Summer glared at her wife who was kneeling in a seiza with her arms held above her head.
A familiar sight. One she'd seen almost weekly over a decade ago.
She ignored the memories of Raven's younger self in her Beacon uniform and the later years when they'd up those punishments to include-
"Again." She demanded, pulling away from her nostalgia.
Summer was totally not recalling anything sexy. Nope. Not her. Summer was disciplining right now. She totally wasn't contemplating anything like that.
"I won't ever harbor a fugitive without my spouse's permission using my PMC. Especially if they're a Maiden." Raven replied automatically for the umpteenth time, a simple black eyepatch covering her right eye over a patch of shaped adhesive gauze that seemed to cover the majority of the surrounding skin.
Summer knew that the patch of skin under it (despite needing more time to graft properly) was a little too perfect, just like her own.
There was a momentary thrill of the fact they now matched, upset immediately at the sight of the right side of her hair from her temple to just behind her ear having been shaved to the skin, hiding the fact that she'd clearly lost some of it in her accident.
She'd have to thank Jaune again. Gods, how much were they going to end up owing that boy?
Taiyang was currently on the phone talking with Ozpin after helping double-check some provided information by Raven about the new Spring Maiden's teacher, his co-worker Aurelia.
Otherwise he'd be grilling their wife with her.
"I'm…" Summer sighed, "Well I'm sort of proud of you for lending a hand to a stranger, even if it was more out of personal spite rather than real empathy. But I told you to get me if you needed help, Rae. I'm your wife, you should have called for me no matter what."
"...sorry." Raven's voice was hushed and soft.
Raven's ability to genuinely apologize without sarcasm or being forced to by insisting multiple times had only been a very recent change. A big step forwards, especially with her somewhat broken mentality and stubbornness.
Summer just really wished it didn't have to be at moments like this.
"If you're sorry, please don't let a moment like this happen in the future. I know you have issues with him still, but really. Trying to hide a Maiden? Please tell me you didn't take her in just to kill her. We're not even young enough for that anymore."
"I didn't take her in because I planned on killing her, even if I'd considered it with how much of a blue blood brat she was." Raven protested, "It was because she would probably keep running anyways and someone might as well have tabs on the crazy bitch."
Summer wanted to chastise her for speaking ill of the dead, but couldn't when she'd been the woman to curse Jaune's slightly-too-old-for-him friend and taken her wife's eye.
"...Hah." Summer sighed. "How long are you having to keep the eyepatch on?"
"Whenever." Raven' shrugged, "Jaune gave me a magic eye. The patch is just to put a limiter on it until I get good at controlling it."
"Oh gods, this is not going to end well." Summer groaned into her hands, "This feels like positive reinforcement on bad behavior."
"Brats a kid. Plus it's payment for making sure his little temp-girlfriend is safe. Think of it as a silver lining to a shit situation instead."
"Oh well isn't that convenient for you?" Summer sighed angrily, the heat in her voice low but present.
"I'm sorry Summer."
Fuck. Stop making her heart skip beats, Rae. This wasn't fair.
If Raven had this ability back in Beacon, Summer would have never gotten anything done.
"Fine. I don't want to fight about this. You messed up, but you had your heart mostly in the right place. Just… no more trying to keep things under our nose, Rae. Think of what Yang would have been like if you'd lost."
She saw Raven flinch, her hands clenching.
"You said she got lucky, but she was a Maiden. She only really needs to get lucky once. The fact you lived was just good timing because you'd hit her at the same time and she'd have no follow up attacks at that moment, right?"
"Yeah." Raven admitted, some frustration in her voice. "Wouldn't have any trouble when she'd first met me, but keeping you alive was more important than my lust for power back then. She wasn't great at fighting after four years at Beacon, but she didn't need too much when she had literal magic."
Stop making her heart skip beats, Raven Branwen! She was supposed to be mad at you!
Summer played with a strand of her hair, her index finger coiling the white locks around her digit.
