to the bigger companies. If I grew my plant, hired a dozen people, started producing a hundred weapons a day, or more, I’d be causing problems for the companies who don’t want competitors, especially in those desperate and overpaying paranoid edge settlements, out where the grim stalk outside the walls, or maybe hop over and see if a house left a window open. We know the stories, right? For those people, my guns are their last hope. But I can only be that if I’m not ubiquitous.”

 

“I don’t get it,” Yang complained. “Food. Hungry. Feed me, Seymour.”

 

I get reminded at the oddest times that there are overlaps between our worlds. This place has Die Hard, but its Spruce Willis. It has Space Conflict, not Star Wars. They have Alien, but its on a sailing ship, and the aliens are grim. And horror movies are only allowed in big cities like Vale, where there’s enough buffer to not attract grim. In the rural places a scary movie could literally lead to an invasion by the monsters. It could turn into real horror.

 

I lead the teenager back into my living area and washed up, then started cooking some leftover Mistrali stir fry and rice, which is pretty much like Chinese or Thai back home. Once hot I dished some onto her plate, then my own and we started eating without a word. Yang made happy food noises, and I poured her a cup of cold iced tea. She slugged some down, burped, then ate more. I ate more slowly, noticing how tired I’d become. I’d put in a full day and wanted my sleep. Yang would be awake for the next eight to twelve hours. Hopefully she wouldn’t get into trouble once she got bored.

 

“I’ve got ammo loading presses on that wall, and my smokeless powder. It is stronger than your usual fire dust, so if you use it, do some tests so you don’t blow up your gauntlets. Also, be sure to use the pelletized stuff for your shells. The bigger ones are for shotgun shells. The small stuff burns too fast and could explode on you. Its for pistols.

 

“Kay,” she agreed. I could see she was absorbed in her scroll, which I still prefer to think of as a cellphone.

 

“If burglars try to break in my security system may shoot them, electrocute them, or douse them in icewater. If they actually get into the building wake me up so I can shoot them. The police have a Take Away special if you bribe them enough,” I warned her. Then I cleaned dishes, brushed my teeth, and laid down on my cot to sleep. It smelled like Teen Spirit, meaning Yang. Sigh.

 

When I woke up hours later the sun was up so I grabbed Yang, my delivery truck, and cautiously left, rearming the alarm and refilling the pepperball guns with fresh ammo. I also had my working prototype Model 5 and a fixed 3x with bright optics and a wide field of view. We went to a bedding store, and got a second cot for Yang or other visitor, and some bedding, then picked up some essential clothing, some less smelly deodorant for each of us, and a washing machine and dryer. I had never expected to need either of these things as a gun workshop, but my situation is my situation.

 

On return it was strangely quiet, so I activated my nightvision IR system and spotted the sniper nest set up pointing at my number pad. They were waiting to pop me by my gate. Upped the ante. At least there were no IEDs yet but that would come, I am sure. I quietly ordered Yang to wait there and ascended a nearby roof, attached the silencer to my rifle and popped three snipers and their spotters with the big 308 rounds. I did not bother to get close after I finished them, merely returning to the car and found Yang fiddling with her phone. I drove the little electric to the gate, coded the entry, and went in, locking it behind before coding the building doors and entering there next. I helped Yang unload the truck and let her setup her cot while I attached the charging cables to the van and checked the security feed. The pepperball guns were firing again. And some actual guns too. I activated my military grade security and there were quiet bursts of silenced subsonic bullets and the IR signatures stopped moving, grew larger and rapidly cooled. I waited. The police did not show up. I called them.

 

“Some kind of gang war outside in the street. Don’t know what is going on, but thought I’d better call you.”

