Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ A Certain Machinist ❯ Red Head ( Chapter 8 )

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

 

EIGHT

 

Red Head

 

 

Jaune messaged me. Pyrrha wanted to talk to me for advice.

 

“She has to do some assembly work, like everyone else. If she agrees to work, we’ll chat,” I wrote him back. She showed up two hours later, arriving by cab. I buzzed her in. Her clothing was understated, new, appropriate for a first job in physical labor.

 

“Hello, Miss Nikos. Today we’ll be making the model 4. I’ll show you the assembly steps and then you’ll make them, I’ll test them. I pay by the completed units, not by the hour, so make them right.”

 

I showed her the steps and parts used for each. She began to work while she worked up the nerve to speak her mind. Glynda had gone to work an hour earlier. She’d managed to kill a dozen gang thugs, which meant there was a new object lesson that the slightly pregnant blonde was ridiculously dangerous. The gangs had started to put up warning tags a few blocks away, to keep their own getting near my factory shop. They were tagging warning signs to save their own lives from me. I don’t know if I should feel proud of that, but I do.

 

The news played that Roman Torchwick had escaped from jail, probably with Neopolitan’s help. He never actually wanted any part of the mess, because destroying the city where you did business and built your reputation is nuts. And Torchwick is an attention whore, not suicidal. It was also why he’d never approached me or attempted to break in. Weapons are too heavy and they aren’t a gentleman thief’s typical target. It doesn’t fit the mold.

 

“So, how’s things with Jaune,” finally asked her right before she managed to speak. She exhaled slowly, blushing, and turned to regard me with one suspicious eye.

 

“He told me you bullied him into confessing to me,” she finally said. Her voice was soft, sweet, musical, kind.

 

“And Ruby said he confessed and offered marriage, and you accepted. So you’ll soon be Missus Arc,” I answered.

 

“Yes. That happened. It was very sudden, during practice. We were all sweaty and breathing hard and he just proposed,” she said.

 

“Would you have it any other way?” I asked her.

 

“Most girls want a romantic spot on the third date,” Pyrrha said. It wasn’t a complaint.

 

“But you’re the champion arena fighter of the world, practice is a big part of your life, you’ve got runner’s high from fighting, being sweaty and happy is your thing. So isn’t proposing then the right answer, and shows he understands you properly?” I asked her.

 

“Yes. Exactly. I didn’t expect anyone to work that out. Did you tell him to do it then?” she asked me. Ah, that was what was bothering her.

 

“No. I told him to confess to you, and to do it soon, not to wait or chicken out. Confessing during practice was all Jaune,” I told her. She stared at me, searching for dishonesty and found none. She relaxed.

 

“Thank you. I don’t want my love life engineered by others. I hate being manipulated,” Pyrrha said.

 

“Then it’s a good thing I shot Cinder Fall,” I said in response.

 

“What do you mean?” she asked, confused.

 

“You were at the top of a short list to be the next Fall Maiden, because the prior one was dying, and Cinder had stolen a bit less than half her power. The drain was literally killing Amber. If you’d allowed yourself to believe you deserve to suffer instead of marry Jaune like you wanted, you’d accept the power, which would begin to destroy you, and Cinder would have hunted you down and killed you before the hour was over, leaving Ruby to witness your death, breaking Jaune’s heart for good, and crippling the defense of Vale. So tragedy all around. And you’d have died a painful death and your body turned to ashes by Cinder. She’s dead now, Amber is presumably healthy again, and you’re able to shift from arena fighter to wife and housewife raising kids. Jaune tell you about his seven sisters?” I asked her.

 

Pyrrha stared at me.

 

“Blake and Yang warned me that you tend to know things nobody should know,” Pyrrha finally said in a carefully measured voice, a great deal of emotion being held back through deliberate effort.

 

“It is because I am an alien. Yang tell you that part?” I asked her. She shook her head.

 

“Ruby said so. I never believed her. That’s the silly sorts of things that people who wear tinfoil under their hats say,” Pyrrha answered doubtfully.