"I-well. Good. Uh. Y-you can get up now."
She tried to ignore Raven wrapping her arms around her, thumbs running gentle circles into her lower back just the way she liked it. Dammit.
"So you forgive me, Summer?"
"Dammit, Rae." She replied breathily. "Fine, I forgive you. Just very frustrated."
Raven kissed the side of her jaw, Aura mingling as her breath blew hot against Summer's ear.
"I'll make it up to you."
That she did. That she did. Later. As much as Summer was suddenly in the mood she wasn't going to encourage this behavior.
So they waited a day.
Juniper felt like he'd been raked over a bed of coals.
Magic hurt.
Even Pyrrha had entered a deeper state of slumber, only the large built up reserves of Prana built up over the years within them keeping them together.
If he and Jaune hadn't been collecting such a ridiculous amount of prana in his body after years of slow collection, he might have actually died a second time.
His body as a mere Spirit of Hindsight was fragile, it seemed. Nowhere near the level of his near invincible feeling Saber form.
And while Jaune had another SSR Rarity Consumable: Summon Servant (Saber) now (finally), it wasn't worth wasting over alleviating his current pain. He could endure this much.
It wasn't anything like any sort of hidden masochism, but it made Juniper feel like he was still at least a bit alive.
"You're not to breathe a word of this Jaune. I mean it. Nor are you to stress it until after you graduate Beacon." He warned his brother, "Raven decided you were too young to know of Salem and I disagree, though she's not wrong in that you're not ready for everything. But she won't ever act unless she has an overwhelming advantage and has access to the power of the Maidens."
"Why are the Maidens even so important though?" Jaune whispered quietly.
"Now that is complicated. I… I'll tell you once you're done with your first year of Beacon. That's a promise. It's too early to know everything now. It's not because you're unreliable or anything, ok?" Juniper assured, placing a hand on Jaune's shoulder, "It's just… really complicated."
Wasn't that the truth.
Jaune just nodded, trusting his explanation, accepting without question Salem's existence as some sort of cursed Queen of the Grimm, her immortality included.
Of course this didn't include every detail about her broken relationship with her and Ozma, now Ozpin, but even so, Jaune deserved some idea of what was to come.
Of course that didn't seem to get Jaune at a disadvantage at all, as he'd immediately begun to shift through his Inventory seeing if he had anything that could be used for imprisonment or sealing, only stopping when Juniper rolled his eyes and made the boy stop. This wasn't the time to let him begin to obsess over something.
He hadn't been that one track minded as a kid, right?
"Alright. Enough moping in the bathroom, Jaune." Juniper leaned back, phasing his head through the door to see his friends all waiting on the other side, Ruby playing with Drei as Yang held her in her lap, still looking a bit distracted as she gazed in the direction of Raven's room.
She hadn't exactly reacted well to her mom's eyepatch, despite the woman's (Juniper still wasn't used to the image of Raven's weirdly gentle mothering) insistence that her eye was fine thanks to Jaune and that she wouldn't need the patch soon. She'd even covered for Jaune, stating that she borrowed him for something and that was the reason he was late in getting back.
Emerald had fetched a hot towel for Jaune to wipe his face with when he'd returned and was rejoining the others after disposing of it to a laundry basket, her hands crossed behind her back. Blake was crouched next to her, fidgeting with the edges of her hair as she sketched something into her notebook splayed on the ground.
Nora and Ren on the other hand were standing shoulder to shoulder by the entrance to the bathroom, not listening in, but on guard after seeing Jaune come back looking slightly singed and battered.
"Your friends are waiting for you."
Jaune gave a bit of a weak smile.
"Hey. You're not all just waiting outside the bathroom, right?" He called out with a small smile.
"N-no!" Nora and Ruby replied from the other side, the sound of a small hand slapping over a mouth with a muffled "Mmm-ann" following from Ruby.