 

“And you didn’t see anything?” questioned one of the cops that likes a bribe. I passed him a small bribe and some limited edited camera footage, without IR and definitely not capturing any use of my turret guns. Those licenses are well beyond Vale PD, being cleared by the Vale Council as competition to the Atlas turrets and military security systems. Stuff Adam would have more trouble with. Try cutting pepperballs with your sword, goon-boy, and get a whiff of capsaicin and UV activated dye. “Here’s the camera stuff. Didn’t see much. It was the gunfire that woke me. They were shooting at each other. Don’t know why, and don’t know why here. Now if you don’t mind I’ve got to get back to work,” I pointed at the rows of equipment.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” complained the cop, his partner already calling it in. The meat wagon showed up later and started picking up bodies. A drone spotted the crowd of snipers on the roof, and the men called in a bullhead with a winch to attach and lower those bodies to the street to haul away. Forensics? It’s obvious what happened here. Ambush went bad. They were pointed at that gun maker’s gate? Eh, council says he’s hands off, so he’s hands off. Funny how that is. I went back to work, and reminded myself to offer presentation grade weapons to councilman Winchester. As much as his son is a total spoiled jerk, his dad has his reasons for hating the faunus, including a missing leg from a White Fan ambush assassination attempt two years prior and his grandfather’s service during the Great War has liberated POW camps where there had been torture of prisoners. The kind of stuff nobody wants to admit to, but you can never forget. So he’s got bias, just like the Schnees, and see’s the point of a weapons manufacturer for Vale.

 

“Hey, what’s with all the trucks outside?” Yang asked, surprised and having slept through it.

 

“Remember when I stopped the van outside and you fiddled with your phone?” I asked her. The blinked, looked around, then looked me up and down impressed.

 

“So you’re come kind of Jon Bick?” she said, referencing the action movie series. Slightly more popular than Die Fast with Spruce Willis, the Bick series was brutal up-close gunplay.

 

“I have a rifle. Up close is for knife fighters and the suicidal.”

 

“And me!” Yang gestured at herself. I returned the gesture.

 

“People with aura,” I clarified.

 

“Oh… yeah. I forgot you don’t have aura. Why is that?” she said.

 

“Alien, remember?” I reminded her.

 

“Right. Ruby’s alien gun-buddy. Say, how come you know stuff about my mom?” she asked, changing the subject.

 

“That’s kind of a complicated answer. You remember what I said, about protecting you from the people hunting her?” I reminded. She nodded. “It’s kinda like that. I’m not with the villains or the other party in that particular conflict. I’m way more interested in the common Joe just trying to protect his family from grim and the sorts of madmen who enjoy an evenings slaughter for fun.”

 

“Like that?” she pointed at all the trucks.

 

“I didn’t do that for fun. They showed up planning to burst in here, steal my inventory, probably rape and kidnap you, steal Bumblebee, put my head on a pike or give me cement overshoes and toss me in the harbor for the crabs to munch on. It was violence or violence. Talking wasn’t going to fix this. When you finally start at Beacon you’ll get a partner, maybe one with a lot of secrets. Bring her by sometime. Also, if you get the hots for a yellow guy who’s a little goofy and your little sis likes as her new best friend, enjoy his company. He means well. He’s just not as skilled as you.”

 

“That’s surprisingly specific. First day is in two weeks,” she admitted.

 

We cooked a meal and ate together. Yang fiddled with settings on her bike, including adjustments to the O-Lenz shocks, and I assembled another dozen weapons for delivery contracts to the local gun shops. More and more work. It would be helpful if I had a couple more bodies working my line. I looked at Yang.

 

“Hey, you wanna help me?” I asked her. She brightened.

 

I taught her how to assemble model 2’s. She made a couple dozen of them that day. I did random checks, and all were assembled correctly. I kept a tally and worked out a wage, less living expenses, barely any there. Be good to win friends on this. Might get Ruby to show up and help someday, and she LOVES guns and would probably be able to assemble many with her speed semblance. My ammo machine weighed each round as it finished, making sure all was to specifications. I offered a model 2 to Yang with the big 10mm and the silencer.

 

“For those times when you need something dead but don’t want to walk all the way over there,” I said grinning. She looked at it, considering.

 

“I’ll keep it, but it’s really not my style. I always rush the enemy. It’s instinct at this point.”

 

“Well, sometimes you need to keep your distance. You meet a white fang with one eye and a big red sword? Run away. He can cut through anything, including armor, robots, even concrete bridge columns. You name it. He cuts it. And he likes cutting bullets. Your shotguns would bounce off him. I’m not even sure if this would take him from the front, but even from the back, from surprise? Iffy. He’s a combat veteran and is playing with the people your mom is scared of.”