 

“Well, it is true. It just happens that we look pretty much the same, speak the same language, have nearly the same movies and music despite thousands of years difference, and my home planet is slightly similar to this one so I can live here unaided with only minor health supplements.”

 

“Like what?” Pyrrha asked.

 

“I drink orange juice for vitamin C. And eat marmalade, which is a better source. And chili peppers.”

 

“But you married Glynda and you have a child together,” pointed out Pyrrha. I smiled and nodded.

 

“Ohh…” Pyrrha then said.

 

“Don’t go announcing it. The girls will work it out eventually,” I warned her. She finished assembly on her fourth rifle. I put it into testing and then onto the QA rig for specifications checks. Passed.

 

“Or it will cast doubt on Ruby for insisting you are an alien,” Pyrrha countered.

 

“Well, we still look the same. And nothing noteworthy about our accent differences.”

 

“Where are you actually from?” Pyrrha asked.

 

“Earth. It is a planet in the Solar system, in the Milky Way galaxy,” I answered.

 

“I have no idea what any of that means,” she admitted.

 

“Our moon is round, goes around the planet around every 28 days, causes tides on the ocean, and gravity works normally. Humans evolved there. Lots of evidence proving that. I suspect that Remnant is a lost human colony, probably ten thousand years in the future from my time, possibly a lot more. There’s travel time for a colony ship, which would have to be thousands or tens of thousands of light years away, if not more, and your continents were clearly man-made using space lasers or something. So you might be from over a hundred thousand years in my future, or you could think of me being from a hundred thousand years in your past, if you prefer.”

 

“So you’re a Timelord too, not just an alien,” Pyrrha accused, assembling another rifle and handing it to me. I put it through QA next.

 

“I am surprised that the Whooists exist here, but maybe they just didn’t include the bad stuff in the archive,” I commented.

 

“Bad stuff?” she asked.

 

“Doctor Who went super-gay, all the fans protested at how disgusting it was, and it was canceled by their parent company and the BBC. The creep responsible for destroying the sixty year legacy was found skinned and pinned down over an anthill in Sussex, with his organs spread out in some weird cult killing. It was never solved, but the list of people who wanted him dead was in the millions, so its just one of those unsolved crimes,” I blithely answered, vaguely remembering the news item. He had it coming, that’s what I remember. And I’m not even a Who fan.

 

“So you’re from a primitive time before space travel, and you’re an alien, and you don’t have aura, and you still speak English and eat normal food and gave Glynda a child. And know stuff about the future and messed with my love life,” Pyrrha got back to the point. I sighed.

 

“Did you want him agonizing about his anxiety issues for the next year?” I asked her.

 

“No,” Pyrhha sulked. She stopped working on the rifle in front of her.

 

“And he’s going to get you a ring, and you’re going to meet his family, and have to come up with names for all your future children. You’ll have to balance between Argos Greek and Vale French,” I pointed out.

 

“Greek? French? What is that?” she asked, bumped out of her maternal reverie by those words.

 

“Colony world, remember? That’s the countries on Earth your two cultures are actually based on. Thousands of years of history, before I was born,” I explained. “I don’t speak either language, but they had those too.”

 

“How does a space colony lose all its history?” asked Pyrrha, “Assuming that your claim that Remnant is a colony world is remotely true.”

 

“Well, you arrived, terraformed the planet, sent down robots to plant trees and fish in the oceans and establish a living environment suitable for people and their crops and animals, and the planet, which apparently has its own goals, rebelled, resulting in the brother gods and grimm. The planet contaminated the new human colonists with dust and aura, which gave you magic powers, and you ended up getting more negative attention from the brother gods, who smited your original civilization, attacking you directly and wrecking your space technology, computers, advanced materials, and causing a civilizational collapse, wrecking all prior knowledge within a few generations. A lot of time passed and the Gods let up, your numbers climbed, new civilizations arose with bootstrapped primitive technology like iron working and dust, and you managed to climb a bit, then get struck down again, then climb again, then repeat in endless cycles. The grimm keep showing up when you get too numerous and wreck your civilization. I think that’s what was starting to happen with the Breach a few months ago,” I explained.