"Would you like another hot towel, master?" Emerald's voice called out helpfully. "I would be happy to make another quick trip to the kitchen."
"Naw, I'm good, but thanks." Jaune laughed, sitting up and flushing the empty toilet on the half-flush setting before washing his hands to maintain the charade of having gone to the bathroom rather than being given exposition by Juniper himself. "Thanks though, Em."
"Surprisingly good girl." Juniper noted out loud, getting a nod of agreement from Jaune.
It was actually a real stroke of luck he'd been the one to find Emerald in this life instead of someone else. Her loyalty could be honestly frightening.
"Kiss up." He heard Yang tease Emerald as Jaune dried off his hands and opened the door.
"I am my master's blade." Emerald simply puffed out her chest proudly, though her face maintained her normal smiling poker face, seeming to take the insult as a weird compliment.
"Pft." Jaune giggled watching the interactions between his friends. "I love you guys."
Everyone just jumped Jaune, the kids devolving into a pile of limbs and giggles as Emerald rolled her eyes and just leaned over to stroke a bit of Jaune's hair.
"Jaune? You sure you're alright?"
Jaune's knife hadn't stopped moving as he pre-shredded a load of vegetables, but his eyes didn't stray from Big Brother Juniper's form, the wispy outline of his body only recently having fully come back together, though his outline was sometimes still fuzzy.
"I'm fine, mom." He assured with a half-truth. "Just thinking about something is all. I still want to get the trolly system set up, so I've been wondering if I should just machine out more BOLT units for it. I don't want to take jobs away from people, but we're short on manpower with all the farmland readjustments."
He felt his mom kneel down to hug him, leaning into her gentle warmth.
Her Aura was fresh snow on rugged stone, firm but gentle, roses on the verge of bloom.
"Well, you just do what you think is best, Jaune." He felt his mother kiss the top of his head between his ears. "Everyone believes in you."
"Gee, no pressure." He giggled as she placed another two kisses on his head.
"Mmm. You keep seeking it out, so I'd argue that it's your fault. Suck it up. You're a big boy."
"I'm eleven."
"Then stop frowning like an old man. Do you want to grow up to be like Qrow?"
"Psh." Jaune grinned. "Uncle Qrow's pretty cool."
"Gods forbid if you end up half as messy as he is."
"Uhhhh. You haven't seen how disorganized it is inside my Semblance. I've just got one section for machining and weapons, another for food, and the rest is a mess."
"Is that how you've been cleaning up your room, mister?"
"I am not a crook."
He could feel his mother's amusement and exasperation in her Aura as she placed another kiss on the top of his head.
"What am I to do with you, Jaune?"
"Love me forever?"
"Hmm. I'll consider it."
"Mom!"
She laughed again before finally letting go.
"Just don't space out while handling a kitchen knife, ok? You've got Aura, but it still gives me a heart attack as your mother, ok?"
Jaune nodded, turning around to lean over and kiss his mother's cheek as she leaned in expectantly.
"Got it mom."
"What do you know? That Jaune kid really managed to set up a trolley in the end after all." Sienna muttered to herself, gazing over at the slowly traveling rail bound vehicle moving through Kuo Kuana from her perch on top of one of the larger buildings of their capitol. "Thought he wouldn't manage after figuring out our agricultural issues drawing a lot of our remaining workforce away."
A kid chased a ball that rolled by the front of one, the traveling trolley just stopping easily as the little child entered its path, waiting for them to get out of the way before continuing.
"Safety features included." Adam agreed from her side as her apprentice/secretary checked off some things on a clipboard for her. "Jaune does good work."
Sienna side eyed his small smile.
"Remind me again why I took you on when you cut yourself off from him? I could have used that connection."
"Besides the fact that he wants to prove me wrong and started going all out to help instead of pussyfooting about?" The young boy quipped lazily, his smile fading. "We need more moderates to start and less passivism in general. I'm willing to put in work while everyone else is too complacent because Menagerie is growing that they're forgetting we have Faunus in the other Kingdoms suffering. Without something to prove Jaune becomes passive and useless to us."