 

“That’s specific again.”

 

“I know some people,” I didn’t explain.

 

“Right,” Yang said sarcastically.

 

Yang left three days later, back to Patch to see her family and spend time with her Dad and uncle. She would come back to Vale for school, obviously, but I wondered if I’d see her often or just the rare weekend when she needed advice or some pocket money. She left with a couple thousand Lien from assembling guns for me, a fair wage. I did not file any paperwork for it, but I did give her a my company logo patch for her suit, which she sewed on with evident enjoyment. A week later and it was Beacon day, and the I watched the increased airship traffic heading into the Beacon docks on the mesa above and a few kilometers away from Vale, itself large and spread out near the sea. The green forest around Beacon was full of grim and outside the Vale walls. The airships were heavy, metal, pointy, and ignored aerodynamics in every way, probably gravity stone somewhere in the design. Like those fantasy floating islands in anime, what feels like another lifetime ago. Mainly because it was.

 

I got on with my work. It was five days later, after the annual cliff jumping contest held by the school to test or eliminate their Hunter applicants, that Ruby showed up at my workshop, knocking on the gate. I managed to disable my alarm system and let her in before she killed too many of the gang thugs outside. There weren’t many left, but the idea that Ruby is a sweet little adorkable girl ignores her killing all those red jacketed mooks when she got invited to the school in the first place. And that happened here too. I’d seen the event in the local news.

 

“Yang told me you paid her to build guns on your assembly line. Can you give me the same deal?” she asked winsomely. I agreed. Then I showed her how to assemble the model 3. She was thorough, careful, and knew how to use a torque wrench, which makes her nearly unique.

 

“Marry me!” I demanded. She blushed and I shook off the moment of personal madness. “Sorry. Torque wrenches are an aphrodisiac to men. A woman who can use one is better than any five of the usual lady accessories.”

 

“That’s a pretty weird idea, Space Man John,” she remarked, finishing the gun and moving on to the next rifle. Step by step.

 

“So how was initiation?” I asked her. “It was on the news, but there’s no details other than death totals and number of approved students.”

 

“Oh, well… hmm. I have a team. I mean I’m the leader of a team. I guess Ozpin was kinda impressed by me between fighting off Roman Torchwick and slaying two ancient grimm during the initiation. Well, one of them. I helped with the other too. Giant nevermore, must have been a two hundred foot wingspan, so probably more than a thousand years old. Took a bunch of help from my team, but I got to use Crescent Rose to take its head off.”

 

“That’s amazing. Any new friends?” I asked her.

 

“I met a boy. A boy I like.”

 

“Is he named Yellow?” I asked her.

 

“No, its Jaune,” she objected.

 

“Jaune is Yellow in French. Or old Valean as you say it. So his name is literally Yellow, like your sister. Her name is Yellow in Chinese, or Mistralian I guess you call it,” I explained. I looked at me with a startled expression so I booped her on the nose, making the noise.

 

“Hey! Nora does that!” she complained.

 

“Alien Space Man, remember?” I reminded her over her adorkable pouting. “So you like Jaune. Did he rescue you after you exploded?”

 

“I didn’t explode! It was Weiss! Gah!” she complained. I hugged the little teenager and then redirected her to the workbench and tried not to tease the cute girl while she worked on weapons.

 

“He’s a nice boy then. Any other women sniffing around his manliness?” I asked her.

 

“Yes. Pyrrha freaking Nikos has stars in her eyes every time she sees him. I swear I can smell her ovulating every time he’s nearby,” she complained. If you didn’t know, women say really crude things when men aren’t around. Since I’m too old for Ruby’s strike zone, she pays no attention to me and doesn’t mind her language when Yang isn’t around. Or possibly when Jaune isn’t around, either.

 

“She a mean girl?” I asked her.

 

“Noo! What is worse is she’s really nice. Like actually genuinely nice. The nicest girl I’ve ever met, ever!” Ruby complained. “I bet if I was as nice as her Jaune would notice me.”