 

“So the Brother gods are the root of all evil?” she asked.

 

“Not sure. They are either artificial intelligences with rogue aspirations or aliens on a different scale of existence that can affect things like gravity or magic and create inky black monsters from nightmares that feed on fear and paranoia. Something like that,” I answered. I gestured to the rifle and she continued work on it. The last one passed QA so went into a crate with the others.

 

“So what is Earth like?” she asked.

 

“No gods. Lots of people. Seven billion. We have a few cities with more people than the entire population of Remnant combined. Life everywhere, even inside rocks and the deepest darkest part of the oceans or trapped in ice. Lots of history of cultures, and even more history of the planet that goes back for four and a half billion years. Humans carry genes from extinct proto-human species that died out for various reasons. We had ice ages coming and going. Another was coming when I died, announced in the northern mountains that it was confirmed starting a new glacier up there. We had hundreds of languages, and people were 26 different species, sort of. It gets complicated, genetically. We were a lot more variable than on Remnant,” I explained at her quizzical look.

 

“So we’re not really human?” Pyrrha asked me.

 

“Probably engineered, or perfected. Based on humans but likely with tens of thousands of years of both evolution and retroviruses. Most of the people here are healthier looking than my species, better tighter skin, less obesity, and you all seem to be nearly immune to breaking bones or dying from impacts. And you’ve got Aura.”

 

“But you have no grimm and everything is alive?” she confirms.

 

“Not everything. We still have rocks, but the oceans and rivers are full of microscopic life, plants, algae, bits of pollen from trees and grasses and flowers… a lot more species than you have here. A lot more. This place isn’t a monoculture, but it runs the risk of being one. It needs more variation. And I suspect that the process to remove junk DNA has weakened your species. All the old complex DNA from evolution is there for a reason. Sometimes our planet would go through weird phases and we carried inactive DNA to deal with it and keep us alive, and being inactive, the changed conditions would activate it. Get enough cold nights and you activate a gene that makes your blood work below zero so you don’t suffer from frostbite. Live in a desert long enough and you activate a gene that makes you resistant to both heat and dehydration. It is like that,” I explained. I could see she was trying to imagine this.

 

“And my people can’t do this?” Pyrrha asked.

 

“Not sure. You might be able to handle some of the issues, but your death rates seem really high, and your reproduction rates are high to compensate. Its probably why you like Jaune so much,” I answered.

 

“What do you mean?” Pyrrha blushed.

 

“Your instincts want him. And he’s from a famous family that goes way WAAAY back. On hard times now, but the Arc family were dukes for the last few centuries, weren’t they?” I asked her.

 

“That is my understanding.”

 

“And he’s the only son, with seven sisters. A big family. Productive. Fertile. Vital. If you married him you could give up the fights and spend your time raising a baseball team of kids,” I teased. She blushed darker.

 

“And why not?” she challenged me.

 

“Nothing wrong with that at all. You’re a nice girl, remarkably sweet. He doesn’t care about your fame. You could just love him and be his wife and share his bed and raise your children together. A fine dream. Just need to pay for it,” I described it for her.

 

“Yeah. Just need to have some money to pay for it,” she agreed.

 

“And you’ve probably got savings from all those fights, right? Maybe a nest egg?” I asked her. She shrugged.

 

“Or maybe you and Jaune could do a few missions together? Some romantic journeys, fighting monsters, then hot and steamy together?” I stated. She wriggled, obviously something she’d given a lot of prior thought to.

 

“Well, sounds like you know what to do next. Probably want to drag him into a room, tear your clothes off, and break the seal on this love affair,” I suggested. She was frozen at this, knowing it was the right answer but not daring to believe anyone would say it out loud.

 

“You should probably buy a box of condoms.”

 

I let her out of my secure compound and looked at the sky its broken moon as her footsteps vanished into the distance.

 

There was a pop and my world shut off.