"They're putting all their expectations on a child and stopping fighting themselves." Sienna sighed in mild disgust. "Children are our future, they should be allowed to grow and enjoy the small share of warmth this garbage star has left."
"You don't seem too bothered using me."
"You're like an old man in a fifteen year old's body. A helluva lot less creepy than the Albain brothers to boot. I don't exactly have a lot of choice to work with." Sienna sighed, stretching and feeling her skin sliding smoothly against her current White Fang diplomatic robes. "Besides, you were the one that came crawling over to me."
"Sounds like an excuse for grooming."
"Wanna, die, kiddo?"
Adam snickered.
"How's everything looking for the upcoming election?"
"If you could even call it that. More passing the torch. Plus the fact that there's plenty of people arguing for Ghira to keep managing both Menagerie and the White Fang simultaneously even if Chieftain Ghira can't keep that up like he used to anymore. We've grown too much as a Kingdom."
Sienna sighed. That was true. It was why an opportunity was arriving for her in the first place.
Unfortunately, while not inherently stupid, it was true that the majority of Faunus tended to be less educated due to discrimination in many forms, especially as basic education was a right only given in Vale at the moment.
Vacuo couldn't afford to, Mistral would never, and Atlas was a meritocracy which made all the starting lines harder to even get to to begin with, even if there weren't any directly discriminatory laws like Mistral.
"He's not a superman." She agreed with a sigh, "And despite our disagreement on protest policy, he's only done good work. Or maybe I should say his daughter has. Bringing a connection to Jaune Arc has probably been the best thing that's ever happened to the Fang and Menagerie."
"True, but give the Chieftain more credit." Adam argued back. That was one of the reasons why she kept Adam around. He was young and maybe a bit too hot-blooded, but he was passionate and stood by his own. "He was working everything he had with almost zero resources. The fact that Kuo Kuana didn't fall apart in the first place was all thanks to him getting aid from the other Kingdoms in the first place."
Sienna let out a depreciating chuckle.
"That's true. Even though I didn't end up graduating Shade Academy, I was only able to even attend in the first place due to the initiative programs he'd helped set up. It's not as if I'm ignorant of his good work, Adam."
Sienna watched as people boarded and departed from the trolley, some of the idiots having fun by testing the safety measures again and again to the complaints of others on the public transport just trying to the Green Laurel.
The sight of her people having such pointless fun and shenanigans was joyful.
Currently there were only three lines, all green roofed, meaning that they headed to the Green Laurel and back to whatever neighborhood the number on the trolley indicated. A rather large station that the boy was confusingly calling a Cable Barn had been built up by Jaune with his robot dogs and a load of iron bamboo and there was new infrastructure that was being handled there as well, unknowingly adding more to Ghira's workload.
Another odd benefit to the boy's work. The busier Ghira became the more it was necessary for others to take over for him in what ways they could. The Fang included.
Ghira really needed to hire more people to delegate work to in general though.
At least Jaune would set up something rudimentary to shove work onto other people that wanted it, making sure they got to earn some semblance of a living in the process. Sometimes by injecting money into the system himself.
"Still one boy and a pack of robot dogs building three trolley lines in two weeks is ridiculous."
"Jaune's never made much sense." Adam shrugged. "Stop trying to make sense of him and it makes your life easier."
"Like how he dealt with The Burrower?"
"Wasn't awake for it. Can't tell you what I don't know. I've told you that already."
"I just need a word to suggest what we both already estimated. It'd help us all a lot."
"Get it from him then. I've got nothing to say."
Sienna narrowed her eyes.
One of the original reasons she'd taken Adam under her wing was to get the truth of the day of the Glacial Incident. There was no way that the One-Armed Crimson Swordsman was the one to take out both the Leviathan and The Burrower.