 

“You’re fifteen. Pyrrha is 18? 19? She’s probably really lonely and desperate for a normal relationship with a boy. She’s probably as hard up for a boy to notice her as you are, only several years longer and lonelier. In a couple or three years you’ll fill in, grow a couple more inches, become a lot more of a woman than you are now, probably look more like Yang. You are cousins, after all.”

 

“Huh? What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously. “Yang is my sister.”

 

“Sure, and that’s what you tell people. But the family resemblance is kinda obvious. I’d bet you 500 lien that Qrow is your daddy. Why else would he teach you how to build and use a scythe? And he keeps showing up to check on you. He probably stays away because of his semblance. So you’re not so different from Yang, in that respect,” I pointed out, rubbing her head while she thought about it. She really is a cute kid. Young woman. Teenager. She’s at that delicate age.

 

“Yang said you knew stuff about her mom, and that she felt better after talking to you,” Ruby admitted after a while staring into space. I assembled a Model 3 rifle while she thought.

 

“Yang was a lot more anxious about that topic than she ever liked to admit. I was worried she’d going pick a fight with an underworld boss, trash his club and beat up all his henchmen, the ones you didn’t trash at From Dust Till Dawn,” I explained. “She’s got just as much anxiety as any young woman.”

 

“So feeling nervous is normal?” Ruby asked.

 

“Well, yeah. I guess. Not everyone has the same family circumstances, so some grow up a bit more stable. Jaune has seven sisters, so he really understands women, but what drives Jaune his the stories of his family he learned from his Grandfather. The Arc family have been knights and huntsmen for centuries. His parents didn’t want him to do this because he’s still clumsy, and he’s totally untrained.”

 

“No hunter education at all?” Ruby asked, shocked.

 

“None. He’s just talented and picks things up fast. Also. Pyrrha will be training him with sword and shield so he can beat Cardin in combat practice. Cardin is a dick, by the way. His father is a customer, however, and a patron of this shop. So I can’t really stand up and call out the boy for his behavior. He’ll have to learn the hard way, by failing. And it might end up killing him.”

 

“Oh, and there’s one other thing. Your eyes.”

 

“My eyes? Ozpin said I have silver eyes, like that means something to him. What’s it about?” Ruby asked.

 

“Eh, well, like Jaune is an Arc with a family semblance that makes him powerful, you have Silver Eyes that grant you a special power over Grimm, and Maidens, that other people don’t have. It is hard to activate, and it might knock you out. Your mama could use it, but it is a risk as well as a weapon. There are those allied with the Grimm queen who hunt those with Silver Eyes, which includes you. You meet a scorpion faunus who jumps around like a flea? Run for it. You aren’t good enough to beat him, and he’ll kill your Pa if he has to save you. Even my machineguns won’t hurt that guy. He’s too fast to hit, and too tough to kill with bullets. A total madman.”

 

“That’s very specific. Like you know something that’s going to happen,” pointed out Ruby with a significant degree of doubt.

 

“Was I wrong about Yellow?” I asked her sweetly. She frowned.

 

“What else?” she asked with suspicion.

 

“Hmm. Well, there’s a Cinderella the Terrorist who will be coming to Beacon with a couple lackeys. One is an assassin with robot legs, so feel free to cut those off at any time, and the other is a pickpocket who can force an illusion on one person at a time. So like that midget who works for Roman Torchwick, only more limited. By the way, when Weissy throws a fit at Blake about her ears, run after her before she can get to Vale, because there’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens in Vale, some of which you won’t like and will be both dangerous and humiliating. But you’ll meet Penny the Android from Atlas, so that’s something good at least. She’s very sweet. And if you want to show Blake to my place I can offer her some employment too.”

 

“I never told you about Blake. And what do you mean ears?” Ruby responded with outrage.

 

“Faunus. Leopard faunus, I think. A black leopard, not the spotted kind. Maybe one of those south American jungle cats? What were those called?” I asked out loud, thinking. “Anyway, she’s one. And former member of the White Fang that used to kill Weiss’s family and murder her company employees, so there’s bad blood between them. Weiss’s outrage is pretty justified, but Blake did abandon the Fang over their violence and she’s gone straight, so make of that what you will.”

 

“And you want to employ her?” Ruby asked me, digesting this heavily loaded emotional baggage in a huge lump of awkwardness.

 

“Well. I’m employing you, and I gave Yang a job. Blake might be worth employing too, provided she doesn’t tell her ex-Fang terrorists about this place. They might kill me. And I still don’t have Aura,” I reminded the girl.

 

“Why don’t you?” she asked.

 

“Alien, remember?” I reminded. Ruby remembered then.

 

“Oh. Yeah. You sure look like a regular human, you know,” she pointed out.

 

“I’m pretty sure that Remnant is a lost human colony on a world far from Earth. Probably thousands of light years away, and ten thousand years after all knowledge of space travel was lost during one of this planet’s routine catastrophes,” I explained glibly.

 

“That’s very specific again. Do you actually know this?” Ruby queried.

 

“No, but it makes the most sense. I think you’re evolved and perfected over natural humans, which is what I am. We don’t have Aura or magic. And we can’t turn into birds or open portals to family members,” I added.

 

“There’s you being specific again,” Ruby complained. “Why do I end up having even more questions the more I talk to you?”

 

“Well, you have interesting family members. I’m sure my waking up next to you killing a bunch of beowolves wasn’t a coincidence,” I added.

 

“Next to? Didn’t you walk a mile in the snow, uphill both ways?” she pointed out while mocking my apparent age of twenty-four. If only she knew. I sighed.

 

“Right. Uphill both ways. I just hope your aunt doesn’t murder me for being nice to you two,” I muttered to myself. “We should finish this batch of rifles and you can either head back to Beacon or I can fix you some dinner and you can sleep on the spare cot.”

 

“Why do you have a spare cot?” Ruby asked.

 

“I got it when Yang stayed over a few days. She was fighting with her dad and yours about Raven. I mean, I get it. Raven is a bandit queen, and she’s also that other thing we don’t talk about, and finding out she abandoned Yang to protect her from the Queen of Grimm’s spies and assassins… well, its a lot to take in.”

 

“What? I never heard that,” complained Ruby, who finished up the last two rifle while I talked and was tidying up the work area and putting away tools and stacking bins of parts.

 

“It’s as big a deal as your eyes. And a secret, so never talk about it anywhere another student or civilian can hear you. And especially not Ozpin or one of the teachers. Raven has good reason to be worried. I wish she didn’t murder a bunch of helpless villagers, because she indirectly made Ren and Nora into orphans,” I mentioned, then saw Ruby’s face.

 

“What did you say?” Ruby asked.

 

“Kuroyuri is a small town in Mistral, where Ren and Nora came from. It was raided by your aunt, which killed the guards and broke the gates, making the people scared, which attracted Grimm, who killed the only hunter left, Ren’s father, and then his mother. Nora was rescued then, and the stress activated Ren’s semblance, and the two have been surviving on their own ever since. They have no hunter school training, but like Jaune they learned as they went. Unlike Jaune they’ve been surviving since they were around five or six years old.”

 

“Oh no. And I was thinking mean thoughts at Nora for eating all the pancakes at breakfast. I have to apologize to her,” Ruby yelped, and grabbed Crescent Rose and headed for the exit. I managed to deactivate the alarms and defenses barely in time, while she hopped the fence, then the rooftops and sped back across Vale, headed for the last shuttle to Beacon.

 

“Well, so much for dinner with company. Guess I’ll just manage for myself.” I locked up again and made some microwave food with too much salt. I was up half the night drinking water after that.

 

I awoke to a bad mood on Sunday. And to a catgirl ringing the bell on the front gate via the visitor’s camera. I can only assume it was Blake. She was actually more attractive in person.

 

“Yang said you pay wages for working in your factory?” she asked, pushing her way past me. Unlike Yang, Blake was an adult and full grown, and she’d had a lover. She also liked pornography and seemed to be horny most of the time, according to the RWBY show. It was part of her basic contradictory nature.

 

“You want the same deal?” I confirmed.

 

“Yes.”