If she could spin Jaune as some sort of savior using Adam as a 'credible enough' witness, the boy would become a symbol of hope for Faunuskind in combat and technology. Sienna could use his image as a spearhead to press forward for some more aggressive propaganda. It would be on a different level than she was currently planning for.
"You keep making this so difficult for me, Adam."
"I don't know what you mean, Sienna."
"...hah." Sienna sighed. "For someone that claims he's willing to cut away his bonds with the Little Professor, you're pretty bad at betraying him."
"Those two things don't need to be mutually inclusive." Adam handed her his clipboard. "We all have our limits, Sienna."
Sienna just glared as she snatched the clipboard from his hands as she read the report, the useless fluff being scratched out and the important metrics noted.
"You're lucky you're surprisingly good at deskwork."
"I've helped Chieftain Ghira out when Jaune's away plenty. I've had years of practice."
Sienna just snorted through her nose as Adam stepped forward, dropping off the ledge of the building to the street below, cutting off the trolley to slow it down to comfortably board it.
"...Just say to him you still want to be friends, you fucking edgy dumbass. Teenagers."
"BOLT 2B, BOLT 9S. Stop exploring and focus on the job, please." Jaune warned as the two black and white robodogs began to stray from the area and curiously sniff and interact with bystanders.
He'd installed a pair of SSR Rarity Consumable: YorRHa AI Cores into these two, one a (Scanner Type) and the other a (Battle Type) to act as a pair of guard units for the rest of his BOLT units.
They were meant for human bodies, but they'd adapted to their new forms quickly enough.
They were good at their jobs, helping keep order by keeping curious kids away from the construction BOLTs, alongside their stellar performance in his occasional combat tests when he'd sent them to hunt a few Grimm in the dangers of the desert with gun turrets and retractable deterring blades attached to their backs.
As they were ignored as if nothing more than a part of the environment until they attacked, as the Grimm couldn't sense their emotions it seemed. They were becoming very well liked by the local militiamen. Actually they wanted more than the two, but there wasn't much he could do about the base BOLT designs being designed for combat support at best and lacked the ability to house high-power combat AI without him cheating with Gacha items.
They really deserved their SSR Rarity designations with how well they performed with their more limited frames, even with 2B's being juiced up. He sort of wanted to give them more humanoid bodies, but getting people used to robot dogs was already a bit awkward when they took work away from people.
Making them look human, even if he made them look like Faunus, that would go from robot dogs created for a purpose of serving people into robot people taking jobs away and that would be a whole new problematic can of worms to contend with.
They didn't seem to mind much, however, just more interested in interacting with people in general than any potential existentialism that he'd originally been worried might result from what the description window had stated.
After all they were: …near-human android entities designed to serve humans and combat the machine lifeforms that have taken over Earth, though their human masters have perished long ago. They are perpetually trapped, stuck in a cycle of life and death, in doing so have become the closest thing to humans left in their dead world.
He'd worried initially that it might imply greater egos and an unwillingness to serve in the lesser forms he'd had to install them into, but it seemed Faunus were close enough to human for them to be utterly fascinated with all of the peoples of Menagerie. Especially when they'd found their new creator had fully human siblings and friends.
Blake was always on edge around the two, as they were too sentient for her comfort unlike the other BOLTs which were much simpler VI.
Jaune didn't mind any of their quirks as long as they kept helping with his work.
The two elite BOLTs sidled up next to him (2B being almost double the size of a standard BOLT and 9S being slightly smaller than standard), getting some pats from him as they got back to maintaining a perimeter and keeping any too curious citizen from accidentally falling into wet cement.
A mix of iron bamboo and cement was being laid down to set proper foundations for his cable cars, with the rails installed and setting with the following surface layers.
Remnant didn't seem to have a distinction between the two, calling it a trolley no matter how much he'd initially tried to explain it all, and he didn't care enough to correct them at this point.