 

So I showed her how to assemble Model 2’s, which were popular mostly due to the included Red Dot sight and slightly reduced weight compared to the model 1. It had taken me a few weeks to perfect the polymer frame casting and hardening process, but I’d gotten it right and now I had a successful firearm model which sold well with the various gun shops, and I’d supplied a couple dozen to the Winchester estate, in exchange for special favors, mostly a hands-off by the police and the usual bribe seeking extortion artists employed at the city of Vale. And I’d killed enough of the gangs that they steered clear rather than get sniped by my robot turrets. When you put a powerful battle rifle with a silencer and a full bore .308, cover turns into concealment. The scouts and snipers who tried to get a line on my gate kept dying, and my armed drones kept dropping frag grenades in alleyways where the smarter gangers tried to operate drones on me. Funny how those devices transmit a signal you can hack or block, while your own, not run by Dr. Merlot’s compromised code, still work. Dumb crooks are dumb, and my kill count of enemies had passed 100. I am sure Blake can sympathize.

 

“How are things with you and Weiss?” I asked her after she’d finished her shift and I was feeding her a tuna melt. It is a testament to my cooking that she kept eating despite the question. I’d upgraded my cooking area from microwave to an actual stove and oven, with a vent flue.

 

“She’s a snob with control issues, daddy issues, and mommy issues. And she’s got a stick up her ass,” Blake summarized.

 

“And your partner?” I asked.

 

“Yang is a brawler. She lacks subtlety and a sense of stealth. She tends to rush in because that’s always worked for her. I suspect this will get her into trouble someday,” Blake said, eyes distant. She took another bite of the crispy crust I’d browned in butter. This covered the soft slices of bread and the molten cheese I’d then pressed around a core of tuna salad. She made a happy groan of sexual satisfaction as she ate.

 

“I agree. I’ve told her this. Someday she might run into your ex, and he’s a jealous man with serious anger issues.”

 

“Why do you know about my ex?” Blake asked after a moment, then took another bite and chewed with obvious indulgence.

 

“Didn’t Yang tell you? I’m an alien,” I answered, watching her freeze, eyeing me up and down.

 

“No. You are human. I can smell that much on you,” she disagreed.

 

“Natural human. The humans here are perfected, cleaned up, missing some of the genetic history. I am a naturally evolved being, not a perfected colonist. For all I know I can’t even breed with the local humans or faunus.”

 

“Dunno. You smell normal,” Blake admitted, sniffing for effect.

 

“I still have testosterone, which you’ll crave, being female, and one used to male attention thanks to your ex. Did you two have sex?” I asked her, curious. It was never clear in the anime.

 

“Regularly. I was hoping to conceive and use it as an excuse to calm him down, but we were incompatible,” she admitted.

 

“So you’re used to all that testosterone. Have you noticed yourself becoming more anxious lately, and more cautious or fearful?” I asked her.

 

“Yes. How did you know?” she asked me with curiosity.

 

“I’m a bit older than you, so I know stuff. You probably won’t feel right until you get a new source of testosterone in your life. And at the dosage you’re used to, or this anxiety will persist.”

 

“How am I supposed to do that?” she asked, annoyed.

 

“Hug Jaune?” I suggest. “And Sun when he shows up. He tends to go topless so there’s a lot of surface area to take advantage of. Sleep next to either one, skin to skin. Or take Jaune as a boyfriend and get the usual injections for maximum dosage and effect. He might knock you up, and it will piss off Pyrrha, but you’d feel better.”

 

“Usually, adults don’t suggest teens have sex with other people their own age. Why aren’t you some kind of sex predator?” she asked with suspicion.

 

“I’m hoping to meet Glynda. Wanted to see what she’s like once I pull the stick out and push her buttons,” I answered honestly. Blake looked me up and down.

 

“Might work. Can’t help you meet her, though. She’s really standoffish and never socializes. Any parting advice?” Blake asked.

 

“Professor Port never lies. Every story is true. And he’s the strongest hunter in the world,” I told her with a straight face. There’s a long running theory that Port was this world’s Chuck Norris. Every Chuck Norris joke is actually true when it comes to Peter Port.

 

“That may be the strangest and most unlikely thing I have ever heard.”

 

“Just be sure to tell Ruby I said that. Watch her expression. It should be worth it.”

 

Blake left and I locked up again, her 200 lien richer and me having met my production goal for the weekend.