Between juggling all of his volunteer work in enriching the still unofficial Kingdom (Vacuo was still dragging their feet as well, unfortunately), his helping the Schnee siblings (a bit less regular now that Winter was allowed to visit home with less complications), and now having to be supervised by Raven if he and Trivia wanted to do their vigilante work (and dealing with Raven's laughter when Trivia got to dress him up to her enjoyment) he wasn't in a mood to nitpick over details with anyone.
The details mattered so much less nowadays. Especially now that he knew there was some sort of evil super villain that was responsible for the Grimm. Mostly. Juniper's story to him was incomplete for a reason, but also she seemed like she was a slightly selfish woman that became cursed. Immortality because she wanted her husband back? Really? Juniper didn't say who did the cursing, but that seemed like an extreme measure to take for… well anything.
Maybe a curse-breaking item would show up for him and solve this issue.
But Jaune brought himself back to the present, focusing on managing his BOLTs to stay on duty as the VI were made to emulate dogs, so as much of their loyalty was there, so was their playfulness. He couldn't afford them getting too distracted, especially since winter break was getting closer to ending every day.
Heck, he was distracted enough on his own.
It sort of bummed Jaune out that he definitely wouldn't be able to finish all the cable cars he'd wanted before he'd have to leave. Maybe… he should sneak away to Menagerie in short bursts to make sure that once all the agricultural adjustments and reforms were done all available manpower would work on getting the rest of the public transportation in order?
He could also say hi to Blake, too. And avoid Ilia, since she didn't seem to like him hanging around her childhood friend too much. Her jealousy was a bit much, but he understood that he inevitably monopolized more of Blake's time whenever he was on winter break. Keeping her friend too busy to hang out with Ilia herself wasn't exactly fair to the girl either.
"Get your head back in the game, Jaune." He muttered to himself, pulling himself from his thoughts again, "There's still a lot to take care of."
After all the initial cable cars were set up, Jaune would have to expand the system more properly, but for now connecting as much of Kuo Kuana to the Green Laurel which connected the settlements of Kuo Kuana and La Hau was important.
Then he'd have to set up cable cars through La Hau as well.
There was so much to do and so little time, as always.
"Ugh, there's always so little time." Jaune groaned. "Why can't I make clones of myself or something? Best I've got is the SR Ring of Nine Dragons and that splits my intellect and focus and I become a gaggle of useless drooling idiots."
He absentmindedly pet 9S that had come back to butt his head into the back of Jaune's leg again, as if detecting his creator's stress.
"Thanks 9S." Jaune sighed, never calling 2B and 9S girl or boy like a regular BOLT dog.
As they had human level intellect and that felt odd, even if the headpats didn't.
"You and 2B are going to have to help keep the rest of the construction BOLTs in line when I'm gone for school soon… I should probably add a hologram projector to you and 2B so you can communicate with text. Dammit. I should have thought of that to start."
9S just circled around Jaune's legs, though not excitedly.
It was almost impossible to read the emotions of an AI that had developed such without the input of humanity even if they emulated them well. But none of that was applicable to 9S as he was in a BOLT body. Still it wasn't impossible.
"You… don't want that? What, me leaving or the text communication?"
9S dug his right forepaw into the dirt twice.
"Really? You seem so interested in people, don't you want to communicate better?"
The smaller BOLT frame just looked him straight in the eye.
"...you want to observe us all more without people knowing how cognizant you are?"
9S let out a bark.
Jaune shrugged.
"I mean, I guess. If that's what you want. I'll just have to write more stuff down on paper for instructions, is all. Don't worry."
He felt 2B bump under him and between his legs, using its head to pull him up onto the back of its frame like a mount.
"Whoa there. Ok. We're not leaving you out, okay?" Jaune assured as 2B bumped her cheek against the smaller 9S. "I still want you keeping bystanders away from walking and sticking into the foundation's wet concrete. C'mon let's all get back to finishing this."
You'd think they'd stay away from wet concrete, but some people are just too curious for their own good.